Beneath a streetlamp, love bloomed; it was not the tender bloom of spring, the lush bloom of summer, this was a bloom that came in the winter, nourished and given life beneath the warm golden glow of a streetlamp that lit the snow covered streets of Ponyville, turning each falling snowflake into radiant stars that drifted softly to the earth.
Two figures moved through the drifting snow, one short and quadrupedal, the other tall and bipedal. The short figure, standing at about hip height to the bipedal one, was an earth pony. He was a soft muted blue, tufts of a cornsilk yellow mane protruded from beneath a knitted stocking cap, and his body was covered in a form fitting heavy winter coat. The larger bipedal figure was also clad for the winter, wearing an extended frock coat over long flowing skirts. Two short dainty little horns protruded from the sides of her head. She wore knitted mittens to protect her hands from the winter’s chill. What little was visible of her from beneath her outerwear was glimpses of white with black patches.
The earth pony, named Cobalt, was laden down with full to bursting saddlebags strapped to his sides. He trotted with a springy step, raising each hoof high to walk through the endlessly piling snow. The whistling wind tugged at his stocking cap and whipped his tail out from behind him.
Beside him, the minotaur, named Tuli, stepped carefully, watching where she placed each hoof. Her hands were out to her sides for balance, her scarf flapped in the wind, and her skirts were billowing around her lower fetlock joints.
The pair moved from window to window, stopping to look at the various holiday displays.
“This is nice,” Cobalt said as he peered into the window, cocking his head sideways as he peered at the model train display. “I’ve always liked trains.”
“I’ve worked on trains,” Tuli remarked, bending over slightly to look at the display.
“You’ve worked on everything,” Cobalt responded as he turned his head to look at Tuli.
“I am a tinkerer, it is what I do,” Tuli replied as she reached out one mitten covered hand and patted the earth pony beside her.
“What you did,” Cobalt corrected, looking up and smiling at Tuli as he spoke. “Now you are a school teacher, teaching the little ones how to fix anything and the million uses of a wrench.” The earth pony resumed looking at the display, content to feel the heavy mitten covered hand upon his back. “Would have been exciting to have been a railroad engineer. Instead, I’m a clerk in the copyright office.”
“I make the gadgets, you copyright them, that’s the deal,” Tuli said in a low melodic voice.
“I suppose it is pretty good work for an earth pony. At least I’m not pulling wagons or working on some farm someplace. I like air conditioning and comfortable chairs too much,” Cobalt said as he watched the train chug along a miniature bridge.
“You were lucky to get a job. Even if it is a lowly clerk position, running around and fetching donuts and such,” Tuli stated, her mittened hand traveling up Cobalt’s back and along his neck as she spoke.
“Still better than Baltimare,” Cobalt muttered as Tuli pushed his stocking cap over his eyes. “Are you happy here?” he asked as his stocking cap was readjusted.
“We are tolerated here,” Tuli said in a low voice, looking around her at the festive holiday crowd as she spoke. “We do not get shouted at or have things thrown at us.”
“That isn’t the same as being happy,” Cobalt insisted, his breaths coming out as puffs of steam in the freezing winter air.
“Must we spoil a good time with this sort of talk? I am happy enough. We are left alone and in peace,” Tuli said in a patient voice as she turned to look at a toy zeppelin upon display.
The pair departed from the window, Cobalt leading the way, and Tuli followed along behind him, both of them moving carefully through the crowd. Grinning roguishly, Cobalt doubled back, dropped his head down low, nosed his way beneath Tuli’s skirts, pushed his way under, and then brought his head up to press his cold snoot against the inside of her thigh, causing the minotaur to let out a startled moo of alarm.
“Cold!” Tuli shouted as she danced around, trying to shoo the earth pony out from beneath her skirts. She could feel the cold snoot pressing into other places as Cobalt continued to root around and sticking his muzzle into any nook and cranny he could find. Especially her cranny. She felt the earth pony snuffling around in the warmth between her legs, trying to get his snoot warm, the cold making her shiver, his touch making her quiver.
Emerging from beneath her skirts, Cobalt snorted. His white square teeth were visible as he grinned broadly.
“Bad little draft pony!” Tuli scolded as she brought the flat of her mittened hand against Cobalt’s backside, delivering a resounding smack.
“That never gets old,” Cobalt quipped as he gave himself a shake. Looking around, he saw that there were quite a few ponies looking at him, some looked a little shocked by his behaviour, but most were smiling.
“We wear clothing to protect our modesty,” Tuli chided, shaking her mittened hand at the earth pony as she scolded.
“I see it more as wrapping paper covering a present,” Cobalt teased as he drew nearer to Tuli. “Besides… I’ve seen everything underneath there up close already.”
