Scootaloo yawned. When Bash had pointed at the old couch in the back room of the bar, she had been so happy. It was the first time in - how long had it actually been? - that she had something soft underneath her body when she went to sleep- Though the couch really was comfortable, compared with the floor in the garage at least, she hadn't been able to drift off.
Her mind was filled with the events since she had left Ponyville. Did Bash really save her from that mugger yesterday?
It felt like it was weeks ago. Bash had just brought her home, to Rusty. Now that she thought about it, it seemed odd to her. She was just bringing a pony she just met home, before they even really talked? Who would do that?
She came up quickly with the answer. Good ponies. Bash had seen that she needed help, so she gave her food and a place to sleep. And not only that, she gave her somepony to love. It felt strange. Scoots had never been involved in anything romantic at all. She was completely knew to this whole thing. Yet what had happened between her and Bash was unmistakeable.
She wondered wether she and Bash might marry someday. Was that legal? Were two fillies allowed to marry? It would be silly if it wasn't, that's for sure. But even if they would, they wouldn't be able to have foals, physically.
She shook her head to get the thoughts out of it. Her sleepy brain seemed to give her the strangest ideas...
She forced herself to think about something different.
'Something different, something different, something different...' she thought.
It was getting on her nerves pretty quickly, but now she wasn't able to stop it anymore.
'Something different, something different, something different...'
She wanted to scream, but thought better of it, afraid to wake Rusty or Bash, who were probably having a pretty restful sleep. Instead, she just hit her forehead multiple times. Frustrated that it didn't work, she hit harder and harder. After one or two minutes of this, she gave up and lay her hoof down. The pain was now pulsing in her head. It would swell 'til the morning. She'd probably have something of it the whole day.
"Hnnngh", she groaned in the armrest of the couch. She felt so uncomfortable now on it. Deciding to go for a little walk, she raised from it, leaving the small blanket Rusty had given to her behind. She entered the front room, careful, not to make any noises now. She didn't know how thin the walls are, and she really didn't want to wake them up. She sneaked towards the door, not seeing the chair standing in her way.
It made a dull noise and her knee suddenly hurt. She let out a swall of course words that she shouldn't have known at her age, always careful to keep the volume down.
She continued her way to the door, but stopped after a few steps. Should she leave a note? No, she would most probably be back before they awoke anyways, since she hadn't really planned to stay out the whole night. So she left the pub and entered the dark roads of Manehatten.
Once she stepped outside, she found wet darkness surrounding her. She found it to be pitch black, the stars and the moon hidden behind big, dark clouds which were slowly dripping. You couldn't even call it rain, really. So she decided that it wasn't too bad for a little walk.
To her right was the only lightsource that was around for probably a mile. To her left the street was dark. She remembered the way she and Bash had come here first, after she had saved her at the shed. The pub had been on their right, so they had come from what was now left for her. She decided not to go that way, afraid to meet the unicorn she had her unpleasant encounter with again.
As she walked, she tried to arrange her thoughts. Had she made the right decisions in the past two days? Wasn't it kinda stupid to run away from Ponyville? No, she decided. It had been the only thing she could do. The only thing she regretted about it was that she didn't have time to say goodbye to her adopted sister. Rainbow Dash. She wondered whether the mare was thinking about her. She hoped she wasn't worried.
The more she thought about it, the worse she felt for leaving her without anypony telling her where she had gone. She might think something bad happened to her. Or was she just taking herself for way too important? Maybe she didn't even care about her. Maybe she was happy that she was gone.
What was she thinking, that was impossible. Yet the thought about it hurt. But she knew Rainbow Dash, and she wasn't the mare to not care about somepony. She was the element of loyalty, after all. She would be the last to leave anyone behind, especially if it was the pony she had promised to take under her wing.
Her thoughts wandered towards her friends, the crusaders. She missed them so badly. Did they miss her, too? Most probably not, since they were the ones who didn't want to have anything to do with her originally.
Once again she remembered the beauty of Sweetie Belle's voice. How perfectly she pronounced every word when she sung, putting her listeners in a deep trance. Scoots never had had the chance to tell her how much she loved it. She always wanted to ask Sweetie whether she would sing for her.
She had watched her once, just outside Ponyville, on a small clearance with a stump in the middle. Sweetie had sat there for a few hours, just singing for herself. Scoots had waited behind a tree, listening and dreaming to it. She felt so much less miserable when she heard Sweetie's voice. It had always filled her with warmth, even in the cold winter days they spent together in the clubhouse, barely keeping each other warm by sitting close to each other.
On these days they had always told each other stories, sometimes ghost stories, sometimes funny ones, but when none of them could think of any they hadn't shared already, Sweetie would start singing, first silent and shy, later loud and confident. She always had the right volume for each song. Sometimes her songs told stories, too. But most of them told about the beauty of the fall sun, shining on red and yellow leaves, slowly falling down in the wind.
A wall in front of her brought Scootaloo back to reality. She looked to her sides, noticing there weren't any walls, either. Now that she looked around, only behind her was a way. She turned around and walked back. She had been out here long enough, anyways.
The rain had stopped by now, and the sun was rising behind the old buildings of Manehatten, letting the sky shine in a tender rose like a dahlia. Eventually she came to a crossroad. There was a way behind her - of which she knew it was a dead end - one to her left and one to her right. Her heart speeded up. She didn't remember this! Where did she come from?
She rushed down the left alley, only to turn around after a few steps and run down the other street. She was panicking. She had to go somewhere, but where? She decided to just follow the road to her left. She sped up her movement and looked around, hoping to find anything familiar. Of course she didn't.
How could she have been that careless? That was so foolish of her! She should've known better. But she could blame herself for her stupidity later. Now she had bigger problems.
The road she followed had led to another crossing. Now there was one to the front and one to the right. She followed the one to her front, hoping it would get her right. But after a while, the road parted, again.
This cleared the last shimmer of hope from her. She let herself sink on the floor and dug her head into her fore legs. She couldn't help but cry at her situation. She was in a big city with probably millions of people living in it and had walked down the streets without any care of where she was going. This wasn't Ponyville anymore, there was no easy way to get out of this labyrinth. A single thought tortured her mind:
I am lost.