Darkness was again on the horizon in full.
In the heavy stillness that permeated the night, miles upon untold miles of dry landscape kept itself deathly silent in the gloom. Nothing moved even as the wind picked up from a lull, save for a lone jumble of cloth in the shifting sands of night.
Quietly the colt lifted his muzzle from the dirt where it had lain. As he did so a small grimace flashed across his face following a meek gasp that managed to escaped between his parched lips.
Cracking a grime caked eyelid he stared out into the desert air with a tired gaze. Only a few rays of waning light shone from over the peaks as the moon slouched its way over the peaks and cast a glittering splash of silver on the on the opposite mountains. Minutes crawled by but the small colt never moved. Content to sit and watch the halo of morning creep up from the moonlit mountains to the east.
From behind the folds of his hood he watched as crags of dirt broke free from their entrenched holdings in the fur around his nose to flake off and be carried away by the soft breeze. Small flakes of the caked dirt also managed to peel from the edges of the wrappings and duly followed suit into the great space beyond the rim of his vision.
He shifted his forelegs gingerly out from under his head where they had been resting and moved to slowly arch his back. Little snaps and pops broke the quiet as numerous joints in his back gave way in a delightful little sputter. Suppressing a low groan he bit his lip as the tired muscles in his rear legs refused to obey the order to stand.
The numb limbs still not part of his waking movements, he instead contented himself to at least get his front half off of the ground in a half stretch. Wiry muscles screamed in protest but he managed to liven his body enough to sit upright on his numb lower half. Having won that minor victory his gaze wafted over to the dunes as the wind swayed his tail hairs about in haphazard swirls.
Wavering a bit, he lifted a hoof to his hood and meagerly gave it a soft pap. A cloud of sand and debris too heavy for the breeze to carry rained from the folds and pooled at his hooves. A great deal of what stayed would wear off in time and let himself relax with that little task done. He stared out into the great beyond and marveled as he often did at the suns rays as they raced along to ground to meet him. In a flash they were there and then gone, gliding onwards towards the feet of the yonder mountains. Already the air had gained its early morning red tinge.
Thinking on that, he looked back to his hind legs and grimaced. Copious red stains had streaked from his haunches to the tips of his hooves. Still wet, the blood itself looked parched as it eeked slowly from the wounds. The small bundle groaned outwardly into the morning, annoyance clearly betraying its abundance in the tone.
Tiredly he turned and blinked his eyes as the straps of his harness came into focus. All over the rough leathers and cotton were matted smears of red and brown that mixed together with the grime. Through the break in his stained rags he could see a small spattering of bright crimson red.
As his teeth deftly maneuvered the article aside a strong fume of blood and sweat rose to meet his nostrils. A coppery taste immedietly stuck to the back of his throat as he slightly recoiled from the rank smell.
Holding a breath, his pressed his muzzle forward into the smell and gingerly peeled back the layers of his ratted coverings. What he saw when he managed to pull them back far enough brought up a small sound of dismay.
Long red ropes of skin had been rubbed raw under the nearly empty saddlebags. Most of which were rubbed completely clean of fur. With a grimace of disgust the colt could see bright red slowly seep up from the freshly disturbed wounds. It seemed that him sitting up had agitated them enough to let fresh blood flow into the already matted fuzz on his back and sides.
Whimpering quietly, he bit back a tear and finished removing the offending rags from the red mess on his flank. He couldn't help but wonder if he had done something wrong with the buckles. No one had ever taught him how to properly buckle the brass fittings, so he had attempted to do it himself. The results of which were painfully clear now that he knew he had inevitably secured them wrong.
It was already a steep price to pay and as he turned to look at the other haunch a sense of dread filled his stomach as he spotted similar damage. A image of a book cover flashed into his vision, a red and blistered hide covered in boils and rot, all encapsulated by the bolded words at the bottom. Infection Prevention.
The little colt couldn't help but feel queasy. His brow suddenly feeling hotter than it had a second before, and his sides ached in tandem with the panic that suddenly rose to fight him. Heavy breaths accompanied a squeak that was quickly carried off into the wind. The only thing he could see was the word; almost roiling in his brain.
He could hear a voice, tinkling like a bell, telling him to "always clean up a scrape!" after he got one. His panicked eyes flew to his sides, and flew up and down the seeping ridges in horror. A diddy from a radio rose tohis mind. No soap, no hope it sang.
No water to wash with honey.
With great effort he forced his eyes away from the wounds on his flank, the matted fur and blood implanting itself into his brain as he slowly settled back to the ground on shaking hooves.
He felt sick, but as he stared into the brightening day ahead and the relative calm that pervaded it. Cautiously he let the calm descended over his thoughts. The heat he felt in his stomach slowly abated as he tried to think of nothing. Just him and the blackness behind his eyes. A tiny him, and the big, empty blackness full of nothing. Especially not book covers.
He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly before sitting back up to sullenly go through the task of laboriously removing his trappings one by one.
As the bits of weathered hood and the leather strapping's were shucked from his hide he threw them without much fanfare into a pile at his hooves. Each and every buckle he moved to release sent a sharp bite of pain up his sides as his work went on. Old blood oozed to mix with the new on the tip of his muzzle as he progressively unearthed the damage he had done.
