“S-Sky?”“Shh,” whispered Cloudy Skies into her ear. “You’re not going to wallow like that. I won’t let you.”“Have you come from… from wherever it is ponies go after they die? Are you going to tell me the way out?”There was no glowing figure, no touch on her shoulder, nothing but the voice. “I’m not real.” She almost sounded sad about it. “You’re hallucinating. Something in the water maybe, or some side effect of coming back to life. You always come back overflowing with magic, but a pegasus can’t use it underground.” It sounded almost like a mental shrug. “I can’t tell you which, because you don’t know.”“You’re too kind.” Alex’s voice was bitter. “It doesn’t have to be something that systemic. It’s not like I was some beacon of sanity to begin with. This last was just one too many. I’ve lost it.”“No. Absolutely not. You’re not insane, Lonely Day. You’re perfectly sane, and you’re going to get out of this.”“How?” Alex rose to her hooves again, walking back the way she had come. She had to move with great care, taking each hoof carefully on the uneven floor. She wasn’t exactly in a cave, but she wouldn’t have been terribly surprised if this mine was old enough to have been from before the event. Of course if that were true the wooden supports along the walls wouldn’t still be holding…“Do I have to tell you?” The voice sounded annoyed, uncharacteristic for Sky. More than enough to convince Alex that she was really just talking to herself. “You haven’t just been dumped here with nothing. You’ve got your brain! Everything you know about mining. You know the way these tunnels are structured. Hell, maybe you’ve seen a map!”She hadn’t. Complete maps of the mine were only available to supervisors, and getting one hadn’t been her first priority.“It’s dark. I can’t see, so I can’t navigate. There’s no way a naked pegasus in a tunnel somewhere is going to be able to make light.”“You’re right,” Sky agreed. “But you’re not helpless. You remember every step you’ve taken, right? You can build a mental image of the tunnel. Extend your wings!” She did, mostly by reflex. She wouldn’t have known how to do it if she had actually thought about it. “Now walk. Keep them along the walls, and go slow. Can you make a picture by touch?”“I’m… I’m not sure.” Lonely Day started walking. She found she already had an image of where she was going from having walked here the first time, or at least the one wall she had hugged to get to the water. She reached her fallen jumpsuit exactly where she expected to find it. It wasn’t like seeing the mine, because of course she had never seen it. It was, rather, like getting up in the middle of the night, and not needing to turn on the lights or even open her eyes to find the bathroom. It was perfect familiarity, so much that she didn’t worry about bumping her head.“That’s it! Now we just keep going. Explore every inch, and be careful not to fall. You’re not going to die and lose your wings before you even use them. If you do, I swear to god I’ll come back from the dead and haunt you.”Lonely Day smiled for the first time since she had woken up. “But you’re not Sky,” she pointed out. “You can’t come back”
 
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