....A proper story is supposed to start at the beginning.... I'm afraid this one's not so simple...
Taking Off, Coming Home.
I've never been one for jumping into things without some background knowledge, but in this case, it might be better if you didn't know the whole story from the beginning. I wish didn't. But wishing isn't going to do us any good now, so let's see here... Suffice to say, this particular story is about a Filly. One whose whole world has been twisted up and shattered apart right before her eyes. But see, I'm already getting ahead of myself. So... where to start... I guess it only makes sense to start off where all stories ultimately have to begin.
She wakes up. She stands up and clears her head; shakes the dust from her mane and looks around. Its not much to look at though: the walls are still there, all four right where they should be, the floor too, with her mattress in the corner and nothing but clutter from there to the door. But the dust; its sitting thick on everything, and one look upward tells her why. No ceiling, not anymore. Whatever happened last night ground the wood to powder, yet left rest of her little shack intact.
She makes her way to the door, and she does so quickly. Something just struck her mind, something far more important than a missing roof. She left a friend out there the night before, and she'd never forgive herself if any harm had come to her. She reaches the door and pushes it open in a hurry, she can't waste a single second now that she's remember her best friend in the world might be in danger. She steps out the door... And falls to her doom...
...Sorry, just seeing if you were still listening. Of course that's not what happened, you know that as well as I do. No, she didn't die, but it was a close thing. She steps out the door and right off the edge of the world. The crevice goes down further than she can see, pitch black nothingness awaiting her if she should lose her grip on the edge of what was once her front steps. The Filly hangs there for a moment, then, slowly, begins to pull herself back up. Once she's on four legs again, she looks back at the newly-formed gorge in her front yard. It stretches on for what must be miles, but it's only about a meter wide.
She shakes off the shock of what almost happened, her thoughts turning to her search. She whips back around toward her house, her purple mane covering one eye until she blows it out of her face. She returns to her doorway and carefully sidles around the corner of the house, staying pressed against the wall until she's sure there are no more cracks in the earth around her. Her friend was waiting for her out back, and the Filly races there to see what has become of her oldest companion. She turns the corner, anxious and terrified of what she might find. Her eyes fall upon the back wall of her home, and she sees her fears are well-established.
The small grove of trees that had stood behind the little house for decades must have simply exploded over night. Chunks of debris, branches and leaves, dirt and roots, all of it was scattered about, smashed against her back wall. Splinters of all different sizes, some as big as her, are imbedded in the earth and the wall, like darts in a board. Her heart falls within her chest, her friend didn't make it. Nothing could have made it through this. And yet, that wasn't good enough for her.
The Filly dives forward, kicking aside branches, splinters, and piles of leaves. She sifts and digs until she's more than halfway across the wall. And that's when she finds her, her life-long friend, buried beneath a pile of small tree limbs. She clears them away, kicking with her hind legs until the branches snap all over again, freeing their prisoner from that spot against the wall. Her friend went through quite a night, but all in all, it doesn't look like anything too serious. A few scrapes, a gash that would likely remain for the rest of her existence, and some minor dents here and there, but nothing serious.
She embrace the cold steel like a long-lost sister, the scooter doesn't object. Reunited, the two return to the front of the house. As they come around the corner, she sees that even more of the ground has given way. She watches as it crumbles before her eyes, a beautiful swath of green land pitched into the tenebrous abyss. The cracking and creaking are perfectly audible, almost deafening as they get closer. She's standing in the doorway, unable to move as she watches a break form in the ground and make its way right to the corner of her house that she came around only moments before. What comes next is a sound like nothing you'd have ever heard, nor anything you'd ever want to. A groan erupts from just below the floor of her house, and suddenly half of the home she had known all her life, had been sleeping inside only minutes before, falls away. The ground beneath it crumbles and takes the half with her bed in it down into the black depths.
She makes her decision right then and there, no time to think up an alternative. She hops on her old friend, backs into the remainder of her house, and aims herself at the door. Her eyes narrow as her wings begin to beat the air behind her furiously. And then, all at once, she's off.
A burst of speed sends her bolting through the door, her front wheel smacking off the doorjamb and sending her into the air, over the thin gorge before her, and onto the solid ground beyond. She stops and turns to take one last look at her slowly-collapsing home. As she does there's another groan escapes from the floorboards, and and the house implodes inward as the ground beneath it gives way. The loss reverberates as a near-physical pain, but she doesn't have time to think about that. No... She has a mission now. She has answers to find, shelter to seek out, and, most importantly, friends who are likely in just as bad a predicament as she is.
So she starts riding, racing toward Ponyville as the cracks around her begin to spread. She's all alone for now. Just one little pony, in a world that's about to fall to pieces beneath her very hooves. You might want to say a little prayer for her here, just a reassuring word or two. She's going to need them...