The sky was bleak, dark and gloomy, threatening a downpour at any moment. The clouds seemed to tremble, ready to erupt in lightning and thunder. The air was cold, humid, the light dim. The wind was weak, but constantly blowing. Never faltering, never altered, a stream that brought along droplets of water from the nearby marsh and its slightly rotten, slightly salty smell. A few reptilian eyes stared from beyond the tall, rusty metal fence, the only thing visible in the darkness past the edge of the cemetery.
Three ponies stood under the orange glow of an oil lantern, in front of a mossy gravestone. Two, stallions, stabbing into the wet ground with shovels and deepening the shallow hole they were inside of. The third, a mare, watching them work. They moved silently, efficiently, only occasionally throwing glances around to ensure they were still alone or shifting slightly to feel more comfortable in the damp cold around them. There was no sound except the low plodding of the shovels moving wet dirt.
Until there was a thud. The metal portion of one of the stallions' tools hit something hard, and everyone stopped for a moment. Then he swallowed and dug again, revealing the thing he'd found. The mare took a step forward and looked down. The stallions took one back and looked at her. "Move," she said, and they were a few metres away in just a moment.
The mare's horn began to glow, and that same glow spread over the tiny bit of metal the stallion had uncovered, then further along it into the ground itself. The earth shifted and shook in front of her, it sucked and it caved. Sounds like the soil was breathing came as the light grew brighter, bright enough to shine through to the surface. The mare arched her neck. With a loud, violent plop, the thing she had grabbed hold of slid up out of the ground, covered in mud and dirt.
The metal object fell to the ground with a loud thud. Its shape and size left little doubt to its nature, though whether or not it truly contained what the headstone claimed was another matter entirely. But unlike their previous effort in a similar field, the ponies there did believe it would indeed hold what it was supposed to. A fact which made the two stallions most uncomfortable.
The mare stepped forward again. Her horn shone once more, her magic focused into a single dot on the muddy surface of the metal casket. It tore through it like scissors through paper, and she traced a hole all over the middle portion. Another flick of her horn and the shape she'd drawn detached itself from the rest and flew into the air, its edges still smouldering hot and sizzling as it landed on the ground. She looked over the contents of the coffin she'd unearthed.
Bones. No meat on them, it had been far too long for it, but the long consumed remains of it were still visible on the bottom. Little more than black soot and dirt at that point, when even the worms that had eaten it had starved and so had the maggots that had fed on their corpses. Rot in its advanced state, indistinguishable from the soil. The smell hit them all a moment later. The mare didn't flinch, unlike the others, but only because it paralysed her, and for a moment she almost lost consciousness.
Regained her nerves, she reached inside with her magic. Out came the skull, and a few more bones alongside it. She looked for a moment in its hollow eye sockets, but whatever she was thinking of she did not speak about. Another look inside, to confirm the shape of a few bones she'd left, then with those she'd grabbed still held she turned and walked away. "This is her mother, no doubt."
The two stallions looked for a moment at each other. "Are we just leaving her there?" one asked, nodding to the damaged coffin lying on the ground.
"Won't do her worse than what time did in decades and I did in moments," the mare said. "She won't care about it much, besides. She did not complain about either of the former, after all. A little rain won't be a deal breaker. Let her see the sky for a while."
The other stallion swallowed, then he spoke too. "Is it not disrespectful? I understand the reason, but you seem to care so little about the dead. Would you enjoy it if the same happened to you?"
"Graves are for the living to mourn, the dead care not for the state of their resting place." Twilight looked upwards as the first few drops of water fell on her feathers. "As for myself, I believe it quite likely I will be rotting in a forest or a lake, never found and never buried."