//------------------------------// // Bark is Gross // Story: Rarity's Colt: A New Life // by Mocha Star //------------------------------// Snickers held the now empty bowl in his hooves, looking at the water he’d filled it with. His reflection rippled when he looked at it and then smirked. “Hey, how’ve you been? Lookin’ good,” he brought the bowl to his lips and sipped some water. “Well, that’s not bad; but I think you can kiss better than that.” He giggled to himself and stepped away from the water source several paces, then he dumped the water over his head with a blubbering grumble. He rubbed his hooves through the mane on his head and around his ears. “Who needs a bath when I have an empty fruit bowl that I got after threatening the guy who apparently sent me here. At least it was yummy and healthy. “I guess that means I’ll be rescued soon, since I only have a little food and need so much more than a bowl of fruit. And company, before I have real conversation with my reflection; not sure I won’t make out with myself though,” he laughed as he filled the bowl again and returned to the spot and washed his head while making sure to wet his neck for a cleaning. He finished after four more bowlfull’s and several minutes later before he returned to the hammock and rested. “Best thing about this crap is every day is a lazy day…” Snickers grimaced as a small cramp lightly pinched his insides. “Ugh, except for the fact I need to survive by eating,” he rolled his eyes sardonically. “Damned, stupid... DNA and carbon based life forms,” he grumbled getting up and dragging his hooves, “gotta consume energy to keep producing viable cells. Could’a gone RNA and silicone based, but no, the multiverse had to make DNA it’s prime example for life,” he smirked. “I miss that lunk head,” he said, picking up his hooves and trotting into the forested area past his little clearing and perceived safe haven. He spent two hours going from his camp, out for a minute to scrounge for supplies, then back in every direction on a navigational mandala he’d trained with as a human youth until he was finally done. “That’s it, no more walking around. If anypony’s gonna find me, they’re gonna have to be smarter than my six year old butt.  “God, I hope to see seven,” he looked at the bowl he’d been gifted and sighed, “about two pounds of berries that didn’t make my lips tingle, some edible sticks and branches that I came across, and one rabbit I stomped on when it came to steal my berries. I guess starting with meat would be wisest. “I have no idea what to do with it, though. Hey, ghost fucks?” Snickers shouted to the canopy, “Beam some of that ‘how to cook food’ shit into my brain like you did how to swim and build a little shelter.” He looked at the rabbit and was somewhat pleased he stomped it’s head and not the center or had simply crippled it. He had a chance for a meal on the fire he’d barely kept alive, using wet sticks and old leaves made a lot of smoke, he quickly learned. It had raised his hopes for a moment until the forest created a breeze that scattered the smoke among the treetops, preventing him from creating a smoke signal for help. He nudged the rabbit and looked at the canopy. “Well?” He asked again, softer. “Well, screw you too, then!” He leaned down and bit the rabbit’s leg while placing a forehoof on it’s side before pulling and twisting, jerking his head every so often as the sound and feel of bones breaking and skin tearing rattled his senses. He fell back and gagged, spitting the brown fur from his mouth while rushing to the brook to slurp some water. He swished his mouth backtracking to his wash area and spat it out with a final spit. “Fuck! Fucking… fuck! I can’t do anything out here,” he kicked some muddy earth against a tree and growled at it, fuming for a moment before he charged the marked tree and reared up, scratching at the bark and shouting incoherently. “Gah! Fuck,” he shouted when pain sparked in his hoof. He landed with a yelp and felt his eyes watering, glared at the tree that seemed to mock him, then turned and gave the best buck three and a half hooves could afford him, regretting it when he couldn’t hold his weight as well as he thought and, while loosening several leaves, sent himself forward a body length and chin first into the dead leaves and against an exposed root he had been trying to avoid. Sniffling, Snickers stood up and tried to put weight on his injured left forehoof. “Fu… damn it,” he whimpered and hobbled slowly back to the side of his fire and sat down. He looked against the tree he’d fallen asleep against the previous night and finally noticed a sharpened rock he’d intended to use as a knife. Snickering at himself, he scooted close to it and picked it up with his lips. Carefully, he cleaned his hoof off from the muck and gunk of two days in the forest had gifted him with, then pouted. “I wanna my mom, Rarity. She’d know how to fix this,” he said looking at the crack in his hoof wall with a splinter sticking in his frog.  