Pandemic

The air was chilled with morning mist and the sun had barely began to climb above the horizon. It was a beautiful sight really, with all of its radiant hews being thrown wistfully upon the landscape. As the sun rose bit by bit the mist evacuated quickly, receding into whatever hiding place it could find. The dirt path still held some moisture as Dash awoke.

Dash flitted her eyes open for a second only to find herself in total darkness. She was dazed, confused, and her limbs felt like gelatin. She didn't quite remember where she was or what she was doing, all she could process at the current moment was the terrible stench around her.

It smelled like a thousand decaying bodies.

Then Dash remembered.

She opened her eyes again and tried to move but was pinned down by the weight of the bodies around her. The stench grew worse as she disturbed the corpses and she felt an unknown fluid spill onto her legs. She held back wretching and desperately fought against the cadavers around her. She shifted her arms enough to free them and used them to wrest the bodies on her head enough for some light and fresh air to file in through a gap. Encouraged by this, she struggled more and more as the pile shifted and gave way. Finally, with a last heaving push, the pile toppled down in front of her head.

She wriggled out of the pile and fell into the grass eagerly gulping fresh air. She sat looking up at the sky and admiring the large cloud formation of CloudsDale. She remembered when she was a filly and she used to race her friends around the misty buildings and streets, using her secret shortcut if she ever fell behind.

'Those were the days,' she thought.

'If only I could be a filly again, without a care in the world. If only I could wake up from this hellish nightmare.'

"If only" she muttered to herself.

As she gazed at the beautiful city she noticed something strange. Normally, you could see plenty of Pegasi hustling and bustling about the city, but today there were none. Something else she noticed was that the pile of bodies in front of her was positioned directly beneath the edge of the floating city.....and they were all Pegasi.

She rolled on her side to avoid looking at either the city or the pile only to have her wing explode into an inferno of pain. She rolled back on her back and onto her other side as she winced. She looked over at her left wing to try and assess the damage.

It had a swollen knob on it where the bone had broken and it was still dislocated and hanging from her shoulder joint. She knew she couldn't relocate it until she had a splint on the broken bone but sadly, she didn't have a wing splint in her bags. At any other moment, Dash would have panicked. At present moment though, she simply curled up into the fetal position and whispered strange things to herself.

"You were never good enough. You'll never save your friends. You are a failure. You have no use to anyone. You are a despicable waste of space and air. You are too late and now your friends are going to die," she whispered soft enough so that only she could've heard the harsh hisses and clicks of her irate and outraged voice.

Dash was broken.