The cockpit of the faithfully decrepit one-pony plane was filling with smoke. With a string of ladylike non-profanities, Hearthfire slammed a hoof into the emergency shutoff, severing the supply of fuel to the groaning engine, and started her preparations for the inevitable crash landing.
With a glance at her instruments through the cockpit haze - altimeter was reading a thousand above sea level, airspeed dipping below eighty and falling - she eased the plane into a shallow dive, trading in altitude to avoid the prospect of a disastrous stall.
“Hold on to your socks, Cas, the sugar is about to hit the fan,” Hearthfire called out, taking one hoof off the stick long enough to tug her goggles down from her forehead.
She was answered by an irritated feline chirrup from somewhere behind her in the storage webbing that lined the fuselage. Cas, almost as seasoned a flyer as Hearthfire, was well acclimated to the nose-diving tendencies of the scratch-built aircraft and knew what to do in case of emergencies.
Coughing, and wishing profusely that she hadn’t opened her mouth, Hearthfire leant forward, trying to get a clearer view out of the smoke-obscured windshield. There was nothing but sand as far as the eye could see with no hope of a neat landing, so she picked what looked to be the least rocky piece and took aim. One hoof rested on the crank for the landing struts; the wheels wouldn’t help, but the struts might cushion the plane’s landing slightly as they snapped...
She released the crank. If she just let the plane belly flop it would probably survive, and with the struts intact, it might fly again if she could find civilization, and get help hauling it to somewhere flat that could be used as a take-off strip. It was certainly a long shot, but better to leave the option open.
Belly flop it would have to be.
* * *
Cas watched the scene disdainfully from her perch, nestled between Hearthfire’s ears. Hearthfire had produced a shapeless brown robe from the chaos that had previously been their luggage, and the hood was now keeping the worst of the sun away from the two stranded companions as they took stock of the wreck. Cas was not impressed with the desert heat, and made no attempt to hide her displeasure.
“I know, I know,” Hearthfire grumbled, voice muffled by the folds of the scarf she had draped around her face and muzzle to keep the worst of the dust out, “I should have done a full engine check at the last stopover. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.”
She chose to interpret Cas’ answering rumble as a reprimand for not having performed the check at the stop before last, or, come to think of it, the one before that either. There was never time, that was the problem. Ha.
The plane itself wasn’t too badly damaged; a little magic here and there to help the frame hold together could do wonders during a forced landing, as the unlucky unicorn pilot knew from far too much personal experience. It had listed on to its port side as it came to a halt, skimming across the gradual lower slope of a dune, and the impact had caused something of a sand-slide, leaving the lower part of the fuselage submerged where the dune face had slipped. Wings okay, propellor okay, engine not immediately on fire, no liquids visibly leaking out of the fuselage. No point checking internal damage to the plane’s systems: it wasn’t going to be moving anytime soon.
“We, on the other hand, need to start moving as soon as it gets dark.”
It took an hour to find everything they would need from amongst the jumbled supplies and damaged packs, but eventually Hearthfire’s saddlebags were stocked: a crude map (however useless it might prove to be in the featureless terrain), a meagre few days’ water, tinned rations, a pocket knife, a scrap of canvas and some folding poles for shelter, the plane’s first aid kit, a waxed box of matches, a sturdy tin containing dried tea, and the Box.
With the supplies organised, there was nothing to do but find shelter, and wait. Hearthfire would have liked to have done something for her stricken plane, to check the engine, or organise the belongings they would be leaving behind, but it would be wasted effort. Better to conserve her energy, ready for the pony-knows how many days of hiking that lay ahead of them.
They moved to the far, sheltered side of the dune. Even here, in the dune's shadow, the ground was uncomfortably hot from the day's sun. Hearthfire took what comfort she could by spreading the canvas out over the sand, and settled in to do what planning she could until the sun went down.
"…so, our best choice is here, though the map isn't entirely clear on how large a settlement it is. Our supplies should last that long, at least. We might even have a little water to spare at the end." Cas reached down from her favourite perch and batted absently at the map.
"Yes, I know, I'm a hopeless optimist," Hearthfire replied, reaching up to stroke her friend's head affectionately.
It was too hot to fall asleep, but after an hour or two the pair of them were dozing fitfully in the baking shade. As such, Hearthfire wasn't entirely sure whether or not she was dreaming when Cas came suddenly alert, hackles raised, and stared up into the sky.
"Hmm? Whasamatta?"
She followed Cas' gaze, and spotted the two specks, circling high above.
"Vultures already?" It seemed odd, but then, she didn't have a better explanation. Unless a pair of pegasi had just happened to stumble across her wreck a hoof-full of hours after she crashed in the middle of nowhere, but what were the odds of that?
