The Long Road

When the mare woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night, she reached out to touch the filly sleeping beside her. Her hoof rose and fell softly with each breath.

She pushed away the blanket covering her body and and looked toward the east. With the first gray light, she rose and left the unicorn filly sleeping. She walked out to the road and squatted and studied the country to the south. Barren, silent. She thought it was sometime close to Nightmare Night, but she wasn't sure. She hadn't kept a calendar for as long as she could remember.

There'd be no surviving another winter here.

When it was light enough to use the binoculars, she glassed the valley below. She studied what she could see; the segments of road down there among the dead trees. Looking for anything of color, any movement, any trace of life. She lowered the glasses and pulled down the cotton mask from her face and wiped her nose on the back of her leg and then glassed the country again.

Then she just sat there, holding the binoculars and watching the ashen daylight congeal over the land.

When she got back, the filly was still asleep. She pulled the rotted blanket and and carried it out to the grocery cart and packed it. She came back with their plates and some cornmeal cakes in a plastic bag and a plastic bottle of syrup. She spread the small tarp they used for a table on the ground and laid everything out and she just sat watching the little unicorn sleep. She watched the filly and she looked out through the trees toward the road. This was not a safe place.

They could be seen from the road, now that it was day. The filly turned in the blankets, and then she opened her eyes.

"Hi, Mum," she said. "I'm right here."

"I know, Muffin."

She knew only that the child was her warrant. If she was not the word of Celestia, Celestia never spoke.

An hour later, they were on the road. She pushed the cart and both of them knapsacks. In the knapsacks were essential things, in case they had to abandon the cart on short notice. Clamped to the handle of the cart was a chrome mirror that she used to watch the road behind them. She shifted the pack higher on her back and looked out over the wasted country. The road was empty. Below in the little valley, the still gray serpentine of a river - motionless and precise - lay decayed.

"Are you okay?" She said. The filly nodded.

A quarter mile down the road, she stopped and looked back. She pushed the cart off the road and tilted it over where it could not be seen. They left their packs and went back to the station. In the service bay, she dragged out the steel drum and tipped it over and pawed out all the quart plastic oil bottles. Then they sat in the floor emptying them one by one, leaving the bottles to stand upside down draining into a pan, until they had a half quart of oil. She screwed down the plastic cap and wiped the bottle off with a rag and hefted it in her wing.

"You can read me a story," the filly said. "Can't you, Mum?"

"Yes," she said. "I can."

...

On the far side of the river valley the road passed through a stark black burn. Charred and limbless trunks of trees stretched away on every side. Ash moved over the road and the sagging hands of blind wire limped from the blackened light poles whining thinly in the wind. Farther along were billboards advertising motels. Everything as it once had been save faded and weathered.

At the top of the hill they stood in the cold and the wind, getting their breath. She looked at the filly.

"I'm all right," the girl said.

The mare put her hoof on the girl's shoulder and nodded toward the open country below them. She got the binoculars out of the cart and stood in the road and glassed the plain down there where the shape of a city stood in the grayness like a charcoal drawing sketched across the waste. Nothing to see.

"Can I see?" the filly said.

"Yes. Of course you can."

The unicorn leaned on the cart and adjusted the wheel.

"What do you see?" the mare said.

She lowered the glasses. "It's raining."

"Yes," the mare said. "I know."

They left the cart in a gully covered with the tarp and made their way up the slope through the dark poles of the standing trees to where he'd seen a running ledge of rock and they sat under the rock overhang and watched the gray sheets of rain blow across the valley. It was very cold. They sat huddled together wrapped each in a blanket over their coats and after a while the rain stopped and there was just the dripping in the woods.

When it had cleared, they went down to the cart and pulled away the tarp and took the things they would need for the night. They went back up the hill and made their camp in the dry dirt under the rocks and the mare sat with her arms around the filly trying to warm her. The gray shape of the city vanished in the night's onset.

She lit the little lamp and set it back out of the wind. Then they walked out to the road and they went to the top of the hill where they could see out over the darkening country to the south, standing there in the wind, watching for any sign of a fire or a lamp. There was nothing. The lamp in the rocks on the side of the hill was little more than a mote of light, and after a while they walked back.

They ate their meal cold and lay down in their bedding with the lamp between them. She'd brought the filly's book, but the girl was too tired for reading.

Can we leave the lamp on till I'm asleep? he said.

"Yes. Of course we can."

She was a long time going to sleep. After a while he turned and looked at the man. Her face in the small light was streaked with black from the rain.

"Can I ask you something?" She said.

"Yes, my little muffin. Of course."

"Are we going to die?"

"Not now."

"And we're still going south."

"Yes."

"So we'll be warm."

"Yes."

"Okay."

"Okay what?"

"Nothing. Just okay."

"Go to sleep."

"Okay."

"I'm going to blow out the lamp. Is that okay?"

"Wait Mum. Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"What would you do if I died?"

"If you died, I would want to die too."

"So you could be with me?"

"Yes Muffin. So I could be with you."

"Okay."