Dark Fragments

Strummer Nightingale woke up slowly. He felt as if he hadn't moved in weeks. His blue wings ached, and his blue and black mane was covered in sand. He sat up, and viewed his surroundings groggily. He was on a beach, but he couldn't remember how he got there. In fact, he couldn't remember anything, not even his own name.

'where am I?' He thought. He looked to the left of him, and saw two other ponies laying in the sand. He wondered if they had the same problem that he had. He stood up and slowly walked over to them. But his hooves ached so badly that he had to use his wings to fly over to them.

The ponies looked like they were in bad shape. One of them had the same body color as Strummer, but had a dark blue mane. He also had only one wing. 'must've been some sort of accident' thought Strummer. The other one had a gray body, and a white and light-blue mane.

Strummer sat down and shook the blue pony, trying to wake him up.

"Hello? Wake up!" Strummer said, "Wake up!"

The blue pony groaned and lifted his head up and rubbed it with his hoof. "ughh, where am I? Who are you?" he asked, looking at Strummer while brushing the sand out of his blue mane.

"I don't know." Strummer replied, and went to wake up the other pony laying in the sand.

"About where we are, or who you are?"

"both"

When Strummer shook the gray pony, he woke up with a start, and bucked Strummer to the ground.

"where am I?" exclaimed the pony, obviously startled at being woken up in some strange place.

Strummer rubbed his stomach, which now had two hoof prints on its left side. "it's okay, we're not here to hurt you. Ouch." he said.

The pony instantly got defensive. "Pfft, you think I would be scared of you? You look like you just crawled out of a dumpster!"

"I wouldn't be talking if i were you! You look the same way, if not worse!" said the blue pony.

That shut the gray pony up. "Gah, whatever, i don't need you guys anyway!" and with that statement, he galloped away into the jungle, with Strummer and the blue pony watching in confusion.

"What's his problem," asked the blue pony, "we didn't do anything to him."

"Doesn't matter, we need to find a shelter, and then figure out where we are." said Strummer, wishing he could remember something. Anything. Then he remembered that the blue pony hadn't yet told Strummer his name, and hoped that it would help him remember something.

"What was your name again?" Strummer asked, "I didn't quite catch it."

"Well, that's because i never said my name in the first place," he said, "my name is Torrent. Torrent the Plotknight."

Strummer got a massive headache when he heard the name. He knew he had heard that somewhere before. 'I know I'm missing something important, but i just can't place it!' he thought in frustration, 'at least I'm getting somewhere'.

Torrent saw that Strummer was in pain. "Hey, are you alright?" he asked, "maybe you should lie down?"

"No, i feel I've done that too much already," said Strummer, "I know you from somewhere."

"But how do you know me, if you don't even know your own name? I mean, I can't remember anything either, but at least I know my own name." said Torrent, "Come on, we're running out of daylight, and who knows what kind of predators are on this island?"

Strummer thought for a moment. "yeah, you're right, we should go find some firewood."

'I'll get this sorted out later' Strummer thought, 'we need to hurry before it's nighttime'.

Strummer and Torrent trotted in the jungle, in search of dead trees that they could use for firewood. Torrent brought up that they had no way to start a fire, but they decided to look anyways. They had nothing else to do, so why do nothing? They spent about 2 hours looking for something they could use to help them.

When they were about a mile into the jungle, they found a clearing with plenty of dead trees they could knock down. They could use them for some kind of makeshift shelter that they would have to come up with.

When both of them were carrying large bundles of tree branches, they decided to go back to the beach and start building their shelter. They were just about back to the beach when Torrent was suddenly knocked onto the ground, spilling his bundle of branches all over the place.

"What the?" Torrent said in surprise.

"Oh, sorry, i didn't see ya there," said a voice, "this is not one of my luckiest days!"

Strummer looked at the pony who had bumped into Torrent. He had a golden body, a golden mane, and lime green eyes, and he seemed pretty cheerful, other than the fact that he knocked Torrent down.

"let me help you pick these up," the pony said, "It's the least i could do!"

"No, the least you could do was nothing," Torrent replied, "but thank you."

The pony paused for a moment, then said, "my name is Lance, what's yours?"

Strummer got another massive headache, and it looked like Torrent was feeling the same thing.

"Uhh, my name is Torrent, nice to meet you." he said, rubbing his forehead.

Lance flinched when he heard Torrent's name, but regained his cheerful posture quickly, "what's your name?" he asked Strummer as he helped Torrent pick up the branches.

"um, I don't know, I'm still trying to figure everything out." Strummer replied.

"well you could try looking-" Lance was cut short when the ground started to shake. The rumbling of the earth intensified, knocking all three of them down, once again spilling the branches onto the ground. "Awww, come on," Torrent said in despair, "we just picked those up!"

The shaking lasted for about ten minutes, and stopped as suddenly as it began, and everything went quiet.

"It sounded like it came from the clearing," Strummer said, "let's check back there."

They galloped as quickly as they could to get to the clearing, and were there before they thought they knew it.

"what the hell?" Strummer exclaimed.

The clearing that used to be in that exact spot was replaced by another white, sandy beach.

"Did we take a wrong turn?" asked Torrent, perplexed at the sight. Lance too was in disbelief, "I was here three hours ago getting my own wood, what happened?" he asked.

"i don't know." replied Strummer, as always. He was getting angry that he still wasn't able to remember his name, when the other two ponies could.

'Wait a minute.' he thought, and looked down at his cutie mark. It was a guitar. 'Wait a minute, how could i have forgotten my own name?' it was so simple, and the answer was right there on his flank. His name is Strummer Nightingale, and looking at his cutie mark reminded him of it.

Just as he came to that conclusion, his head exploded in pain, as he felt the worst headache he had ever felt his whole life. He fell to the ground in pain, waiting for the feeling to go away.

"Whoa, guy, are you okay?" asked Torrent.

"Does it look like he's okay?" snapped Lance.

Before Torrent could think of a comeback, the ground shook violently again. But this time, the ground beneath them crumbled, giving way to what looked like a bottomless chasm, and they all fell into darkness.