//------------------------------//
// Lyra Heartstrings 
// Story: Bathtime for Ponies 
// by Derpsanddinks404 
//------------------------------//

       Lyra sat next to you like a normal pony (which was odd for her) next to you as she eagerly awaited her bath. She had grown onto you the very second she saw you, happy to have your assistance. She obviously had never seen a human before, and now both loved and envied you for being one. Who would've thought her obsession would begin with you?

You turn off the tap and turn to the filly next to you. "Alrighty, Lyra!" you say to the pony. "Time for your bath!"

Lyra smiles cheerfully at you and lifts her front hooves up for you to place her into the full tub. Her pistachio body submerges in the warm water, and she giggles at the feeling. She looks up to you and smiles, again happy for your presence.

With the filly in the tub, you may now begin. Grabbing the shampoo next to you (and getting an awestruck stare from Lyra), you squirt some in your hand (with a still awestruck Lyra watching) and lather Lyra's mint green hair. Lyra enjoys the feeling of your fingers combing through her hair and leans back a bit to enjoy it further. Her short hair is easy to clean, only taking twenty or so seconds to fully soap-up. When you're finished, you step back and look at the overjoyed filly, who looks back at you, still smiling her cute smile.

You rinse the soap off her hands and start to scoop up some water to rinse Lyra's mane when the little unicorn reaches out to you. Seeing what she wanted, you chuckle a bit and hand over one of your, er, hands. The filly's eyes light up as she grabs hold of the new natural technology before her. She looks it over for a few seconds before rubbing her head against it. When she's done being adorable, she looks at the hand again and sticks it in her mouth.

Her little teeth lightly clamp onto your fingers, causing you to jump back and yelp a bit. You shake off the pain and look back at Lyra, who looks confused as to why you were in pain. You laugh a bit at her and say, "Well, looks like somepony's teeth are growing!" Lyra happily shrieks back at you and slaps the water, oblivious to what you said but accepting the compliment nonetheless.

You continue what you started beforehand and scoop some water into your cupped hands. You pour the water over Lyra's mane and watch the bubbles fall from her hair. She is again amazed by your hands' ability to pick things up with ease and drop them with greater ease. Her mane only takes six rinsing rotations, again due to its short size. When you're done, her mane returns to its mint form.

With her head clean, you move onto her hindquarters. You place your hand on Lyra's flank (at which she flinches at the contact of human skin) and ask her sweetly to lift it and hold it. She comprehends and does what you ask gladly. You reach next to you again and grab the shampoo again, applying some into your opposite palm. Then you start lathering the filly unicorn's tail, which is longer than her mane. Because of its size, it takes almost twice as long to lather than her mane. Thirty seconds later, you finish lathering and notice Lyra staring at something. When you follow her gaze, you find it isn't the appearance of something, but the lack of another thing; you had no tail yourself. You laugh a bit at the pony, who stares at you, confused.

"Humans don't have tails, Lyra," you explain to her, but to no avail. Lyra stares for a few more moments trying to put two and two together to find out where your tail was. She gives up though when you turn around and hide your behind, mostly because it was getting kind of weird having her stare at it.

You begin yet again the cycle of cupping water in your hands and rinsing the soap out of her tail hair. Lyra steals a small glance at your behind again when she thinks you aren't looking. Her behind only takes eight rinses, which wasn't as much as you thought. Nonetheless, her tail is eventually finished and ready for drying.

Drying, however, won't be until after the bath, and her bath wasn't over quite yet, for there was one more thing you wanted to do before you left. You grasp from somewhere behind you a special toy you had brought over from where you lived. Revealing to Lyra a Barbie and a Ken doll, expecting her to love them. She did far beyond what you had hoped, and immediately took the two human figurines out of your hands as though it were her first Christmas (or, as it were in her world, Hearth's Warming Day). She observes the alien toys and instantly falls head-over-hooves for them; moving their arms, making them walk and sit like bipeds, and basically everything else humans could do that ponies could not. You smile warmly at the sight, remembering the first time you played with the- er, I mean, when you saw someone else play with them.

Ten minutes of playing and exploring possibilities later, Lyra is done with playing and is ready to leave the tub. You oblige and unplug the tub, draining the soapy water. Lyra lifts her front hooves again so you could pick her up (you muse at how she was the easiest foal yet). Placing her on the ground along with the two dolls, you grab the towel to your left and quickly dry off the latter. Then you turn to the towel's main purpose and start drying Lyra's short mane, then her torso, and finally her tail and hooves. When you're done, Lyra starts to leave the bathroom when you stop her.

"Aren't you forgetting these?" you ask her while holding up the Ken and Barbie. Lyra beams at your gift and takes them from you with a look of gratitude. She then trots out of the bathroom, both Barbie and Ken smiling stiff in Lyra's mouth.

You put the towel away and take a small moment to look at your hands. "Well, they do look kinda weird," you muse aloud to no one.