He leaned his foreleg against his hind leg for balance and bit the splinter to give it a tug and wash out the dirt when sharp pain shot through his hoof to his elbow. He yelped and snapped back, looking at the wood in his hoof before tears started to fall again. He lay on his side and cried, holding his injured hoof to his chest and whispering prayers for salvation in pony form. The rest of the day, and the next, were spent scrounging for survival near his area that he was clearing just by being there. Three legs wasn’t the best for him and most of his energy was spent trying to pull things he could have simply bit and walked with. The dark dankness of the forest floor wasn’t helping his mood or mentality at all, either. Add to that the scent of blood from the rabbit he’d butchered and no small critter would near him, because all critters could speak the same language if they ate nuts or seeds, not one would listen to him when he asked for help. They didn’t send word to a pony named Fluttershy, they didn’t bring him food or company, and by the fourth day, Snickers had begun to lose his pony mind to loneliness. … Standing in a new area designated as his latrine four steps to the left of the previous one he’d filled, Snickers groaned and pushed something more fibrous than anything he’d every excreted out of his body, thanks to the supplemental diet he’d been eating over the past days. Each day dragged into the next, each day brought the same primal terrors every few hours of the day and all night every night; as though something would creep around his area. Sometimes he’d smell something that would put him on edge and send him leaping for the fire and throwing on more and more burnable things, even in the middle of the night. No time was safe as was the nature of true untamed nature. And he resisted the desire to pick a new direction and walk until he was found, he was smarter than that now.  Somepony would find him, any hour would be the hour of his salvation. None was looked to pass faster than the one he was currently ending, though. “Grrrrk, c’mon, ah, ow, ow, ow… fuck, if this is what giving birth is like; then I’m -ow, ow, ow- gonna give flowers, prayers, and good wishes to every mare giving birth in Ponyville, then,” he felt his knees tremble as the end neared, “I’m gonna donate ten percent of my allowance to maternaty wards for the whole next… y-ear,” he nickered loudly and it turned into a whiney that echoed, and then sighed when he heard a wet thunk by his rear hooves and felt better than he had since his bowl of fruit wake up. He reluctantly turned to look at his accomplishment with worry at any damage it might have done to his anus, and a sense of pride at a story he’d tell for the rest of his life… in the right conditions. “Holy shit,” he said with wide eyes looking at what lay in the ground, “that’s gotta be as long as my elbow to hoof and weigh six pounds…” he estimated on the spot with a mix of emotions. He lifted his injured hoof, lashed heavily with string from vines to keep the crack sealed from getting any worse than he’d made it trying to ‘tough it out’, when the still warm log moved. Snickers froze in place, staring at it and wondering if he was imagining it again. “No, not the first time I’ve had hallucinations here, won’t be the last; especially if I’m not res-” he stepped back when it moved again and expanded. “What… the…” he whispered and moved back on three legs another set of paces.  Snickers stared for a few more seconds before looking away. “Nope, just losing your fucking mind, Snickers. Don’t look at it, it’s just in your head and it was a big one so there’s no reason to,” he looked at it again and his stomach clenched and he retched into his mouth. He made eye contact with a newborn timber wolf and his anus clenched, the stinging didn’t rate on his what-the-fuck meter as the pup blinked it green eyes at him. Snickers stumbled to the side and blinked hard to make sure he was seeing what his brain told him it was seeing, and when it was confirmed, Snickers felt his body starting the process of vomiting. “No,” he told himself, “gotta keep it together. This is a nightmare and maybe I’m getting fucked by a bear and this is my dream telling me that I’m full of shit for being so unbearable,” he chuckled and shook his head.  “No, fuck… just,” he noticed the pup crawling away and hesitated before choosing whether to follow it, or return to his camp and write it off as a huge dump combined with isolation making him delarious. He chose to follow the pup and sneered at what he saw. “Gross,” he said, watching the pup chewing some of his old, much more normally sized, horse apples.  