In the dark, cold night of eternity, the grey mare surprisingly found herself in the world of dreams. In the dream she found herself in the town, and as she walked past the burning buildings, she could see the dead rising and walking among her. The skeletal and corpse ponies were trotting or flying about, as if nothing was out of the ordinary. The mare herself was the only pony with any flesh, and as she walked past the walking dead and the burning buildings, she thought nothing of it. This was just any regular day in Ponyville to her.

She felt a sudden jolt in her belly. When she looked down and rubbed her swollen stomach, she realized that they were both hungry. A sudden craving overcame her, and she found herself walking towards the smoldering building from which she was a regular customer. There was no line, but as she walked into the flaming building, a few other ponies walked out the doorway, some on fire, but none of them thinking of it. One of them even laughed, as if he or she had just heard a very funny joke.

The inside of the building was completely on fire, and smoke filled the air. The mare trotted up to the counter, where a familiar skeletal face was smiling at her. The skeleton waved at her, and almost had to keep herself from bouncing.

“Hiya D… or should I say Mrs. Whooves! Welcome to Sugar Cube Corner! Did you enjoy that special “Wow now you’re married but also preggers but that doesn’t matter ‘cause your happy” party!? I thought that it went pretty well except for the part where Pokey accidently knocked the punch bowl over and spilled punch everywhere, but it was funny because the floor was so sticky that Scootaloo got stuck to the floor and Spike tried to pull her up with a spatula and…”

The mare smiled, and placed on of her hooves on the counter as she listened to the talkative skeleton jabber on. The counter was flaming hot to the touch, but it did not faze her. When the skeleton had finished, she took a breath and spoke finally. “Hiya Pinkie! I guess just give me the regular muffin. Blueberry if you’ve got any!”

The skeleton bounded towards the kitchen, literally bouncing the entire way. “Okey Dokey Lokey! It’ll be out in a jiffy!”

As the mare waited patiently for her snack, she could hear the cheerful skeleton singing from the kitchen, her loud but very nice singing voice carrying a short but cheerful song; most likely made up in about five seconds. The beat was catchy, and the mare found herself drumming alongside the skeleton with her hooves on the flaming counter.

She repeated the song about five times until finally she appeared from the kitchen again, bouncing over to the grey mare with a tray of muffins on her back. The mare began to question why the muffins would stay on her back completely without toppling over, but she assumed that it was better not think too hard about it. Regardless, the skeleton reached back and plopped a few of them on the counter.

The mare took one and munched on it, while the skeleton placed the others into a brown paper “to-go” bag. The mare took them, and began to pay, when the skeleton stopped her. “Oh no no no no no no! These baked goods are on the house!”

The mare was shocked. “But Pinkie, that’s not fair for you. Just let me pay, it’s no big deal.”

“No big deal!? Well, duh it’s a big deal! You’re all preggers! You’ll need those bits to buy diapers and bottles and baby stuff! No no no no! This ones on the house!”

The mare wanted to argue, but she knew the skeleton well enough. When her friend said no, she generally meant no, and nothing was going to change her mind. She sighed, but smiled. “Alright Pinkie. Just this once though.”

As the mare turned to leave the flaming building, she suddenly caught a strange sound in the air. Her ears twitching, she turned back to the skeleton, and tilted her head. “Hey Pinkie? Do you hear that noise?”

The skeleton smiled. “Oh I sure do! That noise is coming from the kitchen! It’s the boiler, and it’s all about to go kablooey and destroy us all! My Pinkie Sense told me so!” The skeleton said it in such a cheerful way, that it was almost terrifying.

The mare looked at the skeleton, horrified. She attempted to speak, but she found herself froze in shock. The skeleton didn’t look too fazed, however, and her empty sockets continued starting at the mare.

“But that’s ok, because you’re dreaming silly! None of this stuff going on is real; it’s all just in your head! In fact, you’re about to wake up in three… two… one…”

***

The mare awoke from the sudden dream, and she felt a shivering underneath her. Peeking under the blanket and her wing, she could see that the child was awake, and wide eyed. She cooed softly, nuzzling the child.

“Mommy… I had a nightmare…”

“I’m sorry muffin. I did too.”

“I’m sorry mommy. What did you dream about?”

The mare closed her eyes. She could remember details about the dream, but not the whole thing. She remembered the cheerful skeleton, however, and spoke to her daughter. “I dreamed about one of my old friends.”

“Oh.” The child was silent for a minute. “Do you miss her?”

The mare nodded, her features softening. “Oh yes. I do miss her a lot.”

The mare felt the child nuzzle her back. The two of them laid there for a while, each the other’s only comfort. The air was cold, but the wind was light. The grey cloud hovered above them.

