Starlight climbed steeply down the grassy hill, treading stiffly so as not to topple and faceplant. The ground beneath her was dark, assaulting her senses with confusion when the sky above was still perfectly bright with evening glow. The far mountains' shadow stretched longly, and she suddenly felt a wave of familiarity as memories of caves and darkness swam through her mind. She wasn't sure if it was pleasant or not.
She didn't light her horn - not yet, at least. After countless days of wandering beneath the ground, with only herself as illumination, it was taxed far beyond aching. The unicorn folded her ears, feeling ever so slightly nauseous as a result. Perhaps she was young, perhaps she was unskilled, or perhaps she just had unrealistic expectations of what a unicorn should be capable of, but she wouldn't let the hornache stop her. Besides, she could see in the dark.
The darkness suddenly magnified tenfold.
With a yelp, Starlight tripped over something and barely caught herself. She landed on her flank, looking up to see the fringes of a canopy obscuring the still-light sky. Had she reached the forest already?
Stubbornly, she climbed several paces back up the steep hill for a better vantage point. When she turned around, she saw that she had indeed reached the beginning of the trees - or any other patch of never-ending, monochrome land bathed in the blue of the night.
Starlight sighed. Rubbing her horn gingerly with a hoof, she tapped it once... twice... and winced as it lit up, throwing out a spark or two. Squinting and holding herself low to the ground, Starlight re-entered the forest, praying for a breeze to make its way through the trunks and cool her horn.
Surprisingly, the underbrush wasn't dense. Giant ferns blocked her path, but they were neither prickly nor poisonous, and she pushed her way through headfirst with relative ease. Her hooves padded across a bed of needles, indicating that the woods were coniferous. She licked her lips; pitch was a fairly useful material.
Threading her body through the amply-spaced trunks, Starlight continued downhill with a slight sideward variant. She was trying to reach water, both as a guide and for her own supply. Fortunately, her meal earlier had been sufficiently moist - far more than her hard, preserved rations from the caves. She kept her ears pricked for the sound of rushing water, just in case... and plodded onward.
Starlight blinked. The woods ahead of her opened up into a clearing, her namesake filtering down from above. Smooth, flat stretches of exposed rock abounded, covered in moss and perfectly inviting. She touched one with a hoof; it was springy and supple and felt reasonably well insulated. She let her horn go out, breathing a sigh of relief as she pondered stopping to sleep the night away.
Casting off her saddlebags, the unicorn flopped down on her pink back, admiring the cloudless sky and trying to pick out familiar constellations from her foalhood. Idly, she followed her gaze with a pointed hoof... but every time the action came with a lingering sense of nostalgia, as if her favorite constellation simply wasn't there.
What was there was the moon, early into its rise and still partially obscured by the treetops. It was far more relaxing, and Starlight stilled, letting its white light wash over her body until her thoughts quieted and she couldn't even feel her horn. It felt good. She wouldn't have minded if it had stayed.
But eventually it moved on, and Starlight was plunged back into relative darkness. She frowned, holding still for a moment longer... and realized she was hungry again. Grumbling, she got to her hooves, relit her horn, and resumed her trot into the forest.
This time, Starlight felt, the trees moved faster. The ground was more forgiving, opener and slightly less steep. There were still crags and boulders she had to leap over or navigate her way down, but they were further apart and hardly as tall.
Her mind processed this as she wound around a particularly wide trunk. Rocks fell down, so wouldn't the base of the mountain have an abundance of-
Her ears perked. She heard water.
Starlight Glimmer bounded forward, suddenly thirsty in addition to her hunger. A gust of wind suddenly disturbed the treetops high above, but she simply stopped, waiting for the noise to die and her ears to pick up the river again.
Belowhoof, the ground grew barren again, its only coating lichen, moss and the occasional root so powerful it had forced a crack in the stone. Eagerly, Starlight sped up, chancing a brightening of her horn. Something glistened ahead, a long ribbon of reflectiveness... and there it was, racing down the incline perpendicular to her charge, pure and crystal and with no bed save for flat, hard stone.
Eagerly, Starlight leaned down... and dipped her horn into the stream. Briefly, she hissed in pain at the temperature change, but soon the pain melted away into relief as her overtaxed appendage cooled and numbed. It was like a gulp of fresh air, if fresh air could be applied directly.
Next, she drank. For nearly two minutes, Starlight lapped without pause, only stopping to roll onto her side and groan after having as much as she could possibly hold. Still, she felt thirsty... so she resolved to lay there, the tips of her four hooves barely touching the running water, until she was able to drink again.
Before too long, however, laying on the exposed stone in the night air began to take its toll. Starlight shivered; it wasn't a bone-piercing cold like that of the caves that had never seen the light of Celestia's sun, but it was the kind that would wear out its welcome soon to even the sweatiest of exercisers. Starlight felt her coat. It retained all of its youthful fluffiness, but that group definitely included her.
Starlight got up, considering taking a bath in the stream... but decided against it. If she was cold now, that would just make things worse. She'd do it in the daytime, when the sun could dry her out.
Instead, she pulled open her saddlebags and removed her flasks. Unceremoniously dumping the cave water from her last filled one, she held the three under the stream with her mouth, carefully rinsing them and filling them back to the brim. To test, she sniffed one and took a sip - exquisite. She topped it back off and returned them to her bag.
Next, she withdrew her food supplies in their entirety. Stale, dried fruit. Stale, dried bread. Stale, dried cheese... and maybe some other things. Much less exquisite. The unicorn glared at them, wishing for the grassy meadow from the previous evening... but they were what she had. Frugally, she put most of them back away, saving a few bites to munch on as she made her way downstream.