Not The First

I felt her eyes on me.

Sparkle watched my every move. She hardly blinked. She hardly moved herself. Like a cat stalking a mouse.

I tried to ignore it.

Instead, I focused on tamping down my own homicidal instincts. I wanted to live, and she was taking valuable time from me. She drank my water. She never complained about the impurity of the source.

She wasn't eating yet, but I could hear her stomach churning. It was only a matter of time before she was after that, too.

One day, she wasn't watching me. I found her on the other side of the corpse pile, throwing rib shivs into a makeshift target. She'd skinned one of our selves and painted circles on its skin.

"Soooo..." I ventured. "What are you doing?"

"Practicing," she said.

"Yes, but practicing for what?"

"I began thinking about all the different uses for teleportation." She paused to throw another spike of bone. "As I'm sure you remember, each of us used it quite a bit."

"Books, food, random stones in our path," I recalled. "We abused that spell. Your point?"

"Well, what if the next time Princess- that's what I'm calling the current version," she explained. "What if next time Princess is facing some powerfully dangerous creature, she decides to teleport it instead of herself?"

I thought about it. That would be a clever use of the spell, now that I thought about it. Useless against a foe like Tirek. But against, say, a manticore? Or a cockatrice? Potentially easier than facing them in combat. Of course, the teleportation spell worked the same regardless of target, so-

"Oh," I realized. "Carry on."

Only later did it occur to me that I didn't remember showing her the shivs.

"You should keep up your strength," she told me later. Sparkle dragged me off a ways, where she'd been working the past few days. I was rather surprised at what she'd made.

"A gym?"

"Mmm-hmm." She seemed proud. "You had all that distillation waste lying around. So I followed your bone-ceramics recipe-"

"You've been reading my journal entries?"

"-And I turned it into weights. We don't have magic anymore, which means we don't have Earth Pony strength anymore. I thought we could take some time to exercise. What do you think?"

"Those are private!"

Sparkle ignored me and trotted over to one of the weights. She demonstrated a bicep curl and looked at me expectantly. I angrily picked up the dumbbell and shoved it into the air above my head.

"Wow." She looked me over. "Maybe we didn't lose all our magic. That looks kinda heavy."

It was. Too heavy, actually.

I toppled sideways, and the weight smashed onto the ground. Half of it exploded into shards of blood-clay. That was the name I'd given that particular substance, though I'd only written that in a later entry. She probably hadn't read it yet.

Speaking of...

"Stop reading my journal!"

"Oh. Sorry," she said. "I just thought, since we're the same-"

"We are not the same!" I shoved my muzzle against her nose. "We are different ponies! Got that?"

She deflated. "I- I'm sorry..."

I didn't stick around to listen to her excuses and lies. I galloped back to my camp as fast as I could, and gathered up my journal. From now on, I'd keep it close.

Today she tried the meat. I was nice, in a way. I gave her a piece of spleen.

Spleen is the most disgusting organ. Imagine the tissues you throw away after a bloody nose. Imagine dropping those into a deep fryer filled with more blood. That's about the best way to describe spleen.

Gross.

It is, undeniably, the worst of the worst when it comes to pony meat. So I figured, if she could eat that, she could eat anything. I watched carefully as she prodded it.

"Are you sure it's cooked?" she asked.

I glanced down. A small trickle of blood oozed out. "As much as it can be," I replied cheerily.

She gulped and placed her muzzle against the chunk. She pulled back with a moustache of blood. "Maybe I could try again la-" Her stomach rumbled loud enough for me to feel the vibration through the floor. Sparkle stiffened and dived forward, scooping the spleen into her mouth and swallowing. She didn't even chew.

I was impressed.

I was less impressed when she started to gag afterwards. She managed not to puke, but still. If you're gonna do it, do it. Me, I popped it in and chewed thoroughly. My gag reflex had been suitably cowed.

Once I swallowed, I patted my belly and got up. "Want some more?" I asked. I picked up my hatchet and pointed it at the carcass I was currently eating my way through. That we were eating our way through, I reminded myself.

Sparkle placed a hoof over her mouth and shook her head.

"Good." I sat back down and picked up my whetstone. "Cause by weight, that's all we're allowed today." I drew the stone across the hatchet's "blade", shaving it thinner. "Tomorrow I think I'll take out something special- how do you feel about ovaries?"

"I think I'm going to bed." Sparkle shot up and away. I snickered a bit after that. Rainbow Dash was right- pranks were fun. Though come to think of it, ovaries weren't half bad. They required a bit more finesse than other parts, but if cooked right they were like scrambled eggs. Well, in a way, I guess they would be scrambled eggs.

I stayed up a while longer, watching Sparkle shudder and shiver across the way. I sat by the fire and sharpened my hatchet, thinking about tomorrow's meal. And the next day's. And the next.

Less than 300 days.

One of us was bound to crack soon.