69-II (working title)
69-II (working title)
Admiral Biscuit
11.10.14
Beautiful summer afternoons were meant to be spent relaxing and socializing. The beach was a popular destination, or one of the many parks. Cafes around town were doing brisk business at their tables, serving refreshing treats to ponies who had just finished their day's work.
Comet Tail was not among them. He was inside a barn, which was a bad enough place to be in the summer; what made it worse was that he was helping to unload a hay wagon.
It had started innocently enough. Cherry Berry had told him that she would have to cancel their date, because hay was in, and if she helped unload the wagons, she could get four bales at a deep discount. Four bales was enough to last a pony for two months, and that was the kind of deal any sensible mare would take.
He hadn't made any alternate plans for the evening. Comet Tail thought that their relationship was starting to go somewhere, and that it would soon be time to take it to the next level; he wasn't going to risk that by flaking out on his marefriend. He did have a book he'd been meaning to finish eventually . . . but he had an idea that he'd instead spend the evening at home thinking about all the fun he wasn't having. So he had foolishly opened his stupid mouth and offered to come by after he got done with work, and help out.
He'd arrived to a busy scene. Empty hay wagons were neatly lined up one one side of the yard, with full ones waiting to be backed into the barn. He watched from the fence as Golden Harvest hitched herself to the nearly-empty wagon in the barn, pulling it out as soon as the last bale was tossed free.
Unable to delay the inevitable any longer, Comet Tail walked through the open doorway like a stallion headed to the gallows.
Cherry Berry gave him a wave when he entered the barn, and Berry Punch did the same a moment later. Both of them were standing on the open floor, a mountain of bales stretched out behind them, stacked in a stair-step arrangement. Applejack was queen of the hay-pile, standing four pony-lengths above everypony else. A pegasus he vaguely recognized was stretched out one tier below. Shoeshine, who was standing waiting for the next wagon, gave him a friendly hoof-bump.
“Comet Tail! Cherry said you'd come, but I didn't believe her.” She gestured to the open space behind her. “Once Goldie backs in the next wagon, you and I will toss the bales to Cherry, Bea, and Goldie.”
“Sounds easy enough,” he stupidly said, moving to the side to give Golden Harvest room to maneuver.
Two wagons later, he was regretting his words. The bales were heavy, and there were a lot of them. The barn was hot and stuffy, and he was sweating like a pig, and the tepid water he eagerly lapped up from the communal trough hardly cooled him down at all. Worst of all, small flakes of hay went everywhere. He quickly gave up at brushing them out of his mane and just tried to ignore how they were making him itch.
The afternoon turned into a blur. Lift, turn, toss. Lift, turn, toss. Wagon out, wagon in. Lift, turn, toss. The stacks of bales got higher and moved closer to the edge, but simple calculations told him that if they were planning on filling the entire loft, they'd be there all night long . . . and as yet another loaded wagon was backed into the barn, he had a sinking feeling that was exactly what was going to happen.
He almost collapsed with relief when they reached the end of the last wagon. He was barely able to resist the urge to pass out in a senseless lump on the wagon, and if it hadn't been for the thought of how much more hay chaff he'd have stuck in his everywhere, he would have done just that.
Cherry hopped easily down off the loft, and nuzzled him. He obediently turned his muzzle up for a quick kiss. “Thanks for helping out.”
“No problem,” he told her, spacing it carefully between pants. She was completely lathered, and her mane was sticking up in wild spikes, clogged full with hay. Outside, the vengeful sun was still well above the trees—he could have sworn he'd been in the barn forever, but it looked like it had only been three or four hours. Comet Tail didn't think that listening for the town clock’s chimes would be any help; the constant pulse of blood in his ears would drown out any sound the clock might make.
It was a pity. He'd hoped to slink home after dark, so that nopony would ask why he was so filthy. A silly matter of pride, perhaps—the condition of his coat would be a giveaway.
“I've got some beers over at my house,” Cherry said. “You've earned one.”
“I need to go to the pond and rinse off,” he told her. “Get this hay off me.”
“I've got a shower.”
“Really?”
* * *
The pair of them walked through Ponyville, Comet Tail making extra sure to lift his hooves high enough to avoid tripping over them. Normally not a task he gave any consideration, after today his hooves felt like they were encased in lead. Cherry Berry didn't seem as affected by the labor as he'd been, which was patently unfair.
