To her relief, Applejack woke up to the sound of drizzle over the cloth. The dogs hadn't looked like bandits, anyway.
To her irritation, she woke up to the sound of drizzle over the cloth. Damn seaside weather.
She walked out of the tent, whistling for Winona to appear. A moment later she did-- caked with mud and twigs, and spraying water over everything with her tail.
Applejack grumbled something under her breath, took off her saddlebags, and on nimble hooves climbed one of the gnarled trees. She was scanning the surroundings when one of the dogs exited their tent.
"How do you do it without hands?" he asked.
"When you grow up in an or-" she realized she was talking in Equish and shook her head "Grew up in a, uh, apples farm. Played in trees a lot, with old brother"
He nodded and went to start a fire, and after a moment Applejack jumped from the tree and put on her saddlebags again.
"Be back in a second, with water" she gave a pat to the canteen that hung from a strap in her saddlebag. The dog nodded.
Winona watched Orange Hat Horse wear her water-coverer and walk away, and her cheerful demeanor turned serious immediately. She walked to her pony's tent, sniffed it to make sure of whose it was, and sat between it and the diamond dog, ears erected.
It took Applejack a few minutes to reach the brook she had seen. It was clean from the rain that still fell on it, but she tasted it nonetheless. There wasn't any taste on it.
She took a water skin from her saddlebag, which looked not unlike a snake, and filled it and her canteen. With one strapped to her saddlebag and the other slung across her neck, she walked back to the camp, where the second dog had woken up and was stretching.
"Want something warm to drink?" she asked, taking off the overall.
The dogs nodded.
"Thanks," the one who was sitting by the fire gestured to the sky "You think it's going to last all day?"
"Seems like it" she took out a pot from her saddlebags and put it on the fire, then filled it with the water skin.
The dog who had been stretching came in with two cups and gave one to the other, a tea bag already on each.
"Where are you going to?" he asked, sitting down.
"Home" she said with a small shrug. Winona walked to her and sat in a unassuming manner, earning a pat in the head.
They both nodded.
"We are going to see our father," said one "He caught a cold, and at his age..." he let it in the air with a face.
"Just make sure to not get a cold yourselves" she said with a smile "don't want to worry him, don't you?"
-ยบ-
By the time the rain stopped, Applejack had been walking for several hours and the sun was at it's highest. It wasn't sudden, but rather a slow descent to nothingness.
She gave the sky a look -clear blue- and took off the hood of the overall, but kept it on. Only when she stopped to camp and had a fire going did she take it off, to hang it from a rope slung between trees near the fire.
When she was drinking something -and Winona was drinking warm water from a small plate-, something climbed her throat, and she barely had time to curse before a sneeze escaped her muzzle.
Damned seaside weather.