The pup sniffed the air and looked back, the green in its eyes changing slightly to have a yellowish color tinted around the edges. It smiled as a canine made of wood could and yapped twice at Snickers before turning back to it’s endless buffet of offerings. Snickers moved to a tree and leaned against it, watching with awe at the life he’d created. “Damn, I’m gonna be so broke next year.” … Hours later, and after a poor excuse for a bath for Pup, Snickers sat by a tree at the edge of the fire’s light, unable to pull his timber wolf closer to the fire without it whining and beginning to fall apart. Snickers, never having seen or heard of the regenerative properties of the creatures, was terrified he was killing his pup and only source of companionship, so there they sat, cool in the cold forest in the protective light given off by one of the most wonderful and horrible things in existence; depending on who you ask, of course. Holding the wolf between his forelegs, leaning over it like a careful parent, Snickers watched the fire dance and glanced down to see it sleeping with little twigs it had for ears twitching every so often.  “Okay Pup, how the hell did you come out of me? What am I gonna do with you? How can I explain you to anypony? What about a name? How long will you live? Are you gonna eat me? Is this how your kind reproduce, and once you’re out of me your pack shows up to reclaim you and feasts on me?” Snickers began to tremble as the fear of a new night began eating away at his senses. “Do you just plop out of growed up ponies and they don’t talk about it because it’s embarrassing, or maybe they don’t know. Maybe I’m the first to stay around long enough because nopony else would check their shit for bragging rights… yeah, no. Last week, Diamond Tiara said she dropped a huge one after a wedding last year. “She ate for almost the whole day because it was so good and she wanted to talk to this one filly but was too nervous, so she nervous ate. The fillies started talking about their biggest poops after that and I was glad they were in Sweetie’s room and I was in mine so I could shut the door and bury my head under my pillow until they came to ask me if I wanted to join in talking about personal stuff.” Snickers looked down and met eyes with the pup. “You like that story?” He asked, getting no response besides a twiggy ear twitch. “Well, you’re a good listener and you’re gonna help time go by so much faster now for me. And I don’t need a latrine as badly with your… dietary needs, do I now?” The pup lay back down and licked a green vine of a tongue against Snickers’ hind leg. “Hey, that tickles, don’t do that.” Snickers giggled and the wooden pup looked up curiously at him, as though to ask ‘what is that noise and what are you doing’? “Oh, don’t look at me like that; you’re good, just don’t lick me anymore.” The pup cocked its head, it’s eyes blinking out and back on in a split second, then he barked and started panting. “Ugh,” Snickers gagged and turned his face, “that’s the most rotten stench I’ve ever smelled. What did you… oh, yeah,” he chuckled when he remembered the pups gorging on his droppings.  “Well, I’m gonna have to find a way to work with you to smell less horrible, darling. It’s simply atrocious; how you smell can dry wet paint, only for it to crack into dust.” Snickers pet the pup and yelped with his mouth closed, getting its attention. It looked at the injured hoof curiously, as seemed to be its only consistent act at the moment. “Don’t worry, just a little ‘plinter, I’ll be fine when I’m rescued.” It looked at the hoof and sniffed at it, even thought Snickers kept it out of reach. “What, you wanna smell it? Check me over?” Snickers lowered his foreleg and turned his hoof frog up so it could be sniffed to the pups content. Its vine tongue licked out quickly and passed over the splinter, like it was being tasted. “Ouchie, no! Bad, don’t bite the hoof that feeds you!” Pup swallowed and let its tongue loll from its mouth as it began panting again; not a care in the world. “Why did I show a mutant turd dog my owie? What if I get some kinda poop-itis-otis...ondria that’s highly infectious, what would I do until I get rescued, or would I have to cut off my own foreleg to stop the infection?” He whimpered and looked at his hoof, staring at where the splinter had been. Instead, now there was a divot an inch deep and tender to the open air. “Well, shit. That looks horrible,” he frowned and pointed his hoof at Pup. “Look what you did?! You might have cost me my--” Pup leapt and bit Snickers’ hoof and held on while Snickers screamed and fell back, the sense of impending doom scrambled his senses and he leaned over to bite Pup on the back of his wooden leg. Pup yelped and whimpered, releasing his grip from Snickers and getting a firm kick off the colt into the tree they were leaning against, shattering into its component pieces. Snickers crawled away towards the fire and curled beside it shivering. He leaned down to munch on dead leaves and spit them out. “Ugh, tastes like horse-shit… duh. Fuck! Wh-wh-what the f-f-fuck?” he asked himself and looked at his hoof, expecting blood and bitemarks. Still trembling from the adrenaline, Snickers stared at the thick amber sap unevenly spread across the underside of his hoof. It had packed his open wound and soaked the string holding his hoof crack together. His eyes went to the area he’d shattered Pup and then back to his hoof. “Oh, no.” He got up and stepped closer to the remains on three legs, keeping the curious one off the ground. “Pup,” his heart ached as he looked at what could have been the animal, then his eyes darted around as he tried to identify anything that would, possibly, help him reconstruct his creation.  