***

At noon, they finished the last of their food stubs. They had managed to split a small bag of sunflower seeds, and had emptied their canteen. The mare knew that finding water would not be a problem, but the food would be. It was always the food. As they made their way through the forest, they came upon a small clearing in the trees. The ground was rocky beneath them, and the mare watched her child leap upon on of the taller rocks, and stand with her hooves pressed together.

The grey mare smiled. “You silly filly. You look like a billy goat.”

As the child continued to play, the mare looked up into the clearing. The wind was not harsh today, and even though it was cold, she knew that her kind had been built for the cold. Watching her daughter take to another rock, she spoke to her. “I’m going to fly up and take a look around. Is that okay?”

The child stopped in her tracks. She looked down, somewhat self-consciously at the ground, fear embedded in her eyes. The mare knew that it would necessary for her to fly eventually to get their bearings. They could wander this empty forest for weeks, until they were either consumed by it or starved to death. She needed to know where they were. “Do you not want me to?” The mare asked gently.

The child was quiet, and continued to stare at the ground, now shuffling her hooves. The mare began to take that as the answer no, when the child spoke.

“Can I go up there with you?”

Her daughter had never made a request quite like that. It seemed that when they had traveled, if they had ever gotten to a high up place, then the child would begin to act apprehensive and nervous. The mare had just assumed that she was afraid of heights. She had never thought that she wanted to fly. The child was a Unicorn, and their place was here on the earth. In spite of this, the mare did not reprehend her, and only responded with surprise. “Of course. Of course you can.”

When the child was secured onto her back, the mare flexed her wings, and took a steady movement upwards, aiming herself towards the grey cloud. She took to the sky slowly, and as soon as they were above the treetops, the mare could already feel the air becoming thicker. The wind had picked up considerably, and she found herself already exhausted. The child clamped on tightly, staring at the ground below in fright.

“Don’t look down. That will only make it worse. Take out the telescope.”

She felt the child rummage around in her saddlebags for a bit, until she pulled out the cylinder shaped object. She fumbled with it for a bit, but finally pressed the smaller end against her eye, extending it slightly.

“Do you see anything?” The mare coughed.

“No.”

“Remember to look all around.”

“No. I don’t see anything.”

When the child was finished, the mare looked through it herself. The object itself needed cleaning, but it still worked fine. She stared through the lenses, and looked in every direction. There wasn’t anything but treetops. There wasn’t any smoke, any signs of a fire, or any signs of civilization. The haze in the distance made it too unclear to see any hills or mountain ranges. The mare felt a sting of fear. If only I was a better flyer, she thought to herself.

***

They had not eaten since the previous morning. The child was exhausted, and too tired to walk or talk. The mare was carrying the child on her own back, and she continued to walk through the forest. She had started a habit, where every hour, she would fly above the treetops, and look through the telescope. She would scan the horizon, and when she found nothing but a sea of trees, she would land and continue on hoof. She found that there were no landmarks to go by. Unlike her part of the forest, where her cave had been, this forest was all the same. It was nothing but trees and thick grasses and ferns. The ash went unnoticed to her, as it was everywhere.

The nights had been the worst. As she had laid in the darkness and held her child tight, her brain would create scenarios where a beast would find them and kill them. Oftentimes at night she would swear to awaken and hear a faint laughing in the distance. She would wait, and stare into the darkness. The laugh would only sound once, and when she was entirely sure that they were completely alone in this damned forest, she would resume sleeping if she could.

There was nothing to eat here but the ferns on the forest floor. Around noon, the mare came upon an area where the ferns were especially thick. Though still grey from the ash, they were much greener than the previous ones she had seen. She plucked one, and using her wing feathers, she squeezed the juice out of the fern as best as she could. Albeit a little bitter at first, the fern was was rich, and she began to harvest a few.

The child awoke on her back, and watched as she plucked the healthier looking ferns from the ground. “What are you doing?”

The mare plucked a fern and handed it to her daughter. “Here, eat this.” The child looked at her funny, and the mare chewed and swallowed one of her own. “Go on. It’s good to eat.”

“What kind of ferns are they?”

“They’re called fiddlehead ferns. They’re an edible type.”

The mare gave the child a few more to eat, and she managed to harvest a few. These small ferns would not last long, and neither would they be very filling, but they were rich, and would give them some energy.

When she had gathered enough to be satisfied, they took a break, both eating on the ferns that the mare had gathered and sharing the canteen. They did not start a fire, as it was not possible with the wind, but as the cold chill began to disturb them, the mare removed the tattered blanket and wrapped it around the child. They sat amidst the ferns and ashes, and faced the opposite ways, both back to back, in silence.

After a short while, the mare felt the child move shift behind her. “Mommy, do you ever think the cloud will go away?”

The mare looked up at the sky. “I’m not really sure muffin. I don’t know if it can.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I mean that I don’t think anything could push it away or break it.”

