//------------------------------//
// And So We Meet 
// Story: On We Go 
// by I Am The Night 
//------------------------------//


 “We'd stared into the face of Death, and Death blinked first. You'd think that would make us feel brave and invincible. It didn't.” 

-Rick Yancey







From He



She was the first thing I saw.

Like a deer in lights, she stared at me with a cautious look that not many showed in recent weeks. But at the same time, she didn't seem afraid, nor did she seem frightened. It seemed to be more of a look of surprise...like she wasn't expecting me to wake.

I tried to speak out, tried to get up - but all I could feel was pain. I looked down to my leg and saw it bandaged, splinted with wood - wood that seemed to be from a door, placed firmly against my leg to keep it still.

"You shouldn't try to move," she said to me. "It'll make it worse."

No hesitation but no resistance, I took her advice and tried to stay still, all the while adjusting my working body, keep myself comfortable. With a sigh, I turned to the ceiling, only for a moment, before looking back to her. It was at that moment that I noticed her attire.

Uniform.

"You're a soldier?" the first thing I asked the stranger. She nodded and asked me the same thing.

I did the same, and she seemed to sigh herself, this time in relief. I knew why she did it. It was no surprise to come across a survivor or a raider that scooped a Royal uniform off the remains of a real soldier and keep it for themselves. Some times, it was without consequence.

Other times, they caught the plague and were dead three or four days later, with crystals spewing out of every orifice in their body. That, however, only came from fresh victims. Typically, the plague died with the host after one to two weeks, leaving the contents safe to take. But any time before that, and you risked your life.

I turned my head slightly to the side, looking past her seated body, to the windows. It was dark, maybe just having turned to night. I could hear the sounds of the wildlife as they inhabited the land, whether it'd be crickets or deer or even bears.

"You've been out for a while," she told me. "I was the one that saved you. I just...had to be sure."

"Be sure of what?"

"That you were one of us."

She knew now.

"Did you live here?" she asked, but I shook my head.

"Seaddle. I was stationed near here when it happened. I tried to get home, but..."

But my mind turned to the memories of those early days. The panic, the turmoil, the riots and the fires. The killings and the slaughter.

"...I was forced to hunker down for a while. I've been on my own since."

The stranger's face held a sympathetic look to it. She was unsure of the feeling, but she seemed sorry for me.

"And your family...?"

I tried to shrug in my lain position. "I don't know. From what I heard before the radios died, the city was burning. I have no clue if they got out in time, or if they..."

That other answer, I couldn't say. It wasn't so much of an answer...more like an assumption - something I couldn't truly say for sure was true.

I didn't want it to be true; I never want it to be that.

But if...

I shook it away.

"I've been on my own since everything fell. I've been going from place to place, trying to...get by."

She didn't answer right away, but asked, "So you're a nomad?"

I nodded. "Exactly," I said in a quieter tone. "I guess you can say that."

"I guess that explains why most of this place is empty." She looked directly at me upon asking, "I take it that's from you?"

With another nod, I added, "I was planning on leaving as soon as I cleared out that tent. Wasn't expecting any survivors to be lurking near here."

"You mean me or those bandits?"

"Both."

"Hmm."

We were both quiet for a few moments. After a minute, I spoke again.

"What time is it?"

"Late. Sun went down a while ago. Found the closest house I could that was boarded up the most. We should be fine as long as we're not loud."

I nodded, giving a brief sigh before looking around the place. The room was lit with candles, but only a few; the only light in the entire town, no doubt.

"I wonder if any of the ponies that used to live here ever made it out, or is out there surviving, still alive. I... I couldn't see a whole town dying off." I looked to the floor. "Then again... I can."

"When did you first come to this town?" she asked me.

"A week ago. Maybe two. I don't remember. All I know is that I've been here for days. I was doing pretty fine on my own for a while. The only thing I had to worry about were the dogs... but I didn't think I would've been seeing them out in the day. They usually come at night."

"The dogs?"

"Yeah. They always traveled in groups. Sometimes five or six, and other times twenty or more, like packs. Unngh..."

I stopped as I felt a pain in my shoulder. As I turned and looked, I noticed that it had been bandaged up. I turned to my leg to find it even splinted.

"Your leg could be fractured," she explained. "It doesn't seem to bruise too much, but you shouldn't try and walk on it too much. And your shoulder - it'll be fine. Give it a few days."

