Compass Rose found herself in a patch of grass not unlike those she frequented as part of her surveying work. However, she didn’t have any of her surveying equipment, or anything else at all, which made some sense: she shouldn’t have been working at all, given how very pregnant she was. This was honestly frightening, especially since unlike those patches of grass she often trotted in to map, this one was halfway up a desolate mountainside. Her eyes darted from the sheer cliff behind her to the almost-as-steep drop in front of her, then past that to the wilderness beyond, then back to the patch of semi-flat ground on which she rested, waiting for... something. How had she gotten here? She couldn’t remember. Who was she waiting for? She couldn’t remember that either. “Hello?” the mare tried to shout over the drop, hoping someone would hear. In reply, she got the mocking cliffs repeating her shout back to her, some almost louder than her own voice. The drop-off was making her dizzy. She backed up away from it, toward the cliff behind her—it was imposing, but at least she was at the bottom of this one, rather than the top. The ledge she was on felt smaller every time she looked at the edge. She tried to sit down to steady herself. Something got in the way. It was something whose feeling, whose shape she recognized: the foreleg of a foal, pushing out of her When had her water broken? She couldn’t remember. None of this made sense! Why here? [i]How[/i] here? Did anyone else know where she was? Was help coming? Was she really going to foal on a ledge, alone? The tidal wave of an oncoming contraction seemed to answer that question for her. She stood up again, and spread her stance, and braced, and pushed. She told herself that the effort was what drew a tear from her eye. She knew it wasn’t true. ----- Another mare, another pregnant mare, was busily working on a test. Nyomi had picked up surrogacy as a way to get through college, and she was just about ready to pop. Her midterm test lay open, sheet after trace-copied sheet of form questions in front of her. None of the questions made any sense. She could feel that buzzing, that constant feeling that she knew she had once known the answers, but couldn’t remember them. It was eating at her. The time limits didn’t help. There were two that she was worried about. The first was of course the official one: the large clock, thirty hands in diameter, above the lectern in front, counting down the seconds until she was out of time and had to turn in a paper with no answers on it. The second was almost as cruel: she could feel her contractions starting. With that one, she had no clue how much time she had. Nyomi could feel the tension, in the air, in herself. The sound of her own pen scratching answers across the sheets, of her classmates doing the same, was drilling into her brain, louder, louder, until she could barely stand everyone else’s nibs scratching across paper like hooves across a chalkboard, [i]couldn’t[/i] stand her own. She dropped the pen from her horn’s aura, lowered her forehead to her desk, and struggled to keep her composure. Apparently her body didn’t get the message. A contraction came down, hard, and it was all she could do to keep from groaning aloud, drawing more attention to herself than she was sure she already had. She breathed, long, hard breaths through her nose, trying to be silent, surely failing— She felt her water break, amniotic fluid spilling onto her chair and dribbling onto the floor. She looked up, and her face went cold. Everypony else in the chamber was looking at her. “Return to your examinations,” a voice said behind her, feminine, authoritative. They did at once. What the hay? Nyomi tried to turn around in her seat, mid-push—and froze, and gasped in pain at the turn before returning to sitting forward. “You will need a second,” the voice politely reminded. After the contraction finally ended, Nyomi, much more carefully now, much more deliberately, more slowly, turned in her seat to catch a glimpse of her saving interdictor. She wasn’t sure who she expected, but she definitely didn’t expect the direct intervention of one Princess Luna, to whom she tried, and failed, to bow in obesiance. “None of that.” Luna shook her head. “You were in need of assistance. I am happy to offer it. Rise from your seat, and follow me.” Nyomi worked her way out of her desk, got her footing, and stood up next to the