Running Free

Lizzy shivered as she had her hands raised above her head, a cool stream of water rushing over her as her trainer, her cousin, sprayed her down with what was little more than a garden hose, showering off the mud caked onto her nude body. She squirmed and squeaked into her brass bit, tugging at the sturdy straps binding her hands as she stood upright, one knee crossing over the other to get Emma to stop blasting her bare pussy with the nippy water as the ponygirl stood in the shower stand. A tall post with 4 armatures, each with a hanging set of cuffs to restrain a mare while washing them down. The post had 4 sets of cleaning supplies, including a soft and rough-bristle sponge, a brush, and soaps and shampoos for each of the four stations. Emma hadn't gotten to the soaps yet, but had had to use that rough-bristle sponge to scrape off some of the more stuck-on mud that had dried during the trot back to the ranch after Lizzy's tumble in the stream, something she still blamed Emma for, even if she had been the one to lose her footing in those rocks.

Her trainer stopping the flow of water got Lizzy to shake out her hair, soaked ponytail flopping back and forth like a rope and scattering water everywhere, getting Emma to sputter and cover her face, earning a little bit of glee for the pony as Emma fetched a washrag and bar of soap.

"Alright, alright. I get it, I deserved that. C'mon, Liz. We've gotta get you cleaned up before lunch. Hold still a bit." Emma chided, her voice generally playful as she began to quickly rub a bar of soap along Lizzy's body. The bar itself had some little granules of pumice to help exfoliate and scrub away, and felt pretty good, like a bristly massage. Lizzy shivered from the cool water and moaned softly into her bit, breathing heavily as Emma focused on particularly sweat-gathering areas, like her armpits, top of her pony boots, and crotch. The boots, for that matter, were fairly water resistant but when liquid did seep in, it slowly ran down and out of a tiny hole just behind Lizzy's heel, provided she lifted and tipped her foot the right way. Handy, if a little awkward for her to figure out at first but she'd gotten the hang of it quickly. Emma had removed the saddle when she'd unbound her, so she finally gets a scrub along her belly and back where the saddle had been encasing her skin. It felt good to be released of the tight leather waistband and more so to have the skin massaged and soothed after a few hours of it being on, tugged each time her hands tried to get away from her hips.

Finally, Emma grabs the hose again and washes her mare off, leaving the stream on more sensitive areas to soothe crop and spank marks, even as Lizzy squirmed and shook, trying to get out of the way. Once done, she hangs the hose nozzle on its hook and grabs a towel, drying off Lizzy's waist before belting on the saddle again and unbinding her cousin's hands one-by-one to reattach them at her waist. She gets close to her mare, body-to-body, and runs a hand down Lizzy's stomach and hooks a finger into the saddle as Lizzy seems to pout into her bit, hoping she would have gotten her hands free at least. "Just because I know you'll probably try something silly with these free. You're still learning." Emma's other hand glides down Lizzy's back and cups a butt cheek, the trainer smiling at her mare as the pony still dripped dry from the shower. "Now, let's get you fed. In you go." Emma gives Lizzy a soft spank and gets out of her way, letting her lead the way into the stable.

The stable where Lizzy would be spending the next few months naked, trained, and treated like a pony at every turn.

The Silverstone Ranch stables were on the older side, some eighty years of service, not all of which were with human ponies, and they were showing their age. The exterior walls had some cracks and the roof was likely due a replacement in a few years, but there weren't any leaks during the rainy season, so it was left alone.

The stable was a large rectangular building with stalls all around the exterior, 12 stalls each with an exterior door to a small fenced-in enclosure which itself could be opened to allow mares access in or out of the stable without going through the main barn doors at one end of the long hall running through the middle of the stable. Each stall had tall 9-foot walls but no immediate roof, the steepled roof of the stable being an extra foot or so above the stalls. The stall walls facing the interior had sturdy steel bars to allow viewing in and out of them but denied easy escape through an open portal of any kind. Additionally, each stall with an adjacent pony stall had open viewing-bars to the neighboring stall, removing any sort of genuine privacy from the ponies. What would a horse need privacy for, after all?

The stall itself was 7x10 feet, longer than it was wide, with hooks and hangers on the exterior wall. As Emma led Lizzy through the little "patio" and through the split-gate door, a set of gates that could be opened up top or both together to allow viewing or access as desired, she found there was already a sturdy hemp lead hanging on the wall with a simple collar on the end of the rope to put around a mare's neck and lead them by, if a bridle wasn't handy or convenient to fit them in.

Lizzy was, however, still bitted, saddled, and booted, so there was no need for it right now. The mare's ponyboots clopped on wooden floorboards and she looked down at the floor to see the back half of the stall was covered in slatted flooring, with a good inch between each slat while the front half, closer to the inside of the stable, was solid concrete. Emma sees the confusion on her mare's face and "helpfully" informs her what it did.

"Just in case you're in for the night and need to relieve yourself, Liz. A lot easier to clean when you just spray it down and it drains into a communal tank beneath the stable, y'know?"

