Picnic at the End of the World
Sweet Sunshine was having a very bad day. Her body ached. She was tired.
Her gut was bleeding through her bandages and battle saddle from a gunshot wound, a .308 if she had to guess.
But that wasn’t important. She was almost there.
Sweet had never been a very complicated mare. She’d minded her own business, never started any trouble that wasn’t worth starting. She’d been a farmer for all fifty-four years of her life, and in all fairness that was quite a good run for a wastelander. Not many ponies got to live that long.
Her husband didn’t. Neither did her daughter. But she did.
Maybe not for much longer.
“Hkkkakk…!” She stopped to cough, pain shooting through her body as she doubled over, nearly crumpling. Those bastards had gotten her good. But she’d gotten them better -- they weren't still kicking, but she was.
And she was almost there.
She stumbled through the trees, her hooves plodding over the grass as her bandages started dripping through her pierced barding.
Sweet had never really desired too much in her life. She was a farmer -- razorgrain, mostly. But she had kept a nice vegetable and flower garden too, on the side of the homestead, where she spent what little profit she made at the market that didn’t go right back into the farm on seed packets.
Dandelions were her favorite, which was… Unfortunate. From what she’d gathered, pre-war ponies didn’t exactly cultivate dandelions on purpose, so finding seeds to grow them was troublesome. She’d only ever had them canned, dried, or otherwise preserved, but that was enough for her to know she loved the damn things. Enough to pay too damn much for a small bundle of seeds.
Freshly-picked dandelions, between two slices of fresh baked bread, and lightly toasted to bring out the flavor. Dandelion sandwiches weren’t anything gourmet, but they’d always been her favorite.
The hardest flowers to cultivate were in the bushes at the edge of the garden, though. They were finicky things, especially in the wasteland soil that made up most of her farm. The seeds weren’t cheap either.
But those weren’t for eating. They were for the plot of gravestones at the edge of the property.
“Hey old mare!” The punk at the front of the band had rasped, “What’s in the bags?!”
“Yeah, bitch,” snivelled her second-in-command, “What’s in the fucking bags?!”
They hadn’t waited for an answer before they started shooting. They all looked manic. Probably strung out on goddesses-know-how-many chems, all three of them. They’d jumped her on the path, and managed to graze her foreleg before she’d put one of them down with her shotgun. She slumped behind a tree for cover, stuffing more shells into the tube.
Bastards. Rotten bastards, all of them. She’s got somewhere to be, and they’re not helping.
Chunks of wood ripped out of her cover as the unicorn in charge dumped a battle rifle with an uncomfortably large magazine her way, laughing maniacally as she showed the tree Sweet was hunkered behind who was boss.
“Gimme! Gimme gimme, you old cunt! Fuck you! Gutrot! Fucking kill the bitch!”
She heard a break in fire and rapidly-approaching hoofsteps, and only just managed to swing out of cover when ‘Gutrot’ (she presumed) swung a hatchet at her.
The wicked sharp edge of the axe caught in the tube of her shotgun, narrowly saving her ribcage from the same fate. She could see the big emptiness in the stallion’s eyes as she tried to wrestle her gun away, and it was so breathtakingly nothing that she almost didn’t notice the leader pulling the charging handle on her machine gun.
She wasn’t going to wait for her remaining companion to finish the job, Sweet realized.
Another volley of bullets filled the forest, slamming into Gutrot’s back and blowing his skull out across the mare he was wrestling with. His body slumped forward so fast that Sweet didn’t have the chance to react before she was beneath his corpse.
The big, dead bastard draped over her like a sack of bricks kept her pinned.
Her compatriot was approaching, a cacophony of giggling growing louder with every step.
There was this ancient billboard on the edge of the homestead. It was on the opposite side of the highway, so every day, assuming the weather was right, she could sit at her window sill and see it at the edge of their property.
It was a bit odd to know the thing had been there longer than she had. Many times over, in fact! The idea that every matriarch of Sweet’s family had woken up in this same bed, seen that same billboard on the other side of the highway, was… comforting, somehow. It was familiar.
It wasn’t anything special, the billboard. She wasn’t even sure what it was advertising, as she had gathered was the purpose of most billboards.
It was a pre-war family on a grassy hill. A mare, a stallion, and two foals -- the billboard was so worn it was hard to tell what combination of son and daughter the children were. They were all seated on a red-and-white checkered blanket, in the middle of which sat a basket. Laid out between the laughing ponies was a spread of food and drink on plates. Sandwiches, small containers of who-knows-what. Bottles of Sparkle Cola sat in the basket.
“Treat Your Family! No Picnic is Complete Without-” it read, and the rest of the slogan had been lost to time, burned away by a fire that had engulfed a wagon that crashed into the billboard hundreds of years ago.
Sweet had spent a long time looking at the billboard, wondering. Wondering what had happened to that family when the war started and ended. If they had been real to begin with, or if they had just been the artist’s creation. Were they the artist’s family? The family of someone who came up with the idea for the billboard? They looked real enough. The father’s cutie mark appeared to be some kind of telescope, backed by a shooting star. The foals didn’t appear to have theirs yet, or maybe they’d been worn away by the billboard’s decades of neglect.
The mother’s was a flower of some sort, though Sweet had initially suspected it wasn’t a real one. She’d never seen one like it, anyway. It was a red bulb, pinkish at the center. All the petals were curled slightly out at the edges, and the whole thing hung at the end of a little stem with what looked like thorns that she never even saw until she went to look at the billboard up close.