He felt his mouth go dry as he realized he may have to eat the detritus in the area and his bottom lip quivered. “Oh, Pup… I’m so sorry. I can’t eat you and go through that again, it just hurt too much to push you out,” he rubbed his fetlock under his eye to wipe a phantom tear, “I sound like some awful parent, but I just can’t go through it again with you, or ever.” Snickers lowered his head and tears finally fell from his eyes. He rested his head against the trunk of the tree and wept quietly, quietly enough that he heard rustling under himself. He opened his eyes, fearful of a snake, or some other deadly creature that haunted his every night; instead, Snickers watched as Pup reformed before his eyes.  “Pup? Pup! You’re alive, and you don’t stink,” he hugged the timber wolf with his good foreleg and laughed loudly, somewhat deliriously, at the last minute in comparison with his overall time lost in the forest. “With luck like mine, I’m expecting a meteor to fall in the fire and set us both on fire. Fire, Pup; and we’ll burn the forest to the ground, then we’ll be found and get back to life like it was, only I’ll have you by my side. “And I’ll teach you to eat not shit, and keep crazy scientists from taking you apart in some secret lab, and how to roll over! Oh,” he retook his place by the tree from before with a happy Pup lying beside him, “I’ve always wanted a quadrupedal pet. I heard of cats being pets back home, home, but most creatures don’t do too well off their home planet. “What I got was a creature like you, only more meat and less twig,” Snickers chuckled shortly, “not that I’m saying your twig is anything to laugh at, bud. Shit, are you a girl or boy? Do you even have a gender, or will you get pregnant at all? How the fuck did you even get in me in the first place? “Wait, I had a six legged pet! That’s what I was gonna say, yeah. It crapped every eight hours and six minutes as long as it ate something solid, and it ate leftovers that we didn’t want. It sucked, because when it was five I was nine Sol rev’s old, and we had to kill him to pay our rent and buy a month’s rations. “They don’t have that here, Pup, but if I find out they do, then I’ll come back here and hide with you, as long as you’re with me, I’ll never be alone, right? I mean, you’re made of sticks, and other shit. You grow big enough and you can hunt for me, or maybe learn to smell leaves I can turn into a great salad. “Mmm, salad with nuts, fish, an egg, red wine vinaigrette, Mom, Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo, Apple Bloom,” he licked his lips and leaned against the tree, “all of us eating and talking, with Silver Spoon eating like little miss perfect and Diamond Tiara eating like a little lady because Rarity’s with us. But, as soon as mom got up to check something, Diamond would throw a nut at one of the other fillies and start a small food fight. “Heh, we’d all play dumb, but I know mom always knew. She’d ask one of us to clean up with her, that’s how I know. When it’s just the three of us, Mom’s name is Rarity, Sweetie is my aunt, even though she’s a bit older we’re not really family. You see, I’m adopted… kinda. It’s complicated, but that’s my family. “Mom, Sweetie, and me. But, Sweetie’s actually just staying with us until next week, then she’s gonna spend some time with her real mom and dad. Oh! I just got a brother from another mother… wow, that’s fucking brilliant! I’ve gotta tell that to Kiwe, he’ll love it! Ha, I’m a genius, seriously, I am. No, seriously.” Snickers lay at the edge of the fire light for another ten minutes rambling about his life to Pup, who seemed to care as much as any lesser intelligence creature would, before Snickers finally quieted and let the sounds of nature take over his baser instincts again. “Damn this place, I can feel the wrong here. But, it’s right, too. I want to be here, because it feels normal. I want to be out of this place because it feels normal out there,” he said to the sleeping timber wolf beside him.  