Long Way Around
The lone wanderer
I stared at the sun through groggy eyes for a few moments, admiring it as it hung there in the sky, providing the starting point for life on the earth below. I knew that it wasn’t my sun; I would likely never set my eyes upon it again. This was the sun of a land that human eyes had never been blinded by before.
I stretched slightly to alleviate the stiffness in my body but continued to lie there. I wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. Looking around I saw nothing but grass and the sun. I still had my clothes on from the previous night and my trainers were by my feet, undone and ready to be worn.
I lay there in the grass for few more minutes, letting the sun wash over me and warm my skin. Eventually I decided that I should begin my journey and put my shoes on. I looked at my laces. I didn’t especially want to look around as I tied them; I already knew about the sun and grass. I finished tying them both up, tugging to make sure that they were tight enough, and then I stood up.
I looked up at the sun once more and then turned in the opposite direction so that it was on my back, lighting my path in front of me. I looked at the grass once more and then I began to walk. I knew where I would go. I would go as far as I wanted to, and then the next day I would do the same again. Today I would see more grass and tomorrow I would see grass or maybe some trees. Further into my future was unknown, maybe more oceans of grass or maybe I would come upon a forest and spend weeks walking amongst the trees as they towered above me, starving the land beneath them of sunlight. I would walk under the trees that had risen first and had reaped the rewards and starving the losers who has suffered and died. I would walk amongst those losers and witness their suffering. That may be a step on my journey that I would have to take, but today there were no trees in sight.
I was fairly certain as to where I was. I would have to wait for my assumption to be proven but for the moment I accepted that my prediction as to my whereabouts was correct. For the rest of the day I walked, being guided by the falling sun behind me and darkness coming to greet me. My stomach asked for food but I had eaten the day before and that would provide for the time being. Eventually the darkness swallowed my sight and so I lay down and now stared at the moon. Like its counterpart it was not my moon, instead it belonged to someone else. No thoughts flooded through my mind or set me to fearing as to where I should go. I knew where I was going.
The stars were different too, as expected. A brief thought crossed my mind, as to if any of them were my star. One of them could be but I did not know which one. One day I might, but at this moment in time I resided to not having yet acquired that piece of information. Sometime on my journey I may come to know but not yet. I would wait.
The first day of my journey had nearly come to an end. Had I accomplished anything? That was uncertain. I had seen some grass and the sun and moon but not much else. I had seen neither birds nor other wildlife. They had eluded me today and maybe they would tomorrow. Perhaps there were no other living things besides grass until the horizon and then to the all the other horizons after that.
No, I had accomplished something today. I had been greeted by two strangers and walked amongst some of the humble inhabitants. What had been a passing thought countless nights ago had become a reality. The journey that I had proposed upon myself, one sleepless night, had been taken up. I was free to wander the world as I saw fit. I would avoid the clichés and the “normal” things to do in my predicament that countless others would jump upon to perform. I was like them in some regard but different in others. I would not make it my purpose here to meet inhabitants of villages and cities of brick, but instead to walk to amongst the residents of forests and deserts and plateaus and wherever my feet took me. I would explore this world not to meet the individuals within it but to meet the land itself. If my journey took me to a town then I would enter but I would not stay. If others chose to follow my journey then so be it. I do not know when my journey will end but I know that it has now begun.
The stranger’s sun came to wake me once again and stretched out its beams of light towards me. I lay there letting them embrace me, ridding me of the chill from the previous night. It was nothing too serious but eventually I would have to find some way to keep warm at night.
I turned towards my shoes and repeated the steps from the previous day. I raised myself up on my legs and stretched. I heard a slight crack; the grass was soft enough. I began to walk towards my shadow and to the far off horizon.
