What followed Sassy's acceptance of her odd traveling companion was a long, one-sided conversation about the merits of satin versus lace in creating a sense of elegance and refinement. It will not be recounted here because it was perhaps the single most boring thing that has ever happened since the dawn of time, but it did happen. It happened, and the creature that Sassy did not acknowledge as a sasquatch listened to every word, giggling and clapping its hands at every inane alliteration, always with a gleeful "UWAH!"
This of course only spurred Sassy to new heights, so that she went into greater and greater detail, alliterating more and more often until at long last she reached that fabled realm of seamless, flowing perfection known for eons unto ponydom as "the zone." Therein, she managed not once but thrice to place in immediate succession words that began with the letter X. It is a feat unrivaled in all the history of the spoken word, and to dare replicate it here, even in mere text, would threaten the reader with the permanent ruination of all cognitive function. Sassy Saddles, for those few minutes, was more than sass and more than saddles. Indeed, for that brief flicker in the infinite continuum of time and space, Sassy Saddles was nothing less than a goddess!
Then, Sassy Saddles went blind.
She had most definitely noted her eyes' slowly developing sensitivity to the afternoon sun, along with a mild pain that had continued to escalate in intensity as she had given her rousing disquisition. When at last the pain became unbearable and her vision failed her fully, she ground to a halt, the howling laughter and thunderous clapping of the mutant ape-beaver not-squatch enduring several seconds beyond her cessation of both speech and motion.
"Jeopardizing jodhpurs," she mumbled, producing one final chorus of goats and clapping. "It would appear I've gone quite blind."
"Uwah?" grunted the ape thing.
"There was a welding accident earlier," explained Sassy. "I was not aware of it as such at the time, but in considering my current circumstances, I am forced to the opinion that it was, in fact, an accident."
"Uwah," said the ill-defined ecological anomaly.
"Yes, 'uwah,'" said Sassy. "There is a crow I know of whom you simply must meet, but for the moment that is neither here nor there. What matters is that I am still on the railroad tracks. So long as I maintain my current direction, and stay between the rails, I should make it to Ponyville without incident."
Undaunted, Sassy Saddles strode forward, tripping only seven times as she went, and even fewer which she would admit to herself as having been proper instances of tripping. "Stumbles" she decided they were more fitly called; hardly trips at all. Still, given her current destitution of vision, it was only a matter of time -- or rather of distance -- before some peril or other befell her. The distance in question was some eighteen paces or thereabout, (wherein all of the aforementioned stumbles took place) and the peril was a small hole next to a cross tie.
Now, this was no ordinary hole. This hole, of all holes beside the cross ties of all the railroad tracks throughout Equestria, was certainly the most unique, owing to a long, sordid history that began some two hundred years prior.
There had been a band of rats, themselves not ordinary rats, but avaricious bandit rats; highwaymen of the worst order, responsible for foul deeds to chill the blood of even the most stalwart. They had dug this very hole as the entrance to their hideout, though the railroad had of course not been present at that time.
In the course of all their robbery and pillage, these rats had accosted a rat princess with whom the bandit rat king had fallen deeply in love. So smitten was he with the young rat maiden that he sent her away unharmed, taking only her signet ring as a memento of their meeting.
When her father, the rat king* of the greatest rat kingdom of Whitetail Wood, in the course of a banquet at his great rat castle, discovered the signet ring missing from his daughter's tiny rat claw, he sent word throughout the kingdom that any rat who should bring it before him should be given his daughter's claw in marriage. There was little question as to why he would promise such a thing; it was simply the sort of thing kings promised in those days when princesses and priceless artifacts of the state were involved.
By and by, the bandit rat king heard of this offer, and said to his band of rat bandits, "We shall go to the castle of the great and noble rat king to receive our share in the kingdom!"
But it was a trick, for the rat king's spies had seen the rat princess' meeting with the bandit rat king. The bandit rat king and his band set out to the castle, and upon their arrival found themselves surrounded by a hundred rat guards. The rat king stepped forth to demand their surrender, but the bandit rat king refused, and a terrible battle was waged, wherein the rat king's forces, being substantially greater in number, quickly gained the upper claw. For the rat bandits, this action eventually devolved into a fighting retreat.
As they tried to make their escape through the woods, the rat bandits were struck down one by one until finally only the bandit rat king remained alive. Grievously wounded, he dragged himself back into his hideout. As he lay dying, he clutched the signet ring, his one memento of his life's only true love, to his chest. With his last breath, he lay a curse upon the ring, the hole, and himself, swearing that if anyone for the rest of time should enter into this place to take from his grasp this, his one last, most precious possession in all the world, the hole should collapse upon them and bury them alive. This he swore, and gave up his spirit, and for two hundred years not so much as a single ant -- not so much as soil to fill it in -- had dared to enter that hole, so heavy and ominous did the bandit rat king's spirit linger upon its entrance.
Until Sassy Saddles stepped in it.
In keeping with the curse, the hole immediately collapsed around her hoof, sealing it there as firmly as a well-rooted tree. It is worth noting that this was still a rat's curse, and what seems like an especially terrible curse to a rat is often not quite so lethal to a creature as large as a pony. As such, the whole incident would probably have constituted a mere inconvenience, except that, unbeknownst to Sassy, the engineer had exaggerated the repair time on the locomotive, mostly in an attempt to get her to leave.
