Holding a small peanut butter cracker to her mouth with a feather, Blue kept quiet while she trod on after the foal and stallion. They'd walked in silence all day; neither so much as spared a glance back at her. Even when he'd passed her the cracker, RipEar had refused to look at her; he'd merely hovered it behind himself and  almost smashed it against her muzzle.

Blue couldn't blame them, to be honest. She knew she was weak, and was frankly surprised that RipEar was still with her. It had, of course, only been a day since they had left the facility—slightly less than that, even. Nevertheless, she'd already confirmed the extent of her weakness twice; she was a burden, a useless waste-of-space who could only manage to mess things up. As such, the only possible reason that she hadn't been booted yet was that RipEar felt some form of loyalty towards her—as a friend, or something more? It was the only logical explanation; what with her amnesia, it wasn't even so impossible.

As she nibbled on the edge of the cracker once again, Blue looked up to the split, unnatural sky and frowned. Still walking forwards, it was then only a few seconds before she felt herself collide with something warm.

She fell to the ground on her flank and shook her head a few times before she rose back up to her hooves. She looked ahead to see that the stallion now faced her, his expression tightly drawn. He took a step backwards quickly before he grunted, in as monotone a voice as possible, "You're tired."

Blue's ears flattened immediately at the statement and a blush rose to her cheeks. "We can keep going. I'll... I'll survive."

RipEar scowled and turned his back to her before he flicked her with his tail. She yelped at the contact and hopped backwards. Her eyes followed him warily.

"You can't even eat without getting us attacked," RipEar hissed and turned back to face her. In all three years that she'd known him—as far as she could remember—she had never seen his eyes quite so cold. He then jerked his head to the left, in the direction of a towering oak tree which had missed miraculously missed Blue's notice in her musings. "It's partly hollow inside. We'll sleep in there."

Blue stood still for a minute before she turned away slowly and began to plod the fifty metres. She gasped as something cold then wrapped around her flank—in a not so unpleasant way which instantly made her tail flag—and she felt herself be shoved forwards. After she skidded to a halt at the base of the tree, she then glanced about a few times before she gave a sigh.

She dragged her hooves as she walked into the hollowed out area and jumped a little when her eyes fell on Coalburst. The foal was already laying down and making a fire. Blue couldn't even meet the little filly's eyes for fear of retribution—though she did manage to question whether lighting a fire in a tree was such a good idea.

The filly, to her credit, didn't seem quite so tense now that RipEar was gone. She merely nodded and muttered, "I'm making it small, but it'll be a cold night," before she looked away.

As a tiny flame morphed from Coalburst's magic, Blue smiled weakly and rested her head down on her hooves. She then shuffled around to face the entrance and looked outside. She continued to gaze up at the sky.

"It's weird, huh?"

Blue, momentarily stunned, jerked her head around to look at the filly. "What?"

"I just said, it's weird. The sky should be just day or just night, I think. Not, y'now, both, like it is now—but I've never seen it like it's meant to be. ." Coalburst gave a weak smile and followed the mare's gaze to look up at the twinkling stars above. "I'll bet it was really pretty, though."

"The view from the facility was... Well, right. I suppose that was some illusion, or something. But, sure, it was nice to look at. 'Specially if you saw the sunrise, all orange and red and... magical."

Coalburst sighed and her eyes gazed out longingly. "I'd give my good back leg to see what the world was meant to be like," she continued. "That's just a dream, though. The sky'll never be fixed, not until the plague's gone, and the plague's never gonna go."

"Why? The sky, I mean?" Blue leaned forwards, ears twitching. It had crossed her mind more than once as to why the sky was so wrong; though she was far from a scientist, she also knew for sure that a disease, even an epidemic, could not have such an effect on celestial bodies.

"The princesses don't control them anymore," Coalburst said as she hopped to her feet and stepped outside of the little hollow cautiously. She beckoned for Blue to follow and pointed her hoof up to a massive mountain far in the distance, off of which a massive pink bubble could be seen. "That's Canterlot—only plague-free place around, because of that big health bubble... thing. It's huge, and if it falls Canterlot'll get infected too. So the princesses have to use all of their magic to keep the shield up. That's what Mum told me, anyway."

"Oh." Blue lowered her head once again and shuffled back into the feeble warmth of the hollow. "So, until there's a cure, the whole world's stuck like this?"

"Yep. It's been this way ever since Celestia cast her spell on Sombra and Chrysalis. S'posedly she didn't know how it worked, but with changelings busting into her base and all that, she couldn't keep up the fight otherwise." Coalburst gave a feeble laugh and poked her nose outside to look at Canterlot again, nestled so very far away. "I kinda find it funny, really. She used this spell—which could've killed her, for all she knew—to save us all. Didn't exactly go right, did it?"

Blue gave an equally weak smile, her ears pinned as she shook her head. "Not really. I kinda feel sorry for her though; imagine that guilt." She shuddered and curled up into a little ball next to the fire. She lay her head down with a sigh—but not before she spared a glance towards RipEar. "Is he... Is he gonna come in?"

"Sure. He's just working out where we are. Said he wanted to make a detour, get you a weapon 'cos you're so weak and pathetic."

Blue gritted her teeth, hearing those words spoken aloud especially hurtful. "Wow, Coal. Talk about making me feel better."

Coalburst only giggled a little as she wrapped her orange tail around herself for warmth. It was no wonder her mother had chosen the name she did; she genuinely looked like a miniature fire herself. "If you want to take it out on anyone, go for RipEar. But he kinda hates you at the minute for not even trying, so it's better just to bury your anger."

Blue sighed and closed her eyes as she unfolded her wings. She wrapped them around her body before she followed Coalburst's example with her tail.

"Yeah, I guess."

As she lay there, ears constantly flicking at the peculiar sounds of the mostly silent world, she couldn't help but grind her teeth together. She was a wuss, she knew that—but out here, there was no room for cowards. It was survival of the fittest—and, Lunadammit, she was going to survive.