Broken Oak

by L. Lenore

- do not use without the author's permission.
- GNU public license, L. Lenore.




Chapter 3: Sirius: In his stall

Hannah had shown him to his stable. The walls were thick oak slats, and the floor was sweet-smelling straw. There were three beams - later he heard them called "cradle beams" projecting from the wall about two feet, at the height of Sirius' hips. Emily made him lie on top of them, bent over to offer up his buttocks all the more. The beams were old oak branches, it seemed, stripped of their bark and worn smooth by years of ponies.

"This is where you'll sleep." Said Emily. On the wall by Sirius' head there was an ancient, U-shaped yoke of cast iron, hanging oddly on a length of chain. She slipped this around his neck - the smooth patina was cold against his bare skin - and looped the chain through the notch in the opposite side of the U. It was a very loose restraint - he could easily have gotten up off the beams and stood almost upright. Probably, if I want to, I can see over the dutch-door.

As if reading his thoughts, Emily said, "I want you to relax until Hannah comes. I'm going to shut the door. You'll be all right here. Welcome to Broken Oak." She stroked his back and his bound arms for a while. Very gingerly, she prodded the spot where he had been branded - it did not really hurt; it felt as if he was wearing the mark on the surface of his skin. Then she got up and shut both halves of the door, leaving him in the slatted darkness of the stall.

Sirius cycled between discomforts. In some indefinite way, his arms would panic - he had to get them loose from each other, hold up his hands before him, even if only for a moment. Then it would be the silencer pinned through his tongue - he would push at it and suck on it, sure that he must choke instantly if he could not get it out. Then it was the phallus inside him, the leather traces tickling at his thighs. Then it was the sheer strangeness of lying on the cradle beams, and he kept adjusting himself like a man with a new mattress. No one bothered him in the meantime - there was not even much noise in the rest of the barn.

At length, Sirius had worked his way off the cradle beams and sat against one wall. He was not any more comfortable that way, since he had to keep his neck up high in the yoke. But there he was when Hannah returned with a bucket. She tsk-ed at him disapprovingly, set the bucket down on a stool, and left again. This time she left the upper door open. He felt a momentary sadness that he hadn't pleased her, but waved it away immediately. "Why on earth would I?" he asked himself.

In any event, the bucket stood up off the floor, so he had to get back up on the cradle-beams to inspect it. It was full of water, and he managed to drink a little by lowering his face into the water and simply letting it fill his mouth. The water was cold and felt nice. He was not really thirsty, though.

Outside, he heard a man groaning, animal-like, as he was being ferociously whipped. It sounded as if Ingrid or Emily was administering the punishment. It went on and on, and Sirius lay listening as if nailed to the cradle beams. He couldn't bear the sound of it, the thought of it. And will they whip me? Is it common? Is it a punishment for something or simply because they can? Certainly they wouldn't whip me on my first day here? His ex-lover had spanked him once or twice, but only in jesting play. He had never been whipped. He trembled thinking of it.

Finally the whipping stopped, and Sirius listened for a long time to the victim's low whimpers. Only long after they had ceased did he dare play out the chain on his yoke and peer over the dutch-door.

The barn was vast - it seemed even bigger on the inside than from without. Under the hay-mow, two rows of stalls faced each other across a wide corridor, and several other ponies were peering out of their stalls as well - male and female, some wearing bits and harnesses, some not. They all wanted a look at Sirius when his face appeared, and he blushed to be the object of so much attention.

There was another walkway, perpendicular to this corridor, which led out to the threshing floor. Where the two corridors crossed they formed a broad open space that seemed to be kept open for frequent use; it had no ceiling, opening upwards into the hay-loft as an access shaft. Here the victim of the recent punishment stood. He was bitted and harnessed, and the reins of his harness were tied off tautly to a block-and-tackle which hung from the dappled darkness above. His ankles were splayed wide apart and fettered to rings in the floor. His back was streaked from the whip, and his cheeks were streaked with silent tears. Powerful muscles still rippled in the aftershocks of his agony, and he was oiled with sweat. He was horrible and beautiful. Sirius could look at little else. Yet the other "ponies" seemed more interested in Sirius. Perhaps they had seen and experenced whippings too many times before.

Soon Hannah came marching up the stalls and found Sirius leaning against the doorway of his stall. She seemed pleased by this.