So it was that as she stood there on the railroad tracks, blind and with her right hind leg buried to well above the hock in the collapsed hideout of a forgotten bandit rat king, Sassy Saddles heard the distinct chugging of an approaching train, growing louder by the second.
"Cliches and Culottes!" she cried, but this time the not-squatch did not clap or giggle.
"UWAH!" it shouted.
"I KNOW!" shouted Sassy.
"UWAH!" it shouted.
"I'M TRYING!" shouted Sassy.
Indeed, she was trying, pulling with all her might in an effort to extract her leg. To her misfortune, however, the life of a fashion diva had left her with precious little might to spend in the endeavor, so that she made little headway. Being a unicorn, she might have dug herself free with her innate telekinesis, but that would have required her to be able to see where she was digging.
As she stood there, hopelessly stuck, she heard over the growing roar of the oncoming train the sound of its whistle. By its volume, she knew it must be close, now. Fueled by adrenaline, she tugged even harder, but it was to no avail. At last, out of ideas and certain of her impending doom, Sassy broke down.
"What did I do to deserve this!?" she whined, collapsing to her belly. "I'm not a bad pony; I'm just sassy! Astonishingly, irascibly sassy with a mildly obsessive love of a single poetic device that I perhaps overuse from time to time!"
Here, she realized that she had allowed herself to lay down in the dirt, still clothed in her fine, suede-lined outfit.
"And now my dress is probably dirty!" she whined. "I'm going to die in a dirty dress!"
With that, Sassy Saddles began to cry, wailing in a most undignified and in no way alliterative fashion. She had been at this for no more than a few seconds when she felt something scrubbing violently at the dirt around her trapped leg. There were a pair of them -- huge, flat, and firm. They were hands, she realized; the hands of the mutant beaver ape.
The whistle squealed -- close, so close! The hands dug -- huge, weird, and so not belonging to a sasquatch! Death was upon her! It was the end of all things chic and worthy that Sassy Saddles would ever know!
Then, something yanked her free from the ground, and she was tugged suddenly through the air. She rolled down a hillside, not knowing where she was or where her tumble would end. The air around her was full of the squeal of the train's whistle, the screech of its braking wheels, and her own screams. Darkest amidst all of these, however, there came one agonized "UWAH!?"
Then, after what had been the space of mere seconds, it was over. She was sitting upright on the ground, trembling and thankful to be alive. She could hear the faint hiss of steam escaping from the train's boiler, and she sniffled and rubbed at her nose, not even caring if she did so elegantly.
"Beaver?" she said.
There came only silence.
"Mutant Beaver!?" she called out again.
Silence.
"Mufflers and miniskirts?"
Only silence.
She was so obviously in shock from the experience that nopony from the train made any effort to talk to her until they arrived in Ponyville a few minutes later. An ambulance was fetched from the hospital, and shortly thereafter, courtesy of some medical magic and a pair of sunglasses, she could see again, even if her eyes did still hurt a bit. The nurse who was tending to her kept giving her odd looks, and Sassy found herself wondering repeatedly whether it was because of her filthy dress, of which she was now doubly conscious, being able at last to see it.
"If there was a more interesting name for a nurse's cap," said Sassy, "I would find a way to alliterate it -- sassily."
"Hmm?" mumbled the nurse, a white earth mare with a medical cross and four red hearts for her cutie mark.
"To show my displeasure at being scrutinized," said Sassy. "What is the problem?"
"They're just telling some really weird stories about you downstairs," said the nurse. "The police took a report from the other passengers, and ... well ... Eh, they'll get around to asking you about it; don't take my word for it."
In keeping with a brisk narrative, a police officer stepped into the room at nearly that exact moment, and gave her an even stranger look than had the nurse.
"Okay," he said, "So far all I've got is a few 'I don't know what I saws,' one 'You mean I missed her?' one 'Y'all know what it were!' and one 'Caw.' There was some kind of thick, brown fur they found on the front of the locomotive, and all the passengers say some kind of big, hairy animal was seen running from beside the tracks. You wanna tell me what's going on?"
Sassy slumped down in her bed, and sighed.
"I believe it was a sasquatch," she said.
"Great," said the police pony, throwing up his forelegs. "I'm gonna ask to be put back on drug enforcement; this is too much."
He turned and left the room. As the door swung shut, they heard him grumbling about how he should have gone to business school, and then he was gone.
"Sasquatch?" asked the nurse.
"Sasquatch," said Sassy.
"You sure you didn't hit your head?" asked the nurse.
"I'm fine," said Sassy, "and if possible I'd like to leave so I can make it to my meeting; even if I will be late."
"Well, you're cleared to leave whenever you want," said the nurse. "Go right ahead; nopony's going to stop you."
Sassy gathered her things, and exited the hospital by the front door. Outside, she found a curious thing: two orderlies trying desperately to move a large, heavy rock from the middle of the main walkway.
"What's all this?" she asked.
"We have no idea," said one of the orderlies. "It just appeared here like half an hour ago."
As she walked around the rock, she found something that gave her a shock, and brought a smile to her face. There, painted on its side in some substance best left unidentified, was a poorly-rendered picture of a unicorn walking beside a large ape creature along a set of railroad tracks. Notably, the ape creature seemed to be giggling and clapping its hands.
She stared at it for a moment, and chuckled quietly to herself.
"Uwah," she said. "Now, how could I alliterate that?"
finem