Mimic nodded nervously and Summer Breeze stepped back, satisfied. She then silently uncocked her brace pistol and began to untie the ropes with her teeth.
"No, I got it. Here." A flash of his horn, and a few seconds later the rope was neatly coiling itself on the ground. Mimic stretched happily and patted his bandaged head gingerly. "Thanks Summer. I guess I owe ya."
She nodded tersely. "You do." She then trotted outside, followed by the changeling, and began loading the cart back up. "The mutants'll probably be back here any minute, so we'd best get going and head on back to the camp.
"Hold on just a sec." Mimic quickly shimmied out of his brown vest and experimentally buzzed his now-freed wings. "Ah, it's been a while since I used these." he sighed, and before Summer could understand what was happening, a flash of green fire enveloped him. When it disappeared, the black chitin-covered pony look-alike was replaced with a sandy brown pegasus stallion with a darker mud-brown mane and a cutie mark depicting a lone palm tree with a pool of water poking out from behind it. He made a beeline for the first aid kit kept in the cart and began to apply a healing spellkit to his forehead.
"What the-" Summer blinked rapidly in... confusion? surprise? She was not sure what she felt at the moment.
Fortunately, Mimic seemed to pick up on that. "Lighter colors don't absorb as much heat. I was roasting as Dusty, and I know from experience that staying undisguised isn't better at all. It's like being a foil-wrapped potato over a fire, although it is nice not having your sweat mat up your fur." He chuckled. "Plus, the brown helps with camouflage with all the rocks and dust." Making sure the pre-enchanted rune was wedged firmly under his bandage, Mimic began hooking himself up to the cart. “Okay, ready!”
Summer hesitantly hitched herself next to him and the two trotted off, the changeling limping slightly from his injured hoof, but otherwise much better than he had been a few minutes earlier. Summer felt odd moving alongside the disguised changeling. When she would occasionally bump into his side, he felt like actual flesh and blood, when just a few moments ago he had been smooth and hard. It was disconcerting to say the least. She tried to force her mind away from how uncomfortable she felt and instead she blurted out what was foremost on her mind.
"So, you can be a pegasus too?"
"Mhm. Pegasus, earth pony, or if things got fishy, I could morph into a unicorn. Or mutant. Or Turned. Actually, pretty much anything, really."
"And you could have always been a pegasus?"
"Well, yeah."
"So we could have had a cloud fort with Buttercream! Back when it was just us three!
He nodded slowly. “I guess you’re right, but I wasn’t about to break character anytime soon back when he mentioned it.”
“But if you had changed, he might still be alive right now!”
“Hey, don’t try to pin his death on me, Dusty couldn’t fly! I was Dusty! End of story. If it makes you feel any better, you could always make your cloud fort right now.” He opened his right wing to punctuate the statement.
Summer sighed. “Let’s just get our stuff and get to the ruins. We can plan that later.”
"About that," Mimic remarked, "Are you sure you wanna go all the way back there? It's a good couple'a days away if we take the direct route through the dead zone. I thought we were gonna head south and try to meet up with that caravan?"
"That can wait. We're going to Sparklestone first."
There was a brief silence as they worked their way up a rocky outcropping, hoofsteps sounding in sync. When their path evened out again Summer glanced at Mimic.
“So, if you eat emotions, why do you eat actual food too? ‘Cause I don’t recall seeing Dusty, er, you skipping meals.”
“Yeah, I can eat, but only so nopony gets suspicious. I don’t need to, so I guess that means there’re more provisions for you now- it’ll help stretch them farther if they’re being consumed at half the rate they were. Another bonus of working with me.” He chuckled, then flicked his ears nervously. “Not that I wasted the food, I mean, I did try to eat as little as possible, hard to find or grow the stuff out here. I mean, I don’t even like pony food- it gets all over your mouth and sits there in your stomach like a lump of, of something, I mean…”
Summer watched him awkwardly attempt to blunder his way out of trouble with an inscrutable expression, absently wondering how somepony this dense had fooled her for a matter of months, then suddenly interrupted his ramblings. “You don’t act like Dusty.”
