Rainbow Dash awoke with a yawn. She stretched her forelegs and adjusted her form on the couch, finding it a little more difficult than months before. A stack of adventure books were on the floor next to her, all read already, repeatedly. Without much else to do, she took in the sight of her body. Where was that athletic Rainbow Dash who could fly laps around everypony, or just get up from the couch without grunting? She touched her face with a hoof, which sunk into her cheek a little, and then ran it down her neck, no longer tight like it had once been. She remembered the day she was married as among the best in her life, but months later that union had created a new life, and as she thought back to those early months, she recalled once again where that athletic Rainbow Dash had gone.
Rainbow Dash flew around her house in the sky, weaving through the streams of rainbow falling from it, flying expertly through every arch and around every column; once she’d finished three laps, she landed at her doorstep and took a glance at her sundial. When she read five whole minutes, she doublechecked before a scowl crossed her face and she went inside. Her mood got worse as she slammed the door shut with her right hindleg, only to notice the act to be slightly less easy than before, with just a small amount of extra effort required, from just a not-so-small extra something in the way of her leg. Without looking behind herself, she sat down in a cloud chair with a huff, but squirmed from the extra comfort there.
“I’m not used to this much cushioning.” She finally took a look at her rump. What had once been tight muscular flank had some flab of all things to it. She could actually grab her cutie-mark and distort it with her hoof, which she couldn’t recall ever being capable of doing beforehoof. She flung herself backwards into the chair to stare at the culprit.
“This is all your fault, you know.” Her son, asleep in her womb, could offer no response to such an accusation, and she poked him with a hoof. Rainbow Dash wasn’t a big mare, but her husband was a big stallion, and it looked like their foal was shaping up to follow in his hoofsteps. From the pregnancy books Twilight had given her, foals gain most of their weight in the later months. She didn’t want to imagine how heavy she’d feel by the time she gave birth.
Rainbow Dash snorted in a serious way at the memory. One glance at her full-term barrel, now with a layer of pudge surrounding her baby, answered that question. It was poking out far from her side and trying its best to hang off the couch; her belly button, once hidden underneath her fur, was fully popped out and not at all inconspicuous. Her barrel had once been nothing but tight muscle, but she couldn’t do sit ups with a baby in the way; she’d tried a few times before her husband made her stop, however. It had been hard for her to get much exercise at all during the early months of her pregnancy, let alone nowadays. The thought reminded her of her when she’d ended her old employment.
A cloud was smashed into water vapor with a kick and a grunt. Rainbow Dash was beginning to wheeze from the exertion, but continued with her weather pony duties. The extra weight building up into a new pony within her continued to take its toll, and she knew herself to look like a hummingbird with how harshly she was flapping her wings to stay afloat. The occasional hard blow at her insides didn’t help. Still, she was managing until she felt an ache pour into her right wing that quickly became unbearable; she wasn’t seriously concerned about falling out of the sky, but still wanted to let her wings rest immediately.
There were, fortunately, many clouds remaining around her, and she took her pick of the closest and fluffiest. It wasn’t a large cloud, her hindlegs hung off the back, but it was large enough. She closed her eyes while taking a deep breath and snuggling a little more deeply into the plushness, and exhaled through her nose as the soothing wind swept over her. It took her a moment to realize what was off about the wind, and her eyes shot open in concern when her mind caught up to the cool breeze she felt against the front of her bump. Her belly was so big it poked through the bottom of the cloud. She couldn’t recall this ever happening to her beforehoof, and she didn’t want to think about whether she were blushing in embarrassment or not.
She didn’t need to look, she didn’t even really want to look, but she spied a pond not far away, and decided to take a glance at her reflection. With her wings now supporting no weight, it was effortless to glide over to the water, and now she really felt the wind hitting against her belly. Her forelegs and neck and every other part of her was getting warmer with the cloud’s help and, even though her belly was still one of the warmest parts of her body, it wasn’t like the wind was helping. She reached the pond and lifted her head to look at her reflection in the pond beneath her, and craned her head this way and that way, but the blue ball set against a cloud backdrop looked no smaller no matter which way she tried looking at it.
“Wow, now that’s a pot belly!” Rainbow Dash was lucky she hadn’t destroyed the cloud and fallen into the pond with her nervous jolts, but she did sink even more deeply into it, making her reflection even less flattering. The sound had come from below her, and she looked beneath herself for the pink owner of the voice, but couldn’t find her. She stretched her neck and leaned forwards to look directly underneath herself, and saw Pinkie Pie paddling in the pond. She almost asked Pinkie what she were doing here, but she’d certainly get some answer like “talking to you” and so cut to the chase.
“I don’t have a pot belly!” She started gliding away towards home before even getting an answer, but could hear Pinkie’s retort.
“It sure looks like a big blue cauldron to me!” Now Rainbow Dash knew she was blushing.
