Salad and Vignette

The warm nothingness bled from my body, replaced with bitter cold and cutting wind. Getting knocked out isn’t that bad, it’s coming to that bites. It’s not like waking up from sleep. No, when you come to, your senses don’t come back all at once.

Wind howled in one ear, an odd squeaking sound filled the other. Groaning as the pain set in, I tried and failed to lift myself off the snow. The squeaking got louder, then stopped. I tried to open my eyes, but one was swollen shut, and the other refused to focus. Something yellow moved in front of me as my good eye remembered how to focus. A little yellow pegasus had found me.

It ran from my sight just as I focused on it; squeaking as it fled. Had that been what I was hearing all this time? Maybe I had crashed on something that belonged to it. I tried to move again, but only managed to get my arm out from under me. My muscles refused any weight. I was worse off than I thought. All the effort rewarded me with blackness creeping in on my vision. I was going to black out again if I wasn’t careful.

The squeak sounded in my ear again: this time I paid it more attention. “Are you okay?” the little voice asked.

“No,” I grumbled.

The little yellow pony came back into my line of sight. Shaking, she jumped away from me at my every move. “There’s a cave...” she said, pointing to the hillside.

I rolled my eye to follow her hoof. I couldn’t see a cave, but the topography told me where it would be.