He blinked at her in confusion. “Huh? What does that have to do with canned beans?”
“It doesn’t. It was just an observation.”
He blinked again. “Well, ‘cuz I’m not Dusty. Personally, I mean. Like, when I’m undercover, it’s better if I force myself to think that I am that pony, so that I don’t slip up. Act like they would act, that kind of thing. But I’m not them, and I’d rather act like myself than somepony else if I’m not trying to fool anypony. Plus, I’m pretty relieved I don’t have to keep up the charade after months and months, so I’m a little giddy at the moment.” To himself, Mimic noted it was mostly nervousness- he definitely did not want to have Summer poking around Sparklestone, and on top of it, he did not know how drastically she would react to the events of the past day. Being able to sense her emotions had always helped him to predict her thoughts in the past, but at the moment they were swirling so chaotically that any reaction would be a viable one.
He took a deep breath and continued on with the topic. Best to convince her there was no reason to perceive him as a threat. “We are two different ponies, after all. I’m not gonna try to ask you to close your eyes and pretend I’m him, either, because that won’t keep anypony happy. Or possibly mentally stable. Have you noticed how many things can tip a pony over the edge? It’s disturbing how likely that is.”
Summer was not entirely sure what to think of Mimic. She was expecting him to continue acting like Dusty, to be Dusty except filled with lies and trickery, but that was not the case and she was unsure what to think now that her expectations had not been met. She studied his new face as he babbled on about the various threats of the eternal badlands. He looked like a complete stranger now- he was not even an earth pony anymore- and it chilled her when she thought that here was somepony that she just realized she did not even know, somepony who most likely knew everything Dusty knew about her. He had been observing her, traveling with her, and just in general living with her, and all from behind a mask. A skin. She shivered despite the heat.
And fighting alongside her.
Summer thought back to everything that had happened the past few months. True, she did not know Mimic, the real Mimic, but even if he had stifled his personality and claimed his actions were simply the actions Dusty would have done in his stead, the fact remained that he had saved her on numerous occasions, helped her get through situations she could not have on her own, and even just been a shoulder to lean on, especially in the tough days after her brother Buttercream’s death. After Pot Shot and Berry Blossom's deaths. He had said and done a lot of things that he did not need to in order to keep her going, give her hope in a tomorrow. True, he might consider himself bound to her as his food source, but Summer believed in actions speaking loudest for anypony, and Dusty Canyon had gone above and beyond the call of duty in keeping her alive. And he had never left her hanging.
She just hoped Mimic would do the same.
She knew it was a two way thing though, Sure, he could be counted on to protect her, but what was really needed was teamwork, not a one-sided protection. That was what had gotten the duo through thick and through thin, and now…
Could Summer trust herself to cooperate with him? Work together with him? With Not-Dusty? She steeled her eyes. She may be a cold killer, but she never abandoned a friend. Like it or not, she had already been working alongside him for a while and had rescued him from certain doom almost as often as he had repaid the favor (but really, who was counting?). When Mimic needed saving, she hoped she had what it took to step up and save him right back. She owed him at least one chance to prove himself, and she would force herself to think of him as her friend if need be.
As long as he was not lying to her anymore.
After scouting for intruders, the two pulled up into their campsite exhausted from the strenuous day. It was little more than a sheltered alcove tucked in the corner of some rocks, but it was easily defensible, and as such, the two had stayed there almost half a week. Summer immediately began moving their belongings from their stash hidden there to the cart, while Mimic repaired the damages it sustained and organized its contents. He then treated his head wound with their medicinal kits again, and after a brief meal on Summer's part she volunteered to take first watch for the night. The disguised changeling curled up in the small overhang and was quickly out cold, leaving Summer alone with her thoughts. She had had enough moping about Dusty for the day, she decided, so as she cleaned her gun she tried turning her mind towards different subjects.
