Applejack opened her eyes, and the rain came crashing into them. It flew into her face, into her nose, into her mouth. She sputtered and coughed it out. She raised her head out of the dirty puddle that had risen around her during the night. She stood up on numb, tired legs, but slipped on the wet ground. The rain still rushed at her back. She picked herself back up and wiped the grime from her face and chest. She gave one last glance to her bed for the night, a shallow hole by the side of the road, and walked away.
She began moving forward on the same old, weathered stone road she had been running on for days, weeks, months—she didn’t know how long anymore—ever deeper into the mist and rain. Not running anymore, though. When she had first come to this rain soaked place, Applejack had galloped, but she had long lost the energy for that.
It didn’t matter, though. It didn’t matter where or how she was, it only mattered where she was going and how she was going to get there. No, she shook her head, and rainwater feel from either side of her chin, that didn’t matter either. All that mattered was who she was going to. She slowed down to examine the path ahead.
The thick foliage that surrounded her on all sides had grown over and covered parts of the old road ahead of her. She frowned.
Beneath the rain and the dark sky, the familiar flowers, grass, and trees had wilted. They had given way to foreign twisted, thorny vines and briars with wide, deep green leaves that pointed straight up into the air. They covered the ground as far as Applejack could see. It was a heavy, flooded jungle of scrubland that reached no higher than her stomach. Everywhere else, the plants had conveniently kept off the road. But here, they had grown bold. They had spread across the stone, recovering what had been taken from them by the road makers.
Thorn-covered vines had coiled around unkempt briars that had risen from between the cobblestones. It had grown so dense, she could hardly make out the stone underneath.
Applejack had no choice but to go through or turn back. She stumbled through the weeds, and thorns cut her legs, and strange gray lizards hissed at her from beneath the leaves.
Those cuts didn’t matter, though. All that mattered was who was at the end of this road. She cried out as she tripped and fell into the briars. A sharp, jagged thorn slashed at her coat and face. She saw red mix with the muddy rainwater beneath her. Applejack winced and grabbed her chest. The blood didn’t matter, either.
Applejack couldn’t stop. She couldn’t quit. She couldn’t give up. Rainbow Dash wouldn’t have stopped. Rainbow Dash wouldn’t have quit. Rainbow Dash wouldn’t have given up on her. So Applejack wouldn’t, either. She gritted her teeth and stood up. She went on.
Her hooves splashed in puddles and tangled in the vines. Her cloak, soaked and tattered, offered her little protection from the wind and rain. There had been a time when she could still feel the endless raindrops that struck her back, but her coat had long since grown numb from cold. Water spilled over her hat and into her eyes, her mane slicked to her face, and her tail dragged through the thorns.
But none of that mattered, either, she told herself again, as she always told herself, everyday. Not the pain in her legs, not the numbness of her skin, not the vines on the road, not the mud she had slept in. All that mattered was who was at the end of this road.
All that mattered was that Rainbow Dash was at the end of this road. And Applejack was coming for her. She walked a little faster.
Before her, among the weeds, a great tree had grown up through the center of the road. Its roots had pushed aside the cobblestones and risen high over the leafy umbrage below. Its trunk was thicker than she would have believed possible if she hadn’t seen for herself, at least half as wide as the Apple’s barn back in Ponyville. Its bark was jagged and dark, and water poured down through deep grooves in its surface. But it offered her no protection from the rain. It grew high into the air, far over her head, over even the clouds. Its leaves hovered somewhere beyond her sight. It wasn’t the first such tree she had seen, but it was the first she had seen growing out of the road itself.
She scrambled up onto one of its elevated roots with a grunt. She carefully balanced on the slick wood to stay out of reach of the thorns below. She slowly walked along the roots, clear around the tree. She saw light.
She wiped water from her eyes and squinted into the distance. Ahead of her, she recognized the unmistakable yellow-orange glow of firelight. She picked her pace up to a trot and jumped down. She could just hear the crackle and pop of the fire through the thunderous rain. She smiled. Fire meant warmth, fire meant ponies, fire meant dry ground, fire meant rest.
