After many hours of travel the wagon train came to an abrupt halt startling Nephila causing her to drop her book in surprise, she then poked her head out of the wagon and looked around a bit and spotted a guard walking by, she then spoke to him, “Hey why did we stop?”. The guard looked at her in surprise, having completely forgotten that she was even in the convoy due to how silent she had been and said, “Sorry Ma’am, we are currently stopping to rest and eat, we are about halfway there and we’ll continue when the sun rises in the morning.” she just looked at him a bit confused and said, “O-Oh… Well guess that means I can eat these fish sticks.” She then opened up the small lunchbox showing the still warm fish sticks perfectly preserved inside, apparently the lunch box was designed to preserve whatever was inside of it to the condition it was in prior to being placed inside. Examining the lunch box made her wish they had these back in the hive, would have made preserving the meats for the hive much easier. She softly shook her head in an attempt to pull herself from her thoughts before her mind could begin to wander and make her relive her hive's final moments. She promptly began eating the fish sticks slowly while humming softly.

She knew she really didn’t need to eat at the moment, but the process of eating seemed to soothe her greatly. She never really was a foodie before her hive fell, only eating when necessary, but going without food for as long as she did made her learn to savor and enjoy food. Afterall she was greatly paranoid about going without food again. Without the harvesters and the love collectors of her hive to make sure she had a dedicated supply of food she was constantly on edge about when her next meal would be so she was enjoying this luxury while she had it.

As she finished eating the fish sticks a unicorn guard opened the back flap to the wagon and floated a bowl of stew to her, the stew was something the rest of the guards had been eating, it was a simple vegetable stew with some meat substitutes added in for the Pegasi to enjoy it better, she almost greedily grabbed the bowl slightly burning her hooves in the process saying, “Thank you so much, this smells simply divine!~” She then grabbed a spoon from the lunch box with her magic and began slowly eating the stew, letting out and adorable noise of immense satisfaction as the stew had touched her tongue, the flavor was as good as the smell in her opinion, there was a perfect amount of seasoning and the meat substitutes were so soft that they practically melted on the tongue. She practically devoured it, eating the stew so quickly it startled the guard who watched in awe at her. The guard then slowly floated the bowl from her hooves and took it back with him saying. “Get some rest, we got a long trip ahead of us.” Nephila nodded and laid her head down upon the bench she had been resting upon and drifted off to sleep, reawakening the next morning when the wagon cart had begun moving causing her to fall over onto the floor of the wagon with a resounding thud, “Owww, that hurt…” She said as she rubbed her forehead in pain as she looked around the wagon seeing the morning light seep into the gap in the wagon flaps, she went over to the crate and grabbed a canteen of water and drank it slowly to quench her intense thirst. She was quite happy that for the first time since her hive fell she didn’t have a nightmare, probably due to being comfortable and feeling safe inside the heavily armed wagon train.

She looked over at the crate again and went back to reading her medical books, taking notes on the things she needed to, she focused the most of her knowledge on the study of foals, she realized just how many similarities nymphs and pony foals had, the only real differences she noticed is that the changeling nymphs were told their roles from the moment they hatched compared to pony foals finding their way in life as they grew up. They both acted similarly she thought, they were kids after all. As a matter of fact after she took over the nursery as the lead caretaker she made sure that changeling nymphs and larvae got to play as much as they wanted in between their lessons. She remembered fondly how due to those changes the little ones when all grown up told her just how much they viewed her as a mother figure. She also remembered how she encouraged individuality amongst them which resulted in the little ones ending up with unique personalities that really ended up helping the hive a lot in the long run, the one larvae that ended up making her the proudest was the queen's advisor Arachni who she personally raised to fit her role, she truly hoped Arachni made it out of the hive alive, she really hoped she wasn’t the only one left, things will get so lonely if that is the case.

She was eventually pulled from her thoughts when the wagon pulled to a stop again, she was curious and looked outside to see it was nighttime again, she apparently had zoned out and was thinking the entire time they were going. The same guard from the night before opened the flap and gave her a ration kit this time around, it was a dinner pack this time around, it had some fancy blue coloring with the word “Dinner Ration Type K” on it.

She opened up the cardboard box with curiosity and poured the contents out and found canned meals, one was a can of mystery meat for Pegasi, then there was a can filled with crackers and two candy chocolate disks, and a coco powdered beverage mix. Then the final can had some kind of applesauce inside of it, she never heard of applesauce before and was curious about it, she moved her attention to the other objects inside the ration kit and opened it up finding one smaller box with all sorts of stuff like gum, a box of cigarettes, matches, sugar, coffee powder, and some disposable silverware for the meal, she immediately got to work opening the meal, using the can opener provided to open the mystery meat first and got to work eating it, savoring the meat that came with the meal. It honestly wasn’t that great as it was made to last in preservation after all, but she still enjoyed the meal since it was technically the first thing she ate all day.

She spent the next few hours eating the various parts of the ration and making the hot cocoa and coffee mixing it together to make a mocha, something she heard the infiltrators she raised talk about, one in particular raved about a white chocolate mocha they had during their time in Manehattan and wouldn’t stop talking about how good it was. She tried this makeshift beverage and learned how terrible the ration coffee was, the chocolate powder barely made it bearable, it was so strong and bitter that it almost made her want to spit it out.

She bared with it and drank the beverage so she could try and enjoy the dessert that came with her meal, eating the chocolate disks and the crackers, she loved the chocolate disks big time and when a passing guard smell it tried to get her to trade his entire meal for the disks which made her giggle like a little filly to think about. She did give him one of them so she could have another pack of cocoa powder to make the coffee less bitter.

After she was done with her meal she laid down on the floor of the wagon instead of the seat and quickly drifted off to sleep, due to having a nice meal in her stomach and the safety of the guards all around her she felt comfortable enough to begin to sleep peacefully.

Author's Note

Chapter 6 is released! I took a small break from the story while I waited for the cover art to be finished, now I can finally get back to work on the story, a fun fact is I'm getting chapter art made, 2 to 3 drawings per a chapter if things will go as planned.