“Oooh! A chocolate shop!” Tuli cried, distracted by a different window display.
Pulling off his stocking cap, Cobalt settled into the cozy booth seat in the corner of the shop and Tuli sat down on the other side of the table. He watched as she pulled off her mittens, revealing her white hands. On the left hand, she had two black fingers, and on the right hand, there was a black spot on the back of her hand. His ‘kissing spot’ as he liked to call it.
Tuli began dusting snow off of her cleavage, all too aware that Cobalt was watching her every move, watching as her ample bosom jiggled enticingly from her actions. “You’re staring.”
“I know… I like them,” Cobalt admitted.
“You’re incorrigible,” Tuli huffed as she shook her head in exasperation.
“Well, ponies in general don’t have anything like that. Besides. I like all of you. Every inch of you. You’re… bipedal and something about that fascinates me. And you have hands. Plus, you talked to me when every other mare I knew turned me down and told me to buzz off,” Cobalt said, grinning from ear to ear as he spoke.
“You offered to help me when I got off the boat. I was lost. I didn’t know what I was doing,” Tuli said in a soft bashful voice. “I am glad that I left Minos when I did. Everything that is happening there now… I do not wish to even think about it,” she added, her voice dropping in a low whisper after her moment of hesitation.
A green unicorn approached the table, bearing a tray with two mugs and a selection of delectable treats in her magic. She set the items on the tray upon the table, looking first at Tuli and then at Cobalt. “No charge,” Lyra remarked. “One of the perks of being a teacher. You two are adorable.”
“Thank you,” Tuli said graciously, looking at Lyra. “I know you… you’re-”
“Yes. Lyra Heartstrings. Now available in toy form. And yes, I’m one of the wives of the headmaster of the school. Enjoy the treats,” Lyra cut in as her ears splayed out sideways. “Gonna be a long busy night,” she muttered as she departed with the tray.
“The hurricane was the best thing that ever happened to us,” Cobalt said as he lifted a chocolate covered cherry up from the plate. “We couldn’t even get service in Baltimare. Now we’re getting free candy because you are a teacher at this big fancy school.”
Carefully pinching a bon bon between her thumb and forefinger, Tuli lifted it to her lips and pressed the whole candy into her mouth. She bit down and immediately tasted chocolate and pecans. She chewed thoughtfully as she stared at Cobalt. His green eyes glittered in the soft overhead light. Steam rose from her cocoa. She felt her heart thudding in her chest and she was suddenly struck by an almost delirious feeling of happiness.
“One good thing came out of living in Baltimare,” Cobalt said as he lifted his cocoa up between his two front hooves and peered at Tuli over the edge of the cup.
“And that was?” Tuli inquired, raising her eyebrow inquisitively as she looked at Cobalt.
“You came into the office where I was working as a mailroom clerk, looking for a job,” Cobalt answered. He blew into his cup of cocoa and watched as the marshmallows drifted around upon the foamy surface, like ships tossed around by a maelstrom in a brown ocean.
“It was closest to the shipyards. I didn’t know what else to do,” Tuli said in reply, watching as Cobalt took his first sip of cocoa.
“Funny how these things work out… you meet somepony… somebody through random circumstance and you discover that you’ve found the friend that you never realised that you’ve been waiting on your whole life,” Cobalt said after he swallowed his sip of cocoa.
The couple looked at one another, Tuli stared at the chocolate mustache now upon Cobalt’s lip. Cobalt looked up at Tuli, his eyes darting from one black spot to another, he knew each and every one of them on her body, but his favourite was the small almost heart shaped one just over her left kidney on the small of her back.
“Things have changed between us,” Tuli stated in a low whisper as she reached for another chocolate. “These moments when we stare.”
“I thought things changed between us when I walked in on you in the shower,” Cobalt said as he made a suggestive ear wiggle. “You grabbed me by my tail and pulled me in, saying you were going to wash a dirty little pony.”
“That was lust,” Tuli whispered, her cheeks now blazing with an inner fire that started deep within her chest and radiated outwards. “There is something else between us now.”
“Well of course there is, don’t spoil it by talking about it,” Cobalt muttered, his ears splaying out sideways as his face darkened. “We’ve been through a lot together.”
“We’ve been teased, ridiculed, and had things thrown at us. We’ve been evicted several times. Twice in one week once, in fact. We’ve been hated and abused. At any time… you could have just walked away or I could have left and the hardship would have been over,” Tuli said in a soft voice. The minotaur lifted up her own cup of cocoa and took a sip, carefully extending her lips to draw it in, doing so in a demure feminine fashion. “Why would we endure all of that if not for love?” she asked after she swallowed her cocoa.
“That certainly sounds like love to me,” Bon Bon remarked as she sauntered by.