I looked to the stranger with a look of faint impression. Or maybe it was impression. I don't know, but I was grateful.

"Thank you."

She smiled, faintly. I introduced myself, giving her name and hoping she would do the same.

"Rainbow Dash."

Rainbow... I sighed to myself; that was why she was so familiar...!

"You're from Bravo, aren't you?"

She nodded. "Do you recognize me? Have we met?"

"No. At least, not that I know of. But I've heard of you. You're the... with the wing."

I didn't want to be too forward or rude, but she knew what I was saying. Understanding, she held her wing out to me. It was metallic and shiny, but coated with dirt, wear and tear from the time of the war. It was the same size as her organic wing, but it was all so strange at the same time.

"I lost my wing in Detrot," she said. "It was an ambush. There was a lot of killing. I was probably one of the few casualties that didn't end with death."

I looked at her with a sorrowful expression; I didn't have to say anything for her to tell me it was okay.

"This took a long time to get used to. I'm still not used to it. But it was better than being stuck to the ground."

I gave a silent snort of laughter through my nose. We talked like strangers getting to know each other. It was a sense of normality that was rarely ever sought now, but we embraced it. Or at least, I embraced it.

"Where are you from?" I asked her.

"Cloudsdale. I spent most of my time in Ponyville, but Cloudsdale was my home... was."

"What happened to it?"

"Same thing as everywhere else. Ponies died from either the plague or each other."

"... And your family?"

She nodded, and I regretted asking her.

"It's fine. Someone was bound to ask me eventually. My family didn't want me to go fight, but I didn't have a choice. They stayed in Cloudsdale and hoped things would just go back to normal soon. By the time I was back home... they started getting sick, showing symptoms. When I found them..."

She closed her eyes and sighed.

"After that, the city just went quiet. It was strange, though... it looked clean, like it was just empty, not ruined. But I guess everything that wasn't magically held up fell down to the ground."

It explained why there was so much random debris in that field a while ago. Cloudsdale had been there at one point, but was now likely floating elsewhere. Where was it now?

"Where were you headed next?" she started. "Before you got jumped, I mean."

I shrugged. "Just somewhere. I figured to go to Coltston, that town a few hours east of here. Last I heard, it wasn't hit as bad... so maybe there'd be more food there."

"I just came from there. It's gone."

"Gone?"

"The ponies there burned it down to prevent any bandits from taking their things. Some died from the plague. The rest burned to death with their families. Anything that was left was picked clean by whoever cared enough to look through the rubble."

Damn it. It shouldn't have surprised me. But I was hoping that wasn't the case.

With a sigh, I looked up at her and asked the same thing of her. I always feared asking that to someone else because they would die soon after. Did I doom her too?

Rainbow Dash opened her mouth to speak, but a sound from the outside kept her from letting her voice slip. Instinctively, I turned off the nearby oil lamp and put out every candle. The living room went dark, but light still remained. It came from outside, flickering.

The two of us peeked through the front window blinds to see the familiar town square. A house in the distance was on fire. It looked intentional. It caught the intention of every infected in town... dozens of them.

The plague all kinds of different things to ponies. Sixty percent of them would die by the time their eyes bled, twenty percent of them would turn feral and mindless before dying the next day, and the other twenty percent wouldn't die at all. Their blood didn't crystallize. They would become feral, then just continue to live and eat whatever they could until something or someone killed them.

Many of them out here would walk into the fire and burn to death. They would scream and moan, but they wouldn't roll over. They would just accept their fate, not knowing it was already set for them.

"That fire will keep them distracted," Dash whispered. "We shouldn't worry."

"I don't worry. I've seen enough of them to learn to stop worrying."

She seemed to take that statement in stride.

"We should stay here for the night. We'll leave tomorrow, if you're able."

"Even if I'm not... we should go anyway," I informed her. "There's no food left here, and that fire will draw a large enough crowd to make this place a death trap. Staying here longer than a day would paint a target on us."

She sighed, not telling me directly that I was right, but her expression told me that she knew.

"Okay."

For a while, the two of us looked outside, watching as the infected shambled their way into the growing fires of the burning home. The sounds filled the air with a chilling ping that echoed across the land.

It was the sound of blind and deaf anguish. It was the sound of cries that would never be calmed until the last breath left their lungs.

It was the sound of the end, but also the beginning.