When she got home, she gently lifted herself out of the cloud and fluttered over to her porch. The ache in her wing was still there, but surely there were still some exercise she could get that didn’t involve her wings. After a little more waddling she was standing in her living room. Squats wouldn’t work, since she found she couldn’t bend all four of her legs well enough to do anything but squish her son and land on her butt after she spread her hindlegs too far apart, but lying down on her side to do some hindleg exercises may work. Soon she lay there moving a leg up-and-down while cursing how she’d forgotten to get anything to put underneath it; as it was, she was doing simple stretches and nothing more. Lastly, she got into her head that sit ups were something she could still do, and managed to roll onto her back after a minute of wheezing. She could see her hindhooves, and not much else; it was difficult to breathe. Still, she gritted her teeth and strained as she tried to raise her forebody at all. The most she could achieve was rocking her pregnancy back-and-forth.
By the time she’d given up, she was so tired she had to wait for her husband to help her stand.
Rainbow Dash could no longer deny that she was the owner of a pot belly; she was even proud of it, and drummed her hoof against it for a few moments. She grinned at it while thinking about her child asleep therein, entirely dependent on her for everything from eating to breathing; there couldn’t be any shame in that. Running a hoof along the little back she felt within her and then pressing in until her hoof was surrounded by skin on all sides solicited movement, and she winced when she felt but didn’t see a kick striking her ribs. She chuckled at the little pegasus-to-be, and wondered what his or her appearance was in there.
Her mind turned back towards the clouds. She stretched out her wing, the wing that wasn’t pinned against the couch, and examined it. It was still as strong as it had been in that memory, maybe even stronger from supporting her extra weight, but she hadn’t flown without a cloud (mostly) underneath her since, except for the stretch of time it took her to fly from her porch to land on one. It was simply too straining, and too tempting to cheat. Without any exercise, that had really been the beginning of the end for her figure. It wasn’t all bad, however, when she started remembering how ponies treated her differently afterwards. Her mind wandered to a particular time she’d visited Sugarcube Corner.
A craving for cupcakes, and a desire to get them faster than she could make them herself, had Rainbow Dash making another journey to Ponyville. The once short journey from her home to the village below was getting ever so slightly longer each week, and she had stopped clearing errant clouds from her airspace to give herself easier access to them. She’d occasionally tried to lie on her side to pilot clouds, instead of lying flat on her stomach and poking through them, but it was simply too hard to pilot a cloud like that. The last time she’d tried had left her slowly falling towards her back until she fell off completely, legs flailing while unable to gain any hoofhold. She’d been in no danger, and had simply controlled her fall until she’d reached a lower cloud, but it convinced her that she was simply too big to avoid it.
Trying did nothing to stop her from blushing as she got closer to Ponyville, and familiarity made it no less alien when a passing pegasus stallion occasionally turned his head for a second look, or started prematurely losing altitude for no particular reason. Earth pony and unicorn stallions occasionally stole glances at her as she slowly hovered just above the houses; at first, she had mistaken theirs for looks of disgust or bemusement, since that’s what she saw from herself in the mirror, but that they weren’t didn’t make them any less embarrassing. She was no stranger to adoration and head-turning, but this was completely different. It was embarrassing to know they weren’t thinking about how awesome she was, and wanted to cheer her name for an entirely different reason. How did Rarity deal with all of this attention?
Reprieve came in the form of Applejack beckoning Rainbow over to her stall when she’d unknowingly passed over it. Rainbow lowered the cloud about a pony’s height from the surface and stood, yelping when the cloud chose to evaporate rather than regain its former shape, and she fluttered her wings to safely land with some panting.
“Woo-wee, yer looking riper by the day, sugarcube. Ya remind me of my aunt Ballyfatten at the family reunion a few years ago, back when she was still a broodmare. Poor thing could hardly walk around without knockin’ something over.” Rainbow regained her breath before responding. “Hey, Applejack. You’re looking, uh, not pregnant.” Rainbow wanted to be mad as she once again compared her friend’s tight and muscular body to hers that had just been compared to a broodmare’s, rightfully, but she couldn’t find the will to do anything but politely smile back. She’d have her fun when Applejack finds a husband and starts waddling around everywhere. Then she’ll be the pony compared to aunt Bellyfatten or whatever. Applejack was undoubtedly the fitter pony between them, but only for now, Rainbow reassured herself. Regardless of whether or not Applejack saw the gears turning in Rainbow’s head, she didn’t make it known.
“Oh, I didn’t call you over to make fun of ya. Ya looked like you could use,” she paused for effect, “an apple!” She hit the counter to bounce an apple, balanced it on the back of her hoof, and then tossed it to Rainbow Dash, who started blushing again after catching it in her mouth without thinking about how that looks. Applejack’s face was just a little twisted into a smirk, she noticed. Rainbow Dash quickly finished the apple before walking over and resting against the counter as Applejack was. She wanted to voice her thoughts to Applejack but instead, while they talked, she just kept in her mind the thought of herself lying in one of the apple trees again, poking fun at an Applejack swollen to more of a pear shape lying at the base below. After a little more chat, and some apple foal name suggestions, Rainbow made the short walk the rest of the way to her destination.