She looked up at the sky, the sun visible for once from behind the dull grey clouds. She had once heard a legend long ago of an evil pony who wanted to plunge the world into eternal night. She wondered if that would be much worse than this perpetual day which had dawned the morning the princesses sacrificed themselves for ponykind, and had yet to end. It was years ago; she recalled Buttercream remarking that he could no longer remember what the night was like- all of his memories of a time before the apocalypse were jumbled up into a confusing blur. He had been still a colt when it had happened, but she had been older and could remember the face of the mare in the moon. Summer wondered where she was now. Maybe she was looking down on eternal night somewhere and was happy.
The long day had done nothing to help the land stabilize after the magic rip and subsequent reality bomb had ravaged it, mutating any creature that had caught the full blast and opening the floodgates for innumerable afflictions and maladies, the Turning being only one example. If nothing else, the day's constant heat had slowly seared the earth and prevented soil gone infertile from the blast from recuperating. The terms day and night now had a completely different connotation nowadays, referring to waking hours versus sleeping hours rather than environmental changes. A very thin blanket of ugly light grey clouds floated almost too high for a pegasus to reach and never seemed to dissipate despite the constant blistering heat. Summer suspected that they provided a greenhouse effect, keeping more heat trapped below than what would have been normally with the eternal day.
Whether that was true or not, the heat had destroyed what was left of Equestria, transforming it into deserts and badlands as far as anypony she had come across had gone. Plants especially suffered as the heat withered whatever had survived the initial magic wave, making food hard to come by and the air scarce. Long ago, she had come across a group of earth ponies who had set up a sort of biodome, channeling their magic to keep their small patch of vegetation lush. The thing that struck her most was the fact that it was situated at the border of a dead forest, it’s leafless tree trunks so dry and brittle that she could have splintered one with a good kick.
Food was scarce. So scarce, in fact, that she had heard rumors that unicorns had begun to eat meat. She had not noticed any signs of that when she and Du- Mimic had raided the unicorn camp, but she would not put it past them. If that were true, they would not last much longer- the only meat not horrendously infected in some way or another was… the surviving ponies.
She shuddered and pried her thoughts from the grisly topic- she really needed to stop spooking herself like that. She glanced at Mimic to discover he had shifted back into his natural form while she had been lost in her thoughts. She mentally kicked herself; if she had not noticed the bright flash of green fire, she might not have noticed an ambush approaching from the same direction either, and so with a sigh and a grumble, she packed away her gun cleaning kit and focused on her guard duty.
“Looked like you could’a used a helping hoof there, miss.”
“As if, we had it under control, thanks.”
“Oho, lookit that, too proud to offer a ‘thankee kindly for saving our lives, kind sirs.’ Them turned woulda ripped youse lot apart iffin we haddn’t showed up.”
“I said, we had it under control.”
“Don’t be such a grump, Summer. Thanks for the assist. I’m Buttercream, and this ray of sunshine is my sis, Summer Breeze.”
“Don’t go introducing yourself to random ponies, bro!”
“Ah, but if we was to be introducin’ ourselves, we wouldn’t be such strangers anymore, now would we? ‘Dey callz me Pot Shot, an’ all who hear mah name tremble at mah fierce-like reputation!”
“Well, I’ve never heard of you.”
“Ah, well ifin news got around in dese parts, you’d know Ah’m dah terror of dah Turned ‘n’ masher of mutants evvrywhere, li’l lady! And di ‘ere is mah sidekick-”
“Friend. Not sidekick. To hear you go on, you’d think you were destined to save the-”
“Burn it. Cleanse the pom-pom vinaigrette!”
“Er…”
“And this is Berry Blossom. Say hello, Berry.”
“Parakeet feathers. Everywhere the feathers spill across the sea. The kingdom waits, but the hoofball never comes. Foul!”
“Is she…”
“She’s perfectly harmless. And rarely bites. She’s real kindhearted when she’s coherent.”
“I see. Well, I’m Dusty Canyon- a pleasure to meet you all.”
