13 - Race You to the Bottom
Applejack scrambled down the slope in the darkness, running for her life.
They were dead. They were all dead. The ngoloko had come for them in the middle of the night, ripped open their skulls, and feasted on their brains. Zecora, Bhiza, Idube, all the others, dead. And she was next. She ran.
The slope was rugged, uneven, made even worse by the night. Every few steps, she tripped, rolling down the hill, across the sharp rocks, and opening up a new swathe of cuts across her already bloody body. Her head was swimming from the impacts. Her legs felt like burning jelly. If she pushed herself any harder, her heart would burst. But she couldn’t slow down. If she slowed down, they’d catch her.
From somewhere behind her, far too close for comfort, a ngoloko called out to its fellows. It was a harsh, grating sound, not unlike a timberwolf’s howl, but more aggressive, more untamed, more malicious. More intelligent.
Other ngoloko answered. The pack was closing in.
She looked behind her, trying to catch a glimpse of her pursuer. Big mistake: she planted her front hoof on an unstable rock. It slid out from beneath her, twisting her ankle. Her attempts to regain her balance failed, and she hit the ground hard enough to bite into her tongue. As she spat out the coppery taste of blood, she tried to stand up. But her injured hoof, unable to hold her weight, screamed in pain and she collapsed again.
Another call. Closer. Another response. Closer.
Reaching out with her good front hoof and pushing with her rear ones, Applejack kept clawing her way down the slope. The rocks scored her belly, but the pain barely registered. Keep running; that was the only thing on her mind. Keep running. Keep running keep running keep running.
Something stepped on her tail, halting her descent. Claws dug into her side and viciously flipped her over. She could barely see the ngoloko in the dark, registering only a shadowy haze three times her size. Except for the eyes. Two red eyes burned through the black, glaring at her with an intense hatred she’d never known before.
Applejack kept pawing at the rocks. Instinct. Useless. She knew it had her.
It cocked its head, and those eyes blinked. It snorted in her face. Its breath was hot, moist, and reeked with things Applejack couldn’t imagine. Then it lowered its head, opened its mouth, and enveloped her head, its teeth puncturing her skin on either side of her head. She screamed as the ngoloko’s jaws tigh-
Applejack awoke in a cold sweat, panting heavily. She looked around in a panic for a few seconds before remembering where she was. She pulled on her face with a hoof. Just a dream.
But how were the guards doing? They were still out there, weren’t they? Applejack rolled over and, quiet as she could make herself, crawled to her tent flap. She nudged it aside, and the first thing she saw was hints of orange creeping over the horizon to the east. Not too far from sunrise, then. It was odd, thinking that Celestia was still moving the sun this far away from Equestria.
Now, where was she? Guards. Right. With the orange in the sky, their silhouettes were easy to pick out, standing on an upthrust of rock, spears close at hoof. Whoever the current pair was, they didn’t look particularly worried. They appeared to be talking to one another, but if they were, their words were snatched away by the wind (not to mention that, as Zebran, they’d be incomprehensible to her anyway).
An unfamiliar shape poked its head above the ridgeline, well away from the guards and the camp. It started padding towards the tents, but before Applejack could react, one of the guards flicked a rock up from the ground and bucked it at the shape. The rock bopped the whatever right on the head and it howled, a strange sound halfway between a cat’s meow and a bear’s growl. With a hiss, the shape bounded away into the remains of the night.
A ngoloko? Maybe. It was about the same size as Idube had demonstrated the day before. It hadn’t seemed that threatening; even timberwolves took a few rocks to fully drive away. At the very least, it meant the guards could handle most of the wild animals out here. Applejack’s apprehensiveness dropped several notches.
She crawled back into her tent, hoping to get a little more shuteye before the rest of the camp had to wake up. Hopefully, she wouldn’t get any more nightmares. (Wasn’t Luna supposed to deal with nightmares? Did the dream-realm thing have a distance limit? Or was she just busy?)
After a longish period of time that still felt way too short for Applejack, Idube woke up the camp. Almost out of reflex, she looked around the camp. No wounded or injured from ngoloko, or any other animal that may or may not have been in the area. After a quick breakfast, it was time to take the carts down the rest of the slope to the Serembarti.
