Amidst Deception

The unlikely two reached the platform with no time to spare. The Canterlot Express was a true industrial masterpiece; it had smooth streamlined protrusions of polished steel connecting each carriage, it had a scheme of multi-tonal panels riveted masterfully onto sides, it also had an ear-piercing whistle which it played as the doors began to close.

Braeburn galloped extendedly towards the closing opportunity. He gazed back and expected to see Rose lagging behind but she had long surpassed him and his expectations and was already on the train.

The locomotive picked up more and more speed as less and less of the platform impeded it. Braeburn pushed hard and gave all that he had into the last desperate moments of gallop.

The end of the platform rushed towards him and nearly clipped his hoof as he leaped in through the door.

A ticket official noticed the entry right away, he rehoused his spectacles on the bridge of his nose and confronted the two “tickets please.” Braeburn panted breathlessly and gave the chrome blue stallion a dirty look.

“We- We’ve got the—Tickets, we have the tickets, hold on.” Braeburn dug his fore hooves into half-jacket pockets and came up empty.

A snarl tugged across the official’s face, he pointed to the door and formed an evil smile. “No tickets, no train ride.” Brae was swallowed up by the carriage floor. He checked his pockets again and then a third time but nothing but lint and sweet wrappers lay within.

He swallowed painfully a lump that formed in his throat; he looked hopefully at rose whose only response was a nonchalant shrug. Brae swallowed again, this time something became lodged in his windpipe. “I lost ‘em.”

The official lost his sense of humour and picked up Braeburn by the scruff of his jacket “you both will be getting off at the next stop, oh and good news, it’s in the little village of Sanstone.”

He gave them a view of his rear end and ventured down the central passage of the train. “Enjoy the walk Mr Apple, maybe you’ll lose the native.”

Braeburn thought he was going mad; he patted his pockets down and dropped his face in defeat. They had broken into the 1st class carriage.

Throughout the rows of seats sat the entrepreneurs, the account fiddling bank executives and the over privileged heirs and heiresses who had never had to lift a hoof in their hoity toity lives. There was a strict dress-code on this part of the train and neither Rose nor Braeburn adhered to it. Across the walls were detailed balustrades and silken curtains lay behind them.

The two sat quietly at the door they had leaped through for the ten minutes or so it took the train to reach the closest stop.

If Appleoosa was a one horse town, Sanstone was a no horse town, nothing much happened there and even when it did nopony noticed.

It used to be an important town during the age of mining but those health and safety bereft days were eons ago now. The train chugged along and scenery rushed past the windows. Nothing was that interesting out in the desert; an I-spy game would have no place in a setting like the Attacanter desert.

The minutes dragged past but finally the train pulled into the ghost town and it’s subsided single-platform station. Not a single other rump left the seat as the doors slid open. The sheer brightness of the dunes and furrows of the desert was a true eyesore.

Brae and Rose hopped off into the burning land and quickly realised it was far too hot to walk on. Rose was first to chicken out, she leaped several metres to an even hotter flat rock before she rocketed skywards and landed in a cool, half formed barn.

Braeburn braved the heat for a little longer, he switched between which two hooves had contract with the lava floor and alternated them almost twice a second. Soon his hooves were raw and he followed the choked calls of Rose.

Safe under the shade, the two panted through dry throats and sore tongues. Brae leaned back against a fragment of a wall and took the weight off his welted hooves. Rose went to nurse him but was swatted away by the stallion. “What the hell Rose? You were looking after the tickets, where did they go?”

Rose peeled her plasticising lips apart and puckered the bloody pulpy result. “I must have dropped them in the race for the train.” Braeburn seethed as he reaffirmed his seat, he spied a flock of black birds circling above.

The sun-burdened stallion cricked his neck and wrenched it over to Rose. “It’s the peak of the day; we should stay in the shade till it cools.” Reluctantly, Braeburn succumbed to the sun’s brutal rays and dropped off though exhaustion.

Rose trotted through the high-noon inferno until she was sure that Brae couldn’t see. She produced a pair of tickets from her person and screwed them up and tore them into a few equal segments before sailing them off on the unpredictable currents of air.

