FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

This story was written for Rubyhoof as part of my Themed patreon request day for July. This month's theme was "In the Workshop." The story contains M/F sex between consenting adults and MLP related lewdness. :3

From Clay

Asha wasn't sure whether to feel excited or sorrowful as she walked lightly through the abandoned factory. Many years ago this place had been a thriving business, producing plates and other ceramics in all manner of designs and styles for ponies throughout Equestria to enjoy. Now however it like much of the other industrialised buildings in this area were scheduled for demolition. Industry on this scale just wasn't something that Equestria wanted or needed, and while many smaller independent ceramics studios had sprung forth from the closure of this larger and more uniformed enterprise, the unicorn felt that it was vitally important someone take the time to remember this place on its own merits.

Passing between machines that were entirely inoperative, gears and cogs having long since rusted without regular unicorn magic to power and move them in whatever processes they were made to carry out, the unicorn's hoofed feet echoed upon the hard stone floor below. Were it not for the glow of her horn Asha would have been cast in pitch darkness, the windows either boarded up where they had been cracked or broken in disrepair or simply covered by blinds to keep the outside out, and the inside in. And yet as she moved deeper and deeper into the factory, the unicorn paused in her stride. She blinked, and lowered the intensity of her own magical glow for a moment as she peered to one side of the factory floor. There was a glow. Emanating from a small side office on the ground level of the factory. A faint but undeniable glow of not magic, but what looked like flickering lantern-light.

Cautiously, Asha moved towards it. Her aquamarine mane and pearly white coat faded into grey and then absolute darkness as she extinguished her horn's glow, not wanting to necessarily scare whoever was in here with her but also not wanting to give herself away before she knew who she was dealing with. After all, she wasn't strictly meant to be in here. No-one was, to the best of her knowledge. She moved as quietly as she could upon her hooves, and soon found herself approaching the doorway through which that glow was visible. Peering inside, the pony's eyes widened.

The room was lit up not by a lantern, but by the glowing fire through the reinforced glass door of a kiln at its far end. And around that kiln, lining the walls in makeshift wooden shelves, were dozens if not hundreds of plates, vases and other ceramics. Some freshly fired and naturally coloured. Others washed pure white or other shades by a glaze, and others still decorated with the most gorgeous, intricate designs the unicorn had ever seen.

And in the centre of the room, facing the kiln with their back to Asha herself, a pony sat at a potter's wheel. Gently peddling at it's manual motor with one hoof, the pony's forelimbs were gently and oh so delicately guiding a piece of clay spinning upon the wheel. Moulding it into a tall, sleek vase with seemingly effortless grace, occasionally reaching down to one side where a small pot of water waited to moisten the glistening tips of those dark hooves. Asha couldn't look away. Transfixed. She watched for maybe two minutes as he oh so delicately adjusted and teased that clay vase into the most gorgeous and seemingly impossible shape for such malleable material, and then...

"No!"

She cried out in dismay as with a soft grunt, the pony raised one hoof and unceremoniously brought it down upon the peak of the vase, squishing the entire thing down and back into an unrecognisable clump.

Needless to say, he heard her cry. The pony whirled around on the spot, his pale grey coated face flushed crimson and his rich brown eyes staring in shame, in shock at the presence of the other pony.

"I... I c-can explain..."

He stammered nervously, hopping down from his potters wheel and revealing himself to be actually a rather short, skinny figure, though he had seemed so much more large and confident in his demeanour while at the wheel.

"Why did you do that?"

Asha stepped into the room, almost feeling like tears were going to spring to her eyes as she watched the now unoccupied potter's wheel grinding slowly to a halt. She could see the confusion in the other pony's eyes. The uncertainty as to why she wasn't berating him for his very presence here.

"Why did you ruin that? It was... it was beautiful."

The earth pony opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again without a word. Embarrassment rather than fear now caused his cheeks to continue burning, and he simply shook his head. He looked around the room. At the countless plates and vases and sculptures all forged from clay, and then to the fire burning in the kiln. He swallowed thickly, took a deep breath, and tried again.

"It was fine. But... I can do better. I... I only have a little time left here. Before they tear it down. I need every piece I make to be worthy of that time. To mean something. It isn't enough just to shape something from the clay because I think it's nice. I... I need it to..."

It was then he realised that he was talking to a total stranger, his voice trailing off into embarrassment once more as yet again he shook his head dismissively.