The slope was neither very long nor very steep; Applejack could’ve made it down quickly and easily if it was just her. Or just her and the zebras. But with the carts, it took almost an hour and a half to get everything all the way down. There wasn’t any easy way to do it, not with the slope covered in loose rocks and stones. Pulling the carts down normally wasn’t an option; with the aid of gravity, they’d just roll over their carriers. Putting the cart before the zebra and having the zebra pull back on the cart to keep it moving slowly wasn’t good either; with the loose stones, the zebra wouldn’t be able to get a good grip. Eventually, they settled on each cart getting moved down individually, with the whole team clustered around it to make sure it didn’t break away. It was boring and slow, but it worked.
During a brief rest at the bottom, Idube came up to Applejack. “Excuse me,” she said, “but I was wondering if I could ask you to help pull one of the carts today. It can get tiring for my zebras, and yesterday, you did not seem to have any problem at the crane.”
Applejack flicked her ears. “Sure you can. Why were you wonderin’ that? Ain’t like I’m doin’ anythin’ else.”
“When we are escorting certain types of people, they can get…” Idube pawed at the ground. “…rather insistent that they do no work. I assumed that you were not one of those people, given how you helped yesterday, but I just want to be sure.”
“Ain’t no way I’m one o’those layabouts,” said Applejack. “Bet you I can drag that cart the whole day!”
“If you can, that would be great,” Idube said.
Bhiza was staring at Applejack and grinning. “Do you really think you can pull cart day whole?”
Applejack grinned back. “You’re just jealous of my strength from yesterday.”
“Not after bridge.” Bhiza’s grin briefly fell into a smirk.
“…Still…”
Bhiza laughed. “If you pull cart day all, I will make your tent tonight. Yes?” She spat on her hoof and held it up.
“Yes.” Applejack spat on her own hoof and banged the two together. Making a tent was easy for her — trivial, even, and Bhiza knew that — but it was just the principle of being able to go all day without much rest because she could. She’d’ve done it if Bhiza had just dared her to do it, with nothing in return.
“For pony who does not like magic much, you think it will help you much,” Bhiza said, wiping her hoof on the ground.
“I know how my magic works. Just not other ponies’.”
The hitch to the cart required minimal adjustment to get it comfortably around Applejack. Of course it would; ponies and zebras had the same body shape, just sized differently. The hitch design seemed like it wouldn’t work for a pegasus, but that didn’t matter right now, did it? And the cart itself wasn’t too heavy. This would be easy.
And finally, Applejack saw the Serembarti up close.
It was magnificent.
Endless, endless grass, as far as the eye could see. Lush and green, it was like a really expensive (if somewhat simple) dinner was spread out, just waiting for her to eat it. There wasn’t much else — every now and then, a tree was placed on the plain, almost randomly, but that was it — but that didn’t matter to Applejack. It was just so open and free. It didn’t feel dangerous like the jungle, but it also didn’t feel laid-back; it felt energetic, like the kind of place Applejack wanted to gallop through all day, running wild for the sake of running wild. It was sublime. It was life.
The zebras must’ve felt it, too; someone spontaneously started singing some kind of marching song, and everyone else joined in. Applejack couldn’t understand a lick of it, but she still managed to memorize the tune and hum it.
Unfortunately, that led to some small problems for Applejack; being smaller than the zebras (if only by a little), she took shorter steps, so as she marched in time with them, she either fell behind or had to take larger steps than usual. After a few minutes of switching back and forth between the two, she just settled into taking normal, small-for-zebras steps and speeding up into a canter whenever the need arose. No one noticed or seemed to care, though.
Except for Bhiza. “You take steps small,” she said with a grin after another five-second canter.
“Ain’t my fault,” said Applejack. “I’m smaller than y’all.”
“You are.” Bhiza’s grin grew wider.
“‘Course, I’m also stronger than y’all.”
“…You are,” Bhiza admitted; her grin vanished. She looked briefly at the cart. “Are you still not tired?”
“Heck no,” Applejack said. She smirked; she was feeling just fine, and would probably continue to do so for most of the day. “I’m as lively as the smilin’ day.”