Her smile faded when she reached the source of the light’s glow. Just one torch stood in a puddle by the road. Its fire flickered in the open air and steamed in the rain. How it stayed alight, she couldn’t guess. It seemed to keep the plants at bay though, as the area around it was clear. Some magic, maybe. Twilight might have known. Or maybe she couldn’t have, Applejack mused. Maybe even Twilight’s brilliant mind couldn’t have understood this place.
Applejack could feel it, deep in her stomach. The magic in this place didn’t work the way it worked in Equestria. It was something else, something wrong. At Sweet Apple Acres, Applejack had been able to feel the life in the trees through her hooves as she trotted out among the orchards. She could feel it in their roots under the earth. She could trace it up along their trunks. She could see it bursting forth in their blossoms. But here, when she felt down into the earth, the plants felt alien, and twisted, and broken.
Applejack ignored it. As far as she was concerned, it was just one more thing that didn’t matter. She had no need to understand the how or the why of this place. She only needed to know enough to get through it to Rainbow Dash.
Beside the torch stood a small travelers’ rest. It consisted of only a wide wooden umbrella, three thin walls, and a single bench.
One other pony sat on the bench. A stallion, nearly as large as her brother. He wore a dark cloak that gleamed subtly and unnaturally, and that appeared completely dry. Some kind of magical ward against the rain, Applejack figured.
He didn’t so much as glance in her direction as she walked up to the travelers’ rest.
“Evenin’,” she said as she sat down, grateful to have found any respite from the rain, however slight. She nearly had to shout to make herself heard over the sound of the rain pounding on the wood.
He merely grunted in response, still as a statue. Applejack sniffed and wrinkled her nose. He smelled just like the fish she used to help Fluttershy catch to feed her otter friends.
Applejack took a moment to catch her breath. The rain still found her, dripping through little cracks and holes in the umbrella, but she couldn’t complain. “I’m heading for a place called, uh, Ibrobus or Imbralists, or somethin’ like that. Friend of mine’s supposed to be there,” she said after she had caught her breath, looking over at the stallion. “You got any idea where that is?”
He lifted a single hoof and pointed down the road, the same direction she had already been walking. “Up the hill," he said, voice gruff.
She nodded, though she didn’t see any hill. “I figured as much. My name’s Applejack,” she said, holding out her hoof.
The stallion shot her a quick sidelong glance and looked away again, ignoring her offered hoof.
Applejack frowned. “I’m lookin’ for a pony. A pegasus.” She reached into her saddlebag and pulled out a photograph. She held it up to him. “Her name’s Rainbow Dash. You haven’t heard of her, have you?”
Slowly, he reached over and took the photograph. He held it close up to his face. “Very beautiful." He handed it back to her.
“You’ve seen her?” Applejack asked quickly, sitting up.
He shook his head.
“Oh...” Applejack sank back down onto the bench. She looked at the photograph for a long time. Rainbow Dash smiled back up at her, her face folded, faded, and torn in a dozen places. She sighed and put the photograph away. “Somepony told me they saw her go this way, but I don’t know... Why would she come here?” She leaned against the wall and let her eyelids droop.
She hadn’t slept the night before. She had only lain in the dirt while the rain battered her coat, not really awake but not really asleep either. She hadn’t slept since the rain started to fall. It had begun as only a light drizzle, but as she had steadily galloped on, the rain had steadily worsened. The sky had darkened, mist had spread over the ground, and the rain had rushed down to the earth in heavier and heavier torrents. It had thrown itself ever more violently at her. It had pelted her and the ground with thick, stinging droplets. After it had begun, it never stopped.
Beneath the rain, the world had gone dark. Applejack could barely tell day from night. For she didn’t know how long, she had trampled through this perpetual rain that soaked the country. She had run ahead on the only road she could find.
It had been hard. ‘Road’ was generous term for that collection of loose cobblestones. In some places, the road had sunk beneath newly formed ponds and lakes, and she had waded through cold water that came up to her neck. In other places, the road, cracked beyond repair, disappeared in the mud, and Applejack had spent hours searching for where it started again.
She looked around herself, suddenly remembering where she was. “This sure is some rain though, huh?” She waited for him to reply, but he kept his mouth firmly shut. She went on, happy to have someone to speak to, whether they spoke back or not. “Back in Ponyville we used to have rainstorms, but never anythin’ like this. I swear, I almost don’t remember what sunshine looks like.” She frowned at that. She had meant it as a joke, but it sounded frighteningly true.
