This work is copyright 2000-2004 by Xaltatun of Acheron (A Pseudonym). It may be posted on the Internet to any free forum. It may be reformatted to match the forum's look and feel, and the forum editor may make minor spelling and grammer corrections. Otherwise it must be posted in its entirety, including these notices. It may not be sold, or included in any compilation that is sold, or posted on any forum that requires a fee for access, without my written permission. My permission will require payment, terms to be negotiated. For purposes of this notice, sites guarded by Adult Check or similar packages are considered pay sites. Posting on any site must include this copyright notice.
Adult Content Warning - this story contains adult themes, including non-consensual bondage/slavery and forced sexual acts. If you are under the lawful age for such materials (18 in most jurisdictions) or if you would find such material offensive, please go elsewhere.
Safety Warning. This story may contain descriptions of practices that are decidedly unsafe, either in general, or if performed by someone without adequate training. There are a number of good books available on safety in the BDSM scene. Most large cities, and some not so large ones, have organized BDSM groups that will usually welcome a newcomer. I'm not going to point out which practices are safe, and which aren't. Any practice is unsafe if performed by someone with inadequate training and experience, or if performed when not paying attention. Please think before you act. Don't make yourself a candidate for a Darwin award.
There are seven stories in this series, which takes a young lady named Sally from her first attempts to scratch an itch she isn't able to ignore to becoming a full time career ponygirl, subject to the desires of her legal owner.
1. Trainee Ponygirl
2. Stable Discipline
3. Weekend Ponygirl
4. Show Ponygirl
5. Resident Ponygirl
6. Indentured Ponygirl
7. Academic Ponygirl
Now on to the story...
Flying Hooves stood in her stall, staring sightlessly at some point on the straw-covered floor. It looked like she might be in trouble shortly, and she wasn’t sure if she could do anything about it.
The chatter of voices coming down the corridor snapped her out of her revere. The babble of different voices sounded like another school group taking a tour of the campus. The ponygirl stable was a popular stop on the tour; she suspected some of the tour groups came just to see the stable, and weren’t particularly interested in the rest of the campus.
She shook her head to dislodge any straw caught in her red curls. For some reason, the tour guides always stopped behind her stall and pointed her out specially. It wasn’t all that unreasonable for them to mention her; after all she did have the distinction of winning regularly when her owner showed her. Most of the ponygirls in this stable were pretty undistinguished, and the tour guides needed something to keep the schoolkids’ attention.
What she didn’t understand was what they found interesting in a nearly naked female standing on four hooves in a ponygirl stall. There was, after all, nothing different about the stall. It was three feet wide, five feet deep and had four and a half foot high walls. There was an alcove in the back wall where her water bowl and plate of ponygirl mush stood, and there was a coat of straw on the concrete floor.
There also wasn’t a whole lot different about her. She stood on all four hooves in the stall like all of the other ponygirls, hindquarters to the corridor and head in the rear. All four legs had iron shod hoof boots. The boots came up to her shoulders or hips, as appropriate, and were covered with horsehair of the same brick red shade as her hair and tail. They couldn’t see either the triangular chastity and control shield that covered her sex, nor could they see the identification
They could see the ‘Property of Mandy’
What was unusual wasn’t visible. She was an expert at programming the control shields, and that expertise was a large part of why she and her owner, Mandy, won prizes regularly at shows. She was pretty sure she was the only ponygirl doing her own programming. That made her unique, and that was one of the roots of the problem.
Simply put, she was a hot property. She’d attracted a lot of attention by winning regularly, and by winning over professional show ponies with a decade or more of experience and training. She knew that Mandy had gotten offers for her indenture, for amounts that had made her gasp. Offers like that had to be reported to her protective association, and they kept her appraised.
She was sure that the people making the offers didn’t have any idea what they were trying to buy. She won races not because she had better stamina or strength than other ponygirls, or because she maintained a rigorous training schedule, or because she had an
That was expected. Everyone that was serious about showing their indentured pets did it. What they weren’t allowed to do was use the shields to communicate during the race, which meant that hers and Mandy’s programs had to be independent. Supposedly, that limited what the programs could do. She’d gotten around some of the limitations by working out a signaling protocol with her tail and the reins. Mandy knew about it, of course, but she couldn’t describe it. It was built into the programs at too low a level. And that was, of course, the big limitation. It wasn’t just her program, but her driver’s program, and the communication between them. That ruled out any males as drivers since they didn’t have the chastity and control shields, and it ruled out any females that didn’t have close to an expert level with the shields.
At the lower levels, most of them used something they’d scraped off the net, or bought at some meeting or other. Some of them weren’t bad, and a few had flashes of brilliance that she had gratefully copied. However, one size fits all generally doesn’t fit anyone well, and show programs weren’t an exception to that rule. Her hand-crafted programs might not have had quite the insight of a seasoned racing professional, but they were hers, not some mythical average
She suspected that if a professional trainer got it through his head that her programming was what won, he could improve her performance quite a bit. However, all the professional trainers she had ever heard of seemed to have egos a mile wide and were totally impervious to anything resembling respect for their ponygirl’s abilities.
The gaggle of chattering
A voice intruded onto her audio channel. “Hi! Are you Flying Hooves?” Her eyes flew up in surprise as she tracked it down. It turned out to be right behind her, so it was one of the students that was trying a shield to shield chat.
“I am. Who are you?” she responded on the chat circuit.
“Sherry Davis,” came the surprised response.
Sherry, it turned out, had a lot of questions, and they chatted for a few minutes.
“Sherry, you are not paying attention!” the school group’s teacher admonished.
“I’m talking to her,” the girl responded.
“You’re what?”
“I’m talking to her with my shield,” the girl elaborated.
“That’s impossible!”
“Uh, ma’am,” the tour guide interjected. “It is possible. We teach a course in how to do it. I’m just surprised any of our ponygirls know how.”
“Can we talk to her?” one of the bigger boys asked.
“She says use a communicator and put it on speaker.”
“That should work, but I’ve never learned how,” the tour guide said. “Use mine.”
Sherry took it and frowned as she pushed in a sequence of codes, looked at the result and then pushed in another sequence. Suddenly a voice came out of the little device’s speaker.
“Hi people, I’m Flying Hooves, otherwise known as ‘what did she do now?’” That got a few chuckles from the students. She spent a few minutes fielding questions.
“Maybe you could show us around?” one of the boys put in. That got a glare from the tour guide, who seemed to be a bit put out by having one of the ponygirls showing her up.
“You’d have to reserve me,” Flying Hooves responded promptly.
“How do we do that?” the teacher in charge of the group asked. She didn’t say that anything would be better than this tour guide, but she might as well have.
“This way,” Flying Hooves said, as Sherry started punching in the codes on the tour guide’s communicator that Flying Hooves sent her.
“Hey!” the tour guide said just as Flying Hooves said: “That worked. Get out of the way, and I’ll meet you in a few minutes.” The group moved back as the computer backed Flying Hooves out of the stall. They watched as she trotted down the corridor and flaunted her tail before vanishing out the door and around a corner.
