Heart of the Storm
I just stood there, obviously dumbfounded. How the hell did this thing know my name? Better yet, what the hell is that thing? I felt like standing around there wasn't going to get any answers, so I wiped the surprised look off of my face and started to ask some questions.
"What the... How in the hell do you know my name?" Was my very bright response.
"I know a lot of things. But that is aside the point. I am here to warn you."
The weird floating light said. Well, it's more like he sent it into my mind or whatever, but that's aside the point.
"Uh, Warn me? About what?" I responded, a confused look returning to my face. I guess I just couldn't keep a straight face around a floating light warning me about something or the other.
"Your existence here is for a purpose." It said all high and mighty.
"Okay, great. So now I know that my existence is not pointless. And your point is?" Sarcasm probably wasn't the best choice, but oh well.
"Your destiny is a double edged sword. You are meant for important things here, but something was lost to get here..." It responded, it's voice beginning to fade.
"What? What do you mean?! Who the hell are you, anyways?" I shouted at it. Again, probably not the best of choices.
"Who I am is unimportant... As for what I mean ... time will tell." It's voice was practically a whisper at this point.
"Wait! I'm not done with you!" I frantically shouted.
"There will be time later. Your friends approach... " Then, it faded to nothing. I was still frustrated at it's cryptic response to my questions.
"What the hell did you mean!? Come back! I have more questions!" I fell to my knees, all four of them. I was so close to finding out why I was a pony, yet I learned absolutely nothing. True to his word, my friends, or whatever they could be called at this point, came over a hill looking down on the small valley that I had rolled down into. They were standing all next to each other, pretty bunged up and dusty, but besides that, generally okay.
"High Wing! Who are you shouting at?" A voice shouted from the distance, one I recognized as Thunder.
"N-No one. I'm fine..." I said, still trying to get over that weird light thing.
"Well, if you insist." He shouted as he began to run down the hill towards my direction. It took the lot of them a few seconds to get to me, and by then I could feel a searing pain spread throughout my leg. I looked down on it, and saw a red line dripping blood. I was injured.
"Great, as if I need any more excitement..." I groaned, sitting down completely and looked at all the other ponies, who seemed to be at a loss of what to do.
"Well? Bandages? Hello?" I said to the dumbfounded faces around me, suddenly snapping them to attention.
"Right... of course, dear..." Picturesque said, looking through her saddle bag.
All the other ponies followed in suit. After a few seconds, they went out of the saddle bags and shook their heads.
"None of you have first-aid kits on you...?" I said, obviously unamused and in pain, my leg now kicked into overdrive. " Take your time, only losing blood here."
"W-well... We normally don't get into accidents that much... So there really is never a need. In fact, the train conductor doesn't even know why we got in a wreck... It was completely random." Stormy said, freaking out about my leg.
"God damn it! It was that thing, wasn't it?" I let out a frustrated sigh.
"Uh, stallion? What thing?" Fleet Flier said, also staring at me leg. I decided to take some action about that thing before they freak out, or I pass out.
" Do you have any clothes with you... Any kind of shirts or whatever ponies wear?" I flatly said.
" Clothes...? Why, yes I do. I brought an extra dress, just in case." Picturesque said.
"Why do you need some clothes...?" Canvas said, a look of confusion in his face.
"You'll see." I responded as I took the dress from Picturesque and began to tear strips off with my teeth.
"W-what are you doing?" Treble said, pretty silent up until now. I didn't respond, but instead continued tearing until I had a decent number of strips laid out in front of me. I started to try to tie them around my wound, but to little avail.
"A little help here?" I said, a strip in my mouth. Picturesque nodded and the strips began to float up around my wound and tie themselves around it.
"Make sure they're tight. Really tight." I stated. She nodded as the strips tightened considerably. I grunted in pain, but nodded my head for her to continue. After a couple minutes of this, my leg was tied up tight and was pretty damn sore.
"How resourceful." Canvas said, looking at my makeshift bandaging.
"Yeah, just remember I've got to change them every four to six hours... Hopefully we can find some kind of town until then." Looking around, I found the hill I had a pleasant roll down.
"And how are we going to do that, exactly?" Fleet said, a look of confusion on his face. I just shook my head.
"Follow the railroad tracks, of course." Was my response to his inane question.
"Oh." He responded with a straight face. The others just shook their head and attempted to laugh a bit, but none of them could find that sense of humor which they had so much of earlier.
"It's night so watch your step, don't take a pleasant roll down a hill like me." I said. Looking up, I noticed exactly how long I rolled down, and considered it nearly miraculous that I hadn't been considerably more injured. I let out an audible sigh as I began to climb, my leg throbbing with each step. Probably leaking blood. The longer I climbed, the more I see things that could've gone considerably more wrong. A stick jutting out of the ground in which I could've impaled myself on. A large rock I could've hit my head on and suffered some kind of brain trauma. So forth and so forth. If I had died, who the hell would that glowing light talk to? I could imagine hime floating up and saying, ' You're here for a rea- Oh... Probably not the best of my ideas. Huh.' as I was impaled on a stick or something. My frustration turned into anger, which really got my heart pumping. Turns out, your heart pumps blood, which my leg just so happened to be leaking. Now that it was pumping faster, so was my leg. This forced me to calm down as the wound began to sting considerably. The purple strips from the dress was soaked with blood, making the purple around a nice line turn a darker color. I grumbled some curses to myself, but realized that no pony here would know what any of those even meant, so saying them under my breath was kind of pointless.
