Tales by Balefirelight (a Fallout: Equestria Group Collab)

Caravanby Honey Mead

I found everything I was looking for, and everything I feared.

It was the smell that led me to them, that stomach churning, noxious mixture of ash, cooking meat, and burnt hair. I nearly retched from that stench a long mile away. Nothing I did could cover it up, seared as it was on my memory.

Inside a half-mile, I spotted the first curls of smoke as they dissipated into the air. Ten? Fifteen? I couldn’t count for the watering of my eyes. Those thin tendrils wafted, almost dancing, over the charred remains. Black corkscrews, like temporary tombstones, that marked where they’d fallen.

By the time I reached them, there was nothing left in my stomach, and only the sour tinge of vomit on my tongue.

Stumbling, I fell against the still smoldering wreckage.

I heard them coming back, their whoops and hollers echoing between the hills, but I couldn’t make myself care.