Those Who Wander

"Mr. Cut! You've gotta come, quick!"

Huh. See, this is interesting. I don't normally like ponies barging into my office, especially ones that I'm not familiar with, but this girl kind of makes it work. She's got her arms, legs, and wings spread out, she's panting like she's been running, and for some reason, she's wearing goggles. Whatever she's about to tell me, it looks like it'll be good for a spit-take, so I make sure to drink coffee between sentences.

"Woah, there. Relax for a second. Why don't you catch your breath, and then you can tell me what this is all about, eh?"

"There's no time for that! It's Mr. Saddle! He just ran into the desert to fight off a giant monster!"

I spray coffee all over my office with my eyes wide open, just like I had anticipated. This is a big deal, alright. Mr. Daisy has probably already sent his associate down to check up on me, so if that kid runs off and gets himself killed, well, I've spent a few nights thinking about all the things he'd probably do to me, and most of them look better from a wide-angle shot. I wipe my face off, and start running out the door.

"We'll take a carriage!"

"Through the desert?"

"Hayseed, you're right. We're gonna have to hoof it."

"We'll never catch up with him."

"How far did he get?"

"I don't know. I had to stop and call for a response team."

"Good thinking. For now, I guess just keep leading the way."

The truth of the matter is that I'm not in particularly good shape, and I'm already worn out just from galloping a short distance and talking, but I can't let her see that. For all I know, this could be life or death for me, so I've decided that I'm going to keep heading forward, no matter how tired I get. I don't have goggles like this girl does either. I really wish she'd have grabbed me a pair of those. If I didn't need the energy that I had, of course, I'd just use magic to shield my eyes, but clearly, that isn't about to happen. I close my eyes so the sand can't get in them, and keep going in a straight line for about four seconds. Then I fall on my face.

"Are you okay? Come on, we've got to get moving."

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just give me a second to catch my breath. I'm not used to galloping around like you kids."

"Um... Mr. Cut, are you sure you need to come with me yourself?"

"Well, sure. Why wouldn't I? We've made it this far, haven't we?"

"But we haven't even left the camp yet..."

I wipe my eyes off and look around. She's right. We're still right there in the middle of the set. Luckily, pretty much everyone is already inside the trailers, or this would be pretty embarrassing.

"Perfect! Wait here for a second."

I rush over to the gray trailer, third from the left, where I know the stuntponies are hanging out. I grab a particularly large one and tell him to come back with us. I think his name starts with a "C." Anyway, that's not important. I have to pull on this guy to get him to hurry up, and he's trying to drink a glass of water, so that just kind of goes everywhere, but I don't care, because this is important. He's also saying something to his friends, but who's paying attention?

"Come on, now. I need you. This is life and death, probably!"

"Uh... what's going on?"

"I need you to fly me across the desert to save Blazing Saddle from a giant something! Now come on! We're getting some goggles."

After that, he finally stops resisting, so I guess he's figured out how serious this situation is, at least to some extent. We get to the changing room, and I have to rummage thorough the costumes for a good five minutes before I fnd two pairs of goggles, and Whatshisface doen't even help. I mean, he tries to a little, but he doesn't even go through any boxes. He just kind of stares at everything. Whatever. Next, we go back to that mare from earlier so we can take off. Seriously though, I've got to start asking ponies for their names.

"Okay, we're ready to go. Lead the way."

"Who's this?"

"He's going to fly me over there, and we're going to save the star of the show. Now get going. Chop chop. We don't have time to sit around."

"Um... okay."

With that, we take off.

I never did get the hang of being flown around, truth be told. I'm half-ready to lose my lunch just from looking at the ground the whole time, but the mise-en-scène is too beautiful to look away from. If you've never done it, you've never had to squint past your own mane to see your shadow maintain a perfect shape while it passes over dunes and valleys. You don't know what you're missing with that. It's totally worth the stomach-ache. I'm seriously mesmerized right now. Oh, man. I look up for a second, and the big lummox carrying me around is staring right at that girl's flank. Well, I suppose that's a good thing, actually, since she's leading the way. Otherwise, I might say something. It's not very gentlecoltly of him, now is it? Hmm. Gentlecoltly. That word doesn't sound quite right phonetically. It's probably the "ltl" it's got in there. Yeah. I want to add a scene to the movie where somepony is flying over dunes from this angle. It looks really nice. In fact, instead of just one shadow, I could have an entire armada, and play Ride of the Valkyries in the back for a really nice opening sequence. Not bad, Smash. Not bad at all. Hmm.

So, I'm just kind of letting my mind wander after a while,and that's when I turn to see what is almost, but not quite, the most horrifying thing I've ever seen. At first, it looks like an enormous white mass coming up out of the sand, like a beached whale being uncovered by the wind, or some second thing that's like that. I can usually think of more than one example, but I'm kind of preoccupied. You see, as I think this, I am also becoming increasingly aware of the fact that there is a giant worm headed right toward us from the left side. I yell for the two pegasi up there, but one of them is too far ahead to see him, and the other is too preoccupied to notice I'm yelling. Worms aren't supposed to have that many teeth. I figure it would be a good time to start flailing to get his attention. He wasn't ready for that. He loses his grip. I'm going to die a gruesome off-screen death while the audience winces slightly. To be frank, I think I deserve a bit better than that. Here he comes to grab me, at least. This would be a lot easier for him if he hadn't just noticed that worm thing. Let's hope for a good adrenaline rush here. Oh. Nope. Nope, he's flying away. That guy is incredibly fired.

Well, I seem to have lucked out in more ways than one here. Number one: The worm thing wasn't aiming for us. In fact, he looks wounded, now that I get a good look at him. This leads me to number two. If he's wounded, that means that someone put up a good fight against him recently, and that could very well mean that Blazing Saddle survived his little episode with the giant monster. Number three, and my personal favorite: I was born a unicorn, thereby enabling me to gently lower myself to the ground in situations such as this one. I don't die, and I don't even get a face full of sand. I love being me.

Except now I'm stranded in a desert.