“So, where’s you lot headed?”
“We’re aiming-”
“Nowhere. Nowhere at all.”
“Sis…”
“Well, issint that a happy coinkidink, we’re not going anywhere in partikkular either! Whaddaya say we team up and wander aimlessly together! As me dear mum used tah say, the more ponies ya gots, the more foes ya squash!”
“She never said that! She s-”
“Ey, I think Ah know what me own mum said, Dusty!”
“Thanks, but we’re perfectly capab-”
“We’d love to! To travel with you, that is. If you promise to keep our best interests at heart, we’ll promise to do the same. All three of us will.”
“Saw this morning morning’s minion. Dappled falcons rolling on air, to through toward, under up with.”
“Sure will, ‘specially if I get tah spend quality time with this angel ovah here. ‘Cmere darlin’, no need tah chew on dat. ‘Ere, I’ve got a lovely radish in ‘ere somewhere, much tastier den- no, ‘dat’s me machete, sweet’eart, don’t- Come back ‘ere! Yer gonna hurt yerself iffin you don’t- Oh sweet Celestia!”
“Ahem. Don’t worry, Pot Shot’s dealt with unicorns at this stage before; he knows how to keep them happy. At this point they're actually pretty simple to control.”
“Sorry, excuse us, I just need a moment to discuss this with my brother… What are you thinking, Buttercream?”
“It’s like Pot shot said, safety in numbers, sis.”
“But we don’t even know them. They look like they’d swipe our gear the first chance they get!”
“Summer, if you never trust anypony, you’re going to have a miserable life. Well, more miserable than it is already. You have to learn to give ponies the benefit of the doubt!”
“I think the sun’s getting to your head. We don’t need friends.”
“What about Berry Blossom?”
“She’s different-”
“We don’t know as much about the sanity scourge as other ponies- for all we know, the spacey stage only lasts a week before they go full on mental. We don’t know when she’d be about to turn on us. We need help to give her proper care, and knowledge that other ponies have. We can’t do this alone.”
“...I still don’t want any friends, Buttercream.”
“You won’t regret this, I promise.”
Summer Breeze was jolted awake and by the sound of a crash and leapt to her hooves, wingblades at the ready. A quick survey of the campsite revealed that Mimic had been fiddling with the cart again and merely knocked one of the burlap sacks over the side. She sighed and carefully folded her wings again. False alarm.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t meant to wake you up.”
Summer shook her head. “I’m fine. Might as well get going though.”
“You’re good then? You sure you don’t want another hour or so?”
“No, I’m good.” She looked at Mimic, who was in the shape of the tan pegasus once again. “You’re really gonna wear that dumb hat?”
He adjusted the brim of the dented cowpony hat. “I was thinking of it- I mean, it’s pretty good for keeping sun outta your eyes, and I’ve gotten used to having something on my head. Feel kinda naked without it.”
“Suit yourself.” She tossed the sleeping mat into the cart with a snap of her head. “That everything?”
“Yup.”
“Alright then, we’d best get going. We’ve been here too long anyway.”
The two cantered of, weapons within easy grabbing distance should anything impede their progress. The first few hours passed uneventfully, neither pony sighting another living being besides themselves. They crossed a dry lakebed, stopped for Summer’s brunch atop a low mesa, and passed the remains of what might have been a town decades ago.
As they passed a stone platform half buried under sand, they came across two warped metal rods which stretched in the direction they were headed farther than the eye could see. “Train tracks.” Summer noted disinterestedly. They continued alongside them for a few minutes in silence before Mimic spoke up.
“What was it like?”
“Huh?” Summer had been calculating the distance remaining until they hit the dead zone, and was caught unawares by his question. “What was what like?”
“Equestria. Before the Apocalypse.”
“You don’t remember?”
He shook his head. “My egg was laid after it had already happened. This is everything I’ve ever known. But what was it like before? I assume it was nicer.”