Princess’s much taller form. Where she was, then, was the perfect place for her to notice an additional something, almost as surprising as Luna’s presence on its own. The royal was pregnant. Very much so. Her overfull belly bulged almost to the floor. Nyomi couldn’t recall seeing [i]anypony[/i] so pregnant before, not outside of— Outside of fiction. She left it at that. “Tell me, Nyomi, is it?” Having received half a nod, Luna continued. “What is it that is your field of study?” As she spoke, she half-stepped, half-flew around the other pregnant mare, far more deftly than her belly should have allowed, and began to examine the papers on her desk. “P-p...uh, potion, synthesis.” “Hm.” The Princess’s pursed lips were more suspicious than Nyomi was comfortable with. “Would you mind telling me, then...” Luna produced a sheet from the stack of papers in front of her. “Why is it asking about stages of labor then?” Nyomi did not have an answer to that question. So Luna answered it instead. “I do not believe this place is what you believe it to be.” The Princess began to walk toward the rear exit of the auditorium. Nyomi remembered to follow. Luna opened the door, held it with a rear hoof, and motioned for Nyomi to follow. When she did, she entered not a university hallway, but... something like an open-air hallway of a completely different sort, lined with doors of every color, size and style. They were fixed to the same shining, shimmering path, but were set into no wall. Behind them, including the one she had just left, was an indeterminate, swirling, starry space that stretched on to eternity. Nyomi’s silently mouthed “[i]Ohhhhhhhhhh...[/i]” revealed her realization. She was dreaming. Hence Luna’s presence. That made much more sense. Luna smiled a small confirmation. “You’re not the only one perturbed by an impending birth this night.” The doors whizzed past the pair as they stood still in the non-space between dreams. As that occurred, Luna tossed her glance over to Nyomi, who suddenly appeared even more nervous than she had already been before. “Go ahead and push,” Luna said. “This is going to take a minute anyway.” Gateways to irrealites sped silently by Nyomi, but for a minute she ceased to pay attention. Instead, she focused on herself, on her breathing—in, then out, then in, then out, as she had drilled a hundred and something times now—and on her pushing into her contraction, feeling herself spread open, and a snout press its way from womb to canal. The contraction ended, and she bore off just in time to see the various portals cease their dizzying swiftness, halting with... not a door at all, simply a vaguely triangular but otherwise formless white plane. “You can wait here, but I believe this dreamer would appreciate it very much if you were to follow me,” Luna said over her shoulder. Then, without another thought, she stepped into the white and disappeared. Nyomi hesitantly approached where the Princess had just been, carefully putting first one forehoof, than the other, into the shapeless portal. Both forehooves found something solid on the other side, so, she breathed, steeled herself, and stepped forward. It took a second for the mare to get her bearings, but once she did, she saw that she was on an outcropping of some sort. She looked around and saw that she had stepped out of the bottom of a sheer cliff, maybe a hundred hands tall. The view was magnificent, if... oddly desolate, was the least bad way she could put it. That wasn’t the focus of her attention for more than a second, though. Her eyes fell to the of course still pregnant Luna, facing away from Nyomi, instead talking sweetly to another mare— To Compass Rose! Nyomi knew her! She was lying on her side, as pregnant as she was in waking life. But something about her was off. Nyomi couldn’t place it yet. “Oh,” Luna said, “it looks like our guest has decided to join us.” She turned around and waved for Nyomi to approach. When Nyomi did, she realized what was different about Compass: she looked [i]awful[/i]. Not in the sense that she was aesthetically displeasing—she wasn’t—but that the world had been awful to her lately. Nyomi could see the stains in Compass’s coat from the tears that had streamed down her face. The mare was in desperate need of a hug. That and she too was foaling: Nyomi could see one foreleg, and another, poking out from under Compass’s tail. “This really is a torture you’ve built for yourself, isn’t