When the wake-up bell rang, Sienna was drifting between sleep and wakefulness. She did not bother to react until, as every morning, her groom's crop lightly touched her shoulder.

"Hey, Sienna! Morning's here!"

Without the bell and the groom, she could not have known that it was morning because she slept blinkered, in total darkness. The groom had begun blinkering her when she injured her ankle, a long time ago. He had probably thought that sleep would be easier for her; and he had probably been right. Now that the pain had long since subsided, she should have preferred even the limited vision afforded by her every-day blinders. Since there was no way for her to communicate a preference, she let it slip away before it grew into frustration. Sienna carefully avoided desiring most things. With no way of relieving desire, frustration would fester quickly.

Even after the groom spoke to her, Sienna did not move. There was nothing to do until he came back to shoe her. That would happen soon, but not right now. So she could still relax for a while.

"Soon" and "right now" were the only notions she used for the future. "Tomorrow" was meaningless, as it would be impossible to distinguish from today. The far future was something she avoided thinking about. She could continue as now for a long, long time yet, fifteen years or so, before she would be physically inept. She did not want to think about what would happen then. Once in a while the possibilities would slip through her defenses, and none of them were good.

There was one future event which was certain – the only event which might mark the passing of time for her. Once a year, she was offered the possibility of leaving the island, of returning to the States. But even that annual singularity was blurred. Each time, the ceremony was identical, and since Sienna reacted each time in the same way, she had already lost track of how many times it had happened. It was annoying not to know if she had been there for two years or for three, but after all, what difference did it make?

Not that she was either indifferent to events, or incapable of tracking them and analyzing them. She was both sensitive and intelligent, but she had changed a great deal since arriving on the island. She now thought of herself as two beings, intimately melded into one creature named Sienna. There was the pony: a primal being, emotionally and physically sensitive but almost mindless in quest for food, water, sleep and sex. And there was another being, who shared the pony's senses, while standing distant, floating, observing. This one felt all that the pony felt, and had an intense need to understand … but could not act. Never.

There was a languid pleasure in these early morning moments, waiting for her groom. Her mind could wander, musing over nothings, like "soon" and "right now", and how to measure time. Once upon a time, in another life, she had measured time in minutes, hours, days … There had been something called a calendar. The present had been a slippery instant between an infinite but measurable future and an infinite but measurable past.

Now, time was completely different. The present was almost the entirety of her existence. The future hardly existed; and the past was … variable: "yesterday" was a useful notion, an epoch still clear in her mind. Before "yesterday" was much less certain – did something happen just the day before, or two days, or … So that period before yesterday was amalgamated into "recently". Even earlier events were "quite a while back". At some indefinite point, the past became  "a long time ago".

To complicate matters, Sienna's perception of the distance of what happened to her varied, depending on how she had enjoyed them. A sadistic guest's whip was necessarily sharp in her mind, and therefore recent, even if the groom's calendar would not agree. And Her Driver's touch was a necessarily much too long ago, generating a dreamy longing … even if He had been with her just the day before.

The door to her stall squeaked open.

Automatically, Sienna raised her right foot in the air. The groom removed the plastic brace which kept her foot in a "points" position during the night, slipped on her hoof-boot, blocked it against his thigh, and began lacing. The boots held her ankles in that same "high heels" position, but there were no heels. Laced up over her calves, the boots reinforced the ankles at the same time. He pushed the shod foot to one side and caught the other foot which she immediately presented. He worked methodically, saying nothing.

When she was shod, he tugged lightly on her bridle, and she rose to her feet. She staggered a bit, making little nickering noises. Getting balance, on tiptoe and without vision, is not easy. Even without blinkers, standing at attention was a dressage test, and a very difficult one. Except in dressage, Sienna never quite stood still. She always stood with her hooves spread moderately, both sideways and fore-and-aft, and moved them minutely but constantly, readjusting her balance. It was far easier to remain still when hitched to a sulky, with the drawbars providing fore-and-aft stability.

As every morning, her groom led her to a corner of her stall, and removed her butt-plug tail so she could defecate. Urinating was possible anywhere, any time during the day, but defecating was not. She crouched and took as long as necessary. The groom waited patiently, and then reinserted her tail. She had no idea when or by whom the mess would be cleaned up, but when she returned later in the day it would be done.

The groom next hitched her bridle to a bar above head height, maintaining her rigidly upright, while he cleaned her. Sometimes he just brushed off the night's straw, sometimes he swabbed her down, and sometimes he flooded her with large quantities of water (buckets, probably, but she was not sure, because she was still totally blind). Today, he just brushed her off. This was a disappointment, because she was always hoping that the cleaning session would transform into something more fun. When his hand drifted close to her sex, she thrust her belly forward and nickered hopefully. It was no surprise that he did nothing, but it was always worth a try. When he really washed her down, he had to rub her, and she could sometimes get him interested.

