The Diary

The Diary

By LixiD

Chapter two - One step forward and two steps back

You wake up when the first sunrays cross over your eyes. It is a beautiful morning. It surprisingly wasn’t that cold at night and the seat was pretty comfortable to sleep on. You look to your left and see Scootaloo still sleeping next to you. She looks like she’s about to fall off, because her front hooves are hanging on the edge of the seat. You check, if your bags are still where they were before you went to sleep. Yup. They are still there. You let out a big yawn. ‘Gosh that feels good!’ You decide to take a quick walk around the bus stop area just to wake you up a little. You jump off the seat and walk out of the shelter. To your right you can see the huge buildings of the city in the distance. After a couple minutes walking you get back inside the bus stop to wake up the little filly inside it.

You go sit next to her and nudge her gently. Her eyes start slowly opening.

“Do I have to get up already?” She asks in frustration.

“Well, you said yourself that you want to wake up earlier to see the city.”

When she hears the word city coming out of your mouth, her eyes lighten up and she stands up. She immediately grabs her bag and puts it on.

“Let’s get moving already!” She says in pure excitement. You laugh a little for Scootaloo's reaction, but then you pick up your bag.

“As you wish.” You start following the road to the direction towards the city. Seeing Scootaloo’s excitement makes you smile. ‘She’ll probably be disappointed, but I’m not going to ruin her excitement.’

“Can we spent the whole day in the city?” She asks you happily. You know you would like to keep her happy and stay there for a while, but you know that that isn’t possible.

“I’m sorry Scoots. We can’t spend anymore time in there than we have to. And besides, you’ll see most of it, when we walk through it.”

“But I would have wanted to see the whole city.” She says and her smile fades for a second. “Well, at least I’ll see it!” She says and is again filled with excitement.

It is almost hard to keep up with Scootaloo, because she just keeps increasing her walking speed. But you’re not trying to slow her down, because it is only a good thing, if you can move faster.

***

You arrive at the edge of the city pretty quickly. Scootaloo is just looking all the buildings amazed. You tease her a little by slowing your movement speed to almost nothing. Scootaloo stays by your side, but looks like she is going to explode soon. After a few seconds, she can’t hold the excitement anymore.

“Can we walk a little faster?” She looks like she is sweating, but you don’t know if it’s the sun or her mood. You just simply nod and increase your speed.

After you have walked deeper into the city, you let her go investigate a little bit. You won’t let her go far away, but at least she gets to see something. It is amazing how you can’t see any... you know... bodies. ‘I heard that the cure is deathly, but where is everyone then?’ Suddenly you hear Scootaloo shouting for you. You go to her and see that she is pointing at something. A food store!

“Good spot Scoots.” You give her pat on the head and this time she accepts it. You both start walking towards the food store and when you have reached it, you tell once again Scootaloo to wait for you outside.

“I’ll be back in a sec. This time, don’t scare me, okay?”

“Fine.” She sits on the road and starts rolling a rock with her hooves.

You open the store door and start slowly moving inside the store. After a little investigation, you can say that the shop side is empty, so you decide to check the storage room. You open the storage room door and a terrible smell floats out of the door. You start coughing, because of the terrible smell, but you force yourself to push further into the storage room. You move to the closest storage box and open it. It is full of rotten apples. You almost vomit, because the smell seems to be getting worse and worse whole time. Then you spot a refrigerator in the corner of the room and walk in front of it. You let out a sigh as you grab the handle. Then you slowly open the door. ‘Well, I guess we are going to have good dinner today.’ A big smile grows on your face when you see that the fridge is full of canned fruits and vegetables and some water bottles. But then you spot something in there that you know is going to make Scootaloo happy. An untouched chocolate bar.

You garb what you can into a plastic bag that you found. Then you make yourself back outside the store and you see that Scootaloo is still sitting there and is rolling the same rock with her hooves and hasn’t noticed you yet.

“Hey Scoots!”

The little filly snaps back to reality.

“Look what I got!” You wave the plastic bag full of goodies in front of her. Then, you see a big smile grow on her face, when she stands up and takes the bag from you. She takes a quick look inside the bag to make sure that it really is full of food.

“We are going to live with these for weeks!” She states happily and comes to hug you. You respond to her hug.