The scene was truly hopeless, buildings lay roofless and the well ran dry. There were some remnants of the previous inhabitants. There were eyeless dolls and teddy bear corpses robbed of their stuffing. There were ruptured clay pots and frayed lengths of rope and above it all swarmed a maelstrom of black-hearted birds.

Braeburn lifted his eyelids and saw something staring back at him. He darted his eyes away from the illusion and rubbed them feverishly with the latter half of his hoof. He looked again, it was no illusion. It had a dark coat and a svelte frame, it stood gaunt and uncomfortably on the burning sand.

From the cover of the ruined house it stayed behind there could be seen a translucent wing, it was short and disfigured, much like the creature that owned it. Brae brought his gaze into the soulless opalescent specs that glowed in its wide slits of eyes.

It looked a curious thing, its’ one visible hoof drilled through with sparsely spaced holes and its visible ear torn off at the end. Braeburn examined the thing a little longer; he would have recognised it straight away if it weren’t for his spinning head and the haze of the glaring sun. He burst into a fit of coughing, his eyes forced shut through the strife, and he parted his sore lips and trusted his sore hooves as he pushed himself proud of the wooden stakes he was leaning on.

He was regaled with an empty space where the creature had been, it could have flown away or maybe scurried. His throat rasped with the threat of further coughing and he closed his eyes again to hide his pain. When once his eyelids lifted he saw the scene was still bereft of the creature. Had it been a figment of his dehydrated mind?

He panned his vision across the derelict home the creature had appeared behind; he looked for the missing cow that must have gone in search of water during his slumber. He found a pair of eyes staring back from a Dickensian window frame, they were closer and the brow had sunk down as if the creature was angry.

Braeburn affixed his eyes to that of the barely visible creature, the eyes the only pigment of colour which showed in the shadow of the partial roof above.

The sunburnt stallion blinked repeatedly to clear the obvious mirage from his mind, yet there it remained staring coldly from across the dusty void. Gradually the omnipresent eyes gave way to a set of normal ones, and the dark guise of the creature became a chocolate pallet of a buffalo.

Braeburn rubbed his eyes again but through the cleaning was assured that the being beyond the window was the returning Rose. He put one saw hoof in the front of the other and broke into a lazy swaying form of a trot. He reached the other side and stuck his nose in past the window sill.

He heard an insect-like beat of wings just behind his head and twisted his head around, his nose scraped across the splintered frame of the window as he turned. Back at the shade of the barn stared the pair of glowing eyes.

Braeburn had to double take the sight to be sure it was not fantasy, he turned back to the window and pried the horizontal beam off from it, there was not a soul within the ruined home.

The butterfly wings fluttered behind him once more. With great trepidation he faced the root of the sound and found another worn, tired looking home. He risked changing his focus again and the eyes were gone from the barn he had slumbered under. He noticed his reflection in the still existent glass pane of the window of the new-old home.

He wondered towards it, sweat fell in swathes from his clammy forelock. He reached the would-be mirror and admired the sweltering blisters which formed on the tip of his nose as well as on the girth of his back. Something else called his eyes in the reflection, the creature’s eyes were burned into the glass, he checked over his shoulder but seemingly he was alone.

He turned his attention back to the window and noticed the once pale visage of his was no much clearer and detailed as it looked back at him. He used the brief moment of peace to cleave a hoof to the clammy surface of his cheek and rubbed tentatively the area. The reflection did the same.

He blinked his eyes alternately and the reflection mimicked every subtle movement. He spread widely his mouth and let his shiny white teeth glow under the mid-afternoon glare. The reflection followed suit. He relaxed his face, the reflection did this too, and then he turned his tail to the mirror and promptly checked the actions of the refection over his shoulder.

The reflection was still staring out of the window, its face and body had not copied the motion of Braeburn. Confused and in way over his head, Braeburn confronted his shadow again, he knocked his hoof against the pane. The reflection did the same.

He combed a hoof through his mane, the reflection copied again. He burdened his forehooves with his muscular frame and bucked his back legs out and through the window. The reflection was gone.

Braeburn then caught wind of his signed hooves, he stumbled and tripped over the window lip his back hooves were hooked upon and fell headfirst into the brimstone sand. The sun had gone to bed for the night, or so it seemed, above the fallen stallion Rose loomed.

