The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi

Drifting

Starlight didn't stay out as long as she was expecting. Her eyelids opened for her, pried apart by the cold and a splitting headache. Slowly, she breathed, trying to let the nearby crate walls orient and comfort her as the river's gentle trickle filled her ears.

Her horn was like a dark spot in her senses, always on the edge of what she could feel... but no closer. She didn't dare try to use it, which was just as well: there was nothing she could have done with it in the first place. She was in a mildly-waterproofed box, floating down an unknown river with nothing to her name in hope of finding a destination that merely had a high probability of existing.

The chill from the caves was back, this time born by the water in her coat. It wormed its way past her muscles and into her bones, cooling her very core. Already, she felt a scratchiness in her throat, though whether it was an oncoming cold or merely rawness from screaming, she couldn't tell.

A shallow layer of moisture lined the bottom of the box, combined residue from what had dripped from her coat and what had remained when she bailed the boat out earlier. It made it difficult to tell how well her waterproofing job did earlier, but at this point, it didn't matter. She was already wet, sandy, freezing and entirely at the mercy of the coming sun. Hopefully, she would make it that long.

Starlight shivered, hugging herself. Grimacing at the feel of sand gritting through her coat, she rubbed her sides and back, lucklessly trying to eke out a bit of warmth from the actions. It was likely a waste of time, but she had nothing better to do. Hopefully, she glanced at the sky, but the moon hadn't even risen yet. She would just have to occupy herself and try to survive until sunrise.

Maybe she should have made a fire, on the beach. There had been wood, hadn't there? She struggled to remember, mostly recalling a thick layer of green underbrush that would have made searching on hoof impossible. Perhaps it was edible. She still wasn't hungry.

She reared up on her hind legs, deciding to get a look at the land around her. The crate wobbled as she did so, but still managed to balance, leaning but not capsizing. Starlight peered out, seeing a wide, flat expanse of still water fringed by jagged, rocky spikes intermixed with sand. Above and beyond that was the canopy, branches stretching nearly far enough to meet in the middle.

The river was calm and smooth to the point where Starlight had no expectations of rapids anywhere near. She tried to take the opportunity to sleep again, but couldn't tell if she succeeded: no dreams came to her pounding head, and the river looked the same as it had before.

On the crate floor, her saddlebags and blanket lay in a bundled, watery heap. What did those even contain? Water? Ironically, all three of her canteens were intact and full. She took a sip from one, hoping it would help calm her overtaxed horn. If only she could stop doing that to herself!

There was also sand everywhere. Aside from her coat, her blanket was full of it; perhaps even more so. Could she fix that, at least, as she floated? ...Actually, maybe she could.

Unbunching the thing in her hooves, Starlight figured out where the corners lay, sitting upright on two legs as she worked. Upon extracting two, she carefully gripped them, then tossed the rest over the side of the crate.

Her blanket hit the water with barely a wet slap. As soaked as it was, this wouldn't make much of a difference, but it could still wash the sand out. She let it trail in the water for a moment, then rotated it to another angle, washing the bits that had previously been held above water. With nothing better to do, she sat still, continuing the process for quite a while.

Eventually, Starlight leaned back, deciding it had had enough. She rolled the blanket up like a burrito, folded it in on itself once, and twisted it further as if baking a pretzel, food evidently on her mind as she wrung as much water as she could from it, eventually hauling it back into her crate. It took nearly a minute for the stream of runoff to dwindle to the point where it broke into droplets, at which point she deemed that to be good enough, as well. Folding it carefully, she draped it back along the crate edge, making sure to keep it above water.

She had done something, at least, even if it had done nothing to make her less cold. The air around her seemed moderately humid, which annoyingly slowed her drying. She took a moment to ponder that; in her hometown, it had been fairly hot and dry most of the time. Cold and humid seemed like a logical counterpoint to that, especially given how much rain she had seen the place receive, but pictures in her mind gleaned from reading books said humidity paired with hotness. Jungles, and things. And from somewhere, she recalled that it could simply be too cold to rain.

That obviously wasn't where she was now, she thought to herself with a shiver. Growing up, rain had always intrigued her. Perhaps it was because the pegasi brought it so rarely, but it had seemed like an otherworldly event. Unnatural; magical, even. Wild magic, not the domesticated kinds that ponies used. The kind that begged to be explored... that she might have explored herself, had her life taken a different turn not so very long ago.

Now that she no longer had a roof over her head and windows to watch from, there was no more wonder in the rain. It was a menace, and she hoped it stayed away. Eyeing the fringes of the star sheet strewn above, there were no clouds in sight... though the massive mountain range from which she had fallen loomed starkly nearby, and she knew rain could descend from that in an instant.

The boat rocked gently, snapping her from her contemplations. Was the river changing? No, a quick glance told her that she was merely rounding a bend. At least she was moving. Starlight sighed and brushed her sandy coat once with a hoof. It was beginning to dry, and the sand was causing it to stick together and clump into useless, patchy spikes. She would have to get those out soon. That, and fix her cutie mark. All things to do when she was inevitably forced to make landfall, be it by hunger or rain.

Hoping for the former, Starlight Glimmer drifted onward into the night, tired and broken... but not yet unable to proceed.

Comments

[Boopers]

none of the places I floated had mummies.

https://staremastershy.deviantart.com/art/Definitely-Not-Special-695016226

[PropMaster]

That dang denim blanket will never be dry again, lol

GRDC: 3

[Cold Bolt]

8325705
Poor soggy Glimmy.

[Merula]

Rain, rain, go away...

[Walrusesarecute]

11138107
come again some other day