Gravid Gravitations

The following story by Kassaz was written to accompany this artwork:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/582238/tall-tales-of-the-one-true-queen-and-her-many-children

Queen Chrysalis was falling, not to her death, but to her embarrassment. She had woken up from a wonderful dream in which she’d turned all other living things—her changelings excepted—into nothing but their love, and then devoured them effortlessly. Her eyes had opened to remind her that, while her belly was so monstrously swollen with children it lifted the rest of her off the cold cave floor, she was still desperately, unyieldingly hungry; worse, that part of her body containing her consciousness and over which she had the most direct control, her thorax, had in her sleep become tilted towards the ground and was very slowly falling. Her wings had been unable to correct her predicament, and she was unwilling to waste precious energy merely to slow her descent, so she scowled at the ground as her head and forelegs got ever closer to it. Despite being so pregnant so often, she still had instincts which at first had told her to push herself away from the ground with her legs, and had tried in vain. Her legs had absolutely no leverage skewed as she was, and the rather large love reserves presently occupying her rump left her hindlegs nearly immobile, not that she’d have been able to return to her prior position using them anyway. All her pushing accomplished was pressing deeply into her belly, squishing her many children within as it reshaped around her forehooves. They, powerless, closed their eyes and squirmed under her motherly touch. Queen Chrysalis sighed. Despite its futility, she kept one foreleg jammed into her gut while her right brought its hoof to scratch at her face.

Her children would venture down into the chamber containing her soon enough to tend to her, she merely had to tolerate her situation until they would notice and move her back into an acceptable position. She was not so gravid that the act would require more than three or four of them at most, and she would likely deign to help them with her wings once airborne. The queen lifted her left foreleg, feeling an uncomfortable strain shooting through her back from her total lack of leverage, to look at the foals living in her body underneath it. It always delighted her to know they were strong enough to withstand the occasionally harsh forces in her body. Some of them had already returned to sleep, little limbs twitching according to irregular timing. She locked eyes with one who was still awake, and thought about his destiny. Hers was to create him and his siblings and so on. His, soon enough, would be to help her create his younger siblings, whether that would be by defending the hive or collecting the love that comprises them, both from lesser beings, or by helping her as his older siblings soon would. It was an honour to be her child, they knew, and she would make them repay the debt accrued by such inconveniences during their gestation.

The pain in her back became too great, and she let her forelegs fall before her again, the ground annoyingly out of her hooves’ reach even as she sneered at it. The same pain spread through her neck, and she slammed it into her belly with a snort. She regretted not looking around the dark cave while she could still lift her head, not that it had changed in any way whatsoever; now she could only stare at her legs, gut, and the still-approaching ground. She couldn’t even see any of their faces deep within her body, only backs and rear ends. She could tell vaguely how she was moving along the floor through the movement of great pressure across her womb’s surface, and the sensation of cold against the stone floor that spread with it. Any sensation of relief across those sections of her womb newly spared from the floor was insignificant, as they were mostly numb in the present.

Strain next met her hips. Her hindlegs no longer rested so closely against her maternity, and instead began to lift slowly as she descended and contorted. The queen wasn’t worried about the strain sending her into labour, but it still displeased her to feel aches and pain settling into the rear of her back. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore it. She would move her behind to stand on top of herself eventually, but that would hasten her fall and welcome in different suffering. She took a deep breath through her nostrils and slowly released it. Moments later, she furrowed her brow and grunted. She opened an eye. The ground was still out of her reach.

Already, Queen Chrysalis felt she’d been falling for much longer than she knew to be the case. Her grown children were on a fast schedule, and always met it, but she was angry at not doubling it earlier. With these newest children, and perhaps another batch, she would have enough around to warrant forcing one of them to stay down in the lowest part of the hive with her at all times, to prevent situations like this in the future. She looked at the ground again. Her forehooves hovered over it so very closely. The pain in her hips was now too great for her to ignore. Her hindlegs flailed and achieved naught but beating the rear side of her womb several times, until her left hindhoof managed to stake itself. This brought on a new pain, but the thin membrane trapped between hoof and foal had necessarily fewer nerves than her limbs and thorax. Queen Chrysalis sighed, this time at feeling minor relief. One hindleg dug into her body, and the other was still pointed away from her, trying to be still. The movement had cost her some time she could’ve spent falling, but not much.

