THE BOG
Written by: Patient X
Head pounding, I my eyes flutter open and my vision swims into focus. An intense pain sears through my back as I try to sit up, as I'm laying on my belly. I look to my right, Valeriya lays on her belly, too; her wings pressed up against her light blue form, blood leaking from long lacerations and bruises that had formed around the base of her flight appendages; her white and silver mane are caked with mud.
Looking around, without moving my light green torso, I notice that we had landed on a small island of sorts surrounded by a swamp. The island that we are currently laying on is about ten meters across and covered with small patches grass and moss, a large tree grows from the center of the raised, earthy area of the ground. The tree itself is adorned with vines, small holes where insects have burrowed into it over the years, and many different types of fungi, all of different colors.
I look to my left to find several snapped tree branches floating in the shallow pool of the bog. Other large trees dot the huge pool of water that surround the tiny plot of dry land, each with the same features as the tree on our island. A heavy mist hanging in the air, causing me to lose lack of visibility further down the swamp. Suddenly, it all comes back to me.
"Uuuugh...that damn tree." I say aloud, grabbing my cranium under my black mane trying to dull the pain of my throbbing blood vessels.
"Mmph. Wh---what happened?" My friend asks, trying to get up. Her torso was about a full foot off the ground when she clenched her teeth and gave a weak moan. Her quivering form then quickly collapses to the ground, and she turns her head left to see me, giving her a look of worry.
"I think we hit that tree too hard, I can't move my wings or body without them hurting like a sonofabitch." I tell her, still trying to get up.
"Wait...oh, shit! I was supposed to get that package for, um---Fluttershy!" Valeriya exclaims as she, too tries to get up, only to repeat her last process of clenching her teeth and falling back down, her mail-bag cutie mark caked with grime.
I finally manage to stand up, even with my wings throbbing. I manage to turn around and extend a hoof towards Valeriya's front hooves. We grab each other, and I help her up, her teeth clenching and a loud moan of pain escaping her lips.
"We got anything in there that we can use to patch us up?" I ask Valeriya as she fumbles through her saddlebags.
"Oh, praise Celestia! I've got some gauze tape and peroxide!" she exclaims with slight relief.
"Good...now who wants alcohol dumped on an open wound first?" I ask sarcastically. Valeriya gives me a playful punch on my arm and we both smile.
Opening the brown plastic bottle, I fill the cap up to the brim and begin to dump it over Valeriya's wounds. She grits her teeth in pain; her gashes filling up with a very pale, white foam as I remove a few feet of gauze tape from the roll. I wrap the tape around my friend, while she is still clenching her teeth in slight agony over the stress on her torso.
"All done. See that wasn't so bad." I tell her, giving her a reassuring wink. She scowls playfully at me, then gives a grin.
"Your turn." She tells me.
My lacerations are even deeper and more blood caked than hers, as mine need two cap-fulls of the organism killing liquid. After patching my torso up with some of the gauze tape, we sit and wonder.
"What happened? I remember a race, or something, and then I blacked out." I told her, my neon green hoof under my chin as I scrunched my face in concentration.
"Oh, I remember now, Sergei! We were having a race to see who's the faster flier. I think that we flew a bit too low and we kinda...crashed into a tree...Why did you tag along?" Valeriya says, flipping her white and silver streaked mane to one side trying to remove some of the caked on mud.
"I just wanted to spend some time with a friend." I quietly remark. We both smile.
"Now what are we gonna do? We've got little supplies and we're stuck here until someone comes searching for us; but that'll take weeks!" Valeriya shouts in frustration.
"Well. This island is pretty good; leaves and branches from the tree to make a shelter, we could utilize some of the fungus growing under the tree for food, and...oh shit. I don't have a lighter on me, fuck!" I exclaim with Valeriya's frustration; remembering that I gave up smoking tobacco a month ago.
"I think I remember bringing a book of matches with us." She says to me. Valeriya then produces a small book of matches, a quarter of which had been used.
"Excellent." I say, trying to break off a branch of the tree with my mouth, only for it to snap off completely and I fall backward into the warm, murky pool behind me.
I resurface, only to have a black snake coiled around my muzzle. I rip it off and throw it on land, which I proceeded to stomp its head in. Several stomps later, the appendage is gone, and a mess of grey and red matter lay haphazardly on the ground in front of the dismembered reptile. I carefully pick the snake up with my hoof and show it to Valeriya, who wears a look of disgust.