Summer gave a dry laugh. “Nicer? That’s an understatement. It was… peaceful. And beautiful. Nopony had to fight to survive from one day to the next. There was more food and water than you could ever imagine, and you could just buy it, with money. Bits, they were called. And everypony was so friendly. You could smile at a stranger and they would smile back. And there were so many ponies… Everypony lived in towns, all close together, a few feet between houses, that’s how close they were. And you could have a permanent home that you could always return to at the end of the day without fear that somepony else had claimed it as their own.”
She looked around at the wasteland around her, so different from the picture she was describing. A bead of sweat rolled down her face, causing her to scowl at the sun. “Even the land was different- the sky was blue instead of grey, and it wasn’t half as hot as this, probably even in the hottest parts of the world. And there was green and color everywhere. So much color…” She trailed off, thinking of the dry lakebed they had passed and wondering what it might have looked like years ago.
“And what about trains?”
She blinked. “Trains?”
Mimic nodded. “Yeah, trains. You said these were train tracks. What were those like?”
Summer thought for a moment. “I think I’ve been in one before. They were machines, big enough to hold lots of ponies, and they would take them all over Equestria, wherever the ponies wanted to go. They only could travel where their tracks were, and they went so fast… Faster than I could have flown. I remember looking out the window and seeing trees and houses passing in a blur.”
There was another brief silence. “Thanks.” Mimic solemnly bowed his head to her.
Summer nodded absently. “Yup.”
“It’s just, I know a lot of ponies don’t want to talk about it because it’s too painful or something, so I really appreci- Yargh!”
He stopped short as Summer jabbed him in the side with her wing. “Wait,” she hissed, “something’s not right.”
Mimic quickly looked around as the pair unbuckled themselves from the cart. “Nopony’s nearby- I’d be able to feel them if they were. Unless it’s the Turned.”
Ignoring him, Summer launched herself into the air and flew straight up before hovering and peering intently off into the distance. Slowly she turned in a complete circle, scanning the landscape before diving back to the ground. While she had been occupied, Mimic had taken their weapons from their spot near the front and had mounted one of their newly… acquired ones on his side. He would have tossed her her mouth-firing semi-automatic, but she waved it away.
“Two things.” she announced tersely. “First, we’re in the dead zone. We have been for at least an hour.”
Mimic’s ears stood straight up. “What? If that’s true, we should be under attack by now! Fighting for our lives and stuff.”
“Yeah, well, I remember the landmarks from when we came through before. There’s no mistaking it.”
“Well that’s… weird.” Mimic mused, then glanced up at her. “What’s the second thing?”
“There’s a group of ponies off in the distance coming this direction. I’m pretty sure they saw me.”
“Ponies or…”
“No, they were ponies. Couldn’t tell if they were unicorns or not from that far away, but they sure weren’t acting like them.” She gave the changeling a funny look. “What did you just say? You can sense nearby ponies?”
Mimic sighed and kicked at a river stone, sending it skidding across the uneven rocks in a puff of dust. “Yeah, emotions.”
This took her by surprise. “You can feel emotions?” He nodded. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” she snorted.
He looked at her in surprise. “Umm, maybe it’s because it never crossed my mind? Come on, are you really going to grill me on every facet of my being? Right in the middle of the dead zone?”
Summer Breeze narrowed her eyes and glowered at nothing in particular. “It would have been nice to know…”
“Yeah, that’s why I just told you. We haven’t exactly been bumping into any other ponies left and right, so it’s not like there’s anything else to sense.” There was a pause as Summer tried to wrap her head about the new tidbit of information. Mimic scowled. “What, not even a ‘thank you Mimic for sharing your early warning system with me’? Yikes, all you do is care about how hurt you feel and how mean it is for me to not to immediately spill everything to you whenever you feel like it. Have you ever stopped to think about what I feel? That maybe this is sort of traumatizing for me too, to be found out and ordered around as if my say no longer mattered?” He glared at her and snapped his tail angrily, ears pinned back. “What, you think that I don’t deserve respect anymore?”