“Moving right along,” the tour guide said, trying to recover her aplomb.
“This is the latrine,” the tour guide told the group.
“And you don’t want to go in there unless you really like to see ponygirls squatting and
“Eeuuwww,” one of the girls said, obviously channeling most of the group.
“I didn’t hear you come up,” the teacher said. “That’s an interesting getup!”
“Well, it’s what I wear when I want to be in someone’s face about being a ponygirl, but I don’t want to be one at the moment, if you get the drift.”
The teacher nodded. “Can the class look?”
“Of course. Let’s start at the bottom,” she said, raising one hoof. “I’m wearing my hoof boots with an overboot that keeps the horseshoe from damaging floors. That’s why you didn’t hear me come up; the horseshoes make a lot of noise, but the overboots are pretty quiet.”
“I see,” the teacher said, as she managed to take the overboot off while the students crowded around. Then she put it back on.
“Now, as a ponygirl I’d be wearing hoof boots on my arms, or rather my front legs, but I just wear these arm sheaths for show. They’re the same as the boots on my back legs. This shade of brown,” she indicated her tunic, “matches my hair quite nicely, and tricks the eye into filling in a horsehair coat over my entire body. The short skirt, of course, is easy to lift in case someone needs access to the programming port on my control shield.” She slid out of the tunic to show that she didn’t, in fact, have a coat of horsehair all over. Then she put it back on. “That’s a quite clever illusion. So what have we got next?” she asked the tour guide, adroitly stopping several boys that would have liked to investigate further.
“We’ve got the grooming machine,” the guide said. “I’ll admit I don’t really understand it.”
“That’s right this way,” Flying Hooves said. “In fact, there’s a door from the latrine directly into it since the computer tends to route the ponygirls to the latrine before grooming them. However, we’re going to come in from the side, and make sure you stay inside the designated area or you’re likely to get sprayed by the washer.”
The guide led them into a long room that was filled with weird looking machinery.
“It’s not quite as complicated as it looks,” she told them. “There are actually four grooming lanes. This first machine is the undresser. It removes all of the pony girl’s tack and mounts her on the platform for the next stage.”
“The undresser?”
“Let’s wait a minute, there should be a ponygirl coming through in a minute or so. Meanwhile, does anyone have any questions?”
“Why not use grooms?” one of the girls asked.
“Well, I like the automation, but I’ll admit that most of the ’girls would prefer grooms. Part of it’s cost, but most of it is that there aren’t enough to go around. That’s going to be a long answer, I’m afraid, so if some of the boys would prefer to watch the machinery, we’ll simply let a couple of ponygirls go through while we talk. OK?”
It seemed like the suggestion met with everyone’s approval.
“Most of what you see around you starts with the Scatterbrain plague and the aftermath. I assume everyone knows about that.” From the expressions, it was clear that a fair number of students were confused.
“Well, remember that the plague hit after the other plagues reduced the world population to under two billion, and that it killed half of the men and turned half of the women into extreme scatterbrains that weren’t capable of taking care of themselves.”
She saw a fair number of nods.
“There were too many victims to be able to care for them; the resource requirement was overwhelming, especially for a society attempting to dig out from the devastation of the plague decades. Both the chastity and control shields and the ponygirls were part of the solution. Effectively, they simply wired them up to computers that could fill in the missing pieces, and put them to work.”
“But that was ancient history! Why are we still doing it?”
“Partially because social institutions don’t up and vanish once they’ve got a good hold, and also because the Scatterbrain plague hasn’t gone away. They don’t like to talk about it, but it burrowed into the survivor’s genes. That’s why we’ve still got a two to one female to male ratio, and why a lot of our women are, to put it charitably, not very bright.”
“I don’t understand why no grooms, though.”
“Well that has to do with the sheer number of grooms that would be required. Population control means that only about a third of our women will ever have children, and most of them are going to be full time mothers. They come from the top 40% or so of the female population. The bottom half is so riddled with Scatterbrain that their best career choice is to accept an indenture and a lifetime of computer control. The rest is divided between professionals at the top and various support positions at the bottom.
“Two thirds of the surviving male population is happily married supporting families, and much of the rest is married to professional women. The number on the bottom that are
The girl who had asked the question nodded. “I see. They would go to the smaller stables that can’t afford automation.”
“Exactly. Also to larger training stables. The one where I was trained had grooms for the trainees, but when I went full time they put me in the automated section. After that, I only saw grooms socially. Or when they wanted to use me sexually, of course,” she grinned.
“I think that’s enough on this. You’ve seen three ponygirls go though while we’ve been talking. Observations?”
“Man! Those arms strip a ponygirl fast!”
“They sure do. I remember the first time I went through one I was in a state of shock. After a few times you get used to it.”
“Where does the used tack go?”
“Didn’t you seen the box, stupid?”
“Who you calling stupid?”
“Children,” the teacher stopped the two boys.
“Right,” Flying Hooves said once the altercation had been quelled. “It goes into that little box, and then to a dry cleaning machine. After that, they’ll either go into storage or to the end of the line so they can be put back on. Now, let’s move to the washer.”
“Why do they put them on those little carts?”
“Mostly because it’s very difficult to walk four footed without hoof boots. Our hind legs are too long. The front hoof boots have a stilt arrangement that keeps the hands about a foot above the hoof. The shackles are to prevent startle reactions; normally the computer keeps sufficient control that the ponygirl is going to go through the line.”
The class watched as the waving arms in the stripping machine ejected another little cart with a ponygirl mounted very like a work of art. The ’girl’s hands were clenched into fists that rested, knuckles downward, on a raised platform, as if she were knuckle walking like a gorilla or chimpanzee. The ’girl’s ankles and wrists were shackled to short posts.
The cart scooted into the next station which seemed to consist entirely of small nozzles. It stopped, and the nozzles blasted the girl with warm, soapy water, followed with clear water to rinse her off. She shook her head, wet hair flying, as the cart scooted to the next section.
“One thing that isn’t real obvious,” Flying Hooves filled in, “is that the washer has an ultrasonic cleaner. It does a real good job of getting rid of dirt and sweat. The next section is the drier, which should be obvious.”
The drier consisted mostly of larger nozzles for warm air that moved back and forth over the pony girl’s body, drying her off and caressing her at the same time. The front of the drier had two small arms that took and spread her hair out so that the drier could work efficiently.
“The interesting thing about the drier is that the air is bone dry so it isn’t necessary to take a long time on the hair. The other thing, of course, is that she’s rather obviously enjoying it.”
The cart scooted forward with its mounted ponygirl to the next stage. This consisted of more arms that held what looked like some kind of cloth.
“This is the oiler. The arms spread a light coat of massage oil over her body to replace the natural oils that got stripped in the washer. They also do her hair if it’s necessary, and they apply lotion for any whip marks.”