After my train of thought derailed, it took only moments of perseverating on random thoughts before I realized that I was at the top. Looking down, I could see that we had come a considerable distance up. The rest of my friends followed in suit, looking towards the railroad and then off into the distance.
"So, we gotta walk all that way, huh?" Thunder said, a distant look in his eyes.
"You guys are basically horses, right? So, why would walking be a problem?"
"It's not that it's a problem, it's just so bore to the ing. Come on, walking miles, when I can't fly ahead at high speeds? Sometimes, having non-pegasi friends can be hard." Fleet Flier grumbled.
"Oh, would you be quiet? We've had enough annoyances for the night..." Picturesque said to him, looking off to the distance as well.
"Shouldn't we be walking...?" Treble said, her violin miraculously in one piece and strapped to her side in its case.
" Yeah, that'd be a good idea... This is actually a nice scene. If only I had some paints..." Canvas wistfully said. After that, we just kind of started to walk, not knowing exactly where we were going first, however, my final destination was still Ponyville.
After about an hour of nothing but railroad and hills and seven exhausted ponies, some lights finally came into view. As to where we were, I had no idea. However, a goal in our eyes gave us heart to start running, even myself. I would definitely regret that later with pains in my leg, but I was really, really tired at that point. Fleet nearly tripped over some railing, and the rest of us stopped in our tracks to make sure he didn't fall. I laughed, of course. It was pretty funny, but none of the other ponies seemed to have the energy to even laugh. So, goal in eye once again, we charged ahead.
When we finally got there, we learned that it was just a stop with some glorious, glorious beds. And a first aid kit. Yes, a first aid kit. I was overjoyed. However, when I took off my makeshift bandages, the green fur around my wound matted and stained a reddish green color. I let out a deep sigh and looked around. The walls were a tannish color with streaks of brown right before the roof and the floor. There was a counter where the inn keeper or whatever they call them here normally was, but he was preoccupied with getting that first aid kit for me. My leg stung badly, but it wasn't burning as horribly as it was about ten minutes ago. There was a couple doors to the left and right of the counter, and I wondered where they went. I dropped the thought and leaned my head against the arm of the bench I was laying on, looking up at the white roof and sighing. I tried to make shapes and pictures out of the various bumps and notches on the roof as I laid on the bench, getting insanely bored. He was taking his sweet time. Perfectly in time with this thought, the door swung open and a tall male pony with brown fur and short, white hair that was spiked back slightly came in through the door, the inn keeper in suit behind him, considerably shorter then the large pony that just came in through the door, his fur a light blue with darker blue hair. Both of them were earth ponies.
"Well sir, I'm sorry to wake you up, but you're the only pony here with medical experience. I'd rather not make any mistakes." The inn keeper said to the tall brown pony, obviously trying to suck up to him so he pays well. The aged brown pony just growled lowly as he walked over to me, his stoic expression suddenly changing as he saw my wound. I guess it was bad by pony standards, but I tried to avoid looking at it anyways.
"How far did you walk here?" He said, not wasting time with any introductions.
"I don't know... about five or six miles, I'd say." I answered him like I'd answer any doctor.
"How did you not bleed out for that long?" He said in his low voice.
" Well, I cut some strips from a dress and wrapped them around my bleeding leg, getting some help tying them, of course." I said, slightly imitating his flat tone. What could I say? He kept me waiting long enough.
"Clever. More clever then any of the ponies around here. You're not from around here, are you?" His light, crystal blue eyes seemed to stare right through me. My heart skipped a beat before I realized what he meant.
"No, not really. Just passing through, on my way to somewhere." It's not that I didn't trust him, I just really didn't feel like explaining anything at the time.
"Right. Well, I'm going to clean this wound and your fur, then apply some antibiotics before wrapping it up. In the morning, I'll change the bandages before you leave." He said very routinely, like he rehearsed that in the mirror or something.
"Right, how much is this gonna cost me?" I asked, my human nature speaking out again.
"Cost? You're funny, kid." He stated all high and mighty. However, getting this done for free sounded nice to me. Ponies certainly were kinder then humans, that's for sure.
After a few seconds of me clenching my teeth and wishing I had fists so I could clench them too, the white bandages were wrapped around my right foreleg. I let out a sigh of relief as the old doctor pony walked away, the inn keeper walking up to me after he left.
"Your friends are waiting for you in the the third door to the left past this door-" He pointed to one of the doors on the right side, "You should be able to rest here well tonight. You can pay in the morning, but you need rest right now."
I just nodded, too tired to say anything really. So, there I went, into the room with six crazy, yet strangely lovable ponies, and fell asleep, not even considering what would happen in the future.