So remember the whole 'moving food to some other place' idea I had yesterday?
Yeah, terrible idea.
Moving around is painful enough as it is, so I don't know why I thought moving WHILE carrying things was gonna be any better.
First I had to decide where I would move. There aren't a whole lot of liveable spaces left on the ship that are far enough away from the fire. The only place I could find was a portion of cargo hold, but that had a massive hole that looked out onto the Badlands, which would make it easier for wild animals to find me if it ever came to that. I figured I might as well try and move some of the food and water there, so that when the fire did move over to the galley, I would only have to worry about getting myself out of there. And so I went back.
Once I had shuffled over to the first crate of food, I realized that, being an earth pony, I would have to either drag the crate with my mouth or stand on my hind legs, holding the food in my forehooves. After repeated failed trials of trying to move the food with my teeth, due to the frequent and heavy debris in the area, I realized the second option was now the only option. But did I stop to think that standing up on a broken leg may be a bad idea?
Hell no!
The instant I put my weight on my back leg, I collapsed with a scream of pain. Let me tell you, nothing, I repeat, NOTHING will EVER hurt more than that just did. After my nosedive, I stayed there for about an hour, moaning and wailing and clutching my leg. That's me, the strong, independent stallion of survival.
After lying on my back for ages bawling like a little filly, though, I decided to just take each individual item of food out and move it to the hold. Slow? Yes. Painful? Definitely. Inefficient? Certainly. But effective. In a mere four hours, I was able to move two full crates of food over to the hold. So thats about...what, five days worth? Six? Doesn't matter, it's a start.
So now I've given myself a little break. I'd give myself a raise too, if I could. I don't get paid nearly enough for this.
'Hey,' you might ask, 'it's already day two, and you still haven't told me who you are and how you got here!' That's correct, imaginary reader! I haven't, and its about time that I did.
Firstly, the name is Bond. James Bond.
Heh, not really. I've just always wanted to say that. My name is actually Steel Course. When you here that name, I bet you start thinking of a Royal Guard type of stallion. Tall, white or silver with a cold, hardy stare, somepony who's super masculine and tough, right?
Wrong.
I'm about average height, and a brownish color. I like to say it's a walnut tone, my friends like to say its the shade of cow dung. I also have a pretty small frame. I'm not a featherweight, but I'm certainly not a massive, hulking horse. The best word I can think of would be lithe. Probably not the best form for surviving alone in a desolate place, but oh well. Just another little problem I have to deal with.
Same goes for my being an earth pony. If I were a unicorn, I could teleport myself out of this mess, or at the very least use some magic to make things a little easier. If I were a pegasus, I could probably fly out of here in a week or so. But as an earth pony, I'm grounded and magic-less. The only thing I got going for me is my supposed 'earth-pony-strength', but I've never been strong at all. I'd rather have something like 'earth-pony-sight' or 'earth-pony-speed' or 'earth-pony-survival-in-the-badlands-skills'.
Anyways, let me tell you why and how I got here. I work as a carpenter. I basically do - well, did - repairs all over the ship. I fixed up the hull, riggings, and just about anything else that needed repairing. Wood is what I'm best with, but I can work with other materials as well, like metal. Anyways, I was a freelancer. Any airship coming into or out of Canterlot could have been my home for a week to three months or longer. I worked mostly with merchants, who were shipping their goods to and from remote, hard-to-reach places all across Equestria. Once I was invited to work on one of the Royal Guard's airships! Well, ok, so it turned out that they were really conmen disguised as guards, but oh well, it's still a pretty cool story.
Anyway, it was a good life, I suppose. Work was easy (carpentry is my special talent, after all), pay was good, I got to travel all over Equestria and beyond, and I met some really great people who became my lifelong friends.
At least, until this voyage.
From the beginning I could tell it was gonna be bad. Not as bad as it's been, but still pretty bad. Like 88% as bad.
When the captain approached me in the bar, I could tell something was wrong. He looked intoxicated, and spat as he spoke. He mentioned something about a trip to Saddle Arabia and huge amounts of gold, but never once told me the name of his ship or what he was carrying. Then he proceeded to boast about all of his past exploits, which I could clearly see were lies. But, to be polite, I just sat and listened. Eventually, he told me in his inebriated glory that I should join him and that he would, and I quote, "bestow more bits on me than Celestia's left cheek".
Yeah, don't worry, it didn't make any sense to me either.
But, I had been out of work for some time and needed the bits, so after I had met this guy, he took me to his ship and, let me tell ya, the thing was a mess. Honestly, it may look better as a steaming pile of broken timber than it did before. Planks were missing, the balloon was lopsided, and the hull looked pretty torn apart, like it had made one too many emergency landings. And those were just from looking at it. I didn't even want to know what else was wrong, but as the ship's carpenter, that's my job. So yay, a ton of work for me.