Asha stepped forward. She didn't know what she was doing. Why what the earth pony was saying to her was striking her so intensely, and indeed why looking at that squashed lump of clay which had been a beautiful freshly formed vase mere minutes ago still brought a lump to her throat. She loomed over the shorter pony, and before either one of them knew exactly what she was doing or why she'd dropped back onto her haunches, using her forelimbs to grasp one of his damp, clay-stained hooves and lift it up before her.

"What? What do you need?"

She glanced up and down his body as he stood before her, trembling slightly. His mane was unkempt and loose. His cutie mark, a flame wreathed potter's wheel of course, glittered in the firelight of the kiln close by. Between his legs, a rather ample pair of balls rested, far larger than his modest frame would have suggested.

"I-inspiration."

The male croaked bashfully, like it was the dumbest thing he could have said. He frowned, pawing nervously and in frustration at the solid stone floor beneath them with one of his free hooves.

"I need the clay to inspire me. I don't want to have to think of the designs. The ones I'm truly proud of, the ones I used to make long ago, before I started working here... it was like watching musical notes flow out of an instrument. Like a song. I moved my hands over the clay and the shapes just appeared. So natural, so... honest and free. But, I let other ponies convince me that more was better. I took my success, the wealth and trust I had earned from my work, a-and... I had this factory built."

Asha's eyes bulged.

She had heard the stories. The rumours of the reclusive master potter who had led to this factory's construction almost thirty years ago. Of how every design they had produced was based on one of his original creations, replicated and repeated over and over again. But, part of her had just assumed that one of the reason's for the factory shutting down was that he had retired. Or... maybe even passed away. This man however, this pony, he wasn't some old man. He was older, sure, but he was still very much alive and very much possessing the same talent that had allowed him to open this place so long ago.

"But... the work you made, it was still beautiful. Just because other ponies realised they wanted to go their own ways with design..."

She began to speak, but fell silent as the earth pony snorted loudly.

"They didn't want to go their own ways. We were making more money than ever. Making more designs. They had works from me to keep themselves going for years, decades more. But... I couldn't keep doing it. I couldn't keep seeing myself pumping out uninspired works and having them reproduced until every last drop of originality was drained and crushed. I stopped it. I was the one who shut the factory down. I gave my life's earnings to ensure that my staff could go and pursue their own ambitions. Their own potteries and shops in whatever ways they pleased. And for years now, I've been trying to get back there myself. To stop being the one who churned out designs en masse... and be the pony I once was, letting the ideas flow from my hooves because I was too excited, too inspired by them to keep them inside."

He looked around, and at the remains of the vase now sitting silent and still upon the motionless potters wheel.

"But, whatever talent I had... whatever special gift was seen in me to earn this..."

His left hoof tapped at his cutie mark.

"I betrayed it, and cashed in whatever true potential I once had far too long ago to hope that I could ever recapture it now."

The pony looked up at Asha, chuckling dryly.

"And now I'm a crazy guy in a factory slated for demolition, running out the clock on futile hopes and spouting nonsense to a mare here to... well, I don't suppose it really matters why you're here. I'm sorry for wasting your time, regardless."

Asha frowned. She pulled her hooves back from where all this time they had been clutching at the male's right foreleg. She scratched her forehead with the tip of one hoof, and flicked her fringe back so that her golden eyes could peer deep into his rich brown hues.

"With all due respect, sir... that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."

The earth pony snorted, raising an eyebrow in curiosity.

"Oh?"

Asha shook her head, frowning as she stepped closer to the male.

"Talent, the gifts that inspired your cutie mark, they aren't some finite resource. And inspiration... it's not some ethereal substance outside your control. It's not magic, and even magic has rules and limitations. Inspiration is just... it's just effort. Focused, clear effort. It's great. It's amazing when it comes naturally, but... having to work at something? Having to push, that doesn't mean its any less valid. Or any less beautiful! Can you imagine how the world would work if people just gave up when they weren't able to do things without any effort? How friendships, how relationships of all kinds would suffer if the first time something didn't come perfectly naturally, ponies gave up?!"

Again, having only recently released it, she reached out and grabbed the earth pony by one hoof. She held it up not in front of herself, but to his own face.