“Yes Scoots. Yes we are.” You almost feel a tear coming from your eye. You can’t express how happy you are, so you just stay there and hold her close to you. “Yes we are.”

***

After a little too long break you continue your walk through the city. You gave Scootaloo the chocolate bar and she is happily munching it as you walk. You stop for a second to drink a little bit of water and Scootaloo keeps walking. You don’t stop her, because you know that you’ll catch her quickly. You open the bottle and start pouring the liquid in your mouth, but then suddenly you hear a scream. It’s Scootaloo.

“Scootaloo!” You yell as you run as fast as you can to the direction of her voice. You turn around the corner and see Scootaloo standing still. You immediately hug her.

“What is wrong?” You ask and Scootaloo simply nods in the direction she is looking at. You turn your head to look there and when you see what she was screaming at, everything goes silent. No birds singing. No whistling of the wind. Just silence. ‘It seems that now I know where all of the bodies are.’ You stare at the scene for a solid second, but then you realize that Scootaloo is still watching it. You turn her quickly around and hug her tightly. She is trying to hold her tears, but you tell her that it’s okay to cry. Then she let’s it out. She cries against your shoulder. You feel like crying too, but she needs your strength now and that is what you are planning to give her.

After a couple minutes, she stops crying, but is still holding you. You grab her shoulders and look her in the eyes. She is looking straight into your eyes. You smile at her warmly and she smiles back.

“Let’s get out of here.”

She nods as a response. You stand up and start walking back to the direction you should be heading. Scootaloo walks close by your side.

***

The night seems to be getting closer thanks for the “little” break you had, you are still in the city. You have almost made it out of the city, but then you notice a familiar looking shop on the other side of the street. It doesn’t look special in anyway, but it still looks somehow familiar.

“Um... Scoots? Could you wait here a second?”

Scootaloo looks at you confused. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to check this shop. Wait here.”

“No! I want to come with you.”

You look at Scootaloo who seems shocked about the idea that she would have to be without you. You take a second to think.

“Okay. Come on.”

Scootaloos eyes brighten up and she walks next to you. You start walking towards the shop slowly.

You open the door and walk straight in. You take a quick look around the shop. ‘Why does this look so familiar?’ You spot another door behind the registering machine. You look behind you and see Scootaloo searching the shop for anything.

“You search the shop side and I’ll take a look back here.”

“Okay.”

You open the door and when you walk inside, you close the door behind you. You take one more step deeper into the room. Suddenly you start hearing screams inside your head. ‘What is this place?!’ You look around the room and spot a photo on one of the desks. You walk to it and grab it. When you start looking it more closely, visions start flying past your eyes. Like they would be memories. You are peeking through a hole in a door. You see two shadows in the wall and you can hear two voices in your head. A female voice and a male voice. The female voice is screaming loudly and the male voice is laughing evilly. Then suddenly you realize that this vision IS a memory. You take even closer look at the photo and you recognize two figures and immediately realize who they are. Your can’t stand anymore. Your legs give up and you fall on the floor and drop the photo.

There you are now. On the floor, staring at the photo and crying. Crying harder than you have in a long time, because you now remembered the things that you had managed to forget. Memories of your past. You hear the door open behind you, but you don’t react to it, because you know who it is. She is saying something, but you don’t know what. She runs to you and looks at you. Then, she takes a look at the photo and knows what is going on. She wraps her hooves around your neck and holds you. Suddenly you get a strange feeling. It’s not a bad feeling. It just is something you’ve never felt before. You look at the filly who is doing her best to cheer you up and make you feel better. Then you realize what the feeling is. It’s care. You have never felt like this before. You hug her back and you smile. ‘She isn’t anymore just my mission. She is my sister.’

***

The night has come and you’ve decided to sleep in the back of the shop. Even though you wouldn’t like to do it. It just feels like you should. Scootaloo is already in sleep. You are still awake.

We didn’t get out of the city yet. We’re sleeping in a shop. We had some good luck and bad luck today, but we are still doing good. Scoots is already sleeping and I’m going to sleep soon. I hope tomorrow we’ll have a better day when we get out of this city. I guess that she has had enough of it too. I was thinking that maybe we could go to the old ruins and stay there resting for two or three days, because we are getting really tired and we need to rest for a couple days. Now to sleep.