She had collected some water which she contained in an old rusty pail which she set down at Braeburn’s side. “Sanstone aint what it used to be” Rose concluded as she stole Braeburn’s hat.

Braeburn crawled over to the pail and sank his head inside of it. He lapped up the murky water before clambering back to his hooves. He threw Rose a cheerful smile which thusly dropped as he tilted his head skywards. Above the two flew the murder of black crows. Braeburn wore his heart in his throat as he confided in his ally “they look like there are waiting for something, like a meal or something, and I think we’re it.”

Grains of sand kicked up from the surface and drifted quietly on the harsh updrafts of air. More sand joined the first few grains and the wind howled and hell descended on the humble town of Sanstone.

Rose cajoled her stallion into the shelter of the barn as a pelt-tearing storm tore through the Sanstone. They entrusted their lives to the bowing walls of the half formed barn and huddled together in terror at the far side of the sanctuary.

The sanctum granted the impatient winds entry as some of the tenuously nailed boards became dislodged. Braeburn forgot his own pain and shielded Rose’s from the ensuing storm.

Dusterfield Lane>

Octavia rebounded off of the pinstriped awning not twice but thrice before landing in a heap in the sand. As by a stroke of luck or a spot of bad luck, the new town sheriff played witness to the whole affair.

Octavia tended to her bruised cheek and her grazed knees before standing back up and waddling away. She saw the end of a nose, which belonged to a dull-green stallion, poke over the window ledge. She hugged the wall and shimmied along it until she was beneath another awning.

Thinking she was safe, the mare ruffled her furry pelt as she brushed the dust off of it. She contained the bowtie between her hooves and pulled it straight once more. “Miss Woodwind?” A faint voice bellowed in the distance.

She was in two minds about the whole bizarre debacle and tried to put it behind her. On one hand she he had acted irrationally and volatilely but on the other he had the right to be annoyed.

It eluded the mare why she had fibbed to the heir of her departed friend, especially after he had treated her like a princess. This time, a little louder, the same voice bellowed “Miss Woodwind?”

Just as before, she paid no notice to the voice, and she waited to hear the window close above. As luck would have it, the windows indeed slammed shut. She experimented with the bow that pared with the cello and held it out from under the awning.

There was no reaction so she got back on task and headed further down the street with a heightened sense of fervour. The same voice called, even louder than it had previously, it sounded strained “Miss Woodwind?”

This time the voice coupled with a collection of footfalls into the sandy soil. Octavia turned at the encroaching sound and fell backwards over a hoof cleaning iron which stood like a tree stump next to the saloon. Dazed and slightly embarrassed, Octavia put a name to the face and exclaimed in a less than gracious manner. “Mister Pear?”

Bartlett had galloped with such ferocity that he collided with the mare that had her legs up in the air. They rolled several times and came to rest at a fork in the sanded street.

Bartlett had ended up on top; he was panting heavily, his breath congealed on Octavia’s face. Octavia was first to ruin the oddly romantic tone of the encounter, she pushed his head back “do you really hate my music this much sir?”

The stallion had been so long without a mate that his southern-born brain took precedence and he pushed Octavia’s forelegs back around to her sides.  He held her there and stole a look at the window he had seen her fall from “why did you jump from there Miss?”

She felt his limp member stroke her wounded knee and shook in protest. He pressed down harder on her and drew his head ever closer. Octavia feebly lifted her hooves a sliver off of the ground before having them thrown painfully back down.

She gnarled her face into a snarl. “I don’t see why this is any of your business and as such I shall not dignify your question with an answer.”

Octavia brought her knee up into the swaying stifle of the stallion and shuffled back on her rump as he recoiled in agony. She got back to a walking gait and broke into full gallop before she rounded a corner in the fork in the road.

Bartlett held gently his length and fought back the urge to vomit. He caught sight of the musical mare’s daring escape around the corner and set off after her virgin hoof prints in the sand. He rounded the same corner, his speed limited by the sore quality of his aching cock. His worst fears were coming to fruition, the mare he could only just see was heading for the Major’s office, and she was much faster than he.

He thanked the alicorns above as the mare came into view. She had paused at the door to the town hall, she looked unsure of what exactly she was going to say. Bartlett tapped a hoof in announcement as he set hooves on the town hall steps.

