It was a perfect world.
The mare’s first impressions were of the rough grass beneath her cheek. It tickled her nostrils as she breathed and tangled in the long strands of her mane. She blew them away with a snort, rolled onto her belly, and lifted her head to survey the scene around her.
Low mists hung upon the clearing, concealing the dozen or so forms that still slumbered. A sliver of red sun broke the horizon to the east and filled the world with golden light, a warm touch upon her coat that chased away the stiffness in her muscles. Her joints creaked as she stumbled up onto her hooves, her mouth smacking with the first breaths of morning. A tremendous yawn split her face in half, wide enough to swallow both her hooves with room left over for more.
Breakfast. She lapped at her muzzle with her tongue, tasting bits of grass and the ghosts of last night’s love. For a moment the present slipped away, and it was night again, and she danced by the crazed light of the bonfire, and a nameless stallion danced beside her, and she could not tell where her limbs ended and his began, and in the darkness she felt other ponies move around her, their tails and wings and manes waving with abandon, and all of them utterly, perfectly free.
A rumble from her stomach broke the silence, and the memory evaporated like the fading mists around her. She clacked her teeth together, loud enough to stir the nearest ponies into waking, their bleary eyes puzzling at the cold morning mists. A quiet murmur filled the clearing.
She ignored them and pressed her snout into the grass. A deep breath flooded her nose with the scent of fresh dirt, ashes, ponies, rain, feathers, starlight and everything green. She snorted and tromped away from the herd, seeking the one scent that mattered. It teased at her brain, dancing at the edge of her perception, a cruel joke played by her imagination.
A log blocked her path. She vaulted over it without thinking, her nose back in the grass as soon as her hooves touched down on the earth. The sharp, sweet tang of her quarry was stronger now, too strong to be a dream. It smelled like the sun on a summer day, bright and hot and full of life and burning.
She stood upright, and the scent stayed with her. She could taste it on the air. The anticipation of it set her trembling, and she broke into a canter through the misty forest, weaving around the trees, ducking beneath branches, crashing through bushes like a careless foal. The sting of the twigs against her coat was nothing; the little pains were electric and filled her with urgency.
Finally, there. She burst through a patch of honeysuckle into a small grove surrounded by towering sycamores. A thin stream wound its way between the giants, and floating in a still bend, anchored to a fallen tree, was the most wonderful thing in the world.
She tried to savor it, she really did. She plucked the first petal with her lips and set it on her tongue. The taste burned like like a fuse through her brain, chasing away thought and reason, leaving behind only a ravenous hunger. Her body trembled as the last vestiges of control washed away, and she chewed the petal into a mash and swallowed it.
The rest of the flower vanished in seconds. She tore it apart in a frenzy, gulping huge pulpy masses of it as fast as she could swallow. For a moment she nearly choked, her eyes bulging as the remains of the flower filled her mouth and throat, but even then she never stopped, ignoring her burning lungs and spasming chest. Finally it was gone, and she sucked in a desperate gasp of air.
Shuddering, trembling, her lips and gums ragged and bleeding from tearing at the log, she waited. She waited and smiled, blood dribbling down her chin like drool to flow away in the cold stream beneath her.
It started in her belly, like it always did. The flower’s juices were absorbed by her stomach lining within seconds, and from there filtered straight into her bloodstream. A heady buzz built behind her eyes, and she tossed her head back to howl.
Lotus intoxication. Nothing in the world compared. Not food, not sex, not victory, not even Princess Celestia’s love. Nothing was better than the lotus. Her legs shook, splashing her body with water, and she felt her wings stretching so far and so high they wanted to break. She tried to scream and realized she was laughing.
With the lotus in her blood, the world was a greater place. Every sound crashed against her eardrums like a bomb. She could feel the wind teasing every hair in her coat. Sounds carried from the distant clearing, and she could hear the heartbeat of each pony still rousing from their slumber. Their scents played in her nose. She could taste them.
She wanted to fly. Or perhaps the lotus wanted her to fly, for it was all the same. The thought had barely crossed her mind and she was already airborne, rocketing away from the ground like a cannon shot. The wind screamed in her ears, almost loud enough to drown out her laughter.
Almost, but not.
Higher she climbed. The trees beneath her blended into a single mass, a forest stretching for leagues in every direction. Somewhere out there, she knew, was the civilization they had left behind. A world of ponies who still cared about pointless things like jobs and homes and families. Ponies who hadn’t tasted the lotus. Ponies who had never known joy.
She flew higher. Clouds whipped by her, streaking her coat with droplets of water. She shook to rid herself of them and flapped her wings harder.
The memories fled from her mind. Only the bite of the cold air against her face, the rush of it through her feathers, the spinning tableau of the world beneath her, only those things mattered. Higher she flew, until the horizon began to bend, and the sky above darkened and the dim stars emerged, heedless of the sun still rising to its zenith. She exhaled a wondrous breath and realized she had no breath, for there was no more air. Her feathers cracked and frosted together.
She laughed in silence. Her lungs drew in nothing and expelled nothing. A droplet of blood, frozen into a perfect crimson crystal, glittered like a ruby in the space before her. She reached out to touch it with a hoof.
She was not cold. The lotus burned in her blood like wildfire. All the long miles down it warmed her. The screaming wind buffeted her body, but they could not touch her heart, which flowed with the nectar of the gods. She didn’t bother to fly – she was done with that.
The ground rushed up, and she impacted the side of a cliff at just under terminal velocity, which for a pegasus falling from the edge of space was considerable. The forest quaked for hundreds of yards around, and a rockslide large enough to bury a village poured down the mountain, sending a pall of dust thousands of feet into the sky.
Through it all she laughed. The rocks bruised her, but even that pain was transformed into sensation, something beautiful that only her lotus-addled mind could savor. She howled with joy.
Eventually, a new sound stirred her. The edge of the lotus high had begun to erode, leaving her more attuned to the real world, and she flicked an ear toward the disturbance. Hooves on stone. Ragged breaths in a deep chest. Sweat and musk.
A pegasus stallion crested the ridge beside her. A dozen feet away he stopped, frozen, nostrils flared, his eyes wide and fixed on her form, on her face, on her lips. She could see the muscles straining beneath his coat, ready to erupt. His wings twitched at his sides, as though unsure if they should be flapping or not.
He closed the distance between them with a few steps, and then stopped again. His muzzle lowered until it was even with hers, and slowly, so slowly, he leaned down to lick the blood from her lips. His eyes closed, and he shuddered again.
The mare smiled and waited. Those few drops of her blood contained only a vanishing fraction of the original lotus, but it was enough. Enough to turn over a pony’s mind, make them a beast.
To free them.
The stallion’s tongue found her lips again, lapping at her sloppily, desperate for any bit of the lotus in her blood. It tickled. She laughed and pushed him away.
Wrong answer. He growled, the only warning she had before his teeth sank into her foreleg. The pain was delicious and sharp.
Without the lotus, the mare was a gentle and peaceful pony. With the lotus coursing through her blood, she was free from such limits. She laughed and screamed and slammed her forehead into his muzzle. Once, twice, more. The copper stench of blood splashed on her face.
He let go with reluctance and stumbled away. They stared at each other, panting, the lotus burning in each of their hearts. He smiled, a savage, wild smile, and when they came together again, she welcomed his lips with her own.
It was a perfect world.