“Whip marks?” The girl who asked the question sounded shocked.
“Well, being whipped is part of being a ponygirl.” Flying Hooves shrugged. “Drivers who overuse the whip can get in trouble with the ’girl’s protective association. My trainers let me taste the whip quite regularly until it got through my brain that it simply wasn’t an option to not put out the last bit of effort. Then Janey used the whip quite liberally during my first two races in competition. I don’t think I could have won without it. That inspired me to put together a racing program, and neither Janey nor Mandy have whipped me since.”
“Why would anyone want to be a ponygirl if they get whipped?”
“Think of it this way. The bulk of indentures are either housekeepers or ponygirls. There’s quite a bit of overlap, but housekeepers have to be able to master all the tasks required in cooking and cleaning. The household computer really just organizes their work day so they don’t have to understand what task comes next, which is what they need after Scatterbrain plague is done with them.
“Ponygirls, on the other hand, only have to put one hoof in front of the other and obey the reins and a few voice signals, and they’re trained so that’s completely automatic. It’s a simpler lifestyle, and a lot of women who you would think could live independently are attracted to it. I could probably have won the right to have children in the lottery, but I like to be controlled. I’m Mandy’s housekeeper as well as her ponygirl, and frankly I prefer being her ponygirl.”
She shrugged again. “Let’s get back to the groomer. The last stage is tack up. What happens here depends on where she’s going next. If she’s going to her stall, it just puts her hoof boots on and installs her tail. If she’s going out, it’s going to put on her waistband, bridle and shoulder harness as well. If she’s going to time off, she simply gets off the cart here and goes to the locker room. The groomer dressed me this way so I could take you through the stable. When I’m done with you, the computer is going to run me through the groomer again and then send me to the locker room so I can dress in my maid’s uniform and go housekeep Mandy’s apartment.”
“You said time off?”
“Kiss Pray requires that all indentured servants have a day a week, and the protective associations are very rigid on enforcing that rule. The actual fact is that it depends on how badly they’ve been ravaged by Scatterbrain. The lower levels of ponygirls and most pets wouldn’t know what to do with time off, but housekeepers and the upper levels of ponygirls take their time off regularly.”
“I think they’re about overloaded,” their teacher said with a smile. “What’s next on the agenda?”
“We’re going to the library,” said the tour guide, with a venomous look at Flying Hooves. The ponygirl smiled back at her.
Flying Hooves watched the tour group leave the stable, and then sent the command that told the computer she was back on-line. After a moment’s hesitation, she walked to the latrine and relieved herself, and then walked through the door that connected to the grooming machine. The computer put her on lane 3, which seemed to do a bit better on outside clothes, such as her tunic.
Ten minutes later, she got off the little cart at the end of the line and trotted to the locker room. This time she was naked and wearing her tail. The computer dropped its control as she entered the door. She went to her locker and put on her black maid’s uniform.
Flying Hooves thought of the maid’s uniform as fancy dress. It had a fairly tight neck edged with white lace, and short sleeves that were likewise edged with white lace. The shoulders were articulated so she could reach without twisting the uniform’s torso.
She wore a white apron that covered her from just above where the uniform stretched between her B-cup breasts to just above the hem of her uniform skirt. The uniform itself emphasized her waist and hips without being so tight that it inhibited her ability to bend to do her tasks. The apron was, of course, held on by a belt that tied in an ornate bow in back.
She was shod in a pair of heelless toe
The other thing that marked her as a ponygirl was her tail. It popped out of the back of her uniform where it curved slightly under her ass cheeks, providing a natural place for it to emerge without binding either the tail or the garment. Her owner, Mandy,
She walked briskly from the stable building across the campus to the upscale apartment building where Mandy had her
The door to her mistress’ apartment likewise opened without needing a key. As she entered, the household computer recognized her and took over. She walked
Two hours later she walked to the door and
She followed her owner to the dining room, where she had just laid dinner on the table. Mandy ate as her maid hovered in the background, ready to fetch anything required.
Dinner over, Mandy retired to her workroom to get started on her night’s homework from classes while her maid cleared the table and cleaned up from the meal. A half hour later, she finished cleaning the last of the dishes and walked into the workroom. She knelt on her heels at Mandy’s feet and laid her head against her mistress’ side.
Mandy palmed the sweet she kept for this occasion, and held it in front of her maid’s head. Flying Hooves reached her head up and delicately took it from her fingers with her
“I love my graduation present,” Mandy spoke the first vocal words of the night as she scratched her ponygirl under the jaw.
“I don’t think I’m going to need you tonight,” Mandy told her maid. Flying Hooves got up fluidly,
She giggled slightly as she heard the door close. Flying Hooves made as perfect a maid as she did a ponygirl. Her household computer never forgot the
Meanwhile, Flying Hooves walked briskly back to the stable, enjoying the dusk as the sun set and the evening birds heralded the first stars.
“Come in and stand there a moment,” the alto voice said from the depths of the office. Flying Hooves walked into the office, her booted hooves making no noise on the carpet.
“Hold still a moment,” the well built brunette behind the desk told her. She laughed. “You really do look, um, interesting in that getup! Perfect for the tour group. Grab a chair; we need to talk.”
Flying Hooves looked at the chairs, and then spun one sideways and sat down, her tail drooping over the back.
“I take it you know who I am?”
“From the publicity photos, you’re Vanessa Kale, and you’re the stable mistress.”
“Exactly right. I got a very warm note from the group’s teacher praising you, and a rather vocal complaint from the tour guide. The whole incident raised a couple of questions. First, you seem to know a lot about how the stable operates, and I wouldn’t think that a ponygirl would have either any interest or opportunity to learn some of the detail you’ve obviously mastered.”
“Well, I’m not a typical ponygirl.” The stable mistress’ eyebrow rose, asking for an expansion. “The typical ponygirl is either a Scatterbrain victim or just stupid. I’m a bit kinky; I like the feeling that the computer can just decide to move me somewhere, and I’m going to go there as if it was my own idea.”
“That’s definitely kinky. I’d wondered, your dossier looked like you should be somewhere, happily married and raising a
“The manuals are all available on the net. As to why, while I like the feeling that the invisible puppet master is pulling my strings, I also like to see the puppet master at work.”
The stable mistress chuckled. “That makes sense. Now, how do you win all those events? I’ve seen the athletic department’s evaluation, and while they’re pleased that you’re taking their conditioning recommendations to heart, they don’t believe you’ve got the physiology for a championship racer.”
“I do my own programming, and I do most of Mandy’s programming as well.”
“Explain?”
“All show ponies have specialized programs loaded into their control shields. The amateurs get generic programs off the net, and some owners touch them up a bit. The professional racing stables use their own programs, but they don’t tailor them for the individual ’girls they’re racing.”
“Right. One size fits all means it doesn’t really fit anyone well.”
“That’s part of it. The usual racing program keeps her focused, and helps adjust for track conditions without her having to think about it. It also adjusts for distance and a couple of other things. Our programs do a lot more than that.