Bhiza cocked her head.
“I ain’t tired at all.”
“Do all ponies talk like that? Or only you?”
“Most don’t. They’re my countryisms.”
“Coun-try-is-ms,” muttered Bhiza. “They make as much sense as kiboko dry.”
“Kibowhat now?”
Bhiza smiled. “You see?” She laughed. “Kiboko live in water. Should not get dry. Kiboko dry is strange very.”
Applejack snorted in amusement. “That’s an interestin’ way of puttin’ it.”
“You began it.”
As they traveled across the plains, Applejack barely tired at all; the cart wasn’t too heavy, and the ground was level. One thing earth pony magic couldn’t do anything about, however, was the heat. It’d been hot in the jungle, but out here, with no shade, the sun simply beat down, almost feeling like a physical blow. Her hat couldn’t do much to protect her. It wasn’t the hottest Applejack had ever been, but it was still up there. At least it was a dry heat.
It’d been late summer when she left Equestria, Applejack reflected, late enough that the Running of the Leaves had only been a few weeks away in Ponyville. It’d still definitely been summer, but it’d been the cooler end of summer. Not here. Here, it felt like midsummer, and an especially hot midsummer at that.
None of the zebras seemed to notice. Applejack kept sweating, but all the zebras looked just peachy. Right next to her, Bhiza was whistling a jaunty tune and did look remotely sweaty. Zebras were better equipped to deal with the heat, probably; Zecora had never seemed too bothered by Ponyville’s worst summers, but had often bundled up for minor chills that even Apple Bloom had laughed at. Was it a psychological thing, with zebras being used to hotter overall temperatures, or did the stripes have something to do with it?
For that matter, what season was it here? Zebra seasons didn’t necessarily have to follow pony seasons. For all she knew, this could actually be midsummer in Zebrabwe. “Bhiza? Out of curiosity, what season is it right now?”
Bhiza paused briefly in her whistling to say a single word: “Dry.”
Applejack blinked and paid attention to the ground beneath her hooves. True, the ground felt a bit drier than back in Equestria, so it was probably a dry season, but that hadn’t been what she’d been asking about at all. “I noticed. Which season is it?”
Bhiza’s whistling puttered out and she gave Applejack a strange look. “It is season dry.”
“Well, sure, I can see it’s a dry season,” said Applejack, biting back the urge to sigh, “but what’s the name of the season?”
“Dry! Season is named dry!”
“Uh-huh. Sure,” said Applejack, nodding skeptically. “As opposed to, what, the wet season?”
Bhiza looked at Applejack like she was stupid. “Yes! We are now in season dry! In moon previous, we were in season wet!”
Applejack stumbled a little. “What? Y’all got seasons called wet and dry out here?”
“Yes.” The look on Bhiza’s face grew increasingly worried. “During season wet, we make it rain. During season dry, we do not, except for occasions few special.”
“…Oh.” Applejack looked down the ground. That made some sort of sense, but at the same time, not really. Saving all your rainfall for a focused period of time would make it easier to grow food during that time, but it also meant that you had to be more careful with storing food; you couldn’t spread your growing out to make things easier. Of course, zebras probably had all kinds of artificial irrigation techniques, but why bother with those when you could just ration out the season’s rain? “Y’all got any other seasons besides wet and dry?”
“No. We do not need they. Why? What seasons do you have?”
“Equestria has four seasons, an-”
“Four?!” Bhiza looked like she couldn’t decide whether she should be dumbstruck or laughing her tail off. “Why four? Two are good.”
“I dunno. Tradition, I guess.”
“It is tradition,” Bhiza said, lightly rubbing an elbow in Applejack’s ribs, “that ponies stay in Equestria and zebras stay in Zebrabwe. But you are here, and I want to go there.”
“Yeah, but…” Applejack shook her head. “Anyway, our seasons are spring, summer, fall, and winter. Spring’s probably like your wet. Everythin’s beginnin’ to grow, there’s a lotta rain, that sorta thin’.”
“Sounds like wet,” Bhiza said with a nod. “Sommer?”
