It had been a long afternoon of strain for Penny, the focus on building her magical strength causing a whole new kind of work-out-strain to be the norm for her. She had ducked into a quick bath after the class and, upon returning to her room, pinned her ears back the moment the door was open.
"Stick…" Penny sounded defeated already. Her mate was sitting up on their bed, with Penny's phone in front of her, listening to music no pony should really want to.
'Hold the S because I am an aint'
Stick's own ears were half folded, the changeling tilting her head down at the phone. "You listened to all of this?"
Penny sighed and nodded. "Here, let me find something you might like." She paused Mr Manson while she searched.
"I remembered how you used it, I was just trying to find pony-sounding names." Stick's ears perked up as a new, much more melodious song began, with a stallion singing about somepony named 'cupid' shooting arrows. "Oh, this is much nicer… smashing?"
The unicorn grinned. "Not all musicians choose names that match their theme, some go quite counter to it." She settled down beside Stick and nuzzled her.
It was easy music to relax and just listen to, some of the song themes were beyond the changeling but most of them seemed to be about just living. "Okay, I definitely like this, is there more of theirs?" Penny grinned and tapped back on the phone, revealing a whole slew of albums. "Awesome."
"There really isn't right and wrong with music. Each song can build up the most mighty of high emotions, no matter what the actual emotion is. That other pony… his songs were more a commentary on life, on growing up in an imperfect world." Penny now flicked through, wondering briefly what Stick would think of some of the stuff and, in the end, deciding that was for her to worry about.
"Your world was imperfect?"
Penny nipped Stick's shoulder. "Isn't every world? This one seems perfect to me right now, but other ponies might not think so."
Stick caught her drift and nuzzled. "How perfect is it?"
"Temptress." Penny accused Stick, kissing the mare soundly.
Mid-kiss, of course, Hay came in. She blushed at seeing her friends caught in the private moment, she blushed further when she realized they weren't going to stop on her account. Then she noticed the music. "Oh, what is that?" She looked intently at the phone, reaching her magic out to it.
Penny broke her kiss quickly. "Careful with it, very fragile and impossible to replace. That is like… well it is sort of the closest thing our world comes to magic." Penny clicked the button to wake the phone up and show it to Hay. "Most of the functions of it can't work without the magic back home… oh…"
"Back home?" Hay set the device down, realizing there was more to this story than she knew.
"Back home, my old home. My new one is beside this mare." Penny kissed Stick's cheek, getting a giggle from her. "If you wish, I will tell you a little about it."
Hay set down her things and started to squirm and work out of her dress. "Give me a moment to get settled!"
Penny found herself watching, her mind playing over how naughty it felt to watch Hay strip her dress off, even if not wearing anything was acceptable, the act of removing clothing was still interesting.
"Okay." Hay bounded onto the bed and landed beside Stick, giving the drone a nuzzle. Stick was a little surprised by the affection at first, but returned the pressure with some of her own.
"Well, Earth, what human-" Penny started to give some background but a raised hoof got her attention. "Hay?"
"Humans? Like the two legged things that seem to keep appearing?" Penny nodded. "Wait, are you saying you were one of them? I heard some of them were being made into ponies, but it was sort of only used in emergencies, right?"
"I will get to that." Penny sighed but her friend looked more inquisitive than ever. "Right, so humans, on the whole, are pretty normal. They fall in love, they have friends." Penny paused again, Hay had her hoof up.
"Are you a human?"
Penny shook her head. "Am I? No, I don't think I am human much at all anymore."
"But you were?" Hay's question got a nod from Penny. "That is pretty cool!"
"So, you have humans, they have a balanced gender system, roughly the same amount of mares and stallions. Unlike here, they tend to prefer male-female pairings to the point where it is seen as unhealthy to not. Then you had me." Penny traced through the bands on her phone, picking out an unlikely choice.
'Such a lonely day, and it's mine'
The tune was soft, the volume kept low. "I didn't have any real feelings either way. I liked ponies," Penny didn't even blink at her mind now tainting all her words with pony-isms, "but never really felt strongly towards getting into a relationship. I had some good friends, one in particular who went missing." Penny felt back, remembering the emotion she had felt when she thought her friend either dead or, worse, just ignoring her. "He wrote things, lots of things. His stories were a part of my day and I like to think the stories I wrote were the same."
"You wrote books?" Hay didn't raise her hoof this time.
"We wrote stories that were… magically, able to be read by anyone who wished to." Penny thought back to the Internet, finding magic to be the best way to describe it. "I lost it, all of it, for a whole year. I wasn't a healthy pony, a combination of things bringing me to some low places…" The song had finished and she paused it lest the next one break the mood. "Then I got asked if I wanted to find him. It was some kind of being, I later found out. Once offered there wasn't much that would have stopped me saying yes."
Hay's eyes were wide, this was certainly not the history she had thought when she pondered the lunar unicorn's past.
