It’s the cold that wakes you up first. It seeps in through the flaps of your tent and tickles your toes and the tip of your nose.
Beneath your blanket, you’re still cozy and warm, and you hardly want to move at all. You groan and adjust and squirm beneath your fuzzy shield, groggily opening your eyes only once you realize that you are not going to go back to dreamland. The inside of your tent is as you left it last evening: embers glow behind the grate of your stove, and the stones piled beneath it release their last vestiges of stored warmth. Your folding cot suspends you a few inches off the cold ground, and your thick woolen blanket keeps you warm beneath its shaggy, slightly itchy mass.
You sit up and yawn, smacking your lips and rubbing the sleep from your eyes.
“Yup, it’s light outside,” you say to no one in particular
You sit there for a minute, thinking about nothing in particular. That comes to a stop the moment a particularly icy breeze slices in through the front of your tent and chills you to the bone. Swearing, you hastily don a jacket and find your hat. From there, you naturally progress to putting pants on, and then socks, and then your boots. Before you know it, you’re grabbing your skillet from its resting place atop the stove and stepping out of your tent
What awaits you outside is a wonderland of frost. The sun has yet to peak over the treetops ringing your campsite, and the entire place is cast in that almost-light that precedes true dawn. Everything is coated in a fine layer of frost. Your squat, drab, conical tent resembles a fine summit constructed of crystal, the metal chimney poking out of it like a great metal tower on the slopes of some otherworldly mountain. The firepit in the middle of the camp is similarly coated, ashes, stones, and all; the logs beside it too are bedecked in a layer of ice.
On the other side of all this wonder sits the wagon, all bright purple clapboard and faux-golden framing, its barrel-shaped roof also coated in crystalline dew. The shutters are drawn, the door closed, but even then you can hear exceedingly loud snoring emanating from within. You chuckle lightly, and make to grab wood, tinder, and some matches from within in your tent. Soon, you have a respectable fire burning in the pit. You walk over to wagon, open a box on the front of it, and pull out four eggs, some butter, a wooden spoon, eight strips of hay bacon, and a metal stand (fucking hay bacon. You still had no idea how something made of dried grass tastes just like the real stuff). Setting the stand over the fire, and your pan atop it, you begin whipping up breakfast. Melt the butter, fry the hay bacon, fry the eggs, realize that you forgot the toast, run to grab some stale bread, make some toast using a stick, et cetera, et cetera. Pretty soon, you have a breakfast fit for champions.
Well, it seems that chainsaw in the wagon has ceased operation. That means she’s probably awake by now. If not, well, you know the trick to carrying a pony and you’re not afraid to use it. Putting the pan to the side of the fire (to keep brekkie warm), you walk up to the door of the wagon and rap your knuckles upon it once, twice, thrice.
”What is it? Trixie is trying to get her beauty sleep here!”
You slowly open the door.
“Breakfast is ready, Trixie.”
”You mean Master Trixie, lowly apprentice!”
“Oh, of course, ‘master Trixie’. Either way, you had better come get some soon if you don’t want your eats to get cold.”
She grumbled in response to that, but you could hear movement now. Assuming that she would be out soon enough, you went back to your tent to dig out your mess kit. Sure was a good thing you ended up in Equestria while camping, or else you might have had to pay for all of this crap. And that would be awful. Now, where could you have hidden that damnable spork? Then, all of a sudden, the morning stillness is shattered by the screech of a wild animal.
”ANON! WHERE IS TRIXIE’S COFFEE!?” shouts the beast. ”YOU KNOW THAT I CAN’T WAKE UP WITHOUT MY COFFEE! WHERE IS IT?”
You try your best to ignore the shouts of your fellow camper. Ah, there’s that metal bugger. Now to grab that tray, canteen…
”ANON, ARE YOU IGNORING ME?”
The telltale sound of hooves clip clopping behind you alerts you to the fact that Trixie will be bothering you from up close very soon. Collecting your implements of breakfast-y destruction, you back up out of your tent, then stand up and turn around. A small, blue, very irate unicorn is currently trying to burn holes in your forehead with her glare, all the while telekinetically waving an empty mug in your direction.
“You seem plenty awake to me,” you state.
That comment earns you a scrunch of (adorable!) anger from her face, and a log floating up to join that mug in floating dangerously close to your head.
“Remember, Trixie? We-“
”Master,” she interjects.
“*ahem* Master Trixie. We got chased out of the last town before we could restock on coffee, if you may recall”
”Ponyfeathers! Well, those philistines likely didn’t have coffee worth Trixie’s Great and Powerful time anyways.”
“Indeed.”
With that, you both head to the fire, dust the frost off of your seat-logs, divide up the food, and dig in. You’re a decent chef, or so you like to imagine, but you are certainly leagues better at cooking that Trixie is. Seriously, you saw that mare burn a salad once. At least she seems to appreciate your cooking, seeing as how she’s devouring her breakfast with gusto.
After you finish your meal, you make to grab the kettle from the storage box on the wagon. You start walking to a nearby stream. The sun is just starting to break over the treetops, and the glen that your camp is situated in is beginning to come alive. Even in winter, it seems, the songbirds and squirrels and other innumerable strains of wildlife. Stooping down, you fill the kettle with absurdly clear and fresh water. While it still feels strange to just be able to take water out of a random stream like this and have it be completely drinkable, you’ve learned to not question things like that in Equestria. Water acquired, you then stroll back to the camp and hook the kettle onto the stand, leaving it suspended above glowing embers.
Trixie looks at you quizzically. ”What are you doing, Anon?”
“Getting some water boiling so I can have some tea, duh,” you reply.
Trixie raises a piece of toast to her mouth as she snickers: ”Anon, you do realize…”
“Realize what?”
”That we’re out of tea leaves, as well?”
You look down at mare chewing on her toast, then at the pot sitting on the coals, then back to the mare, and then back to the pot.
“SON OF A-“
Author's Note
A piece of fluff, with no story or meaning behind it, and without even prose rich enough to distract from its mediocre narrative. I thoroughly apologize for its lacking quality.
Please critique, as is appropriate.