"You're up, you're up. That's great. Here." She held out a sugar cube. Sirius caught it in his lips, letting it dissolve between his teeth. Hannah rumpled his hair, and smiled approvingly, but she shut the dutch-door again. Night came slowly, full of questions. That first night in the barn, he did not even think about sleeping.


~~~~~

In the next few days, Sirius became somewhat more accustomed to the confines of the stall. Really, it was ideally placed. Sirius had moved into the stall formerly occupied by Pleides, and this was, happily, right alongside the common space where Scorpio - as his name turned out to be - had been punished. If, indeed, it had been a punishment, and not simply torture for its own sake. The grooms used this space not only for beating unfortunate ponies, but for cleaning them, dressing them, and sometimes for curb-tying them when it was momentarily inconvenient to take them back to their stalls, or out to wherever they were going - Sirius himself never went anywhere, and Hannah cleaned him in his stall with buckets of soapy water. At any rate, he had an excellent view of the barn's activities.

The stall immediately opposite Sirius belonged to a ponyboy named Jasper. He was not an athletic figure like Scorpio, but elegantly handsome, with curly brown hair and clever eyes. Jasper was not "built" like Sirius and Scorpio: he had long hoof-boots on his hands as well as his feet, and went about on all fours. Sirius inferred after a while that there were different "breeds" of ponies. Jasper must have belonged to the same breed as the ponygirl in the stall diagonally across from Sirius, Turquoise.

Turquoise - the grooms usually called her Turq - was painfully beautiful, but seemed aloof, superior. She had long brown hair which the grooms sometimes let loose, but usually they would braid it into a single plait; with black and white ribbons in it. If they were feeling especially evil, they added little bells. With her hair pulled back, Turq's forehead seemed a gorgeous frame for the crown strap that was usually resting on it. She looked noble. Sirius could tell at once that she had long experience as a ponygirl, and felt humbled by her. When she was taken out of the stall, Sirius could see a large birthmark on her ass and lower back - it ran up under a sort of belt that she and Jasper always wore. It was the kind of birthmark called a "port wine stain," red as her lips, and it had a strange effect on Sirius. In any regular woman, he knew, it would have been considered a disfigurement and an embarrassment. She would have worried about undressing for a new lover. But on Turq it's gorgeous. Her nakedness makes it gorgeous. She seemed more like a pony than any of the others.

Once, Turq had been hobbled in the center of the corridor for a punishment that never took place. (Some of Maxon's guests arrived, wanting to ride on a pony-drawn coach, and the groom preparing to beat Turquoise got distracted.) Regal in her restraints, Turquoise had caught Sirius staring at her ass - at the birthmark, at the chestnut tail plunged inside her, and the shadowed lips behind it. He was mortified, and slunk back into his stall. But why? We are all naked, we all stare at each other.

The other ponies were stabled further from Sirius, so he could not form such an easy impression of them. Syzygy was a powerfully built man with prematurely graying hair, which the grooms trimmed back to a short, silvery fuzz. He seemed proud and competitive, a ponyboy for the racetrack. Chessy - the gelding - was usually hard at work, and seemed to accompany David most of the time. Sirius rarely saw him. When he did, it was usually in the distance, pulling the phaedrus in full harness, for Maxon's guests.

The other ponygirls included two more quadrupeds: Coral, a magnificent creature with flowing blonde hair and sapphire eyes; and Minka, who was dark and quiet. Neither of these were built in quite the same way as Turquoise and Jasper: Coral had neither the belt nor the little chains that held her legs in place. Minka, on the other hand, wore the most complicated gear of any of the ponies in the barn. Her entire torso was sheathed in deep blue latex, molded tightly to the curves of her belly and breasts. Between her shoulders, this second skin thickened to become a collar that held her neck up in an attitude of supplication. At the other end, the latex skin was tapered down to join her tail, leaving her buttocks available for punishment, and what lay between them available for reward.

There were four other ponygirls, all "built" like Sirius, and standing upright. One of these was another yearling pony, named Ayesha - she had been broken in just before Sirius, apparently. The other three - Comet, Magda, and Dolly - were stabled at the far end of the row, and Sirius did not see much of them. Of the those four, Comet seemed by far the most interesting. Her brown hair was carefully pleated into a hundred pencil-thin braids, and her eyes were full of mischief. Moreover, she had a gorgeous firm little ass, so sweet that the grooms could hardly resist punishing her for the slightest infraction.