Lizzy didn't know and was horrified that she was expected to use her own "home" as a bathroom, but the bit in her mouth denied any protest. She shook and pulled but Emma didn't seem concerned at the moment. Instead, she pulled her mare to the sliding gate on the interior access wall of the stable and slid it open, pulling Lizzy out into the broad "hallway" central to the stable. Looking towards the center of the building, as Lizzy's stall was in the far corner of the stable, she saw a half dozen other naked girls and about as many trainers loitering nearby as lunch time was already underway. Each pony was eating out of a large canvas bag of some sort, some bags being held by their trainer, some bags set on a raised "trough" that demanded they bend almost halfway over to eat from, and some being fed from their trainer's hand. It seemed... almost jovial, as trainers chatted freely and the mares seemed calm, even if most were blushing wildly at Lizzy and Emma's arrival.

"Hey! It's the new trainer, hiya Em!" One trainer said, cheerfully turning to the newcomers as she sets her mare's feedbag on the trough, earning a little whine from the dark-skinned mare but she obediently bends over to keep eating. Lizzy blushed upon seeing a set of weights attached to that mare's labia, jingling gently as she moved about...

"Hey Sam. How's Choccy doing? Still on the routine, I see." Emma said, giving the friendly dirty-blonde trainer a hug as the two looked at the dark-skinned mare.

"Yeah... she keeps on having issues with obedience and getting those knees up. Frankly embarrassing for a second-year. But she'll learn eventually. What about this treat though, look at those knockers!" Sam says, turning to regard the naked and freshly-washed Lucky Lizzy as the tanned blonde blushes, looking away and drooling in two ways...

"Yep! This is Lucky Lizzy, my new mare! I know I'm late getting her here, so be nice, she's past the hazing period." Emma says, likely joking as she hands the reins over to Sam and goes to get one of the feed bags, coming back shortly as the rest of the trainers set their mares to eat and gather around the new, tall, buxom blonde.

"She's never gonna want to run with those things..."

"Cherry's got a proper replacement, at least. She'll be a treat after race days!"

"Yeah, if she competes at all... she probably won't run for the first few-"

"If at all! Bet she's a show-pony. Look at her! Bright blue eyes, perky ass, big tit-"

"Alright, alright, enough you lot!" Emma says, pushing through the crowd as they fawn over, but don't touch, Emma's mare. She rests the canvas feed bag on her waist as she pries the reins out of Sam's hands and addresses her compatriots. "Firstly, I think she's bigger than Cherry Pie, but then again it's only by a little bit so it barely matters, and Cherry's were a bit saggier, while Lizzy here is nice and perky. Judges love a perky pony. Second, she's my charioteer and will be running in the first week of competition for the rookie circuit. If she sticks around, we'll be running circles around you all next year!" She smiles as she turns to regard Lizzy, who was presently blushing madly, drooling all over her chin and chest, and desperately trying to cross her legs to hide how wet she was down there too. "And lastly... she's not gonna be a delight for any race winners, since she's never coming in last. Count on it!"

The other trainers scoff and tease, but slowly fade back to let the new trainer feed her pony. Lizzy, however, is turning over the implications of that phrase... what did Emma mean "delight for race winners" and why did it earn such a response from the other trainers?

Emma pulls Lizzy away from the bulk of the crowd to a trough to the side and sets the feed bag down before working on the bit in her mouth, unclipping one side so the brass bit came away and finally freed Lizzy's mouth. She gasped and panted quietly, working her jaw as Emma spoke quietly yet firmly.

"This is your feeding time, Liz. It's not an excuse to be speaking properly, but I won't punish you badly if you do... you were getting wet again from the attention, weren't you?" She reaches down, brushing a hand along Lizzy's thigh, collecting some leaked fluids and showing them off to make her mare blush.

Lizzy, shamefully, nodded and looked away, her hands clenching at her hips as those were still bound. "I... it... there were a lot of them... and they were all looking at me..." she whimpers.

Emma brushes Lizzy's hair out of her face, still wet from the shower as she hadn't bothered trying to dry her through the head harness, instead letting her pony air-dry. "That's what they do. But remember, you're not... well, it's not a sexual thing for them. Probably. You're just a-"

"Just a pony..." Lizzy breathed, panting at the words as they came from her mouth.

Emma paused, nodding. "That's right. Good girl. Come on, let's get you fed, I'm sure you're starving."

She turns and opens the draw strings to the feed bag, revealing a fairly unflattering mix of food in the bag. Inside was a jumble of dried meats, some oats and nuts, dried fruits, and fresh vegetables all stirred together in an unimpressive fashion. Lizzy paused as she looked at the "food." She gave Emma a look.

The trainer smiled weakly. "It's extremely nutritious, well-balanced, and is ideal for most mares. Some get specialty diets, especially the show-ponies where every pound counts, but for running mares... this stuff is perfect. Don't be shy. Give it a try before you judge."

Lizzy, still hesitant, turned and looked down at the bag for a moment, then around for a set of plates and a spoon, and then her eyes stopped on the other half-dozen ponies, like her, bent at the waist with arms bound, boots clopping softly as they maintained balance, heads stuffed in their feed bags and some even swaying their behinds to "wag" their tails...