It had been a long time since she last talked to anyone. She wanted to enjoy the sound of her own voice and the feeling of knowing someone else heard it too. “You ever heard of Ponyville?”
He took a deep breath, but still didn’t answer her.
“It’s nothin’ like here. It’s all blue skies, green grass, and nice folks. Perfect for growin’ all sorts of things. Apples especially. I bet ya couldn’t even grow a potato here, though. Ponyville’s a long, long ways over, eh, that way, guess.” She pointed back the way she had come. “A long, long ways...” She frowned again. “It must be harvest season by now. I bet Mac’s out there in the orchard right now, gatherin’ up the apples. Granny Smith is out there too, sortin’ ‘em. And Apple Bloom... she might even have her cutie mark by now. Maybe a few of my cousins came to help since I’m gone. They’re all out there together, workin’ together.”
She closed her eyes and tried to imagine herself with them. She trotted among the apple trees, their branches bowing low with the weight of ripe fruit. She wiped sweat from her forehead and looked up at the sunny sky. She imagined her friends with her. They laughed at some joke that wasn’t really funny, but they laughed anyway because they were together again after so long a time away from home. She tried to imagine Rainbow Dash, laughing along with them, but all she could see was rain and stormclouds.
_________________________
She must have fallen asleep, because when she opened her eyes again, she found herself lying on the bench with her hat pulled down low over her face. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. The stallion was gone, but his cloak lay beside her. She looked around for him, but he was nowhere to be seen.
She picked up the cloak and turned it over in her hooves. It was flexible and slick, but strong. She looked back at her own cloak. It was frayed and tattered. His was in much better condition. She wondered why he had left it, and if he had left it for her.
She stood up and put it on, silently thanking him. The clouds looked lighter than they had when she had fallen asleep. Though, the rain came down as violently as ever. She decided it must have been morning. She walked out onto the road again, feeling a little less tired. Where the rain had soaked her old cloak down to her skin, it bounced right off this one, dribbling down to her legs. She could already tell it would make traveling easier.
She looked back at the travelers’ rest, but it had nothing left for her. She set out on the road once again.
Her sense of time quickly became warped and confused as she walked through the rain. It might have been days, hours, or merely minutes that passed. Each spot on the road looked so much like every other spot on the road, that she couldn’t tell any difference between them, and she soon had trouble remembering just when she had spoken to the stallion at the travelers’ rest, or if it had happened at all.
She eventually came to another travelers’ rest, identical to the first, but she didn’t see the stallion again. She laid down on the bench, and fell into a fitful sleep, knowing the next day would be just as hard.
__________________________________________________
Applejack trudged up the hill, almost certainly the same one the stallion had mentioned. The road had begun to rise so gradually that at first she hadn’t even realized she was walking uphill at all. But it rose steeper and steeper with each step, and now she climbed up at a sharp angle. For as far back as she could remember, the road had passed through flatlands. This was the first hill she had seen since... she wasn’t even sure.
To the side of the road, she saw a sign. It was an oddly normal thing to see in such an abnormal place, but there it stood anyway. A single word was etched onto surface—Imbribus—and an arrow pointing up.
That confirmed it. At the center of this marsh was a hill. At the top of that hill was a town. And in that town was a pegasus.
Nothing else mattered.
She looked up. The road only became steeper higher up. She knew of no other way to go, so she shrugged and kept walking.
Just then, she heard a roar. She raised her head just in time to see a swell of water and mud rushing down the road to meet her, already mere inches from her snout. She didn’t even have time to catch her breath.
The wave knocked her clear off her hooves and carried her down the hill. By luck alone, she managed to grab ahold of a crevice in the road and keep the wave from undoing all the progress she had made. When it passed, she stood up, brushed herself off, and walked forward. She tripped again and again and again on the slippery, steep, hill road, stubbing her legs and chest on the hard stone. Every time, she stood back up even though her legs begged her to stop, to lie down and give up. But Rainbow Dash wouldn’t have given up on her, and Applejack wouldn’t give up on Rainbow Dash.