The fourth corner of the intersection that Sirius' stall opened onto was occupied by a little office that the grooms used. The major function of this room seemed to be that it kept their radio and coffee maker away from kicking hooves. Just outside this office, the grooms had set up a little coffee table with two barstools. This was the focus of the human activity in the barn, and was usually covered in newspapers, coffee mugs, and half-eaten donuts (the constant object of unattended ponies' mischief).

The focus of the ponies' attention was Orion's stall, several doors down in Sebastian's stall-block. Orion was the barn's stud. What this meant was that on Friday mornings, he was brought around to each of the seven ponygirls' stalls, and briefly delivered them to ecstatic heights. In the meantime, though, he was treated with almost reverential deference by the grooms, who seemed always concerned about his well-being. He was a big man, with muddy blonde hair and somewhat harsh features. He did well here in the barn - his body was more attractive than his face, and above all he had a gorgeous set of equipment for his job as stud. Clothing would certainly have abused him.

Behind Sirius, there was a little access hallway, and then the stone wall of the barn itself, bermed deep into the hillside. There was an ancient, half-crushed door in this wall, leading in to some other part of the barn, but Sirius never saw it open. Like so much at Broken Oak, it remained a mystery not necessarily by design, but because no human bothered to mention it within earshot of a pony.

In fact, of all the many little tortures he was accommodating himself to in this new existence, the most difficult was not speaking or being spoken to. He could not ask questions, so even the most trivial curiosities tortured him. It took him days, for example, to learn all the other ponies' names. And the grooms - Emily and Ingrid especially - seemed inclined to whip a pony a dozen times for doing the wrong thing, rather than explaining what it was they wanted.

But this was not say that everything else was easy. Not at all. With the silencer in his mouth, it was hard to eat, or even drink. He could take little sips of water, and work them back to swallow them, but at the slightest touch of solid food, he began to salivate so profusely that it was hard to get anything down. His grooms seemed quite aware of this, and fed him almost liquid oatmeal, copiously sweetened with maple syrup. They made sure he got it down, and they weighed him every day in a sling scale out on the threshing floor. And indeed, after three days his mouth had entirely adapted to this strange new presence, and he could eat practically dry oatmeal, almost as fast as he had before. He always got his chin dirty, though, and Hannah would scold him cheerfully and clean him, and only occasionally crop him for it.

It took Sirius a bit longer to explore the terrain of the humans. Hannah was a perfect groom - he loved her, he dreamed about her at night. She was the one who cleaned him and oiled him, who got him in and out of his tack, who took out his tail for an hour every morning and evening, and sometimes left it out all night. Washing him, she would reach under him and tickle his belly, working slowly down until he was desperate for more intimate contact. She liked to feel his hard cock leaping in her hand. She would barely stroke him, just form a little mudra with her soapy fingers and let him thrust into it. When she let go, he would be left hard and frustrated, and he would rub against the cradle-beams, although he could not come that way.

Emily was tyrannical and cruel, and she often seemed inconsistent, which made Sirius furious. She doesn't understand ponies, he thought, realizing that he himself had been a pony for all of a week. Sirius didn't mind being lightly cropped or switched - he rather enjoyed it, and would sometimes intentionally provoke Hannah into punishing him a bit. But he quickly learned to fear Emily's whip-arm. She would flog an errant pony fore and aft with the same casual smile that stuck the taser into him when they first met. He hadn't run seriously afoul of her, but he shuddered to think that it was probably inevitable. He could not bear the thought that these grooms would easily deliver pain to change his behavior - and that it would probably work. Of course it would work. Like it works on a mute animal.