Octavia watched the pitiful example of physical fitness and pretended to file her hooves. The stallion caught his belated breath and bore down on the mare “you didn’t answer my question.”

Octavia cursed her knack of finding trouble when she was supposed to be resting, she took a step back before she advanced towards Bartlett and pinched his badge away from his shirt along with a clump of his skin “You didn’t answer mine either Mr Thicket!”

Bartlett finished what she had started and lightened his burden of responsibility. He ripped the five-pronged symbol of authority off of his person and allowed it to drift under the sandstorm carpet.

The storm had come out of nowhere, even as far from its origins as Appaloosa, the storm was as strong if not stronger. Both Bartlett and Octavia took refuge in the hall. Octavia didn’t waste a moment in the foyer or shooting the breeze with the receptionist; she marched directly to the door of the serpentine Mayor and knocked impatiently upon it.

She had arrived at the most unfortunate of times, the intestinal vision of evil was scoffing down a platter of little baby white mice. Octavia nevertheless hurried her knocking upon the thick oaken door.

A rattling coaxed from the end of the scaly beast as the doorway was freed of obstruction. Octavia entered and looked everywhere but the satisfied eyes of Mayor Delilah Caiman. The child like plaything rattled over nest to a chair, the relatively small grey hued mare saw this as ushering and quickly obeyed the order.

She settled cosily in the chair, it was plush, it felt like it were swallowing her up. The snake vibrated her forked tongue and lowered her head to rest on the impractically sized desk “Miss Octavia! What a pleasant surprise.”

Sarcasm rang through every hiss of the serpent Mayor. Octavia stood up from the chair’s out-of-place embrace and combated the snide comment of Caiman with a smile. She broke free of her shell and demanded “I want a stallion thrown out of this town! He has made a mockery of my profession and has made unwanted advances upon my marehood.”

It was impossible to tell whether the snake was smiling of frowning, it cocked its head to the side and gave a hint via the rattle it had at its tail end. Caiman then thrust her head forward. “Does the stallion have a name?

Octavia drowned in the ridiculousness of her own poor memory, she sat back in her seat and grimaced as the head drew nearer. She felt her impending demise would lie at the glinting points of the snake’s articulate fangs.

In knowing the end was but a whisker’s breadth away, the mare found a lion’s courage somewhere in her heart. She stood up from the plush chair cushions once again and remained as close as she could get to the Mayor’s teeth without bathing in the poisonous leakage.

She was so close she could smell the decomposing baby mice in the belly of the beast. Octavia aired her grievances “yes he does have a name. Wallace Thicket, I’ll have you know he ruined my cello and…”

The rant was cut short by the rattle which vibrated loudly next to Octavia’s pricked-up ears. The tail end then fetched a pair of rarely used reading spectacles which were then propped on the stout nose of Caiman. Delilah bent her head down so low she was looking up to the other, she sighed before she spoke. “Did you sssay Wallace? Wallace Thicket… isss he the pony who’s been giving you trouble?”

Octavia rolled her eyes at the repeated information and confirmed. “Yes, him, I want him gone from this place.”

Caiman shook her head in disbelief; she raised her spectacles above her brow with her tail and bit the arm of one before stating. “He has long been gone from this place Misssss. Your wish has already some true for the stallion you speak of isss dead.”

All that spewed from Octavia’s drooping muzzle was a chorus of defiance. “…But” she uttered finally as she collapsed onto the floor.

Caiman supported the mare with her stout snout before delivering her to the chair. She picked up the chair in her jaw and swayed it this way and that. Octavia came to but her eyelids were like lead weights.

Caiman formed herself into a neatly coiled pile and lowered her head to the musical mare. “Have you lossst your way Miss? How could have you seen, even talked to a pony who hasss been dead for over twenty years?”

The stuttering mare ceased her blathering and cooled her head. She dropped her vision to her sore knees and accepted the painful truth “perhaps I am mad. I have spoken to the one you say is dead. I have run from him just now.” Her voice cracked during that last few syllables and she hanged her head down further into the pit of despair that lay in the centre of her lap.

Caiman brought her tail up to the corner of her mouth and then made eye contact with the stallion that waited behind the frosted glass. She gestured her tail housed rattle forward and beckoned the onlooker. “Misster Bartlett. I can ssseee you, you know. Come in here thisss instant!”

