A Long Time Ago
"Twilight," Starlight stated with her latest step on the rough cut cobbles, sunlight beaming down on her too-warm coat.
"Easy," came Trixie's retort from beside her as the pair of them continued to pull their wagon to Baltimare. They'd been going for hours now, but they were more than used to the long journey, including its boring bits. "Easy. I'd just wave a book at her first."
"Alright, fine," Starlight conceded with a nod, hrmming to herself as the pair of them continued to hoof along the sizzling stones. "How about Rainbow Dash?"
"Hah! Foal's play," Trixie tittered, casting smug eyes over her bestie with a sidelong glance. "As long as I had a little notice first, I could use just a pinch of magic to stop her from flying away in time."
Starlight raised an eyebrow. "That's assuming you could even hold down her wings with your magic. Rainbow Dash has probably got the strongest wings out of anypony I've met..." Starlight caught just how wistful she sounded saying that and cleared her throat out of marely instinct. "Uhm, y-yeah. It'd be tough."
Luckily, Trixie didn't hold her to ransom over her slip up. "You're right, of course, but you're obviously too green to know the first thing about pegasi, and just how much they adore having their wings touched in just the r-r-right places..." There was the trill, the little roll of Trixie's tongue that Starlight's brain always told her was a little too playful. It made her blush at the best of times and heated up her belly at the worst. "And trust me, if you know that? Then you know just how to hit them in the worst places, too. Very sensitive things, pegasus wings."
Starlight always hated when Trixie did that. The teasing demeanour and tone of voice, the reminder that Trixie had that little bit more sexual experience—and life experience to boot—than her, and the fact that both of those things turned her on when she knew they shouldn't have. They were both completely into colts, after all, maresculinity unparalleled.
Honest.
"Okay... Princess Celestia," Starlight ventured, knowing it to be her trump card.
"What, you think she doesn't sleep at night?" Trixie grinned, looking at her as if the solution was entirely obvious.
"She's surrounded by battle-trained guardsmares in her bedchambers at all times? You'd never get in."
Trixie halted in her motions, bringing the wagon to a rough stop behind her and causing it to bump into Starlight's flanks. She raised a hoof to her chest in mock shock. "My dear Starlight, have you forgotten that I'm an illusionist? I could simply turn invisible, or project the image of a cute, loose stallion maid and wait for all of those guardsmares to chase after him! Getting in would be as simple as opening the door after that..." She shook her head, as if in disapproval, heaving the wagon forwards without bothering to comment on Starlight's now lightly bruised flanks, laughing all the while. "Face it, there isn't a single mare in Equestria that I couldn't punch! Trixie is far too cunning."
"Trixie is far too self-assured," Starlight chuckled. For the next thirty seconds, silence reigned alongside the victorious Trixie, until suddenly, Starlight had a brainwave fit to abolish the diarchy. "Maud."
Trixie's breath halted in her throat. "O-oh, come on, we both know Maud Pie doesn't count," She deflected with an eye roll, focussing on the road too intently all of a sudden and refusing to meet Starlight's gaze.
"She totally counts! Why wouldn't she?" Starlight pressed the attack, knowing that she'd found the one Trixie couldn't beat.
"That mare isn't natural," Trixie spat. "Have you ever seen her tired, sleeping? Hell, even if she did fall asleep, there's no way I'd be able to sneak up on her. She'd probably wake up before my teleportation spell had even finished, say her pet rock sensed me or something." Her last sentence ended with a shudder, and the worrying part was that try as she might, Starlight wasn't sure she could discount even half of what Trixie had just said.
So she settled with what she could say, cheap or not. "Well, she still counts. Admit it, you'd never manage to get the drop on her. Hell, even if you did, you'd probably feel it more than her. Have you seen that mare throw a boulder before? Makes us all look like colts in comparison."
"You realise that's your other best friend you're talking about, correct?"
"What, I'm not allowed to acknowledge her freakish strength?"
"Ha! So you admit that she isn't natural, and therefore doesn't count!"
"Wha—" Starlight shook her head furiously. "I never said that!"
"Mmh, if you say so. Trixie tires of this game."
"Only because you lost," Starlight teased, managing to coax a grumble from Trixie as the pair walked in grouchy synchronicity. Starlight's eyes travelled as the conversation petered out for the third time that hour, and she took in her surroundings as best she could. Unfortunately, it was a lot of the same during the middle portion of their journey. Large, verdant fields filled with greenery, a long, narrow, and straight road, and mountainous terrain kissing the sky in the far distance.
"I want a break," came Trixie's voice, still relatively sulky.
"You always want a break," Starlight countered, but it was half-hearted. She'd been feeling the ache in her hooves for a little while now, but it was always a competition of perseverance between the two of them to see who would ask to stop for a while first. It was hardly like a mare to complain about a little laborious travel, after all. "But I guess we have been going for a while." Starlight pointed to a large spruce tree, posed atop a hill overlooking the surroundings. "Bet there'd be good shade up there."
