And with that, they were both kicked off and landed with an unpleasant jerk onto the ground below. Both of them were a little winded but they could see that each other was fine.
Edgy leapt up and started saying something angrily that Starry pretended not to hear. She was going to just give up on trying that route but Edgy was already equipping himself for another climb. Starry shook her head and went to nurse some of her scratches.
He was already going up the cliff side twice as fast as they had done previously.
“But Edgy!” Starry whined from her spot at the bottom of the cliff.
“Do we really have to? I mean I really can’t do this right now.”
Edgy didn’t give a glance back. He continued the determined look on his face and kept climbing up. All the ropes and other equipment seemingly cluttered but perfectly situated to keep him steady.
Starry just rolled her eyes. It was pointless. He couldn’t hear her, and if he could, he would pretend that he didn’t.
She looked around at the bushes nearby. She had noticed some sort of berries on them but she couldn’t identify what they were.
They were a brilliant brownish red color with a lacy design in brown all around it. They grew like cherries, either one by itself or in pairs. The bush itself looked ordinary.
She looked back at Edgy. He was still on his mission to get to the top of the cliff.
There was an oppressive stillness in the forest around them. There wasn’t the sound of a bird or a squirrel. There were no insects either, but Starry hadn’t really noticed that. If she could find some animal that would eat the berries she would feel a little safer about eating them herself.
Still, she hadn’t eaten since they left the old mare’s house and Edgy was already nearing the top with his own supply sacks.
Starry started impatiently tapping her hoof on the ground before she finally gave in to her hunger and popped one in her mouth.
It tasted bitter and cold.
She spat it out but it left a numb feeling where it had been on her tongue.
Edgy had just made it to the top of the cliff when he looked down to where he had left Starry. It looked like she had fallen asleep down there. With a shake of his head, he continued toward the cave. If either of them should be sleeping, it’d be him, since he hadn’t slept at all the night before.
*** *** *** *** *** ***
Starry didn’t know how long she had been asleep, but the next thing she knew, there were unwelcome bright lights and shouts. Vigorously turning her head away she found herself crashing onto the ground.
It took a few seconds before she was able to get up and see what was going on around her.
It seemed like too many smiling faces and too many staring eyes.
She was surrounded by mainly red, green, and yellow colored ponies. Five of them were holding a stretcher that she had apparently been laying on. They began to set it down as soon as she proved that she could stand and even walk on her own.
Edgy was nowhere in sight.
“Where am I?” Starry asked them.
One of the mares giggled.
“Huh?” Starry said, but the other ponies went off into giggle fits, too, and not a single one would answer any of her questions.
They let her roam freely though, so she started wandering around trying to figure out where this place was situated from where she and Edgy had been. The cliff that she and Edgy had been on was nowhere in sight. It seemed like houses and houses surrounded by trees and then open plains as far as her eyes could see.
She asked a few where Edgy could be but she didn’t get a response to that either.
The town itself was a mess. There were no evenly spaced streets and the houses were similar to Ponyville but not quite. They sprawled around and lumped together. They had thatched roofs and had vines growing all over them. Some were one story and some were two, but they were mainly one story huts. She could see picnic tables set out in one of the main squares. Covering a few of them were dozens of pies, all ready to cool.
After about an hour of asking around and trying to get any clues about where she was at, she was going to snap and just race off in one direction. Any direction. Just away.
She grabbed a few pies that were sitting out on one of the main picnic tables and stuffed it into a nearby sack and actually started heading off in one of the directions.
She didn’t have to look behind her but she knew she was being watched by dozens of overly smiling faces. She braced herself and continued going, but it wasn’t long before she noticed that a few of the landmarks that she had picked out in the distance weren’t getting any closer or further away. She knew she was moving forward, but it seemed like she was staying still.
Turning around, the town seemed just a few feet away but she had been walking for at least an hour.
She had heard of things like this, though it was more like the feeling you get walking through a desert than something real. It was like a dream that wouldn’t let you run away.