[GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion

WavemasterRyx wrote:

SilentCarto wrote:I want a bigger version of the image on the fan!

Finally got it finished for you, sir.

Spoiler:

http://wavemasterryx.tumblr.com/post/32454355695

Hee hee hee! Oh, Seapony Rampage, how do you be so cute?
Thank you, that's awesome.

Kattlarv wrote:
On a more PH related not, this just struck me: Didn't BJ get a memory orb out of Rampage? How is Rampage supposed to watch it?

They have a recollector.

Anyway, on slurs, the thing I try to keep in mind is that there's a difference between using one to hurt and use to reclaim a word; as with pornography, you can't necessarily say how to tell the difference in all cases, but you can figure out which is going on when you see it.

But all this talk along these lines reminds me of the night I found out "spook" was a slur for black people. Long story short, I misunderstood a conversation because I thought it only meant "ghost" or "undercover agent", and ended up using it rather loudly. After that, I decided to check out Wikipedia's list of ethnic slurs (which is actually a pretty interesting page for the more etymologically inclined) to at least mitigate the risk of a repeat.

@Racism I attach different meanings to those words. "Nigger" is someone being unpleasant or making a nuisance of themselves. "Spook" is a lurker, infiltrator, or someone deliberately trying to stay hidden. Also my aunt's ex husband name their dog Nigger once. They lived in a black neighborhood. Freaking priceless! xD

Icy Shake wrote:After that, I decided to check out Wikipedia's list of ethnic slurs (which is actually a pretty interesting page for the more etymologically inclined) to at least mitigate the risk of a repeat.

Excellent! with the help of this list I can make sure to never offend anyone again, all I have to do is never talk about... billiards... most foodstuffs... zoology... alcohol... botany... fuzzy things... 50s subcultures... classical literature... wait, when the hell did "fresh off the boat" become an ethnic slur?

Seriously guys, this is stupid.

Seeing that picture with the caption added still makes me feel so bitter... *sighs*

Cptadder wrote:
(Hint Hint Artists)

RoboRed wrote:This needs to happen.
*slowly turns head to look at Wave*

Well I can't make any
promises (except that it definitely won't happen tonight), but I'll see
what I can do.

SilentCarto wrote:Hee hee hee! Oh, Seapony Rampage, how do you be so cute?
Thank you, that's awesome.

She's just a natural at it, heh. I'm really glad you like it, sir, thank you very much.

Cptadder wrote:If someone were to make a tiny filly Glory in Goggles and teeny tiny lapcoat and then make it avatar sized for 100x100 and 200x200 then someone might find a gift in their paypal account.

Not new car sized gift, but definitely two or three pizzas big.

Well... um... maybe... if I can actually do it... if no one else does it first
and if it actually turns out any good...

Valikdu casts Ray of Stupid Derailment.

Throw your will save and open.:

Shipping Gogglez, ENGAEG:

@Ryxy
Jeez, forgot to mention, I thought both of your last two drawings were quite cute. :)

@Racism
This doesn't meet the Does This Need To Be Said test for me, so have one of my favorite Kids in the Hall sketches.

Spoiler:

Hah, I performed Bruce Mccullough's "Looking for Love" monologue as a public speaking thing in college. Got an A in that class for sure!

Spoiler:

....what the blueberry fuck is going on in here?!

I'm such an asshole.

Wait...what? What happened Kipper?

CamoBadger wrote:What happen

Somepony set up us the bomb !!

I must be a good train-person (whatever the fuck it's called) because I fail at derail.

Spoiler:

Valikdu wrote:

CamoBadger wrote:What happen

Somepony set up us the bomb !!

Main screen turn on //

CamoBadger wrote:Wait...what? What happened Kipper?

Katarn told me how his dad drank the last of his rum... so I made some soviet drunkard jokes.
Then Katarn showed me a picture of his dad... so I made some soviet bear fighting jokes.

XD Okay, I laughed

Cut down and such to take away what isn't needed.

Spoiler:

So be it. So-vi-et. :3

Ironmonger wrote:I must be a good train-person (whatever the fuck it's called) because I fail at derail.

Did somepony say derail?

swicked wrote:

Kippershy wrote:Cut down and such to take away what isn't needed.

Spoiler:

Here, let me make a worse joke,so that you can feel better.

Ahem.

Why is he russian? He really needs to slow down.