When they got to her house, she pushed open the door and let him in. “Beer's in the kitchen,” she told him. “I'm going to the sandbox.”
“Don't take forever.” He trudged into the kitchen, lifted a beer off the counter, and looked at it warily. He wasn't normally much of a drinker, but a day like today was the perfect reason to have one or maybe even two if he was feeling adventurous. He slumped into the kitchen chair, opened the lid, and took an exploratory sip, grimacing as the bitter brew touched his mouth. But the second and third sips were better, and so he continued on.
He was a quarter of the way through when Cherry came back, hoofing a beer off the counter for herself. She took the chair opposite him, and slammed half of her first beer down. “I needed that,” she muttered. “I'm gonna finish this, and then hit the shower and get cleaned up.” She batted at a wild lock of her mane, knocking some chaff loose. “You should too.”
“I don't want to move any more,” he muttered.
“You're filthy,” she informed him.
“I know.” He took another sip of his beer. “But I haven't got the energy to do anything about it.”
Cherry slammed down the rest of her beer, and looked at him thoughtfully. “You sound like a little colt at bathtime.”
“I ache all over.” He slumped across the table.
Cherry grinned. “If you were gonna go in the pond, you'd have fallen over and drowned.”
“That would make the pain stop.”
“You gonna finish that beer?”
“No. I'm too weak to lift it.” He let a few sparks fall off his horn. “Tell my sister that I'll miss her.”
“You big baby.” Cherry took his beer bottle and finished it for him. “Come on—it's showertime. You're never going to impress a mare if you look like that.”
His ears fell. “Just get me when you're done. I don't wanna—“
“Be useful,” she chided. “I can't get all this chaff off me by myself.”
Comet's ears perked back up. “You—really?”
“Me 'n Berry usually help each other out during hay-time, but I ditched her for you. Don't make me regret my choice.” Cherry got up and headed out of the kitchen, grabbing a mouthful of towels on her way out. Comet eagerly followed her, his body bristling with newfound energy.
She led him out behind the house, towards a small wooden deck, where a pair of pipes were fastened to two uprights.
She tossed the towels over the fence and stepped up on the deck, nodding for him to follow. He eagerly trotted up behind her, crowding next to her.
“It's a bit cold, but that's okay for a day like today.” She pushed down on a hoof-valve, and the water spurted out of the showerheads.
Any other day, he wouldn't have liked the cold water, but today it was the perfect thing, unbelievably brisk and refreshing. He let out a contented sigh as the water sluiced across his back, and shoved his head completely under the spray.
Comet Tail turned, giving it a chance to rinse down his side, before turning tail to the showerhead.
“Do you have soap?”
Cherry nodded and lifted the lid on a rusty metal box. Comet pulled a bar loose with his aura, and moved back under his showerhead, casting a sidelong glance at Cherry to make sure she wasn’t watching as he reached under his belly and dislodged a particularly uncomfortable bit of chaff.
He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, letting the chilly artesian water cool him. As it rinsed off the lather, he started to feel more and more like a normal pony again, instead of some kind of filthy beast.
Comet jerked in surprise as Cherry rubbed the soap across his back. “You’re not getting yourself very clean,” she chided. “More scrubbing.”
“I can do it myself,” he protested, side-stepping away from her.
“This is more fun,” she insisted. “Do you wanna scrub my belly?”
He looked dumbly at the bar of soap floating in front of his face, before he nodded and pushed it against her chest gently, trying to gauge how much pressure he was putting on it. It was easy enough to soap himself—he had automatic feedback, after all—but somepony else was a different matter, and it didn’t help that he was completely exhausted.
Comet moved it in an easy swirling motion down Cherry’s belly, all his attention devoted to the motion until the soap was just shy of her hind legs. “Um, should I—“
“They won’t bite,” Cherry insisted.
He took a deep breath and continued onward, his face reddening as he reached her teats. Cherry flicked an ear as the soap brushed across a nipple, and he backed off.
“Just surprised me,” she said, spreading her hind legs slightly. “Keep going.”
He bit his lip and finished up, his face beet-red by the time he’d finally soaped the inside of her thighs and down to her fetlocks.
When Cherry turned back to her showerhead to rinse off, he quickly lathered his own belly, making certain his back was to her as he rinsed himself off. It was hardly a thorough job, but he didn’t want to spend any more time at the task and risk her seeing.
