The Highest Shelfby re- YamsmosChaptersOf Course It's All ThingsAt Least I Thought SoI Could Live For BetterOf Course It's All Things"Do you need some help?" For a second—just a second—it seems that her only answer winds up being the steady, then suddenly violent, crackle of the flames before her, but, minding the other presence for yet another second, she suppresses a smile, finding him waving her off with a shake of his head and a flashing of his teeth that, even in the moonlit shadows hanging from the monstrously hideous spruce trees, still shimmers with a well-cared-for glow. "What kind of gentlecolt would make a mare work?" He asks, not realizing how little the title applies by this point. Yanking up the metallic table with a single hoof, he unhinges its legs, stabs them into the dry dirt, and folds the countertop out with a precise flick of his wrist. Bending over to bring out the little brown bags in his teeth, he continues, "B'sides, you're already letting me use your fire." He turns around like a Royal Guard, but his chuckling figure doesn't quite match up to a T. He lets out a little more breath as he goes further, hoisting his collection onto the newly-available table, "Least I could do is let you sit down awhile." Thump! "You look like you deserve it." If there was anything she actually deserved in the world apart from what it had given her, a nice round of sleep sounded about right. Her stomach comes at her like a rising tidal wave, almost doubling her over and onto the ground in a seizing, cold heap, but, leaning farther back into her little canvas chair, she drowns the rumbling, bumbling, grumbling noise out with the creaks and hisses of her current source of support. She can't stop herself from humming a quiet note, but she returns to her straight face just in time for him to open his eyes once more. He's beaming again, but, this time, it seems it's more out of achievement than unjustified kindness. She blinks her purple eyes, which, once out and about again, dart over to the table-top. It's littered with plastic bags of greens, reds, and oranges, and a few cylinders here and there dressed in black, white, and red; there's a rectangular paper box with measurements on the side, a carton of broth, and a can of beans. He notices her prolonged staring, and as she ducks back into her scarf and turns away—pretending she hadn't been looking—he pulls out a Dutch oven from the ground next to him in one hoof, and places the three-legged stand in his other hoof in the center of the fire. The oven goes on top thereafter. And just like that, as he begins slicing up butter, chopping up onions—and not shedding a tear, which raises her suspicions just a tad—mincing cloves of garlic, and then throwing all three inside, he's cooking a campfire meal she'd probably shake her head at when it was later presented to her steaming and fresh. Her ears flick to and fro wildly with each pop and snap of the firewood, stray sparks causing her to involuntarily suck in short breaths and hope her companion hadn't noticed. She dares move up an inch closer to try and get more heat to stop her shivers; she moves back when it gets too stuffy. Her chair has begun to make twin trails in the dirt, parting rock and gravel and dirt better left untouched, but disturbed by her presence alone. A few black holes have begun popping up on the armrests. She moves back a little more. Her forelegs jab first into the pits of her forelegs, then, with a revelation, into the safety of her jacket's front pockets. The green peppers fall in. "Thanks again, by the way." She doesn't move her head, but her gaze shifts up. He raises one of his sweater-covered forelegs to stop his yawn at the gates, but, incapable, lulls out his tongue like a party horn and opens his mouth to let out an almost absent mumble followed by an invisible curse. "Ah, sorry." Again, shorter this time. "IIIIII just... wow." A laugh. "I keep doing it." A cough, now. "Usually starting the fires would be my buddy Quick Step's job, but he couldn't make it, and everypony else is at the party in town. I'm pretty much all I've got, and that barely comes close to being enough." She can't really stop from bunching up her shoulders with a hum. Minding the thermos sitting snugly in the cup holder to her right, she pulls it out, tips it back, and takes a few cautious sips of her hot chocolate. It burns her throat a bit, but what the hell, it's still chocolate. A shake of cumin, oregano, chili powder, and cayenne pepper. It looks like an autumn cloud. He sniggers, almost covering his lips with a hoof until realizing one was holding the wooden spoon, and the other was planted firmly into the ground to keep him standing. "Prob'ly would've..." he waggles his gripping hoof anyway, letting the utensil clatter against the inside of the oven, "...set the whole campground on fire. Or chop my hoof off with an ax. Was never any good at that stuff, you would not wanna see it." As if hearing its mention, the forest lets its other occupants rematerialize in her ears. A couple of teenagers still throwing around a frisbee—which was, mind her, lit up with glowsticks haphazardly duct-taped all over it—in the middle of the night let out whoops and hollers far to her right side in the tree line. A flash of oranges, yellows, and reds, which she quickly discovered to belong to the large bonfire of a three-pony family cheering gleefully as the flames danced across the drawn-out fabric of their pretty expensive-looking tent. The little colt was already pulling out a bag of marshmallows and toting a sharp branch. Two jolts of the pepper and salt shakers each. Sucking in a long breath of air through his nostrils and pushing it back out between his open lips, he falls onto his haunches even though his seat is right behind him, lifts his chin, and surveys the deep-blue, white-speckled sky stretching out above the both of them. He would've been better off talking to it instead of her. "This is nice, y'know?" Back down. Little flecks of embers flee the coop and swirl about in front of his fuzzy face. Any closer and he'd burn that beard right off. "Quiet, or, well, at least compared to the city," he resumes, giving a quick glance over to the frolicking teens. "Nice change o' pace from busy streeeeets, and taxis... and the tall buildings and the, I dunno, pressure I guess." He turns to regard her. "You ever feel that way?" She blinks once, and then twice, without putting any thought into her response. She sucks in her bottom lip and nods. "A lot." He makes a low note, returning the gesture, and then he's back to staring skyward. "Never really liked Manehattan, honestly. Only really moved here for college, and it's only been a few months and I already don't like it. Miss being back in Vanhoover." His hooves softly clap each other, then make a huge gap that's easily twice as wide as his own body. "Lots of places to camp there, really nice trails and stuff too. Seems everyone in Manehattan is concerned about crossing the street and not crossing their boss." She feels words about to spill out of her mouth. She closes it, then slightly parts it to take another swig of cocoa. Another shiver overtakes her, but she wiggles herself around on her canvas chair, turns in at an angle, and rests the back of her head against the beginnings of one of the armrests. She probably looked ridiculous, but it was a lot more comfortable this way. The broth is opened, and it tips over above the oven and begins to pour its contents inside. It thumps hollow back onto the table, and the large can of beans takes its place and sickeningly schlips its own members into the thickening stew. It's starting to smell like Heaven, and it's starting to get harder to ignore the remnants of last night's noodle cup and this morning's half of a granola bar. She grumbles again, then passes it off as an annoyance with her position, which she fixes again. He whistles a sweet tune to nopony in particular, stirring the concoction around and bobbing his shaggy-maned head to and fro. The first thing that she reads not coming from a little screen is the words on the front of his pullover-sweater. Vanhoover Blizzards! and a cartoon picture of a very angry snowflake shooting metaphorical and literal daggers—of ice—at something out of frame. Below it, the letters look to have been caught in the team name, dripping with stalactites. We'll Kick Your Ice! "You want my firewood, by the way?" Clunk! Clunk! She's looking at the bowls as they fall onto the table side-by-side, and her ears dance with each scrape of the spoons he's now dropping inside them. He stops for a second before placing the last utensil, looking over at her from between his brow. Chhh! She