Cuddles III
Admiral Biscuit
There was nothing to compare to the comfort factor of a fluffy unicorn in the wintertime. Pony body temperature was naturally higher than a human’s to begin with, and then there was the fur to consider. Cami’s winter coat gave her maximum fluff.
In the dog days of summer, though.
Ponies built their houses to allow for natural airflow, which at least helped. The thatched roof insulated better than I would have thought possible, and the overhang helped keep the high summer sun out of the inside of the house. Open dormer windows created a chimney effect in the house, which in theory would pull the hot, humid air up and replace it with cooler air. That was simple physics.
And that required cooler air to make it work. Maybe the weather ponies had screwed up, or maybe Celestia had moved the sun too close—that wasn’t a thought I would have had back on Earth.
It was day nine of the heat wave. Everypony in the office was listless, and work had slowed down to a crawl. The third day, some of the officemares came back from their lunch break soaking wet and I discovered that they were spending their lunch break cooling off in the local pond. By the fifth day, I’d joined them, packing a bathing suit and a towel along with my lunch.
Even the normally industrious earth ponies stopped their midday labors, retiring from their travails in the afternoon. The fact that they made it that long in the sun was a testament to their stamina.
Weatherponies disappeared mid-morning, either roosting in trees to wait out the heat or hiding in their clouds. There had been an attempt to cool things down with an unscheduled rain shower, but that didn’t help for long. It was pleasant for the time it lasted, then the clouds dried up and the evaporating rainwater increased the humidity.
Throughout the heat wave, my fancy work clothes had changed from formal to casual and then to minimal, and I wasn’t alone in that. Ponies who normally wore clothes didn’t, and they all de-accessorized themselves as well. Mitzy was the last holdout; on Friday, her bow was drooping by mid-morning, and she finally took it off, wrapped her mane in a sloppy bun, and stuck a couple pencils in to hold it in place.
I got home before Cami—in deference to the heat, work was getting out when the majority of ponies gave up on it—and flopped down on the couch. The fireplace, a source of joy in the wintertime, was purposeless. Unless ponies could somehow invent a fire which sucked up heat . . . that was something to ask Cami when she got home.
Or maybe not. She preferred when I kept the subject off magic, especially experimental magic.
I could have made us dinner, but I didn’t feel like it. There were leftovers from last night, a couple boxes of takeout from Cheerful Cow-Bear, and they would be perfect cold.
• • •
I hadn’t fallen asleep on the couch—it was too hot to fall asleep on the couch. I had mentally disengaged, so I didn’t register the front door opening, nor the clop of hooves through the house; the first I knew of her arrival was when Cami poked her snout in the living room.
Her coat was streaked with salt and a few drying patches of lather. All of a sudden, all my discomfort was forgotten. “What happened to you?”
“I’ll explain in the shower,” she said. She paused on her trek through the living room long enough to give my knee a gentle nuzzle, then made her way up the stairs.
She was midway up when I heard the water start—that was one of the advantages of being a unicorn. In the morning, she would sometimes start the water before she even got out of bed, in order to give it time to warm up. Today, of course, she had no interest in letting it warm up.
Judging by how hot the house was, it might need a minute or two to cool down though.
Cami got in the tub with her tail to the showerhead and she backed into the spray, finally pausing as it reached the back of her neck. “Stars, that feels good.” She dropped to her knees and then did an awkward roll in the bathtub, until her belly was facing the water.
“Who’s a silly pony?”
Cami stuck her tongue out at me, then flung her loofa at me with her magic. It was a half-hearted attempt, and I caught it easily. “Never thought I’d be wishing to chase some magical abomination into a deep cave, but no. Somepony decided to go experiment with a jar of bullywug tadpoles and of course she wasn’t quick enough to catch them all.”
“Gotta catch ‘em all,” I say.
“The local monster patrol got about half of them before we arrived,” she said. “But that still left a dozen or more to chase down. In the hot sun. Across several fields and bullywugs are naturally attracted to water, but you think I got to chase any of them into a pond or even a puddle?