Turned out it actually was a real flower! A rose, it was called. Apparently, they’d been popular before the war. A gift for loved ones. It was strange, she thought. Giving somepony you loved a flower with thorns on its stem. But pre-war ponies were strange ponies, after all.
She’d found the botany book a few years after the raiders came to the farm. Bought it off a stallion who was selling them for tinder -- it wasn’t like many ponies could read, him included. But Sweet’s mother had taught her how, albeit mostly so she could label her produce bins to make them look fancier.
She was always proud of their little booth in the market, even if it was just one of dozens. Even if it was never the best, or the most popular stall in the market, it was still hers.
“You dead, bitch?! You dead?!” The raider screeched, stomping her hooves giddily as she approached Sweet’s supine form and the corpse atop her. “I’ll fuck you up if you ain’t, don’t worry! Gut! You faggot! Is she dead?!”
She had to get this dead raider off of her before her nameless friend got to her. More importantly, before his blood started leeching into the contents of her saddlebags. But he was a heavy bastard with all this worryingly-seamless leather and random patches of sheet metal armor smothering him.
At this distance, she probably couldn’t tell if it was her or her friend who was still moving. But she’d be able to tell if she got much closer -- hopefully she didn’t have any more ammo for that rifle.
Sweet's shotgun was still on its mount on her side, though the magazine tube was still split and crimped by Gutrot’s hatchet. Had she managed to pump it before he sliced into it? Was there a shell in the chamber? In the heat of the moment, she couldn’t remember. Either way, if she missed, she wouldn’t be able to chamber another shell for a second chance.
The raider mare was almost upon her. Adrenaline coursed through her veins as she managed to throw the dead stallion off of her and scrambled to her hooves in the hopes that she’d get lucky one more time.
Her homestead’s final harvest. She never completely understood what happened, or why. Something to do with those weird towers she’d see every now and then on the horizon, she’d gathered.
But the cloud cover opened for the first time in… Well, ever, and… something had happened to the wasteland. Something that had apparently been fantastic for most of the flora of the world, bringing shades of green back to places that hadn’t seen such hues in centuries.
Something had happened, something that was not good for the carefully maintained ecology of a farm now built upon cultivating crop that had adapted to the wasteland’s soil.
She watched during the last planting season as grass overtook the far hills. Watched as her own plants withered and died, ironically unable to survive the new abundance of rain that fell upon her fields.
That harvest, she had no produce to sell.
She wasn’t going to starve. She had a modest stockpile of preserves in case of a lackluster turnout, but the farm wasn’t prepared to survive a total loss like this.
It was strange. Decades of toil and countless bandits hadn’t managed to topple her family’s legacy, but a few extra inches of rain was what finally brought an end to all of it.
It was that last harvest that had made up her mind. She'd decided today was the last time she'd wake up in that empty house, and see the family on the billboard at the edge of the highway.
She gathered up some of her preserves, and what little of her crop had survived the sudden change in climate, wrapped up and packed neatly in her saddlebags. It was just enough to counterbalance her battle saddle’s lopsided weight and make the coming journey a little bit easier.
Her insides felt cold and wet. Every step uphill felt like getting shot all over again, but she had to keep going. One more trip, old mare. Just one more.
After what felt like hours, she’d finally managed to crest the hill. She shakily unlatched her battle saddle and let it fall into the grass, then tumble down the hill. She wouldn’t need it anymore anyway.
She more carefully removed her saddlebags, setting them down gently and unbuckling them. The canvas was bloody, but it had kept everything inside safe.
The sandwiches were a little smushed, but none of the bottles of Sparkle-Cola had broken, by some small miracle.
She set her bags to the side, carefully removing the blanket so as not to smear it with her own blood, or Gut’s.
Sweet spread it across the top of the hill, its blue and white plaid pattern contrasting nicely with the green of the grass.
She’d lost a plate, unfortunately. Broke when the raider’s corpse fell atop her, or maybe when she was fighting with the last mare, so she was only able to properly set two places on the blanket.
Though the rush of battle had faded, she could still feel something else on its edges. Something she hadn’t felt in quite a while, and the feeling was only growing stronger as she gingerly arranged food and containers across the spread blanket. It was a feeling she could focus on, instead of the aching she was feeling with every delicate move.
Finally, she was done. She sat down on the quilt, wincing as blood dribbled from her midsection to the fabric beneath her. She took a sandwich from the center of the spread and stared out at the distant land beneath the hill, past the forest and the highway.
A dandelion sandwich, lightly toasted. Her favorite.
The cool wind felt nice on her face and blew through her greying mane, though she imagined it might have felt a little better if she wasn’t feeling so cold already. So tired.
She could see the back of a billboard next to the road, and her farmstead just beyond her empty fields. If her vision hadn't started to get all fuzzy, she might have even been able to see the plot of graves just past. Maybe even the last bundles of red roses she’d left.
The sun was just about to set on the hills making up the other side of the valley. She’d meant to get here much earlier, but hadn’t accounted for a gunshot wound to the belly.
Oh well. It was a wonderful view, either way.
Sweet set her barely-nibbled sandwich on the blanket where her plate would have been if it hadn’t broken, and gently eased herself back. Blood started to soak fully into the cloth beneath her, but she no longer cared.
As her vision began darkening around at the edges, her limbs feeling heavier at her sides, Sweet Sunshine let out one last sigh.
It hadn’t been such a bad day after all, she decided.