finds her voice, way, way down. "Sure." It sounds indecisive and almost relenting to her, but he seems to take it affirmitavely and begins scooting his plastic black tote over to her side. He doesn't look at her when he cackles, "I'll try an' make sure I get it before sunrise tomorrow. Think that cute mare over there was asking about a bonfire earlier," instead returning his focus solely on the chili. "Birthday or something," he adds, as if she hadn't already been overanalyzing every word she could hear since arriving. He taps the bottom of the oven with his spoon, then clucks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "Ah!" Turn. "Uh uh, don't get up." She sinks back into her seat. She at least should help him clean... "I'll get you a bowl first. Your fire, after all." It crackles in agreement, burning a hole into another section of her armrest and dotting the rocks around it with black. He scoops up both bowls with one foreleg, tucking them into the crook of his arm. Sweeping them about, he picks up the spoon with his other appendage, dips it into the oven, and lets drip the presumably spicy gates of campfire chili. He repeats it and, with both steaming in his grasp—and surprisingly not burning his skin, which raises another red flag—he holds one back behind his head and overdramatically presents her with the other. Her depraved hunger lunges at her, and she reflexively leans forward, only to hesitate with a slight noise she wishes she hadn't made. It's as if her maneuver starts to play in a reversed state, her mind even blanking somewhat to allow it to go unopposed. She blinks rapidly as if there are tears there, and every time she's either looking far to her left, and right in the center toward the steam billowing up and over the top of her purple mane. He cocks an eyebrow. "Not hungry?" Not eating, she would have liked to say. "N-not that, I..." The bowl thrusts suddenly. He snorts as if it was some kind of a joke. "C'mon, eat up." He backpedals, daring a glance behind him to make sure he's aligned, and finally falls into the comfort of his creaky, wooden tripolina. The dirtied white cloth sags in his wake. "Trust me, it's pretty damn good. And I'm not just saying that because I made it." Yes you are. ... The bowl having been placed further from her with his rearing, he leans far over to his left—almost tipping the whole chair—and presents it to her once more. ... ...she had been talking to him, even if her words were small. She could've very easily shooed him away, or said a simple no, or something. But she was talking. ...maybe she deserved a bite, just this once. "O-okay." He lights up like a Hearth's Warming tree, and she has to stop herself from grinning in kind. "Yeahhhh!" The bowl goes into her hooves, then clutched between the thick sleeves of her coat upon realizing its temperature. At the other end, her adversary is already digging in with the bowl just inches from the end of his snoot. She looks down at her own. And before she lets herself have a single second thought, she coils her hoof around her spoon, collects a bit of everything on the end of it, and sticks it between her lips. At once, the pangs seem to vanish completely, as if just this one morsel was all it would take to stave off her self-sustained hunger. The garlic mixed with the butter and the onions, with the peppers and the beans, with the broth soaking it all with the spiciness of the herbs... Gods, she hadn't had real food in a long while. Despite her own, newly-burning desire, she steadies herself and keeps a light pace to savor the flavor. It might be ages until she got another good meal, even if asking for seconds wasn't out of the question for a party of two. As she quietly slurps up vegetables, he takes the opportunity to wipe his mouth, lean back with a tilt of his head in both directions, and a maintained stare at something seemingly far and away to his left—behind her right—in the distance. His irises peer at her for half a split second, and then he reaches for his spoon and takes another short self-serving. He barely finishes swallowing before, wiping his chin, he points at what he'd seen. "Is that yours?" Oh. She rotates about at her hip and looks at it. The two tarps—silver over black—are still hanging over the rear; her panniers on either side still have their locks on them; the three bright-red gas cans are still sloppily clipped to the back of her upright seat; her purple, white-lined helmet is still dangling from the right handlebar. Her license plate is beyond dirty, too, but there's no need for her to clean it out here in the nowhere. She knew a few ponies who'd have a fit if they saw all the dust and dirt caked all over it. She's reminded of her constant task to acquire a spare tire for emergencies, but she'll probably forget it again. She blinks, and turns her head back toward the fire. It greets her with a friendly snap that almost catches her swaying hindlegs. "Y-yeah." She dips her muzzle back into her bowl. "Pretty sweet bike, if you don't mind me saying!" He exclaims with a belly laugh that shakes it too. "You've got a... heh, lotta stuff on there." She breathes in and out. In and out, softly. She takes another bite. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him blink, then look away and then back. Thankfully, his small frown gives way to his bright grin again. "Where you headed, little mare?" She hadn't really looked at her map in awhile, to be completely honest, and the last time she had, the only thing was just... kind of... all over the place. Her spoon scrapes the bottom of her bowl. "Dunno yet, just... kind of... moving, I guess." "Hm, nice, nice. Little adventure, huh? You look about that age." Creeeeak! "Used to do that with my friends back in high school during break. Pack up our stuff and head anywhere we wanted. Mostly Las Pegasus, though. Nothing beats a nice beer and kickass burgers." Snap! Pop! Pffffsssss! "...where'd you start?" She sucks in much more air than was necessary, her stomach almost exploding. Her nostrils flare up, and she eats another spoonful. "Ponyville." A chuckle. She can't help but call his voice safe. "So, what, you running from home or something?" She can't even hear her own heartbeat. It seems that the raging fire has grabbed a chokehold of her vocal cords and silenced her indefinitely. She hears a twig snap, and she's not sure if it was in her head, or behind it. She's barely halfway done with her food, but now she feels like she shouldn't have eaten it in the first place. A breath in and then out. She reaches a hoof up and wipes her mouth, then lifts her chin and blinks at him. "It wasn't home." At Least I Thought SoSomething has broken. And this time, she has the option of physically beholding it before herself instead of finding it in a discarded shard of roadside glass, and so she does so, and as the pebbles first scatter and then dig little trenches into and across her jacket, she has to shake her head and stop from aptly, aggressively rapping on it for not knowing her trusty ride inside, out, and in again. A simple lesson or two— self-taught of course, or maybe with a literary aid—and a few spare minutes of her time, and she'd be all set to simply replace what all needed work and be back on her oh-so-merry way in the span of little less than half an hour or so. Now she's lying on her back in a pile of sharp, multitudinous rocks, doing maintenance in the middle of the waning, bleeding, orange-ing sun leaving her life to replace it with cold brought upon by a distant—more accurately opposite—cousin, whose assuredly hurried arrival would mean nothing but halting herself in her winding tracks, slashing a dark red X on her eternal progress, and sticking around for much too long in a place she wasn't familiar with. The feeling and event weren't all too foreign or overall alien to her, in fact being something she'd pretty much experienced every day's end, but the groans and sighs that escaped her lips every time she begrudgingly met it told much more novice stories. What's left of Celestia's bright Object peeks out at her from behind her prior shield of a curled hindleg, and she raises a fore this time, seethes, and pulls her neck waaaay back to try and stop blindness before it gracefully afflicted her. Bringing up her tail in a last-second idea, she reverts her attention back to the mess of parts—metal and plastic—that sit a bare inch from the end of her muzzle, scrunches up her nose, and shakes her head to ask nopony what in the Hell she's even looking at. It seems to be a silent argument; she crosses her forelegs in a lazy X-shape and pouts out her lower lip, taking the silent stretching minutes to glance about at things