The Bug in The Cave

Chapter 5:Loneliness

Twilight Sparkle was annoyed. Not at her dire situation, or the perpetual soreness in her muscles, or the agitating dryness in her throat that left her constantly coughing and scratching at it. She was not annoyed at the rocky floor of the cave that had been her home for the last few days, nor was she annoyed by the unflinchingly hostile heat that beat down on the desert every time she had the audacity to peak outside.

All of that was bad, yes. But no, the source of her ire was something far more personal.

“Why do all of the survival books make it look so easy?!” she groaned from the back of her cave before devolving into a series of coughs.

Twilight had always been a studious sort, delving into whatever tomes she could get her literarily greedy hooves on. A fair few of them had been about ponies surviving in dangerous environments for prolonged periods of time. As such, with her main bulk of survival experience coming from family camping trips in the woods, she had called on what she remembered of those to act as her guiding compass.

There were a few problems, though. First off, the ponies in those books were physically much stronger than she was. Secondly, the authors had often seen fit to cover their mistakes in greater detail than their triumphs, to up the drama on every page. Narratively, it was a sound move to keep a reader hooked, but utterly useless for a pony actually trying to get some life-saving information from them, especially when pulled up from the dregs of one’s memory and not the page itself.

Third, most of the survival stories she had read had taken place on islands, or in forests, or frozen tundras. The general principles still applied, of course. Find food, safe drinking water, and shelter. The minutia of those principles was radically different in the blazing desert of the badlands.

For example, Twilight had put it together exceedingly quickly after her first foray to bring supplies back from the shattered wagon that going out while the sun was out was a terrible, terrible idea. She had only done so one other time since then before it occurred to her that it would be far safer to move at night. The heat of the daytime sun sapped her strength like a leech on the jugular, and left her dehydrated and sweating profusely.

Another mistake she had made was leaving the cave door completely uncovered. Sunlight still seeped through, especially in the evenings, and the way it reflected around inside heated up the rocks to the point that Twilight had been forced to retreat into the very back of the cave and huddle up in the corner by the pool.

If nothing else, she had water, and a lot of it. She had sent a few small orbs of magic light into the pool to check its depth, and had discovered that it was at least six feet deep. But more than that, she had discovered a hole in the back wall of the pool that she could only assume led into some kind of large, underground pond or lake. So as far as water was concerned, she was set in terms of quantity. Enough to last for weeks, if not months.

The question then became whether or not it was safe to drink from.

The pool was far from clear, a surefire sign that less-than-desirable things dwelled within. But without something to boil it in to purify it, she was left with few other options. The water flask she had salvaged from the wreckage had proven less than workable in this situation, being a flimsy and, more importantly, flammable container. Putting it over an open flame to try and boil the water would simply leave her without a container.

So, she had resorted to drinking from the pool. She did so sparingly and only took as much water as she felt she needed, hoping to minimize her risk of contracting anything dangerous. A flimsy hope, she acknowledged, but it gave her some small comfort all the same.

She let out a snort of breath and went over her situation in her head, conjuring up a makeshift checklist in her mind’s eye to help her visualize what she had to do.