Oh... she thought. She gave Emma one last glance before sucking in a breath and bending over. She winced as her plugged bottom tightened, the metal bulb in her rectum, pressing against her sphincter from inside, was growing extremely sore from being in for so long, but that wasn't her primary concern. Her main concern was a fresh drop of pussy juice running down her thigh as her face pressed into the bag, smelling quite sweet thanks to the dried apricots and dates but the fact that a bunch of people were seeing her act like this... restrained and naked, shaved, bound... it was enough to make an exhibitionist swoon.

Lizzy opens her mouth and gathers up her first clumsy bite of feed, most of it spilling out of her mouth but what she does keep as she stands upright to chew is... fine? Oats, dried meats like jerky, and some dried fruit isn't a stellar combination, the flavors not really balancing... Lizzy chewed slowly, trying to decide if she could enjoy it. She... didn't hate it? She might not have minded any of the components on their own or prepared differently, but like this...?

Emma brushes her hand comfortingly along Lizzy's back as she watches her cousin eat, her own stomach growling a bit. Trainers ate after their mares went out to graze, so she'd get her lunch soon. She leans in, swiping a small piece of lettuce stuck to Lizzy's cheek and feeds it to her. Lizzy blushes at the fact that she accepts the bite before glancing away and deciding she'd really rather not know and see people were staring at her, instead following suit on the other mares and stuffing her head into the big feed bag and keeping her head down, leaning her hip into Emma to help keep balance as she ate and as her trainer began chatting. Lizzy couldn't hear the other trainers well from in here, so she really only got Emma's side of things.

"No, no, she fell in the stream... I was showing her why not to go unsupervised. Yeah, she liked the shower. Wait, what? What did Izzy say? Oh! W-well... yeah, she did squirt all over! It was a mess! I'll make it up to her later. No, not like that, but like, I'll help her tidy up and stuff, perv. Yeah-yeah, go on, get your skinny ass out of here and get your mare to pasture. Love you too!"

Lizzy was sweltering in the feed, sweating and drooling below the waist as she half-listened to the conversation, mostly about her, mostly about how embarrassing today had been. Regardless, it seemed the other trainers were friendly even if they barely treated Lizzy as human and more like a pony. Maybe that was why her body refused to obey and constantly felt arousal.

Finally finishing off her feed, the mare found her mouth dry beyond belief and her stomach full. She decided that the food was acceptable but certainly not world-class. She turns to Emma who gently pulls her along, the brass bit still in her trainer's hand as she gets led to a flowing-water trough, keeping fresh water circulating and available to the mares. "Have a nice drink, freshen up, and then we'll go get you out to pasture." The pony did as she was told and, frankly, all but dunked her head into the water, lapping and slurping greedily as she really needed some fresh fluids. Once satisfied, the bit went back in and Emma led her mare by the reins out of the stable and into the afternoon sunshine.

Other trainers and ponies were all meandering away from feeding time and towards the pasture, where the two had walked by earlier. A young-looking freckled redhead was standing by a big gate to the pasture with a checklist and a straw hat, smiling at each trainer as they checked in their mares.

"Chocolate Bomb, Young Pine, Raunchy Runner... oh, she's new, hi Em!" She said, waving her pen at the blue-haired girl as the two approached. "Miss Silverstone said you were coming on as a trainer this year. Congratulations! No more pasture duty for you, huh?" She teased. Emma had spent the last two of her three years as a stable hand working with this girl, sharing their duties and the ranch's bunkhouse as stable hands did.

"Thanks Polly, it's been a rush... and yeah, my mare. This is Lizzy. Lucky Lizzy." Emma says, proudly pushing her nude cousin in front of her to show her off.

Polly smiles as she jots down the name on her sheet and gestures into the pasture. "Go ahead and take the reins off, I'll keep them here and stuff. You go enjoy lunch. Cooks made barbeque today! It's in the chow hall!"

Emma lets out a little "ooh" as she unclips the reins and gives Lizzy a swat on the ass, making her mare tense up from the surprise and whimper as her muscles clench on the steel plug in her bottom. "Thanks Polly, hope you ate double. Don't be afraid to use the prod if Liz goes running off, and keep her away from water, she's unsteady on her hooves still!"

The redhead nods, jotting down "Shock - approved, water - risky" beneath Lizzy's name on her form and waves farewell before turning to Lizzy. The tall, booted blonde watches as Emma walks off, joining a trio of other trainers and heading to the ranch house as the freckled girl smiles at her.

"Hiya pony! This is your first time out here, so just be a good girl and I won't have to get mister Zappy out, alright?" Polly says, gesturing with her clipboard towards a small "camp."

Lizzy blushed as she was treated like a child as she looked over to see a small pop-up tent with a table, cooler, folding lawn chair, and a bright red cattle prod resting against a strange sort of wooden furniture. It was a vertical post with a diamond-shaped "seat" on top, with metal cuffs near the bottom of the post. She gives the innocent-looking redhead another look and nods, stepping away carefully as she gets some "free time" out in the field...