She advanced slowly. She took each step carefully to avoid falling, searching for grooves in the road. She looked up occasionally to mark her progress, but the summit never seemed any closer. It was like she was stuck in some perpetual loop in which she never went forward or backward. Considering how backwards the magic was here, she worried it might actually be possible.
Hearing another roar, she looked up to see a second wave surging towards her, ready to knock her off her hooves. This time, she braced her legs and grabbed hold of the stone. The water slammed into her like a buck to the chest, but she held. When it passed, she allowed herself a small smirk. She wouldn’t be bested by the same trick twice.
But still the road rose steeper, and still rose higher into the rain. She grabbed the vines that grew to the sides of the road, pulling herself up and ignoring the thorns that cut into her hooves. She went on. The end was near. If Rainbow Dash was anywhere, it would be in the town at the top of that hill.
Or so she prayed.
No, she shook her head. She believed it. She knew it. Rainbow Dash would be there. They could go home to Sweet Apple Acres together. Back to the warm air, blue sky, gentle spring breezes, and green orchards.
She took another step.
_________________________
Applejack held on with all four of her hooves. She lay outstretched on her stomach, her chin grazing the slimy, wet stone beneath her. She coughed back out the water that flowed into her mouth and nose. She crawled, feeling like a snake slithering on its belly. The road was too steep to stand any longer. She could only crawl now.
But she could finally see the top. She took a step up. The end was within her reach. If she could hold on for only a few minutes more… She took another trembling step up and screwed her eyes shut.
The hill had seemed as endless as the rain that fell upon it. On and on she had crawled up its side. But now she could plainly see the top. It had taken her longer than she could tell, hours in the least, but now she could see the end. More than once she had considered sliding back down to its base and giving up, but she didn’t know any other way to go.
So, instead, she had put her head down and taken another step. And then another, and another, and a dozen more steps after that one, and a hundred more after that. She had kept her eyes pointed down at the ground, because every time she had looked up, the top of the hill had seemed just as far away as the last time she had looked.
With each step she came closer, she reminded herself again and again. With each step she made progress. Now, a couple more steps and she would surely reach the top. She knew it. She just had to keep going...
She felt her eyes droop. She shook herself back awake. She could do this. Rainbow Dash could have done this. Rainbow Dash would have just flashed that confident grin at her and bolted right up the side. Applejack smiled.
Abruptly, as she crawled forward in a drunken daze, fighting to keep her eyes open and her legs moving, no longer able to tell how long she had been climbing the hill or when she had started, the road leveled out. In a matter of moments, it went from a sheer cliff face to nearly flat ground.
She collapsed on the road. She had done it. She took a moment to catch her breath, and then stood up. She wasn’t done yet. She had traveled through the marsh and climbed the hill. Now she just needed to find the pegasus.
And bring her home.
She looked up and saw a wall of water standing before her, just inches from her snout. At first, she thought it was another wave of water. She frantically looked about for cover. But this wave stood still, stuck to one spot.
She stepped forward to examine it. It stretched in a curved line on either side of the road, all around the hilltop. The water fell from nowhere. It seemed to be a waterfall that started somewhere high above where she couldn’t see. It stood still, suspended in the rain filled air, ethereal to her sleep deprived mind. It flowed down onto the road, and rushed past her hooves.
She cautiously stuck one leg out to touch it. To her surprise, her hoof went straight through to dry air. She poked it again to test it, and once again her hoof met air. She shrugged, and stepped through. She didn’t need to know why it was. Just another thing that didn’t matter. She just needed to get past it. For a moment, water entirely obscured her vision. In the next moment, she found herself standing in a town.
In front of her, the road branched into a dozen smaller paths lined by torches. Each branched path crisscrossed and twisted through a snarl of dirty, wooden buildings huddled together in the mud. It was the dirtiest town she had seen yet on her travels. It looked to be a shantytown made up of nothing but slums. The wooden planks of every building were black with mold, and no roof rose higher than a second story.
Except one. Towering over them all was a colossal, wooden column that stretched high up into the air, higher than she could see.
Behind her, the wall of water and the rain continued to pour. She looked up, and saw no sky. No clouds or sun or stars or moon lay overhead. She could see only darkness.
As she looked up, a fat drop of rainwater fell from the darkness and into her eye. But it was nothing like the rain outside. It felt like a slow droplet of water falling from the leaf of a tree.
