Sparkler popped out of her teleport a couple of feet in the air, just enough for his hooves to brush the very tips of the wild grass beneath her. Even though she precisely shot for such a height, the short fall was enough to catch her by surprise. Perhaps it was the adrenaline now coursing through her, edging her onto the tips of her hooves, that caused her not to think about what was happening and simply act.
But now, as she laid sprawled out in the grass with a sore ache at the base of her tail, there was nothing she could do but think. Her forehooves grabbled for her face, tugging at her mane and yanking her horn from side to side as a wave of emotion crashed into her. She kicked out at the air and struggled for breath, patting herself down as everything that had just transpired repeated inside her mind like a broken record. One moment, she was trying to come up with a way to weasel away from the two stallions, and then she was hit over the head. The next thing she knew—
“I exploded,” she uttered, staring listlessly at the empty sky overhead. “I seriously just exploded.”
The sky looked down on her and offered her its everything. The wind danced over the tips of the wild grass, finding the depression she made in the field and tickled her nose. Not too far away, the sound of flowing water slowly came up to meet her. She could’ve sworn she also heard a bird chirping. Soon thereafter, the a deep shadow fell over her and the sky began to darken.
She threw her hooves over eyes this time and pulled. “What the heck is wrong with me?!” she cried out, writhing there on the ground. Not even an echo tried to answer her.
Eventually, after the stars started to bore their holes in the sky like awakening eyes, and after the winds shifted from bringing chills to driving a stinging cold, and when the tears that welled up inside the pits of her eyes had dried, and all that was keeping her down the weighty migraine rocking her head, she sat up. Sparkler glanced out over what she could see of the world around her, and she sighed when she found the same old Green Stretch sprawling out in all directions.
She hung her head, just for bits and pieces of metal to slide off her horn and fall into a pile in her lap. She picked one of the odd fragments up, which felt warm in her hooves. It was covered in black soot marks and gave off the distinct, earthy scent of ozone, like the smell of fresh rain. She frowned when she realized some of the same black marks were all over her hooves. And that she’d been running her hooves all over her face earlier.
It was in the night when she first appeared her, wasn’t it? So why hadn’t she popped yet? Then again, Sharp Tack could’ve been lying to her. About that, at least. She knew she did a lot of lying herself. She dropped the metal fragment, reached over for her satchel, and stood.
The late evening was already handing the sky over to the darkness of night. Just a few lingering colors of sunset clung to the edges of the Windhurst Mountains to the east. She slung her satchel on and then walked over to where the sound of flowing water.
She hobbled down a small earthen embankment and appeared on the rocky shoreline of a familiar river. Her satchel absent slid off as she approached it. The water was much colder than before, which stung her hooves and legs as she waded further out into it. It then bit her as she took a deep breath and submerged herself in it.
At least the quick bath seemed to subdue—or rather override—the pain of her headache. Sparkler shortly ran back out of the river, her teeth chattering and her legs flailing between steps. Maybe she should’ve waited until the sun was out before doing that. But then again, she didn’t know if she wasn’t going to pop somewhere with any sort of water source. Which should be happening now. Or sometime soon. She sat on the riverbank, cold and wet, gripping her head with her hooves as she waited for the inevitable.
Which, as her luck would have it, didn’t come. Even as the night reigned completely overhead and her only comfort was the full moon’s light reflecting off the river, she still hadn’t popped. Instead, her headache only kept getting worse. Another hour passed in miserable silence until she finally got fed up and the odd stench coming from her satchel was too great to ignore.
She grabbed the bag, overturned it so everything clattered out onto the rocks, and then marched over to the river and furiously dunked the satchel in it. There wasn’t really a thought to it, she just kept shaking it around and smashing it against the riverbed. Even after the bag was well and truly soaked, to the point every bit of dirt and grime had left it, she kept dunking it, again and again. Her teeth were grit, gnashing together in a moment of absentmindedness. The pain in her head was simply too much for her to not give her attention to.
Until, at some point in the dead of night, she regained a bit of composure. Her legs were weak, her entire body racked with tiredness and shivering in the cold. The comforting winds now peppered her with needlepoints as she slugged back over to where her belongings lay. With a sort of mechanical anger, she sat down and threw everything inside the soaking wet bag. She closed it up and then gripped it tightly in her hooves, her eyes straining to keep her awake as her mind tried to escape the growing pain that cursed it.
At some point, she finally collapsed at the riverbank and fell unconscious. By sleep’s embrace or the weight in her head, she didn’t know. So long as she could briefly escape that insufferable pain, she didn’t care.
Sometime later, at the awkward point between morning and the afternoon, Sparkler woke up. To her pleasant surprise, her headache was gone. But a strange sharpness scratched all around her, and she soon realized she was in a pine tree.
She yanked her bandaged hoof tight against her chest and screamed. Then she fell twenty feet to the ground, hitting every branch along the way.