"He's an Alicorn, and you're..." She struggled to find a delicate way to say it, "...slightly above the typical child-bearing age. It's an unusual situation, to say the least." Heart fidgeted slightly, worried about overstepping. "Look. I know a Zebra... Zecora, in the Everfree... who helped me out when I was pregnant with Hope. It might not be a bad idea to talk to her. Just in case."
Maya nodded. "I know Zecora. We exchange some tricks every now and then. I'll see her about some checkups. About my age, I've kinda been using potions to keep me from hitting 30, probably why I'm not dead." Meanwhile, Dusty was floating a match above the cake, literally lighting over a thousand candles.
Heart breathed a sigh of relief. "Good. I just want you to have a healthy foal." Hope's horn glowed as she began carefully poking her mother in the back of the head with magic. "And if you're lucky, a healthy non-magic foal."
"You know..." Maya rubbed her belly. "Maybe it wouldn't be so bad for the kid to be like their daddy."
"She's a natural born Alicorn is what happened. Destroyed the Crystal Heart and damn near froze the whole Crystal Empire before they figured out how to get her under control."
Overhearing the conversation, without wanting to, Jay stopped eating and seemed to remember something. Bolting to his wagon, he took a while to return, with a rune. The rune had 3 waves and was slightly glowing orange. He gave it to Maya and pointed to where the womb would be. He acted like he had a cramp then waved no with his hoove and returning to his meal.
"Oh!" Maya looked over the rune. "For a stranger? Thanks, dude." Maya turned to Saber. "Hey, @saberscratch88, you okay? You've just kinda been staring all day." "You may consider just letting me run the bar," Dusty said, almost finished with the candles.
"No, actually," he responded. "That was my first performance of me doing anything. Never thought it'd be a singing role though; I would have thought I'd be playing guitar."
Heart sat in a booth, drinking a glass of milk with honey. Beside her, drinking the same out of a spill-proof cup, Hope sat and quietly crumpled and uncrumpled a napkin with her developing magic. After a few minutes, the napkin burst into flames, and Heart Song dropped it into a water glass with a dozen other half-burned napkins and got Hope a new one to play with.
Maya smirked. "Just try not to burn the place down, kiddo." Dusty smiled as he finished lighting the candles. "Make a wish, dear." Maya wasn't normally superstitious, but she did so anyway. She pleaded with some unknown force for the well-being of everypony in the bar, especially her unborn foal. Two failures was enough; it was time to get it right. With that, she breathed deep and exhaled hard, extinguishing all 1,024 candles in one sweep. Dusty magically removed every candle. Maya looked around, informing the patrons, "Free cake!"
Dusty stroked Maya's back. "Maya, you should have first slice." "Eh." Maya dished out Neo's cake before turning and finally noticing the painting. "Holy crap, those are badass."
