The sound of Celestia laughing filled his ears as Gosling lay on his back in the grass, staring up at the stars, and he fostered fond hopes that he would die from embarrassment. He was so embarrassed about what had just happened that he didn’t care that he was laying on his back, exposed. He felt empty inside, spent, almost as if he had been hollowed out. He had just eaten dinner a little while ago, but his innards felt as though they were some vast void. Beside him, Celestia sat upon her haunches, her long hind legs kicked out, and she propped herself up with one front hoof planted in the grass between her legs.

“That was my fault. I squeezed you too hard and caused that to happen.” Celestia tittered and reached over with her free hoof to touch Gosling on his barrel. Her nostrils crinkled and she shook her head. “That cheese had to be aging in the cellar for quite a while, Gosling.”

Cringing, Gosling covered up his face with his forelegs as he closed his eyes.

“Oh, come now, it was bound to happen sooner or later,” Celestia said, still tittering.

Gosling groaned in reply.

“You’re such a silly pony,” Celestia said in a low voice as her hoof made little circles on Gosling’s barrel. “When you sleep next to me in bed, it is bound to happen.” The princess giggled and then prodded Gosling, trying to get some sort of a response out of him. “You’ll be sleeping next to me in the bed, I’ll roll over, or you’ll go to hold me in my sleep—”

Whimpering, Gosling shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut even tighter.

“Gosling… what do I have to do to get you to feel better?” Celestia’s smile became impish and she extended one wing. “Oh wait, I know!” She ran her wingtip over Gosling’s belly, starting at his ribs and working her way downwards.

There was a yelp and then a giggle as Gosling rolled over, kicking his legs and trying to defend his sensitive stomach. He looked over at the mischievous alicorn, sat up, sighed, and shook his head.

“Gosling, you will soon discover that we alicorns do everything better… magic, flight, our strength… everything. I can blow out candles from across the room.”

The colt began snickering at Celestia’s words and he gave her an embarrassed smile. “I’m sorry. I suppose you’re right. At some point, it was bound to happen.” Gosling paused for a moment, looked up into Celestia’s eyes, and scooted a little closer to her. “It is strange to hear you talking about us being in bed together. Is that really a foregone conclusion?”

“Forgone conclusion?” Celestia snorted, threw her head back, and laughed. After a moment of boisterous laughter, she looked back down at Gosling, bent her neck, and sat almost snoot to snoot with him. “Cadance did her job a little too well. You are very dear to me. I’ve already grown very attached to you, Gosling.”

“We’ve spent a week getting to know each other,” Gosling said.

“Time is different for me.” Celestia wrapped one wing around Gosling and pulled him close again. “Time is so very different for me. In some ways, time is far more precious to me, in other ways, time has lost meaning for me, Gosling.”

“Help me to understand,” Gosling said as he nuzzled Celestia’s neck.

“A week to you is but a few moments to me,” Celestia began, her voice almost sounding sad. “But those are precious moments for me. You look at everything in weeks, months, and years… you rush about doing everything, so worried about time, or not enough time, but you little ponies are always so worried about time. Like you worrying if a week is long enough to get to know somepony before you can kiss them or allow for a little harmless poot.”

“I’m still trying to understand.” Gosling rubbed his cheek against Celestia’s neck, feeling the muscles beneath her velvet pelt, feeling the blood flow through her veins, he could feel the evidence that she was alive, that she was flesh and blood.

“Gosling, you might live to be a hundred or more, maybe longer, and that will be a very long time to you. For me, it will be a blink of an eye. Every moment, every second I get to spend with you will be precious. You might get almost a hundred years to spend with me—”

“But from your perspective, you will only have what will feel like a year with me?” Gosling finished.

Celestia nodded and pulled Gosling closer. “Cadance was right to go after somepony young… somepony like you. You’re just right. I’ll get just a few more precious moments with you.”

