Five ponies and one dragon huddled in a small, dark cave of ice. Despite the frozen nature of their surroundings, the ice insulated well; cramming the six into a confined space made their shelter stuffy and uncomfortably warm for most. Nonetheless, Rarity kept a foreleg wrapped tightly around a burning-warm Spike, calming the young dragon’s trembling and quick breaths.
Rainbow shifted constantly, tail and ears twitching, extending a wing or leg only to hiss when it hit a barrier or retract it at the grunt from another pony. They were trapped, she was trapped, and it was not cool. Not cool at all. She relaxed slightly when the light touch of Fluttershy’s wing swept some of the trapped humidity to around Fluttershy instead; the press of latent cloudstuff about her body eased, no longer exacerbating her claustrophobia.
“Sooo … “ Pinkie’s bubbly voice cut through the shocked silence, an edge of anxiety lending her words a manic tint. “How long d’ya figure we can stay in here? If we were one pony I’d think maybe four hours, but since there are six of us that’s probably more like four ten minutes or even less than an hour to figure out what to do before we all suffocate because I’m pretty sure based on what my left hind hoof’s doing that Twilight’s in trouble and -”
“Pinkie, shut up,” Applejack’s tired voice cuts through the other pony’s nervous chatter. “Y’ain’t helping.”
One look around shows the truth of these words: Fluttershy cowering under her bit of cloud, Rainbow trying to crawl up the walls to find the space to extend her wings, Rarity with her foreleg over her eyes and Spike having slipped free to dig desperately at the rocks. Pinkie’s mane deflated, her friends were unhappy and it was completely her fault (aside from the avalanche that had buried them in the first place, but that was just a detail ...)
Her eyes widened as she finished processing part of the scene. “Wait - Spike, stop!”
“Not while Twilight’s in trouble!” the small dragon replied defiantly, biting through a tough part of the rock before brushing the mouthful to the side. “C’mon, I saw what your hooves can do, help me out here!”
Pinkamena’s gaze traveled up along the barrier between them and outside, lifting another hoof from the ground as it shivered in nervous anticipation, sympathetic to the shifting stone. “You’re going to destabilize -”