Cardinal Direction yawned, taking a break from her drawing to look around from her perch on top of the cloud. Behind her, nothing but empty endless ocean, in front of her, the new coastline she’d spent several hours sketching out and all around her was empty air.
Fresh air, she reminded herself. She was doing what she loved, even if this was the more tedious part of her calling. She was exploring, discovering really. There was even a chance she was the first pony to ever venture this far south. Certainly she was the first to map the new continent out. That was how she’d gotten Princess Twilight to finance her one-mare expedition after all.
So little was known of Giraffrica, other than that was where Zebras came from. It was nothing but a myth to most Equestrians, having never seen it nor even heard of anypony coming from there. Well how could they, as far as Cardinal knew there weren’t any ponies on this continent. Oh she was convinced there were people there, just probably not ponies.
Historically every race had kept mostly to themselves, though as they said times were changeling and so the newly crowned Princess Twilight Sparkle had sent out envoys to every known culture or, as in Cardinal’s case, to the unknown ones.
She had been part of the expedition to contact the elusive Zebra tribes, well she still was part of it even if she had split off on her own. It had been over a week since their ship struck land, only to find nothing but deserted shores. It had been agreed that the ship would follow the coastline to the west until they met any sign of habitation while the pegasi took turns scouting ahead. Cardinal though had a slightly different mission. She would leave the diplomacy to the others, her talent was in making maps after all. She had taken on the rather daunting task of mapping the entire coastline. It would probably take a while, continents weren’t exactly known for their small size.
Still, she had no regrets, enough supplies to last for at least a couple weeks more and no intention of turning back until she had to.
As a pegasus she had an endless supply of water in the form of clouds and if worse came to worst and she didn’t find any edible plants she could always fish. Her nose wrinkled at the idea of eating another creature. Yet she’d just have to deal with that. Pegasi had after all a long documented history of pescavorism and well fish was fish, it wasn’t like she’d be eating any cute animals. You had to make some concessions to survival when you were the only intelligent life for miles around.
She grabbed another chunk of cloud with her wing and wiped it across her brow, then threw it overboard, it would be too salty to drink.
That was one thing she could say for Giraffrica, it was hot, no wonder the entire place seemed like a desert. Maybe the Zebras were just as heat resistant as dragons, or the continent was larger than even Cardinal had expected.
Only one way to find out.
With a satisfied smile she stuffed her finished drawing into it’s tube, ate a chunk of cloud to hydrate herself and set off into the unknown.