I'm actually from Ukraine :/
Though I think it's same to most folks -.-
Er..eh...I didn't mean to sound offended, cuz I ain't, really :D

LOOK, IF YOU WANT TO DERAIL THIS THREAD, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO FIGHT ME FOR IT.

And I have tools far beyond your capabilities.

3...2...1...

I slumped into the chair at my desk, defeated after another shitty day at work. I switched my computer on and spent the minute waiting for Windows to load thinking about how depressing my life had become. No girlfriend, a long commute every day to work a dead-end job with colleagues who were complete douchebags, and this dismal studio apartment.

But then the login screen appeared and I was dragged away from these grim thoughts by a request for my password.

I checked my emails. Some v1@gra spam, a chain letter from my mother, ANOTHER chain letter from my mother (no, mom, I wasn’t aware that a recent study showed that 85% of the cans from a coke machine have been tainted by cat pee…), a chain letter from my sister, an email from my sister asking for money, an email from someone called LittleMissSunshine…

Wait a second. LittleMissSunshine? Why was that name familiar?

Oh shit! Now I remembered. I’d joined one of those internet dating sites a few weeks back and sent of a whole bunch of ‘kisses’ or ‘pokes’ or whatever the hell they were called to girls who seemed interesting. Disappointingly, I hadn’t received any replies back – until now.

I sighed and cracked open a can of coke, cat pee be damned! Knowing my luck, LittleMissSunshine was a troll or a hooker or a Russian mobster or a Nigerian scammer or a god knows what else. The chances of her being a normal female human being were just about nil. Better to just tag it for deletion and…

I must have missed the tick box and accidentally clicked the mail itself as it popped open. I shrugged. Well, fate I guess. Maybe I should give it a read.

Dear anonymous1991,
I was very pleasantly surprised to find your hug in my inbox.

Hug? Oh yeah, that’s right. They were called ‘hugs’.

I’d like to say that I originally joined this site as a bit of a joke (my little sister suggested that I do so), but the truth is that I’m usually so busy I don’t really get any time to meet eligible males – and the ones I do meet are all under my authority so it would be indiscrete to date one of them. Also, I apologise for taking so long to get back to you – there was an incident that had to be dealt with straight away….

I took a sip of my soda. So LittleMissSunshine sounded like one of those corporate HR manager types. Interesting! I wondered if she’d have anything in common with a guy like me though. But I did enjoy her writing – she seemed a little unsure of internet terminology, so I was guessing she was probably older than me – but that wasn’t so much of a problem. Maybe she was a totally hot cougar. Unlikely, yeah, but a guy can dream.

I put my soda down, my interest further piqued, and kept reading…

Even though I’m surrounded by others all day, I often feel quite alone. I’d love to just be able to enjoy a nice quiet dinner and some conversation with an interesting male. No pressure, just a chance for the two of us to get to know each other. You seem like a genuine young male – your profile was lacking all the usual kinds of half-truths that one finds on such sites. And there was just something about your way of writing that intrigued me. So why don’t we meet for a drink, and then if that goes well perhaps dinner?

I found her use of ‘male’ a little peculiar – maybe English wasn’t her first language? But I was flattered by her compliment about my writing. I was a failed writer – but a failed writer who never told anyone he was writing, one of those individuals who hides their manuscripts and if they get caught writing they say they were beating off instead. Because if you say you’re a writer, the next question is always “Have you had anything published yet?” and if the answer to that question is “No,” then you’ve just introduced yourself as a kind of freakish failure who takes pride in that failure. And I’d had a big enough dose of failure in so many aspects of my life that my writing was one that I wanted to keep sacrosanct.

I brought up LittleMissSunshine’s profile again. There was no photo, but that was never an indication of anything. Plenty of good looking women left their profiles pictureless to weed out time-wasters, right? At least there wasn’t a MySpace angled shot or ducklips or some other photographic atrocity.

Likes: sunshine, honesty, justice, sugarcubes, rainbows, friendship, big words
Dislikes: swearing, rainy days, disorder, big dumb males

And there it was!

Age: 2000

It was a typo, of course, but I wondered how old she really was. I’d been a little reticent about asking her in my email – you know women and their hang-ups about their age – but I guessed that she must be somewhere in her mid to late thirties at least based on her style of writing, her job in upper management and her ignorance about the internet.

Well, I decided, I wasn’t so sure about sugarcubes, but I liked sunshine. Maybe we were meant to be together! Anyway, it would give me a chance to get out on a Saturday night – so I suggested a mid-tier hipster-free trendy bar for us to meet at.

