Salvation | Rebirth

Wild didn’t think he was an especially good kisser, but Artful was, surprisingly, enjoying it, moaning ever so slightly as Wild planted a kiss, the volume of the said moans changing depending on where he did it. Cheeks, of course, lips, and neck too. Along the jawline, right on the throat, and just above or below the respective lips. However, Wild knew not to go any lower, and Artful was likewise aware of the current restrictions. Both of them knew that getting too much into it when in public was not what either of them wanted. Wild specifically did his best to minimize noise, so he consciously didn’t suck on Artful’s face or anywhere else. While the noises he could produce otherwise would be quite enjoyable or, at least, a bit funny, he didn’t exactly want to attract any serious amount of attention to what they were doing. Ponies would likely pay it no mind, open as they were about this kind of stuff, but Wild didn’t want to chance it. Of course, if he wanted no one to notice what they were doing, he wouldn’t be doing it, so he willingly if not entirely knowingly disregarded the possible consequences of his current actions. Kissing, he found, was much more important.

Wild would never admit it out loud, but when Swingblade came to them and told them about his... sexual adventures, it got Wild somewhat excited. Not that he wanted to do it with Swingblade or whomever he went to bed with, but just generally speaking. Partially, it was also a desire to do something else, something that would direct his attention away from how the day had gone for him.

And yet, despite not wanting to get too excited, Wild found himself feeling the heat radiating off his face and between his rear legs. Before it got too much, however, he separated with a wordless signal for the two of them to stop. Both were breathing a bit hard, the red in their cheeks glaringly obvious. Wild liked what he was seeing, the flustered enjoyment Artful was displaying on his face and in his body language.

“We should... do more in private,” Wild said, “When we are... home.”

“Yeah,” Artful readily agreed, then licked his lips, “I’m looking forward to that.”

Wild could still scarcely believe he had a boyfriend, a lover. They hadn’t been together for long, yet he already had trouble imagining his life without Artful, both when it came to physical pleasures and his mental support and acceptance. Wild was perfectly aware that he only needed to be willing to pay in order to get the benefits of physical interaction, and some ponies would likely let him do them for free, but there was quite a lot special about Artful specifically. To Wild, it had seemed that they had been through thick and thin already despite how little time had passed, and the two had come out of it closer together. Artful knew some of Wild’s secrets, yet he accepted him despite them. Not only accepted him, but let him close, so close that they had already been intimate more than once, and this sort of intimacy was something Wild thought Artful would not have let happen without putting a good amount of trust in Wild, trust that Wild had, apparently, proven worthy of.

Love, Wild was finding out, was a beautiful thing.

“You are good for me,” Wild admitted it, his voice quiet yet certain. He decided not to add ‘too’ before ‘good’. He needed to accept that love wasn’t about deserving. At least, that was what he was hearing from both Luna and Artful, and they seemed to be right about it.

“Mmm-hm,” Artful wordlessly nodded, smile on his face and in his eyes.

“I am... glad you are still... with me,” Wild said, haltingly, hating the fact that he was about to ruin the easy atmosphere between the two of them, “After... today.”

Wild might know that love wasn’t about deserving, but love was not endless either. He was perfectly aware that if he were to do something particularly bad, no one would want him, and for a good reason. He wasn’t even sure Artful would want him if he learned a few more facts about Wild, something more than just his circumstances of birth. However, as much as Wild wanted to reveal those secrets and see if the growing love Artful held for Wild would hold, he didn’t want to face the possibility that it might just not. Princess Luna had accepted Wild despite all that he had done, and Wild was certainly not sorry for what he had done in his pre-death quest for revenge, but Princess Luna had many centuries over Artful, and she had lived a life far different to many ponies, so her perspective was certainly not the same one Artful had. While she had accepted Wild, Wild feared Artful would not find it in him to stay after learning that Wild had killed and had greatly enjoyed doing so.

Wild hated his thoughts for going in that direction, for souring the mood completely, for bringing up future problems that he had, so far, been doing his best to ignore. However, he couldn’t control what he thought or felt, he could only control what he did about it.

Perhaps he would tell Artful the whole terrible truth, reveal more of his life willingly than ever before, and... he would then face the consequences of that decision proudly. However, that day would be in the future, for he was certainly not proud right there and then.