Parched lips and teeth drug each strap from the groove it had weathered into his sides. The grimy metallic taste stung his tongue as each buckle was popped free of its holdings and after what seemed like an eternity he finally stood bare in the oncoming heat of day as the extent of his nights trot was brought into the morning sun with agonized slowness.
A shiver shook his thin frame as he tenderly rubbed the sores and marks on his flank and back. Smoothing back the matted fur into place and giving the raw flesh some air to breath. A number of the joints in the ill fitted saddlebags had been digging right into the spot where his haunch met his stomach and a great swath of fur was rubbed free from where it once was; leaving only a mangy patch of fuzz surrounded by a raw patch of skin that sat on both sides of his body like a hoop. The feeling he got from it wasn't pain however, worse than any pain imaginable he felt something akin to death itself. It itched.
Screwing up his face into one of pert concentration, he refused the urge to rub the already raw skin any further to get at the itch. It was maddening. Like a thousand bugs below the surface with the sole intention to torture until he disturbed it. Shaking a bit he instead chose to work on the open wounds that lay on his back. Pulling out a strip of cloth from his hood, he went to the work of binding the marks as the morning drew on.
It was while he was dumping a bit of sun bleached stone dust he had gathered and ground onto the still seeping wounds that the the stars overhead finally winked out one by one overhead. From the light that crept further and further up into the heavens the glittering sea of diamonds seemed to protest the treatment with a fantastical display of beauty. He stared back at them, eyes reflecting the expanse of the cosmos, letting the waning cool of night sooth his aching muscles one last time.
Picking out a few constellations before they could finally disappear, his eyes wandered until a small easterly breeze softly interrupted his gazing. Sniffing the oncoming air he winced slightly.
The breeze, like every other day, smelt of something foul. As if a rank fire was at that very moment burning beneath the sands and only lacked the tangible signs of smoke or flame to show it. Thankfully, from his experience the full light of day seemed to burn these offending smells away, or at least mute them under the pervasive odor of baking earth. Around midday it was always tolerable again. Tolerable to a point.
His gaze inevitably followed the horizon to the barely lit clouds and then onwards to their distant grey-green tops. Towering masses of fluffed air, they always looked so alien to the small colt. The sky above was always clear, yet the clouds over there always looked so ready to rain.
Thinking back, he could just about remember reading a picture book or two that had those clouds in them. Rainclouds was always stenciled into the book with letters as colorful as the ponies that accompanied them.
His nose scrunched up in the dry desert air. The ones near the mountains never show any white or blue stuff falling from them, only a sheen of fog that waved back and forth once and a while. And on top of that there were no ponies with wings at them either. Watching intently the small colt spent a few minutes searching for the colors before shrugging his shoulders and turning back to his work.
He had never even seen anything like that in the picture books anyways. The bumpy mountains in the books were always green with white tops, Not the completely brown ones that mocked him daily from afar.
In a burst of activity the stale wind suddenly gusted, whipping around his small frame and rippling his mangy fur. The sudden change in wind shifted, and then managed to fully tip the pile of gear he sat by over. The rags secured inside the bags mercifully stayed with him but the clattering canteen was already almost gone from his reach. He leapt to grab it and just barely caught the chain in the crook of his hoof before it could fully blow away.
His stomach collided against the hard packed earth with a thud as the leap carried him with the wind. Grunting, canteen in an outstretched hoof, he slowly regained his breath. Without word, he stood up looking forlornly at his canteen as the cap's chain rattled emptily against the tin.
He wanted to throw it.
Even after leaping to its rescue it didn't matter, it still was, and would forever be empty. Anger seethed up in himself as he listened to the chain clink over and over into the empty tin.
Sighing, he moved to put the canteen in his mouth and sauntered the short distance back to the overturned pile of rubbish.
Luckily nothing else was light enough to have been carried away with the wind, which had by happenstance now suddenly died again to a trickle. The sand he had piled on top of the bags had thankfully kept them secure against the assault.
Rubbing the grit from his eyes, he dropped his canteen back down into the pile and turned to survey his future path. A small gully only a few lengths taller than he was had carved its way through the land a few miles ahead and broke the seemingly indistinguishable terrain into two sets of distinct landmasses.
The great fissure went east to west for as far as the eyes could see. The young colt assumed that it could go on farther, forever even, with how straight it seemingly looked. He sat and turned his head to the mountains. Perhaps it even ignored the mountains and just kept going.
It wasn’t until his eyes made contact with a glimmering speck of light just barely above the horizon that he stopped his gaze. Right ear twitching as if a rouge sound could be heard from the din he stared out into the wind and continued to rub a few of the lesser sores on his shoulder with a dirty hoof, never taking his eyes off the glinting speck. His head dipped to the ground ahead in contemplation.
Slowly he stood back up and shook a little to shake what dust he could from his fur. Gathering the little pile he had made, he bundled it back onto himself piece by piece.
Soon he was trotting again. This time however he wasn’t pointed towards the unknown distance ahead, but aimed straight towards the blinding speck of light on the horizon.
Hot air from the mountains beyond began to pick up along with the colts heart. Soon a canter formed out of the steady trot. His eyes soon reflecting less and less lights on the horizon as the heat of the day fully dissolved anything ahead into its permanent haze.
He reached the fissure quickly. A twist between a grimace and a grin formed on his small face as he clambered down and then up again past the fissure. A snarl puffed out of his muzzle as he pulled himself up and over the edge and onto the grimy green haze beyond.