"Who wants dinner?" I ask her in a jokingly morbid tone.
"You're fucking nasty, Sergei...I'll cook it medium-well." Her face then contorts to one of hunger.
The moon has begun to rise on Equestria as our makeshift shelter stands frailly under the tree which has provided us with the material. The small tent, made out of sturdy branches, is currently being surrounded by leaves from the island tree. Those leaves are then plastered onto the structure with decaying bog-matter as I attempt to patch up every hole. A fire burns brightly in the center of the island, Valeriya holding the snake's headless cadaver impaled by a sharp branch, the fire reflecting off her green eyes. The fire is fueled by peat that had been collected among the decades at the bottom of the swamp.
"All done." I say to Valeriya as I attach one more leaf to the external wall of our cube of a tent.
"Right on time. Snake's almost done. I hope you like stringy muscle meat." She calls back, and then chuckles.
I then wash my muddy hooves off in the already muddy bog-water and sit next to Valeriya, putting a light green hoof around her shoulder. We sit and stare out into the fog that had gathered around our 'little patch of heaven' for several minutes before any of us say a word.
"Hmm...Do you think Fluttershy would miss her precious package too much?" I ask her, getting up and rooting through her saddlebags that I had put into the hut-tent.
"Probably not." She states matter-of-factly as I pull out a brown cardboard box. Opening the box, I find rolled up newspaper, and a... first aid kit.
"Damn. Hey,Valeriya, didn't we need this just a few hours ago?" I ask her, holding up the red cotton bag.
She then gives me a sigh of annoyance and a playful smirk. I sit next to her, opening the bag to find several bottles of spray-on peroxide, a box of small bandages, cue-tips, other miscellaneous supplies, and two small knives.
"Who needs better patching up?" I ask her, holding up our newly acquired medical supplies.
"I do, but you get to go first on the peroxide this time." Valeriya gives me a smirk.
After a piping hot meal of Seminatrix pygaea and proper bandaging, we both crawl under our makeshift tent and snuggle.
"Are there alligators in this swamp, Sergei?" Valeriya asks, clutching my chest with sudden fear.
"None that I'd heard of." I reply without giving a second thought.
A sudden growl comes from in front of the entrance to the tent, and I share her fear, clutching on to her tightly. The fire has now just died down to a few scalding coals, but I can still make out the faint outline of a scaly reptile with four legs.
"Fuck...wait. Didn't we have knifes from the medical bag?" I ask Valeriya, hopeful.
"Yes!" She quietly exclaims back.
I remember the medical bag being under my back hoof somewhere...I just have to kick around for it---there! I use my back hoof to drag the bag closer and unbutton the top, revealing the two stainless steel blades supported by rubber lined grips.
I take one and slowly approach the adversary, who turns and looks at me. We stand there looking for several seconds before the reptile careens forward and jumps right on top of me. I can barely see it, but I can still try to push it off; a small black object falls onto my face. Three seconds of bitter struggle later, my stainless steel blade plunges into the skull of the aggressor sending blood up and out of the wound. A sobbing Valeriya comes to comfort me as I throw the corpse of the reptile off of my body. I sit up and we embrace for several minutes...
Six or seven hours later, we both wake up in our hut. I sit up and stretch, quickly wiping the insects out of my black mane. My mining-pick cutie mark caked with mud and small bits of moss. Valeriya then sits up and looks behind her and grows a look of shock.
"What's wrong?" I ask, puzzled; unaware of the small leech that had crept under my blue eye that night and had made it's home just beneath my line of sight.
"Uuuummm." She states, grabbing a pair of forceps from the medical bag. Removing the leech, I feel a slight sting as the teeth of the parasite leaving my skin.
"Thanks. Are we gonna do anything today, or are we just gonna sit here and rot?" I ask Valeriya as we both exit the tent to find the stinking, blood-soaked remains of the caiman still lying belly down near the fire; breakfast if Valeriya's up to it.
"We need to get all this shit packed up and get going. I think the swamp's end is like a two day's hike." She replies, gathering up the more important items in her saddlebag.
"Well then we need to get going." I say to her, strapping the first aid bag onto my back and gesturing her to wade into the warm, murky pool of dirty water with me.
She follows, making small sounds of 'eeeww', 'gross' and 'fuck me' whenever she stepped onto small, waterborne plants. I chuckle and give a small smile.
