Emily had been busy preparing for their new guest's arrival. When the two keeper's dragged the dragongirl back out, Emily offered them a chain, which they hooked to her collar, and the monster was winched, hissing and striking, up onto her hind legs. Four other chains were looped around her limbs - not without considerable difficulty - and the keepers pulled them taut and tied them off, so the dragongirl stood spread-eagled in the center of the barn.
She was something incredible to behold. Turquoise shook her head back and forth, to take her all in, in the narrow field of vision she had. Her first impression was the wholeness of her staggering, ferocious beauty. She could hardly believe that she was looking at an adorned woman, a human woman who had been changed in certain, specific ways. No, it was easier to believe that she was looking at a dragon with a woman's face, a woman's breasts and belly, a woman's cunt clenching in rage at being chained, but first and foremost a dragon.
She had the huge, deadly, teeth of a tiger, which she bared incessantly, and between them flicked a long, forked tongue that it seemed she could not easily retract. She was Japanese or Korean, and had the doll-like features and the compact hemispheric breasts which make the women of those nations so lovely. But her skin was everywhere tattooed with scales - not the bold, brash tattoos that one sees in America, glossy magazines on the flesh. These looked more like a watercolor, painted with infinite patience, covering her from the neck down. Her long black hair had been braided with dozens of leather pleats, and drawn tightly down her spine. It was secured to the base of her tail, so her neck was held in a permanent arch, even without a posture collar. Turquoise thought it must feel like a bridle, but a bridle made of oneself. She shuddered to imagine it.
This braid of hair was pierced through by half a dozen horns of metal, rising and then falling along her spine. Her tail, too, had small spines along it, and ended in an evil-looking hook. It was almost as long as she was, and it flexed and unflexed - how? - which, with her heaving breasts and darting eyes, was the only motion the chains afforded her.
But without any question, the most striking feature of the dragongirl was her claws. They looked razor-sharp, lethal - Turquoise could see why she was bound with chains and not leather straps, and why the keepers feared to get near her. She had eight sets of claws - her hands and feet were covered, and so were her knees and elbows. It seemed these inner claws did not allow her to fully extend her arms or legs. Even spread-eagled, she was compact, her limbs bent at right angles. On the ground, Turquoise thought, she could probably move almost as fast as one of the Doctor's quadruped ponygirls, since most of the work would be taken off her fore-limbs.
It was clear that, fundamentally, was she nothing like a ponygirl at all. Ponies, even the most disobedient stallions, were all essentially domestic animals. At San Rafael, Turquoise had seen mermaids and centaurs and caryatids and - most boring of all - vampires: these were essentially humans, with human minds. The dragongirl was clearly neither. She was a wild animal, a force of nature. She was not held in check by human considerations or her groom's training, but by raw links of steel. It was entrancing just to look at her.
And now Kimiko and Maxon were there, talking, and Maxon wanted to inspect the creature close up, but her thrashing tail made this too dangerous. The two keepers had to find another chain for the tail, but there was no more chain available. At length, they seemed to agree that they could use a leather cord, and one of them darted in to secure it. Thus defanged, the dragongirl jutted out her breasts and roared, shaking the chains. Several of the ponies whimpered in fear or sympathy.
"This is Hiko of Toby." Kimiko was saying to Maxon. She spoke English with a British accent, or perhaps Indian. "She was my third dragon, and she always travels with me."
"'Of Toby?' You mean she's pedigree?"
"Yes, indeed. Her father won the Maui Endurance Race in '74, and then he retired. I don't think he ever talked to her much about it, though. When I was still creating her, he came to me, and he was very philosophical, you can imagine. He said 'I ask you not to sell her. But if you are going to sell her, you should know she's pedigree.'"
"And you haven't sold her."
"Oh, no, I couldn't. Right now…" Kimiko trailed off sadly, and Hiko hissed at them in the silence, thrashing against her chains. "Right now the market is all for fighting dragons."
"So I hear."
"I think it's horrible. I mean, in Thailand and Burma they've beat the law, because it's no more horrible than boxing, but I think boxing is horrible, too. And in China, the old guard are all dead-set against it - Western capitalist decadence, you know - but their underlings are so corrupt it might as well be legal. Look." Kimiko walked up to the dragongirl, stroking her flank to calm her, and traced a line from the bottom of one breast down across her belly. She shuddered and gaped her mouth silently, a strangely terrifying gesture. "Ninety stitches."