it,” Nyomi heard Luna say as the latter looked out over the bluff dropping off the little lookout, briefly hovering over the precipice with her broad wings before returning to the earth nearby. “Good thing I showed up to interrupt.” “...h-hi, Compass.” Nyomi bashfully introduced herself. “You okay?” Compass Rose took a second to breathe deep and put on a sad smile. “Better than I was, now.” She wiped the tear-stains with a forehoof and sniffed. “Glad to have you here, at least. Though... what the hay is going on?” Luna looked back toward Nyomi with a face that said “I’ll let you explain this one” for her. “Um... I think we’re both having bad dreams about foaling... and Princess Luna decided to intervene. Not sure what else to say about that.” “That’s about the sum of it,” Luna confirmed. “Would you like to—” “Oh, I’m dreaming!” Compass laughed nervously to herself. “Okay, that’s much better, I thought I was going to foal alone and—and Dusty would miss it, and-and...” Dusty Rose was Compass’s husband. Luna placed a consoling forehoof on Compass’s shoulder. “No such will occur. This is, after all, dreams’ stuff; your stallion is missing nothing.” “...thank Celestia, that’s a relief.” “You’re welcome.” The irritation in Luna’s response was evident, and worried Compass, until Compass looked up to see the present Princess’s mischievous half-smirk. “...and thank you,” Compass said nonetheless. “Fret not, you are very much welcome. That turn of phrase brings no offense at all. I am more than used to it.” “Still.” Compass Rose could be polite to a fault at times. “As it is, this... cold desolation, that the mind beneath your mind appears to have conjured up for you,” Luna said, changing the subject, “cannot be of any good to you, I daresay. Let us go somewhere a bit more comfortable. Do you need assistance in rising?” “...yes, please,” Compass somewhat sheepishly answered. Luna’s horn glowed, and her aura appeared under Compass’s shoulders and gently hoisted her upwards, until the latter mare found her footing and the Princess dismissed her glow. There was no mistaking it now, though: the forehooves of Compass’s foal were now poking out beyond her tail as she stood. “Are we ready to find somewhere less... hostile to dream of foalings?” Luna asked. Nyomi was not quite in the position to answer “no,” even though she would rather have done so. She was bearing down on a contraction, feeling herself tense, and push, the pressure flowing down her back and to her nethers as they opened further, first one forehoof, and then her foal’s snout, pushing out of her, one pulsing inch at a time, until Nyomi could catch her breath, and the conjured sunlight peeked through clouds and, for a moment, bathed the foal’s face in a radiant beam. “...okay, now I’m ready,” Nyomi said. “We shall off then,” and the same not-quite-shapeless portal opened into the rock face before them. Luna stepped halfway through, then turned around in place and waved her subjects through with a forehoof. “After you.” The space between dreams was not a surprise to Nyomi anymore, even if it were still something to behold. It was to Compass, though, and Nyomi found the awe in her eyes a sort of beautiful. Granted, Nyomi found Compass’s eyes beautiful in general, her raspberry-pink irises catching the light along with her blue-sky coat and golden mane; her fertile round belly, her... ...where was Nyomi going with this line of thought? Compass was very much taken. Did she even lean that way? Compass was looking at her. “...you need something?” Nyomi quickly averted her gaze. “N-no, I’m fine.” Compass shrugged and returned her view to the wondrous indeterminacy of unfixed dreamspace as the three mares, all pregnant, two foaling, trod along a shimmering winding path. After a minute of walking, Luna stopped, opened a nondescript red wooden door, and motioned for her subject-guests to enter. “I do hope you find the space quite cozy,” she said. First Compass, then Nyomi entered. For a moment, they were both confused, almost lost: the sky was still the beautiful vibrant nothingness of unused dreamspace. However, in this was an island of definition, a pleasant, maintained patch of verdant grass, in the center of which was an idyllic little cottage. Shrubs grew in beds across its front, and flowers bloomed from their branches. The place was inviting, by sight and by scent. Luna closed the doorway behind them and it faded into