Before the date I went and got a trim, shaved a week’s worth of neckbeard off and hit the gym for some half-assed reps so that I had a bit of tone to my body, but when I looked in the bathroom mirror I still saw the poster guy for average looks staring back at me. Ah, fuck it. From her email and her profile she sounded like the type that liked intellectual guys, anyway, so hopefully I’d be able to charm her that way.

After getting my cheap ass across town on the bus I was soon sitting at the bar itself cradling my scotch in my hand and watching the door. It was snowing out, and flurries of white slipped in every time the door opened. A woman came in, stripping off her scarf and long coat. Nope, not her. LittleMissSunshine had said that she’d be wearing a sun-shaped gold brooch, so I was on the lookout for it. She took all this sun stuff seriously, I realized. Well, everybody has their thing. It didn’t mean she was crazy, did it?

Every few minutes a woman would come in through the door from the snow outside alone, and each time I scanned them as they stripped down for the brooch. A few times I was relieved, a few times disappointed – but still LittleMissSunshine didn’t appear.

I looked at my watch. She was thirty minutes late! Well, that was it. I’d been trolled and trolled hard. I guessed LittleMissSunshine was somewhere in the bar with her girlfriends having a good laugh at my expense. I looked around but the bar was so full now that even if they were there I’d never find them.

Well, fuck it. I downed the rest of the scotch and was just about to get up when I glanced across at the woman who had just come and sat down at the bar next to me. And what I saw made me stop and sit right back down again.

She was older than me – but wait, was she really all that much older? It was difficult to say exactly how old she was – her face had a kind of timelessness to it that some Asian women have, her skin smooth and unblemished with only the hint of some age at the corner of her eyes. If I had a gun to my head, I would have guessed she was in her late-thirties, early forties - but it was hard to say.

Her features were delicate but striking, her nose and cheekbones giving a regal cast to her face that might have tended towards aristocratic sternness if they hadn’t been off-set by her two large darkly-lashed eyes and a dainty, perfectly-formed mouth with lipsticked lips that made her seem gentle and curiously doll-like. Her long brown-blond hair was done up in a casual style, adding to the overall effect of an unselfconsciously elegant woman who was concerned with looking her best yet not at all vain.

But it was the colour of her eyes that most gripped me. Those huge eyes were such a strange color – they must have been gray, but in the light of the bar they seemed almost violet, and within them I could feel a cheerful honest energy that you encounter pretty rarely in the savage city.

“I’ll have a dandelion wine, please,” she said to the bartender. Her voice was smooth and confident, modulated like she was used to speaking professionally, but underpinned with a warm friendliness. That, and the dress she was wearing, one of those casually elegant black sheath dresses, sleeveless, with a bolero jacket on top – the kind of simple carefree luxury that inner-city legal or managerial types like to wear – made me immediately think of LittleMissSunshine, who I’d decided was probably an upper level manager of some sort.

And so my heart skipped a beat , but as I looked on her chest for the brooch I saw she wasn’t wearing one. But what I did see was her deep décolletage, delightfully bare above her V-neckline. She was surprisingly busty for such a slim woman, and her skin was creamy white turned white-gold under the soft lights of the bar, like chryselephantine.

All of this took just seconds to go through in my mind, but I must have kept staring at her while as I was lost in thought, because she noticed me looking and turned her head and smiled.

“Oh hello!” she said.

“Ah hi,” I said, a little lamely. She’d caught me staring at her and I felt ashamed of myself. But the feeling quickly passed – the woman’s eyes were crinkled at the edges in a genuine smile, and there was something about them that calmed me and made me feel comfortable in her presence – which was strange, as I’m usually a bit nervous around good-looking women. She was definitely extremely attractive, even if she might have been old enough to be my mother.

“You know, I don’t usually go out at night,” she said. “But there’s a definite charm about it, especially with it snowing out.”

I nodded. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? I’m a bit of a night owl, myself.”

The woman smiled. “You sound just like my little sister! She loves the night as well. But I’m more a daytime kind of p- person,” she said. She took the dandelion wine and was about to take a sip when she noticed the bartender looking at her. She looked back, but he said nothing and merely coughed and her eyes went wide. “Oh of course! Money!” She chuckled, slapping a hand on the bar and reaching into her handbag. She took out a wallet and opened it, flipping through it for a second as if she had no idea what she was looking for, and finally took out a hundred dollar bill. “Is that enough?”

