He hated every stupid, annoying little twig and leaf around him. Once, Zephyr Breeze thought nature was beautiful, but after a night in the Everfree Forest he never wanted to so much as glance at a tree again for the rest of his life. Leave that to Flutters, or her friends, or that zebra that talked in rhymes all the time. Zephyr would take a nice apartment any day of the week.

And yet here he was, stuck out in some Celestia-forsaken pit of a jungle. Stupid trees. Stupid mountain. Stupid zeppelin.

Oh, right. The zeppelin. He thought he better get away from the burning wreckage before he got hurt. Again. One of his wings ached when he hopped into the sky, but Zephyr forgot about that the moment he saw the endless, agonizing ocean of green surrounding him. He darted his head one way, then the next, but no, it was just trees, trees, and more trees as far as he could see. Except for the mountain. That thing crawled into the sky and blocked off anything to the left of the wreck.

“You know,” he said to nopony in particular, “maybe I’ll just hang around the zeppelin after all.” He floated down to the ground. One of his hooves landed in something wet and the noise that erupted from him scared off every bird within a mile. Zephyr leapt up and spun around, moving at speeds he had never reached before and never would again.

“Oh, thank Celestia,” he muttered. “It’s just sap. Wait. I hate sap.” He sat and pawed at the goopy garbage stuck to his hoof. “Oh, why won’t it just…” He groaned as the sap just spread to his other hoof.

“Hey,” a voice called out from the wreckage.

Zephyr froze.

“Whas goin on out there?” the voice slurred out. “We landed?”

Zephyr tugged his hooves apart and did his very best to ignore the awful, sticky, no good gunk on his hooves as he trudged over to the remnants of the airship. Flames licked what was left of the canvas balloon, steel charred and twisted like a bombed skeleton above a hull that had smashed into three pieces when it plowed into the dirt. The section Zephyr approached had a yawning cavern where the prow was supposed to be. It was a mighty wreck, towering above the trees even in this pathetic and splintered state.

He poked his nose around the jagged splinters of the hull. “Y-y-yo?” he spluttered. “Who said that?”

“Me,” the voice said.

“Me who?”

“Me Berry Punch. Who da hay’re you?”

Zephyr squinted. Yes, just a small walk into the avalanched seats and tables, was a purple earth pony. She was under a mountain of planks and the grand piano was embedded into the floor only a few inches away from her head. Berry Punch’s ears swiveled in his direction, and her eyes drifted toward him.

“Oh heyyyy, I know youuuu,” the mare said with a grin. “You’re the waiterrr…”

Zephyr rolled his eyes. It just figured that the only other pony that didn’t get off the zeppelin in time was the mare that pounded back cabernet like it was going out of style. Why would the universe let him be stuck with anypony else?

He walked closer. He asked, “Are you okay?”

“Oh, me? Yah, I’m jus fiiiiiiine,” Berry Punch waved a hoof and lolled her head in his direction. “There’s thish heavy pile o’ junk on me, though.”

“I can see that,” Zephyr said. He sighed. Why him? Why, why, why did these things always happen to him?

Berry Punch flopped her hooves against the canted floor and shoved. She jerked halfway out of the rubble pile and stopped. She frowned and stared at the rubble like it had insulted her mother.

Zephyr snorted and ambled over to her. “Here, let me –“

“Heyyy, buddy, whatcha doin’? “

“Lady, how are you still this drunk?”

“Trade. Secret.”

Zephyr shook his head and hooked his forelegs under Berry’s limbs and hurled himself backward. Berry Punch popped out of the ruble like the cork to a champagne bottle. The two of them fell down the sloping cabin floor and tumbled out into the jungle.

Berry Punch stood and glared at the trees surrounding the zeppelin’s remains. “This ain’t Ponyville,” she muttered.

Zephyr Breeze sat and glowered at the drunk mare as she staggered around the wreck. First, he got the worst job of his life. Then, the place he worked had an engine explode and he couldn’t reach the escape route like everypony else and rode out a flaming torpedo into the dirt. Now e was stuck in some jungle, who knew where, on the edge of a giant rock, with this irritating ache in his wing, and the only pony he had for company was so sloshed that she didn’t even know they had crashed.

Zephyr hugged himself and shivered. Did anypony know he was out here?

More importantly, would anypony actually care enough to come looking for him? Rainbows, well, he’d blown that about as hard as anypony could. Fluttershy? Well, she was busy saving the world half the time he reached out to her after moving out of mom and dad’s place.

“Yo,” Berry Punch said.

Zephyr started rocking back and forth. No, as far as he could tell nopony was really going to notice his disappearance. His boss? Ha, that old coot was going to fire him by the end of the day, he could tell. His coworkers? They would bake a cake and throw a party once he was gone.

“Hey,” Berry Punch said. Her voice was closer.

Zephyr Breeze was going to die out here, really die, all alone and forgotten and it was all because he kept on being a world class screwup just like everypony told him and Fluttershy would have to go on knowing all that effort she and her friends put into making him a better pony had failed and he hadn’t even talked to her in –

Berry Punch slapped a hoof on his back and asked, “You good, buddy?”

