Spleens woke up early the next day and, hoping to surprise everypony with breakfast, made her way outside. Spleens was briefly brushed aside by a sleep-drunk Near Miss, who was presumably returning to her bed after doing her early morning business. Sprite Spring and Sprite Sprint had actually beat Spleens outside and, in addition to gathering more firewood, had rekindled the previous night's fire.
As Spleens set up the cookware and started to make breakfast biscuits and lightly fried potatoes, she had one of those early morning half-awake conversations with Sprint and Spring, asking where they were from and where they were going.
"Functionally," Spring answered, "The answer to both is the same. We're from Cloudsdale, traders and the like. Normally we fill up on exotic goods from far away and fly them to Cloudsdale over the course of a day or so, where our sister, Sprite Price, sells them in her shop."
"But you're on the ground," Spleens pointed out, her confusion not helped by still waking up.
"Thing is," Spring continued, "Everything was going fine on this trip, until we passed over this weird grey valley, when we were both hit by some kinda magic, and it made our pegasus magic stop working, and with the weight of the caravan, we started to lose altitude. All we could do was glide down to ground, where we felt so tired."
"We couldn't stay there," Sprint continued the story, "So we just started pulling and shoving our caravan as far from that valley as we could. Once we weren't feeling like all of our strength wasn't being drained out of our butts anymore, we tried flying again a few times, but we could only lift the caravan for a few moments before it was too much. Since then, we've been hoofing it."
"What about you lot?" Spring asked, "What brings a changeling, a unicorn, and a Thestral out here?"
"A changeling, a Unicorn, and a Thestral walk into a bar, sounds like the start to a joke." Near pointed out, as she exited the caravan. "Somepony needed someponies to retrieve some kind of stick from some place, and seeing as how we just got done retrieving some kind of stick from some place, we seemed the most qualified."
"That's all we're getting out of you, isn't it?" Spring asked.
"At least until my coffee hits."