“Mandy’s processes her hearing so she doesn’t have to turn her head to check where racers are. It contains a lot of knowledge of racing strategy, and it contains a very subtle communication protocol so we trade knowledge of my endurance on a second by second basis. We fine tune our racing strategy in ways that nobody else can match.”
“I’d think the pros would do something similar.”
“They can’t. For one thing, I’ve never seen a female driver at the professional level. Even if there were, Mandy’s programs play fast and loose with both her module and the owner’s module; she gets away with it because she’s a decent programmer in her own right. The protective associations would shut anyone else down who tried some of the stunts we get away with.”
“And your dossier says you’re programming ability is somewhere in the stratosphere.”
“Right. I doubt if there are any champion racers that know much about shield programming.”
“The stables wouldn’t allow them to do their own anyway,” the stable mistress said. “Now, here’s the question. Would you consider doing the tour guide thing on a regular basis?”
“Yes, as long as Mandy agrees. But I thought that Jessica complained.”
“She did, but so what? Some of the tour guides are adequate with the stable, and some aren’t, but none of them are what I’d call really good. Most of them don’t like to do the stable part of the tour; I’ve had a number of requests to remove this segment altogether.”
“I’d be delighted, frankly. I’ve never particularly liked them praising me and then showing the back end of a female on four hooves. It seems like the wrong image, somehow.”
The stable mistress giggled at the image. “Good point. But that raises some other possibilities.” She paused a moment. “Let’s see how this goes, and if it
“There may not be much time.”
“Oh?
“Mandy has gotten some rather good offers for me from professional racing stables. So far she’s rejecting them, but they keep offering more money. I don’t think she’s losing interest in me, but sooner or later they’re going to get to amounts that she can’t ignore.”
“I take it that’s not what you want?”
“I’m not really interested in racing, and as you said, I don’t have the right physiology for it. If I got sold as a racer, I think the buyer would be very unhappy with his purchase, and I really don’t want to be the object of his wrath when he figures it out.”
“Good point.” She nodded. “I’m going to be blunt. As a tour guide, you’re not that valuable to me. It’s just not that important in my scheme of things. If you work out the way I hope, though, I think the University would be quite interested in buying your indenture. That’s going to take time to find out, and we’re not in the price range that a racing stable with a shot at the major championships in its eyes can command. I’m not sure how to proceed other than to go ahead and hope for the best.”
“Well, I’ve got an idea. The problem seems to be they’ve got a wrong idea in their head, and the Ponygirl Derby is coming up. Mandy’s got other things to do that weekend. So I was thinking...”
The car wound through the wooded hills, towing a trailer. The woods had returned to this part of the country since the plagues. If one looked closely, one could still see traces of pre-plague roads and buildings. The three strips of the divided highway were new since the plague. Those three strips would have puzzled pre-plague travelers; the old roads had two strips. The survivors had found that building three strips saved them time when they had to repave the road: the work on one strip didn’t affect the traffic on the other two.
“I think,” Mandy said judiciously, “that your attending this as Sally really is going to work out.”
“How so?” Sally answered from her position monitoring the car’s driving computer. “I’d think you’d want to keep me as Flying Hooves.”
“Well, I do. I like my graduation present! The thing is, I never knew you as Sally so it really lets me keep Flying Hooves separate. I can discuss things about Flying Hooves and her future with you that I couldn’t discuss with her.”
“So you’d appreciate me keeping the separation as well?”
“Very much so. In any case, I wouldn’t be taking a ponygirl to this event except to sell her, and I’m not selling Flying Hooves, at least until I’m too busy raising a family.”
“I figured you’d be taking the mommy track.”
“What else is there? None of the professions grab me enough to give up my chance at a family. I’ll work at one until I satisfy the stable relationship requirement and start having children, but that’s it.”
“So you’d sell me, um, Flying Hooves, then?”
“I suppose it depends on my husband’s income and where we settle. I could do with a housekeeper and a ponygirl. I don’t know that Flying Hooves would be that suitable as a family’s ponygirl, though.”
“Oh?”
“She likes the shows and the programming too much. She makes a big deal out of liking to be controlled, but I think that’s wearing a bit thin.” Mandy looked sideways at Sally as she said that.
“You may be right,” Sally said thoughtfully, organizing what she was going to say to play the game with her owner. “I’ve caught her being a teensy bit irritated a few times recently when the computer has jerked her out of what she’s doing to send her somewhere. It doesn’t seem to be affecting her as a housekeeper, though.”
“If it did, I’d be really worried,” Mandy said, suddenly serious.
“Oh?”
“The only time the household computer jerks her out of her current task is when I want something. If she got irritated at serving her owner, we’d need to deal with it.”
“Point. So tell me again why we’re pulling this trailer?”
Mandy shrugged. “Three of my friends decided to see what they could get for their ponygirls at this event. I think they got bored and want the money. The other one is from the stable. She told them she wanted the chance to be a racer, so the stable asked me to see if I could sell her as one.”
“So you’re going to be trying to deal, while I’m trying to make contacts and beat some sense into the people that want to buy Flying Hooves.”
“We’re both going to do that; I really don’t want to give up my graduation present.
“Of course,” she continued, “if what the stable mistress told me about her plans for Flying Hooves pans out, then I’d weep and wail and gnash my teeth and give her up.” She giggled at the image.
“She’s been very mysterious about what she’s planning.”
“And I’m going to be just as mysterious.”
“Drat.”
The car continued its path through the new forest, the trailer with its four ponygirls following behind.
Sally stood at the railing, watching the six ponygirls pulling their sulkies and drivers around the far turn. It wasn’t a total disaster, she thought. At least the drivers had gotten their ’girls into a line rather than trying to pass on the turn.
This particular race was a claiming race: the ponygirls would be sold to the highest bidder that exceeded the race’s posted minimum. She wondered briefly how many of them knew they would probably have new owners before they got back to the stable. Then she wondered how many of them cared.
“Think any of them are worth buying?” a voice broke into her concentration.
“I think number four is trying to keep from being bought,” she responded.
“You know,” the voice said thoughtfully, “you might be right. Those were a couple of real weird moves back there.”
Sally backed up and looked at the
Bingo! she thought. One of the bidders for her indenture. Now if he had taken the bait, rather than just a random encounter.
“Your hair style is rather distinctive, Miss,” he continued the conversation.
Not the worst pickup line, she thought. “It’s the only way I can control it. My hair wants to curl, and trying to straighten it simply ruins it for anything.”
“Not to distress you, but you look very like a ponygirl I’ve been trying to buy.”
“Flying Hooves?” she said. “Yes, I’m Flying Hooves, but I’d appreciate it if you called me Sally. So would my owner; she wants to keep Sally distinct from the ponygirl.”
“That does help some people,” he said, somehow making it clear that he wouldn’t have much to do with that kind of nonsense. “I’m Jason Overstreet.”
“I know,” she grinned.
