Turning Back the Winter

by Dinkledash

Friendship is Bathtime

For almost an hour, Celestia floated in paradise, all troubles forgotten as she was suspended in sensual, delicious warmth unlike anything she had ever experienced. How do you get to be a princess anyway? When I'm princess, I will dispense with a throne room and hold court tubside. Taxes will be paid in bath beads and my royal scepter will be the backscrubber. I think I can feel the water getting cold. Or less than perfectly warm. I suppose that means it's time to get back to the real world. She sat up in the tub. "Lady Lavender? Lady Sandalwood?"

"Yes, Lady Celestia?" the two ladies-in-waiting responded together. Lavender was a light shade of purple with a rose colored mane, while Sandalwood was tan with off-white hair.

"Oh, just Celestia, please. I'm no noble. Gosh, that's awkward, isn't it?" The highborn unicorns tittered sweetly in unison.

"Lady Celestia, you are in the Royal Bath and the Princess has instructed us to attend you." Lady Lavender smiled gently as she spoke. "I assure you, that makes you enough of a lady for us. Please just call us by our names, there's no need for titles here."

"Well, that's very kind of you, thank you both. Could you please hoof me the scrubber and soap?" They giggled again.

"No, silly. It's our job to bathe you. Are you done soaking then?" Lavender started to soak a scrubbing brush.

"Bathe me? That seems rather... intimate." She was already red from the warmth, otherwise she night have blushed.

"I assure you, we will be entirely professional. If that's what you want." Sandalwood winked at her as she leaned over to soap up a sponge. "We could get in with you, if you like. We can get better leverage that way." Celestia's eyes widened in alarm.

"Sandalwood! Stop that this instant, you are frightening her!" Lavender splashed water at Sandalwood who took a scoop of bubbles and deposited it on Lavender's nose in retaliation. All was quiet for a second and then all three mares started howling with laughter. As they got their chuckles out, Lavender started scrubbing Celestia's back and Sandalwood started doing her mane.

Sandalwood stopped laughing. "Moon and stars, is this blood?"

"Not mine, at least I don't think it is." Celestia stopped laughing too, and absently started playing with the bubbles.

"Anything you want to talk about, honey?" Lavender moved over to the other side of her back.

"Did you guys hear that big explosion this morning?" They both nodded. "That was me," Celestia said in a very small voice.

"You were in the battle? You're that mage that everypony is talking about? The one who k..." Sandalwood fell silent, continuing to rinse Celestia's mane.

"The one who saved us all from the mercenaries, is what Sandalwood was going to say," Lavender purred as she felt Celestia stiffen. "The one who was so brave at the Battle of Riverside? I think that's what they're calling it. And look at you, you're a filly. A bit on the large size, perhaps..." the lady-in-waiting started to massage Celestia's back and suddenly she stopped feeling guilty and sick and just concentrated on the incredibly delicious pleasure-pain sensations that Lavender was evoking with her magically enhanced massage in her tired, stiff back muscles. "...but so accomplished for one so young!"

Sandalwood finished with her mane and started cleaning the filth that remained in her hoof cuticle. "You know, Celestia, my friend in the guard told me that you saved all their lives out there. Except for the seven that..." She checked herself, silently cursing her tongue. "And that you are the most powerful, bravest and most quick-thinking unicorn he'd ever seen." She moved on expertly to the next hoof.

"I... I appreciate that, but really I was just making it up as I went along. If I had realized... I should have scanned the area before we went in. We could have fallen back, gotten reinforcements. Captain... I mean Major Thunderhooves would have been able to come up with a better plan. I could have softened them up from long range, or maybe even scared them away. Do you know how many ponies are dead because of me? How many buildings I destroyed? Homes and businesses gone forever?" She started crying. "I'm no hero, I don't deserve this!" Tears started flowing freely and she started to take great gulps of air.

Sandalwood slapped her on the cheek, hard, and Celestia was so shocked she stopped crying.

"Now you listen to me, filly! Self-pity is a luxury leaders cannot afford! If you hadn't been there, all of those guardsponies would be dead, including Honor Sharphoof, who is my lover and you aren't going to tell anypony because it would be a delicious scandal; the princess would be dead, we'd be raped and probably killed from what Honor said of the brigands' behavior, our families would be ruined and the Academy wouldn't be able to finish working on the sun problem, so the world would be doomed. So don't you DARE feel sorry for yourself! Could you have done better? Yes, and I'm sure you and the Major will spend many an hour discussing how to improve your tactics in the future, but Honor swears that you are the only reason we're all alive in a nice castle with our supposed virginities intact so you WILL accept whatever honors Platinum gives you with a smile and a wave. You wave like this, by the way." She demonstrated the noble wave, twisting her hoof with a big plastic smile on her face.

Lavender leaned in and spoke quietly. "Sandals is right. The unicorns out there are terrified of what is happening, and having a hero is just the thing they need. You can inspire them or you can hide from the limelight and blame yourself for not being perfect. It's your choice, and I'm glad it isn't my choice, but if it helps any, I think you're a real hero." Then she kissed Celestia lightly on her tender cheek and it took much of the sting away.