"So you have fought her."
"Only three times. And she was so angry, she almost died when I wouldn't let her go back to the ring. She thinks I lost confidence in her because she lost a fight." She said something to Hiko in Chinese, maybe just repeating the phrase, then returned to English. "But in truth, I love her, and I cannot bear the thought of her coming to harm."
"Of course." Said Maxon, respectfully nodding. Kimiko walked away, leaving Maxon's hands to explore her breasts and the claws of her fore-legs. The dragongirl tensed and inhaled, and for a moment Turquoise felt complete empathy for her, wild animal or not. For she too made exactly the same gesture when she was pinioned, with strange hands exploring her.
Kimiko walked to the gate of Syzygy's stall, and massaged the ponyboy's scalp idly. "So, I have gotten the consortium interested in ice-climbing, and we're setting up a race at Dawson Peak. My hope is to provide something more lucrative than a cockfight. You see?"
"It's hard to believe that ice climbing will have the same appeal."
"Aiie. You wouldn't say that once you see Hiko halfway up a glacier, numb with cold, clawing at the ice. But it's economics, isn't it? You spend a million dollars on a creature, or, if you're me, you spend months making it, and you don't want it to maybe get a scar across its face, or bleed to death, God forbid, just for one night of competition."
"No." Said Maxon. Now he was exploring her teeth, quite gingerly, since her jaws were free to snap him, and Turquoise found herself getting wet just watching his fingers move across the ivory. He moved down to her nipples, fingering something that Turquoise couldn't see. "What are these?"
"Pearls, under the skin. Black pearls, too, Max. Nothing but the best for my dragons."
"Isn't that an old Yakuza trick?"
"That's right, very good. On the dragon-boys, we do it like the Yakuza, the pearls under the skin of their penis."
"A built-in studded condom, Kimiko?"
"Pshaw. You wouldn't know, Max, but you'd need a microscope to see the studs on a condom. This is more like…" she rattled something off in Japanese. "Knots on an old cedar log."
"Beautiful. I'd love to see one, sometime."
"So, here's what I'm looking for." Said Kimiko, suddenly businesslike. "I want to undercut the arenas. The consortium is holding this ice race in Dawson Creek; I want the kitty to be twenty million. So I'm kind of on a fund-raising tour."
"I see. Why not just make more dragons, Hadashi-San?"
"Because I refuse to sell any dragons in this market, Mister Maxon."
"I see." He said again. His had circled behind the dragongirl, and his fingers ran down the back of her hind legs to the knee-claws. "So what do you want from me, exactly, and why do you expect me to give it to you?"
"I want your contribution of two million to the purse, with your name on it of course. And I expect you to agree because we are friends, and because dragon-fights are wrong."
There was a long silence. Maxon gripped Hiko's buttocks and spread them slightly, then pressed them back together and dug his fingers in. Turquoise sighed with awe and envy. The dragongirl shook her head, her forked tongue slipping lusciously across her lips.
"I want to make love to her." Said Maxon.
"Of course!" Said Kimiko hurriedly, "I will have my men chain her more accessibly. But please understand that this is not a, what do you like to say, a quid pro quo. You are welcome to have your fill of the dragongirl whether you accede to my request or not."
"You were always such a diplomat, Miko. I don't accede to your request. I'm going to give you three million."
To Turquoise' immense surprise, Kimiko actually kneeled. This woman, the woman who had invented dragons, was kneeling in front of Turquoise' owner. It was shocking to think about.
"Sir…"
"Hadashi-San," Maxon interrupted. "You should know something. Because we're friends. I don't really care about boxing. I understand how you feel; you've poured your heart into making these creatures, and it breaks your heart when they die in some stupid fight for a five-figure ante. I understand that. But morally, I don't agree with you. I think the boxer knows he could die in the ring, and that he is at peace with that."
"Then why do you assist me, my friend?"
"I will tell you. Dawson Creek is only two hundred kilometers from here. I believe in your vision. You will make ice-climbing the Saint Angelique of our generation. And I want to host the after-party."
Turquoise smiled. She felt like she was witnessing something very important. She realized that she was swishing her tail back and forth with excitement.