“That is not what I meant- if we’re going to go over this again,I-”
Summer took a deep breath and let it out. ‘No anger’, she told herself. Yes, she might have been thinking of him as ‘the bad guy’, but she reminded herself that he had a personality and motives and opinions and feelings like anypony else, even if he was a bug-like pony pretender. “Sorry. I just, it takes me a long time to bring myself to trust ponies. I’m paranoid and not naturally… yeah. I’d been travelling with Dusty Canyon for a few years and it took me all of that time, well, not all, but a lot of it to get to where I am now. And when I do trust somepony, I take it very seriously.” She sighed. “ When Buttercream died, I… I promised him that I would at least try to be more open, to make more friends, but it’s hard. So I feel that you’ve betrayed my trust, and it’s difficult to think of you in any other light. So I’m sorry if I’m snapping at you, but I’m just trying to… to convince myself to trust you after you’ve been, oh, I don’t know, lying to me this whole time.”
“Well, I’ll just say it again: don’t expect me to apo-”
A spine-chilling screech echoed across the plain, causing the two to instantly snap their heads around, looking for the source.
“Mutants.” Summer breathed.
“They’re pretty far away, we could avoid them easily if we don’t stay here.” Despite his confident words, Mimic’s eyes were darting around scanning the landscape intently.
“Any distance is too close. Let’s get moving.”
A few moments of tense silence passed as Summer fiddled with the cart’s straps before Mimic spoke up again. “So how about we investigate those other ponies? I mean, you already said they were coming towards us. Now might be a good opportunity to trade some of the goods the unicorns ‘donated’ to us. Or maybe see if there’s any news.”
Summer hesitated, weighing the pros and cons of interacting with potential highwayponies before sighing. ”Might as well, I guess. It’s not like we can’t handle them if everything goes sour.”
The changeling nodded as he hitched himself back to the cart, but kept his side-mounted weapon on under the harness.
In the distance the moan sounded out again.
The gap between the two small groups of ponies closed quickly and silently, and soon enough Summer could make out the individual ponies in the group. Two of them were pegasi stallions- a pale purple one leading the group while the other limped along in the rear. Between them, a pink earth pony mare with a frazzled blue mane helped a small colt along, his head swathed in bandages. All three of the older ponies were loaded down with burgeoning saddlebags and there was a cautious weariness to their walk. Once they were within hailing distance it was the leading pegasus who called out first.
“We don’t want any trouble, ‘k? There’s nothing here you would want. We just have some questions.”
“Well, I can’t say we’ll know the answers.” Summer shot back. “Too bad though- we were hoping to trade some stuff.”
The two groups pulled up to each other and now that they were face to face, Summer was quite surprised by their appearances. The leader’s wings were almost completely devoid of feathers, and the wings themselves were shriveled away, pressing feebly against his stained-looking sides. The other stallion looked to be in an even worse condition: a sickly brown reached from his hooftips all the way up to his hocks and forearms before fading into his pale yellow coat. His tail was suspiciously thinned and a swath of the same brown was spread along his underbelly, but despite the obvious pain in his hoofsteps, there was still fire in his eyes. The mare was covered in long scars, but that was nothing unusual given the circumstances.
“Hmph. Trade, huh?” The lavender pegasus eyed the cart with a raised eyebrow. “You got any seeds or magic artifacts?”
“We have some spellkits, would those be okay?”
“I guess it depends on which spells they are.” the pegasus admitted. At that, Mimic detached himself and slowly made his way to the back of the cart.
Summer hesitated. “Are you sure you don’t need firepower? We’ve got more than enough weapons to offer.”
The pegasus shook his head. “Nah, we’re all set for that. Just anything that might help out with plant care.” He stuck out his hoof. “Name’s Lavender Crisp.”
“Summer eyed the proffered appendage warily before shaking it. “Summer Breeze.” she replied tersely. “Are you from one of the farm projects?”
Lavender chuckled darkly. “Well, I guess you can say that. We’re from Cloudstone City, or at least we were. Now we’re just helping out the earth pony half of it.”
