//------------------------------//
// Chapter 2 
// Story: A Long Shot 
// by Near Miss 
//------------------------------//

"Gallifrey Gorge!" Long Shot whined as the three walked, "But we were just there, or almost."

Near Miss replied with a curt, "Do you have any better ideas?"

Long Shot held up a hoof and opened her mouth, but for several steps said nothing before she put her hoof back down and admitted, "I've got nothing."

"Well Spleens, what do you think?" Near asked.

"Doing anything with you two is more interesting than sitting back home at Jackie's Holes doing nothing," Spleens concurred, and with that it seemed settled. With that the three mares continued their way out of Canterlot, their heads a-swivel as the opulent architecture quickly faded to farmland.

The three of them made good progress that day, making it around a third of the way to Ponyville before dark even though they had only started around noon. Setting up camp the three fell into their usual routine with Long Shot gathering firewood, leaving Near Miss and Spleens to set up dinner. Happily, they had picked up fresh fruits and veggies in Canterlot, so around the campfire Long Shot noisily devoured a small stack of mangos, Near enjoyed a nice fresh salad while Spleens daintily nibbled on a few very spicy peppers she had picked out for herself earlier.

Near was the first to finish eating and so pulled out the bag of bits that Starlight Glimmer had given them for completing their previous quest, opening it to find several smaller, neatly labeled bags of bits within. 

"Girls," Near said after a quick count, "There's nine thousand bits here."

Without missing a beat, and with her mouth fuller than should have been possible without choking, Long Shot replied, "They were probably just that glad that they didn't have to go to deal with the weird magic of Wren's Anomaly themselves. Hey, do you think there are any other areas with ancient magic-draining spells that need fixing?"

To this, Spleens replied, "No way, I'm never going into one of those again, my magic is still super screwed up."

Near had to agree, as she was still not sure how they had managed to pull that particular feat off and lived to tell about it.





An hour or so later, it had become bitterly cold, to the point where a small campfire simply wasn't cutting it anymore as the early December winds bit at all three mares deeply, and they all bid a hasty retreat back into the cold caravan wherein Near Miss dove into her sleeping bag while simultaneously using her magic to heat up the space heater in the middle of the small room. The space heater was a metal cage surrounding a fuzed quartz container containing NaK, a metal alloy liquid at room temperature. Near heated the liquid metal until it glowed a dull yellow, at which point the caravan promptly started to warm up. 

By the time the last of them were asleep, the wind outside was howling outright, almost as if angry at the cold it was being ignored.