"We don't have anything to worry about. Most things in here are far more afraid of us then they are of them." I reassure her as we slosh through the foggy, smelly bog.
"Most things? What about the few things that aren't?" Valeriya asks, becoming paranoid and swatting at a mayfly.
"Well; caimans, alligators, some swamp snakes, biting and stinging insects, and the occasional Hydra." I elaborate, stepping on a fallen branch, only to further scare her.
"Well ain't that just fuckin' dandy!" She shouts at me, huddling up against me as we walk; her silver and white mane threatening to tangle with mine.
Several minutes come and go without us saying a word. We continue to slosh through the shallow and yet warm waters of the foggy, and strangely unnerving bog.
"Ssshhh...you hear that?" I ask her, stopping dead in our tracks. A small hiss comes from behind us. Valeriya shrieks with terror and embraces me with both front hooves, her light blue face buried in my mane. Her horror filled cries echo all around us, each sound wave bouncing back at us both at indescribable directions. I look back and give a weak smile.
"It's just a small snake. It's the same kind from yesterday, and it's even running away from us; look!" I comfort her. She looks up and back, seeing the snake slowly swim away from us just beneath the surface of the water.
Valeriya then gives me a huge punch in the arm, I flinch with the unexpected pain. Holding back the desire to call her out on it, I gesture her to keep moving, which we do.
"Huh. You're a fucking asshole. Anyways, do we have any food?" She asks as we continue to slosh forwards.
"No." I look around to find a cricket attached to a tree on my left. I slam the cricket with my hoof and pick it up, showing it to Valeriya, who's face contorts into one of disgust.
"No, I'm not eating that. Poison ivy, maybe." Valeriya protests.
"Come on. They're just like your fancy protein bars...only they twitch." I assure her, breaking the creature in half and giving a half to her.
"Guuuhh...Let's get this over with." She states, swallowing the morsel in one gulp; I do the same.
We continue to slosh through the smelly, foggy swamp, swatting at mosquitoes, dodging fallen tree branches, and trying not to get stuck in small, foot wide eddies. We feast on small amounts of crickets, Valeriya hating every minute of it.
One hour later, we come across a small island, much like the island what we had spent the first night on, but it had one defining feature...a cave.
"Ooohh. Check out this cave! It's gotta go down about a hundred feet." I say to her, looking into the large hole in the ground. The floor of the cave begins about five feet down and it continually slopes downward, along with the roof of the limestone cavern.
"Don't let your miner instincts get a hold of you, we gotta get some shelter up." Valeriya tells me, dropping her saddlebags onto the mossy plot of dry land and looking at my mining pick cutie mark.
"I'm gonna do down anyways." I tell Valeriya.
"Fine. Just leave me up here...alone. With all of these dangerous animals wondering around." She calls out to me, becoming paranoid.
"You wanna come in, too?" I ask her.
"Uuugh. Fine. Let's just make this quick." She responds.
We leave our bags on the surface as we enter the dark depths of the cave, not forgetting to wrap a tree branch with dead leaves and vines, making a good torch. Holding the torch in my hoof, we walk down the humid, cold cave; dripping stalactites threatening to impale us from the ceiling. The small tunnel opens up into a small cavern, the stench of rot hangs heavily in the air, so much that both Valeriya and I vomit.
"We should get out of here, Sergei. I've got a feeling that something bad's gonna happen." Valeriya pressures me with conviction as we continue pressing forward.
"We're just doing some harmless exploring, we'll be fine---WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT!?" I shout as the torch illuminates something truly horrific.
An earth pony, emaciated and toothless, lying against the back wall of the circular dead end cavern, his back is split open by a stalagmite, revealing black, rotten organs. His red mane withered and falling apart. His eyes are gone, leaving two rotting pus filled holes where yellow fly maggots continue to squirm uncontrollably. His teeth and parts of his mane cover his yellow and green striped skin, which has wrinkled and rotted.
Valeriya passes out, leaving me all alone with the cadaver. I quickly prop Valeriya up on my back, and I sprint for the entrance, dodging rocks and running past a small coal deposit, which I could break open later with a well placed stone. We finally make it to the entrance of the cave and I climb up the rocky edges, trying to keep Valeriya on my back as best I can. We make it out of the cave. Setting Valeriya down gently by her saddlebags, I take a quick five minute break before patching up the entrance to the cave as best I could with large leaves and sticks. Afterwards, I begin to work on making a camp for the night.
