In a somewhat crumbly-looking, brown-shingled house on a densely wooded hill, a single figure laid on his bed, reading from a dimly-glowing tablet computer, with only a window-fan loudly humming to fill the silence. The dull glow from the tablet was enough to illuminate the listless, drooping eyes of someone who had been up far past his point of reasonable sleeplessness. Stifling a yawn, he flipped to one side and kept reading. There was a distant noise, and his finger froze mid-scroll on the tablet. After a moment, he stretched his arm to the fan, and flipped it off. Absolute silence reigned, but shortly, a rolling peal of thunder could be heard. As he strained to listen, the sound of rain hitting the leaves could be heard, and the sky seemed to split open, bringing a sheet of pounding rain.
"God damn it," he spoke.
Two hours later, the storm had subsided. The power had gone out, and the figure, whom we shall refer to as Jay, hauled himself out of bed before putting on a pair of shorts. When storms of that severity rolled through, they tended to leave downed trees across the road, and if nobody called them in, it would take quite a bit (which is to say days) longer for them to be cleaned off of the road. Such is life when the county constantly cries "NO FUNDS!". Still wearing thin slippers, Jay jammed his feet down into an unlaced pair of work boots, then tucked the laces into the boots. It was still pitch-black outside, being somewhere near four in the morning. Jay sighed and grabbed the large flashlight he kept near the front door, before heading outside. It was clear the storm had passed, if only because of the deafening din of tree-frogs and other peeping amphibians.
After a short, somewhat slippery walk down his downwards-sloped dirt driveway, Jay reached the road. Going right along the road, he found a tree down on the power lines, having pulled them to the point of losing power, but not physically snapping. "Doesn't the power company call these widow-makers? Oh joy." Not finding any more downed trees in that direction, Jay walked past his driveway in the other direction. There were several large branches down across the road, and he could see something laying off to the side of the road just on the other side of the small bridge that crossed a stream. It was too big to be a branch, and didn't seem long enough to be the trunk of a tree. As he got closer, it moved. Jay stopped dead in his tracks, frozen with his flashlight pointed at whatever was a mere three feet away from him. It was some kind of animal. It's eyes fluttered open listlessly, before widening in shock as they met with Jay's. Then, it sneezed.
After a few tense moments, nothing happened. Jay got a closer look at it. Whatever it was, it was covered in mud to the point where it was impossible to tell what the colour of the animal was supposed to be. As he was scrutinizing it, it made a noise. Running on around twenty hours of sleeplessness, Jay remarked "Sorry, say that again?" It had been instinctual, in the same way that a sleepwalker might try to order a burger with a side of fries in their sleep.
What was unexpected, however, was the whispered response of "Please... Help. I'm so cold."
Jay, in a sleep-deprived state of mind, is able to process things that a properly-functioning mind usually blows a fuse trying to make sense of. As such, he decided that either he was dreaming, and thus might as well help the talking animal, or he was awake, and might as well help the talking animal. "Alright," he said. "Can you walk?"
The whatever-it-was weakly shook its head no. Jay looked carefully at it. It was roughly horse-like in sha- No. No fucking way. This is why Jay hated not being able to fall asleep. It always led to weird dreams based on whatever he had been reading before he slipped off into blissful unconsciousness. For example, finding a pony on the side of the road.
Jay sighed in semi-lucid annoyance. "Alright, I'm going to pick you up. I need you to hang onto my shoulders and back as well as you can." Picking up the pony unceremoniously, Jay quickly positioned (him? her?) to be able to hold on tightly. Wrapping his arms around the middle of said pony, he began the walk back to his house. Despite slipping a few times on the slick mud of the driveway, he found himself at his own front door again quickly enough. "Wait," he said out loud. "How am I going to clean you off without power?" The pony only groaned in response. Carefully weighing his options (which is to say, picking the only one he could properly think of at the moment), Jay gently put the pony down on his front porch. "Okay, stay here." Feeling a bit foolish at that, Jay nonetheless went into his house, popped off his boots, and grabbed several towels from his bathroom closet.
Shoving his boots back on, Jay went outside and picked the pony back up. He staggered across a small section of his lawn, and unlatched the gate to the large in-ground swimming pool. "This may be a bit cold," he warned. With that, he popped off both his boots and his slippers, and gently lowered the pony onto the second step of the shallower end of the pool. The pony involuntarily spasmed upon contact with the chilly water, so Jay didn't waste any time in scrubbing the mud and grime off of the pony. Said pony was, unsurprisingly, not mud coloured, but was instead a light, powder-blue sort of colour. By the time he finished, his vision was swimming from lack of sleep. As he pulled.. her? The pony had to be female with hair like that, plus she just flat-out looked female. As he pulled her out of the pool and dried her off, he nearly missed the muttered "Thank you." He responded with a gentle pat and smile.
Wobbling up the front stairs, Jay nearly fell when he opened the door to his house, barely remembering to lock it behind him. Hauling a spare blanket out of storage, he set the pony on his couch and wrapped the quilt around her before staggering off to the bathroom, stripping off his mud-soaked pants and shirt, wiping off his legs and arms, and then finding his way to his own bed, where he fell asleep moments after his head hit the pillow.
