//------------------------------//
// What I'd do For a Drink - Aethraspex 
// Story: June - 2012 (T.W.G.) 
// by The Writer's Group 
//------------------------------//


Author: Aethraspex
Prompts: All of them, but mostly Angel Bunny can talk.
Warning: Dark
Title: What I'd do For a Drink



All four legs, both wings, even my eyes were sore. I didn’t know how much longer I could run. I collapsed into the dank leaf litter piled between two massive gnarled roots. Most likely, my coat’d be crawling with too many legs in too few minutes. I doubt I’d notice, though, because there it was, glinting like a beacon under a golden shower of light raining from a gap in the canopy.
“Hey buddy, you gonna get that or what?” Two blood-shot eyes swivelled to face the source of the voice. It was a cute fluffy white rabbit, the last thing I’d expect to talk in a voice so low and rough. “C’mon! I’m gonna be late already! This is what’ya came ‘ere for, don’tcha remember?”

I remembered. I remembered waking up with a head full of aching and sunshine sizzling my retinas. I remembered scrubbing myself in the waves before a night of tumultous dreams. I thought nothing could’ve persuaded me to move out of my ditch in the sand but then I met high tide. Next thing, I’m scampering for the jungle, for the shade. It was something about cover I think. That’s when I met a talking bunny.
“C’mon, buddy, we’ve gotta go,” I didn’t want to go. “I said, COME ON! I’m late, and this is important!” This time I went, following a late, talking white rabbit, like anypony would. Didn’t question what it was doing in the jungle though.
“Hey... hey...” I felt something in my stomach threaten revolt- obviously it preferred silence. Dé ja vu washed over me like the flowing tide. “Where are we going?”
“Quiet!”

And suddenly we stopped.
I heard words bouncing off the trees. Something about ‘crispy on the outside’ and ‘sharing recipes’. Two ponies and a baby dragon came into view, carrying torches. The ponies, I recognised. One was a nightmare princess that gobbled ponies whole, the other was a straight-maned pink demon with eyes too icy for this heat. The third was a dragon, enough said.
“Hey guys?” said the Pink one, hitherto unspeaking, “What are we going to do if we catch him?” All three stopped, and so did my heart.
“We shall see,” said the princess.

“Hey, buddy! ...HEY BUDDY! We gotta keep movin’ remember? You’ve been lyin’ there for hours! Get up, I said, GET UP!” My hooves were over my eyes, my wings covered my ears- trying to block out the noises in my head. When I got up, we ran until either we got there or I broke. It wasn’t too little of both in the end, but there it was, lying there in the sun, where I left it.

“...Don’tcha remember?” I remembered. “I don’t have to remind you who got us through this, right buddy? Who showed you how to deal with those other five? They were gonna make you into LONG BEEF, remember? And it’s me whose been your guardian angel! NOW GO!”

I didn’t remember the other five, just waking up from terrible dreams and running. And that’s why I needed the rum.