He blinked once, and decided to dispense with any more preliminaries. “So what would it take to buy you?”
“There are some very solid reasons you don’t want me,” she answered. “That’s why I’m here trolling for the bidders. I figure that it’ll be easier to make that point in person.”
“So, what’s one reason?”
“You’ve got a reputation as a hard headed man who prefers to see things for himself and come to his own conclusions. So you tell me one. If you saw me without knowing I was Flying Hooves, would you think I had the potential to be a championship racer?”
He looked out at the track for a moment, thinking it over. “I was wondering. Would you mind coming somewhere I could make a more detailed observation?”
“Lead on.”
They walked back of the stands to a private box, and entered. He closed the door. “Strip.”
She located a stand and slid out of her tunic, then bent over on the stand so her back was level. He went over her from head to toe feeling her musculature, and then started in again with a measure, whistling tunelessly while putting numbers into his communicator. Eventually he was done. “You can get dressed now,” he said, looking at the display.
“Right outside the envelope. Not impossible, but most likely not championship material. I might take a chance if I saw you in a claiming race, but not for what I’ve been offering. So how do you do it? Good genetics?”
“A bit better than average, but nothing startling. You can have a sample if you want.”
“I want.” He carefully snipped a hair sample and put it into an envelope.
“So how do you do it?” he asked as the walked back to the rail. “Conditioning schedule?”
“I do an hour or so a day with the regime the athletic department and the trainers recommend for me. I figure a good trainer and a serious conditioning schedule could do a 10 to 15% improvement, maybe 20%.”
“That I can provide.”
“I figured as much,” she laughed. They both knew that her conditioning schedule wasn’t going to be negotiable.
“That doesn’t add up to the performance I’m seeing. So how do you do it?”
“I do my own shield programming, and most of Mandy’s.”
He looked thoughtfully out at the field, thinking it over. “How good are you as a shield programmer?” he finally said.
“Off the end of the standard tests. Mandy is pretty good as well.”
“I’ve tried full out tailoring. It was too expensive for the benefit. Shield programmers that can do what I really need don’t grow on trees.”
“I suspect we could have an interesting discussion on that. You tend to keep lots behind your teeth.”
“Where it’s going to stay.”
Sally nodded. “Showing me is Mandy’s hobby. Doing the programming beats standing in my stall watching some inane comedy, and I’ve never wanted to settle for second best.”
“An attitude I can appreciate. How important is the driver’s programming?”
“It depends on the event. I suspect it means two places on average for the competition I’ve got currently. In the random obstacles, I could probably put everything I need in my programming if we removed the blinders. The others? It varies.”
He pondered a bit more. “So I need a female driver. It’s not customary, but the hell with custom if I can win. How important is it that she be a good shield programmer?”
“The racing package requires some rather risky mods to both the owner and self modules. We had to do a lot of explaining to her protective association before they would allow it, and they only did it because she could vet my programming herself. They’re still itchy about it.”
“I get the impression you’re not really enthusiastic about becoming a champion racer, either.”
“Racing is interesting, but it’s not what puts the fire in my gut.”
“So,” he said, tapping his teeth as he looked at the track, “when I put it all together, you probably wouldn’t embarrass me in a championship race, but it’s very unlikely you’d challenge the winner, let alone win. And that assumes I can find a female driver that’s also a good shield programmer.”
He nodded. “Now that I think of it, you’d do better for me as the driver and programmer. Unfortunately, I can’t use you as a driver while you’re indentured, and I can’t afford you as a free agent. If you ever want to buy out your indenture and work for me for a lot less than you could as a programmer, give me a call.”
“That might be interesting, at that,” Sally replied. “I think I may have better prospects at the university, though.”
“Anyway, I want to give both of you a pass to the owner’s box as my guests. Circulate and talk about anything. The rest of them see you as my guests, they’ll back off.”
“We seem to have been successful,” Mandy said as she watched the trees flash by.
“Definitely. We got the pressure off of me, and you unloaded those four ponygirls. I take it you’ve got some ideas for the four you bought?”
Mandy shrugged. “Sales depends on matching the buyer and the product. Three of them wanted to race, and they wouldn’t stink up the track for an amateur. The other one? She’s a perfect family runabout for a wired community. As for the four back there,” she nodded, “one is for the stable, and I figure I can unload the others to various students I know for a good profit. At least pay for my dealer’s license.”
Sally laughed. “You’re following in your father’s footsteps.”
“You knew him?”
“Only from the indenture signing. Impressive man!”
“He is that.”
“I’ve heard of wired communities,” Sally changed the subject, “but I don’t know much about them.”
“I’m surprised; they’re talking about putting the same system in on campus.”
“Oh?” Sally thought a bit. “Ah hah! A centralized stable, and you get free taxi service if you contribute a ponygirl.”
“Not just taxi service. You need a ’girl, you get yours if she’s available, otherwise they send one from the pool.”
“And the centralized stable is cheaper per ponygirl: it can
“A single family stable is cheap. Whoever uses her grooms her before putting her back in her stall. Keeping her fed, her stall cleaned and seeing that she gets enough exercise is simply a family chore. It’s town and apartment living where you can’t put in your own stable that gets expensive. That’s one of the major issues with keeping you after leaving college.”
“I’m not sure Flying Hooves would like it, though,” Sally said thoughtfully, remembering Mandy’s instructions about referring to her ponygirl persona. “She likes her stall time to do programming and research.”
“Less stall time was a selling point, but I’m with you on that. I think Flying Hooves would crash and burn if she didn’t get in her shield programming time. Some of the older systems are starting to put in guaranteed minimums for stall time, at least if the owner requests it. I’m going to have to do some thinking about this.”
“It’s not like we have to solve it today,” Sally said. “The racers are out of the way, and they’re not talking about the new system until next year at the earliest. Budget problems.”
“So I get to keep my graduation present for a while longer,” Mandy laughed.
Flying Hooves looked at the latest tour group. They were all good kids, and she hated to say no. So this group was going to get a surprise when she said yes.
She stood with the group on the sideline as they watched another ponygirl go through the automated grooming machine. It was usually the high point of the tour, especially since she had spiced it up by making the literally dozens of mechanical arms and hands wave kind of randomly in the air when they weren’t being used. She only used the effect with tour groups, though. All that waving wasn’t really good for the equipment, and she’d had more than one ponygirl balk when the computer tried to send her into something that looked like it should have stayed in a horror film. A bad horror film.
It seemed the teacher had written in advance asking if one of the girls could spend some time as a ponygirl. The sablemistress had agreed, if she could get her parent’s permission, and then had dumped the project on Flying Hooves.
“Uh, miss,” one of the girls spoke up as the ponygirl emerged from the tacking machine and trotted toward her stall, tail flowing behind her. “What does it feel like to go through that?”
“The first few times it was quite scary,” Flying Hooves answered. “Now? It’s more like an amusement park horror house you’ve been through a dozen times. You’re more interested in finding out how the witch works than being scared when she jumps out at you.”
