The little pony did not move when she woke. Instead, she lay still, fixed in the same position in which she had laid down to rest hours before. Her head rose as she stared out at the vast nothingness that lay before her. Anywhere out there her friend may be waiting. Searching for the pony, trying to find its way back to the colourful little being. Turning her head, she watched for any sign of movement that may indicate the arrival of something new, or something once lost.

Nothing catching her eye—and there was indeed a lot of nothing—she craned her neck to look back at her own rump and tail. The vibrant purple and blue hairs trailing behind, to point the way she had come. The direction that was her home, where the rock waited patiently for little Oecee’s return.

Tears gathered around her deep purple irises and threatened to spill out onto her pouting cheeks. She had left the rock all alone back there! It was for a good cause, to find their mutual missing friend, but the little pony couldn’t help but feel sorry for it. She herself was quickly becoming distraught without any other friends with which to play and converse. She missed snuggling up to the rock.

“Ah… alone.” she sobbed, no one but the void to hear her pine, “all alone.” She thought to herself of what she had lost. The rock, the wind. Her friends. Her family.

Oecee wailed and covered her face with her hooves. Why had she done this? The wind had always found its own way back to them; she should have just given it a bit more time! And how would she get home if the wind had not seen her go? How would it know where to look? It could take forever to find her with how far she had gone!

She sniffled and shook out her mane. No. She had to find the winds. It was too late to turn back now. Imagine if she went back to face the rock, only to tell that she had given up after one sleep? How disappointed he would be! She wouldn’t be surprised if she got the cold shoulder for as long as she lived. Rocks could hold grudges like that.

And so the only option was to plough forward. She would find the breeze and bring it back! “Find Wind!” Oecee cried to the heavens as she stood. Determination set upon her tear stained face as she reared on her hooves and whinnied as if she were the greatest stead that ever lived. “Bring Wind home!”

The little blue pony galloped off like a stray hair taken in a gale. She ran as fast as she could, determined to find the one friend that had been with her since her birth. She ran for ten thousand steps.

She ran for ten thousand more.

Her aching muscles eventually slowed her down to a brisk trot, but she did not stop. Each hoof fall silent as ever as she journeyed out across the abyss.

She ran a hundred thousand more.

Even when she was utterly exhausted and could not move faster than a walk, she kept going.

For ten million steps she walked. She ran when she could, slowing down only to regain her breath and give her aching joints a rest. She did not stop. She did not sleep. Fatigue pulled at her mind. Her eyelids threatened to fall shut on many an occasion. But she did not give in. Finding that which was lost was more important to the little pony than her own menial pain.

She turned back once. Only to look over her shoulder at where she had come from. There was no way of knowing how far away the rock was. She could only imagine how long it would take to get back.

Countless millions of steps.

She faced forward once more, shook the thoughts from her head and took the next step.

Intent on finding the wind once more, Oecee trotted further into the unknown, into the abyss that stretched for an eternity out before her. After many steps, she could barely even walk, but still she tried to drag herself on. Her bones were tired. Her legs ached from the unrelenting exertion, her lungs and heart sore from working at maximum potential for so long. The little pony was tired beyond belief, but still she stumbled on, barely in a straight line. The only thought in her head was to be with the wind once more. She wanted to be there for the breezes and comfort it just as had been done for her.

So, on she walked, farther and farther away from the rock, until she could no longer support her own weight.

In the middle of nowhere, amidst the blackness of the eternal void, a pony collapsed in overwhelming fatigue.

Her chest shuddered with each breath in and out. Panting, the blue mare rolled on to her back and stopped. She lay splayed on the invisible ground, too tired to bother keeping her eyes open, she just lay and breathed. Her bones were made of lead. Muscles bathed in acid. Each gasping inhalation felt obstructed by a torrent of water.

Oecee lay back and rested.

The burning took a long time to subside, and even then, her body was too sore to move. She wanted to keep going, but any movement was met with resistance, as if her limbs were all glued to the ground. She wanted to find her friend, but it was too much. She had to rest.

It felt as if every hair on her body had been coated in stone, weighing her down and forcing all of her limbs to remain rigid like the rock. But even if she could move, the pony didn’t want to. She had been through so much. Her mind was as exhausted as her body, each primitive thought dragging through tar as she breathed in and out, wanting to find the winds so badly, but also finding a great appeal in rest.

And so, it was with great pains, but also unbridled relief, that the little equine succumbed to the longest and deepest nap in the history of the entire void.

Oecee dreamt of many things as her body recovered.

Flying through the air, she swept across the void. The passing air tickled her face. It blew through her intangible mane and left her blissfully in tune with the natural monotony of space. She flew across the world in mere minutes. The distance a pony may walk in a year or more flew by without a second thought. Impeded by no obstacle, she flew on through the endless night.

Riding the wind, she was the gusts themselves. Sailing through the air, her body stretched for miles. Equally wide arms glided across the expanse, feeling out every inch of the world in which she lived. There was not much there.

But not all of the space was empty. For the wind can feel much more than a pony could with her hooves. And throughout the void, there was not nothing. There was always something.

Some resistance to the movement of her vaporous body. For air was not nothing, as one who has a body just as light and fickle as the air itself may attest. The winds are made of air, or rather the ripple through the air. The movement itself.

As the mortal body replaces each of its cells over time with different atoms, it still remains the same consciousness throughout numerous copies of the same structured bodies. So too does the wind change its composition on a highly regular basis. Some molecules of gaseous nitrogen, oxygen and argon enter through the front of the wave at the beginning of a ripple, and others are shot out the end, no longer to be part of the wave passing through. And yet the wind lives on, as a preserved structure of particles that aren’t alive themselves.

Oecee decided that being the wind made her feel no more alive or dead than she did as a pony. It was almost identical, if completely different. She was still moving through the void all the same, retaining her given form almost effortlessly. Her body grew at times, and other times it shrank. She turned into all different indistinguishable shapes of many different sizes, but she was still herself. She still held together and acted the same, no matter her outer manifestation.

As the wind, she could feel much more than her skin, or even her tongue (which she had found to be much more sensitive), could feel in the body of a pony. She felt the push of the air against her as she moved. It felt similar to the wind in her face as she galloped, but it could not be the wind, as that is what she was. Furthermore, the entire void was not only full of air, it contained tiny, tiny granules of matter. Like rocks, but smaller. So small that she would never have realised existed as a flesh and blood pony.

This dust was everywhere. Wherever in the void she soared, there were these minuscule motes fluttering against her amorphous body as a lady beetle might buzz against a coat.

Little things were everywhere. Things that Oecee could never have realised existed with her own rugged, insensitive hooves and unexercised eyesight.

It was… comforting. To know that all of these particulates floated in the air around her was a new sensation. Wherever she went, even if the winds were not there to caress her coat and mane, there were these tiny little friends everywhere in the void. She would have to look for them when she woke up. Let them know that she cared about them too.

And so, the little pony made some new friends.