The other grooms he had less sense of. Tomas was often good for a sugar-cube, or a carrot, or coffee. David was rarely in the barn itself - he drove the tractor, and did other work elsewhere, only occasionally coming in to eat lunch with whoever was on duty. Ingrid was a marauding Valkyrie who would have been more dangerous than Emily, except she had less authority. Even Hannah seemed slightly afraid of Ingrid. And Maxon - the owner, the aristocrat - he hardly ever saw at all.


Chapter 4: Turquoise : The students on tour

It was a boy and girl - they were either high school students or, more likely, college freshmen who had not yet lost their high school gangliness. They were, of course, abjectly horrified.

"…so you see," Emily was saying "Why you had to sign the non-disclosure forms. I need hardly point out that the provisos are legally binding. Now then." She snapped her riding crop on the dutch-door of Orion's stall, getting everyone's attention. "Good morning, ponies! I'd like you all to meet Mellisa McMahall and Patrick Blink. They're students from the University, and they're writing a paper on nineteenth century barns."

Thirteen heads emerged from their stalls, curious. The boy wore a swim team jacket and a checked shirt, very preppy, but his hair wasn't combed and his glasses were a size too big. The girl was much more attractive - a slender redhead with her hair in ringlets, freckled cheeks flushed to a bright red, and eyes and lips making three neat circles of surprise. She wore jeans and a rather ugly sweater - but a tight one, which displayed her very attractive figure. The word topheavy came to Turquoise' mind. For an Irish girl she had an ample bosom and a slender waist.

Some of the ponies ducked back down into their stalls, embarrassed or - more likely - bored. The two students stood stock-still in the middle of the corridor, afraid to move or breathe or speak.

"As you can see," Emily intoned with gleeful obliviousness to her audience's looks, "this is an excellent example of Swiss-German barn architecture, with flagstone walls, and you can see the laube, on the second floor, which has stone columns…"

"What are they?" the boy breathed. Emily stopped in mid-discourse. She smiled. She changed tack altogether.

"Here, I'll show you one." Said Emily. "They've just eaten, you see." She took a bit and bridle from the tack bin and deftly buckled it around Coral's head. She opened the stall gate and whacked Coral with the crop several times, pulling hard on the traces to make the ponygirl move. Evidently she did not want to be displayed before these horrified youngsters.

"Come on, girl. That's it." As Coral finally skidded out of the stall, Emily swatted her buttocks again for good measure, then balled up the reins to present the ponygirl, holding her head low. Coral snorted and pawed at the ground with displeasure.

"Is she…" Said the boy, finding his voice, "Does she…live here like this?"

"Yes, of course. We've had Coral for two years now, and she's one of our best four-footed jumpers. She's cleared 113 centimeters in the Savannah games. I'm sorry she's being petulant now; normally she's pretty well behaved." Emily whacked her again, hard, an admonishing stroke that left a white welt along the top of her buttock. She whinnied and shook her tail, but stopped pawing. Turquoise watched Mellisa's face. She was rapt with horror and awe. She was not listening to Emily at all, but rather staring at the ponygirl.

"Do they like it?" the boy was saying.

"Not all of it, no. It's a hard life. But I think they're as happy as you or me."

The girl Melissa had dropped to one knee, and was looking at Coral in the eye, though the ponygirl kept snorting and looking away. Finally, with immense boldness, she reached out and touched Coral's flanks with two fingers. This seemed to calm her. Turquoise watched, ignoring the boy's next ten predictable questions, and Emily's predictable, cheerful answers.

"Here, give her some sugar." Said Emily to the girl. She nodded wide-eyed and took the sugar-cubes, which she held out very gingerly, as if Coral might bite her. Which, of course, she might. The ponygirl gobbled them up happily, and Turquoise thought she saw the girl smile, though only for a moment.

"But all in all," Emily was saying to the boy, "I don't suppose there's anything else you want to see?"

"No, ah, no. Melissa? Honey? Let's get going, huh?" The girl nodded, and stood up, wiping her hand against her jeans. Coral give a little whinny of displeasure, and Emily smacked her again. The two of them started to turn.

"Miss McMahall?" Said Emily as they hastened away. She stopped and turned.

"Yes?"

"How old are you?"

"Eighteen, ma'am."

"Let me give you my card…"

"No!" Said Melissa hurriedly. Emily smiled her most lethal warm-and-fuzzy smile.

"All right. But the phone number is 555-PONY. Easy to remember, eh? If you want it."

At this the girl blanched, looking around her hastily. "Umm, no, ma'am, no, I…no!" It wasn't clear who she was talking to. "I have to go. Thank you!" And they hurried out of the barn to the waiting limo.