My stomach asked for food and I refused it; grass wasn’t exactly edible. Instead I carried on walking, one foot in front of the other, until I saw a smudge on the horizon. Fortunately the smudge was in my path and so I strode towards it. After a few hours the smudge began to turn into smaller smudges and then eventually into trees. I walked amongst them, grateful for the protection from the early riser. Vegetation littered the floor and amongst the weeds and roots, were a few leafy bushes. I looked at them and their fruits being shown off to the world. I had never had to eat wild berries before and didn’t exactly know which were edible and which would end up being unpleasant for the following few hours. I don’t think that I was yet a beggar but I decided that even if I had known about berries before, the knowledge would most likely be useless here. So I popped a few in my mouth. Tasty enough, I never really liked berries, but they would do until I found something better to eat.
I looked around the forest floor and picked any berries that I could find which, most of, were stored in my pockets. Probably not the best place to keep them but good enough. The fact that I hadn’t yet had to take use of any of the nearby large leaves meant that they were probably safe. I allowed a few bushes to keep their fruit in case anyone else had the need of them, and then I carried on my journey.
The trees turned out to belong more to a wood rather than a forest. I stood on the edge of the tree line and looked over the forb, to the mountains in the background. By now the sun had nearly reached these mountains and so I sat there, on the edge of a foreign wood, and watched a sun set on the horizon. By the time the sun had said its farewells to the land, my mind was thinking. A few thoughts passed to my friends. I probably wouldn’t see them again but we’d had good times together and done things that friends do. We had done what we could and they had kept me happy. Their job was done, they may stay friends until they were old men or they may drift apart over the years. Now it was no concern to me, I had no way to influence their future anymore. Instead I let memories of them keep my mind busy as I looked at the strange stars.
The last of my berries went from my pockets as I closed in on the mountain range. It was then that I realised that I may have to slightly alter my course. The mountain range ahead of me looked much more imposing than it had the previous day. It was still a noticeable landmark and I was at least a few days walk from it. An even steeper mountain range stuck out of the land to the left of me. Both would prove impossible for me to maneuver over, especially as all I had were some trainers, shorts, a t-shirt and a few squished berries in my pocket. I could either try and find a pass through either of the mountain ranges (which was unlikely), turn back or walk around both sets of mountains.
As I stood there trying to come to a decision as I saw some large birds off in the distance. They flew across my field of view and then proceeded to make in the general direction of the mountain range on my left. They probably weren’t birds as they seemed too large even from this distance. Deciding that they probably knew where they were going, I chose to follow them as they were the first local wildlife that I had yet seen. For a few futile moments I decided to jog and try and keep them in my sight but to no avail. They soon became dots in the sky and then they were gone. They had seemed to be flying straight ,with no indication changing course, and so I carried on in that direction.
For the remainder of the day I saw no other flying objects in the sky, instead I saw metal and wooden tracks leading towards one of the mountain ranges. Metal and wood, same as most places but these seemed slightly less modern. I squatted down next to part of the track and placed my hand on it and waited. After about ten minutes I felt a slight rumbling in my hand. I kept it there as the rumbling became more powerful and began to spread up my arm. I could feel something fearsome coming closer, getting angrier as it neared me. My whole arm was shaking now as the beast raced towards me. I waited another minute and then stood up. I shook my legs to get rids of the pins and needles and then I walked across the track.
About a hundred metres from the tracks I turned and sat down. I watched the tracks and listened. The train was pretty fast and considerably loud. I watched as it raced towards its destination. Most of the windows had curtains thrown across them but one or two didn’t. Instead they had bored faces looking out of them, counting the minutes down until they reached the station.
The grass and the small bush next to me didn’t provide the best cover but I wasn’t trying to hide. I didn’t notice any change in the quick bursts of faces that I was offered. Maybe one of them had seen me but hadn’t yet processed it. They might think about that quick glance of the odd shape that they had seen and dismiss it as nothing or they might have already begun having a panic attack.