The two pegasi circled the crash site, dropping lower on each pass. They were on the third pass by the time Hearthfire had worked out that, yes, there really were two pegasus ponies directly overhead, had decided that there was a better than fifty-fifty chance that they were bandits, and had realised that there was very little she could do about it if they were.
They landed lightly, a few meters away, on either side of the stranded unicorn in twin plumes of dust. Hearthfire patted her knife to make sure it was still there as she eyed the newcomers warily. One was a pale grey, with a long, light blue mane and tail; the other sported a darker yellow-brown coat and wild, aggressively cropped black hair. They were both male, and young, she could see immediately, not foals, but not exactly full grown stallions. Neither of them appeared to be armed; in fact, the pair of them were carrying only bandoliers of simple, hoof-crafted pouches and water skins.
That won’t stop them pounding you into a pulp the old fashioned way if they’re here to loot your supplies, she reminded herself, sternly. Her hoof didn’t move away from the knife, though she wasn’t really sure if she would be prepared to turn it on another pony if it came down to a fight. Cas had vanished somewhere down the back of her robe, out of sight.
One of the pegasi, the dark-coated of the two, barked something as they approached, his words low and lilting, in a language that Hearthfire didn’t recognise.
“Uh...” She turned to face the one who had spoken, while simultaneously trying to keep one eye on the second interloper. Another string of unfamiliar words. More aggressive this time, or was that her imagination? A hoof was pointed in the direction of the downed plane.
“I’m sorry,” she tried, “I don’t understand.”
The two pegasi stopped dead in their tracks, watching her with wide eyes. Hearthfire tensed for whatever was coming next.
“Canterlot!” The grey pegasus yelled, and all but took to the air in his sudden excitement. The enunciation was off, marred by a thick accent, but there was no mistaking what he had said. “You are... Canterlot?”
“You two have heard of Canterlot?”
“Yes. Canterlot, in Equestria,” the other pegasus chimed in. He dragged the syllables out, ehh-quest-reaa.
“Um. I’ve been there, once?” Hearthfire made an effort, though she didn’t know if they would understand. She pointed at herself to emphasise, hoping they would get the hint. “I’m from Manehattan.”
“You know, Wun-der Boh-lets?”
* * *
On the journey from the crash site, the two pegasi took alternating turns flying and walking, one leading Hearthfire onwards, the other circling lazily overhead, ensuring that their heading was always true. The yellow-brown pegasus spoke the better Equestrian of the two; Hearthfire quickly worked out that the pair’s native tongue was an unfamiliar dialect of Saddle Arabian, which she had only a very simple understanding of at the best of times.
Between her guesswork, based on her own limited vocabulary and their basic grasp of Equestrian, it was almost possible to have intelligible conversations through the language barrier. She managed to work out that the two ponies were from a caravan, and that the they had seen the smoke of her plane going down, and flown over to investigate. The pale grey pony was named Cloud Flower, if Hearthfire was translating the name correctly, and the brown-yellow coated one introduced himself as Sandwhistler.
Oh, and she also picked up that they had heard of The Wonderbolts. It didn’t take her very long to discover that they were big fans. The closest she came to a conversation with Cloud Flower began when she did her best to ask the colt how the two of them had heard of the aerial display team, but any semblance of discourse quickly devolved into a bubbly, enthusiastic extravaganza of leaping, flapping and hoof-waved illustrations; sadly, due to Hearthfire’s poor grasp of Saddle Arabian, the whole thing went completely over the unicorn’s head.
As the four travelers approached their destination, the setting sun rendered the loose slopes in sharp relief, leaving the seemingly endless dunes as an undulating wash of crimson light and deep shade. The dune they were climbing seemed taller than the others, but otherwise not unusual to Hearthfire, but obviously something had become visible from the air, as a whoop of joy resounded from Cloud Flower on high. With a swift barrage of Saddle Arabian, Sandwhistler took to the skies.
Cresting the dune, Hearthfire could see it, too, the long trail of dust kicked up by the passage of vehicles a mile or two ahead. Even Cas broke cover from her hiding place inside Hearthfire’s cloak to see what all the fuss was about, wrinkling her nose as the ever-present dust tickled her.
“Looks like we got lucky, huh, Cas?” The cat stretched, easily, claws digging playfully into Hearthfire’s mane.
“Ow! Don’t let it go to my head. Got it.”
By the time they reached the caravan, it was almost dark, and the caravaneers were preparing to camp for the night. The twelve wagons that comprised the convoy had been halted, and arranged into a loose perimeter. In the centre of the semicircle, a glow of a fire was visible, casting the long silhouettes of the wagons onto the slopes of the surrounding dunes. It was clear that the night’s stopping point had not been chosen randomly; on the far side of the camp, a low rocky outcrop rose from the desert, sheltering the area from the worst of the wind-blown sand.
