When Dash woke, she found herself alone.
Relax Dash, this isn’t the first time that's happened since crashing out here. Rainbow reminded herself. Strider’s probably off taking care of… stuff.
As she settled down to wait for Striders return, Dash noticed that the bandages on her foreleg had disappeared.
“That's odd.” Dash muttered. “Did Strider take them off?”
Looking over her shoulder, she found the the bindings on her wing and hind leg were also gone. “Ok, that's just weird.”
Carefully testing her wings, Dash found that there wasn’t any pain. A smile quickly spread across Dash’s face as she flapped her wings harder, this time actually getting airborne. “This is great!” Dash exclaimed. “Now that I can fly, it's going to be so easy to get back home!”
Just before she shot up above the canopy, Dash was struck by a terrible realization. “What am I doing?” she scolded herself. “I can’t just take off and leave Strider wondering what happened. I know I’ll wait for him to get back, then I can fly up above the trees and guide us back to Ponyville.It’s a brilliant plan!”
Making herself comfortable, Dash waited for her friend to return from his “business”.
After several long and boring minutes, Dash was thoroughly bored. “Ugh! Where are you? Seriously, how long does it take?” she complained loudly.
As time wore on, Dash slowly went from inpatient to worried. “Maybe something happened? Maybe he’s stuck or hurt or something. I should probably go look for him.”
Slowly gliding through the trees, Dash searched for any sign of where Strider could have gone.
“Where the hay is he!” Dash exclaimed after an hour of fruitless searching. “I don’t get it! He should be here! He couldn’t have just disappeared.”
She kicked a nearby tree in frustration only to instantly be caught in several vines. “Oh, come on!” Dash shouted and reached for her stone knife only to find that it wasn’t there.
“Just great, now I’ve lost my knife.” Dash groaned. As she searched for where her knife could have fallen, she noticed that the sheath was missing as well.
“When did I take that off?” Dash asked herself. “I don’t remember taking it off.”
Without the knife, Dash was reduced to struggling against the vines until they broke free. As the last one gave way, Rainbow let out a small victory cheer, before resuming her search for Strider.
As the sun began to drop below the horizon, Dash finally found Strider. He was standing at the edge of a cliff, staring out into space. Rainbow called out to him, but Strider either didn’t hear her, or ignored her. Calling out to him louder this time, Strider again didn’t respond to her. Just as Dash was about to yell his name for the third time, she noticed that the ground around Strider was starting to crack and come loose.
Fearing that her friend was about to fall to his death, Dash pumped her wings hard only to be met with a loud crack and a face full of dirt. Ignoring the pain, Dash let her suddenly broken wing dangle at her side and ran forwards, only to see Strider disappear as the ground gave way beneath him.
“NO!” Dash screamed as she bolted upright from her makeshift bed. Before she could take stalk of what happened, Dash felt something grab her shoulder. Turing to see what it was, Dash found Strider looking at with concern. Rainbow instantly wrapped her forelegs around him. “You’re alive. It was just a dream, just a dream.” Dash repeated over and over as Strider gently wrapped his own arms around the pegasus.