“Couldn’t the wind just blow it all away?”

The mare felt a feeling surge through her wings as she remembered her races’ ultimate reason for existing. “No. Wind is created by Pegasus ponies, and there aren’t many of those left anymore.”

“Couldn’t the wind blow away the cloud now?”

“I don’t think so. The wind now is not natural, and neither is the weather. We don’t have any way of controlling it anymore.”

“Is it an evil wind?”

The mare felt as if she should laugh, but her daughter was probably not far from the actual truth. “No. I don’t think so. I think that because we ponies can’t control our environment anymore, the environment just decided to take care of itself again.”

“Did you ever make the weather rainy?”

This time, the mare actually did laugh. It was a small laugh. “No. I actually helped create more lightning and thunder than I did rain. I wasn’t very good with the weather…”

“But what if, we got a lot of Pegasus ponies and took them up in the sky and then they tried. Would it work?”

The mare was reminded of her hometown. Cloudsdale had been strong, for a while, but the ashes and smoke had become too much. The other Pegasus ponies whom had retreated there had all suffocated or starved to death. The grey cloud was too thick and dangerous to travel through. In the end, Cloudsdale had not fallen from the sky; it had dissolved. It had evaporated. It had become part of the grey cloud. She had never known what had happened to those living there.

“No. I don’t think that the sky is a suitable or livable place anymore now. The wind is too strong and cold, and the air is so thick that you couldn’t breathe up there anymore.”

“Oh.” The child seemed to take the mare’s last statement as word, and she continued the silence from before. When the mare could feel the energy created by the healthy plants drizzle through her body, she lifted herself and her daughter, and they pressed onward.

***

The cold night was as breakable as the previous had been. A very specific and freezing wind seemed to strike them in the night, and the mare had kept the blanket on her daughter, whom was tucked underneath her wing. Now, beneath an outcropping of rock, the mare continued her silent vigil, keeping her eyes and ears as alert as she could. The child stirred beneath her, and took a quick gasp of breath in. In a moment, however, the child relaxed, and her breathing became steadier.

The fiddleheads would be satisfactory, but not enough. There was never enough anymore. Never enough food, never enough energy, never enough pleasures of life; life itself was not about life, but simply survival. There were no pleasures to enjoy, and each was the others only comfort. There was simply nothing more for them. Without the other, the opposite may as well not exist. For now, each pressed against each other for desperate warmth, the mother and child rested in the inky darkness, the cold chilling them down to their very bones.

The mare began to feel herself drift away. They had picked a rather unnoticeable place to be found, and the mare knew that in this deep, darkness, she would have been able to make out the vision of a light from a distance away. As she began to fall asleep, a loud bang awoke her senses. The child underneath her snapped awake, and jumped at the noise.

After a moment of complete silence, the child spoke hesitantly. “Mommy? What was that?”

The mare shushed her quiet, and kept her senses alert. There was nothing to see in the night, but there was everything to hear. Usually, there was nothing to hear but the familiar dead silence of the night, and whatever environmental factor that was somewhere close by. But the bang went off again, followed by an incomprehensible shout.

Quickly, the mare rose to her hooves and grabbed her daughter. The child held on without being told, and the mare took to sprinting away. When she felt her hoof hit what might have been a stump or rock, she took to the air, gliding above the ground not so high that she could hit the branches, but enough that she could avoid the rocks or roots underhoof.

The child seemed to realize their dangerous predicament, and began to glow her horn as best as she could to light their path. With the light glow illuminating the forest, the mare landed and began to sprint as fast as she could.

The grey mare had not turned to look when she had begun running, and a part of her was confident that they had outrun whoever it was who was out there. The bang went off again, this time louder, and the mare felt the right side of her body becoming slightly warmer. She was not quick enough to turn and look, but she grunted as a seemingly large and hot object seemed to skid across the right side of her body. Instinctively, her wings flapped to fly away, but the object hit her right wing dead on, singeing a few of her feathers, and burning the wing itself. She felt herself being thrown sideways, and she tumbled onto the ground, her daughter losing her grip and being flung away, screaming all the while.

The mare felt her senses cloud with pain and confusion, and in her hazy vision, she could see a light ahead from her. A tree seemed to be on fire, and a large, meteor looking object was embedded into its base. She could smell her wing burning, and she resisted the urge to vomit; not necessarily from the smell, but from the pain itself. As she slowly rose to her hooves, she could hear quick stomping noises from behind her, becoming louder and louder by the second. As her senses began to return, she realized that it was being accompanied with shouting as well.

“Dinky… Dinky where are you…” She could barely speak, and she managed to practically choke the words out.

She felt something heavy hit her from the back, and throw her forward. Her senses utterly confused now, she felt as the heavy something grabbed ahold of her back leg, and attempted to bend it in an unnatural way. The loud, disgusting breathing that accompanied it made her realize what it was, and she kicked her free leg out, bucking the stranger right in the jaw.