Trixie looked at the hill with disgust, as if that same hill had killed her parents and exiled her from her birthplace. "Do we really have to walk up that first? We could just sit in the wagon, after all."
"Hey, it's a nice day! I wanna enjoy the countryside for a little, get off this damn road. Come on, it's not that far."
Trixie weighed her options for a moment before finally sighing and beginning to turn the wagon away from the path. "Fine, but you owe me."
She might have said that, and Starlight might have nodded, but both of them sighed in relief the minute their hooves were off of the path and pressing against the soft, fresh grass. It was like a ticklish massage in reward for their efforts, nurturing and restoring their hooves as they made the final, five minute haul over to the large hill that'd be their lunch-site.
"You know, if it wasn't for heat season, I would love spring," Trixie sighed as they trotted along, finally looking at Starlight fully. "The weather's to die for, but it's impossible to enjoy it properly when you know any moment you're liable to launch into a frenzy of pure need."
Starlight cocked her head. "You say that, but we managed alright last year between the two of us."
"Starlight! Keep it down!" Trixie hissed, head dipping up down and all around in search of listening ears, not even trusting the woodland creatures scurrying by not to be agents of Fluttershy. "I don't want ponies thinking we're filly foolers."
"Who the hell is going to hear us out here?" Starlight laughed, even if she did wear a shade of scarlet around the muzzle herself. "I know we're not filly foolers, Trixie, and I wasn't even talking about that. I just meant that we managed to keep from going too crazy."
"Still!" Trixie pressed, apparently too vested in her neurosis to see reason. "If word gets out that we did... what we do sometimes last heat season, then—well, you know how colts get with gossiping. If everypony thinks we're filly foolers, how will we ever get another coltfriend?! We'd have to move, we'd have to make new friends, we—"
"Sheesh, is your head like this all the time?" Starlight teased, giving her flank a light bump. "I'd hate to think what you were like when you were plotting revenge plans, must've driven yourself half-crazy."
"Like you're one to talk," Trixie sneered. "You were full crazy before we met, and not much has changed since."
"At least I'm not more embarrassed about the fact that I ate you out a few times than I am about being an ex-maniacal dictator?"
"Starlight!" Trixie growled, before switching, changing her tone almost too quickly. Couldn't afford to back down, could she? "I bet the only reason you're bringing all of this up is because you know heat season's right around the corner."
"Obviously? Wouldn't be much point talking about it otherwise, would there? Besides, you started the conversation."
Trixie shook her head. "I started talking about heat. You were the one to bring up what happened last spring, and I'll bet it's just because you wanna do it again, isn't it?"
Starlight did a double take. Was... was Trixie serious right now, or was she playing gay chicken? "I-I mean..." Trixie seemed to be loving the blatancy of Starlight's search for words, but she was determined to not give her the upper hoof if this was just another contest. "What if I did? What if I said I don't think we even need a colt this year? We did just fine last year without one." That line was bullshit and they both knew it, they barely got by, but Starlight was ready to double down in a heartbeat.
"Oh yeah?" Trixie batted her eyelashes, gave her best stallion-slaying smile, and looked as deep into her friend's eyes as she dared. "Who do we need, then? Each other, I suppose?"
Starlight was on this in a heartbeat. She stopped completely, unhooked herself from the cart, and stood right in front of Trixie, matching her gaze even as her eyes followed her. She saw a gulp from her friend at the proximity, knew she could break through her exterior if she kept it up—if she didn't falter. "I mean..." she bit her lip, softly, teeth slowly scraping at the soft, sensitive flesh as Trixie's eyes darted down to catch a guilty glimpse of the display, "would it be such a terrible thing to admit? We're already amazing at liking each other, so maybe we could try..."
"Loving each other?" Trixie stole the words from Starlight's mouth, which was closer to her than either of them were at all used to. Starlight wasn't even sure if she'd posed it as a question or a statement, as an idea, or a latent need that had gone unfulfilled for far too long, one they could choose to facilitate right in that moment if only they had the guts to do so.
"Maybe that's..." their horns touched, not by purpose or design, only proximity. It was like a static current flowing between them, one that could be snapped at any moment; sensitivity in overdrive, magnified by the first dregs of heat manifesting in each of them as they stared one another down.
"What we need..." They spoke in unison, moved in tandem, like two ponies pulling a cart had for so long moved as one, they began to think as one, act as one, speak as one. Trixie blinked, slowly, and Starlight didn't want to miss a single second of those eyes that betrayed every second of her reactions. Their horns were still brushing together, likely soon to reach critical levels of stimulation, but there was nothing they could do or say to change that now. Why would they want to, need to?