Mimic poked his head out from behind the cart. “From where?”
The purple pegasus sighed. “Ah. That would explain it. Cloudstone City was something a bunch of pegasi had started years back. A place like the old Cloudsdale where-”
“We don’t need to tell them every detail of our lives, Crisp.” Summer started at the unfamiliar voice before realizing that it came from the mare who was sheltering the bandaged green colt as if a stiff breeze would knock him over. She was glaring at Summer with mistrust- a sentiment the younger mare could understand.
Lavender, however, did not seem phased by the interruption. “They should know for safety’s sake.” He turned back to Summer. “We lived in the clouds where very few mutants could reach us. There was an earth pony farm immediately below us, and in exchange for food, we’d protect them since we were in good health from the lack of threats.”
“I knew it!” Summer exclaimed in triumph. “That strategy-”
“Was a failure. Don’t ever attempt it.” Lavender cut in. “It was fine for a few years and we lasted this long with few casualties but… The clouds are poisoned.”
“What? Poisoned?”
“With no spare water, we couldn’t make any on our own, so we pulled some down from the higher layers and worked the grey out of them. We thought it would be good enough, but now the entire city is dying.” He spread one of his shriveled wings with a grimace. “It manifests itself in a bunch of different ways. My wings are useless now.” He gestured to the yellow and brown pegasus behind him. “Sun Showers’ legs are being corroded away. We’ve already lost so many, and dozens more are too weak to move. Now we’re outta the clouds just trying to help out the earth ponies since they’ve got no more protection.” He blinked as if just realizing something. “Hey! If you don’t have any other obligations, Cloudstone could use a few able bodies around! It’s a few days journey west northwest of here, in the lee of a rock formation that looks a bit like a sleeping dragon. You’d have free food in exchange for the extra firepower, which it looks like you’re in no shortage of.” He chuckled.
Summer hesitated but was spared an answer by the disguised changeling emerging from behind the cart. He had one of the smaller burlap bags with him, which he set on the ground by Summer’s hooves. “Alright, we’ve got a poison antidote, frost blast, a stack of thunderstorms and something labelled ‘starbeam’.” He picked up a gemstone shimmering with captured magic. “I have no idea what it does though.”
Summer looked at him in confusion. “We have an antidote spellkit?”
“Yeah, it’s new.”
“We’ll take them! All of that stuff there” Lavender exclaimed and reached a hoof out.
“In exchange for what?” Summer pulled the sack closer to her and narrowed her eyes at the stallion.
Lavender flicked his ears and snorted before turning to Sun Showers. “I’m just gonna take a few things outta your pack, okay?” The yellow pegasus stiffened and glared at his traveling companion, but ultimately said nothing as Lavender rifled through his saddlebag, the latter laying a small pile of goods in front of Summer.
Mimic looked it over, but as nothing caught his eye he turned his attention to the mare and the colt, leaving Summer to haggle with Lavender. He was unsure as to whether or not he should bring up the bandages bundling the colt’s head, but the mare caught his gaze before he could look away and held it challengingly.
“What are you looking at, bub?”
He hesitated once more before nodding at the colt. “Did you do that to him?”
The mare continued to hold his gaze. “So what if we did? He’s safer this way.”
“He’s really not,” Mimic protested. “Once he reaches adolescence the magic buildup will terminally-”
“Don’t you tell me what will or won’t happen!” she snapped so suddenly both Summer and Lavender glanced over in surprise. “You don’t know a thing on this subject! We’ve got doctors over at Cloudstone- actual doctors- who say there ain’t nothin’ wrong with him! Nothin’!”
“Ms. Floss,” the colt looked up at her in concern. “What did he say about the magic?”
The mare draped her foreleg around the colt’s barrel and hugged him against her. “Nothin’, sweetie. He doesn’t know anything.”
The answer apparently did not satisfy the colt, but he didn’t say anything else as Summer finished up the trade, tossing a bag into the cart before Mimic could see what they had gotten.