It grunted painfully, and attempted to grab her again, but this time she reared and bucked with both legs, hitting the stranger right in the mouth. It cried out in pain, and she turned to observe her foe. It was a large Earth pony stallion, young and unkempt looking. He didn’t appear to have a tail of any sort, as it seemed to have been chopped off completely. His mane was greasy and long, and his sunken face was now swollen and bloody from her hard kick. A mare was with him, a Unicorn, and she had grabbed ahold of her daughter, and was on top of her, attempting to grab her front legs. The child was flailing and screaming.

The grey mare quickly reached into her saddlebags and grabbed the knife that she had found. The stallion whom she had bucked attempted to grab her again, but she dove underneath his large body, and bucked his ribs, lifting him off and sending him into the air, crashing onto the ground. With the knife blending into her undamaged wing like a feather, she dove towards the stranger attacking her child, and flailed her wing at her. The Unicorn mare let out a short, shrill cry as the blade sliced her face and sent her falling backwards. The mare was upon the stranger in a second, and with the knife, she stabbed her once in the side of the head, and once in the throat. The stranger was dead in two seconds, blood bubbling from two holes in her body.

The blood speckled mare reached to help her daughter to her hooves, but she felt someone grab her damaged wing and swing her, sending her slamming onto the ground and sending the blade slipping from her wing. As the stallion reared up to crush her, she rolled out of the way and butted into his side. When he fell to his side, the mare turned around and bucked him in the side of the head, her adrenaline adding to the mix. The result was a sickening crack as the stallion’s head split open. He did not get up. Instead, he lay on his side, twitching.

When the grey mare found her daughter, she was visibly terrified, but mostly unhurt. Numerous bruises seemed to indicate that the stranger had been very rough, but more than anything, the child was alive. She buried her face into her mother’s chest, and cried loudly and painfully. The mare herself was at a loss for words, and simply nuzzled her back, feeling her own fears drip out of her eyes as well, a sob escaping her throat. Over her daughter’s sobs, she made out another noise, sending the adrenaline coursing through her now exhausted body again.

“Sweet Celestia!”

The mare quickly grabbed her daughter and threw her onto her back. A stallion had wandered upon the area, and upon finding his dead comrades, had screamed out in fear and anguish, alerting anyone whom was nearby to their location. The child was screaming in pure, petrified terror now, and the mare sprinted like mad. She could hear the loud and quick hoofsteps behind her, and the shouting and profanity of the ponies that were creating it.

There is no other option, the mare’s thoughts echoed, You must fly.

The mare had not been able to look upon her wing clearly, but it had never been damaged like this before. Maybe she had sprained it once or twice, but it had never been hit so hard and burned so badly. It was painful enough just keeping it tucked at her side safely. In spite of this, she flared her wing, and grunted as she tried her hardest to make use of it. It could flap, but the pain was excruciating, like several dozen hot knives had been driven into it, bending and turning.

When the grey mare took to the air, she avoided the branches as best as she could. The voices were below her now, and her ears could hear them screaming not at her, but one another.

“You numbskulls! Bring her down!”

“What do we do!?”

“Didn’t you see her eyes? She’s a retard! Throw stones at her!”

When the pain became too great, and she knew that she would fall to the earth, the mare took upward, and landed on a thick tree limb. She collapsed to her rump, and she pulled the child close to herself. The child was no longer screaming, but by the faraway and dead look in her now puffy eyes, the mare knew that she was beyond terror. The mare herself could feel their heartbeats, beating together like some Zebra drum beat, making a melody of absolute horror. She did not dare look below her. Ponies themselves were not great tree climbers, and if there had been any Pegasus ponies among those below, she and the child would have been dead by now. Their voices were gruff and desperate sounding.

“We’ve got her now!”

“How do we get her down though?”

“You moron. Chop down the tree!”

“But we don’t have an axe.”

“Oh. Yes I forgot. Well…”

The group beneath her became silent. If they fell asleep, she and the child could escape. Her wing was hurting more than ever, and she wondered if she would not be able to fly the same again. She could feel it beginning to numb and stiffen, so she kept flexing it, fighting the pain to keep it folded at her side.

“We’ll just smoke her out. Get a fire going.”

They weren’t going to leave. They wouldn’t leave until they had what they wanted. They were going to force them out of the tree, and then they would give chase. The child was hugging close, silent and traumatized, and the grey mare held her close, her mind racing with thoughts. Though her thoughts were random and sporadic, there were only two that stood out in her mind as she listened to the stallions and mares below her conversing, getting ready to kill her and her daughter.

You bastards. You bastards.

Author's Note

I hope that didn't escalate too quickly.

Also, fiddlehead ferns are a real type of fern that you can eat.