the dream. “A little cottage I conjured up as a stopping place between dreams,” she explained. “I cannot say I’ve had guests here, not honestly. There is, I suppose, a first time for everything. Go ahead,” she finished, opening the cottage’s front door with her horn. “Enter, and make yourselves at home.” Nyomi stepped forward, then stopped. It seemed rude to simply enter when Compass was mid-contraction, as she suddenly now was. Compass Rose had her forehooves together, her rear hooves spread, and she was almost in a squat as she pushed into her contraction. It was a powerful one, too: her foal’s snout appeared, and then the rest of his head, and as she began to bear off, first one shoulder and then the other pushed and popped out of her, leaving the foal’s front half hanging free, only its rump and hind legs left inside her womb. After a moment of catching her breath, Compass tried to put her composure back together. “Sorry about that. The little walk must have worked something loose.” “It is no problem at all,” Luna replied. “Though, speaking of, I would hate to be the odd one out—” The Princess widened her stance and bowed a little, and closed her eyes, and strained for a moment... and then a burst of water popped from under her tail and trickled down between her legs to the grass beneath. “There,” Luna said, catching her breath, with a smile of odd satisfaction. “Now are we all together.” The other two mares took a moment to process that turn of events. Luna waved them toward the cottage again. “Enter! ’Tis quite comfortable, I promise.” Nyomi and Compass both paused for a moment, each letting the other take the first step in, then, without paying attention, both tried to enter the doorway at the same time. Instead, their rumps and bellies bumped into each other, cutie mark pressed against cutie mark. They both froze. Compass blushed. Nyomi blushed harder. Nyomi turned, embarrassed, toward the fellow foaling mare to her left, and tried to apologize. Compass interrupted her by leaning into Nyomi and giving her a playful bop with a forehoof: “Oh, [i]you[/i].” Nyomi had no idea what to say after that. Then she realized there was no reason to say anything. The tension dissolved. She giggled, and playfully pressed her rump against Compass’s. Compass too chuckled, and then the two shared a half-sarcastic, sultry smirk, as, pressed against one another, they walked shoulder-to-shoulder into the cottage. Luna, for her part, found the matter adorable. She would have said as much, too, were she not caught in the middle of pushing out her first foal’s snout. The interior of the cottage looked about as comfortable as Luna had promised. Just inside the front door was a pleasant little living room, with a low table centered on a soft, warm-looking rug. Pillows were laid out around the table to rest and prop oneself up on. On the table was a teaset with three place settings. “The tea is warm,” Luna said behind the other two mares as she entered. “I just made it.” Each mare got as comfortable as they could be, fluffing up and lying on pillows to best position themselves to drink tea and give birth at the same time. Luna picked up the befitting a host and her guests. “Milk or sugar?” “Some milk for me,” Compass requested. “No sugar though.” “I’ll take it as is,” Nyomi said. “Suit yourself.” Luna picked up a couple sugar cubes with her horn and dropped them into her cup, then poured the tea. It was steaming hot, of course, as the Princess had just conjured it. While the other mares took their first sips of her own tea, Compass asked Luna a question: “...if I may... why us?” Luna shrugged, one forehoof pausing for a second from rubbing her foal-full belly before continuing. “You were in need of it. I was available. Honestly,” she looked toward the cottage door, “besides yourselves, it has been mostly a peaceful night.” “Sorry!” Nyomi squeaked. “Why?” Luna looked genuinely confused. “...because you were having a nice peaceful—” “Nonsense. I was growing bored. It is a pleasant feeling, being helpful.” Luna took another sip of her tea. “Well, I’m glad that we’re worthy of your attention,” Compass finished. “That was... not one of the better dreams I’ve had; thanks for breaking me out of it.” “Not a burden at all.” Nyomi set up to ask a question: “Um, if I may—” “You may,” Luna answered. “If you may not, I shall let you know.” “—if I may,” Nyomi repeated, stumbling over Luna’s reply, “uh, um... why