Four hours later the sun sets over the foggy expanse of this forgotten wasteland. After making another dinner of black snake and building a tent with the same basic idea as the last one, I gently shake Valeriya awake, who lies peacefully under the leaf canopy of the tent. She opens her green eyes and looks up at me, tears welling up in her eyes. She sits up and we hug.
"We're never getting out of here. We're gonna be just like that...THING we found in that fucking cave!" She stutters through her sobs, slamming a hoof on the moss covered ground.
"Hey, don't say things like that! We'll get out of here in one piece! I swear!" I reply, stroking her mud caked mane with my mud caked hoof.
"You mean it?" She asks looking up through her sobs.
"Definitely." I say to her, giving her a reassuring smile. "Come and eat dinner. It's your favorite: snake." I say to her, jokingly.
She smiles.
Several hour later, we both wake up to the sound of faint roaring. Out of pure instinct, we sit up and quickly exit the tent, green mucus covering our eyelids and our joints popping as we scramble to get our things together. I look behind our place of slumber and into the fog.
In the distance is a large...creature; three heads supported on long stalks, its body covered with orange scales. Each head of the beast is covered with razor sharp fangs and external gills. In one of its mouths is the tiny form of a huge caiman, it's organs spilling out and flopping into the water as it roars in agony.
"Hydr---Hydra!" I shout to Valeriya, who is already sloshing about in the water, not caring about how wet she gets.
I join her and we slosh as quickly as we can into the distance. The Hydra hears us and careens toward us with blazing speed, knocking us both forward several feet. Our bandages soaked and wings numb, we try desperately to press on, only to have the Hydra pick Valeriya up with on of its four mouths.
"SERGEI!!" She screams as the beast holds her high into the air by her hind legs. One of the beast's heads looks at me, taunting me to either run away or help Valeriya, but threatening me with death if I move any muscle. One other head is holding her front legs and is pulling her away from the beast with her hind legs. Pops and snaps of bones are being covered up her screams of pure agony, as well as my loud sobs.
Suddenly, Valeriya's quivering form violently rips in half, her organs flying everywhere, splashing into the murky waters below. Bits of bone fragment fly in all directions and I almost faint, dumbfounded and sobbing loudly. The Hydra then swallows her lower half in one of it's heads while it throws her front half towards me, knocking me backwards and into the water. I resurface, holding the sky blue remains of my fallen friend to spot the Hydra sloshing away from the two of us, roaring.
"Valeriya?" I quietly ask the blood stained remains of my friend, her organs slowly falling out of the jagged rip that encompasses the lower half of her body. Her spinal cord and lower ribs are visible, and are leaking bone marrow and rivers of blood.
"You're a good friend...you...helped m---me through this...hell-hole..." She quietly states, losing blood from her mouth and nose at an alarming rate.
"I---I...I'm so sorry that I couldn't stop that Hydra...I'm so sorry!" I sob at the dying pegasus, her white and silver mane caked with chunks of flesh, blood, and dry mud.
"Don't...be...you tried...your best...I think it's time for...me to go...Sergei..." She states, closing her green eyes for the last time.
"Goodbye, Valeriya...I---I love you..."I tell her, holding back my sobs as best I can.
"I love you too..." She states with a small smile. She exhales and the rest of her intestines and stomach fall out of her and splash into the water, making the already red water turn an even deeper crimson...
"She's gone..." I told myself for the thirtieth time, still holding her body in my hooves. It's been an hour since the incident with the Hydra. I root through her saddlebags and find a small Polaroid picture of her and I standing in front of Cloudsdale fight school after passing our final flight test and graduating. Putting the picture in the medical saddlebag on my back, I finally manage to look up, noticing a large expanse of land. I put Valeriya on my back and I slosh towards my destination, my back numb and my ankles turning prune over the constant exposure to the water.
Coming closer to the island, I notice a small sign. Sloshing over toward it, I read: 'Now leaving Hydra Bog'. Beyond that, the fog fades and a huge field begins to take shape with a small dirt road, the outskirts of Ponyville even farther out. My eye twitches as I inhale deeply...
"WE WERE SO FUCKING CLOSE!" I scream at the top of my lungs in pure rage, stomping my hoof onto the ground. No, I don't have the energy to be angry or sad; I just need to get my friend back home.
I unravel my bandages and flap my wings, they work perfectly, no pain or anything. I hold my fallen friend with both my front hooves and fly to the outskirts of Ponyville, searching for the local morgue...
