Far Away

CHAPTER II

A grizzled stallion wearing a brown trench coat with a brown body and mane trekked through the tough, barren Eastland as the sun was setting. After a few more minutes of a mixture of cantering and walking, he finally started camp. The brown stallion sat down on the rocky surface and looked through his saddlebags. Scruffily packed in it was all the essentials like water and food but also contained a flint and steel and some hay to start a fire and a few other personal items.

It was lucky that he stopped next to a dead tree, because a fire requires dry wood. He started building a fire by stacking small branches of the wood on end, and took out a generous amount of golden hay. A fire quickly started after he stuck the flint and steel and he settled against the tree. A sudden blur of movement made the grizzled stallion take out his Colt .45 DA revolver from its holster. The Colt firearm was crafted with extreme care, an ivory handle engraved with delicate foreign inscriptions.

“Who’s there?” shouted the grizzled stallion.

“Why, don’t you remember me, young Jackson?” said a sneering voice from behind him. Thinking quickly, Jack swept around in a wide arc. Soon, the intruder found himself at gunpoint.

“It’s you again! To hell with you! Go tell Kasha in spirit that he will never capture me, no matter how hard he tries!” Jack spat at the zebra. He cocked the revolver, fanning the hammer with loud clicks of hammer striking primer. Jack let three shots loose, all being released with a sharp crack and a flurry of smoke that surrounded a blast of yellow gas, presumably made by the burning gunpowder. One round embedded itself right in the zebra’s neck and the other two was fired at a small dead bush that lay around five-hundred yards away. An ear splitting screech through the air, confirming his suspicions that somepony was hiding in the bush, just as Jack predicted. Some of Kasha’s ruses were too easy to identify.

For the meantime, he was safe. ‘Better get some sleep,’ he told himself as he settled next to the crackling warm fire, shivering a little. The ‘desert’ was certainly cold at night. He noticed something odd on the horizon soon after settling down and letting his eyes wander over the flat lands. It was puffing what looked like smoke and with that, he drifted off to sleep.

Jack woke up abruptly in the morning, Celestia’s sun shining brightly. Even a fool would know how hot it gets at midday so he packed and started trotting in a south-easterly direction. With the sun behind his back, he could see the horizon much more clearly. Scanning the horizon, Jack kept moving at a steady pace and was greeted by the sight of a run-down village after two hours of continuous trotting. ‘It doesn’t look like much but it could be swarming with bandits,’ thought Jack cautiously. Who could blame him? It was bandit country; many stories of robbers stealing large sums of money came from this part of the desert decades ago. He trotted over into the shabby village and saw that it was a completely abandoned husk. Some of the building looked quite luxurious, made of a dark spruce wood and was probably finely furnished years ago. Why was this town deserted? One answer: bandits.

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The train finally crossed the border, into a dense jungle which was dripping wet with water that never evaporated dur to the thick canopy of dark green leaves. ‘Not good,’ thought Daring, “I don’t want to go in there the more I think about it.’ The train pulled into the station suddenly, which was placed right on the edge of the dense jungle. She was lost in thought, head supported by her fore-hooves. Daring quickly packed her few possessions into her tan coloured saddlebags and stepped onto the train station and greeted with a blast of cool, but humid air.

The city loomed over her as she trotted closer. The highest buildings were hundreds of stories tall! The city was also swarmed in zebras. The black and white patterns on the crammed streets puzzled Daring, wondering how to get around without drowning in the sea of white and black.

Daring considered herself very lucky as she trotted into a motel on the outskirts on the grand city. The motel looked modest enough for her.

“Good day ma’am, how can be of service to you?” asked the zebra sitting at the reception desk.

“One room for ten nights please,” said Daring as she took out her sack of bits.

“That will be twenty bits ma’am,” replied the zebra.

Daring passed the requested sum of money onto the desk in exchange of a small copper key with a tag directing her to room 7. She opened the door into her room. The motel wasn’t the most stunning of places but it was good enough. Daring sighed as she unpacked and lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

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Jack was still on the move across the barren Eastland. The furious sun cast its relentless rays upon him as he struggled to ration the last of his water. He needed something to think about to distract himself from the feeling of a parched tongue. ‘I wonder how close I am to the border,’ he asked himself. The symptoms dehydration started to kick in as he took another swig from his leather water skin. He shook it. ‘This will only last a few more hours if this keeps going on,’ he thought remorsefully. Jack was a smart pony, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out a few hours’ worth of water can’t sustain the many days of trekking until he reached the city of Oteron. He pushed on, feeling the dry heat of the sun evaporate what sweat he had to shed.

It was finally dusk. The warm air of the plains seemed to be replaced by a cooler southwards gust. The wind on his fur felt refreshing, after a long exhausting day, but trek on he must. It was his last and only choice, hoping he will pass out close enough to the border that an Equestrian patrol might be kind enough to pick him up and send him home.

‘Home…’ Jack thought, ‘What a wonderful place to be right now than here in this darn desert trying to find a temple that has been lost for centuries.’ Jack took his last swig of water and stuffed the empty water skin into his saddlebags. ‘What a depressing way to die, out here, all alone?’ The screeches of desert birds started as they always did in the night. He lay there, motionless. “This is our last, my world, we barely knew ye…”