"You and I," said Kimiko, still kneeling, "We understand each other very well. What mystifies me is that we are still friends, with all that understanding."
Maxon laughed, and walked to the battered cupboard, where he pulled out a bottle of Scotch. "Well, to mystery, then, and friendship."
After some consultations with Emily in broken English, the two keepers had built a pile of hay bales in the corridor in front of Turquoise' stall. She clambered up to watch the proceedings, one hoof on the lower door of her stall. With a great deal of hissing and futile slashing on her part, and a good many whip-blows on the keeper's part, the dragongirl was unhooked from her spread-eagled pose out on the threshing floor, hauled over to this table of hay, and spread out on it face-up, so the daggers along her spine were sheathed harmlessly into the hay. As Maxon watched, fascinated and aroused, the keepers fastened the dragongirl's limbs and tail once more, exposing the only vulnerable parts of her - the long, slender neck, the throbbing breasts and belly, and the stretched, almond opening of her cunt.
The beast was now no more than three yards from Turquoise. She could make out little details of her scales, the ring of little bumps around each nipple, the way the three claws on her fore-paws and hind-paws flexed separately, each one razor-sharp. She could see the many little joints in her tail, hear the raspy, agitated breathing of a fighting beast in chains.
"Leave us." Said Maxon, and the humans respectfully filed out of the barn. Emily took Syzygy and Sirius out of their stalls - they were obviously disappointed to miss the show - and led them off to the coach barn.
Now Maxon was alone with the ponies and the dragongirl. He stepped between the deadly claws on her knees, and ran his hands along her belly, making her flinch and whine loudly. He traced her scar, which Turquoise could see now, a long discontinuity in the scales, terrible to think about.
"Savage beast." He said. "My little savage beast."
He opened his fly and lowered his pants a bit - he was wearing close-fitting black dress slacks - and he brandished his cock in one hand. The dragongirl whined again, and then bared her fangs in a slow, silent hiss, the way a snake might. Maxon plunged himself inside her and thrust hard against her, against the hay bales, against the chains. The dragongirl looked away, off into the hayloft, as if the body buckling under her chin was not hers. As indeed it was not.
Turquoise was doubly disturbed. She had never seen Maxon enjoy an animal - he barely even touched the ponies. But she had seen many grooms take advantage of their position, and she herself had had her tail raised by humans a few times - although always with her blinkers on. But when grooms ravished the ponies, as far she had seen, they were standing upright in their natural position. It seemed entirely wrong, unnatural, and cruel for a quadruped to be flipped on its back and taken like this, like some fawning human woman, with her belly and breasts and face exposed to view. Watching it gave her a thrill of the forbidden, the bizarre, that perhaps only a pony would understand.
'But how do dragons mate? With those spikes, those claws?' The moment the question entered her mind, she could feel the answer, in terrible inspiration. 'She would be the dragongirl in her den, perhaps loosely chained. The dragonboy would mount her, slapping her tail aside, not resting on her back but half-upright. His claws would be on her neck, on her flanks, on her belly. Their points would promise instant vengeance if she offered any resistance to his pearl-studded cock - the cock that would grind in and out of her, the walls of her womb tortured by the pearls. If she had the good fortune to win an orgasm, she would have to hold very still, so she would not cut herself against his claws in the tremors of her pleasure. And then he would dismount, slowly, wrenching that terrible cock from her constricting labia, making sure he kept one claw somewhere fairly lethal until he was quite away.'
Turquoise could feel all of this, and it made her moan slightly. Maxon had finished enjoying himself and lay sprawled on Hiko, as he might have on a human lover. Hiko hissed at him, her long tongue jabbering at his hair. He slid off and stood there for a moment, cock in his hand, looking very old and far away. Finally he pulled up his pants and departed.
David was explaining the dragongirl's tail. "It doesn't come out. It's rigged with an enema tube, so she could do her business right through it - or have the business done to her, I should say. The whole things carbon composites, weighs less than five kilograms."
"Yes, but how does it move?" Hannah asked.
"There are twelve joints, right, and some kind of hydraulic system that she can control with pelvic pressure. In the end its sort of a primitive biofeedback, like for a prosthesis. Squeeze this, and that happens. Relax, and that happens."