The bartender and I both looked at each other. The wallet had been stuffed to overflowing with bills, and they’d been all hundreds.

As the bartender went to get her change she turned back to me and at last took a sip of her dandelion wine, her eyes narrowing in pleasure. “Oh, it’s so good to get out! I haven’t had a chance to enjoy myself for a while. I just hope my little sister can be relied upon to look after the place while I’m away.”

“Are you here alone?” I asked.

She shook her head, and I felt my heart sink. Well, of course she wasn’t alone. A woman who looked like her! What the fuck had I been thinking? It seemed my evening was a total waste of time after all.

But then the woman’s eyes went wide a second time and she put down her glass and started rummaging around in her handbag again. “Oh, I just realised I’m supposed to be wearing a brooch!” she muttered. “No wonder he hasn’t come up to me yet! Oh Celestia, you’ll forget your own head one of these days!”

At the word brooch, my heart leaped up in my chest. No way. No fucking way. Could it be that this was…?

“Little Miss… Sunshine?” I asked.

The woman stopped rummaging through her purse and looked up at me. A bright smile played over her lipsticked lips.

“And you must be anonymous1991!” She laughed and the sound was so warm and honestly effusive that it was like a sudden burst of sunshine in the bar. ”Oh what a lovely piece of serendipity!” She looked me over and tapped her chin with a perfectly-manicured finger. “So I guess 1991 was the year you were born in, right?”

I nodded, suddenly feeling sheepish in front of such an elegant and self-confident woman. But she just winked at me and said “Oh, I know I shouldn’t tease, but sometimes I just can’t resist the urge! But where are my manners? I’m Celestia.”

After I introduced myself I said “Celestia? That’s a unique name. I don’t think I’ve ever met a Celestia before.”

“Oh please, call me Tia,” said Celestia. “It’s kind of my pet name – my sister came up with it.”

“I guess you and your sister are pretty close then?” I asked. “You mentioned her in your email as well.”

“Me and Lulu?” She nodded. “Oh definitely. Although we haven’t always been close – we had a bit of a falling out a few years ago, but we patched things up recently. ”

“Family can be difficult,” I said. “Does she ask you for money all the time? That’s what my little sister does.”

“Oh no!” laughed Celestia. Her laughter was deep but light, warm like morning sunshine, happy and unselfconscious. “She knows I’d just say no. Besides, she has everything she wants. But you’re so right about family being difficult.” She sighed. “After our parents passed away I guess I was a bit of a surrogate mom for her, but I think I did a very bad job of it.” She took a sip of her drink. “But now it looks like our roles have been reversed! It was Lulu’s idea that I start dating again. She said that it wasn’t healthy for me to be stuck all alone in that draughty c… house of mine. And I’m glad I did!” She smiled at me, and it was like being in the path of a beam of light so pure and beautiful was the look on her face.

I couldn’t help but smile back at her – it was a smile that forced you into her cheery world. Even after being with her for only a few minutes, I realized that there was something special about Celestia that made you feel at home in her company. I guess she had that kind of charisma a lot of people who are high-fliers have.

I usually find it pretty difficult to find things to say when I first meet someone, so I was relieved when Celestia took it upon herself to tell me more about herself. “I’ve been – how do you say it?” She tapped her chin with a finger. “-out of the market for a while now, I guess you could say. My last real relationship was with this… well, I know what a faux pas it is to talk about previous relationships so long story short, things didn’t work out between us – they say opposites attract, but sometimes I think you can be too different. I like order and harmony, while he was more into chaos and, well… discord. I should have known better, really – after all, Discord was his name after all.”

“Discord?” I repeated. “Wait, that was actually his name? Don’t tell me – he was in a band, right?”

Celestia arched her eyebrows. “Oh, he wasn’t in a band. And anyway, he’s ancient history. I dealt with him a long time ago so let’s forget I ever mentioned him.” She made a sweeping motion with a hand as if casting him off into the wind. “But let’s just say I haven’t had the best track record with guys, which is why I was a bit unsure when Lulu suggested I join that dating site…”

I ordered another scotch as we continued made small talk. It turned out that I’d been correct in my guessing that she was in upper management.