“Summer. It’s got rain, but not as much as spring. But there, things grow faster’n green grass through a goose.”
Bhiza flicked her ears and cocked her head.
“Real fast. Anyway, summer’s hot. It ain’t quite this hot, though.” Applejack took off her hat and fanned herself with it.
“This is not hot,” said Bhiza. “Return in moons two. That is hot.”
“Um, alright. So then there’s fall. It’s gettin’ colder again, and with the harvest windin’ down, we prepare the trees for winter by gettin’ the leaves down, and- What’s so funny?”
Bhiza was walking in an awkward three-legged gait; her spare hoof was pressed to her mouth to try and stem the laughter. “You… take leaves… from trees?” A few snorts escaped from her nose. “Looks silly, yes?”
“It ain’t that silly,” muttered Applejack, flicking her ears. “It keeps the trees healthy, makes ‘em stronger.”
“If you say,” Bhiza said. She started walking with all four legs again, but still couldn’t help a few giggles escaping. “And winter?”
“Winter’s the time when we let the earth rest. It’s cold and it snows so-”
“Wait. Snows?” Bhiza said the word even more slowly than usual, as if she’d never heard it before.
“Yeah. Snow. Y’know?”
“No.”
Applejack blinked. She’d never considered that zebras wouldn’t know what snow was, but if Zebrabwe was kept hotter than Equestria, it made sense. “Well, it’s frozen water, an-”
“Ice?”
“Well, no, not exactly. More like…” Applejack flicked her tail in thought. “More like ice dust.”
“Ice dust,” Bhiza muttered to herself. She twitched. “That… thing cold and white on top of Kwatomanjaro? It is mountain tall very,” she added quickly.
“Then, yeah, that’s probably snow.”
“How long is winter?”
“Three moons.”
Bhiza’s jaw dropped. “Y-you have snow for moons three? But it is cold very very!” She shivered. “Do you not freeze?”
“Nah, it ain’t that bad,” Applejack said with a shake of her head. “Just wear warm clothes outside and keep those fires high inside.”
Bhiza didn’t look convinced. “I do not like winter.”
“Y’ain’t seen it yet.”
“I. Do not. Like. Winter.”
Applejack chuckled. “Really, it ain’t bad. You just nee-”
Idube yelled something and the caravan screeched to a halt; Applejack almost ran headlong into the zebra ahead of her. She looked forward; their path was blocked by a long line of some kind of animal. Not a particularly big animal, but whatever they were, there was a lot of them, stretching in both directions. Applejack waited a few moments, but Idube didn’t say anything else and the caravan didn’t start moving again.
“Hang on,” Applejack said to Bhiza. She sidestepped as best she could with the cart and headed towards the front of the line. A few zebras shot looks at her, but none made any attempt to stop her. Idube was pacing back and forth, muttering under her breath and glaring at the animals. This close, Applejack could finally get a good look at them.
They resembled buffalo if buffalo were a lot smaller. And wimpier. They looked very similar and had the same general shape, but where buffalo were big and powerful, these animals were a little smaller than Applejack and kind of scrawny. But they held themselves in a way that gave them more dignity than they’d have otherwise. And maybe a hint of aloofness. None of them gave the zebras so much as a glance.
Applejack looked in one direction, towards what she hoped was the end of the line. The line of animals stretched off down towards the horizon, so far she couldn’t see the end of it. She looked over her shoulder at the zebras. They all looked varying degrees of angry, but none of them were actually moving at all. In fact, some of them were settling down, as if they were going to rest. But why?
“Hey! Idube!” called Applejack. “What’s up? Why ain’t we movin’?”
Idube looked at the herd, then back at Applejack. An “are you crazy” expression flitted across her face for a few instants before she remembered Applejack wouldn’t know what was up. “Those are the nyumbu,” she said. “They grow most of our food, and… Long story short, we do not want to make them angry, so we must wait until they pass us by.”
“But would that really make them that angry? We ought to just be ab-”
Idube pointed at the herd. “Those are the nyumbu,” she said. “They grow most of our food. Do not piss off the nyumbu.”