“Uh, could I go through it?” she asked.
“You have to have your owner’s permission,” Flying Hooves told her.
“Owner?”
“Probably your father.”
“Oh.” She dug around in her bag. “He gave me this and told me I’d need it if I got up the guts to ask.”
Parents, Flying Hooves thought. He could have been more diplomatic. She took the shield token from the girl’s fingers. “OK, but don’t be surprised at anything.”
She turned to the class. “We need to go back a few rooms to start.” They trooped back to a room before the latrine.
“Does everyone know what this is?” she held up a box with a number of buttons, dials and switches, and two long computer connection cables, one green and the other red. Most of the class shook their heads.
“It’s a programmer. It’s used to download programs into a girl’s chastity and control shield. The computer won’t send her through unless she’s got the stable program in her shield. It works like this.” She plugged the shield token into the top, and then lifted her skirt and plugged the green cable into her shield as the class looked on, fascinated.
“Now, honey, lift your skirt,” she told the girl. The girl lifted the hem of her short tunic, blushing furiously, and the ponygirl inserted the red cable into her shield. A light on the box turned red and then green. A moment later, the light next to it turned green as well. “All done.” She removed the two cables and put the box back.
“Take off your clothes,” she told the girl. The girl looked back at her,
“Very good. The next thing,” she said, addressing the class, “is that the stable computer will take control of her.” She clapped her hands. The girl frowned a moment, and then walked to the door into the next room as if she knew exactly what she was doing.
“Let’s go watch,” Flying Hooves said, leading the way out to the corridor. As they lined up next to the detacker, they saw their classmate walk out of the latrine room to the many armed machine. It quit waving its arms as she came up and stepped on one of the little wheeled platforms and then bent over, placing her hands on the raised section. The shackles snapped around her wrists and ankles, and the platform moved to the scrubber.
The kids watched as their classmate went through the scrubber, drier and massager, to finish at the tacker. Then it did something they didn’t expect. It produced a set of hoof boots and proceeded to put them on the unresisting girl’s limbs. As it did this, it wrapped a waistband around her and laced it tight, and added a shoulder harness. It finished up with a bridle, bit and reins, which it looped around one of the buckles on the waistband. She walked on all four hooves out the far door to the outside.
“Let’s go see where she went,” Flying Hooves told the stunned class. A few minutes later, they arrived in the chariot parking area, to see their classmate standing on all four hooves placidly before one of the chariots.
“This is a special training chariot,” the ponygirl explained. “It’s got a motor and sensors so it will take up the difference between what the pony can do, and what the chariot needs to move. We use it for training until the ponygirl is properly conditioned. The next thing that needs to be done is hitch her up.” She sent the stable computer a signal, and a small machine with a number of arms glided up. It held up the shafts as the student backed up between them, and then buckled the traces, insuring that they had no slack.
“The tour guide will use her to go from one building to the next. It’s a short enough walk to give our intrepid little ponygirl a taste of what it’s like to pull a chariot without overtaxing her. The computer will bring her back here while you’re going through the buildings. Since you’re staying here overnight, she’ll rejoin you at breakfast before you leave for your next destination.”
The ponygirl task module she’d installed beside the standard stable module was, she thought, a nice bit of programming. It made the girl look like she was a fully trained ponygirl, which, of course, she wasn’t. Real training took several months, regardless of whether the trainee had a bad case of Scatterbrain or was a relatively normal adult that wanted to be trained for some reason or other. She chuckled. Well, she was definitely in the latter category. She
Flying Hooves looked at the six young women sitting in front of her. They were in one of the stable meeting rooms.
“Welcome to Ponygirl 101,” she told them with a grin. “I assume you know this is all a mistake?” The looks on their faces were priceless.
“Well, it’s a mistake in two ways. First, we didn’t really intend to start this class until next quarter, but someone put it in the catalog. So the stable mistress called me in and told me I had the ball, and please don’t drop it.
“So it’s kind of an experimental class, and you’re the experimental subjects. It’s a cross between the way I was trained as an independent and the way they train Scatterbrain victims. One of the two differences is that there’s a good deal of crossover with CCS Management 102. I’ve got a section of that this quarter, and the two of you who are taking it will be in my section.” She saw the two girls involved nod; one took out her communicator and made a note.
“The other way it’s a mistake is that, logically, nobody should ever want to take this class. I know why I decided to become a career ponygirl, and our ancestors from before the Plagues would have called it a sexual kink, or possibly a personality disorder. I’m not going to breach your personal privacy by telling others what you wrote when I asked you why you were taking it, but the answers fall into two groups. One is that you’re fascinated by ponygirls, and the other is that you feel guilty that one of your sisters was a victim of Scatterbrain and had to become a ponygirl, and you survived.
“To put it bluntly, Scatterbrain takes out a bit more than half of all girls between 16 and 18, so most of us have sisters that are Scatterbrain victims. Most of us got over the trauma of losing them without getting a guilt complex. The glamor our society puts on ponygirls is part of the adaptation to the ravages of Scatterbrain, and some people still have that fascination when they become adults.
“In other words, you’re here for a number of reasons. I became trained as a ponygirl because I couldn’t get my fascination out of my head, and by the time I did the personality quirk I mentioned earlier had kicked in and taken over. I presume you’ve all tried to resolve either the guilt or the fascination and failed. So you’re here.
“I assume you’ve read the course outline, so you know that the main objectives are to train you in the ponygirl behaviors and mindset, to increase your strength and stamina, and to provide you with network access while you’re standing in your stall on all four hooves staring at the straw on the floor.
“For Ponygirl 101, you’ll be here seven days a week for an hour session each day. Allow two hours so you’ve got a cushion to go through the groomer before and after the session. All the sessions will be with the computer as the trainer. This stable is completely automated, and while you’re on premises, the computer will be controlling your actions. That’s exactly the same as any other automated ponygirl stable.”
Sally continued on for a few minutes, outlining the rest of the Ponygirl sequence.
“So, let’s get started. We’re going to the programming room first since we need to download a number of modules into your shields.”
“I assume you’ve seen a programmer before,” she said, pointing to a device with several blinking lights and a green computer interface cable. “Who’s first?”
One woman came up and lifted her skirt. Flying Hooves snapped the green cable into her shield and pressed the big Program button. A moment later the light turned green. She unhooked the cable and told the woman: “Go back to your seat. This first module takes about fifteen minutes. Next!”
Five minutes later she had done all six of them. Four of them were sitting on their chairs, staring blankly at nothing while the package was running. The other two were staring at them curiously. A few minutes later the other four women had rejoined the real (or at least outside) world.
“The next thing to know is that you’re going to always enter and leave through the transient’s locker room. I’ll assign you a locker. When you’ve disrobed completely, you go through the door to the latrine, and you will be under the computer’s control from there. It will send you through the groomer and get you tacked up for whatever you’re scheduled to do, and will direct you in doing your scheduled activity. When you’re done, it will remove your tack, run you through the groomer, and leave you back in the locker room so you can get dressed and go do whatever you need next.”