Cobalt watched the candymaker go past and then turned back to Tuli.
“This… Hearth’s Warming that you celebrate here in this country. You give gifts to one another to celebrate the founding of your nation… there is something I want from you,” Tuli stammered nervously.
“Don’t be stupid, give her what she wants,” Bon Bon commented as she strolled by once more, now heading back to the counter and the glass display cases. “Always stay true to those that stick by you during the worst of times,” the earth pony suggested.
“We’re dirt poor, but whatever I have to offer, it is yours for the taking,” Cobalt offered in a subdued voice. “You know that… whatever you ask of me.”
The bell on the door jingled merrily and a purple-pink unicorn came in from the cold. She shook the snow off from her pelt as she stood near the door. Trembling, she smiled at the patrons of the shop.
“Hello Sparkler,” Bon Bon called out from behind the counter.
“It is below zero outside,” Sparkler announced through chattering teeth.
Ignoring the distraction, Tuli focused on Cobalt. She reached across the table and grabbed Cobalt’s right front hoof in her left hand, holding on to it and giving the fetlock above it a squeeze between her thumb and four fingers. The cocoa on the table had cooled enough that it was no longer steaming, but there was still plenty of heat in other places. Like between Tuli’s legs for example. Beneath her long flowing skirts it was once again summertime and the humid heat was sweltering.
“Be brave,” Lyra suggested as she went past, heading towards Sparkler, who was still standing by the entryway. “Just say it.”
“I don’t want anybody else but you,” Tuli whispered in a nervous raspy utterance. “I want what we have to be permanent. We could be happy here. We could settle here. We could make a life together here and I think the ponies would leave us alone.”
“We just passed a city law that prohibits discrimination against interspecies couples,” Lyra announced as she walked past with Sparkler at her side. “Oh… you were right in the middle of trying to get him to propose… I’m sorry,” the unicorn whispered sheepishly.
Sitting quietly, Cobalt looked over at Tuli, feeling her hand upon his hoof and fetlock. He lifted his head a little, his eyes blinking slowly, and he felt a creeping heat traveling up his ears. “I’m an earth pony… maybe I misunderstood something, but I thought that we were already together… forever. I think we’re having a moment of interspecies misunderstanding.”
“But we’ve never had a ceremony,” Tuli whispered in a low voice, all too aware that this private moment was being listened to by all. “There has been no vows.”
“I said that I was yours… I meant that. I didn’t know the other stuff was needed. Look, I’m a numbskull… earth ponies are numbskulls. If you want something, you have to be blunt,” Cobalt explained and not bothering to whisper, knowing that every word spoken was being listened to by a rapt audience.
“Oh,” Tuli responded, letting out an embarrassed gasp. “And this whole time I’ve been wondering how long this little fling was going to go on and worried about if this was love. The entire time… you already made up your mind… and somehow I missed it.”
“If you want a ceremony we can have one. There’s nothing stopping us. Is that what you want?” Cobalt inquired, his eyebrows raising as his eyes went wide with curiousity.
“Yes,” Tuli admitted. “I need to know that I have you and that you are mine and mine alone. I want to start a family. I want to put down roots so I can say that I come from a place and stop feeling like a traveler far away from home. Minos is lost to me. I’m never going back there after everything that happened and all that was lost. Maybe it is silly, but I need these little reminders in my life, these little ceremonies, these little actions, just getting a house together made me feel so much better. I need to be able to say that I am somebody’s wife, that I live in a city, some city, some place that is actually home, and I need to be able to tell others that my life has meaning, some kind of purpose, that I have made something of myself,” she confessed, baring her heart to Cobalt.
“You should have said something,” Cobalt replied as he blinked at Tuli. “I didn’t need any of those things. I only needed you. I didn’t care where I settled, or where I lived, just so long as I was with you.”
“You know, he’s a keeper,” Lyra announced as she set down two plates upon the table, each with thick slice of chocolate cake. Big red frosting hearts had been squirted onto the sides. Grinning, Lyra’s horn flashed and the hanging lamp over the table dimmed a bit. “Enjoy the cake,” she said as she turned and trotted away.
“Well, we clearly don’t need to hide anything in here,” Cobalt said. Resting his hooves upon the table, he leaned forward and smooshed his lips against Tuli’s and gave her a slobbery excited pony smooch, stretching his neck over the table and everything on it.
Leaning forward herself, Tuli placed both hands on each side of Cobalt’s face, pulling him closer, her fingers kneading into the little dents in his skull just below his ears. Quite some time ago, Tuli had stopped thinking about the fact that she was kissing a pony, or doing other things with a pony… it was only a body. She loved what was inside the pony shaped body, it was something very dear to her. Breathless, she pulled away with a wet pop and then let go of Cobalt’s face. She watched him settle back into his seat and smile.