After giving her bridle some slack, he screwed a feed bottle into the fat, foam-rubber-coated pipe-gag which permanently filled her mouth, and left her. She had learned to take her time, tilting her head back to let some of the oatmeal-like substance flow into her throat, then tilting her head forward again to stop the flow. In the down position, the bottle allowed her to breathe through her mouth, through her pipe-gag. Once, a long, long time ago, she had eaten too greedily. She had thought she would choke to death when she swallowed sideways, but the groom had heard the commotion she had made, and had quickly unscrewed the bottle so she spit everything back out.

After the feeding, the groom watered her the same way, and then brushed her teeth.

Next came the moment Sienna was waiting for. Every day, she received a coat of UV-blocking cream. Otherwise, nude under the sun, she would be burned to a crisp. The groom's cream-slick hands slid all over her body, drawing little moans and flutters. She pressed her breasts into his hands, and ground her sex against his calloused fingers. Her behavior always brought a chuckle, and often better than that. Every two or three days (but she could never keep count), he would caress her to a dancing, weaving orgasm. Today he was in a hurry. No joy.

Finally he brushed and braided her hair. She never saw her own hair – her blinders limited her vision to a narrow vista just in front of her. Still, she could feel that the braids were done in a different way each day: single, double, multiple; loose or tight; hanging free or bound together; … . Her hair had been shoulder-length when she arrived on the island, and must now be down to her waist. She would have liked to see it, but it never happened.

Only when he had already unlatched the gate to Sienna's stall did the groom remove her blinkers. He gave her an instant to adjust to daylight, and then led her through the stables to the tack room. That short walk was the only part of her universe which she ever saw completely. She was not yet wearing her tack, so she could turn her head.

In the tack room, her bridle was once again hitched high up, lifting her head. The tack he put on her was in fact very light. A pony was meant to run as long and as far as possible.

Sienna stood impassively while he threaded a thin strap in a figure-eight, looping under her arms, and crossing behind her neck. From that strap, four others were attached to her head-harness, effectively freezing her head upright and forward.

The last leather was the wide, soft drawbar belt, buckled well below her waist, which rode lightly and loosely on her hips.

The morning routine, from wake-up to ready-to-go, never varied in any way. Whether she was to pull guests' sulkies, or to take dressage lessons, or to train physically, or whatever, it did not matter. Her day always, always began the same.

From the tack room, the groom led her to the garage. Here her days diverged. Most days, she would be hitched to a standard touring sulky, and then led on to the waiting yard, and the guest-drivers. Sometimes, the sulky would be the ultra-light one for dressage training. Sometimes (and this she definitely did not like) it would be a wagon, when there was materials hauling to be done. A couple of times, recently, she had been hitched tandem, beside another pony, on a light sulky. Those outings had not gone well – she and the other pony had never found the same gait, and chaotic bobbling was the result. She hoped she would be considered too old to learn new tricks like that – the driver had not been at all happy, and had used his crop liberally. Once in a great while, she had been hitched as a trailer behind a sulky, for endurance training. (She was pretty sure that the contrary – another pony trailing while she pulled – was fairly common. She had heard her groom say she was quite resistant. But since she could never look behind her, she could not be sure.)

This morning was business as usual. She was guided to a standard sulky and between the drawbars, which were clipped to her belt. Her reins were attached to the rear of another sulky, making her the rearmost of the little three-car train which was led to the waiting yard.

Often, there was no one there when the ponies arrived. She had no idea of the hour, of course, but when the days were short the sky would still be pinkish when the sulkies reached the yard. Hotel guests usually preferred to sleep.

This morning, though, she felt a driver climb immediately into the sulky. She waited attentively for the first signals on her reins. A flutter of hope rose from her belly: Her Driver always came very early so that they could have a long day together. But the first tug told her that this was not Him. His touch was infinitesimally light – He let her just barely perceive his will, knowing that that would be enough to guide her.

This driver tugged. Not brutally, but much harder than necessary. Sienna buried her disappointment under the intense attention that she paid in these first minutes.

Since her head was fixed forward, she never saw her drivers. (As much as she avoided "desiring" anything, so as not to be frustrated by its denial, she ardently desired to see Her Driver's face, more than she had ever desired anything in her life. She knew, she knew, that she would see Him when He thought her ready.)