Bartlett tried to shirk the call and ducked out of the snake’s view. He soon saw the flaw of his plan and yielded to the call. Once inside he was drawn to the desk surrounded by the boughs of Caiman’s body. He swooned to the siren song and slipped through a gap in the coiled up mare’s form.

The Mayoral Snake sprung from her coil and landed at the back of the room, her head hovered just above the impractically sized desk. She articulated her fangs to face outwards and dragged them through the wooden panel. “Why sheriff Pear, you have let me down. You swore to protect, nay, clean up my town. Your exact words were ‘the cells will brim with the undesirables of this here town’. So what excuse will you offer me, what morsel of intelligence do you have in that thick head of yours? Because my cells run dry, the jail is lacking of any custom, yet ponies are afraid of something.”

Caiman happened upon the missing crest. “And what of your badge? Do you presume to make a fool out of me? What will your portly sprog think of your distasteful cowardice? She won’t look you in the eyes Bartlett, you’ll lose her.”

Bartlett was at least content in that the situation could not sour anymore; his notion of stability was cut through by the grey hued mare. She threw him an impudent false grin. “Your so-called-law-keeper harassed me during my practice; he throttled my muse as if it were his own resplendent erection.”

The Mayor craned her head to meet the shying stallion at her side “is this true Bartlett? If you want so much to make amends then go outside and find that badge!”

Bartlett hated to lose face and so he accepted the challenge and threw back a wager as he made for the door “what if I don’t find the badge? What if I can’t?”

The beady eyes of the Madam Mayor looked hypnotically into those of Bartlett, she licked her lips of poisonous resin and gave an ultimatum “either you find the crest and bring it back here or you leave my town and you never come back.”

Bartlett cantered through the foyer with the threat fresh in his mind. He came to the windowed doubled doors of the town hall and saw the full extent of the storm which ravaged the valley. The snake had followed him out; she knew he might try to wriggle out of the deal “is there a problem Misssster Pear? It’s just sand after all.”

Bartlett swallowed forcibly a dry sandy lump that had formed in his throat and looked up between the venom gushing pair of fangs “how long do I have until there is nothing left of me?” The cruel tongue of the Mayor slithered in between the sheered edges of her fangs and she ushered a cruel laugh “that’s up to the storm Pear”

Overlooking Appaloosa>

The buffalo clan high upon the plateau were safe from the raging storm below. Chief Thundering Hooves stood strong with his protégé, the two of them on bated breath for when the sand would finally settle. Over the wind’s anguished howl Thundering schemed privately with Raging-wonderer. “When the air is once more calm and the ponies below drag their sorry selves from the wreckage we will descend from these sacred lands and we will find my daughter.”

The confident shroud across Raging’s face blew away with the storm. “Perhaps she doesn’t want to be here, why not respect her wish?”

Thundering gifted the defiance with a growl and sunk his hoof into the dry clay-capped heights “I want her back not for my love for her but for my lineage to go on. When we have her, my son, you shall lay with her and you shall have calves with her!”

“It is a fool’s errand father, can you not see?” The younger of the bulls digressed, his body language was entirely sober, and his mind was not his own. “Are we fools then son?”

Thundering began, he reared up on his hind legs and forced the charge to submit “We lived here long before the settlers arrived and we will live on long after they are dead and gone. We own these lands my son” He preached as he landed back on to all four hooves.

The chieftain looked peacefully upwards and closed his eyes in prayer “She will look after us, the great eagle; we are all feathers under her wing. But her and her children, we the children, will lay waste to the sodomy plagued streets below and purge the monsters that dwell there within!”

Raging strayed further from his character and continued to question the ethical minefield of the differences the two sects of people held dear. He huffed large volumes of warm air from his nostrils and broke his father’s heart. “What eagle father? Do you see a single bird not wretched and deformed gracing the skies above? Because I do not and your followers may blindly face down your foes and join your crusade but I will not.”

Thundering took great offence at the blasphemy, he would have wept if it weren’t for his pride, and his patience grew thin. Thundering readied to charge, his horns poised in line of his favourite’s throat, he gave his son one last chance. “The city has poisoned you, it has made you evil and it made you no son of mine. Leave this place if you continue to trample our beliefs or stampede with us to glory once the sands have settled.”