“Look,” said Applejack, “I just don’t see why they can-”
Idube gripped Applejack’s head between her front hooves, forcefully wrenched it to one side, and looked her in the eyes. “Those are the nyumbu,” Idube rumbled. “They grow most of our food.” She leaned in close enough to touch muzzles with her. “Do not. Piss off. The nyumbu.” Her teeth were clenched and her voice had dropped to a low, downright hostile growl.
Applejack squirmed, but Idube had her in too firm a squeeze for escape to be an easy option. Idube glared at her, and eventually Applejack gave up. “Fine,” she muttered. “I ain’t pissin’ off the numbu.”
“Nyumbu,” Idube said. “With a ‘y’ after the ‘n’.” But she released Applejack.
Brushing herself off, Applejack grunted about nothing in particular and looked down the line of nyumbu again. It wasn’t just long, it was loooooong, and it was moving slowly. Not even because of its size; the nyumbu didn’t look like they were in any particular hurry and just kept moseying along. The slowness had the deliberate annoyance of someone who knows they’re too invaluable to you for you to do anything to them, so they deliberately mess with you. It made Applejack want to unhitch herself and buck a clean path straight through the line, but that’d piss off the nyumbu. And she’d said she wouldn’t piss off the nyumbu.
“So, what,” she said, “we’re all just waitin’ here until they pass us by?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” mumbled Idube. She ruffled her mane and sighed. “And that may take hours.” She snorted. “We are stopping for lunch now. You can take the cart off if you want.”
Applejack didn’t need to be told twice. She was just beginning to feel the strain of all those hours of walking, sweat was collecting under the straps, and trying to rest with the hitch on would be all sorts of uncomfortable. Going back to her place at the end of the convoy, she undid a few clips and half-fell out of the cart. Bhiza was right next to her, lying on her back and glaring up at the sky.
“What’s up with the nyumbu?” Applejack asked, settling down next to her. “Why’s it so important that we don’t make them angry?” She hesitantly looked up at the nyumbu; none of them seemed to be listening to her group.
Bhiza snorted. “They grow food. Not just for Zebrabwe, for countries many around here. We make them angry, they probably stop growing food for we.”
“Probably?”
“It has happened in past. Not to zebras, but…” Bhiza rubbed the back of her neck and shivered. “Quagga tried, once. Time long past. They are… not here anymore.”
Applejack boggled. “The nyumbu starved ‘em to death? All of ’em?”
Bhiza nodded solemnly.
“Yeesh.” Applejack looked back at the line “But… but just cuttin’ across their line real quick? That’s gotta be too small to make ‘em angry.”
“We have not tried. Do you want to try?”
“Maybe not.” Applejack looked down the line of nyumbu. The long line. The long, long line. The long, long, long line. She sighed. “Y’all know how long this is gonna take?”
“No.”
“Great.” With nothing else to do, Applejack rolled onto her back next to Bhiza and glared up at the sky.
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One thousand and change years prior:
"Those are the earth ponies," Starswirl rumbled. "They grow most of our food. Do not piss off the earth ponies."
Aw, don't be like that. When my cousins visited from South Africa, they loved to play in the snow! They'd never even seen it with their own eyes before.
7370837 But Hurricane was too impatient to wait. Damn featherbrains.
They
Missing the word 'be'.
Double period.
Requires a space after the period.
Also, I'm going to go ahead and draw a parallel between the nyumbu and the elephants from the new Jungle Book.
7371009 Is snow like soft hail or some kind of powdered ice?
Never seen the stuff in real life.
And more delay for Applejack's party
Though I wonder, maybe AJ can actually convince the nyumbu to let them through. You know, have a little talk from farmer to farmer
Also, why do all the African animals have African names but the zebras are still called zebras?
7371352 It's more like crystal flakes. You've seen snowflake designs right? that's how they really look. Just so small that they're almost dust.
7372523 African animals have African names (specifically, Swahili names) because they don't appear in Equestria, and so have no name in the Equestrian language yet. Zebras are still zebras because they're called zebras in the show. If we were doing it my way, zebras would be pundamilia.
7371352
7373249
It's also kind of fluffy and very light to the touch but turns hard when you compress it.
7373249
But normally, like a LOT of crystal flakes all packed together.
Great work.