that looked to be a little out of place, then things that were obviously out of place. Both solo search parties end up as fruitless as winter, and the argument is resoundingly finished. Her motorcycle has won this time, adding another tally to its long list that easily beats her non-existent one zero-to-now-twenty-three. As if to try and get the last word in, she lays there still, then flops her forelegs out in a spread eagle with a more improper curse threatening to spill from her lips. The sensation passes, fueled by her recent interest and belief in constant superstition, and, stomach bubbling at the thought of what she's left with, she rolls her purple eyes, groans a long groan that comes out as more of a growling hiss, and scrambles out from underneath her motorcycle, jumping onto all fours and swaying at her instantly regrettable swiftness. Shaking the stars and ice from her head, she takes a second—or fifteen—to aggressively rub at her eyes, lull her tongue out for a drawn-out yawn, and strike a pose for nobody but the shrouding trees, distant hills, and much-too-close cliff to see. Lips pursed, she looks so far to her left that it becomes her immediate right. There's a small incline just past where her ride idly sits, going toward the shadowed grove of treeline and ending in an oddly flat section of grass and dirt that seems to become sparser and more inviting the longer she looks at it. She scratches at something on her cheek, lowers the hoof, then goes back at it at a different angle. She sucks in a breath through her nostrils that croaks and snorts. She puffs out her cheeks. Well damn. Here was as good a place as any. She's barely even turned around to access her bag before she stops, glaring at the road... apparently. BUT! She better make up for lost time tomorrow! Wake up early, skip breakfast, and try and make as much ground as possible before Luna's Grace greeted her again. She tosses the condition around for a few seconds, her mind already becoming completely okay with it, and hums. Well, that's fair. She did waste half a half hour just glaring at her motorcycle when it suddenly stopped on the road. Yeah, yeah that was fair. Fair's fair. All right. Wake up early—probably around daybreak, so six or seven or so—skip her morning meal—which she was probably gonna do anyway—and put more distance between her and everypony else. The mountain seemed to be taking her up and to the North, so... maybe that was the best place to go. Just as long as she didn't get too far and end up finding visions of Sombrero or whatever... yeah, North seemed fine. Maybe she could take a visit to Rainbow Falls. She'd never been this late in the year, but the, well, the rainbow falls probably still looked just as cool. She reaches to the side of her motorcycle, realizing her earlier mistake, and pulls out the long canvas bag from its hidey-hole. Lightly tossing it over to the bare patch of ground, she returns her gaze to her bike, kicks up the kickstand with a well-trained swing of her hindleg, and slowly wheels her friend over to their resting stop for the night. Taking a second to make sure of its sturdiness, she tests the ground with a free leg, remembers that that literally does nothing, and finally unlatches the kickstand to watch her ride stand perfectly upright. She hums a low note—the beginnings of a song she used to like—and double-checks her helmet's position before giving her full attention back to the canvas bag lying on the ground before her. She loosens the binds that hold the bag closed, and first pulls out the thin base cover, which she lays flat on the ground, kneels over, and presses any creases and lumps out of. The wall and rainfly—bound by velcro—come out in matrimony, and she shakes dirt and other foreign objects free, walks over the base cover, and places the two atop it. Left rattling in the bag as she holds it are the extendable poles, which dangle and shimmy and shake before she curses at them, where they then increase their efforts and further dirty her tongue. Assembling the first curve, she sticks one end into the wall's grommet, minds her head, turns around, and does the same with the opposite corner. She puts together the second curve, and repeats the maneuver, then clips the pyramidion of the rainfly to the middle of the pole's criss-cross, loops its straps around the stronger parts of the poles, and brings the whole thing up with a grunt. There. Just as awkward, totally not right, and novice-looking as usual. She really should've figured out how to actually put this thing together when she bought it. Despite her utter misgivings, she cracks a smile to herself in the light of the orange sky, falls to her haunches, throws her forelegs against her hips, then claps them free of the dust that wasn't there in the first place. They return to her sides. Home, sweet temporary home. Rotating about to reach for the bags on her motorcycle again, she pulls out one of the longer bags in her collection, unzips it, and pulls out her lazy canvas chair, which she swiftly unfolds, sets into place next to her tent, and sinks down into... only to remember that the rest of her stuff is far, far away from her now. Groaning, she gets up, takes three steps back to her bike, and pulls out her little folding table, equally little canister of propane—which she notes, as she shakes it idly, to be less than half empty now—and camping stove. She sets the former out on the ground in front of her chair, then places the second, then the third on top of it, on top of... it. A soup pot, previously hanging off the left side of her rear wheel, goes on top of that. Table, propane, stove, pot. It's becoming a bit of a pyramid now. A bottle of warm water empties into the pot with her aid, then goes into her mess of a backpack alongside some assorted snacks that have probably gone bad by now. She flicks on the stove with a hoof, shoulders the backpack, then drops back into her chair. The backpack swings around over her chest, then falls onto the ground and gets thoroughly dug into, finally relinquishing its hold on a small white rectangular packet lined with red logos, words, and instructions. She may not be in the mood for soup, or really much of anything right now, but a nice cup of hot cocoa was always welcome, no matter how set she was on starving herself. As the water heats up, she sits back and stares up at the increasingly appearing maze of stars above her head, bringing in more and more and more of their close friends, distant relatives, and familial figures as the sky's orange glow takes on a purple and black haze. The hoof pinching the top of the hot chocolate packet shakes loose the clumps and bubbles surely nestled inside. She lets out a breath, then, finding it visible and wispy, lets out another, and an odd giggle spills out her mouth, sending out more wisps that, in her new rest, slowly lift far and high above her head, disappearing into the reborn night. The shadows of her though rather small fire dance along the stretched canvas of her tent in a bombastic, almost frenzied kind of coordination, and she can't help but crack a smile behind the warmth of her fluffy scarf as she catches sight of the little event. She gives them a new friend with a pair of needle-pinned hooves, and despite its unlovable lump of a hopeless figure, the group welcomes it all the same. I Could Live For BetterAnd here she is stopping again. It was the ragged, violently whipping-about coat-tails of a long line of bad ideas, and horrible mistakes, and unspeakable atrocities better kept locked far and away inside some kind of vault, let alone her own poor head, but it was more a cautious kind of thing than a voluntary one in the end. Her own jacket might not stretch much further than her hindlegs—something she constantly felt a little annoyed with to be honest, looking up from time to time and fully realizing the weather she'd been riding through the past few days—but it was doing its job more than her natural-born Pegasus coat would. She's been driving on a regrettably full stomach since the very first crack of morning, and her ride wishes it could crack a little grin and quietly say the same beneath her. It reminds her a bit of her, honestly—well, who she was—as she need only cast a quick second glance down at the meter above her fuel tank to see that the tiny arrow has gone down by just a tick since she last looked in early yesterday's torrent of rainwater. Just barely starving, and already causing her to begrudgingly go about and alleviate the aching, even if she's more than just a hundred-percent sure that her pangs echo much worse than her bike's. With a frown, a grumble between her practiced clenched teeth, and a