Not seeing her driver meant that Sienna had to collect all information through the reins. In particular, she needed to know, quickly, just how skillful the driver was. The better the driver, the less she took initiatives. The more hesitant the driver, the more she would act on her own. This was one way of ensuring that the outing went as smoothly as possible. A pony's interest was always that the outing go well – even if any mistakes made during the outing were the driver's own errors, he was still the one who held the whip … literally.

As the sulky gradually built up speed to an easily sustainable jog, it became obvious that this driver was less than average. He knew how to handle the reins, but his manner was unsteady – he would first be too harsh, then overcorrect and be almost absent. No matter: he apparently was not going to overuse the crop, and from Sienna's point of view, that was the only important question.

Well, no … not the only question. There was another aspect , and a very important one, to determining a driver's skill level. A competent driver knew the different gaits that ponies were supposed to be capable of maintaining: slow and fast walks, high-step, trot, and so on. A competent driver would require the pony to slip into whatever gait he desired, and not to deviate. He would observe the way the pony moved, and would reward precision … or punish sloppiness.

An incompetent driver would not know one gait from another, would not know how a pony is supposed to move. So Sienna could modify her gait for her own purposes. And she did have her own purposes, or rather a very specific singular purpose: sex.

As soon as she was sure the driver was relatively novice, she began swiveling her hips. Lightly at first, so that he would not notice any sudden change – no driver, however new, would appreciate the idea of being manipulated by a pony!

Gradually, Sienna's rear end wiggled more and more. Her swishing tail made the movement all the more blatant.

Off to the right, at the edge of her limited field of vision, she saw that they were nearing a meadow. Now! she thought, now!

And indeed, he slowed her and pulled her to the right. The sulky was hardly onto the grass before he halted her. She felt one of the driver's hands on her shoulder, pressing her down onto her knees. Then one hand retained her hips while the other pushed her face and shoulders forward and down onto the ground. He gave her no warning nor time to prepare, before plunging into her, but then she had started lubricating as soon as she had realized that he was not correcting her sensual gait.

She tried to milk him, to move in time to his own rutting, to keep him from ejaculating too quickly. She clenched and unclenched as she thought he was closer or farther from exploding, trying to ensure her own orgasm before he got his – she knew that if he came before her, that would be the end of it. No driver thought about the pony's pleasure. No driver except Her Driver.

Here … it … came! Through the haze of her orgasm, she managed to time her movements to build with the driver to his climax, as well. Keep the customer satisfied, and he'll be back another day.

Spent, he sagged back against the sulky, breathing hard. Sienna was making little cooing noises. She emptied her conscious, leaving the space for the little aftershocks that follow an orgasm. Nice …

The return to the yard was easy-going. Neither the driver nor the pony had any particular desire for speed. Sienna was careful to maintain some hip-swivel in her gait – it would not be a good idea to let the driver understand that he had been seduced. The driver let her walk the last half-mile.

Some days a pony could spend a half-day in the yard, and never be called on. This was clearly not to be one of those days. Another driver was waiting as soon as she came to a halt.

"How was she?"

"… eh … She was great, really great. … Pulled the sulky pretty good, too!" He laughed.

"Yeah, yeah … knowing you, that would be the way you see it. Me, I'm gonna see how she goes through her steps. 'Course, I may see how 'good' she is, too." And the new driver laughed, too, as he climbed into the sulky's seat.

"Since she's been exercising, she doesn't need a warm-up," he called, as he gave Sienna a sharp swat with his crop. And they were off.

Sienna was always on the look-out for drivers she could seduce, but failing that she preferred to have a good hand on her reins. This one was fairly good. He measured her capability very quickly, and kept her just on the limit of anaerobia. That meant slowing uphill and accelerating downhill, and he handled her well. Like any animal in good physical condition, Sienna took pleasure in this kind of exertion. Was it endorphins or just pride? No matter.

He ran her for long time, but not too long. He was good – observing her gait carefully, noticing that she was becoming more and more ragged. And before she hit the wall, he slowed her to a cool-off jogging pace. He was very good, indeed. Of all the drivers she had had, only Her Driver was better. But of course Her Driver was the best, no one could compare.

When they stopped, she was not really surprised that he had brought a feed bottle and a water bottle for her. Really good drivers were always considerate ones. When she was fed and watered, he began to caress her.

She cooed, welcoming him, encouraging him. As much as her tack would allow, she leaned into his hands, and moved in time with his stroking. His hand slid over her sex.

"My, my! This little pony is so wet she may cause a tidal wave."

Sienna ground her sex against his fingers. She made little honking noises through her pipe-gag.

"You are a greedy little thing," he laughed, still stroking her.

