Dust and Fruit

by BenedictHooves

1: Dust

They had been running for months across the barren expanse of dust and rocks. Running from what had been their home, running from their friends and their old lives.

Ben’s hooves were swollen and cracked from the pounding of the unrelenting dust kicked up by the wind. He looked ahead at his companion. The stallion was wearing a black cloak, tied around his neck, and thick brown boots that protected his hooves from the elements. He had had the luxury of time enough to grab such things before they were forced to flee.

Ben had lagged behind. He couldn’t comprehend how his companion kept such a steady and purposeful pace through the battering winds and draining heat, when Ben was in considerably better shape. The sun beat down on the hard dirt for eighteen hours of the day, rising again before the night had enough time to cool.

Ben trotted up behind the stallion in black, settling into stride beside him. He was a gray stallion with a hard face and faded eyes. They were dull, dead brown. He didn’t look well.

They walked headfirst into the dusty wind for a few minutes in silence.

“Are we going the right way?” Ben said. His voice was shaky and out of practice. His throat was sandpaper.

Silence from his travelling companion. At length, the gray pony said “I don’t remember my name.” His voice was even rougher than Ben’s. It clearly hurt him to talk.

“I remember it.” Ben said slowly. “It was Silver... something. It started with Silver.”

“Doesn’t sound like me.”

They walked on in silence.

Ben looked toward the horizon whenever the wind relented for long enough to do so. He set his sights on a rolling dune far in the distance. He made it his goal to reach that dune; he willed his feet to go on, just long enough to reach that dune without giving way beneath him. He knew that when they finally reached it, either this night or tomorrow morning, there would be nothing on the other side but more dust and more faint dunes in the distance. Not for the first time and certainly not the last, Ben regretted not being born a Pegasus. How easy it would be to fly above the orange sands, above the wind and the heat. More than anything, he wanted to feel cold wind on his face again. The desert was a closed bubble of heat and the wind on the ground was only slightly cooler than the stagnant air.

They walked for hours without talking. Neither of them could spare the effort. Ben felt the last few drops of water sloshing around in the canteen in his saddlebag. He very much wanted to drink it but he knew that they had to keep to the ration of one or two sips a night to make it last. It wasn’t enough. His head pounded behind his eyes. His stomach clenched and unclenched as he walked. They had been out of food for days now. Unless there was something on the other side of the next dune other than sand and rocks and sun, they weren’t going to make it.

When the sun had well begun its descent into the southern horizon, and the brightness of the day was beginning to seep out of the desert, Silver stopped. Ben continued slowly onward, not noticing his friend for a few moments. Silver coughed and Ben turned around.

“We’ll stop here.” Silver said hoarsely.

“We don’t usually stop this early.” Ben said, his vision swimming. The dusk was just now overtaking the world, colouring everything a darker red-orange.

“We’ll stop now.” Silver said quietly. He sat himself down, folding his hooves underneath his cloak.

Ben dropped his saddlebag on a patch of hard dirt and rooted through it for the canteen. He took it out with his mouth and carefully opened it. He knew his mouth would be watering if there was anything left inside him, but he was as dry as the sand that they walked in; the sand that invaded everything and got everywhere. Both the ponies’ manes were limp and bleached from the sun, and filled with sand.

Across from him, Silver had finished his water. The pony looked at his canteen with defeated eyes. “If we don’t make it tomorrow,” he said quietly, “I’m not going to make it.”

“I know.”

They didn't make a fire. The night hardly got cold enough to warrant one, and they had no food to cook. They hadn’t seen one living creature since they entered the desert. As they sat in the twilight, Ben thought that if a rabid desert creature was so fortunate as to come across two sleeping ponies in the middle of the night, the ponies might just be okay with becoming that creature’s next meal. It was probably cooler inside a desert creature, anyway.

Sweat dripped into Ben’s eyes and he wiped it away with a hoof. The sun was nearly gone behind the southern dunes, and there was no sound except for the wind. He looked at Silver. His form was incredibly thin beneath his cloak. His eyes were sunken and his cheeks were hollow; the skin around his lips was cracked and parched.

Ben knew there was a chance he would wake up tomorrow and find his friend stiff and unresponsive. Then he would be alone. He tried not to think about it.

Silver’s voice, a hoarse whisper, startled Ben out of that gruesome thought.

“Can you feel it?”

Ben looked at his friend. “Feel what?”

“Everything around us is dying. The world is dying.”

Maybe the delirium had already set into his companion. Again, Ben imagined waking up, the last living pony in the desert.

“I can’t say I do.”

“Everything’s dying. We’re being left behind.”

“By what?” Ben looked anxiously at Silver, whose eyes were half closed. After minutes of silence, Ben said “Get some sleep. We’re going to make it tomorrow.” Not sure of what he meant by the sentiment, Ben closed his eyes.

Eventually he slept a restless, unfulfilling sleep.

Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately, thought Ben), neither pony died during the night. Ben was awoken by his stomach going into a more severe cramp. He stifled a moan and lay in the sand, clutching himself. Sand had blown over the campsite during the short night, and Silver’s cloak was now a dusty white. He still slept underneath it, but his face was troubled.

When the pain wore off, Ben slowly got up, his joints popping softly. His legs ached and his hooves were raw and swollen. His head swam as he righted himself, and a wave of nausea hit him. He swayed where he stood, then slowly shook his head. The wind had died down, and the pale sand sat silently under the morning sun, which was already high in the northern sky.

The sand was bright. Ben found himself squinting as he trudged over to Silver. Gently he prodded his friend with a hoof. To his relief, Silver stirred and trembled a bit. The stallion’s faded eyes opened, and Ben realised that he had been right. Silver was not long for this world.

When Silver was awake and mobile, which took longer for the older, weaker pony, they set off. They said nothing. Their eyes wandered weakly over the barren landscape as they trudged through the sand, up the side of the dune Ben had set his eyes on the previous day. Ben was sweating what little moisture he had after not fifteen minutes of walking. Silver did not sweat. His breaths came shakily and rattling.

After an hour of hot walking, they crested the dune. Ben’s heart leaped into his throat as he saw what was at the bottom of the hill of sand.

A small number of dusty coloured houses, clustered together as if to shelter one another from the wind and the dust. Leading into the village was the dusty ghost of a road that once was, but it was swallowed by the desert not fifty hooves from the outermost building.

Ben looked at Silver, excitement bubbling in his chest. It was something he had not thought he would ever feel again. Silver looked back blankly. Ben was slowly losing his friend. Ben fixed his sights on the buildings as they started down the hill, not looking anywhere but his goal.

There was a quiet whump as Silver collapsed into the sand. Ben turned back and saw his friend staring forward at nothing. Ben walked over to him and bent down. He nudged Silver’s side, and the gray pony weakly maneuvered himself onto Ben’s back.

His legs shaking and screaming beneath him, Ben stood up with his companion draped across his back. He set off at an agonizing pace toward the buildings, the weight of both his saddlebag and his friend pulling him toward the ground, begging for him to slow down, stop, and sleep forever in the hot sand.

He lost track of time. The buildings grew ever closer but he never seemed to reach them.

Then all at once, his hooves were no longer pushing through loose sand, but standing on hard, solid dirt. He had reached the road.

He walked into the town. The buildings were made of some sort of smooth desert stone, not bricks or wood like they had been back home. The windows were boarded up or gone completely, empty holes into pitch darkness. There was no colour save for brown and gray, no sign of any other life, just the stones and the blowing sand. Ben would have called out if his throat had permitted, but he could only keep going forward.

As he approached the center of the cluster his eyes fixed onto one thing. In the center of the town there was a dusty, ornate fountain. It was spraying water jovially from its spout, which seemed to be the long nose of some sort of large animal. The sound of the water splashing gently into the fountain’s basin caused Ben’s mouth to begin watering. Silver stirred on his back and moaned something, delirious.

They reached the fountain and Ben collapsed at its edge in an exhausted heap. He bent his head and drank long and deep from the crystal clear waters. After a few seconds of large, full gulps, he paused, turned his head to the right, out of the water, and vomited onto the dirt. It was as clear as it had been going in. He sipped again from the water, ignoring his stomach’s painful cries.

Silver slipped off Ben’s back and blindly found the water. He sipped it once, twice, then collapsed on the ground.

Across from Ben, on the other side of the central plaza, there was a building with no door. The shadows inside looked more inviting than anything else in the world, and Ben got up and began dragging Silver by the cloak towards the house.

The shadows were as cool as they promised. Ben lay Silver down on the floor of the house and went back to the fountain. He filled both the canteens and returned to the shelter of the house.

They lay together for hours; Silver, unconscious and muttering, and Ben, sitting next to his friend and giving him small sips of water every few minutes.

The building was bare, stripped of everything that it may have once held. Still, the walls were sturdy and they kept out the sun. There was one window, with a rickety wooden frame still casting the shadow of a cross onto the floor, but that was it. It was good shelter from the desert.

Eventually Ben must have fallen asleep, because when he opened his eyes the sun was nearly gone. The town was tinted deep orange, and the light reflected off the fountain’s spray like fire. The sound of the gurgling water was the only thing Ben could hear except for Silver’s shaky breathing beside him. He sounded better though, Ben thought.

Standing on weak legs, Ben ventured outside the house, leaving Silver covered by his cloak next to the water skins. His head still ached but he was feeling better after sleeping.

The town stood silent around him, and he had no doubt that it was completely empty of all life, save for its two newest inhabitants.