The dark shapes of pegasi rose from the camp as they approached, winging out to meet them, and soon they were surrounded by a crowd of ponies doing their best to look sternly disapproving but mostly only succeeding at looking relieved. Hearthfire failed to pick up on any of the hubbub of conversation; it was simply too many ponies talking at once to decipher any of the meaning, and in a matter of seconds she was completely at sea.
After a few minutes of Sandwhistler and Cloud Flower hurriedly fielding questions, it seemed that everything was settled, and the horde of worried ponies were somewhat mollified.
“You will talk to my father,” Sandwhistler explained, carefully, as the crowd turned back towards the camp. “He is... uh. Very angry. With me.”
“For bringing me here?” she asked. Cloud Flower butted in with a question, in Saddle Arabian, and a brief exchange followed which caused them both to burst out laughing.
“He says, I think, he does not want to be wearing my hooves,” Sandwhistler translated, after a quizzical look from Hearthfire. “No, my father is angry, because I go without permission. It is dangerous.”
Despite its makeshift nature, and the inhospitality of the surrounding environment, the camp had a surprisingly homely air about it, with gentle lantern-light spilling from the wagons. The chill was beginning to creep into the air as the sands finished radiating the day’s warmth, the flicker of the fire was very inviting, and for all that she couldn’t understand half of what they said, the caravaneers seemed welcoming.
Sandwhistler’s father was found inside one of the caravans, sheltered from the night’s gentle breeze by a rugged wooden frame tautly hung with a heavily-woven fabric. He was an elderly pegasus, his black mane greying noticeably, but his coat retained its tan colouring. He was poring over some kind of document, spread out on the flat surface of a crate, but he looked up as Sandwhistler flitted inside, and Hearthfire caught a flash of a sharply focused green gaze. With slight trepidation, she pushed back her hood and clambered up behind her guide, realising as she did so that Cloud Flower had managed to peel off and vanish, leaving Sandwhistler to face the music alone.
“Excuse me, coming inside...” she murmured to herself, not wishing to draw those stern green eyes away from Sandwhistler and onto herself. Cas immediately gave the interior of the wagon a cursory inspection, before pitter-pattering onto the bare wooden floor where she began the process of sticking her nose into everything.
Despite her efforts to remain unobtrusive, Sandwhistler’s father shot a look her way; he bowed his head slightly in greeting, and said, in very passable Equestrian:
“I am sorry for my rudeness, but I must put my family’s problems first. Please, be seated. This will not take long.”
Hearthfire nodded dumbly, doing her best to hide her surprise. There was a heavy accent there, but none of Sandwhistler’s hesitation or uncertainty. Well, it stands to reason, she reflected. Equestrian had something of a reputation as the lingua franca of trade, at least in Equestria’s immediate region. Still, to hear it spoken so well in a land so far removed from Equestria’s verdant countryside was a little unusual.
After a thorough dressing down, the details of which Hearthfire was not privy to, Sandwhistler was dismissed; she shot him a sympathetic glance as he left, and received a dejected shrug in response.
“So.” The old colt turned his attention to his visitor, as his son’s hoof falls faded away. Hearthfire was feeling uncomfortably aware that the youngster might well have saved both her own and Cas’ lives.
“Please don’t be too hard on him,” she tried, hoping that she wasn’t going to cause offence, or be seen as a meddler. “Cas and I would have been in a lot of trouble if he and his friend hadn’t shown up when they did, you see, we -”
He let out a quiet laugh, waving a hoof to dismiss her worries.
“No, no. I will not be zealous in his punishment. In the balance, it was a good thing he did today. But it is important to follow rules, no? All of that can wait until later, however. First I think introductions are in order.
“My name, I was told long ago, would mean ‘Sandborne’ in the Equestrian language. I am currently the head of this tribe.”
“Pleased to meet you. I’m Hearthfire, and this,” she said, pointing, “is my travelling companion, Cas.”
Cas meowed in greeting, and went back to exploring the wagon’s contents.
“If you don’t mind my asking, how did you know that I was from Equestria?”
“It’s obvious, really,” he shrugged, “as I suspect you know, when you have travelled widely enough, you begin to spot the mannerisms common to the different pony-folk of the world. You are welcome to travel with us, of course.”
“That’s very generous of you. Ah, I’m afraid I don’t have much of value with me...” Hearthfire swallowed nervously.
“Do not worry. We are traders at heart, but if I found myself lost and alone out here, I too would hope to depend on the charity of others. I’ll admit, I am very curious to know how the two of you came to be here, but perhaps that can wait until tomorrow. For now, I will arrange a place for you to sleep.”