Once the water ran clear again, he dropped back to all fours and glanced over in her direction. She was gamely scrubbing the soap into her mane. I ought to get her some nice shampoo as a present, he thought, looking distastefully at the bar in his aura. This is no good for manes and tails. With no other alternative, though, he started to work on his own.
He scrunched his eyes shut and stuck his head under the shower, giving his head a quick shake once he was sure he’d rinsed out the soap, and then he turned to his tail.
When he turned to rinse it, he turned fully in her direction. Her head was directly under the spray, and she’d turned her backside to him, leaving a sudsy tail pointed practically at his muzzle. He couldn’t help but watch as a thin trail of soap dribbled off the end and pooled on the boards below.
Cherry Berry finished rinsing off her head and went on to her tail. To his mild disappointment, she hadn't let him clean that. He idly floated the soap back to the small storage cabinet, imagining how her tail would have felt to have it in his hooves, when she swished it forward, catching, the tip of her tail in her mouth . . . which gave him a clear and entirely unobstructed view of her backside.
He was sure it was unintentional, and it was probably rude to stare, but stare he did.
So here's another one from the wayback file.
Truth is, I kinda forgot that I wrote it. As it happened, I was looking for something else while I was on my way to EFNW, and happened along this one, and started re-reading it just to see how complete it was, and whether it was something that I wanted to finish, because I'd sort of completely forgotten about it.
Well, it was my second attempt at story #69, and I decided partway through that it wasn't really working out like I wanted, so I wrote Silk Pajamas instead.
Then, since it was fresh in my mind, I thought about finishing it up to enter into Jake the Army Guy's contest, and I would have, but. . . .
Those of you who have read Farm Work would no doubt notice that the plot of the two is remarkably similar (although the full version of this ends with a sex scene, which Farm Work does not), and I didn't want to do something so similar to another one of my published stories.
I've still got some intention of maybe writing a new intro and using the second half of the story for Jake's contest, having them bailing hay instead of stacking it. That would give y'all some insight into a different part of the process (no less miserable, I'm sure--at least the inside of the barn has some shade).
Longtime readers will of course recognize Cherry Berry and Comet Tail, but in case you don't, they're the middle two ponies here:
Source Unknown
I've mentioned in a few fics that they're a couple, most notably Apple Honey's Perfectly Ordinary Day. (This is set before that.) The outside shower that Cherry Berry has is mentioned either in Aviatrix.
The only other note I have is that horses should eat 1-3% of their body weight in dry forage every day, and that a bale weighs 60-130 pounds, depending on density.
Putting hay in a loft is a miserable experience, and I don't recommend it.
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Oh yeah, and let me know if the line spacing's wonky. I had single breaks between each paragraph, and got a warning message that there were no line breaks in the story, so I added a second to make it happier.
Instead of importing from gDocs, I cut and pasted this one, to see what would happen.
Manual labor, amirite?
8241879
I know. At least it's often mentally relaxing, so I guess that's something.
Why didn't this story pop up in my feed? Thanks for the blog post pointing me In it's direction!
Huh. I had no idea this collection existed until you mentioned it in that blog. In any case, a fascinating collection of could-have-beens.
One thing to note:
I knew spending too long could make you prune up, but I didn't think it could make hooves mutate.
I don't care how much slower it is, if I ever needed to get a bale of hay to the top of a pile, I'd use a block and tackle on a swing-arm.
I'm old and lazy, is why.
Oh great, this biscuit's got me wondering if unicorns consider telekinesis to be intimate contact.
8250761
I don't know--the feed works in mysterious ways, I guess.
8252048
It's a really under-the-radar type of story, and not very frequently updated, fortunately.
Heh, oops. I'll fix that.
8252461
That's the smart way, anyhow. Why work harder than you have to?
8253103
Well, for one, touching somewhere intimate with magic probably is, depending on circumstances. Maybe fields touching is, too. Hmm, that's a good question to ponder. Comet Tail's got the soap in his aura, and it's not dissimilar to if an earth pony were holding it in his hoof or mouth, although the aura surrounds it all the way. . . .
8253496
Makes me wonder if a unicorn probing a mysterious hole would do so with her field itself, or would she prefer to pick up a stick at one end and poke it indirectly.
8258061
I think that would really depend on the unicorn, wouldn't it? I've got to figure that Rarity, let's say, would probably try and probe anything potentially nasty or unknown with a stick held in her field, whereas Silver Spanner would probably just go right in with her field.