I did try and leave. I mumbled some excuse about my sick aunt or leaving the oven on back at home or something, but at that the captain went berserk. He started yelling at me through his thick beard about loyalty and camaraderie, but I think he was really just upset because I was the first carpenter in a while to dare step aboard his shoddy craft. After his little outburst, I meekly agreed to go on. That's when I met the rest of the crew.
First was Buttercup. Don't be fooled by her sweet name, she was a vixen. She was the first mate, and was almost as bad as the captain in leadership skills. She would stomp around the deck in heavy boots that gave a horrible clanking sound every time she set her hoof down, screaming orders and oaths at the crew. As time when on, the others and I began to associate her boots with fear. She would employ horrible means of discipline, from verbal threats to physical attacks. Once, when somepony was not "scrubbing the deck hard enough", she bucked him right in the chest. Poor guy was sent to the doctor for days.
Speaking of the doctor, Cold Feet, he was... interesting, to say the least. Any time you had to visit him he would try and convince you to let him heal you using one of his "new and improved methods of medical care". They were all insane. One time he tried to get me to eat my own foreleg off to help dull the pain of a sunburn. Yeah, he was definitely interesting.
Next was the cook, Sloppy Joe. He was a gruff, constantly grouchy stallion with no sense of taste whatsoever. The guy literally couldn't tell the difference between salt and sugar, leading to more than one unpleasant meal. Worst part was that he firmly believed his cooking was excellent and everypony else was wrong, uncultured swine. Strange, though, I don't think I ever saw him eat what he had made.
Then there was the botswain, Onyx River. From first glance you could tell he was from Canterlot, and every moment after that he would make sure that you never forgot. The guy had an ego bigger than the airship, always shamelessly self-promoting. In fact, he was so busy talking himself up I hardly remember him actually doing anything worthwhile. Mostly just pranced about the ship, reminding people about his supposedly-royal heritage and how he was "forty-second in line for the crown".
Next is Dazzleflash. Oh Dazzleflash. Overall, he wasn't that bad of a guy. Honestly, he was probably my best friend on that ship, though that isn't saying much. He was, as I mentioned earlier, the helmspony, in charge of the wheel. He was also a heavy drinker. More than once somepony else had to take control after he had fallen asleep in another one of his drink-induced slumber, and more than once he was viciously chewed out by Buttercup. His biggest fault and biggest gift was that he was unfazed by just about everything, so he always found his way back to the bottle.
Finally, there was Merope. She was the navigator, and a griffin. She's one of those people that you can't help but feel sorry for when you first hear about her, but then instantly despise as soon as you meet her. She must've had some trouble as a kid, because everything she would say to you would be an attempt to belittle you. She would insult anything, from your mother to your life to the way you walked, and then proceed to hyperbolize herself. It was actually kinda sad at first, but then it just got annoying, especially when she ever crossed the line with an insult.
So yeah, this was my metaphorical, three-week-long family. Oh, how I hated it.
So after meeting all these wonderful, charming people, I learned we were taking a shipment of gems to Saddle Arabia, in exchange for silk rugs. Really pretty swanky for such a lousy airship. The first week flew by (eh? Get it? "flew" by? Cause I was on an airship? Oh, never mind), with the biggest nuisance being Sloppy Joe's cooking. On about day sixteen we spotted another airship. Buttercup immediately began ordering us to battle stations, despite the ship's lack of any weapons whatsoever. The most deadly thing we had on board was probably Sloppy Joe's cooking. Seriously, that food was terrible. Anyway, turned out it was just another merchant ship, and they cleared off a day or two later. Meanwhile I spent most of my time fixing the ship. Honestly I'm pretty bummed that all my hard work has been reduced to smoldering ashes and crushed wood. I put a lot of pony-hours into this hunk of junk, I was kinda hoping it'd be worth the trouble at the end.
We were just a few days away from the Saddle Arabian border when the crash happened. I suppose I could try and hoof it (ha, get it? Another pun!) to the border, but that isn't at all realistic in my condition. I have a broken leg, little water and food, and no means of shelter. Plus the stretch of land between the Badlands and Saddle Arabia is grueling. It's a mountain range with steep cliffs and deep trenches, and it's riddled with caves. Countless explorers and cartographers have gone into these tunnels and never returned. The ones that have returned weeks later, weak and psychotic. Definitely someplace I do not want to go.
So, it appears I'm stuck here for a while. The fire is actually spreading a bit quicker than I originally thought. The winds no doubt carried it in this direction, but so far it hasn't gotten too close. Hopefully I'll be able to move most of the food and water out before it reaches me.
Speaking of which, I should probably go do just that. Maybe I can get through another crate in only three hours this time!