“Well, it’s kind of hard to explain, really,” Celestia said. “But I guess you could call me a manager. I mean, I have quite a large number of individuals that I’m responsible for.” She sighed deeply. “And they always seem to be getting into one kind of trouble or another! I mean, just today I got a scr- I mean, a message from my top student asking for my help with an invasion of dragons!”

“An invasion of dragons?” I laughed. “Really? Oh wait, it’s some sort of corporate jargon, right?”

Celestia brought a hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry – I guess you’d call it a…” She spun a hand around in the air as she searched for the right word. “…hostile takeover? Twilight – she’s my top student, you see – usually deals with these things fine on her own, but this proved to be too big a problem for her to handle and she needed my advice. But with a bit of reassurance from me she managed to find a solution meant which meant that I could actually get out and enjoy myself for a change! And here I am.”

“I’m really glad you could,” I said. “From the sounds of things you lead a very interesting life.”

At the word ‘interesting’, Celestia’s eyes glittered in pleasure. “You could say that,” she said. “Do you know, nobody’s ever said that to me before? That my life is interesting?”

“What, really?” I said, incredulous.

She nodded. “I think sitting here and talking to you I’ve just realized how little I’ve actually connected with anyone recently. Apart from Twilight and Lulu, there’s not really anybody I can talk to. Twilight doesn’t have much life experience, and Lulu – well, she never takes anything seriously. Her heart’s in the right place though.”

“I thought you were just in upper management,” I said. “But it sounds like you run everything. Are you like a vice-president or something?”

She blushed. “Well, maybe it’s a bit of a higher position than just ‘vice-president’.”

“President?” I suggested. When Celestia shook her head, my eyes went wide. “CEO?”

She lowered her eyes in embarrassment and looked at me through those dark lashes of hers. “Actually, my title is ‘Princess’”

“Princess?” I repeated, incredulous. “I have to admit, that’s a lot higher up than I expected.”

“It’s more ceremonial than anything else,” explained Celestia hurriedly.

“So you have to open sporting events and town halls and stuff like that?” I asked.

Celestia blinked at me. “Promise you won’t laugh?”

“Not unless it’s really, really funny,” I said.

“I raise the sun,” she said.

“The son? Wait, you have a son?” Well, that fig…

“No!” she laughed. “You know – the sun! The big orb of fire that brings light to the land? It’s my job to perform the necessary rituals that raise and lower it each day.”

That was a little more ceremonial than I was expecting. “And you do it every day? Sounds like a 24/7 job.” I took a sip of my drink.

“Well, 12/7 anyway,” replied Celestia. “Lulu deals with raising and lowering the moon, so I do get the opportunity for a bit of sleep.”

I nodded. “It must be a lot of responsibility.”

Celestia’s eyes went wide. “Wait, you believe me?”

I put my drink down on the bar. “Of course I do,” I said, looking in her eyes. “I know it’s probably a strange thing to say, but I don’t think you’d make a very good liar, Tia. You look too honest to me.”

It was flattery, maybe, but I only said it because in some strange fashioned I believed what she was saying. There was an earnestness in her eyes that didn’t allow me to doubt her. And yet it didn’t make Celestia happy to be called honest – in fact, her face became a little distant for a moment. So I decided to change tack and rescue the situation.

“Hey,” I said suddenly. “I just had a great idea. Do you like karaoke?”

“Karaoke? What’s that?” Celestia blinked at me.

“Once you finish your drink I’ll show you! I’m sure you’ll love it.”

Have you ever hit it off with someone right away? I mean, after those initial introductions are out of the way and you get to really talking, it’s like you’ve switched on two faucets that just won’t stop running? They say it’s what happens when you put two people who are usually listeners together – and it happened with me and Celestia. As we sang and drank and talked in our private booth at the karaoke place, the spaces between songs became longer and longer as we shared anecdotes and got to know each other. And even the few little silences that naturally happened now and again felt totally comfortable, like punctuation for our conversation rather than proof of that horrible fact that you often have to try to keep yourself from admitting on a date – that you and this person have nothing in common.

But it wasn’t as if we were similar people. We seemed very dissimilar, actually. She was from a country called Equestria (I was guessing it must be in Europe somewhere – my geography’s always been pretty terrible), where her family came from old money. Her childhood had been tea parties and elocution lessons and pranks played on the foreign dignitaries who visited her mother’s home with the aid of her little sister – I wanted to learn more about her childhood, but mention of her mother seemed to sadden her, so I didn’t press very far in that direction. She loved books and nature and candy and, just as her profile had said, sunny days.

