• Published 13th May 2012
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Austraeoh - Imploding Colon

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Ungrateful

When Rainbow's eyes fluttered open, she slightly less surprised to be alive than she was surprised to be in the same place. The makeshift “barricade” of the saddlebag still stood in front of her, and the blanket was covering her figure. Nothing had torn apart or been blasted to shredded bits by the storm. What was more, daylight was seeping in through the material.

In a flash, she whipped the blanket off her. Sunlight stabbed her eyes. She grunted and sat up, her limbs weak. She couldn't tell how much time had passed. It most likely was just eight hours, but for some reason she felt as though two days had gone by.

She pulled her goggles up and squinted towards the horizon. She saw the sun, but she couldn't tell if it was rising or falling. But then, her senses caught up with her mind.

It was no longer storming.

The desert was dead silent, save for the slightest kiss of wind behind her. Turning around, Rainbow Dash finally discovered where the west end of the world was, for she was staring straight at it.

A solid cloud of brown mess was blowing away from her. She clearly remembered the storm heading directly towards her while she was flying east. At some point during her unconsciousness, it had passed over her figure.

She knew that she was lucky—more than lucky. This was a blatantly stupid miracle and she was desperate to figure out the how and why. Looking down at herself and the saddlebag, she realized that there was something awkward about the ground. There was a slight impression made in the rock, and it stretched circularly outward from where she had been lying for the past several hours. If she didn't know better, she'd think that some sort of inexplicable force had made a crater in the landscape where she had collapsed.

“No way...” She gulped, her body covered in a fine sheen of brown dust. “Was it Whitemane's shield? Was it—?” Her body reeled with a touch of dizziness. She winced, feeling two points of pain at the top of her brow. Briskly, she removed her goggles completely from her head and pivoted them around. With a forelimb, she wiped the grime and sand clean from one lens and looked at her reflection.

The slightest hint of red-on-yellow eyes flickered, and was gone.

Rainbow Dash froze. Sighing, she closed her eyes and hugged the goggles to her chest. Her jaw clenched and unclenched, but soon she focused just long enough to relax.

“Won't pretend for a second as though I'm friggin' grateful,” she muttered to the air.

Slowly, weakly, she gathered her belongings. She dusted off the saddlebag, admired its unearthly integrity, and slipped it back over her shoulders. A little too frail to fly just yet, she trotted limply eastward, battling the sun and dryness and everything in between.

“Nnngh...” Rainbow Dash grumbled. “Sand sucks.”

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