"I saw what you were doing with these hooves. And to me, it sure as hell looked like the shape was just flowing out of your hands. I... I've never seen anything like that. And if you're not happy with that? Maybe it's not because you're not good enough. Maybe it's because after so many years of doing something you didn't believe in, you just don't trust yourself any more. You don't believe in yourself because you're so guilty and angry over letting yourself step away from what you always wanted to do with your talent. To make beautiful things. But... the truth is, you never did stop. You never lost that spark!"

She stared around the whole room, every shelf filled with items the likes of which would proudly grace any collection, any home in pride of place upon the mantelpiece. Ceramics so beautiful they could make a pony weep just looking at them, and now did so as tears began to run down Asha's face.

"Your work is so, so beautiful. A-and... if you can't see that yourself, then please. Please see it in me. See that I believe it. That I mean it, b-because... I don't know you. I don't know anything about you, but... I know that if you don't wake up and recognise your own talent, and start sharing it with Equestria again? The whole world will be a less beautiful place for it."

Silence fell over the small pottery studio, tucked away in the corner of that abandoned factory.

The two ponies, earth and unicorn, stared deep into one another's eyes. Asha felt the male's hoof trembling between hers, and squeezed it tighter, reassuringly and nervously in her own right all at once.

One moment they were still as statues, frozen sculptures of clay locked together by their shared gaze. And the next, they half fell, half sprang into each other's arms. Embracing. Kissing. Tumbling to the ground as Asha's hindquarters wrapped around the master potter's waist, and with a frantic, wordless whinny she begged him to make love to her.

***********

Asha opened her eyes, stretching, yawning, groaning in satisfaction at how relaxed and satisfied she felt before even realising where she was or recalling what had happened.

Her cheeks flushed as she remembered looming over the earth pony, huffing and gasping as she laid him down upon his back and rode him, his member as gloriously large in comparison to his body as his balls. She nibbled on her bottom lip as she heard the echoes of her own orgasmic screams ringing out when he mounted her more traditionally, snorting, huffing, biting at the back of her neck as he filled her with his seed. She remembered her body bathing in the heat of the kiln nearby, upper torso writhing as his head rested between her legs, feasting shamelessly, and groaned aloud as she recalled tending to him in return, urgently rubbing at her own nether regions with a trembling hoof as he pressed his member to the back of her throat and let loose another wave of cum into her waiting, gurgling belly.

She heard a soft chuckle from nearby when she moaned, and raised her head, blinking in the flickering light of the kiln's fire.

The unicorn was lying on the ground near the kiln, resting her head upon her forelimbs with her hind legs rather lewdly spread behind her. She pulled herself slowly upright, stretching and gasping as her back popped pleasantly, and looked towards the source of that laughter.

Her eyes widened.

The earth pony, Lustre Glaze, a name she had demanded to know so that she might cry it out in the heights of her bliss, was seated at his potter's wheel once again. The wheel was in motion, but the clay upon it was not being shaped into a plate or a vase or any kind of functional piece of homeware. What she saw upon it now was a sculpture. A sculpture so intricate she had no idea how any hooves, even those of a master could have produced it, even though right before her eyes she was seeing it happen.

It was a sculpture of two entwined forms. Two ponies, locked together with heads rising up, thrown back in mutual cries of ecstasy. Thus far it was only intact from the waist up, a mere block of clay below, but even as she watched Asha could see the rest of the design being revealed, plucked from the block as though it was already waiting there to be discovered by Lustre's expert touch.

He smiled at her as she stared in awe, and when finally her gaze moved from his creation to the male himself, he spoke in a voice that was more confident than before. Brimming with joy. With relief and wonder and gratitude.

"Y-you were right."

He chuckled again.

"Well, mostly. There's nothing wrong with having to work at an idea to make it worthwhile. There's no reason for me to think of everything I've created as inferior now, just because fresh ideas might not come with the same ease they did when I first discovered my talent. But..."

His eyes flickered from Asha to the sculpture emerging from his hooves, then back again.

"Inspiration? True, genuine inspiration does exist, Asha. And you, dear pony? As beautiful, as wonderful, and every bit as intoxicating as ever; you are inspiration given form."

By Jeeves

Like my stories? Want access to a whole host of writing weeks or even months before it appears on other sites as well as exclusive request days to get stuff written for yourself? Consider supporting me on patreon with rewards from as low as $5 per month! https://www.patreon.com/jeevesroo :D Alternatively, you can throw me a few bucks through my Ko-Fi page.