The hidden agenda of the previously one-track minded bull perplexed his aged father. But he would not be as humbled and malleable as once he was; he was once a clay mass for his father to shape but was now a free grain of sand. The bull broke through the cocoon and spread his wings, in more ways than one.

Raging-wonderer spread his legs apart and grunted through the painful changes within him. From his broad sides emerged two butterfly-like wings and from his forelock erupted a crooked horn.

The whites of his eyes died out to the replacement of two opalescent speckled blue slits. His short mane withered and aged and his ear tip melted away from his face. More ghastly protrusion shot from atop his pole whilst vacuous bores formed in his legs.

Two sinister looking fangs slipped through his blackening lip. As his lips blackened so too did the rest of his body. Several fissures formed in the previously pristine lengths of semi-transparent wing and finally his face reformed to complete the transformation.

“Where’s this all seeing eagle now father?” The changeling demanded.

Thundering was speechless and more appropriately terrified. He backed his sorry self towards the crumbling precipice of the mount and glanced down at the heaving torrent hankering for his soul. An earthen slice of cliff edge lost its battle with the eroding sands and fell into the bleak maelstrom.

Thundering’s hoof lost purchase on the clay cap and he nearly followed after it. The changeling held him menacingly by the ear and dragged him back onto the ground. Thundering saw his chanting children and galloped into the serenity of his family unit. He was to be deceived one last time. Amongst the ranks grew many pairs of translucent wings and what once was brown turned to pitch black.

The metamorphosis was as gradual as ever and the changeling protégé glided over to the scene. As bones snapped and features corrupted the creature sneered “you did have a family but what of it now? Every last one of your kin rots out in the Attercanter and you didn’t even know.”

The cracking of bones and shedding of skin did much to silence the remaining bull but still he cried. “What conjuration is this? None of you should have survived the spell of Shining’s fury, none of you should live!”

The younger, weaker bulls writhed as the changes took a toll on them, some had been fully reborn as the stuff of nightmares and they closed all roots of escape for the last of the buffalo clan.

The first Changeling daintily hovered overhead and came to rest face to face with Thundering. It foamed at the mouth as it relished in the torment of the relic “I was disappointed with how easily I replaced every one of your brothers. You see, me and my brothers need to eat as well, you should know the fairy tales by now…”

It buzzed its wings and pressed its disenchanting head against the cheek of the frozen bull. The changeling whispered to the chieftain “we feed off of you.”

Limbs snapped and regrew and eyes glowed with the typical shade of blue as the stragglers completed their transformation. The murder of crow-like creatures of the night closed in around the normal form of the one different to them, and blocked out the light.

Sanstone>

Still wrapped in the embrace of Braeburn, Rose nearly fell asleep. They held onto each other throughout the first attack of the storm. Their safety was quickly blowing away with the will of the wind.

A stomach-churning creak sounded across the barn from where the two cowered, Brae opened an eye and examined the severity of the situation. He could not keep his eye fixed on the opposite side of the barn for long, his eyes were awash with grit and sand so he turned his head back into Rose.

He blinked without rest to clear the debris and braved the sheering winds once more. The wooden boards that had creaked had bent to the point of breaking. A splinter of wood catapulted from the wall and a draught of incinerating wind licked the cheek of Braeburn.

As soon as the wind reached Braeburn’s face it took with it a slice of his yellow skin. Despite the disabling pain, Brae continued to act as a buffer for Rose.

This time he hadn’t looked away from the wind’s source. Just as the sand dried out his eyes, he saw a gleaming strip of light progressing rapidly towards him. He released his grip and threw himself out of the way of the incoming wood axe which became embedded in the beam between the unlikely pair. It didn’t rest for long as the wind forced it along with the lower half of the beam out into the streets of Sanstone.

Braeburn attempted to cross the gap that had formed between him and the cow he had grown to love, but was foiled by the blistering heat of the wind. Rose, aroused from the sounds and the burning all around her, pushed herself flat against the wall. One second she was there, the next she was gone. The entire opposite wall gave way and dissolved into nothingness.