“Nothing that happened today made me rethink about being with you,” Artful told him, pulling him out of his thoughts, “As I said, you just... you’re just more interesting. You have... different perspectives, all that stuff. Where you were born, that’s just, like... I’m not saying it doesn’t matter, but it’s not everything either. Even if it’s, you know, kinda crazy, from my perspective, that is.”

Wild couldn’t help but chuckle at it.

“It must be odd to hear that I am from a different world,” Wild said, “And that... it was predicted by someone... thousands of years ago.”

“Well, you’re still you, so...” Artful shrugged, “I’m not gonna make a big deal out of it.”

“That’s good,” Wild slumped a little in relief. It wasn’t like Artful changed his mind since their initial talks after the Royal Art Gallery, but it was nice to hear Artful’s honesty once more. Just to reassure himself that he wasn’t dreaming. He had already discreetly pinched himself a couple times, just in case. At least it wasn’t one of his odd dreams about his old world. Those were far from his favorites.

In a short while, Wild and Artful changed their respective positions on the bench. Now Wild was lying half on top of Artful, ruffling his mane and hugging him from behind. Wild then had an idea. With Artful’s permission, he used his magical hands to massage him. It wasn’t like he knew all that much about how to do a massage, but Artful seemed to enjoy it.

“Just a bit lower- oh, perfect,” Artful directed him. Wild was gentle, of course, using his fingers as best as he could. He had a bizarre thought that doing this to Artful felt kind of like entertaining an overgrown cat. Artful didn’t purr, but he did hum in vaguely the same way.

Wild caught himself a few times when his hands drifted slightly too low. Some of his thoughts, he had to admit, were far from innocent. As far as Wild was concerned, Artful deserved all the pleasure that Wild could provide. Of course, there was the regular companionship and physical presence in general. However, there was more that he could do, and more that he was willing and desiring to do. Last time Wild used his hands to provide pleasure, well... that was rather memorable, and he wasn’t at all against doing it again. Not once, not twice, but as many times as Artful was willing to accept it. To hear Artful’s noises of appreciation, Wild would do quite a lot, and certainly more than he had ever expected himself to be comfortable with before the two got together.

As Wild worked his way over Artful’s upper half of the body, he thought about how much more comfortable he had grown with physical contact compared even to a month ago. For a long time, he had thought that he would never again be comfortable with anyone ever touching him, but he was glad to have been proven wrong. First, of course, was Princess Luna - she had given him enough hugs that he could now accept them more or less easily, at least from people he knew and trusted. She had helped him grow accustomed to physical contact. Of course, Doctor Fay had some advice as well, and she had facilitated perhaps his biggest leap, giving him an option to receive a massage in a safe environment from ponies that could be trusted. This step was perhaps what allowed him to actually accept Artful’s advances and reciprocate them.

Wild then, shortly after, experienced sex for the first time. Safe, with someone he trusted, someone he liked, and someone that liked him in return. What had happened to him back in his world, in his old body... He knew what happened, of course, and he still carried memories of it, but his old body disappeared at best or rotted away in a lake at worst. Point was, it was no longer his, so anything attached to it, physically or psychologically, was gone too. Or mostly gone. Of course, it also helped that the scars that had somehow appeared on his new body were now also gone, every single one of them, and that... it made Wild feel clean. It made him feel like he was actually born anew, in a certain way. And so, because of that, he allowed himself to indulge in something that he had pushed away for what seemed like the longest time.

Sex did not disappoint. There was no pain or fear or bad stenches or anything else. Of course, it wasn’t exactly clean, and it certainly did smell a certain way, but none of it was exactly... bad. It was a real experience, with highs and lows, and it was something Wild could see himself doing again. Most importantly, now that he had someone he could trust with such intimacy, the experience had proven to be worth the initial discomfort at the idea.

All of this culminated in today, when Wild was comfortable enough to be casually intimately close to someone else. He could not see his past self being so easy with touching any other person, friend or lover or neither. This... felt like progress.

After a while, the group had gathered together again. Precision and Pebbles, Lina, Swingblade, Artful, and Wild, everyone was ready to go back home. Precision and Pebbles had relatively the same expression and mood that Swingblade had, so Wild could guess what they had been up to. Lina, meanwhile, had a bulging bag full of... sports equipment, if Wild was seeing it right?

“Gotta get my body in shape,” she declared once everyone noticed what she was carrying. Wild idly noted that her limbs seemed less wobbly than before, “Now that I can actually walk again, I’m not gonna waste that.”