She led them to the locker room and watched them undress and put their clothes in their locker. When they closed the door, each of them
She watched them go and shrugged minutely. If all went well, she wouldn’t see four of them again until the end of the class, and the other two she wouldn’t see in the ponygirl context. She could monitor their progress just as well standing in her stall, and that was one of the lessons of the ponygirl. They were there to be used, not there to hang out and make friends.
Sally looked at the sea of faces before her from her position on one end of the line of chairs on the platform. Being here was more of a surprise than being handed the Athletic Department’s ponygirl program, even though she’d known about it longer. In retrospect she thought she should have been able to figure it out. This was, after all, a university, and her only true areas of expertise were in shield programming and being a show ponygirl.
The speaker droned on, trying to orient the first day’s class in CCS Management 101 to what the course was all about. From the faces, she figured he was about average as a lecturer. Interestingly, more guys were getting it than girls, which matched what she had been told.
The lecturer eventually wound down, and started to introduce the rest of the instructional crew. She smiled amusedly as an errant thought crossed her mind. One male lecturer and twelve supporting women reminded her of some old style descriptions of a witches coven: twelve witches and one warlock. The witches ran in age and status from some of the regular instructors to older students and one ponygirl.
The weren’t, she thought, getting through either. Most of the women still didn’t get why they needed to take CSSM 102 to get a grade in this course, although a few of them undoubtedly had figured out that twelve instructors meant the university regarded it as important.
Finally, they got down to her. She got up and walked to the platform, toe shoes allowing her to tower over the other women, and tail peeking out from under her short skirted tunic. “Well,” she started, looking over the faces that seemed to be glancing at the clock, “I could go on and on about how important this is for your future happiness, but you’ve heard that. I could say a few words about myself, but if you don’t know why Flying Hooves gets a bit more attention than the average ponygirl around here, I’m sure the grapevine can fill you in.
“You don’t seem to be getting why the women in this class have to take 102 concurrently. Maybe a story will help.
“A few years ago, the very first time I was shown, the woman who was showing me brought us up through the guard station to the convention center holding the show. She was, of course, equipped with a Chastity and Control Shield, just like all of the women in this class. She had to lift her skirt so the guard could insert the cable into her shield to download the convention center’s territorial module. She didn’t like exposing herself that way to the guard, but she didn’t have any option. Like a lot of places, if you have a shield installed you either accept their territorial module or you don’t get in.
“Why did she have to expose herself for the guards? Very simply, her protective association had disabled the automated download function for territorial modules. I assume the lecturer is going to cover some of the ways protective associations vary, so I won’t belabor the point here. The fact is that lots of places want to stick some programming in your shields before you enter their sacred premises. For example, you’ve all gotten a download from the university, or you wouldn’t be sitting here.”
She chuckled to herself as a fair number of the female students involuntarily looked at their crotches. She would have been willing to bet that most of them hadn’t known about it, even though it was spelled out in detail in the student handbook.
“You either accept them automatically, you use your control over your shield to accept them, or you undergo the indignity of having to lift your skirt so you can have a cable stuck into your twat. Or you don’t get into
“I’ve got the automated download disabled as well, but that doesn’t mean I have to have a cable stuck into my shield. The shield tells me if someone wants to download a module, and I get to approve it or not. That’s not a very advanced function, but it does depend on your being able to manage your shield for yourself.
“The beginning is the hard part. That’s what we’re here for. After you get over the hump, learning more functions is no more difficult than learning how to use your communicator. Having to lift your skirt to have a territorial module installed isn’t the end of the world, but why go through the indignity if you don’t have to?”
It looked, she thought, like most of them had gotten it. “We’ve got time for one question, I think.”
A forest of hands went up, and she selected one of them.
“Why are you a ponygirl? You’re coming off a lot more intelligent than any ponygirl I’ve ever seen.”
Sally looked at her, and decided she didn’t want to deal with her personality quirk. Better get some real content through, if possible. “Collateral damage, mostly.”
“Huh?”
“If you’ve done any reading about how civilization worked before the Plague Decades, you know our civilization is really different in a lot of ways. Scatterbrain plague is still with us, and we have to deal with the fallout on a continuing basis. One of the ways we do that is to idealize ponygirls. It makes it easier to accept it when one of your sisters catches Scatterbrain, and has to be put under computer control for her own good.
“I’m one of the people that couldn’t get the childhood fascination out of her head, and once I got trained and I found out it wasn’t at all fascinating, one of my personality quirks kicked in.”
She looked at the clock. “I think we’re getting close to the end of the class.”
Sally shook her head in amazement. There were close to two dozen students packed into a room intended for about a dozen. At least most of them seemed to have followed her instructions and worn short skirts. She walked to the front of the room and put the box she carried on the table, the green cable dangling over the side.
“I must have made an impression,” she said as she slid onto the bar stool, making sure her tail came out the slit in the back of her skirt. “Welcome to CCS Management 102. I take it everyone knows what this box does?”
“It’s a programmer,” one of the girls spoke up.
“Exactly. I’m going to do this first step differently from the rest of the instructors. They use a combination of exercises and a touch of guided imagery and hypnosis to get you
“You mentioned a task module?”
“Good question. I take it everyone is clear on what a module is, and what permissions are.” She chuckled, they clearly weren’t, and she hadn’t expected most of them to be. This was, after all, the beginning of the class.
“A module is a chunk of shield programming that does something. From a programming viewpoint, a module is a module is a module. They only differ by their permissions. I’m not going to belabor permissions since the syllabus says that will be covered later in lectures. What you need to know is that a task module is programmed to assist in a particular task. For example, I use a task module when I’m racing; it does things like evaluate the track condition and the racing length against my current condition and my driver’s racing strategy to decide how fast I can go and still have a reserve at the end of the race for a final sprint if I need it.
“This task module is going to help you find the various channels and get them wired into your brain so that you can shift back and forth easily. We’re going to start with the auditory and command channels. This module is as simple as I can make it and still be useful: it started out as something I put together when we started letting students from the tour groups experience being a ponygirl for a day or so. The first couple of vict..., ah, volunteers really had a problem with boredom just standing in the stall, so I put this together so they could use their shields to tune in the entertainment channels.
“I’ve removed the video channels for this version; the shields are really awful for commercial video channels and you don’t have the same equipment as the stables. We’ll get to that later.
“The audio channel ought to sound a bit better than high end headphones. It’s probably not going to at first; your brain will need to do some reorganization to make it work right. The control channel will present a small menu in your mind’s eye, and you’ll select items off of that menu. Again, it’s probably going to be really distorted at first, and you’ll need to practice to clean it up. It’s just a matter of your brain making the right connections, and that takes time and practice.
“You’ll come up here and lift your skirt so I can plug in the programmer. It will download the module. I’ll disconnect the programmer, and you’ll go back to your chair and sit down. It’ll start running as soon as you sit down. This first section takes about ten to fifteen minutes to complete. The menu has an entry that will allow you to download the rest of the course segments as needed; we won’t need to go through this programming step again.