“And then the local magistrate wouldn’t let us leave until we filled out the proper capture forms, even though we totally could have done that later. Should have told him what he could do with his forms. At least I’ve got the joy of knowing that somewhere in his file cabinet he’s got a bunch of magical monster capture forms covered in the sweat of my brow—literally—with all the little boxes filled in with the worst mouthwriting ever.”
“Mouthwriting?” I leaned forward with concern. “Were you so tired that you couldn’t use your magic any more?”
“Nah, but I didn’t feel like it.” She shifted around in the tub, winding up on her belly with her head stuck over the side, the cold water from the shower still beating down her back. “He made me suffer in the sun for ten minutes I didn’t have to, he can spend forever with a form he can’t read. What’s for dinner?”
“Leftover Chinese. From last night. Not warmed up at all.”
“Sounds perfect. I like the way you think.” She reached out with her aura and turned the shower off. “Stand back, I’m gonna shake off.”
• • •
In the wintertime, there was nothing better than cuddling up with a fuffy warm pony. In the summertime. . . .
“Don’t touch me,” Cami warned. “Your hands are too hot.”
“I wasn’t going to,” I said. “I was just moving around and trying to find a position where the sheets were still cool.”
She lighted her horn for a moment, then it flickered out. “There aren’t any left.”
“Pillows?”
Her horn lit again. “Nope.”
“Figures. Back on Earth, we’ve got hot water bottles which I suppose could be filled with cold water and I don’t know why I never thought of that before just now. Or crushed ice—you don’t have anything like that, do you?”
She shook her head.
“Spell to keep me cold?”
“Short of turning you into a block of ice, no.” She lifted a hoof up and rubbed her chin in contemplation. “Or a petrification spell—stone gets warm slowly, so maybe. Not sure how much you feel when you’re stoned. I’ve never tried it. I could turn you to stone until the heat wave ends.”
“Boss would be mad if I missed work.”
“Being petrified is a legit excuse, as long as you’ve got a doctor’s or mage’s note.”
“Really?”
Cami nodded. “Had to write one, once. Poor girl, nopony went looking for her until she’d missed work for a week. Well, if you want to give it a try.”
“Is it better to be frozen in stone with an expression of horror, or a heroic pose?”
“You’re not serious?”
“No,” I said. “Curious, though.”
“Hmm.” She lifted her head off the pillow and turned to face me. “Well, I guess we’d get called quicker if you’re frozen with an expression of horror, but if things go really wrong and we can’t un-petrify you, if you’ve got a heroic look there’s always the chance of becoming a new statue in town until somepony figures out how to reverse the petrifiction spell.”
“There aren’t . . . around town, there’s a few pony statues. None of them are actual petrified ponies, are there?”
“Not as far as you know,” she said cheerfully, then dropped her head back down on the pillow. “It’s too hot.”
“Yeah.”
“You ever considered sleeping in the bathtub?”
“Not really,” I admitted. “Why?”
“Good.” Cami rolled off the bed. “That means there won’t be competition.”
“Don’t count me out just yet.” I also got out of bed. It was too hot to race to the bathroom, so the two of us covered the distance at a sedate pace.
“I can’t think of any reason why this is actually a good idea,” I said as I settled in the bathtub.
“And I can’t think of any reason it’s not.” Cami pulled herself over the edge of the tub, planting her hooves on either side of my legs. She settled with her head on my chest, too hot until the water started flowing.
• • •
I’d never fallen asleep in a bathtub before, but I was in Equestira now and there’s a first time for everything. Cami turned off the water when it was just past my navel, deep enough that most of her belly was in the water and her head wasn’t.
It was more comfortable than I’d thought it would be. True, the bathtub was hard and unyielding, and true I was lacking a pillow to rest my head upon, but the cool water was a welcome change from the unbearable heat.
One of her natural sleeping positions was on her belly, folded up into a ponyloaf, and the bathtub didn't impede that at all.
I knew that in the morning I was going to be sore from not sleeping in a proper bed, and I also knew that despite that, I was going to get a better night’s sleep than I would have in the bed, tossing and turning in a futile attempt to find a cool spot on the mattress.
And I also knew that the water in the tub had cooled her enough that Cami wasn’t objecting as I ran my hand through her mane, and when it comes down to it, that’s all that matters.