It all seemed to make sense now. There was an exotic foreignness about Celestia that had been hard to place. As we’d been picking songs to sing, she’d seemed ignorant of almost all the music, even the golden oldie stuff you’d expect anyone to know – she didn’t even know who The Beatles were! But after listening to a song once, she was able to sing it. She had a quick mind and a quick wit, and I found myself wondering at how my fortunes had changed with the sudden arrival of this beautiful and brilliant woman into my life.

But she was still mysterious. The more I learned about her, the more I realized I didn’t know. It wasn’t that she was hiding anything per se, just that – well, she had a very elliptical way of expressing herself and I felt it would be impolite to push her too far. As it was, I was enjoying the mystery – Celestia was marvellous company. Witty, clever, well-spoken – just about everything the girls I usually had a chance to meet weren’t. Her age made no difference to me whatsoever, but I didn’t mention that, of course.

Soon we’d used up our few hours and it felt as if the evening were coming to its natural conclusion. I didn’t want it to, of course, but for a first date things had gone far better than I’d ever hoped.

“I had a wonderful time,” said Celestia as we walked out into the street. It was early in the am and the snow was falling stronger now, such that the world seemed silent except for the few couples like ourselves. Did I say like ourselves? I guess I was getting ahead of myself, but as we walked together it felt as if we’d already been together for a long time.

As we walked along the embankment next to the river that ran through this part of the city, the streetlights making the water shine like polished bronze, Celestia suddenly sighed – but it was a happy sigh. “You know – I knew when I read your profile that you’d be just right for me. An honest and straightforward gentleman.”

“Well, if by straightforward you mean average, then yes,” I chuckled. “But I had a great time tonight as well.”

Celestia said nothing, but she gently slipped her hand into mine, and from then on we walked together hand in hand while I grinned like an idiot to the silent city.

We walked in silence for a little while, the snow slipping down around us, crisping the air and smothering every sound. It was just the two of us, separated from the rest of the universe in our own private little world.

Finally we stopped and just stood together, watching the snowflakes lifted by gusts of air flutter over that glowing river. Celestia snuggled into my coat closer for warmth, and all I could smell was her soft perfume, and all I could feel was the heat rising from her body.

She looked at the snow that was falling about the two of us. “So strange,” she whispered. At first I thought she was echoing my earlier thought, but then she continued: “Not knowing what weather you’re going to get. It might snow or it might not. So strange!”

As we stood there in silence Celestia gazed up at me, inquisitive. I looked down at her, and then – well, call it a sudden attack of bravado, or whatever. I’m not usually so bold or forward. But something inside me demanded that I kiss her. It was barely volitional.

Celestia closed her eyes as I brought my face down to hers. I felt a sudden flash of heat lift up from her skin, the scent of her perfume intensifying – and then our lips touched.

Now, I’ve kissed a few girls and a few women in my life, but kissing Celestia – well, it was as if I was a boy again and I was kissing my childhood sweetheart – that innocent, fresh, excruciating kind of pleasure that strikes you for the first time in your life and feels so strange and yet so familiar, as if it’s the gate to all the other kisses that you’ll enjoy in your life. Time stopped and contracted and for a moment and an eternity I felt that the only people in the universe were me and Celestia, standing there in the snow on that embankment.

“Hey, get a room you guys!” The spell faded as a harsh, accented voice pierced the air. A drunk blond girl was stumbling along the street that ran parallel with the embankment, only kept from falling by her girlfriend who looked at us apologetically.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “She’s from Australia.” As if that somehow explained things!

But I wasn’t really listening. I was still looking at Celestia, who was blushing fiercely, her gaze averted, a smile playing on her rosebud lips made even redder with the cold.

“That was-” said Celestia. “That was- I guess I’d just forgotten what it’s like to be kissed.”

“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘awesome’,” I said with a smile.

She nodded, beaming. “Awesome.”

Maybe I’m just old fashioned or maybe there’d always been the heart of a die-hard romantic hiding in that chest of mine and I just hadn’t realized it. Whatever the reason, I left things at that kiss on our first date. It wasn’t that I didn’t think things would go any further between the two of us – it was just that part of me wanted this to go on forever. It seemed wrong to try and get Celestia into bed right away – she was the sort of woman that deserved to be wooed. Yes, wooed. That word had always seemed strange and archaic to me, but with Celestia it seemed exactly the right one to use.

Kipper you asshole!