//------------------------------// // For the First Time in a While // Story: Rainbow Dash Around the World // by MagicS //------------------------------// The first set of mountains she reached weren’t just bare rocks but had plenty of vegetation on them. Endless forests of trees seemed to creep up and over them, giving the whole place the look of a sprawling woodland. Occasionally Rainbow Dash saw streams that flowed downhill from the mountains and a couple of ponds or what could even be called small lakes. It was an evergreen world below her. Time had passed since Rainbow Dash emerged from the gate and now she could easily tell without even glancing up at the sky that it was past noon. The way the sun felt, the slight change in how the rays hit her, the way her shadow moved on the ground, Rainbow had gotten used to telling time this way years ago. When she was just a filly. And since it was past noon she decided it was finally time to get some lunch. The casual flight, the chillaxing under the warm sun, was done with for now. A forested mountain probably had all kinds of fruits and vegetables she could find to eat—Rainbow Dash doubted she’d have to resort to grass or flowers. And thanks to all the time spent with Fluttershy and Applejack (and Twilight to a lesser degree) she knew what sort of stuff was poisonous and what wasn’t. Mostly. Rainbow Dash slowed her flight and went down, down to the mountains and the trees. She glided right between some large pines and descended all the way to the forest floor. The soft feeling of dirt and grass beneath her hooves brought a smile to Rainbow Dash’s face. “I almost forgot what that felt like,” Rainbow Dash said. She may not have loved the ground and the dirt the same way Applejack and Fluttershy did, but after so much snow and rock hard ground all the time even she savored it a little. The blades of grass and the slightly warm dirt just felt so good to her hooves. For a moment she paused there and took everything about the mountain forest in. Trees surrounded her in every direction, she couldn’t see an end to them or even get an unobstructed view in one direction for more than twenty feet or so. All sorts of bugs buzzed and chirped around her, hidden under rocks and logs or flitting about from trees and flowers. A squirrel ran up the trunk of one of the trees and stopped on a higher branch as it stared down at Rainbow. The earthy smell of the forest filled her nose and when she took a deep breath the freshest of mountain air was drawn into her lungs. “Alright,” Rainbow Dash stretched like a cat and tucked her wings into her sides. “Let’s find some food.” She sniffed the air a few times to see where her nose would take her. Rainbow Dash was pretty confident in her senses but she somehow didn’t think her nose was as sharp as her eyes or ears. She couldn’t really make out anything particular among the multitude of smells in the forest. Even when she closed her eyes to try to just focus on smelling something it didn’t really help. Rainbow Dash frowned and opened her eyes. “Okay, time to look around.” At least everything was just so dang colorful compared to the icy north. Even now when it was reduced mostly to browns and greens it was so much more enjoyable to look at and search through. Rainbow Dash flapped her wings again to hover a few feet off the ground and started casually making her way through the trees, looking for either berry bushes or fruit trees. Applejack could’ve found a trail or known what signs to look for to find some food but Rainbow Dash could only rely on her eyes actually seeing it. She passed over a few flower patches and some bushes, along with a small stream that was barely two hooves wide, just looking for anything edible. No, not just edible, tasty too. A rabbit popped its head out of its warren for a moment but just as quickly retreated when it saw her flying. Rainbow Dash grinned—if she was a carnivore… “Hah! The look on Fluttershy’s face if I joked about something like that with her around...” Rainbow rubbed her eyes to clear away the tears after getting a nice laugh. But if there were critters like that around there was probably some decent food somewhere too, right? Rabbits didn’t just eat grass or flowers. At least Rainbow Dash was pretty sure they didn’t. She really should know more but with how much Fluttershy spoiled Angel Bunny she wasn’t sure if that rabbit’s diet was normal. Her stomach grumbled again mid-flight. Rainbow frowned. “Maybe I should just go for the flowers...” She soon got lucky though after just another couple of minutes of winding through the trees. Something different caught her eye, a group of trees that weren’t pines were growing in the forest just a little ways from where she was. And she thought she could spy a vibrant red color dotting their branches. Rainbow Dash zoomed through the trees towards the other grove and finally came to a halt right in front of them. “Yes!” She pumped her hoof in triumph. In front of her sat a grove of maybe twenty or thirty different cherry trees. They looked incredibly healthy and their branches were overflowing with the delicious red fruit. “Not as good as apples, but you bet I’ll take it,” Rainbow Dash smiled and flapped up to the branches of the nearest tree. She pulled a few cherries right off their stems and chucked one in her mouth immediately. Biting down filled her mouth with sweet, juicy goodness. It was perfectly fresh without a hint of bitterness at all. Rainbow Dash expertly excavated the pit from inside the cherry and spat it on the ground while swallowing the good parts. “That hits the spot,” she licked her lips and started eating a few more. “Maybe I shouldn’t have thrown away that old bag,” Rainbow Dash scrunched up her face in bemusement as she looked at all the cherries she was carrying in her hooves. She was currently flying high above the trees again after temporarily getting her fill of cherries. Her mouth was red and her stomach was full—too full, she had eaten way too many of them. It didn’t even matter to her at the time, they were too tasty and she was hungry. Getting to eat some real sweet fruit like that after so long was just too much. It was so good that she had decided to bring as much as she could carry with her. Which was causing problems now as she didn’t have anything to carry them in. A bunch had already fallen out of her hooves and disappeared into the trees below and Rainbow Dash could only shrug. Whatever, at least she had another day’s worth of food with her now. She didn’t know how long it would be until she found more food, especially since the lush forests were soon ending up ahead, so she was going to hold onto as much as she could. The green mountains covered in trees were just about to give way to the taller rocky mountains that looked much less full of file. Rainbow doubted she’d be able to find anything more than a mountain spring up in them or maybe some sort of refuge. She didn’t think fruit normally grew at the altitude those taller mountains were at but maybe something she could eat did. Rainbow Dash glanced below and took one last look at the great green forest, a smile tugging at her lips, before she jetted off to the next landscape to fly over. One more part of her journey already behind her.