Twilight Sparkle stomped her way across the castle courtyard, fuming. “I cannot believe what that pony just said!”
Cadance looked up from the book she was reading. “Was it Blueblood again?”
Twilight nodded. “Ever since I became a Princess, he’s been trying to get me into his bed. Today he decided to enumerate the things he could do for me with… extremely creative metaphors. I think it was supposed to be poetry?”
Cadance laughed. “I suppose he can be kind of a cute little teddy bear.”
Twilight stared at her, incredulously.
Cadance smiled back at her. “You look like you want to throw something. Want to play horseshoes?”
It turned out that Cadance was not very good at horseshoes. Neither was Twilight, but at least she could usually get the shoe in the general vicinity of the target stick. “Oh, blueberry muffins!” Cadance exclaimed as another shoe went wide.
Twilight carefully tossed another shoe, that missed the stick and ended up a little farther than her last throw. It was still closer than Cadance’s best, though, and would count for points. “Are you letting me win?” she asked, with a cocky smirk.
Cadance stuck out her tongue, and made another toss. This one hit the target straight on – then bounced off to land a few inches away. Not a ringer, but close enough to invalidate all of Twilight’s.
“Uh oh, looks like you might finally score a point,” Twilight said, narrowing her eyes and focusing, then skimming her shoe quickly at a low angle, sliding it into Cadance’s and sending both flying off out of range. “Not!”
“You… you…” Cadance said, her ears flattening. “Twilight, you adorable fluffy kitten!” She blushed, and looked away.
Twilight laughed. “Yeah, that was the sort of thing a kitten would do,” she said. “You have the cutest little swears, Cadance. Is that how everypony curses in Hollow Shades?”
“Oh! Oh, no,” Cadance said. “It’s really just a quirk of my family. When I was young, the ponies I grew up with always used to swear by the same sort of unpleasant things as anypony else – ‘buck’ for being kicked by another pony, ‘horseapples’, when somepony has to go and doesn’t make it to a restroom, or ‘ponyfeathers’ referring to the worn and broken feathers a pegasus has to painfully pull loose when preening.”
Twilight winced in sympathy at that last one. Getting a pair of wings indeed had not been entirely without its drawbacks, although the feeling afterwards was usually worth it.
“But my mother taught me that it could be just as cathartic to loudly invoke the names of things that you enjoy,” Cadance continued. “I usually use baked goods, or cute little baby animals, but the important thing is for it to be something that will make you feel better when you think about it.”
“Oh, that makes sense,” Twilight said. “Baked goods, hmm? Is that what your mother used?”
Cadance laughed. “Oh, no, she always used sex. ‘Fuck me’ or ‘fuck this’ or ‘you motherfucking whore!’”
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