Her hoof touched the floor, and she began to bend her leg to best influence her future position. She’d managed to let her forelegs get trapped underneath her brood once, trapping her chin on the floor while nearly snapping her poor spine, and had been wary of letting it happen ever since. There was the possibility that she could end up trapped entirely upside-down and be forced to waste her magic reserves or smother, but that had never happened; a look of utter hatred with her multitude of fangs poking every which way, and spittle flying from between them after each breath, was twisted into her face while she imagined dying so pathetically, what would be said about her after such a scenario. She calmed down almost immediately and set her other hoof down as she bent her face back into its usual shape. She locked her legs in place, it took no energy, to buy herself time as she thought through her options. As she thought about her position, straddling her very body as if she had a broken wing and were trying to stop herself from falling down a chasm, she immediately realized she had none besides staying as still as possible and waiting.

Unfortunately for the queen, she could feel her rear continuing to move—it had passed her middle point—and start to bear down on her. She gradually lost her hoofing with her hindleg as it moved further away from her and closer at the same time. She now felt an ache spreading much more evenly throughout her entire back. She kept her forelegs locked, even as they skid along the floor collecting what little dust there was, but eventually she lost her hoofing with them too and yelped in a way unbefitting a queen. The front of her hard, black chest slammed into the ground—although it had travelled very little to reach it—and was the final part of her body to stop her falling. Her muzzle was flat against the floor. The queen snorted again, kicking up more dust and then coughing.

Now Queen Chrysalis was deprived even of basking in her beauty. She couldn’t move her neck with her throat pressed as it was against the floor, and could see only her two forelegs pressed similarly. She felt her body pouring out along the floor behind her like molasses sealed in a very thin bag. The floor had been made smooth for her presence long ago, ensuring she wouldn’t pour out on the floor like such a bag that had been punctured. There was no threat to her life, merely a threat to her pride as she lay splayed there, rear hanging over her head she felt but couldn’t see. Queen Chrysalis quickly corrected her embarrassment by reminding herself of lesser beings: No pony could be so gravid as she, nor would any pony survive it even if it could; she felt soreness slowly coursing throughout her thorax, but a pony would’ve been killed by the contortions to which she was being subjected. Princess Celestia called her subjects “her little ponies” as a way of coping with her inability to birth so many loyal subjects, the queen knew. Ponies were easy fodder for fostering a sense of superiority, and she thought about the dragons for a moment: When they weren’t pets for ponies, they hated each other, their barren lands worthless for harvesting love. She smiled at the thought of a dragon being killed by her changelings like a cockatrice covered in ants.

She felt slightly less pressure on her stomach and other organs as her body continued settling behind her, and dug her hooves into the ground to get leverage for pushing herself upright as much as possible. The back of her head pressing into her rear was a good sign of her progress, and she kept pushing until she could see some of her womb’s wall underneath her chest. Her face was one large grin as she grit her teeth, some drool leaving her mouth to pool on the floor. It took all of the might she had—or all she was willing to give—to move herself barely at all; her shaking legs gave out and once again sent her to the ground with prolonged jiggling all around her, but she had been able to reposition her thorax well enough to keep her head off the floor, albeit with her rear still just behind it. She bent her leg backwards to rest her cheek against the bottom of her hoof and stared into the homely dark void of the cave. It would’ve been so much easier had she started falling backwards, with tree trunks to support her compared to the twigs sprouting from her front end. She could fall asleep like that with her hindlegs locked, resting on her gut much as she did otherwise, but not with that weight bearing down on her. Her body twisted painfully again as her rear started leaning to her left.

Tapping could be heard in her containing chamber, boredom had brought her to tapping her free leg against the ground in a slow and queer rhythm. The queen wasn’t usually this bored. Even when waiting for her born children to wait on her, she usually had the unborn to bother as it suited her. She turned her head to her right to look at her very wide side. They were back to sleeping, most with their backs to her, and even she didn’t want to contort her foreleg far enough to poke them.

Things were calm again, and she crossed her legs while she continued to wait. She slowly took a deep breath and quickly released it. She realized help would be unnecessary when she felt a pop deep inside, and then a foal ejected almost entirely outside of her body. The waters of her womb ran over her dock and down her back. Grimacing at the sensation with all of her usual flexibility spent elsewhere, she rotated her head on her neck to lock eyes with her foal, without her body in the way. She’d likely never seen this foal, considering he’d spent all of his life wedged in her hips. He stared in the distance with a blank expression, that of it that had exited her lips. She lit her horn and plucked him out, ignoring the foal that immediately took his place. She set him between her legs and started licking him clean.

Love was love.