"Yeah, just wait." Said Emily, who seemed dejected. "We're all obsolete. These dragons are just the beginning. Ten years from now all the ponies will be in zillion-dollar cybernetic biofeedback suits, with electrode hook-ups so they can control all nine wings. I hate it."
Hannah nodded. "Even some of the Greysons are basically built into machines. They have more leather on them then, well, then humans wearing clothing."
"Whatever happened to just sticking some hooves on someone and shoving a tail up their ass?" Emily did a slow pirouette, gesturing at all the stables. "Dakota Striders and Lazy K Dancers! Nearly naked ponies. Simple beasts, from a bygone day, eh? Nowadays you can't even buy a goddamn leather harness. It's all bioplastic…"
"Let's not start singing dirges," said David, who was still excited about Hiko's tail.
"No, I want to sing a dirge. These are ponies with skin. You leave them out too long, and they come in frostbitten, or sunburned. You couldn't sunburn a Yates Greyson if you dropped a fucking a-bomb on it."
"Every breed has its own strengths and weaknesses."
"Yeah, fuck it." Said Emily, who seemed unusually worked up. She dropped down to a quiet, calmed whisper "What I like about the Dakotas is the interplay between the human and the animal. Ok, they're cyborgs. They have hooves, they have silencers, they wear tails. But they're more naked than humans are. The human body isn't hidden, it's transformed."
"You sound like Maxon."
"Yeah, but he doesn't agree with me, does he? He could hardly wait to jam his banana into that dragongirl."
"Progress." David intoned. "It always comes to get you in the end."
Hannah was drinking apple cider and she poured some generously into Turquoise's empty water bucket. She smacked it up happily. She had forgotten how sweet it was! Hannah smiled and passed on to Minka's stall.
"Big day today." She told Minka, who must have looked perplexed at the treat. "You have a new stable-mate coming to join you. She's out in the fitting room with Emily right now."
Melissa. Turq felt a mixture of excitement and distraction. It was always nice to see a new pony broken in. In that transitional stage, they would shudder at the slightest caress, weep every time the crop touched them, no matter how gently. It was lovely. And to see someone as young and beautiful as Melissa broken in, that was a rare treat. Most ponies had been playing with bits and bridles for a while before they came through the gates of a real pony ranch. They knew what it was to be shackled, to be whipped. They had gotten a taste, somewhere, and they decided to drink the whole thing down.
But Melissa seemed to be innocent. At least, she had seemed that way a year ago. She and her boyfriend - surely a romantic relic from high school - had probably made out in his car, with her brassiere still on. They get to college and she got her clothes off a few times, and her idea of kink had been ribbed condoms.
And then, girl, you walk into Maxon's barn for an architecture class - God help you, I wonder what grade you got - and you see Coral. And me. And all of us. And suddenly you realize that in all those years of playing with horses when you were kid, it wasn't because you wanted to be the rider. You probably asked your folks 'Can I have a pony?' a million times, and they always said no. But then you asked Emily the real question. 'Can I be a pony?' And she said yes. And you already know how impossibly, spectacularly lucky you are. And you know that you're going to go through heaven and hell. But that's about all you know, so far.
Yes, it would be nice to watch. But she was slightly nervous that she wouldn't be the only one enjoying the show. She kept sneaking glances at Sirius' stall, but he was not visible. And then she would reproach herself for this unpony-like jealousy, this stupid flirtatiousness. So there's a hot stallion in the stall kitty-corner to mine. So what? So I think about him a lot. Why not? It doesn't mean anything.
These reflections vaporized as she saw Melissa coming down the stairs. Emily led her on a simple bosal bridle, and Maxon ambled along behind, with his ever-present pipe. But they blurred into the background.
The girl had been gorgeous in her dowdy student's clothes. Naked, she was magnificent. Emily, Maxon, and the barn-boards were just a drab frame. Her hair hung in long red corkscrews, charming all the more for being slightly disheveled. A string of spittle ran from one of these ringlets up to the girl's rosebud lips - she had just been pierced, of course, and her mouth was still struggling against the invasion.
That gorgeous hair and the star-chart of freckles ended on her shoulders, which were pulled back loosely to where her wrists were shackled. Without her arms at her sides, the teardrop breasts seemed to spill forward, as if on display. Turquoise' eyes slid down them. They were perfect. They were a statue's breasts. They were the breasts of a larger woman, it seemed. They belonged on top of a sturdy waist and thick hips, not this elegant little belly dominated by a shy navel and a shock of flame-orange pubic hair Emily had decided to leave in place. Had some other woman of that build presented such a flawless bosom, Turquoise would have immediately cried foul. But Melissa had obviously never been to any surgeon. She had probably been too shy to wear a bikini.