flick of her chin, she finally halts the engine's idling, turning her foreleg and the keys nestled snugly inside the ignition with it. As the constant rumbling and bumbling of the 992 cc motor flees her life with incredibly eerily reminiscent fashion, she suddenly widens her eyes with a noise escaping her hardly-opened lips. In response, her breath fogs up the inside of her helmet's visor, only to dissipate and allow her an undeterred moment of quietly, silently, faintly, just looking around the area she's currently, mistakenly, residing. Her navigational skills were always a bit on the awful, terrible, no good, very bad side, but her observational skills were at least somewhat sub-par at best. She shakes her head quickly, flinging away her wanderlust thoughts and letting only one slip through the hair-thin cracks: refueling. Reigniting the flame in her sole objective. Feeding the one thing that had remained fixated by her side through the thick, thin, and even curvaceous. And so, rising a scarce few inches out of her upright seat, minding her hopelessly swishing tail, and swinging her right hindleg over the front of the motorcycle, she hops onto the ground with a dull thud and immediately regrets the decision. Her scarf begins to itch at the back of her neck where it meets both the bottom of her helmet and her mane, and, reaching up to scratch it, she ceases her mobility and can finally call herself immobile again. Her shoulders are aching; her hooves can still feel the vibrations of the road down to her bones; her ears are ringing and still clogged from her altitude. But, pulling cold air in through her nose and blowing it back out as a fog to temporarily cloud her sights, she shakes like a damp dog and trots toward the back of her motorcycle with only a hoof full of steps. She feels an almost absent, unnoticeable satisfaction at first in the sudden discontinuation of the engine below her body, but, as she feels the dry, crusty dirt give way and sink underneath her eternally quaking fores and then hinds, flares her nostrils obsessively, reaches up with a heavy hoof toward the mess of bags behind her upright seat, and annoyedly yanks the red gas can from its clasps, she finds an odd kind of longing for it. Her mind attempts to whisk her away to some sort of do-well fantasy and evocative of similar sensations, but, shaking her head and juggling them around her empty skull, she settles the container onto the ground in front of her, crouches down, coils a strong hoof around its black cap, and wrenches it free of its chains. Looking at it for all but a few seconds of wasted time, she pushes the nozzle back through the hole, switches its orientation, then screws the cap back on. Again, the thoughts come, but she rises back to all fours much faster than they knock, awkwardly holds the canister up, pops the top off of her gas tank with a flick of a temporarily free hoof, and begins to pour gasoline down its gullet so her companion doesn't feel left out. The last thing she'd want is to keep up her streak with her days far and far away from her. Her slow remembrance of the tank's capacity—along with the ambient, unchanging drizzle of the gasoline—almost causes a catastrophic spill and a flurry of bad choices, but her brain somehow reaches its peak performance just in time, and she hurriedly pulls the gas can away, curses as a few drops bespeckle her jacket's sleeves, and newly frustratedly reverses the cap a third time, finally thunking the bright red, sloshing container on the ground by her side. As the freshly-poured liquid splashes about and mingles with its new friends, she lets out a sigh that chills and freezes her unhealthily-straightened spine up, down, and up again, shuts her eyes, dips her chin, and repeats the gesture to the rear of her motorcycle as if to sympathize somewhat. Her heart beats, and the shrill wind blows through the pine trees, the wet grass, the choppy air, her unkempt mane, the snow-tipped mountains, the low valley, in pleasantly naive response. She takes another dare in a long series, and cracks open both her eyes at once, staring up the bumpy, dirty, rocky road ahead of her and her trusty companion. A high-pitched whistle gets through the blockade in her mind, and she instinctively turns to the source with a full swivel of her body that disturbs her ensemble and bunches it up in all the wrong places. She only realizes she's staring down at the wooded valley when her purple eyes regain their focus and widen at the sight wholly, not yet touched by the slanderous hooves of unnatural life she so pledged allegiance to. Crowds of sharp pines sit atop large blocks of mixed brown and black and white rock, high above the unabashed masses of their brethren trying—and failing—to reach their level of higher status, first appearing to try and cling to the tall rock and then descending toward the middle of the earthly crevice in the landscape, settling here and there and fading away with heavenly blue hues the farther back their endless struggle extends, which seems to sit down and stop right at the feet of the low mountains assuredly much larger up close and dangerously personal, their distant figures like cookies and cream ice cream spilling down to try and help the lowerclassmen out of their predicament. Even with the rain barely discernible amidst the clouds, Celestia's sun is still doing its best to warm her up and put an end to her discomfort, practically lighting her way and presently kissing whatever skin she was revealing with her grizzled road attire. Her dirt road runs along a parallel line to all of it, never minding the cuts and curves of the bumps in the area and keeping right on its goal the whole way, providing her with ample-enough shade should the sun ever get more self-secure with intermittent, sometimes naked trees standing tall, and proud, and occasionally happy. She's still watching, if only for a second. A second turns to two, then to three, then from three seconds to three minutes, and as if wielding some kind of internal, determined alarm clock, she realizes her aimless activity at the distinct strike of the two hands and attempts to appear as if lost in a simple, dead stare at nothing in particular. Another thought, betraying her after all this time, pops up in her head like the button of an office pen, and, eyes dwarfing fine dinner plates, she rotates about, first one hoof—then, after falling to her haunches, two hooves—dancing across her jacket. Not there, not... there. Not there either. A split second panic attack hits her with the ferocity and merciless impact of a five-mile-long freight train, and then, shaking the ice creeping to the tip of her skull, she hops up onto all fours again, calmly reaches for her backpack's straps hugging her seat in a cross-pattern, and, reminding herself what had happened last time, instead goes straight for the front pocket, which she unzips and thereafter fishes around inside, her dry tongue poking out her mouth and flopping onto the right corner of her lip. There it is. She pulls out her current desire and feels it around awkwardly with her two hooves. She fiddles with it like a foal first gaining object permanence—which, honestly, isn't too far a comparison at this point—and finally holds it in a prime position to do what she'd probably end up tossing away when she settled for the evening, if she did so at all. Holding it up, tilting it a quarter of a millimeter downward to try and get all of the valley in the shot, and keeping it still, she depresses the button and swiftly pulls it back down after it clicks away. She sucks in a breath, and her heart returns to beating up her brain with fists of hot steel. Oh. Right. She can't see the pictures immediately. She deflates with a sigh, then catches herself before she can speak her disgruntlement. These things never turned out as good as they first looked anyhow. The dissatisfaction with her novice, low-hanging-fruit of a picture brings about an insatiable want for a snack. Something quick, and easy, like a granola bar, or a bag of chips, that would only take her less than a minute to open up and chow down on. So she quickly straps her gas can back on with its bungee cords, hooks it to the rest of her gear, mounts up, starts her ride anew with a flick of her foreleg and a rev of the handlebar, and folds up her kickstand with a tap of her hindleg before beginning to slowly drive away from the accursed spot, clenching her teeth tightly long before the road even gets bumpy. As she goes, she becomes aware of, and aptly ignores, her left breast pocket as it vibrates three times in rapid succession before—thankfully—quieting again. "Onward," she whispers, to nopony, nowhere, for no reason but to just hear another voice again.
