A Long, Hard Look Into The Deep Dark Depths Of The End Of The World
Blue Moon turned his food round and round, his low voice humming some kind of winter tune lost to time.
The fire, cooking his long-anticipated dinner, crackled and snapped from the assorted pieces of Everfree wood hissing from within. Blue frowned at this revelation; he'd need to get more wood soon, and a quick glance to his right revealed that his excursion would have to be sooner than he definitely would've liked. Brown eyes dancing back along the shadows of the flames, he adjusted his position on the wet dirt, reached up, and grabbed at the saddlebag straps stretching over his back. The left sack was bothering him for a prior time, and a quick tug was all it took for him to feel comfortable again.
The sky, previously dark as Tartarus and filled with the shiniest stars one could ever see, suddenly brightened up without a single warning. Blue had gotten used to it since he was a colt, but he craned his neck, strained it in the process, and stared up at the celestial scene taking place high in the atmosphere above them all.
The sun, much dimmer than legends had told of centuries ago, remained where it was as proud as one of those Apple Soldiers and shone down at the inhabitants of the broken planet gloriously. Blue smiled up at it, but he quickly let the feeling fade and frowned again. The victory wouldn't last long; it never did. Give it about five minutes and the big ol' moon would rear its ugly head back around and kick the sun back to wherever it was before. His attention, shifting from the orange-cracked sky and hundreds of shooting stars, went back to his food, and he let out a curse when he spotted the small gathering of flames wavering at the end of his sharp stick.
Pulling his tool back and pursing his lips, Blue batted at his meal with a hoof. Only when the flames changed to smoke did he notice the girlish chuckles from next to him. He furrowed his brow and shot her a glare.
"Don't you dare."
"Wasn't gonna say nothin'," she instantly replied, apparently expecting the salty bark. Her burgundy armor jostled as she raised a gloved hoof up and clutched the end of her muzzle in an attempt to halt her amusement.
Blue, shooting her one more dagger, grunted to nopony but himself and turned back to his unsalvageable supper. Leaning forward and lightly brushing his nose against the bar of soap now burnt to a crisp, he licked his lips and blew on it hoping he could somehow make it edible. Not willing to look like he'd made an astronomically foolish mistake, he saved face and nibbled a small bit of it off. It being literally half a bar of Ohay soap, it lay just on the edge of delicious, but was barred from being at the top of the scale thanks to his reckless ignorance.
"Still good, Blue?"
His cheeks bulging, Blue nodded and sat back a bit, then planted the bottom of his stick into the ground next to him.
The distant mountains and smoke stacks he could make out in his peripherals disappeared under a blanket of pitch black.
"Moon's back."
"I'm blind, Pepper," Blue nickered, his throat carrying an unintended chuckle. He regarded her silently, and found a slightly annoyed Unicorn folding her forelegs at him. Blue raised an eyebrow. "Whaddya think, though? We've been up for a while."