Chapter 5: Sirius: Learning to march

After Hannah had dressed him fully, she led him out to the middle of the corridor, where she tied his reins to a hanging metal ring designed for that purpose.

"All yours, Emily."

"Thanks." Emily shot back from inside the office. She was busy reading a copy of Homo Equus, and did not come out for some time. Impatient, Sirius stood there watching motes of dust flutter in the sunbeams.

"All right, all right." Emily said, coming out at last. She held a long whip in one hand and a metronome in the other. She set the metronome on the ground in front of Sirius, and started it ticking slowly, then went back into the office to get her coffee. She seemed obsessed with having her coffee close at hand. Sirius, who had forcibly been on the wagon for all of two weeks, felt very superior. Coffee is a human thing, he told himself proudly. Addicts.

"Now, Sirius, you need to learn how ponies walk. You lift your hooves as high as your knee, and you bring them down flat. I want you to do it at this tempo, see? Make sure you lift them high. You can begin."

He began to walk in place, and she instantly lashed him with whip, which left a cruel stinging sensation on his flank. Turning her back to him, she wandered over to the coffee table.

"No, higher. As high as your knees."

He began to march in place, slowly, because the metronome was moving luxuriantly. Tick........tick.......tick. Emily sat at the coffee table hardly paying attention to him, sipping her coffee. Then she whipped him again, quite suddenly.

"On the beat, Sirius. And make sure you're bringing your hoof down flat." She shrugged. "When you're running, you don't have to, but at a walk: flat hoof. Got it?"

He nodded, and continued.

After a while she turned the speed of the metronome up slightly. He was beginning to get tired, or, if not exactly tired, bored with the repetition of it all. Hannah had taken some of the other ponies out to pull carriages of some type, which looked much more interesting.

"You'll find this becomes second nature," said Emily, returning to her magazine. "For a Strider like you, it's the easiest thing imaginable. Now a Dancer, or a Centaur, my god, they get to taste a lot of leather before they learn their gaits properly."

She adjusted the metronome again and then swatted him promptly. "On the beat." He shook his head, flustered and in pain, and she swatted him once more, and again. "On the beat, Sirius!"

Ignoring a little rain of switches with the whip, Sirius tried to concentrate on the metronome. TickTickTickTickTick. There he was. He trotted along in place, breathing a bit faster. Emily watched him for a long time, her face immobile, her whip at the ready. Then, apparently satisfied. She returned to her magazine.

It became quite a brisk work-out. Running in place was one thing, but the high stepping was a new challenge, the clock-clock of his hooves a new reward. He could feel the phallus of his tail angling back and forth inside him, the sweat beginning to run down the tip of his nose. He saw Turquoise, the pretty quadruped, stealing a glance at him, and his cock rose slightly.

"Focus, Sirius." Said Emily, and she switched him lightly on the tip of his cock, hardly looking up. He bleated in shock and surprise. Turquoise smiled and dropped back into her stall, out of sight. Sirius felt humiliated. TickTickTickTickTick.

After what seemed like an hour of this, Hannah had returned. Emily got up and walked off. The metronome was still going, so Sirius kept trotting along, although now no one was looking. Or were they?

"All right, boy, you can rest." Said Hannah. She stopped the metronome with the toe of her boot. "Tomorrow we'll put you on the lunge line. I'll wash you down."


Chapter 6: Turquoise: The Centaur

One evening, after a rather hectic afternoon, the ponygirls were all crowded together in a holding pen, after the grooms had given them all shampoos. Tomas came out to do the evening feeding, and he seemed to decide that this constituted a captive audience. Rather than bring them back to their stalls, he set up a milking stool beside them, and went to get a book.

It was a picture book. A picture book for ponies. And he sat down to read to them, a sort of a bedtime story, holding up the pages so they could see the drawings, which were nicely executed watercolors. Turq immediately wondered if it was not the Doctor's wife who had done them. She had always been painting things, taking photographs, making sculptures.