Of Course It's All Things"Do you need some help?" For a second—just a second—it seems that her only answer winds up being the steady, then suddenly violent, crackle of the flames before her, but, minding the other presence for yet another second, she suppresses a smile, finding him waving her off with a shake of his head and a flashing of his teeth that, even in the moonlit shadows hanging from the monstrously hideous spruce trees, still shimmers with a well-cared-for glow. "What kind of gentlecolt would make a mare work?" He asks, not realizing how little the title applies by this point. Yanking up the metallic table with a single hoof, he unhinges its legs, stabs them into the dry dirt, and folds the countertop out with a precise flick of his wrist. Bending over to bring out the little brown bags in his teeth, he continues, "B'sides, you're already letting me use your fire." He turns around like a Royal Guard, but his chuckling figure doesn't quite match up to a T. He lets out a little more breath as he goes further, hoisting his collection onto the newly-available table, "Least I could do is let you sit down awhile." Thump! "You look like you deserve it." If there was anything she actually deserved in the world apart from what it had given her, a nice round of sleep sounded about right. Her stomach comes at her like a rising tidal wave, almost doubling her over and onto the ground in a seizing, cold heap, but, leaning farther back into her little canvas chair, she drowns the rumbling, bumbling, grumbling noise out with the creaks and hisses of her current source of support. She can't stop herself from humming a quiet note, but she returns to her straight face just in time for him to open his eyes once more. He's beaming again, but, this time, it seems it's more out of achievement than unjustified kindness. She blinks her purple eyes, which, once out and about again, dart over to the table-top. It's littered with plastic bags of greens, reds, and oranges, and a few cylinders here and there dressed in black, white, and red; there's a rectangular paper box with measurements on the side, a carton of broth, and a can of beans. He notices her prolonged staring, and as she ducks back into her scarf and turns away—pretending she hadn't been looking—he pulls out a Dutch oven from the ground next to him in one hoof, and places the three-legged stand in his other hoof in the center of the fire. The oven goes on top thereafter. And just like that, as he begins slicing up butter, chopping up onions—and not shedding a tear, which raises her suspicions just a tad—mincing cloves of garlic, and then throwing all three inside, he's cooking a campfire meal she'd probably shake her head at when it was later presented to her steaming and fresh. Her ears flick to and fro wildly with each pop and snap of the firewood, stray sparks causing her to involuntarily suck in short breaths and hope her companion hadn't noticed. She dares move up an inch closer to try and get more heat to stop her shivers; she moves back when it gets too stuffy. Her chair has begun to make twin trails in the dirt, parting rock and gravel and dirt better left untouched, but disturbed by her presence alone. A few black holes have begun popping up on the armrests. She moves back a little more. Her forelegs jab first into the pits of her forelegs, then, with a revelation, into the safety of her jacket's front pockets. The green peppers fall in. "Thanks again, by the way." She doesn't move her head, but her gaze shifts up. He raises one of his sweater-covered forelegs to stop his yawn at the gates, but, incapable, lulls out his tongue like a party horn and opens his mouth to let out an almost absent mumble followed by an invisible curse. "Ah, sorry." Again, shorter this time. "IIIIII just... wow." A laugh. "I keep doing it." A cough, now. "Usually starting the fires would be my buddy Quick Step's job, but he couldn't make it, and everypony else is at the party in town. I'm pretty much all I've got, and that barely comes close to being enough." She can't really stop from bunching up her shoulders with a hum. Minding the thermos sitting snugly in the cup holder to her right, she pulls it out, tips it back, and takes a few cautious sips of her hot chocolate. It burns her throat a bit, but what the hell, it's still chocolate. A shake of cumin, oregano, chili powder, and cayenne pepper. It looks like an autumn cloud. He sniggers, almost covering his lips with a hoof until realizing one was holding the wooden spoon, and the other was planted firmly into the ground to keep him standing. "Prob'ly would've..." he waggles his gripping hoof anyway, letting the utensil clatter against the inside of the oven, "...set the whole campground on fire. Or chop my hoof off with an ax. Was never any good at that stuff, you would not wanna see it." As if hearing its mention, the forest lets its other occupants rematerialize in her ears. A couple of teenagers still throwing around a frisbee—which was, mind her, lit up with glowsticks haphazardly duct-taped all over it—in the middle of the night let out whoops and hollers far to her right side in the tree line. A flash of oranges, yellows, and reds, which she quickly discovered to belong to the large bonfire of a three-pony family cheering gleefully as the flames danced across the drawn-out fabric of their pretty expensive-looking tent. The little colt was already pulling out a bag of marshmallows and toting a sharp branch. Two jolts of the pepper and salt shakers each. Sucking in a long breath of air through his nostrils and pushing it back out between his open lips, he falls onto his haunches even though his seat is right behind him, lifts his chin, and surveys the deep-blue, white-speckled sky stretching out above the both of them. He would've been better off talking to it instead of her. "This is nice, y'know?" Back down. Little flecks of embers flee the coop and swirl about in front of his fuzzy face. Any closer and he'd burn that beard right off. "Quiet, or, well, at least compared to the city," he resumes, giving a quick glance over to the frolicking teens. "Nice change o' pace from busy streeeeets, and taxis... and the tall buildings and the, I dunno, pressure I guess." He turns to regard her. "You ever feel that way?" She blinks once, and then twice, without putting any thought into her response. She sucks in her bottom lip and nods. "A lot." He makes a low note, returning the gesture, and then he's back to staring skyward. "Never really liked Manehattan, honestly. Only really moved here for college, and it's only been a few months and I already don't like it. Miss being back in Vanhoover." His hooves softly clap each other, then make a huge gap that's easily twice as wide as his own body. "Lots of places to camp there, really nice trails and stuff too. Seems everyone in Manehattan is concerned about crossing the street and not crossing their boss." She feels words about to spill out of her mouth. She closes it, then slightly parts it to take another swig of cocoa. Another shiver overtakes her, but she wiggles herself around on her canvas chair, turns in at an angle, and rests the back of her head against the beginnings of one of the armrests. She probably looked ridiculous, but it was a lot more comfortable this way. The broth is opened, and it tips over above the oven and begins to pour its contents inside. It thumps hollow back onto the table, and the large can of beans takes its place and sickeningly schlips its own members into the thickening stew. It's starting to smell like Heaven, and it's starting to get harder to ignore the remnants of last night's noodle cup and this morning's half of a granola bar. She grumbles again, then passes it off as an annoyance with her position, which she fixes again. He whistles a sweet tune to nopony in particular, stirring the concoction around and bobbing his shaggy-maned head to and fro. The first thing that she reads not coming from a little screen is the words on the front of his pullover-sweater. Vanhoover Blizzards! and a cartoon picture of a very angry snowflake shooting metaphorical and literal daggers—of ice—at something out of frame. Below it, the letters look to have been caught in the team name, dripping with stalactites. We'll Kick Your Ice! "You want my firewood, by the way?" Clunk! Clunk! She's looking at the bowls as they fall onto the table side-by-side, and her ears dance with each scrape of the spoons he's now dropping inside them. He stops for a second before placing the last utensil, looking over at her from between his brow. Chhh! She finds her voice, way, way down. "Sure." It sounds