As Neon trekked through the thick fog, the headache began to slowly subside. It eventually faded to a dull ache in the back of her mind. She just kept on walking in one direction, not knowing whether or not it was the right direction, but she mentally hoped it would lead to somewhere outside of the forest.
While deep in thought, she wasn't paying attention to where she put her hooves and tripped over the remains of a large, crooked tree root sticking out of the ground. She fell face-first into a bush with thorns in it and unleashed a screamed. Her scream split the silence for only a moment, and things returned back to their original state. Neon felt hot tears stream down the sides of her face after a few moments. She slowly climbed out of the thorn bush and sat down. Her hoof hurt a bit from the impact of hitting the root, but her face felt even worse from the thorn bush.
She slowly ran her hooves over her face, checking for any thorns that may be stuck. She found none, thankfully, but her face stung with scratches and cuts from the thorns. She shook the remains of debris from her mane and continued walking in the direction she had been going in for what seemed like a few hours.
As darkness grew overhead, Neon began to grow tired from this seemingly endless trek through the silent forest. She had almost begun to hallucinate sounds and always heard a dull ringing. She wanted to think her friends were there with her, when in reality, they were all probably long gone. She began to cry again with the thought of the ponies she held closest to her all being dead most likely. And if they weren't dead, she'd never find them.
In fact, she knew the chances of her finding anypony good that would help her was so very low. But finally, she realized something - the forest had ended. She now stood at the edge of the forest she had emerged from. Ahead of her through the now thinner fog, she saw buildings. Abandoned buildings. Most had been torn up or destroyed, but it didn't matter. She had found what might be civilization.
Summoning the last bits of energy she could muster, she sprinted towards the buildings. She reached the closest building and stopped, leaning against one of the building walls and regaining her strength. She looked at another building and saw an orange glow reflect off of the wall. She looked at where the source could be coming from and saw figures sitting around a fire. She couldn't tell who they were, only guessing that they were ponies, covered in what seemed to be rags
They wore shaggy grey rags that covered their backs and the sides of their legs. Extra fabric from each covering their heads like hoods. They looked like they hadn't showered in days, which made sense, as the few sources of water remaining were polluted with Celestia knows what.
She tried to recognize who the ponies were, but couldn't...Until she looked at one of them closer than before. She saw this pony had pale mint blue fur...
It was Frozen Star. Neon suppressed a squeal of happiness and slowly stepped out into the light, "Frozen Star?" she half exclaimed while looking at Frozen.
Frozen turned and looked at Neon, "Neon?"
...The tense air that originally resided suddenly lifted and things felt more calm. The two ponies ran at each other and gave each other a big hug.
"I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!", they both exclaimed in unison, eyes becoming misty at the sight of seeing their friend that they had thought was gone.
The two ponies stopped hugging and joined the other three ponies by the fire. Neon recognized two of those ponies as Frozen's children, Buggy and Finolla. She recognized the third as Buggy's marefriend, Beatrice. The green mare begged the question, 'Where was Flain?'She spoke up a bit, "Where's your dad, Finolla?"
"...Flain...he's..." Frozen began, her voice cracking. Neon nodded, understanding what she meant.
"I'm so sorry...He was a good person..." said Neon, casting her eyes down in sympathy. Finolla sniffled and wiped a tear from her eye. Buggy gave Finolla a reassuring hug.
The ponies sat in silence, remembering their lost friend. The silence seemed to last forever and only the crackling sound of wood being burned kept the silence from becoming like the dead, quietness of the forest. Nopony knew what to say or do. But they each had thoughts of their own. Only one question weighed on each pony's mind...
What would they do now?