I watched the train as it dissapeared towards the mountains and then I once again began to walk in the direction of the pegasi. I had a feeling that I knew where they were going. It was somewhere that I would have rather avoided for the time being but I might as well get it over with. The sooner that I got Ponyville out of the way, the sooner I could carry on with the rest of my journey.
Long Way Around
An interlude
Grass looks the same most of the time. This is especially true when you’ve spent two days walking through it with not much else to look at. At least today I was woken by the sight of mountains in the distance. The sun’s light gleaming off of them. Before I had appeared here, it had been right in the middle of summer and it seemed to be the same here. The grass had been wet with dew most mornings and the grass still looked green and fresh,so I presumed that even the weather here was looked after now and again.
For a few moments I considered eating some grass to try and quieten by stomach but I quickly decided that I wasn’t going native quite yet. Instead I decided to walk barefoot through the grass and give my feet a bit of a rest. I began to walk in the general direction of where I last remembered the pegasi to have gone, using the mountains as a reference point. As long as I kept them on my right I knew that I was going in the generally correct direction.
As I walked my mind began to wonder, as it does. I thought about what might have happened if anyone had actually seen me. Maybe Celestia was wondering if I was the saviour of their world whose destiny it was to help stop an ancient evil. Probably not though, fan fics aren’t the best things to base assumptions on.
I then began to admire the actual world around me. The mountains piercing the earth filled the entire right side of my vision.They dominated the landscape and seemed slightly out of place when compared to the grassland around me. While the left was covered by grass and small bits of shrubbery shooting out of the ground. It does feel relaxing, walking through a land not knowing exactly where you’re going but instead just being able to think. I didn’t really care what I was thinking about instead I just waited for what came into my head. I’d wanted to go walking in the hills before but it’s not something that I was ever able to do. Bit of a shame, but here I am, exploring a land that I haven’t seen before. It does make up for it.
Even though my feet were getting a rest, walking through the soft grass, my legs began to stiffen up after a few hours. So I decided to take a quick rest and look at the most prominent mountain beside me. I couldn’t actually see it but I presumed that there was a certain large city resting on the other side of it. The numerous holes that I could see riddling the mountainside seemed to reinforce this. No doubt that these were tunnels excavated throughout the centre of the mountain that allowed trains to travel through it.
I stayed there for a while, admiring the forces that must have created these mountains, before getting a bit bored and deciding to carry on.
The mountains began to recede behind me as I walked to what I presumed was a very distant river on the horizon. That was my next step. I noticed a few small disturbances on my left from a new set of mountains. I took that as a good sign and walked with the tunnel-ridden mountain behind me and the new set off to my left.
The sun was already beginning to get ready to set and so started into a jog. Skipping is apparently a more energy-efficient method of movement but the idea of skipping through a field didn’t really feel right, even considering where I was. So instead I just ran towards the sound of water that flowed over the open fields around me.
I was surprised that I hadn’t seen any more pegasi flying overhead considering how close to the capital I was. That was probably for the best though, considering that if anyone did fly overhead then there wouldn’t be anywhere to hide. So I just ran like humans were designed to. My feet made an almost soundless crunch underneath as I steadily jogged forward. I was diverting a bit from my original idea of keeping the sun directly behind me, but it was necessary to reach my destination.
Over my ragged breathing I began to once again hear the sound of running water. By now I was getting pretty tired and could taste a slight metallic taste in my mouth. Running towards the sound I found a much larger than expected river. The size of it did explain why I had heard it so long before actually seeing it. By now the sun had already set and the river seemed almost perfectly black in the night.
I collapsed on the river bank and lay there, trying to get my breath back. I’d probably been jogging for about an hour or more, a pretty rare feat for me. I stayed there for a while before going up to the river and relieving myself. I then walked a bit further upstream, I wasn’t going Bear Grylls style just yet.
With the night sky above me, that I was beginning to call my own, and the sound of the river beside me; I quickly drifted off to sleep.
Note: Next chapter should be longer than this