indecisive and almost relenting to her, but he seems to take it affirmitavely and begins scooting his plastic black tote over to her side. He doesn't look at her when he cackles, "I'll try an' make sure I get it before sunrise tomorrow. Think that cute mare over there was asking about a bonfire earlier," instead returning his focus solely on the chili. "Birthday or something," he adds, as if she hadn't already been overanalyzing every word she could hear since arriving. He taps the bottom of the oven with his spoon, then clucks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "Ah!" Turn. "Uh uh, don't get up." She sinks back into her seat. She at least should help him clean... "I'll get you a bowl first. Your fire, after all." It crackles in agreement, burning a hole into another section of her armrest and dotting the rocks around it with black. He scoops up both bowls with one foreleg, tucking them into the crook of his arm. Sweeping them about, he picks up the spoon with his other appendage, dips it into the oven, and lets drip the presumably spicy gates of campfire chili. He repeats it and, with both steaming in his grasp—and surprisingly not burning his skin, which raises another red flag—he holds one back behind his head and overdramatically presents her with the other. Her depraved hunger lunges at her, and she reflexively leans forward, only to hesitate with a slight noise she wishes she hadn't made. It's as if her maneuver starts to play in a reversed state, her mind even blanking somewhat to allow it to go unopposed. She blinks rapidly as if there are tears there, and every time she's either looking far to her left, and right in the center toward the steam billowing up and over the top of her purple mane. He cocks an eyebrow. "Not hungry?" Not eating, she would have liked to say. "N-not that, I..." The bowl thrusts suddenly. He snorts as if it was some kind of a joke. "C'mon, eat up." He backpedals, daring a glance behind him to make sure he's aligned, and finally falls into the comfort of his creaky, wooden tripolina. The dirtied white cloth sags in his wake. "Trust me, it's pretty damn good. And I'm not just saying that because I made it." Yes you are. ... The bowl having been placed further from her with his rearing, he leans far over to his left—almost tipping the whole chair—and presents it to her once more. ... ...she had been talking to him, even if her words were small. She could've very easily shooed him away, or said a simple no, or something. But she was talking. ...maybe she deserved a bite, just this once. "O-okay." He lights up like a Hearth's Warming tree, and she has to stop herself from grinning in kind. "Yeahhhh!" The bowl goes into her hooves, then clutched between the thick sleeves of her coat upon realizing its temperature. At the other end, her adversary is already digging in with the bowl just inches from the end of his snoot. She looks down at her own. And before she lets herself have a single second thought, she coils her hoof around her spoon, collects a bit of everything on the end of it, and sticks it between her lips. At once, the pangs seem to vanish completely, as if just this one morsel was all it would take to stave off her self-sustained hunger. The garlic mixed with the butter and the onions, with the peppers and the beans, with the broth soaking it all with the spiciness of the herbs... Gods, she hadn't had real food in a long while. Despite her own, newly-burning desire, she steadies herself and keeps a light pace to savor the flavor. It might be ages until she got another good meal, even if asking for seconds wasn't out of the question for a party of two. As she quietly slurps up vegetables, he takes the opportunity to wipe his mouth, lean back with a tilt of his head in both directions, and a maintained stare at something seemingly far and away to his left—behind her right—in the distance. His irises peer at her for half a split second, and then he reaches for his spoon and takes another short self-serving. He barely finishes swallowing before, wiping his chin, he points at what he'd seen. "Is that yours?" Oh. She rotates about at her hip and looks at it. The two tarps—silver over black—are still hanging over the rear; her panniers on either side still have their locks on them; the three bright-red gas cans are still sloppily clipped to the back of her upright seat; her purple, white-lined helmet is still dangling from the right handlebar. Her license plate is beyond dirty, too, but there's no need for her to clean it out here in the nowhere. She knew a few ponies who'd have a fit if they saw all the dust and dirt caked all over it. She's reminded of her constant task to acquire a spare tire for emergencies, but she'll probably forget it again. She blinks, and turns her head back toward the fire. It greets her with a friendly snap that almost catches her swaying hindlegs. "Y-yeah." She dips her muzzle back into her bowl. "Pretty sweet bike, if you don't mind me saying!" He exclaims with a belly laugh that shakes it too. "You've got a... heh, lotta stuff on there." She breathes in and out. In and out, softly. She takes another bite. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him blink, then look away and then back. Thankfully, his small frown gives way to his bright grin again. "Where you headed, little mare?" She hadn't really looked at her map in awhile, to be completely honest, and the last time she had, the only thing was just... kind of... all over the place. Her spoon scrapes the bottom of her bowl. "Dunno yet, just... kind of... moving, I guess." "Hm, nice, nice. Little adventure, huh? You look about that age." Creeeeak! "Used to do that with my friends back in high school during break. Pack up our stuff and head anywhere we wanted. Mostly Las Pegasus, though. Nothing beats a nice beer and kickass burgers." Snap! Pop! Pffffsssss! "...where'd you start?" She sucks in much more air than was necessary, her stomach almost exploding. Her nostrils flare up, and she eats another spoonful. "Ponyville." A chuckle. She can't help but call his voice safe. "So, what, you running from home or something?" She can't even hear her own heartbeat. It seems that the raging fire has grabbed a chokehold of her vocal cords and silenced her indefinitely. She hears a twig snap, and she's not sure if it was in her head, or behind it. She's barely halfway done with her food, but now she feels like she shouldn't have eaten it in the first place. A breath in and then out. She reaches a hoof up and wipes her mouth, then lifts her chin and blinks at him. "It wasn't home."
At Least I Thought SoSomething has broken. And this time, she has the option of physically beholding it before herself instead of finding it in a discarded shard of roadside glass, and so she does so, and as the pebbles first scatter and then dig little trenches into and across her jacket, she has to shake her head and stop from aptly, aggressively rapping on it for not knowing her trusty ride inside, out, and in again. A simple lesson or two— self-taught of course, or maybe with a literary aid—and a few spare minutes of her time, and she'd be all set to simply replace what all needed work and be back on her oh-so-merry way in the span of little less than half an hour or so. Now she's lying on her back in a pile of sharp, multitudinous rocks, doing maintenance in the middle of the waning, bleeding, orange-ing sun leaving her life to replace it with cold brought upon by a distant—more accurately opposite—cousin, whose assuredly hurried arrival would mean nothing but halting herself in her winding tracks, slashing a dark red X on her eternal progress, and sticking around for much too long in a place she wasn't familiar with. The feeling and event weren't all too foreign or overall alien to her, in fact being something she'd pretty much experienced every day's end, but the groans and sighs that escaped her lips every time she begrudgingly met it told much more novice stories. What's left of Celestia's bright Object peeks out at her from behind her prior shield of a curled hindleg, and she raises a fore this time, seethes, and pulls her neck waaaay back to try and stop blindness before it gracefully afflicted her. Bringing up her tail in a last-second idea, she reverts her attention back to the mess of parts—metal and plastic—that sit a bare inch from the end of her muzzle, scrunches up her nose, and shakes her head to ask nopony what in the Hell she's even looking at. It seems to be a silent argument; she crosses her forelegs in a lazy X-shape and pouts out her lower lip, taking the silent stretching minutes to glance about at things that looked to be a little out of place, then things