Celestia stopped crying and let the expert bathmares attend her, relaxing and enjoying herself considerably, only taking a facecloth to wash her own hindquarters. Then she stood so they could finish her tail and fetlocks. She looked down at the filthy water and Sandalwood tut-tutted. "You weren't kidding about needing a bath first! We need to do a rinse." Lavender used her magic to pull a plug out of the bottom and Celestia watched, fascinated by the dark spiraling water as it went down the drain. She had never seen a tub actually hooked up to plumbing before. Then she looked at the filth that remained in the tub.

"Great jumping manticores! Did all that come off of me?"

The ladies-in-waiting looked over the tub rim, made disgusted faces and nodded at her in unison. "Yeah." Then they looked at one another and said, "You're cleaning it!" Then they all laughed as Lavender rang a bellpull summoning more maids with water buckets.

After a few minutes, some younger mares, barely more than fillies, entered the chambers bearing two water buckets each. The oldest one spoke as they all curtsied and bowed. "Sorry, m'lady, they aren't warmed up proper yet."

"Sorry, Celestia, looks like a cold rinse." Sandalwood accepted the buckets from the maids and started levitating them down at the side of the tub.

"Not necessarily." A wooden bucket with a rope handle, approximately 1 kilogram of wood and 50 grams of rope, to which I will bind wood on the interior surface with heating one liter of water, encasing a field within the boundaries of the object to be charged with twenty watts for ten seconds through ambient absorption on the exterior surface, leaving a gap of two microns in the center of the round bottom piece.

Pop!

"What did you do?" asked Lavender, as the bathmares and one maid who stayed behind stared at the bucket.

"Miss..." Celestia looked at the maid.

"Just Pennywhistle, if it please your ladyship." She curtsied. Sandalwood stopped Celestia from correcting the maid; the filly would be confused enough by recent events.

"Pennywhistle, look at the bucket and think of it being full of hot water."

The maid looked at her skeptically, then shrugged and looked at the bucket. In a few moments, bubbles started to form on the bottom and sides and as they rose to the surface, steam emerged from the bucket. At the same time, ice crystals formed on the sides of the bucket and the floor as the heat was absorbed from the surrounding environment.

"Cor! I mean, sorry your ladyships, but goodness! That's hoofy, isn't it?" She kicked the bucket lightly to crack the ice surrounding it and levitated it to Sandalwood, who smiled and poured it onto Celestia's back.

"Oh! Too hot! Let me take that down about five degrees..."

After about five minutes the maid went downstairs, whistling happily and carrying six enchanted bathwater buckets, one of which was marked "REALLY HOT." The ladies-in-waiting were toweling Celestia dry and she felt cleaner and more relaxed than she could remember. Not just clean on the outside either. Something about being pampered by and having a conversation with these two charming mares cleansed her soul as well.

They walked Celestia to the vanity and the highborn unicorns gathered assorted currycombs, perfumes, powders and other mystical beauty gear with which she was unfamiliar. "Darling, when was the last time you had a proper hooficure?" Sandalwood looked at her hooves critically.

"Not since the battle." They giggled. "Actually I've never had a professional hooficure. My mother would do them when I was little but I've just taken care of it myself with a hoof file since then." Sandalwood pouted.

"One should never do one's own hooves. You can't see what they look like and your angle is all wrong. Allow me?" Sandalwood quickly filed off the burrs and rough bits, then buffed and put a lotion on them. "A touch of hardener." Then she went into the princess' drawers. "And some clear lacquer." She applied the hoof polish with practiced strokes and they shone brightly in the sunlight streaming in from the balcony.

As she was working, Lavender was currycombing Celestia's coat, and the sensation was delightful. Then she finished and started to comb her mane in long, loving strokes. Celestia decided she really liked these two.

"So Sandalwood..." The lady-in-waiting looked up in response to Celestia's query. "Honor? I'm sorry, but he seems so... doofy. He's brave as all hay, but..."

Sandalwood grinned and went back to applying polish. "It's not his brains I'm attracted to, you know. He's sweet, kind, funny and he has other... attributes." She blushed as Celestia and Lavender started laughing.

Lavender spoke between giggles. "Now you must tell all..."

Comments

[NobleValor]

Not having a tub big enough to bathe in. I've had that problem since I was twelve. (I was big for my age. Either that or the tub I used was oppressively small) And what is with girls and 'small talk.' I've never understood that facet about their personality, I still dont.

[Dinkledash]

4612819 Sorry, I'm just trying to give the characters some personality development by having some dialog that perhaps isn't terribly consequential. I hate cardboard secondary characters.

[NobleValor]

4613493 Oh no, you did good on that facet. I was merely stating my confusion on one particular aspect of female behavior. (Translation: Keep up the good work and pay no attention to any complaint I may make.)