Scorch by lyra_lover777
The heat. The unbearable heat.
It beat against her back, made her mane cling to her neck in a sweaty mess, and made her legs so tired that every step was an accomplishment.
The sand whipped at her eyes, though thankfully they were guarded by twin sheets of purple glass.
Her tongue was sandpaper, a thick, dry husky thing that took up the volume of her mouth. Its dryness made her want to choke and swallow at the same time, but from the clouds of dust and her nausea, she could do neither.
A little pebble, picked up in a gust of arid wind, flew towards her. It collided with the left sheet of tinted glass. The lens shattered, the chunks of glass, along with the smooth, hellish pebble, falling into her left eye.
She cried out, her mouth opening. The wind whisked the sound away, and sand billowed up from the ground, filling her gaping mouth.
She closed her muzzle, accidentally swallowing the sand. She coughed, clutching her chest and throat as more sand filled her mouth until she was lying on her side, a mound covered in tan, gritty sand.
She was Vinyl Scratch, a resident of Canterlot. The rowdy daughter of a noble, forced to embark on a journey far from home, into distant lands at the far corners of ponydom.
Her mother, a baroness, had thought this trip would straighten her out, whip her into shape before her coronation as next Baroness since her mother was beginning to become well into her years.
Now, her she lay, withering away under an ever growing pile of sand, so tired that she could barely struggle.
The dumb plane, run by that zebra. Vinyl should have totally recognized that he was on something or other, and was, no way in hell, certified to fly a cargo plane.
But either way she had hoofed over thirty bits, boarding the plane that would lead her to her doom.
After the first ten minutes, the engine gave out. There was only one parachute, and the pilot, of course, smacked her to the ground, making her bleed, before twisting the parachute on and jumping out the window.
Vinyl had latched onto his leg, being pulled down with him.
When they hit the ground, the white sheet billowing behind them lazily, the pilot slapped her once again before quickly disappearing in the direction of where they had come.
But Vinyl soon became heavily misguided, and lost her sense of direction, along with her state of mind, only able to execute small commands such as "walk" and "breathe."
Vinyl stuck a leg out, somehow gaining enough strength from the angry memory to power the motion. But all her leg hit was sand upon more sand upon more sand.
Her slowly failing cranium realized that a sand dune could easily be forming over her.
She tried to shriek, but when her jaw snapped open, her mouth's interior was once again filled with sand. And there was no where to spit the gritty stuff out.
She felt like a pony hourglass, slowly filling up with sand until she would blow.. She could feel the sand leaking into her nostrils and snaking down her throat.
She gave on last cry, swallowing a load of sand, before going still, her mind slack and blank.
===
The sand surged through the air. She was happy for her tan robes that blocked the vicious, skin biting substance out. She peered out from behind the mesh veil that fell over her eyes.
She had seen, from her makeshift hut, a trail of smoke twisting across the sky. She had went out to investigate, and hopefully scavenge some valuables, despite the warnings of an imminent sandstorm from her brother, Arpeggio.
The two had been young and both the two first chairs in the Canterlot Orchestra, and strived to meet their parents' excellence.
But when they had traveled out on a train to Zebrica to hear a Zebrician cellist for Appregio's birthday, the train had crashed, and they and a few zebras were the only survivors.
None of the small band of survivors was rescued, as the rescuers did not take the time to look around the location of the crash. If they had, they would have found ten adult zebras and two very frightened earth pony foals.
After two years, all the zebras had left to try and make it back to their homes, but she found all their bodies sometime later in her life. She remembered what they looked like, even if they were bloated and dead. After all, it was hard to forget the faces of torturers and ones who whipped her daily, along with other scarring activities.
Tears blurred her vision at these memories. If it was real sadness or the biting wind, it may never be known.
But suddenly, after stepping onto a new dune, she fell through it, right onto the cushy limbs of another pony.
She shrieked, but sand fell and covered her up.
She bucked at it, and a hole opened up in the hill.
She whinnied, and dragged the limp alabaster body of her find out onto the blistering sands.
Prodigious burns covered the mare's body.
She hauled the weak, possibly dead mare over her shoulder, feeling her soft, blue mane against her gray jacket covered hide.
She smiled for the first time in years as she hiked home.