"The Centaur." Tomas intoned. "Once upon a time, there was a ponygirl named Estrella Blanca. She was from Argentina. She lived in a great big barn with many other ponygirls." He turned the page, and held up the next picture for them to see. The seven ponygirls crowded in - this was something unusual, anyway. In the drawing, they could see that the ponygirls being illustrated were Dancers, with half-masks that covered the top of their faces - including their eyes, if their grooms so chose. "Their barn was owned by a man named Don Ramon. Don Ramon loved his ponygirls. He wanted them to race fast, and jump high, and pull big carts, and be the most beautiful ponygirls at carnival. But he did not want them to fall in love.

Now, every morning, all the ponygirls in Don Ramon's barn were covered by a stud named Terciopelo. They would stand in a line, in their prettiest harnesses and masks, wearing little blinkers, and Terciopelo would take them one by one. Terciopelo was strong and powerful, and all the ponygirls loved him. But none loved him more than Estrella Blanca. She would shake her hips when he mounted her, and neigh as if she was singing.

Now, Terciopelo loved Estrella Blanca too. When he mounted all the ponygirls, he would always save his strength, so that he could take her slowly and tenderly. And sometimes, when he was able to, he would carry a sugar cube in his teeth and leave it for her." At this several of the ponygirls whinnied approvingly, perhaps to make sure Orion was taking notes.

"Now, the head groom, Don Teodor, saw that this was happening. He went to talk to Don Ramon. 'Estrella Blanca loves Terciopelo, and Terciopelo loves Estrella Blanca,' he said. 'What will we do?'"

"'Don't worry.' Said Don Ramon. 'If they want to be together, we will let them be together. We will make them into a Centaur.'" At this point, Hannah came in, and sat down on the partition wall that the ponygirls were penned behind, listening to Tomas. He winked at her.

"And so they did. They called for their harness-maker, and he worked all night and all day and all night again. And in the morning…" He turned the page to the centerpiece, as it were. "Estrella Blanca and Terciopelo had become a Centaur." The Centaur, which Turquoise remembered quite well from San Rafael, was male in the front, female behind. The front partner - in this case Terciopelo - stood upright, and was very nearly human. He could talk, and he could hold or fondle things with his hands. The rear partner was doubled over, the head, arms, and upper body hidden in a leather sleeve. For them to walk together - let alone gallop - required the utmost coordination.

"The Centaur's head and fore-legs were Terciopelo's, and the Centaur's hind-legs and tail belonged to Estrella Blanca. For the first time, Terciopelo and Don Ramon could talk."

"'Don Ramon' said the Centaur, 'I am so happy you have united me with Estrella Blanca, who I love even though I have never seen her face. But I am sorry for her, because I am standing erect, and have my face in the sky, while she is doubled over and trapped behind me.'"

"'Don't worry.' Said Don Ramon. 'Every three days I will switch which of you is in front and which behind. You will never see each other's faces, but you will each get a chance to see the world.'"

"'Ah, thank you.' Said the Centaur. 'But Don Ramon, please do me one favor.'"

"'What is it you would like?' Said Don Ramon."

"'To prove my love for Estrella Blanca, I want you to let her remain in the front, where she can see. I will be her hind-legs.'"

"'If that is your wish,' said Don Ramon, 'I will grant it.'"

"And so Terciopelo covered the ponygirls for three more days, with Estrella Blanca running behind him. And then Don Ramon switched them, and said to the Centaur: 'As a proof of his love, your Terciopelo wishes to remain behind you forevermore, and let you lead him in the front.'"

"But the centaur sighed, and said. 'Do not be unjust. You have given Terciopelo what he wished for; now give me what I wish for.'"

"'And what is that?' Said Don Ramon."

"'Change us back to how we were, so that he will know that I love him as much as he loves me. And do not let him ask you another favor, for you will have given us both what we want.'"

"'If that is your wish,' said Don Ramon, 'I will grant it.'"

"And so Terciopelo covered the ponygirls for three more days, with Estrella Blanca riding in front of him. And then Don Ramon switched them back again, and said to Terciopelo: 'Listen, Centaur. Estrella Blanca loves you as much as you love her. This is how you will stay forevermore. And you will be called Biello.'"

"And Biello went on to run many races, and win many prizes, and was the greatest of all the Centaurs, because of love. The End."

Several of the younger ponygirls were teary with this illicit glimpse of romance. Even Turquoise was moved. But she had always been terrified of the Centaurs at San Rafael. Their front half was so very nearly human, their hindquarters a faceless rump and tail and genitalia. It was an eerie combination.

Lost in their various thoughts, the ponygirls let Hannah and Tomas return them to their stalls to sleep.