The Pegasus & The Pegasister

Ashleigh didn’t sleep well that night, she kept waking up every few hours, either from the cold or from the fear that Soarin had gotten away. Finally she saw light in one direction of the sky, announcing the fact that Celestia was raising the sun. Although Ashleigh was pretty sure that Equestria didn’t have official time, according to her watch that was with her, night here lasted roughly the same amount of time as it did on earth during an Equinox. Ashleigh was relieved to see that Soarin hadn’t woken yet, the pegasus was in an awkward position with her jacket draped over his face, mumbling something incoherent about pie. Ashleigh looked at the sky. She could see shapes flying like crazy in the distance. At first, she thought they were just birds or bats, however, as the sun rose higher, illuminating them more, she realized they were wonderbolts, which could only mean one thing...

Ashleigh gently pulled Soarin onto her back. She was expecting it to hurt just as bad, if not worse, but to her surprise, it wasn’t as hard to carry him. It still was a challenge, but nothing compared to the agony of yesterday. It was strange to her, due to his massive size, but she was thankful for it. Taking a look behind, she was scared to see there were more. They were far away, but she knew they could travel extremely fast. And if they had eyesight that was as good as hers, or even better than her, then she could kiss freedom goodbye. The challenging trek continued for nearly an hour, Ashleigh continued, terrified that she was going to get caught as she continued through a hilly forest. The wonderbolts still were there in the distance, but they were thankfully further away. What stopped her was Soarin finally waking up. The stallion had been mumbling about pies, until finally he had come to.

“Huh...what? Where am I?” he had muttered. When he saw Ashleigh he let out an unhappy groan, and mumbled something inaudible.

“What happened?” he asked, all emotion drained from his voice.

Ashleigh let out a sigh. “I woke up, and I saw the wonderbolts flying overhead, so I had to get out of where we were. You weren’t awake so I took you with me.”

Soarin grinned. “Well you may be an idiot, but you did make a good choice in bringing me. If you had left me, I would have just tracked you down from your smell. I’m a pretty good tracker, and you’ve got a nice scent.” he stated, no irony in his voice, but a snide grin on his face.

Ashleigh just glared at him. “Oh so you’re making fun of me now?”

Soarin laughed. “Well I was complimenting you and making a joke at the same time. I don’t see why you’re upset.”

Soarin felt the girl suddenly fling him the ground, although not in a violent way. “You’re not making this easy.”

The blue stallion curled his lip at her, unhappy of the fact of where she had thrown him; onto muddy ground. “Then you shouldn’t have taken me away.”

Soarin was keeping his cool, but on the inside he was fuming. This skinny hairless twit had taken him from his friends and home, and yet somehow she thought she was in the right.

“I didn’t have any choice, you were going to alert your friends to imprison me with your earrape voice. You sound like a loser.” her cool words burning through the stallion, angering him more.

“I might sound stupid, but at least I don’t have two tumors on my chest.” Soarin sneered, causing Ashleigh to burst into laughter at the pony’s naïve. Then again, he hadn’t seen a human before, so it would make sense.

“Yeah, yeah, tumors, that’s what we’ll go with.” she snickered. “But anyways, this is amusing and all, but we really need to keep going-” she started, but suddenly jolted back when she heard a snarl. At first, she thought she was hearing things, but she saw Soarin beside her tense up as well, causing her to shiver in fear.

“What’s that?”

Soarin tensed back. “Bear!” he shouted, trying to flee, but instead ending up tangled up in a bush. He let out a comical scream of fear, as the bear emerged from behind some shrubs, causing Ashleigh to back away slowly. However, the bear didn’t seem interested in her, the bear was walking towards Soarin, an enraged look on its face. Ashleigh suddenly realized that the bear must be upset that Soarin had mangled a berry bush. Berry bushes were a source of food for bears, right?

Soarin let out another scream, as the bear ripped him out of the bush and glared at him. The bear pinned him against the ground, terrifying the stallion.

Suddenly, Ashleigh ran forward, and pepper-sprayed the bear, causing him to roar in pain and confusion, giving Ashleigh and Soarin enough time to get away.

“What was that?!?” asked Ashleigh, anger and confusion in her voice. “You could have been killed! Would you have been happy then?” There was no concern in her voice, only anger and disbelief. “Are you a complete idiot?”

Soarin, traumatized by what had just happened, just shook his head and blurted out something he thought he would never say.

“I’m sorry!”

Ashleigh froze. “What?”

“T-this was my fault! I did this to myself.” the pegasus admitted, his head hung in shame.

For a minute, the two said nothing, Ashleigh was amazed by the fact he had for once owned up to apologize. Then she smiled.

“Thanks for apologizing.”

Soarin nodded, but did not meet her eyes, simply looked at his hooves.

Ashleigh got down on her knee and picked him up. Soarin still looked unpleased, but unlike the last times, he didn’t fight back.

“What did you use on that bear to get it to not injure me?” he asked, his green eyes looking at her inquisitively.

Ashleigh laughed. “Injure you? Yeah right. The freakin’ bear was going to probably eat you! You ruined its breakfast.”

Soarin flexed his wings. “No it wouldn’t have.”

Ashleigh ignored him as if he had never spoken that line.

“I used pepper spray. I was gonna play a prank with it, but I got sent over here to Equestria where you guys want to lock me up for just existing probably.”

“No we wouldn’t.” Soarin retorted. “At least I don’t think we would have...well then again, considering our protocol for when we found a griffon near our base, maybe we would have, but can you really blame us? You look like a weirdo. Granted an attractive weirdo, but still!”

Ashleigh stopped. “You think I’m attractive?”

Soarin shook his head in embarrassment and shock, realizing he had let his thoughts slip. “No, that was...uh irony. You look like an ugly tumor ridden hairless weirdo!”

Ashleigh let out a scoff and flicked his ear. “I do not have tumors. It’s just biology. If you ever saw another human girl, you’d understand.”

Soarin said nothing, but finally just nodded. “Great, so I was wrong. Big deal.”

It was odd to say the least, but it seemed the the giant hole that caused discord and distrust between Ashleigh and Soarin had shrunken, just a little, from what happened. The two certainly didn’t consider each other friends, but at least for the time, they shared a common respect for one each other, from the incident that had just happened...