are you foaling too?” A pause. “Like, we are, but that’s because we’re both really pregnant in the... real? World. When we wake up, I mean.” Luna nodded. “So... are you pregnant?” Nyomi looked particularly nervous asking that question. Luna took a second to formulate the answer to her question. “In short, no I am not, except here, of course, by my own design.” She lightly tapped her gravid belly with her forehoof. “No, this is, simply, because you are.” She looked off into the middle distance with a slight amused smile. “That and I have experience.” The other mares’ silence cried out for further explanation. Luna cleared her throat, took a sip of tea, then cleared her throat again. “Well,” she said, haltingly, “there are a few ponies who occasionally dream of... myself, foaling. I’m not entirely certain why, but for most of them, I believe they find it erotic. On slow nights, I may occasionally acquiesce to their desires—’tis something to do, if naught else—but ’tis nice to be able to do this without having any of that,” she felt for the proper word, “[i]subtext[/i] around.” Compass cleared her throat and looked at the floor. Nyomi’s attention was instead focused on the indeterminate, swirling dark brightness outside the cottage window. Both mares blushed. Luna tried to rescue the line of thought: “At least, it is not the main focus.” “Right.” “Yeah, definitely.” Neither mare could remember who had made which hasty agreement. “Though I probably should have guessed from your little display while walking into the cottage. Honestly, had I found no pleasure in it myself I would not have bothered joining in. But, as do you, I do.” Luna smiled cheekily, and took another sip of tea. Compass Rose and Nyomi looked across the table towards each other. “So,” Luna interrupted, lowering her cup to her saucer with an audible [i]clink[/i], “each of you appears to have an apprehension about an upcoming foaling. Perhaps we should address those. Much as I enjoy your company, I would hate to waste it.” Luna poured herself some more tea. “Who would like to go first? Nyomi?” Nyomi looked nervous for a second, then took a breath, and a sip of tea, and spoke. “Well, I’m just about due, of course, and... and I’m worried, that I don’t know enough, that I’m going to mess something up... which, you don’t want to mess up foaling—” She stopped, as though interrupted, but no one else spoke. So Nyomi continued. “So, you know, I’m nervous.” She looked at her tea silently for a moment. “I don’t think I have anything to say after that.” Luna let the matter settle for a second, then asked, “Do you intend on foaling alone?” “Hm? No... this is my first, that wouldn’t be a good idea.” “I did not think you would. It would be rather foolish, from what little I know of it in the waking world. I presume that at least one of the other ponies you plan to foal with is a professional?” “...y-yeah.” Nyomi took a hesitant sip of tea as she thought. “So... so even if I don’t know something, or if I’m about to do something wrong, somepony else will be there.” Luna waved a forehoof a little toward Nyomi. She had something else to say, but couldn’t say it at the moment. The regular breathing, the visible effort, showed why: she was mid-contraction. The foal’s head sliding, pushing, and then popping out, cemented that reality. “My apologies,” Luna finally said, after the contraction had come off and she had caught her breath. “I do have one more thing to say about your matter, Nyomi: judging from the questions on the test you—well, some deeper part of you conjured up for yourself, you do seem to know your material.” She paused for emphasis. “It is a rare sight indeed to see... any coherent writing at all, in a dream, much less consistent writing. I can keep things stable in my own little lucid spaces, such as the one you are in now, but it is far from common, and it requires a deep memory of the—” Compass’s gasp, and then sigh, betrayed her own contraction’s finishing up, and her foal had officially been born. Luna and Nyomi both looked over with surprise and a little concern, and the Princess hardened a slice of aura and used it to cut the dream-foal’s umbilical cord. “...a deep memory of the subject matter,” Luna finished, talking to Nyomi, looking towards Compass. Then, to the latter, “Are you quite alright?” “[i]Haah[/i], yeah.” Compass spread her hind legs to let the foal suckle from her teats. “That’s one