She was glad Sugarcube Corner wasn’t far away, she was still sweating under the mild heat and from the mild walk, and glad it seemed empty except for Pinkie Pie waving at her. She walked up the steps and through the door, but couldn’t get through for some reason. She begrudgingly looked back, which showed her wide barrel to be the blockage, but that had happened before and she had a technique for fixing it. She wiggled back and forth a little and sucked in her gut the best she could, grunting at how the doorframe pressed into her sides, to get herself through. She then walked forward only to be caught again, however. She even more begrudgingly looked back to see her cutie-marks pressed into the doorframe on both sides.
That had never happened before.
Pinkie Pie had fallen over laughing, but stopped immediately when she noticed Rainbow Dash had tears in her eyes, and not even angry tears. Without words, she rolled over to stand, leapt through the window, and helped push Rainbow Dash inside before closing the door behind them. Pinkie gave her friend a great big hug, and there was no noise but a sniffling pegasus in the shop for a few minutes. A little while later they were sitting at a table eating some cupcakes, Pinkie Pie listening and Rainbow Dash talking.
“I-I’m trying so hard to lose weight and stuff, but i-it’s like my body isn’t agreeing with me.” She swallowed her current bite. “I can’t fly anymore because I get wing cramps, and I’m too big to do other exercises, and I-I’m getting even f-fatter because of this, a-and now I’m getting my big butt stuck in doors!”
Pinkie Pie waited for Rainbow Dash to finish her cupcake before making her suggestion. “Have you tried enjoying yourself instead?” This was right for her to do, because Rainbow Dash would’ve choked otherwise. “What?”
Pinkie elaborated. “Well, you’re only preggers once, or a few times, right? So, why not have fun with your new body instead of comparing it to your old one? You can always become your old self again once you’re done carrying little foals in your belly, you know?”
Rainbow Dash didn’t have a response to that beyond putting another cupcake in her mouth, but it did get her thinking. She’d been obsessed with trying to keep her figure, while her body clearly had different plans. Then again, Pinkie’s never had a weight problem in her life.
Those were the parts of the conversation that Rainbow Dash still remembered after all this time.
Rainbow Dash took a glance at her rear, now much larger than it had been. Her cutie-mark had grown with it, stretching it almost but not quite evenly in every direction; it was now slightly wider than it had been, which she’d grown to believe was an appropriate change. It was odd to her, how a cutie-mark can still change a little after a pony gets it.
Her reminiscing was stopped by the conspicuous lack of any suckling sensation from one of her teats. One of her youngest was done with his meal and, while she couldn’t see him, she could feel him stand and begin to walk over her body towards her head. Each little hoofstep sunk in a little, and she struggled to keep herself from giggling and sending an earthquake throughout the world underneath his cute little hooves. She turned her head to see him standing on her rump by now, and shakily making his way past her hips. When he reached her belly, somepony else sent a shockwave underneath his hooves, and he elected to lie across her hips and belly to watch more closely.
“Your little brother or sister is telling you hello. Why don’t you give her a kiss?” He smiled and did just that, it was more of a nuzzle than a kiss, but she grinned and cooed at her son all the same and put a foreleg over him which he nuzzled in-turn. She laid her head back down on the pillow and closed her eyes.
She’d wanted to be a Wonderbolt for so long, but no matter how fast she became, it never felt good enough. She was content now, like this, however. She brought her cutie-mark into her mind’s eye, and felt like she truly understood it now. For most of her life she had figured it to be a representation of speed, hers, but now she interpreted it differently: She was the cloud, and the rainbow bolt of lightning represented her children with each colour; it was still her speed, in a way, but even better with more ponies to enjoy it, although her cutie-mark had three colours in the lightning bolt and she would have more than three children soon. She was broken out of her reverie by the sound of the front door opening.
“Hey mom! You’ll never guess what place I won!” She smirked before calling back. “I guess first place. Am I right?”
He strutted into view, the spitting image of the athleticism she once wore so proudly, wearing a gold medal and a big smile. He pulled his neck back and leaned forward to accentuate his breast and the medal covering it. She beckoned him over with a hoof and they nuzzled, then his nearby sibling wanted and received a nuzzle, and he gave his sibling-to-be a nuzzle to finish. “You know you’re going to have to teach them how to win gold medals too in a few years.” He laughed “But mom, you taught me.” and she told him “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be coaching from the sidelines, but you’ll actually be up there with ’em.”
Soon enough, he left to wash up for dinner, and her stomach growled. Every foal except for the one inside her was asleep, and she patted her belly a few times just to hear the slaps and provoke a response. A strong kick knocked her hoof away, and she smiled at the little bump as it receded. She was breeding another champion.