Lifting a fork off of the plate, Tuli cut off a bite of chocolate cake, a small bite, she then carefully ate the bite off of the fork, making sure not to get crumbs everywhere, and the entire time her gaze never left Cobalt.
“Why me?” Cobalt asked.
“What do you mean by that?” Tuli questioned after she swallowed her cake.
“Why did you grab my tail that day? Why did you pull me into the shower with you?” Cobalt questioned as he lifted a fork in his hoof and cut off a large bite of cake. When he was done speaking, he crammed the bite into his mouth, not caring about crumbs getting everywhere.
“You made me feel pretty and desirable,” Tuli admitted in an embarrassed voice. “I am scrawny and thin. I am not bulky and heavily muscled like the rest of my kind. I was considered undesirable. You flirted with me,” she explained as her cheeks blazed. She cut off another tiny bite of cake and then ate it.
Swallowing, Cobalt held out his fork and pointed it at Tuli. “You flirted with me. You crawled into my bed that one night and said that you were scared of the thunderstorm. And then you spooned against my back all night long, long after the storm was over. You were the only female to actually flirt with me. For some reason, most mares find me incredibly obnoxious. I don’t know why.” A moment after he was done speaking a glop of frosting fell from his lower lip and landed upon the table. “Before I met you, I couldn’t get a mare to give me the time of day.”
Reaching out, Tuli carefully wiped away cake crumbs from Cobalt’s upper lip with her thumb. She licked them from her thumb and smiled demurely at Cobalt, fluttering her eyelashes at him. “Part of me was curious if love was possible between a pony and a minotaur. I wanted to see if our bodies could accommodate one another,” she confessed as she cut off another delicate bite of cake, and as she spoke she watched Cobalt cram another large bite of cake into his maw.
“The shower was not the best place to figure that out,” Cobalt said, spraying cake crumbs everywhere as he spoke. He swallowed, licked his lips with a chocolate covered tongue, and then he narrowed his eyes at Tuli. “I will say, being at waist height to you presented some unique opportunities.”
Reaching out with her right hand, Tuli booped Cobalt upon the snoot. “And you are such a sloppy eater,” she said in a sultry whisper.
“Somepony turn down the heat, it’s getting steamy in here,” Lyra announced. “Ow Bon Bon, was slugging me necessary?”
“Lyra’s right, the front windows are fogging over,” Sparkler said in Lyra’s defense. “Ouch! Bonnie!”
Grinning an embarrassed grin, Tuli gazed longingly at the earth pony whose face was covered in chocolate cake crumbs and frosting. “We made things work,” she said and then she carefully ate another bite of cake. She watched as he scarfed down the rest of his slice and then she watched his throat ripple alluringly as he chugged down the rest of his now warm cocoa.
“We can get married at city hall in the morning,” Cobalt suggested. He licked his lips and looked at Tuli. His ear quivered; there was a glop of red frosting stuck to the tip of it. “It feels nice to know that I’m a keeper,” he announced as he wiped chocolate frosting from his nostril with his fetlock.
Slowly eating her cake, Tuli was in no hurry. She cast an amorous glance at Cobalt, blinking slowly, taking small delicate bites and never once getting a crumb upon herself somehow. “How do you feel about starting a family?” she asked in the sort of voice that would make any male suddenly feel heated. “I know we’ve already been… doing things. But there is no guarantee that things will work between us, even though crossbreeds are possible. We could try adoption… I keep seeing all of these advertisements in the newspaper… they do so tug upon my heartstrings,” Tuli said in a soft alluring whisper.
“We could give some lucky foal a nice home for Hearth’s Warming,” Cobalt responded, his frosting tipped ear still quivering. “And then just keep trying… I’m willing to keep trying. I’ll try all night and day. I’m an earth pony. Trust me, I can keep trying long after other kinds of ponies would just pass out.”
“I wonder if the customers can even see in the front windows now,” Lyra questioned from behind the glass display cases, deftly dodging Bon Bon’s swipe at her.
“I need to find me an earth pony,” a patron grumbled in a flustered sounding masculine voice. “My plot furrow ain’t been properly plowed or seeded in months.”
Finishing her last bite of cake, Tuli fluttered her eyelashes at Cobalt. “I want to take you home now… and then you and I are going to communicate about our relationship. I don’t expect many words said, but I want you to show me how much you love me. Come morning, I want to pay a visit to city hall. Come on, I want you to make me moo like the hot little heifer that I am. Can you do that for me?”
Squirming in his seat, Cobalt smiled a sheepish smile at Tuli. “I’d love to do that but right now I can’t step away from this table without embarrassing myself.”