“I… I’m not sure what to say.” Gosling turned his body a bit so he was facing Celestia a little more, and he craned his head so that he might look up at her. “So I guess for you, talking about us sharing a bed together is just…” Gosling’s voice trailed off as words failed him. He didn’t know how to finish or what to say. He found his own mortal perspectives smashing up against infinity and breaking apart.

“For me, the now just blends together. There is only the now. For you, the present is measured in minutes and seconds. For me, a year can pass and that is my present.” Celestia bent her neck a little more, lowered her head, and pressed her muzzle into Gosling’s ear. She inhaled, then chuffed, and delighted in how his body moved against hers. “Time slips away from me like a fart in the breeze… it happens and then it is gone as suddenly as it appears.”

“What do you want from me?” Gosling asked in a low, strained voice as he felt Celestia breathing on his ear. “Do you need for me to pick up the pace? What do I do?”

“Just keep being you,” Celestia replied, her words tickling Gosling’s ear.

“Can things work between us?” Gosling tilted his head back a bit and pressed his snoot against Celestia’s jawline. He could feel her muscles tensing. Her body might tell him what her words did not.

“Yes,” Celestia said without hesitation, “yes they can.”

The tension in Celestia’s jaw increased and Gosling closed his eyes. He came to the understanding that he was now in a race against time. He was going to have to love her, completely and without reservation, make every moment together special, make every moment meaningful, make it as though every moment spent with her might be their last. He would never be able to take a single moment for granted, every moment would be precious.

With these thoughts in his mind, he wiggled in her grasp, wrapped both of his forelegs around her neck, and thrust his head up as high as it could go. Sitting down side by side, she was still so much taller than he was, so something else had to be done.

Gosling had to be bold.

Bracing his hindquarters against the ground, he gave a shove and a heave, pushing Celestia over. She offered little resistance and holding her neck, he lowered her to the grass, where she lay upon her side. He cradled her neck in his forelegs, her head resting against him, and he found himself in the odd position where she was looking up at him, and he could look down at her.

For the second time, he kissed her. Remembering what he learned from the previous kiss, he pressed his mouth against hers, tilted his head off to one side, and kneaded his lips against hers. Heat flooded through his muzzle, through his mouth, down his throat, and blossomed through his belly. As the kiss intensified, Celestia’s wing flapped against her side, her other wing was pinned beneath her body and trapped against the grass beneath her. Gosling, remembering that he had things other than his lips, rubbed his foreleg against the soft curve of her throat as he kissed her, and he felt himself wobble on his haunches as he almost lost his balance.

The friction of the kiss caused his lips to grow hot—tingles crept through his face and when he closed his eyes, spots and splotches of colour danced on the inside of his eyelids. His wings unfurled from his sides, his body making a desperate effort to try and cool itself as the kiss grew hotter and hotter. His blood felt as though it was boiling and he could feel his wings throbbing as his body dumped his roiling blood into his extremities so it could cool.

Something brushed up against his lips and his brain caught on fire when he registered it as Celestia’s tongue, it had come slithering, seeking entrance, a viper armed with deadly love poison that was certain to finish him off. His own lips parted a bit, he was cautious, this was out of his league, outside of his experience, this was unknown territory.

She surprised him by licking the roof of his mouth. Her tongue darted in, swift, a skilled invader, and he could feel the very tip of her tongue dancing along the top of his mouth. As swiftly as it had come, it was gone again, but only for a moment, before it came back, and this time, the flat of her tongue was dragged over the roof of his mouth. He could feel every lumpy bump, the rough texture made his whole body tremble.

Feeling courageous, Gosling invaded, doing so with the ferocity of the pegasi army ransacking Roam. He might have been clumsy and inexperienced, but at this moment in time, he was beyond caring. His own tongue battered down the gate and made its way into Celestia’s city, and her square teeth were like little houses for his tongue to explore. After a few pokes and prods, he pushed his way in deeper.

He encountered resistance. Princess Celestia—Sol Invictus—was not one for easy conquest. He found himself being pushed back. Her tongue slid over his, she was both dexterous and strong. His tongue fought a losing battle, but did so with valiant effort. With his eyes closed, she was a mare, an eager, needy mare, not much different than a secondary school filly.