Wild nodded to that. He very much appreciated his well-trained body, the ease with which he could move. He had never experienced any true form of disability, at least as far as he knew, but he could still imagine the pain of not being able to move well or at all. It hadn’t been all that long since he was choking on air after running for maybe a hundred meters. He still distinctly remembered the pain and discomfort that he had had to go through to get to where he was now. He remembered the weakness in his limbs before his death, the way they used to shake with the barest of efforts, the way hunger gnawed at him sometimes, eating him from within, taking away his strength and endurance, both physical and mental.

Wild was very glad he had not managed to fall back to that ever since he gained his new body. He ate well, he rested properly, and he didn’t have to be ever-vigilant, certainly not to the extent he had had to when he was at the end of his human life. Despite everything he had gone through in his new life, he could definitely say that, overall, on average, in general, his life had been less stressful than before. Well, perhaps it wasn’t one hundred percent true in every way, but it was true enough.

With the group assembled, it was soon time for them to return to the train station and board the train back to Ponyville. Not long after everyone settled down, the train began moving with a slight jolt. The atmosphere was quiet and peaceful, and Wild relaxed into his seat. This time, Artful was on top of him, though Artful could not do a massage if he tried. Perhaps he could learn - Wild still remembered how good it felt to be massaged at that Ponyville spa place, so it was clearly possible for someone to learn how to use hooves to do a massage.

Whatever the case was, Wild decided to simply let the rhythmic noise of the train let him drift into a half-asleep state until they reached Ponyville. However, his plan was interrupted when the train emerged from the tunnel not far from Canterlot. The passengers vocalized their awe at the sunset, and Wild observed as the sun quickly moved across the sky, quickly getting closer and closer to the horizon line. The shadows lengthened, and the sky shifted from blue to orange to red. The sun seemed to slow down a little at the very end, and then the moon was rising. The shadows deepened yet shortened, the sky turning dark, and the stars twinkled into existence. Subdued lights turned on inside the train cart, and the entire atmosphere seemed to change.

Wild gazed at the starlit sky, realizing that he could see so much more of it than back on Earth. Of course, that fact wasn’t new, yet it was amazing all the same. Light pollution was almost non-existent in Equestria, at least outside of major cities, and this allowed the night to display its beauty to all that wanted to see it.

“Where I came from,” Wild spoke quietly to Artful, “The sun setting is longer. And... it is not the sun that moves. The... planet spins, making it look like the sun moves.”

He didn’t really know why he revealed this fact, but it was perhaps one of the nicer things he could share, and so he did. He was fairly sure it wasn’t due to any sort of guilt about hiding his past from Artful. Probably. Either way, having that ability to share such simple facts made him feel... freer, somewhat. Of course, he could have told Luna many things about his old world, but sharing them with Artful was... different, in a way. It wasn’t something he could really explain, and yet there he was, speaking of a place he... well, perhaps he didn’t hate the planet Earth, for all that he disliked the dominant inhabitants. After all, he was very aware that nature could be and was beautiful. So, sharing his observation of it with Artful was like... perhaps sharing something that he liked.

Wild didn’t think it made a whole lot of sense, but he accepted his own willingness to share what he would have previously kept hidden. After all, every little fact he knew about his old world hardly mattered in the new one. If he let himself forget that everything worked very differently now, there was a possibility for him to stumble and thus raise questions that he didn’t want to answer. The best he could truly do was accept the new reality, and that was really it.

“That sounds amazing,” Artful commented, and Wild smiled slightly at the wonder in his voice, “It’d be nice if sunsets were longer. What about sunrises? Are they also longer?”

“Yes,” Wild nodded, then swallowed, “They are... beautiful.”

Wild couldn’t say he was a person who would stop everything he was doing just to observe the sunrise and sunset every day, considering that it was rare that he had the time and the, perhaps, mental state to just let himself relax and sit in one place for something that happened every single day regardless of his actions. However, the idea sounded... nice. Perhaps he could do something like that with Artful. All by himself, he didn’t really want it, but with someone by his side? That sounded far more appealing. Maybe he could even make it romantic, at least sometimes.

It was a thought that he decided to leave for later, to explore it fully when his days were less... exciting.

For now, all Wild was looking forward to was taking a shower and then falling asleep next to Artful.