She had a hard time imagining a driver getting her off like this – only Her Driver ever did so. But if he wanted to finger her, who was she to refuse? He was behind her, with one hand working her breasts and the other her clit. The orgasm was not far … not far  … not … … He took his hands away.

She squealed, wiggling her sex in frustration.

"Oh, dear, is something wrong?" He laughed again, but it was not a cruel laugh. "So down you go, girl, and we'll see what we can do …"

She dropped like a stone, face and shoulders slamming into the grass, keeping her ass high.

He was as quick as his friend in penetrating her, but nowhere near as quick in concluding. He intended to drive her, in this position, too. He reamed her smoothly and constantly. At some point, his own groans melded with Sienna's honking, in a steamy pulsing duet, rising steadily to a double, and perfectly coordinated climax. A very good driver, indeed.

For the second time that morning, Sienna floated in never-never land.

And once more, the return to the yard was a relaxed, easy jog. This time, though, she was seriously apprehensive as they arrived. This second outing had been wonderful – but extenuating … for various reasons. She certainly was not complaining, but if there were a third outing, she would have trouble staying at speed.

Sure enough. As she arrived back in the yard, at a brisk walk, there was yet another driver waiting … and no other sulky available. Unless this one was waiting specifically for some other pony, Sienna was to get no rest.

She was reined in just past the waiting driver. The two men did not speak as they exchanged places. The new driver was already in the seat when the preceding one raised a feed bottle to her lips.

"Just a sec," he said. "That was her second outing this morning, so she could probably use a bit of restoration." She swallowed a bit of gruel, but not much – if she had to run again, it would be easier without a heavy stomach. She was always well fed in the evening. When she kept her head down as far as she could, showing that she wanted no more feed, the bottle was switched for water. This time she emptied the bottle. Dehydration was not to be risked.

Unscrewing the water bottle, he patted her cheek. "Good girl," he said, and was gone.

The new driver did nothing. He was there – Sienna could feel the slightly heavier weight of the drawbars on her belt – but he did not move. The reins hung behind her, motionless.

She waited, occasionally shifting her stance and balance, but never moving the sulky in any direction. Gradually, her mind wandered. She was tired, and staying concentrated was difficult.

She was not even consciously paying attention when the reins moved. Her training was good, because some sentinel in a corner of her mind noticed the tiny wiggle, and suddenly she went back to full alert. For a half-second she wondered if she had really felt anything at all. Yes, she had. This was a very light hand; very, very light. She leaned into her belt and built quickly to a fast warm-up walk.

This was the test. She listened intensely to her own body, to her fatigue, and to her cold muscles as they warmed again. And she concentrated on the feel of the reins. A hand so light could be Him. Might be Him. However tired she might be, she would not let Him down. He would know when she was ready to accelerate, and would then flick her reins … but ever so gently. He would expect her to be ready.

It was difficult to keep her body relaxed and moving smoothly, as the tension in her mind built higher and higher. They had been at a walk for much longer than usual – if it was Him – and she began to fear it was not. Trust Him, she thought, He must have a reason.

She returned her attention to her legs, to her muscles, how they were working. Her stride was short because her quads were stiff. He was right not to accelerate yet. He would never require speed until she was ready … but He would not be pleased if she did not do her very best to get ready. She forced her stride further out, progressively stretching everything more and more against light, lancing, acid-filled pain.

Sweat gathered on her brow, not from physical effort, but from the intensity of her concentration. Gradually, she also increased the dip in her steps, working her knees. The motion increased the flow of lymph in the tissues, and therefore the evacuation of lactic acid. Stiffness and soreness receded.

There! The reins fluttered. Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes! It is Him. Without thinking, Sienna sang out, an ululation of joy, as she changed gait to an easy, steady trot.

The sulky flitted over the road. She had no past, nor future; only a glorious, perfect present. The changes of gait – a hard run, a breathless sprint, slowing down to recovery speeds, and all of them again – were His choice and hers indistinguishable. When she was ready, He commanded her, and when He desired to command her, she was ready.

Through it all, her need and desire grew. It, too, was an integral part of their magic. She was whining continuously with desire when He finally stopped. Sienna fell mindlessly to the earth, ass high, sex gaping to receive Him.

Orgasms started rolling almost with His first stroke, and built, and built, and built. One of his forearms, under her belly, retained her hips to prevent her collapsing. The other hand roamed her back, and her ribs, and her breasts. At each of His plunges, a thick honking noise ripped through her gag, rising in pitch every third or fourth time as another orgasm struck.

He climaxed quickly, instantly releasing His hold on her, letting her sag forward. To Sienna, their coupling seemed to have lasted hours. Exhaustion crushed her. For just an instant, she tried to resist, but sleep could not be denied.

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by Renfr