She expected a to see others running around. Others fleeing to the hills. Others searching for their friends and family. Others trying to find some safe ground upon which to stand. Needless to say, she's disappointed. Disappointed, but not deterred.
Whatever it was that had destroyed her roof had also done quite a number on the road. She has less than a mile to travel to reach the town, yet ever inch of that distance is covered with craters, most no bigger than her hooves. The fields around her are riddled with them as well, and most of the grass is singed a brownish black. The going is rough, and the scenery isn't anything that she cared to gaze on for very long. The world had always looked best when it was zooming past her... Now the improvement was undeniable.
She speeds ahead, the town's not far now. Five more minutes and the first few buildings should come into sight. The bumps in the road are starting to get to her; she begins actively avoiding the bigger ones now, rather than simply letting the scooter bounce along them. Three more minutes. She starts to notice just how dry the air is, dry and warm, not exactly what one would expect from a typical autumn day. One more minute. She can make out the shape of a house before her, then another, and another, until the whole town slowly comes into view. And after a moment, she suddenly wishes it hadn't...
Whats the most important thing you've ever lost? Now don't worry, I'm not going to make you say it... Just think about it for a minute. Come up with something? Alright. Now multiply that by a thousand. Multiply it and then add onto that the feeling of shock, as if something just jumped out of the shadows and tackled you to the ground. You focus on that feeling for a moment, and you should have a pretty accurate idea of what's hitting our little Filly right now.
The longer she stays there, frozen in place, the deeper the feeling of dread sinks in, and the surer she is of the answer to the only question left in her mind. Gazing at the shattered, burnt, and scourged shell of what was once the home of everything and everyone she ever knew and loved, what other questions could there really be? She didn't care what caused it now. She wasn't curious about how it had happened. She didn't want to know how far it had reached. As far as she's concerned, the whole world might as well have gone up in flames; because the fate of that little town meant that her whole world had. So through out all of that grief, all of that turmoil, all of that dread, just one question was left for her to ask... Who could have survived this?
Well, we both know the answer to that, but imagine how she must have felt. How could anything seem as hopeless as the situation she had just found herself in? But was that about to stop her? ...No chance...
She gets back up. The dirt soaked up her tears eagerly, her sorrow quenching its newly-developed thirst. Her weeping had left that spot wet, but now her that her eyes were dry, she was ready to finish what she had started. She lifted her old friend back onto its wheels, off of the charred ground where she had cast it aside a minute or two before. Her wings beat the air behind her with a steady buzzing sound, and off she goes.
She's not far from her destination now. She swerves between the buildings, a long cloud of dust marking her path through Ponyville. The houses and stores she blows by have seen better days, to say the least. Still, the damage isn't nearly as bad as it had looked from the road. Nearly every building is still standing, though to be fair, most seem to be missing a few vital pieces now. Roofs, windows, walls, not one building made it through with all those factors still intact. Well... I suppose thats not entirely true...
She has no idea where it is she is heading, the tears have crept back into her eyes now. She's just speeding along now, as fast as she can, trying to get through it all without having to really see any of it. So she just keeps riding, looking but not taking in her surroundings; making her way further and further into what was once a lovely little neighborhood. She tells herself that theres no one else around, yet the sight that brought the tears back into her eyes begs to differ. She tells herself that it was nothing, just an old statue, probably displaced during whatever calamity had struck the town. She tells herself that the face wasn't familiar to her at all, that it was all in her head, that it she had just projected her own fears onto an inanimate piece of rock... She told herself plenty of things as she rode along; and why not? In the end, any of those lies would have been easier to accept than having to think about the terrified expression forever locked in stone and ash upon her teacher's face.
Thankfully, her journey finally comes to an end, her destination is finally made clear to her. She looks ahead and sees something strange in front of her. A tree. Well, no, not exactly a tree. Its a building, made from a tree, and its still perfectly intact. Whatever had happened here, that structure had been completely untouched by it; thoroughly ignored by the judgement that had fallen upon the rest of the world around it. So thats where she aims her scooter, and thats where she speeds off toward, not entirely sure of why she was going there, or what she would find when she reached it.
Well... What would you think in a situation like this? She starts to slow down, approaching the old library cautiously. She wants to believe it, but the petrified remains flash through her mind again, and send her whirling into a pool of doubt. Still, hers eyes insist that what she's seeing now is real.
So finally, she makes her way to the door. Its already open, so she lets herself in. Theres a fire burning, but unlike what she saw in some of the other buildings, this one's confined to the fireplace. Books are scattered on the floor, unwashed plates and cups thrown here and there for good measure. She knows it wouldn't have looked like this before whatever happened happened, so that same question comes back to her mind once more. Did anyone else survive?
She moves further in, stepping over a small sea of books and scrolls to make her way to the stairs. She notices another door swung wide open, this one leading to the deck on the second floor, one that would normally look out over the nice peaceful landscape below. Her eyes weren't lying to her after all, because sure enough, she finds someone else....
...She finds me...