that were obviously out of place. Both solo search parties end up as fruitless as winter, and the argument is resoundingly finished. Her motorcycle has won this time, adding another tally to its long list that easily beats her non-existent one zero-to-now-twenty-three. As if to try and get the last word in, she lays there still, then flops her forelegs out in a spread eagle with a more improper curse threatening to spill from her lips. The sensation passes, fueled by her recent interest and belief in constant superstition, and, stomach bubbling at the thought of what she's left with, she rolls her purple eyes, groans a long groan that comes out as more of a growling hiss, and scrambles out from underneath her motorcycle, jumping onto all fours and swaying at her instantly regrettable swiftness. Shaking the stars and ice from her head, she takes a second—or fifteen—to aggressively rub at her eyes, lull her tongue out for a drawn-out yawn, and strike a pose for nobody but the shrouding trees, distant hills, and much-too-close cliff to see. Lips pursed, she looks so far to her left that it becomes her immediate right. There's a small incline just past where her ride idly sits, going toward the shadowed grove of treeline and ending in an oddly flat section of grass and dirt that seems to become sparser and more inviting the longer she looks at it. She scratches at something on her cheek, lowers the hoof, then goes back at it at a different angle. She sucks in a breath through her nostrils that croaks and snorts. She puffs out her cheeks. Well damn. Here was as good a place as any. She's barely even turned around to access her bag before she stops, glaring at the road... apparently. BUT! She better make up for lost time tomorrow! Wake up early, skip breakfast, and try and make as much ground as possible before Luna's Grace greeted her again. She tosses the condition around for a few seconds, her mind already becoming completely okay with it, and hums. Well, that's fair. She did waste half a half hour just glaring at her motorcycle when it suddenly stopped on the road. Yeah, yeah that was fair. Fair's fair. All right. Wake up early—probably around daybreak, so six or seven or so—skip her morning meal—which she was probably gonna do anyway—and put more distance between her and everypony else. The mountain seemed to be taking her up and to the North, so... maybe that was the best place to go. Just as long as she didn't get too far and end up finding visions of Sombrero or whatever... yeah, North seemed fine. Maybe she could take a visit to Rainbow Falls. She'd never been this late in the year, but the, well, the rainbow falls probably still looked just as cool. She reaches to the side of her motorcycle, realizing her earlier mistake, and pulls out the long canvas bag from its hidey-hole. Lightly tossing it over to the bare patch of ground, she returns her gaze to her bike, kicks up the kickstand with a well-trained swing of her hindleg, and slowly wheels her friend over to their resting stop for the night. Taking a second to make sure of its sturdiness, she tests the ground with a free leg, remembers that that literally does nothing, and finally unlatches the kickstand to watch her ride stand perfectly upright. She hums a low note—the beginnings of a song she used to like—and double-checks her helmet's position before giving her full attention back to the canvas bag lying on the ground before her. She loosens the binds that hold the bag closed, and first pulls out the thin base cover, which she lays flat on the ground, kneels over, and presses any creases and lumps out of. The wall and rainfly—bound by velcro—come out in matrimony, and she shakes dirt and other foreign objects free, walks over the base cover, and places the two atop it. Left rattling in the bag as she holds it are the extendable poles, which dangle and shimmy and shake before she curses at them, where they then increase their efforts and further dirty her tongue. Assembling the first curve, she sticks one end into the wall's grommet, minds her head, turns around, and does the same with the opposite corner. She puts together the second curve, and repeats the maneuver, then clips the pyramidion of the rainfly to the middle of the pole's criss-cross, loops its straps around the stronger parts of the poles, and brings the whole thing up with a grunt. There. Just as awkward, totally not right, and novice-looking as usual. She really should've figured out how to actually put this thing together when she bought it. Despite her utter misgivings, she cracks a smile to herself in the light of the orange sky, falls to her haunches, throws her forelegs against her hips, then claps them free of the dust that wasn't there in the first place. They return to her sides. Home, sweet temporary home. Rotating about to reach for the bags on her motorcycle again, she pulls out one of the longer bags in her collection, unzips it, and pulls out her lazy canvas chair, which she swiftly unfolds, sets into place next to her tent, and sinks down into... only to remember that the rest of her stuff is far, far away from her now. Groaning, she gets up, takes three steps back to her bike, and pulls out her little folding table, equally little canister of propane—which she notes, as she shakes it idly, to be less than half empty now—and camping stove. She sets the former out on the ground in front of her chair, then places the second, then the third on top of it, on top of... it. A soup pot, previously hanging off the left side of her rear wheel, goes on top of that. Table, propane, stove, pot. It's becoming a bit of a pyramid now. A bottle of warm water empties into the pot with her aid, then goes into her mess of a backpack alongside some assorted snacks that have probably gone bad by now. She flicks on the stove with a hoof, shoulders the backpack, then drops back into her chair. The backpack swings around over her chest, then falls onto the ground and gets thoroughly dug into, finally relinquishing its hold on a small white rectangular packet lined with red logos, words, and instructions. She may not be in the mood for soup, or really much of anything right now, but a nice cup of hot cocoa was always welcome, no matter how set she was on starving herself. As the water heats up, she sits back and stares up at the increasingly appearing maze of stars above her head, bringing in more and more and more of their close friends, distant relatives, and familial figures as the sky's orange glow takes on a purple and black haze. The hoof pinching the top of the hot chocolate packet shakes loose the clumps and bubbles surely nestled inside. She lets out a breath, then, finding it visible and wispy, lets out another, and an odd giggle spills out her mouth, sending out more wisps that, in her new rest, slowly lift far and high above her head, disappearing into the reborn night. The shadows of her though rather small fire dance along the stretched canvas of her tent in a bombastic, almost frenzied kind of coordination, and she can't help but crack a smile behind the warmth of her fluffy scarf as she catches sight of the little event. She gives them a new friend with a pair of needle-pinned hooves, and despite its unlovable lump of a hopeless figure, the group welcomes it all the same.
I Could Live For BetterAnd here she is stopping again. It was the ragged, violently whipping-about coat-tails of a long line of bad ideas, and horrible mistakes, and unspeakable atrocities better kept locked far and away inside some kind of vault, let alone her own poor head, but it was more a cautious kind of thing than a voluntary one in the end. Her own jacket might not stretch much further than her hindlegs—something she constantly felt a little annoyed with to be honest, looking up from time to time and fully realizing the weather she'd been riding through the past few days—but it was doing its job more than her natural-born Pegasus coat would. She's been driving on a regrettably full stomach since the very first crack of morning, and her ride wishes it could crack a little grin and quietly say the same beneath her. It reminds her a bit of her, honestly—well, who she was—as she need only cast a quick second glance down at the meter above her fuel tank to see that the tiny arrow has gone down by just a tick since she last looked in early yesterday's torrent of rainwater. Just barely starving, and already causing her to begrudgingly go about and alleviate the aching, even if she's more than just a hundred-percent sure that her pangs echo much worse than her bike's. With a frown, a grumble between her practiced clenched teeth, and a flick of her chin, she finally halts the engine's