done.” Nyomi gasped for a second. “You didn’t tell me you were having twins!” Luna interjected, “It may just be the dream—” “No, I’m having twins in real life. Should have a moment before the second one starts.” Compass took a sip. “Did I miss something?” “Not really,” Nyomi answered. “I think we got my nerves figured out. Still a little nervous, not gonna lie, but I think I can handle it. “Speaking of, sorta,” Nyomi continued, “I gotta push. Anyone mind?” “No, not at all!” “Alright.” And Nyomi began to breathe intentionally, and bore down. “Compass Rose,” Princess Luna said after a second, “you seem to be having concerns of your own. What may they be, if I may so pry?” “Oh, I know now, I’m worried Dusty’s going to miss the birth. He’s been out for a week—[i]big[/i] money client, we couldn’t afford to miss it, as in, we needed the bits—and he’s coming back in the morning, actually, but I don’t want to foal alone and I’ve been worried sick that that’ll happen. It’s that simple, really.” Compass refilled her teacup. “He’ll be back in the morning. It should be fine.” “Well, isn’t that something!” Luna tipped her teacup the slightest amount, not enough to spill of course. “’Tis nice, when matters come to resolution on their own. Do not discount that, though. It happens far less often than it should.” “I won’t. Though... there’s still the chance...” The Princess turned her gaze to the other of her subjects, just as she began to peel out of her latest push. Her foal was now most of the way out of her; half a push and she’d be done. “Nyomi,” Luna said, “how closely do the two of you live to one another?” “Uhmmm...” Nyomi strained to remember. “If Compass Rose here were to ask you to come over at an indecent hour, would you be able to?” “Oh, yeah, maybe five minutes’ trot.” “Alright then!” Luna looked back towards Compass. “She’s no stallion of yours, of course, but if Nyomi is present, you need not foal alone. You don’t mind, do you?” “No, not at all!” Nyomi answered. “If anything, I’d like the company, and the... knowledge, of how to foal well.” “Oh, quit flattering me,” Compass teased. “But it’s true!” Nyomi protested. “You foaled while I was there in your den that one time, and you were [i]perfect[/i], and the foals just slid out so well... helps that you’re obviously made for it, those broad hips of yours, that full belly, those teats—” Luna’s expression, over her tea, was one of mild surprise. Compass’s, her spilt tea caught in mid-air and carefully put back into place by quick action on Luna’s part, was one of considerably more surprise. “I have said too much.” Nyomi tried to hide behind and under the table, though her own birthing belly got in the way. For a second, she was focused only on her own embarrassment, but after that she looked up and across the table to Compass. “Um, Nyomi,” Compass said after a moment, “would you mind coming here? Just for a second.” Nyomi cautiously, nervously arose, careful not to jostle her foal too horribly, and then, just as carefully, walked around the table to Compass. She was thoroughly red in the cheeks. “I just thought,” Compass said, “that you would better appreciate it up close.” Nyomi was threatening to burst a vessel, how hard she was blushing. “I-I-I-I-I-I-uhhhhhhhhh... um, really?” Nyomi eventually said. “Sure, just be gentle. I could use the massage.” “The, uh, the um, the-the ‘massage’.” “Yeah,” Compass answered, “you seem to like this belly; do you want to rub it or not? Goodness knows I like yours, though,” she touched a loving hoof to her dream-foal’s short mane as it suckled, “I’m attending to more important matters at the moment, so you’ll have to come to me.” She looked up and cradled her still-very-round belly in her forehooves. “Or would you rather just gawk.” Withouta word, Nyomi lowered herself again, still careful of course—she was still foaling, even if this be dream-stuff—and placed first one forehoof, then another, on the other mare’s belly, rubbing it as they both foaled. Her anxieties soon melted, replaced with a placid little joy, matching Compass’s own. Wordless too was Luna. As she was the Mare of Dreams, she could turn down the attendant pain to her own labors, so this time around, though a contraction did rudely interrupt the cute intimate moment again, it didn’t go anywhere near as close to incapacitating the Princess. Still, she kept quiet. Nothing she could say would do anything other than ruin the moment.