Braeburn screamed for his love and dived into the merciless winds. He soon understood his folly as he rushed from side to side and the very pelt of his form was peeled in slithers off of him.

Even when confronted with his own mortality, Braeburn searched the opaque haze for Rose. The howl of the storm had calmed to a wail and soon a whistle till there was nothing at all. The yellow patchwork of a stallion screwed his face up at the pure agony of his severed skin.

In the dying storm, a piece of torn paper drifted carelessly until it collided with Braeburn’s shredded flank.

SLAP

He felt the alien presence of the thing and dabbed his hoof over his rump to investigate. He unfurled the corners and read the faded message. It was part of a ticket, a ticket for the Canterlot Express. Had Rose lied to him? Why would she have done such a thing? These niggling thought fought for favour in Braeburn’s spinning head.

He parted his lips which, along with most of his well-toned body, were sand blasted to within an inch of their life. They held fast together like waxy glue was connecting them. He jerked his jaw down and pried his lips apart.

The surfaces of his upper and lower lip pulsed with his heartbeat due to the strips of flesh which had torn from them. The day was cooling and a night in the desert was not something Braeburn wanted to experience. He set his eyes on the rail and followed the path of sleepers.

Outside in Appaloosa>

Appaloosa suffered still at the hands of the cruel tides of the storm, the dwellers cowered at the mercy of the harrowing gales as they retreated into their homes and hides to sit out the storm, and not one of them knew how long it would rage for.

Bartlett cautiously applied pressure to the double doors. They swung open explosively and let in the damning howls of the angry beast. He looked to be having second thoughts, Caiman jabbed her rattled tail into the small of his back and chucked him out to the street. The Mayor stuck her tail briefly in the sulphurous breeze and closed the two doors with a bone-shattering slam.

The first part of Bartlett to suffer was his smart attire; his shirt and tie were torn to ribbons and hanged off of him briefly before sailing down the street. The stallion kept his nose to the ground and began digging a few holes near to the town hall steps. He had his rump to the storm and it paid the price, his tail shrivelled and his arse cheeks became chapped.

He nuzzled his nose into the newly dug hole and found nothing. Time grew ever shorter as scars formed up along Bartlett’s back and deep blisters adorned his hind legs. He bit at the air through his pain until something shone at the end of the street. It was a sterling shape he had hoped to find and it had become entrapped at the foot of a barrel.

As he edged closed to the trinket he saw a faint apparition stroll by. Up ahead of him a stallion of dull green walked through the ravaging storm. It stopped at the crossroads and upended the barrel which had held the trinket down.

Bartlett ploughed his stomach through the sand. He groaned as further layers of his pelt were torn forcibly from him. Before too long he had reached the one prong that stuck out from the sand and lunged a hoof towards it.

The ghostly vision stamped its hoof down onto Bartlett’s forward reaching hoof. He rolled onto his side, the blood that welled on his back poured off into the sand. It coagulated on contact with the harsh wind. Bartlett pulled his trapped hoof free and gazed up to the pony above him. He couldn’t believe his eyes, it was Wallace Thicket.

The scorching winds had no effect on the long dead stallion that loomed over Bartlett. He leaned down and picked up the crested badge, he examined it closely before dropping it into the deep welts on Bartlett’s back.

“What are doing with my father’s badge boy?” He demanded. He stepped over the fallen writhing stallion and planted his spurs into the tattered remains of his back. Bartlett heaved himself upon the horizontal barrel and reached a hoof around to his back, he teased the five pronged star out from his shoulder blade and held the resultant thing in front of him.

He turned his attention to the town hall and began the arduous journey back there. He could walk no more, his hooves blistered and burned, he fell to his knees. As he met the volcanic sand the inclement weather calmed and eventually faded out completely.

Bartlett cringed as wisps of hay fell back to earth and window shutters flung open. He admired the spoils and held the badge level on his chest. He pierced his bloody mess of pelt with the point of the pin and assumed his role as sheriff once more.

He kicked open the double doors and walked with a limp but also a new sense of purpose. Bartlett held the badge out for Caiman to see, it tore his flesh slightly but he was numb to it. The serpentine Mayor winked appreciatively to his efforts and beckoned. “You best come back into my office. We have a matter most urgent to discuss.”