“If you run into problems, stand up. That will stop the process, and it won’t restart when you sit down again.”
A minute later, she had a line of students, with the first one shyly lifting her skirt for the programming cable.
That went well, Sally thought as the last student left. Everyone was flipping between the entertainment channels with some facility. Even though relatively few of them had it down to almost
“You certainly threw a wrench into the process,” Mike Martinez told Sally. “It turns out it was the right wrench, fortunately. Your group is moving along rapidly, and the feedback from the other
“Longer term, we’re getting quite a bit of pressure to put on CCS Management 111 and 112. I think you’ve proved you’re a very good shield programmer, and that’s one of the things that’s been holding us up; the best one we’ve got on staff is basically an amateur. We were thinking of borrowing an instructor from the computer staff, but they’re awfully hesitant. They say the language is the same as everyone else uses, and the network side is standard, but the rest is right out of their expertise.”
“Wow! That’s a curve I didn’t expect!” Sally said. “You want me to teach that one? It might,” she said a bit slower, “be a good idea to get one of them as a co-instructor the first couple of times.”
“Put three of you together? That’s an idea. This is the first quarter you’ve taught anything, and we’re more than a little concerned that you’re not ready. So what we’ve decided is that we’ll do CCSM 111 and 112 as a seminar next quarter, with you and one, um make that two, of the other instructors as the seminar leaders. That should help jell the class and bring you up to speed as an instructor.
“And that brings up the question of your status. We don’t have any real agreement on that, other than it’s not a viable option to have an instructor that’s indentured to one of our students. You owner has been less than forthright about her position on our buying out your indenture.”
“Well,” Sally said, leaning back a bit as she organized her thoughts, “Mandy has intellectually accepted the idea that she and I are going to have to go our separate ways when she graduates. She doesn’t see any of the post-graduation options as being good for Flying Hooves, and she understands intellectually that the conflict would tarnish her memory of her high school graduation present. Better to make a clean break.”
“I see. The way you’re emphasizing intellectually seems to mean she’s having emotional problems with it.”
“Absolutely. I was her high school graduation present from her father, and she’s my first owner legally as well as in fact. It’s her name on the indenture papers. Showing me is her hobby and she loves doing it. She’s never shown the least interest in showing any other ponygirls, so I think she’s showing off her graduation present.”
“And you think that’s important to her.”
“You know, putting it that way makes me think there might be a solution. A lot of what I am today is because I’m a show ponygirl, and a lot of my effectiveness at that is really a joint effort. I’m an athlete, and athletes tend to lose their edge when they get older. So what does an over the hill athlete do?”
“Goes into coaching. I’ll admit I don’t see the connection, though.”
“Well, there’s two connections. One is that the alumni association would love to see a show ponygirl team. The athletic department is set enough on it to have given it a course number.
“The other is that, while I was a show ponygirl before I signed the indenture, she’s really a full partner in how well I do. My success is as much her doing as mine, and I think she’s perfectly justified in taking some of the credit for what I do in the future, at least if I continue in the same direction.”
“Well, it’s an angle,” Mike nodded. “We didn’t have one before. It looks like it will take careful handling with Mandy, and emotional situations are hardly my forte. Let’s let it noodle around a bit and see what comes up.”
“I think I may have a solution,” Mandy said vocally as her maid knelt next to her, head resting lightly on her lap. “I need to discuss it with Sally, though. Now.”
Flying Hooves snorted in startlement. “Huh?”
“I said I want Sally, so get up and get a chair, silly.”
Her maid flowed to her feet and found a chair, sitting on it sideways so her tail hung over the edge rather than get bent by the chair back.
“As I was saying, I think I’ve got a solution to how I can keep my graduation present, and keep her in good condition after I graduate college. I want your input on it.”
“I’ll admit I haven’t figured anything out, mistress,” Sally told her.
“Well, it’s complicated. We start by having you buy out your indenture for one dollar plus other valuable considerations.”
“So the other valuable considerations are the point?”
“Right. You’ll have separate contracts with me and the university. The contract with the university will guarantee you an instructional position in the ponygirl and CCS programs, or equivalent, for eight to ten years.”
“I think they’ll go for that.”
“So do I. The first thing I want on my contract is that you’ll keep being my housekeeper and maid until I leave the university or get another housekeeper.”
“Flying Hooves will go for that! She really does like her owner. We’ll need to put a clause in the university contract, though. Her housekeeping duties overlap.”
“Good point.” Mandy paused while she silently added a note to her file. “The second thing is that I want to keep training and showing you, again until I leave college.”
“There may be a problem with the athletic department on that. They’re expecting me to coach the eventual ponygirl show team.”
“And you’d have to do that as Sally, so we couldn’t do the same events. Bummer.” She made another note.
“Also, I want the option to keep showing you after I leave college. I expect that’s got the same problem. Let’s make that if you get a situation were it’s possible to show you, I’ve got the option.”
“Flying Hooves is ok with that. In fact, she doesn’t think that she’s really interested in anyone else showing her.”
“I thought so. I want her to keep in shape as a ponygirl, but I don’t want her to live in the stable. You get your own apartment. I don’t want her to be used as a ponygirl for a while. I’ll get another ponygirl and put her in the pool so I have one to use as a runabout.”
“She’s not sure about that, but the university might insist on it. She may have some
“Might be at that. Let’s make it that she will keep her ponygirl skills current, but will not be used regularly as a ponygirl.”
“Flying Hooves is ok with that, and I think the university might accept it. In fact,” she said slowly, “the Athletic Department might insist on it. They like their coaches to stay playing the games they coach as long as possible.”
“Good. The last clause. After the university contract expires, if it isn’t renewed and she decides to indenture again, I want first refusal. I also want first refusal or participation in any show contracts.”
“Flying Hooves is ok with that, in fact she likes it. She wants it stronger; once you’re stable she wants the opportunity to renew our creative relationship.”
“I like it. I’ll have to think of how to word it, though.”
“Flying Hooves is reminding me that I’ve still got the option of finding a husband and raising a
“I need to think. If we located near each other, I think we’d be fine.”
“Well,” Sally said, slowly. “This feels like a good start at least. Now let’s find out what the university wants.”
“Let’s go!” Mandy bounced up and dragged a surprised Sally off of her chair into a big hug. She pushed a way for a moment. “I get to keep my graduation present!” She pulled Sally into another hug.
After a moment they broke apart. Mandy looked a Sally a moment, and then giggled. “You haven’t bought out yet, so you need to get back to the stable.” Flying Hooves
If you enjoyed this story, please e-mail the author and let him know. He likes to hear from his loyal fans,and it gives him some motivation to keep writing this stuff. Of course, if you're a publisher and you'd like to buy some of these stories, please let him know. The starving author in the garret makes a great story, but it sucks in real life.