“Before you head off,” Lavender Crisp spoke up again, “I mentioned earlier we had some questions...”
“Well go on then.”
If the stallion was offput by Summer’s tone, he didn’t show it. “Do you know if the rumors about the Princesses are true? Are they really still alive?”
Summer let out a bitter laugh before she could stop herself. “Still alive? Still alive? Buddy if they were alive, why would the sun still be frozen in the same spot it’s been for decades? Why wouldn’t they be helping us get through this with leadership and aid and… and advice?” She scoffed. “No they’re dead, dead and gone, ‘cuz otherwise they’ve been abandoning us for all these years, which would really ruin my opinion of them.”
“Ah. Well, according to the rumors-”
“Crisp!” the mare snapped again. “We don’t need to take an hour jawing with them!”
“Oh hush, Fairy.” Lavender snorted and turned back to the duo. “Some are saying they’ve actually been dormant in some sort of suspended animation, like a hibernation down by the southern stormfront.” His eyes glimmered with something Summer hadn’t seen for a long time. “They’re saying all it’ll take is a pony to find where they’re hidden and they’ll awaken and save us!”
Summer flicked her ears, dubious. “Why wouldn’t they be at their capitol where the rift opened? Isn’t that where they were seen last, trying to stop it? ‘Cept for the fourth one, of course.”
Lavender sighed. “I’m not sure- that’s what I was hoping you could answer.”
“Oh, Well, I’m not sure about the… validity of that rumor, but would you be able to answer a question for us?” He nodded and Summer gestured around them. “Isn’t this supposed to be the middle of the dead zone? What happened?”
The stallion looked at her quizzically. “The what?”
“The dead zone! You know, this whole region we’re in right now should be a mutant hotspot. You normally can’t go a day’s travel without being jumped by a dozen of ‘em, but we haven’t seen a single one and we’ve been in it for hours.”
“Oh, you mean the swarmer nest! Well that’s an easy enough one to solve. They’ve all been migrating north these past few months. Nopony’s quite sure why.”
“Nopony’s sure? That’s a pretty vague explanation.”
Lavender shrugged. “Never said it was an explanation.”
The colt looked up with bright eyes. “Maybe they’re running from the princesses!”
“I don’t think that’s it, sweetie.” the mare cooed.
“Hm, alright then, thanks anyway.” Summer dipped her head politely towards the group, but gritted her teeth in frustration. At least half an answer was better than nothing.
And with that, the two groups of ponies began preparations to part ways. As the larger one took off, Lavender turned once more towards Summer.
“Our offer to stop by Cloudstone still stands. Just in case.”
Summer nodded slowly. “We’ll think about it.”
And with that their chance encounter was over, and the two were alone in the desert once more.
“What did you trade them for?” Mimic piped up as soon as they were out of earshot.
Summer shrugged. “Food and ammo. They didn’t have anything else worth taking.”
Mimic looked at her in confusion. “Don’t we already have a ton of that?”
Summer shrugged again. “You can never have enough. Who knows, it might be months before we see another pony again. We gotta make sure we can last that long.”
There was a pause before Summer spoke up again, deliberately changing the subject. “What was the deal with you and the mare? I didn’t catch what started your shouting competition.”
Mimic was silent for a few moments, his face unreadable, before answering. “He was a unicorn. They broke his horn off thinking that it would help slow the sanity scourge, but it won’t. It’ll just speed it up, but they love him enough that they’ve convinced themselves that he’ll be fine.”
Summer nodded- she already knew about the dangers of destroying a unicorn's horn- it was the reason she had left Mimic’s alone when she had first realized what he was. Thinking any unicorn could be saved was foalishness; the madness always claimed them in the end no matter what anypony did.
Mimic didn’t offer any additional information, so Summer found her mind wandering, thinking about the group of refugees. It was interesting, seeing them talk about the princesses. They had something that she almost couldn’t remember experiencing, something rarer than seeds or healthy foals.
Yes, it had been a long while since she last saw anypony with hope.