Oh my goodness. She shot a look at Sirius. He was almost drooling, the bastard. Well, we all are. Turquoise tried to envision Melissa in a few months time, her freckles covering all those pale, never-before-seen curves. It would be wonderful. For some reason she imagined the girl in the high pasture at Gigi's. Gigi would milk you until you came, girl. She would see those teats a mile away and reach for her hormone pills. My god.
By now all the grooms were piled out onto the floor, obscuring Turquoise' view. Emily had a tail that matched Melissa's hair quite exactly - it even had ringlets. She was getting Maxon's approval on it. Tomas was buckling the girl's hooves to the rings in the floor. Ingrid pulled the branding iron out of the oven, white hot, so that Turquoise could see the barn-boards waver in the heat above it. Talking and chattering.
Emily was slowly pushing in the tail, and Turquoise could hear a sinuous moaning escape from Melissa's lips, a final surrender to her new condition. And then Ingrid was standing in front of her with the branding iron, and the girl's eyes went wide. They never expect that. Why not? She saw Coral. But they never think it will happen to them.
"Wait a moment." Said Maxon, in his imperturbable voice. Everything came to a halt except for Melissa's face. She just kept gaping at the branding iron, shaking her head side to side in slow little strokes, as if she wanted to protest but knew that it was too late.
Oh, this is too cruel. She really is a beauty. She should have been a Dancer.
"This is a number one." Said Maxon.
"Yes, well." Emily pulled the phallus halfway back out. "She's only just nineteen, Maxon."
"Look, Em, that has nothing to do with anything, does it? You think a forty-year old can take more cock than a thirty year old? No, no. Look at her hips."
"Yes, boss." Said Em, for once in her life sounding meek. "So what should I do?"
"Can you change the plug for a number two?"
"Ummm. Yes. I'll go get an allen wrench." She took off.
"All right then. Ingrid, put the iron back in the stove meanwhile, it will get cold."
"Right, boss."
As the crowd dispersed a bit, Maxon walked around his newest acquisition, lighting his pipe, watching her. A tear started rolling down her cheek. The first one? That's very impressive, kid. It joined the streamer of drool and ran out into her hair. She moaned quietly.
"All the ponies broken in here at Broken Oak," Maxon droned, "are named for celestial bodies. And you know what your name is?"
The almost-ponygirl shook her head slowly.
"Jewel Box."
"Jewel Box?" Ingrid asked from the stove. "That's a constellation?"
Maxon took a long puff on his pipe, still circling. "No. It is part of the constellation called the Southern Cross. You know - the brand that Rancho Tres Ceros uses?" At the word 'brand,' Melissa shuddered visibly, and Turquoise grinned. But you aren't going to give her an astronomy lesson, a moment before you brand her, are you? Yes, you are. Madman. "Originally people thought it was a star, and it was called Kappa Crucis. But it isn't a star. It's a star cluster, fifty million billion kilometers that way." He pointed down into the floor of the barn, and a bit to the south. Still circling, he took another long drag on his pipe.
"The stars that make up the Jewel Box are very young. Some of the youngest in our galaxy, just as you are the youngest in our barn." He walked up to her now, and ran one hand down her flanks, making her tremble all over, another sob bursting from her. Turquoise was impressed, knowing that he very rarely touched any of his ponies. "Do you know what the astronomer said, when he first discovered that Kappa Crucis was made of hundreds of little stars?" He ran his free hand over her freckled shoulder. "He called it 'an extremely brilliant and beautiful object; a superb piece of fancy jewelry.' And that's what you are now, my exquisite one."
"Ok, I've got it." Said Emily, interrupting the little scene.
"Wonderful. Carry on."
But now Jewel Box knew exactly what was in store for her, and her sobs built into screams as Ingrid approached again with the brander, and Emily with the new, heavier phallus. The barn shook with the power in her little lungs, and Turquoise looked at Sirius, who had been in the filly's place not so very long ago. He couldn't even watch, and Turquoise smiled.