I decided I hated camping.
That’s not true. I hated camping alone. Goldie had taken me several times, but had never gotten around to teaching me how to make a campfire. The tent and bedroll I had kept a bit of warmth in by keeping the wind at bay, but that was about all I could claim.
After a few hours of tossing and turning, I finally growled and got up. It was clear I was probably never going to get any more sleep tonight and I began to break camp. I looked up at the moon, hearing a soft voice in my mind.
”As punishment, she was locked into the moon, and her threat was eliminated.”
“That’s not how you said it happened last time!”
“Oh, and you are just so sure, sprout?”
“Yes!”
“Well, then, maybe you’d like to tell it from now on?”
I felt a tear slide down my cheek. “But I like it when you tell them.”
It took a few minutes for me to get my emotions back under control. I pulled the vest tightly around me against the chill of the predawn air and packed up the tent. My steps were slow and shuffling, but determined. There was a place where I wouldn’t think of her every waking minute, I was sure of it.
I just had to find it.
I found something, all right, but it wasn’t a place to live. Rather, it was a very inhospitable place.
I looked down over the edge of the ravine, the ropes from the tattered reamins of a rope bridge swaying in the wind. The majority of it was across the way, the rough slats barely visible through the haze of distance. I tried to get a grip on them, but my magic wasn’t strong enough. I saw my cerulean aura coat them, but the strain was too great.
I blew my bangs out of my face and plopped down. The map in Goldie’s pack was wildly out of date as far as the printed date, nearly by twenty years, but surely land didn’t change that much, right?
I pulled the map out and located the ravine. It was nearly to the edge of the map, but it showed a few small towns another few days worth of travel beyond the ridge line. If I was reading this correctly - and it was one of the first things I was taught how to do on our camping trips - only a few leagues northward the ravine would close off. The southern end wasn’t included on this map, so I decided to make my way north.
The trek offered me time to reflect on things, lessons taught both by word of mouth and hard practical experience. What sorts of plant life was safe to eat, how to navigate by sun or star, how to choose a campsite and pitch a tent.
“Everything but how to build a fire without matches,” I muttered as I rounded a boulder.The ground was getting rocky, only a few scraggly patches of crabgrass here and there. The landscape was getting bland, dull, and ugly.
And yet, I was feeling something underneath the lingering sorrow and annoyance at the detour. An exhilaration that I had never felt before, even when flying with Golden Ring. I was out among the world, no longer shackled by the rules of a town or the fact that I was a blank flank keeping me from doing whatever I wanted.
I held my head high as a breeze blew through, turning slightly to keep my mane out of my face. Even though my hooves were firmly on the ground, I felt like I could do anything. Once the ground cleared of loose debris, I broke into a trot, excited to see what was over the hill.
A smile broke across my face, and my trot turned into a canter, a wild whoop flying from my lips. Grass, clay, and weeds whipped by under my hooves as I sped up even more, and I felt a few strands get caught in my coat and tail. I crested a small hillock and saw a wide plain spread out below me, the wind making the grass billow like green waves. I saw a small speck in the middle, what vaguely looked like a building of some sort.
I pulled my map out and scanned the area, and there was no indication of what that building may be. Which meant it was either more than twenty years old or had been set up in the interim, and I was curious as to find out which it was.
I took off down the hill, and if somepony else had beheld me in that moment, I’m sure the gleam of excitement might have been brightly in my eyes.