He got up and picked up Pup in his injured foreleg, then slowly moved to the fireside and lay down with his back to the fire and his body shielding Pup from the flames. “This… this is better,” Snickers quietly yawned and lay his head on his propped foreleg, “you’ll see, Pup. Once I get seriously injured, I’ll be saved. Fucking bad luck knows my username and vid number from a bathroom wall in ‘screw that guy’ land. Two days, tops, and I’ll be eating dinner through a straw in the swankiest hospital in Equestria.” The fire danced besides Snickers while he thought of what was to come, then he picked up Pup and moved to the hammock, lay Pup under it and climbed up to sleep and recover from his day. “God, Celestia, Luna? Whoever’s up there, send me some help and something to stop my ass from itching, my baby gave me splinters,” he snickered and started laughing, startling the timber wolf awake and quieting some of the meeker denizens of the night. … Together, Snickers and Pup walked in as straight a line as they could from the campsite, keeping mind of where he was and making marks on trees as he passed with his short spear; made more efficient and deadly once he realized he could wrap the rock knife he’d made to the end. Nearly half an hour passed, then Snickers looked around and shouted wordlessly for five seconds, Pup joining in with a high pitch howl to help. They turned back to the camp and when they had arrived, Snickers smiled at the two dead squirrels and single rabbit slowly roasting by the fire’s edge. The smell was more than he could tolerate at once, and twice he nearly vomited from the strength of it, but it was protein and energy he wasn’t getting enough of eating bark, leaves, and whatever he could find under the layer of detritus for extra nourishment. The day he got Pup, he realized he could see his ribs in an unhealthy way, and that was what motivated him to start hunting. Outside the campsite, it didn’t seem to be an issue with wildlife to cross his path as being seen as non-hostile and earlier that morning he’d taken advantage of it. Pup was an amazing hunter, in the way that it seemed to sense what Snickers was doing and hunkered down, watching from several pony body lengths away as Snickers prepared and struck the small morsels. Even though Pup offered in his own way, Snickers carried the carcasses on his back as he walked happily, with a slight limp, back to camp to prepare. Now, midday into his venture, Snickers sat with Pup lying at his side resting in the warm sunlight that radiated poorly through the canopy to them. Snickers poked the skin of the rabbit and what he could save from one of the squirrels as they lay draped over a low branch just long enough to hold them. “Maybe I can make a hat and scarf, mom would be grossed out, though,” he looked himself over, “not that I’m any better,” he chuckled, “two days of scrubbing might make me presentable again, but my darling Pup, however will I manage you?” Snickers pet the timber wolf. “You’re a pile of sticks, there’s not much for me to work with here. Why, when mother sees you she’ll have a heart attack,” he said with a flick of his forehoof through his rough mane, “I mean no offense, but the best thing about you is your eyes, lovely shades of yellow and green; I wonder what benefit they give you.” Snickers looked back to the meat and sniffed again, taking in the powerful scent and letting his mind reflect to his life before, quickly banishing the images and focusing on his life as a pony. The fun, the fillies, the mares, his herd, the way they smelled and how they felt against his side when walking with him. The feel of them holding him while they slept, Scootaloo’s affection for him and what she’d done with him that one night. The dream he’d had two nights prior where he and all the fillies of his herd lay by the lakeside alone and watched the moon reflect on its surface while sharing each other’s warmth. The nuzzles, the kisses, the fact he’d woken up to the sound of Pup snoring; which didn’t make any more sense than a tree spirit literally falling out of his ass.  He felt cold air against his penis and sighed, bringing his forelegs to it. He began his slow ministrations while his pup slept beside him and meat cooked nearby.  Time passed as thoughts of what he’d do to Scootaloo, then he added Silver Spoon, then Diamond Tiara to take care of certain filly parts he couldn’t reach; he was nearing climax when his ear twitched slightly at something, a bird chirping too loudly. Snickers sped up as it neared and he noticed Pup had woken up and was watching curiously. “Back up, I need this,” he said as he neared his peak and heard Pup whimper and scurry somewhere. He quietly nickered and his ears perked, turning back when he heard steps pounding the ground. “Fuck, if I die, I’m going out… better! Grk,” he said as his body crossed its limit and sent a bolt of pleasure from the tip of his member to its base and then scattered throughout his body, all made mightier by the terror of being pounced upon and tackled by what felt like a log.  Pup stood on Snickers’s side and licked his face from jaw to muzzle with several laps and happy pants. “Damn… fucking… thing. Ruined a perfect… orgasm,” Snickers said breathing heavily after his workout.  “No! Get off him, you monster!” A mare Snickers knew too well shouted.