All thought of treating her as a princess was gone as he continued to kiss her. He groped her, feeling her neck, and lost himself in the moment. In his embrace was a pony, very much like any other. She applied suction, pulling the wind out of him, and made him submit. He pulled away with a wet slurp and opened his eyes. Spots swam in his vision. He looked down and saw two rose coloured eyes looking back up at him. He adored her.

He sucked in a deep breath, his lungs burning, and he continued to cradle her head in his forelegs. She wasn’t even breathing hard, she looked as composed and calm as could be, but he knew it was an act; he could feel the blood surging through her neck and her heart was pounding with such fury that he could feel each thump travel through her flesh, through her muscles, up her throat, and into his forelegs.

“Let me spend the rest of my life worshipping you,” Gosling breathed, “your body will be my temple and I will spend my days getting to know every secret that is hidden inside.”

“Such bold words, my little pony,” Celestia replied.

“Let me sing praises unto you upon the steps leading to your heart…” Gosling was oblivious to everything but the rose coloured eyes he found himself falling into; his arousal, his turgid wingboner, the way his stomach muscles spasmed.

There was a gasp from Celestia, and then she began giggling. She lifted a foreleg, hooked it around the back of Gosling’s head, and gazed into his eyes, withholding nothing from him.

Celestia’s head was eased down to the grass and she rolled over onto her back, perhaps expecting something else from Gosling. She waited, smiling, giving Gosling an inviting, sultry, come hither stare, but Gosling made no other move than to lay down beside her, close to her, also on his back.

“Do you know what I love?” Gosling asked in a breathless voice.

“Me?” Celestia replied, feeling more than a little cheeky.

“I love swimming in the water at night… clear, clean water… when you look down, you can see the stars in the water and it looks as though you are swimming through the night sky. But it has to be in a dark place so you can see the stars.”

“Hmm.” Celestia tilted her head to look over at Gosling, whose head was just a few inches from her own. “That does indeed, sound pleasant. Did your secondary school sweetheart enjoy doing that with you?”

Gosling was silent for a moment, a scowl crept over his muzzle, and then smoothed away as he shook his head. “No. She was scared of the dark… scared of the night. Like so many others. She could not see the beauty in it, only the unknown. It scared her. She liked streetlamps and staying within the safety of the city.”

“I did not mean to cause you pain by asking about her,” Celestia said, thinking about the expression she had seen upon Gosling’s face. “I only asked because I was curious.”

“It’s okay. Cadance has helped me get over her. I was a fool,” Gosling said, shaking his head. “I was so set to marry the first filly I fell in love with. All I could think about was commitment. I don’t know what I was thinking… I was foolish and stupid, I suppose. I just figured I would make things work.”

“I’m sorry, Gosling.”

“It wasn’t even love, it was lust and infatuation. While I try to behave myself, I’m not so different than any other colt my age. I have strong needs. I matured young… early. It worried my mother something awful.” Gosling sighed and folded his forelegs over his barrel as he gazed up at the stars. “She sat me down and had a very graphic discussion about lust and sex. She spared no detail. She held nothing back. She even explained how I could take care of my own needs so I wouldn’t feel so pressured into finding a filly to help me scratch my itch. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for her to do what she did, but I’m glad she did it. I didn’t understand everything she was saying back then, but I did learn one thing that day.”

“And what did you learn, Gosling?” Celestia asked, feeling intrigued.

“I learned that I could talk to my mother about anything. Anything at all. She’s a strong mare and I know that she rubs some ponies wrong, but she’s done right by me. She has never failed to be there for me when I needed her.” Gosling sighed again. “No doubt, she’s probably planning another talk… this time, about love and marriage. She’ll probably tell me everything I need to know to keep a mare happy.”

“Gosling…”

“Yes?”

“Forgive me for saying this…”

“Yes?”

“But you need to listen to your mother, Gosling!”

Author's Notes:

So, dear sister, how did your date with Gosling go?

It was Gouda.