idling, turning her foreleg and the keys nestled snugly inside the ignition with it. As the constant rumbling and bumbling of the 992 cc motor flees her life with incredibly eerily reminiscent fashion, she suddenly widens her eyes with a noise escaping her hardly-opened lips. In response, her breath fogs up the inside of her helmet's visor, only to dissipate and allow her an undeterred moment of quietly, silently, faintly, just looking around the area she's currently, mistakenly, residing. Her navigational skills were always a bit on the awful, terrible, no good, very bad side, but her observational skills were at least somewhat sub-par at best. She shakes her head quickly, flinging away her wanderlust thoughts and letting only one slip through the hair-thin cracks: refueling. Reigniting the flame in her sole objective. Feeding the one thing that had remained fixated by her side through the thick, thin, and even curvaceous. And so, rising a scarce few inches out of her upright seat, minding her hopelessly swishing tail, and swinging her right hindleg over the front of the motorcycle, she hops onto the ground with a dull thud and immediately regrets the decision. Her scarf begins to itch at the back of her neck where it meets both the bottom of her helmet and her mane, and, reaching up to scratch it, she ceases her mobility and can finally call herself immobile again. Her shoulders are aching; her hooves can still feel the vibrations of the road down to her bones; her ears are ringing and still clogged from her altitude. But, pulling cold air in through her nose and blowing it back out as a fog to temporarily cloud her sights, she shakes like a damp dog and trots toward the back of her motorcycle with only a hoof full of steps. She feels an almost absent, unnoticeable satisfaction at first in the sudden discontinuation of the engine below her body, but, as she feels the dry, crusty dirt give way and sink underneath her eternally quaking fores and then hinds, flares her nostrils obsessively, reaches up with a heavy hoof toward the mess of bags behind her upright seat, and annoyedly yanks the red gas can from its clasps, she finds an odd kind of longing for it. Her mind attempts to whisk her away to some sort of do-well fantasy and evocative of similar sensations, but, shaking her head and juggling them around her empty skull, she settles the container onto the ground in front of her, crouches down, coils a strong hoof around its black cap, and wrenches it free of its chains. Looking at it for all but a few seconds of wasted time, she pushes the nozzle back through the hole, switches its orientation, then screws the cap back on. Again, the thoughts come, but she rises back to all fours much faster than they knock, awkwardly holds the canister up, pops the top off of her gas tank with a flick of a temporarily free hoof, and begins to pour gasoline down its gullet so her companion doesn't feel left out. The last thing she'd want is to keep up her streak with her days far and far away from her. Her slow remembrance of the tank's capacity—along with the ambient, unchanging drizzle of the gasoline—almost causes a catastrophic spill and a flurry of bad choices, but her brain somehow reaches its peak performance just in time, and she hurriedly pulls the gas can away, curses as a few drops bespeckle her jacket's sleeves, and newly frustratedly reverses the cap a third time, finally thunking the bright red, sloshing container on the ground by her side. As the freshly-poured liquid splashes about and mingles with its new friends, she lets out a sigh that chills and freezes her unhealthily-straightened spine up, down, and up again, shuts her eyes, dips her chin, and repeats the gesture to the rear of her motorcycle as if to sympathize somewhat. Her heart beats, and the shrill wind blows through the pine trees, the wet grass, the choppy air, her unkempt mane, the snow-tipped mountains, the low valley, in pleasantly naive response. She takes another dare in a long series, and cracks open both her eyes at once, staring up the bumpy, dirty, rocky road ahead of her and her trusty companion. A high-pitched whistle gets through the blockade in her mind, and she instinctively turns to the source with a full swivel of her body that disturbs her ensemble and bunches it up in all the wrong places. She only realizes she's staring down at the wooded valley when her purple eyes regain their focus and widen at the sight wholly, not yet touched by the slanderous hooves of unnatural life she so pledged allegiance to. Crowds of sharp pines sit atop large blocks of mixed brown and black and white rock, high above the unabashed masses of their brethren trying—and failing—to reach their level of higher status, first appearing to try and cling to the tall rock and then descending toward the middle of the earthly crevice in the landscape, settling here and there and fading away with heavenly blue hues the farther back their endless struggle extends, which seems to sit down and stop right at the feet of the low mountains assuredly much larger up close and dangerously personal, their distant figures like cookies and cream ice cream spilling down to try and help the lowerclassmen out of their predicament. Even with the rain barely discernible amidst the clouds, Celestia's sun is still doing its best to warm her up and put an end to her discomfort, practically lighting her way and presently kissing whatever skin she was revealing with her grizzled road attire. Her dirt road runs along a parallel line to all of it, never minding the cuts and curves of the bumps in the area and keeping right on its goal the whole way, providing her with ample-enough shade should the sun ever get more self-secure with intermittent, sometimes naked trees standing tall, and proud, and occasionally happy. She's still watching, if only for a second. A second turns to two, then to three, then from three seconds to three minutes, and as if wielding some kind of internal, determined alarm clock, she realizes her aimless activity at the distinct strike of the two hands and attempts to appear as if lost in a simple, dead stare at nothing in particular. Another thought, betraying her after all this time, pops up in her head like the button of an office pen, and, eyes dwarfing fine dinner plates, she rotates about, first one hoof—then, after falling to her haunches, two hooves—dancing across her jacket. Not there, not... there. Not there either. A split second panic attack hits her with the ferocity and merciless impact of a five-mile-long freight train, and then, shaking the ice creeping to the tip of her skull, she hops up onto all fours again, calmly reaches for her backpack's straps hugging her seat in a cross-pattern, and, reminding herself what had happened last time, instead goes straight for the front pocket, which she unzips and thereafter fishes around inside, her dry tongue poking out her mouth and flopping onto the right corner of her lip. There it is. She pulls out her current desire and feels it around awkwardly with her two hooves. She fiddles with it like a foal first gaining object permanence—which, honestly, isn't too far a comparison at this point—and finally holds it in a prime position to do what she'd probably end up tossing away when she settled for the evening, if she did so at all. Holding it up, tilting it a quarter of a millimeter downward to try and get all of the valley in the shot, and keeping it still, she depresses the button and swiftly pulls it back down after it clicks away. She sucks in a breath, and her heart returns to beating up her brain with fists of hot steel. Oh. Right. She can't see the pictures immediately. She deflates with a sigh, then catches herself before she can speak her disgruntlement. These things never turned out as good as they first looked anyhow. The dissatisfaction with her novice, low-hanging-fruit of a picture brings about an insatiable want for a snack. Something quick, and easy, like a granola bar, or a bag of chips, that would only take her less than a minute to open up and chow down on. So she quickly straps her gas can back on with its bungee cords, hooks it to the rest of her gear, mounts up, starts her ride anew with a flick of her foreleg and a rev of the handlebar, and folds up her kickstand with a tap of her hindleg before beginning to slowly drive away from the accursed spot, clenching her teeth tightly long before the road even gets bumpy. As she goes, she becomes aware of, and aptly ignores, her left breast pocket as it vibrates three times in rapid succession before—thankfully—quieting again. "Onward," she whispers, to nopony, nowhere, for no reason but to just hear another voice again.