"Of course, at the time, I had a whole hand… hoof… I had to take a pile of things every day, to stop pain and stop me from getting worse quickly. I didn't have those with me." Tears were in Penny's eyes, she had trouble finding the song she was looking for. "The princesses, Twilight, Celestia… Luna. They took pity on me, they tried to cure me at first, but it was decided my body was just broken. It was not easy for them to tell me, I know, but it was something I knew for a long time, the fact that even magic couldn't fix me was just another small blow."
Penny had found the song, but waited for the time to play it. "They remade me, Luna primarily." Penny gestured to her dark fur. "She had a deal, I could be exactly what I wanted if I agreed to carry a foal for her. She tried to rescind it, when she found out my feelings, but I maintained I would. Then I met a changeling."
Their eyes met, Penny gazing into the multifaceted lenses of her mate, falling into the blue. Stick too saw so much more than the red-irised eyes looking back.
'I've become, impossible.'
Penny smiled and left the tune playing softly. Stick, however, perked her ears at it. "Who is this?"
"This is a pony who went through some very tough times in his life, not only in creating his music that he loves, but the fame that resulted from it. The song isn't actually about two ponies, he is referring to himself." Penny explained the song, noticing Stick's back hoof was tapping to the beat.
"Are all his songs like this? There is a lot to take in with this one." Hay was listening to it closely too, blinking at the odd sounds.
"This is… well I would say one of the lighter tunes." Penny confessed to the pair. Stick immediately folded her ears.
"When Penny says a tune with this much feeling in it is 'softer' she means that we really don't want to listen to the other ones." Stick booped Hay on the nose.
"Okay, the rest of our story is fairly commonplace, two mares falling in love and finding the world impossible to survive apart." Penny continued for Hay, and it was true she realized, the rest was pretty tame.
"You didn't tell her the most interesting bit." Stick tapped next on the phone.
"Oh, right." Penny blushed a little. "Well, you know how I said I was a little odd with romance and stuff?" Hay nodded. "Well I was apparently a little more odd. Even though at the time I was a stallion, I wasn't really-"
"You were a stallion?" Hay stood up, jostling the oddly thoughtful changeling and the phone around.
"Was. It was a bit complicated but it never really seemed important. Celestia found my ethernet…"
"Etheric Net you mean?" Hay offered.
"Yeah, that. It was sort of floating in that regard, I mean I wasn't really attached to my gender. When she asked I figured I would give the other side a try." Penny blushed.
Stick, however, was almost in tears. She had been listening to the song and looked up to Penny and rushed over and hugged her tight.
"Okay Stick, no more Nine Inch Nails for you today." Penny snuggled her mate and kissed her.
Hay reached out and, having seen how to operate the device a little, managed to get it to stop making sounds. "And now? How do you feel about… it?"
Penny nuzzled Stick more, slathering the changeling in reassurances. "It? I guess I am slowly changing how I feel about it. One theory, in humans, is my… perception, is made because my body lacks something inside it that makes it want to have somepony close. This body doesn't seem to have that issue. My mind is just taking it's own time to catch up."
Hay blinked at this but seemed to accept it. "And mares?"
"I like mares. Stallions are… they are okay, but I think I really love how a pretty mare looks. Particularly if they are happy about something." Penny blushed as she talked with Hay about her preferences.
Hay's blush grew as Penny explained her personal tastes. "So if Stick got you with foal…" Penny nodded to her out-loud thinking. "So you don't object to stallions in that way?"
Penny laughed at this but it was Stick who answered. "Penny loves me. She keeps astounding me again and again with how much she does. I know she is not attracted to stallions, but when I take a male form, her look doesn't change in the least." Hay could sense something, a building tension in the room.
Sighing, Hay slumped down on the bed. This got the attention of both Penny and Stick. "What's wrong?" Penny was at her side first, pressing in a little closer than usual.
"I have been with other ponies before, I am not that young, but it never… I never felt a special connection, it was all… just relief." Stick crowded her other side and Hay blushed at the closeness.
"Would you like to try?" Penny couldn't believe she had asked it, but the moment the words were out she didn't regret them. Hay looked at her with wide eyes, feeling not only the emotions suddenly racing through her own heart, but she could sense a tingle coming from the mare.
"She likes it if you are a little bit rough." Stick whispered the words in Hay's closest ear, the mare seeming to jolt upright. She reached out to Penny, figuring that if the mare was offering food it would be a shame to say no.
Penny felt the touch, deep inside. Hay felt different to Stick, certainly not a bad-different. "Now bite." Stick told the girl. As the mental fangs that Hay had never used before sank in, Penny trembled at her side, pressing closer to the mare. "Just like that, it really is a shame you cannot shift yet."
Hay, right then, surprised herself by how much she was enjoying this. It certainly already eclipsed her clumsy times with other ponies and, so far, nothing had really even happened.