The wind was blowing harder now, and he wandered slowly down the empty main street in silence, the sound of his battered hooves lonely in the orange dusk-tinted town. He turned down a side street. It was wide enough for three ponies to walk side by side, but no more. He could imagine it in its prime, with ponies walking quietly to their destinations, passing each other and nodding courteous greetings, maybe stopping to chat for a bit. He could imagine that in a town this small, you would know everypony; the baker, the mailcolt, the old mare who sat in her rocking chair for most of the day. They’d all be your acquaintances, if not your friends. Everyone’s foals would be in school together, and they’d play together on evenings like this, when it was not too hot.

Ben wondered what it could have been to make every pony who had once lived in this village go away. He wondered if it had just been a simple case of natural extinction, like what had happened to the Pegasi of the Northern Sky seven hundred years ago. He had not been alive to see it, of course, but his father had told him the story many times back in the nursery. Midnight, the self-re-named Last Pegasus had flown out of the clouds, holding his last remaining daughter in his arms. She had passed on in the night, silently and without warning.

Ben’s father told Ben that Midnight had landed and explained the events to the Mayor of the town through freely flowing tears, and then had flown off into the clouds with his daughter’s limp form in his arms, never to be seen again.

The children in the schoolyard had told a different story to Ben, however. They said that Midnight had spiralled out of the clouds arm-in-arm with his daughter. Witnesses had been quoted to have said that they could see a stream of tears flowing behind the Pegasi as they fell. Some say Midnight had tried to land, but his vision had been blurred by the tears. Some said both the ponies were dead long before they hit the ground, and still others said Midnight had fallen with the intent to die in his daughter’s arms.

The story had been a source of conversation during the day, and worried thought at night for Ben. When he was six, he found a book on Pegasi in the library’s back room. Excitedly, he brought it home and asked his father to read it to him. He was disappointed when the book concerned more about anatomy and the origins of the race than of the folklore.

Ben stopped. He had come to the front of a house with an open front door. The wind was blowing hard; harder than it had been minutes before. He felt a sudden wave of nausea come over him, and he ducked into the vacant house to be out of the dusty wind.

He sat looking at the floor until his stomach settled. His head pounded lightly. Probably got up too soon, he thought.

The house was much like the first one; dark, dusty. No furniture that Ben could see. The wind blew in through three windows and the house was cool compared to outside.

In the corner of the room, Ben saw a staircase, leading down. Like the rest of the house, it was plain and undecorated.

Suddenly conscious of the silence of the house, Ben went to the top of the stairs. He looked down into near blackness, but he saw something else... a faint white glow, coming from far back in the cellar. Nervously, he crept down the stairs, conscious of his heart beating in his chest. He wondered if Silver had woken up, back in the house with their supplies and canteens. He didn’t think it was likely yet, but there was always a chance.

He reached the bottom of the stairs. The floor was damp earth, and it was downright cool in the cellar. He savoured the feeling. The small earthen room was empty except for the beams that supported it, and a small table at the other end. Ben walked toward it. Halfway up the wall was a small white orb set into an ornate metal socket. It glowed weakly white, and hummed like a dying animal. It was a magic lamp, something that Ben had not seen since his time at home. They could only be created by Unicorns, of course. Ben stared in wonder at the orb, another relic of a time long passed.

On the small wooden table was a single piece of weathered paper. It was crumpled and browned, and ripped in the corner, but even in the darkness Ben could make it out for what it was.

It was a map of the desert, with a path marked in red. On the top of the piece of paper was one word, scrawled in the immaculate script only a Unicorn could create.

Salvation.

Comments

[Deus]

Well now this is an interesting idea and might I say quite the intriguing story :) Good work and look forward to the next entry.

[wat]

"His voice was shaky and out of practice. His throat was sandpaper."
I don't know why, but that bugs me.

"They walked on in silence."
ned spac under ett

"awoken by his"
You hit enter accidentally?

"He sounded better, though, Ben thought."
One too many comma?

Thats all I noticed, can't wait to read more!

By the way, it's hard to notice errors when you're into the story.

[The sad mare]

sounds interesting i must track with my friendship cannon!

[BenedictHooves]

406724

Thanks a lot, everything you mentioned has been fixed Except "awoken by his", which seems to be a formatting issue as it doesn't show up in the editor, it looks fine.

[Lonewolf554]

like this story and will track it but at the end of the first part silver should have said "the world is moving on." and can u give me a link to the original story? i loved the dark tower books so if these are based off of it i will likely enjoy reading.

[BenedictHooves]

409225 I don't really understand your request; which original story do you mean?

[Lonewolf554]

it said this was an extensive epilouge to equestria:book one so i assumed there was a story before it...

[BenedictHooves]

415733 Ahhhh, no, sorry. Equestria refers to the show and the current universe

[Lonewolf554]

ooooohhhhh thanks for the clarification.

[Daft-Perception]

Great read so far, I can't wait to read more :D

[Val3ntinus]

Ok, you have my attention

[Netbug009]

Ooooh, this is really interesting so far!

One thing though: Unless this desert is magically unique in some way, deserts actually get REALLY cold at night because there's no cloud covering to insulate them. Building a fire or huddling for warmth would be essential to avoid risking freezing to death.