Wow, this battered old copybook takes me back. Let's do this again, with better hoof writing this time, shall we? My name is Bright End, also known as Clara. I'm twenty-nine years old, and I live in Lacknatyne, County Kerry, not too far away from the hive my dear schoolteacher Scarlet, once known to me as Miss Buckley, built. Living with me are those schoolfriends who survived our awful rebirth in a dark, damp, cold tunnel, sealed at both ends by the passage of time. I am a thestral, yet I hate caves and dark places. Imagine that. A thestral who's scared of caves and the dark, the two things thestrals are supposed to love most?

It's probably easy to see why I hate those two things. A collapsed tunnel is simply a formation process away from being a cave, after all. I sincerely hope that no one ever has to go through such a harrowing experience as I and my friends did, all those years ago. Trapped in the dark with no hope for survival. It's frankly a miracle that we survived at all. Had Rian walked by just a few minutes earlier, I would never have heard him and we never would have escaped. At the time, most of Irish civilisation was in Kerry and Cork, not Dublin. It still kind of is, even now, twenty years later.

Some of the friends who were in the bus with me have moved on to greener pastures in Cork City. Some of them are working with the tribal deer that live in Lacknatyne. A few are working with other Returned, teaching them how to use their new bodies in the rehab clinic. Some have taken to wandering around Ireland, travelling between the various tiny settlements that exist.

As for me? Well, I have a very important job.

I work with Silver Searcher's rescue team to help people who arrived in compromising situations like I did escape. After that, Bridget, now going by the name Open Ear, helps them talk through their traumas and adapt to their new life. I, being a thestral, able to see in the dark and use basic echolocation and dreamwalking, am a very useful member of the team for locating people trapped in collapsed buildings and such.

That includes caves. Oh yes, I hate caves. But like I said above, I never want anyone to have to suffer what I did ever again. And that's why I put myself under so much stress to carry out rescues. Because there needs to be a light at the end of the tunnel. If there isn't one, I'll make one. It's my cutie mark after all. A tunnel with a shining exit. That's also why I chose my name—Bright End.

Until there are no more lightless tunnels, I won't stop doing my part to help those ponies. I won't be the first, and I won't be the last to do this task, but if I can make a difference, well, what more could I ask for? Other than a day at the beach with my family, of course.

Author's Note

Here's a little bit of background info for this fic. I became really fascinated with the idea of someone reappearing in a less than optimal location after the Event, as Starscribe has said can happen, and after reading Goldfur's Safe Landings, I thought a bus, with a lot of people on it, might work. To make things more interesting, and also see if I could write from the perspective of a child, I turned that bus into a school bus, and then this happened. And that's how we wound up with several dead children, for which I sincerely apologise.

Anyone who follows my other Ponies After People story, The Celtic Dragon, might recognise some of the characters who appear at the end of this story. Obviously this takes place in the future from that story, so there are extra characters that haven't appeared yet. I guess in that respect this contains slight spoilers for that story, but really, aside from a few name-drops and the implication that they're all alive in the future it's nothing too major.

Anyway, enough rambling. Thank you for reading!