Zephyr almost leapt out of his skin.

Berry Punch laughed. “Heeeeeyyyyy, calm down, bud. Don’t be so jumpy.” She gave him a firm pat on the shoulder and ambled off into the wreckage.

A few minutes later she came out with a pile of wood balanced on her back. “I dunno ‘bout you,” she said, ”but I’m in the mood for some campfire snacks.”

***

The fire sizzled and popped in the cool night air. Sparks danced up into the air and bounced off the overhanging hull of the zeppelin. Berry had given him a blanket she’d found earlier, and he drew it tighter around himself. His coat had matted, knots and a few twigs getting stuck in it and dulling the bright light-blue hue to a drab grayish blah of the same. He didn’t even want to think about his mane.

He watched Berry. She was just as disheveled, but a big grin sat on her face and she held a stick in her hooves with a marshmallow stuck on the end. How and where she found one, Zephyr didn’t know. She had pulled the stick out of her tousled mane, he knew that much.

“Hey, you want one?” Berry asked him. She stuck the stick in his face. Slightly melted marshmallow wafted over his muzzle.

“Uh, sure.”

“Cool beans,” Berry said. She tossed him the stick and he scrambled to catch it.

Zephyr thought, I liked her better when she wasn’t sober.

Berry leaned over, pulled a twig out of her tail, stuck another marshmallow on it, and held it over the fire. She dangled it low and it caught ablaze. Berry laughed and yanked it up and drew patterns in the dark with the glowing marshmallow, afterimages burning into the air for fleeting moments. Eventually the marshmallow burned itself out, and Berry dropped the stick to the dirt.

Zephyr munched his own marshmallow.

“Why’re you so glum, dude?” Berry Punch asked.

“Well,” Zephyr flatly said, “do you need an itemized list or can I just point at the dumb trees and rocks around us?”

Berry blew a raspberry. “Ahhhhh, that’s nothin’.”

“Nothing?”

“Yeah, nothin’.”

“How is this nothing? I don’t know if you’ve noticed but we’re stuck who knows how far from any town and with who knows what out there waiting for us?”

Berry Punch shrugged. “Eh,” she said. “Why worry about that now? Somepony’s bound to come looking for this big ol’ thing eventually.” She rapped a hoof against the broken wood of the hull.

Zephyr looked at her and then shifted his gaze to the warm glow of the fire.

Berry Punch leaned against the hull. “Look, you said it yourself. We’re stuck out here, so we might as well just stay put and wait. Unless you know how to get to the nearest town?”

“I could just fly in one direction until I found something.” Zephyr stretched his wings. The ache had faded over the last few hours. Yes, he could make it. It would be a miserable experience, what with how humid and muggy it was out here, but he could go on and on until he found some sign of civilization and --

“And leave little ol’ me all alone back here?” Berry sing-songed at him. “Ooh, my hero.”

“I’d get somepony to go back for you,” Zephyr snapped. “What kinda pony do you think I am?”

Berry Punch just smiled and leaned against the zeppelin’s hull. She crossed her lower legs and fiddled with a rock.

“Well, I wouldn’t do that, alright?” Zephyr muttered.

“Mm-hmm.”

They sat in silence and watched the fire twist and spit between them. The fire was as beautiful to Zephyr as nature once was. Bright yellows, dark oranges, twisting and shifting around blackening planks and twigs. It warmed his tired body. It drove off the night.
“So what kind of pony are ya, then?”

Zephyr blinked and lifted his head. “What?”

“What kind of pony are ya?”

Zephyr’s ears folded back. He stared at the fire again. “Well, uh…I dunno, I guess. I thought I knew, but…well, things changed. And I don’t think I changed with ‘em.”

He could feel Berry Punch’s eyes watching him. Judging him. Just like everypony else.

“Well, things’ll turn around. They always do. You just have to take stock of what you got and, y’know, grab the day by the throat and ride that sucker until you’ve got it back on track.” Berry Punch’s voice was quiet, soft, nothing like the goofy drunkard he’d come to know. Zephyr looked across the fire at her.

“Trust me. I know.” Berry smirked. “I’m not in party mode twenty-four-seven. I leave that to Pinkie Pie.”

Zephyr smiled.

***

When rescue finally arrived, it was a far less eventful thing than Zephyr Breeze had expected. Just a few search pegasi, that was all. One of them picked up Berry and he flew with the rest back to a small town on the other side of the mountain. Somepony, he didn’t catch who, gave them train tickets back to Canterlot from there.

When they reached Canterlot, Berry nudged him in the barrel at the station. “Well, buddy,” she said, “it was fun. Drop me a line sometime, yeah?”

Zephyr watched as she stepped off the platform, and got pounced by a little filly and crowded by more than a few other ponies. He heard her laugh their concerns off, and saw her lift the kid up onto her back and trot off down the station platform.

The train lurched forward. Zephyr Breeze watched Canterlot recede into the distance, until it was little more than a distant speck on a great mountain that towered above the countryside. He leaned against the window and shut his eyes.