Cranky and Steve's Final Adventure

by libertydude


A Well-Earned Rest

The hot wind streaked across Cranky’s body, the thick heat working in tandem with the bobbing raft to rouse the donkey from his slumber. His eyes, thick with bags not even sleep could ward off, opened and squinted through the straw hat resting on his face. The bright sun streaked through, and his eyes slammed shut. Minor obscenities flowed from his mouth, before he managed to thrust himself up and massage his wounded pupils.

“Decided to wake up today, Cranky?” a high-pitched voice called out.

Cranky lifted his hooves from his face and found a large shadow looming over him. He glanced towards the raft’s stern, where large scaled fingers sat halfway onboard and halfway in the rushing Maresouri River. The appendages’ owner, a long, cylindrical creature covered in purple scales, gave a toothy grin beneath his long tangerine moustache.

“Didn’t have a choice,” Cranky grumbled. “Sun’s always crueler on the prairies.”

“Right you are!” Steven said. “I swear, every time I come out here my coif can never stand these rays.” He fluffed the large orange hairdo covering his head and flowing down his neck. “Split ends with each excavation, no exceptions!”

“You’re the one that wanted to come out here. I wanted to stay in the mountains.”

Steven let out a morose sigh, then twisted the raft ever so slightly away from oncoming rocks. “All the more reason to take you to Pony Plains. You need some relaxation time.”

Cranky shook his head and stared out at the landscape. Overnight, the rolling hills of Northeastern Equestria had given way to a flat plain that stretched as far as the eye could see. Not a building, hill, or even tree appeared in the distance. Only the thick blades of bright green grass covered the plain, with large patches of dust interrupting each emerald grouping. The occasional thick cloud provided the only sanctuary from the still-rising sun, but the eastern winds seemed to be keeping them from blocking Celestia’s handiwork.

“Nice and quiet,” Cranky said. “But she wasn’t out here the last time I came through.”

“This isn’t about her,” Steven said, twisting the raft away from gathered timber. “This is about you taking a break.”

“I don’t need a break.”

“Every creature, pony or otherwise, needs a break. Especially the ones walking around Equestria for twenty-seven years.”

“I can go twenty-seven more.” He gave a mirthless laugh. “What did the fella say? ‘Time enough for sleep in the grave?’”

“How morose,” Steven said, shaking his head. “I thought you were Cranky, not Neightsche.”

Cranky scoffed and scooted his way towards the cart sitting adjacent to his bedroll. Normally, the wooden cart plunked behind him, dragged several miles with aching hips and legs that shook more often than Cranky liked to admit. Now, the cart sat tied down to the raft, the ropes straining with each wave or rock jetting out from the river. Various provisions and knick-knacks filled the cart, from Las Pegasus snow globes to Baltimare dragon glass, all clacking in time with the raft’s own tilts.

Reaching into the satchel sitting in the cart’s front, Cranky pulled out his bag of oats and stuffed a hooful into his mouth. A bland taste washed across his tongue, a fitting sensation for the town he’d purchased them in. An establishment high in the mountains, Manefield Valley contained more hills than homes, the sidewalks twisting between the mounds the various cottages sat on. None of the domiciles showed any personality, all with the same drab brown color and tilted roofs for the winter snows. Even the town hall could only be differentiated by the rotted cedar sign marking it as such.

Cranky never would have gone there had he a choice. He liked isolation, but even Manefield Valley seemed too populated for his liking. The constant smiles and utterances of “Howdy, stranger” drove him halfway to madness in just a few hours. A thousand thoughts of regret crossed his mind since he and Steven had departed down the Maresouri five days ago, a choir of tut-tuts for taking his chase to such an unassuming place.

But the doubts silenced themselves with a single thought: I had to be sure. Sure that she wasn’t there, sitting and waiting for him all these years later in some quiet mountain cottage. It was a one in a million chance, a shot in the dark that she would be sitting in some rinky-dink town where the biggest news was a farmhoof drinking too much cider and climbing up a tree. But maybe she’d find it quaint, a good place to settle down for the rest of her life. A slim chance, but a chance nevertheless.

And like every other chance Cranky took, he came away with nothing but a bland piece of local cuisine and muscles aching more than they had in the last town.

The oats continued to remind Cranky for a few minutes, bitterness building on top of blandness before he threw them back into the satchel.

“Alright, how much farther?” Cranky said with a more than slight growl.

“Don’t be such a grump!” Steven said. “We’ll be there soon enough.”

“You said that before I went to sleep, and I’ve seen nothing but darkness, grass, and water since.”

“Tsk, tsk. I would’ve thought you’d have more faith in me after all these years.”

Cranky groaned. “Faith in you and faith in your sense of direction are two very different things. You even been to this spa before?”

“No, but my hairdresser over in St. Hoofis told me about it. Said she was more relaxed there than she’d ever been in any five-star hotel.”

“Well, I don’t need a hotel or spa to relax. Sleep suits me just fine, and without any of that...” He made a flippant wave with his hoof. “Frou-frou stuff.”

“Nopony’s going to judge you, Crankster. I know plenty of cool ponies who do ‘frou-frou stuff' at spas.”

“Ponies can do that. They’re mushy like that, playing patty-cake into their thirties and singing about how they appreciate each other so goldarned much. Donkeys got a reputation to uphold.”

“You haven’t met another donkey since Manehattan! What are the odds of one being out here in the middle of nowhere?”

“Hmph,” Cranky said. “I still don’t like it.”

“Well, you can-” Steven stared off into the distance, his free hand shooting to his squinting eyes. “I can see it!” Steven said, pointing down the river. “Just down there!”

Cranky followed his finger and indeed, a few faint structures could be seen sticking up from the ground. In the heat emanating off the ground, the structures’ tops rounded into a form more similar to tombstones than buildings. But with each passing second, the figures became clearer and clearer, and the unmistakable glare of windows began to fill the distant landscape.

“Deep tissue massage, here I come!” Steven said with unrestrained glee. He wiggled his body a little faster now, sending waves up and down the river. Cranky fell to his haunches, balancing himself on the raft now weaving faster and faster down the Maresouri.

Maybe I do need this, he thought, his body twisting with each pivot of Steven’s hand and the river’s own bumps. Someplace far away from Canterlot, Manehattan, all those crowded places without a soul worth talking to. Here with Steven. He glanced up at the near-hysterical serpent shaking him and his cart down a roaring river.

It won’t be much, he thought. But it’d be enough for now.