They pulled closer still, closer than they often dared, to the point that they could barely look at one another without the specifics of each other's faces morphing and becoming disfigured by the closeness, so they closed their eyes, and let their other senses communicate. The hot feeling of warm breath against one another, the fur so close Starlight could almost feel its brush already, the lick around her lips that was more compulsive instinct than anything she could even begin to control.
They drew closer. There was barely an inch separating them now, barely a notion. Because honestly, what really had separated the pair of them up until now? Hubris and bravado, silly, abstract concepts that meant nothing in the face of pure chemistry and staggering, overwhelming physicality. You could see it in the quiver of their breaths, the twitching, awkward, but eager motions, the flick of their tails and the tap of Trixie's hind hoof... this is where they were destined to be. Their lips finally touched, and each of them prepared for the explosion of sensation that they'd so wantonly prepared for to take place...
...Starlight slobbered all over Trixie's face and Trixie instinctively punched her in the withers.
"GAAAAY," the two of them shouted in unison, giggling and screaming and laughing and rolling around in the grass, kicking their legs as they made smooching noises between fits of laughter, a tear rolling down Starlight's cheek as she finally came to a rest alongside her best friend. In fact, she ended up right on top of her.
"Oh, Celestia, that was great," Starlight sighed in contentment, giving Trixie a wink as she rolled off of her and they laid together, in contact from barrel to hind leg.
"But hey."
"Hey."
Trixie still had the ghost of a laugh in her tone as she spoke. "Did you feel it for a moment just then?"
"Oh, piss off."
"No, I'm serious!" Trixie whapped her on the side, and Starlight began to wonder just how many more bruises she was going to accumulate today. "For a few seconds, that felt like something repressed between us. Am I crazy?"
"Honestly? I dunno," Starlight admitted. "I kinda felt it too, but maybe we're just lonely. Lonely, horny, and about to enter heat. I'll bet it's just because neither of us has landed a stallion in a while."
"T-Trixie guesses."
"Hey, don't regress on me," Starlight laughed. "Maybe we should see how the pair of us feel after we've got heat out of the way, yeah? I mean... that or we just pretend this never happened and don't bring it up again."
"So, you mean our solution to most of our issues including previous unresolved sexual tension?" Trixie smirked, which was honestly just her default smile. "I think we can manage that."
"Oh come on, we're not that bad."
"Remember when you bottled up your frustration at me and it broke free and infected Ponyville?" Trixie rolled over, giving her plot a little shake. "Bet if you let out all of that lust, the entirety of Equestria would be engaging in a no-holds-barred orgy within the hour." Trixie sat up on her haunches then, resting a hoof over her chin. "...huh. That sounds more fun than I imagined it would."
Starlight didn't deign her with an answer. Instead, she tried to cast thoughts of that from her mind and strapped herself back in. They walked in relative silence to the top of the hill, a bit of an exhausting climb, but they both knew it'd be worth it to get out of the sun for a while. Starlight might have been fond of Celestia, but she'd be lying if she said she wouldn't mind her toning down the giant lightbulb just a tad.
When they finally reached the top of the hill, Trixie went inside to grab a picnic spread for them to lay on. It wasn't like they were going to be eating, but it was more comfort than nothing. As she did so, Starlight began to walk up to the nearby tree. It was a huge thing, easily ten times thicker than her at the trunk, like something she'd imagine seeing deep in the Everfree. The hill sloped into a bank on the other side, which joined onto a river that likely flowed into the estuary leading up to Baltimare. The later part of the journey promised plenty of water, and the view from atop the hill was a refreshing break from the quotidian, a reminder that the two of them were about to step into something new together.
And as she admired that coming promise, Starlight heard a thud from the other side of the large tree, causing her to back up a couple of paces. It wasn't too loud, probably an animal, but it was worth checking either way. Last thing the two of them needed was varmints pestering them as they attempted to lounge in peace for a while.
So Starlight began to walk around the large tree, only feeling slightly wary, but aware of the feeling all the same. She didn't like not knowing things, and yet she called Trixie the paranoid one. As she drew closer, she began to see something she couldn't make head or tail of. It was a... limb of some kind. Outstretched, furless, dark complexion... running down into a claw-like thing with five stumpy digits. But then, the claws themselves were neat and short?
At this point, 'slightly wary' began to progress towards 'full on nope'.
But Starlight needed to know what this thing was, she needed to see more of it! It... it could be dangerous, sure, but she was one of the most accomplished and powerful magicians in Equestria. Surely there was nothing out here in the calm, serene countryside that would be able to hurt her? Steeling herself, fighting down the hesitation in her chest, she kept walking, kept turning around the tree, revealing more and more of this creature to her eyes as she went, feeling them widen all the while as her jaw began to go slack.
This... she'd never seen something like this before.