She realized with a start that there was another of the rounded roofs above her, a canopy wide enough to hide the entire town beneath it, held up by the column in the center. Rain poured over the edge of the canopy, forming the screen of water she had passed through.
She squinted up, her eyes adjusting to the darkness. She could just make out the boards that made up the canopy and the patches of moss that grew on them. She couldn’t guess how many trees had been felled to build it. It must have been old. Rain seeped through a thousand little cracks and fell all over the town in big, slow droplets. In some places, the canopy had collapsed altogether, and the rain rushed through the gaps in streaming waterfalls that collected in ponds in the streets.
“Is this Imbribus?” she asked under her breath. But there was no one around to answer her.
Wind blew Applejack’s cloak about her, and she remembered just how cold and tired she was. She chose a path at random and walked under the light of torches by either side of the road, in search of some place to rest and inquire about Rainbow Dash’s whereabouts.
Everywhere she looked, she saw mud. The sound of the rain hitting the canopy overhead was so loud she could hardly hear her own hooves clomping on the road. She saw the occasional townspony canter by her. They all wore the same, glossy cloaks she did, and took no notice of her. They rushed quickly from building to building, sidestepping raindrops, darting out and then back indoors without so much as glancing in her direction. They never gave her a chance to ask for directions.
She passed by a door and heard sounds of ponies laughing and slamming mugs on wooden tables coming from inside. A bed and mug had been painted on a sign that hung haphazardly over the door. Hoping it was an inn, she trotted inside.
Outside, it had been muddy, wet, and dark. Inside the inn, it was still muddy and wet, but on one side of the room, a crackling fire blazed in an old hearth. A few gruff-looking ponies sat around wide, circular tables, eating, drinking, talking, laughing, and drinking some more, too far down in their mugs to take notice of the new arrival. Applejack stumbled past the tables and up to the bar. She slumped onto a stool.
“Can I get you something?” the barkeep asked in an unfamiliar accent.
“Somethin’ warm,” Applejack said. “Anythin’ warm. A drink.”
The barkeep nodded. “Langsat juice will wash away the rain’s cold.”
A moment later, a steaming mug dropped onto the bar top in front of Applejack. She grabbed it between both her forehooves and brought it up to her mouth. She tipped her head back and greedily gulped it all down at once, and some spilled out and trickled down her muzzle. Immediately, warmth from the sweet juice spread down her throat and stomach, and from there to her chest and legs. She coughed and set the empty mug down.
“Thank you,” Applejack said, looking up at the barkeep for the first time.
The mare barkeep had more wrinkles than just about anyone Applejack had ever seen. The barkeep would have given even Granny Smith a run for her money in a contest of just being downright old. Her legs shook with every step, and Applejack worried she would collapse at any moment, but her movements had a decisiveness and surety kind that came with long experience.
“My pleasure,” the barkeep said, smiling as warmly as all barkeeps at inns do, ever ready to accommodate their guests. Just so long as they have bits in their purses. “Surely you’d like something to eat as well? And a bed for the night?”
Applejack suddenly realized how hungry she was. She couldn’t remember when she had last ate. “I’d appreciate it. Food sounds good.”
“Of course. Can I get you anything else while you wait? And I have rooms open upstairs.”
“Actually, I’m looking for somepony.” Applejack opened her dripping saddlebag and felt an entirely different kind of ache in her chest. “Her name’s Rainbow Dash. She’s supposed to be here in this town somewhere. You got any idea where I might find her?” Applejack asked, keeping the hope out of her voice.
The barkeep squinted at the photograph and then smiled. “Ah yes, the colorful one. I remember her. Very noisy, that one, after a few drinks.”
“Wait, really? Where?” Applejack leaned forward suddenly. She hadn’t seen or heard anything of Rainbow Dash in weeks. She hadn’t really expected to find her in this secluded, rainy hilltop town. But the town had been her only, last clue. She had nowhere else to look. So she had forced all the doubt from her head and lied to herself until she believed it. An exhausted, tired kind of relief spread through her weary muscles. “You saw her?”
“Yes, she came here. I believe she sat on the very same stool you’re sitting on now,” the barkeep replied, her voice sounding as old and wrinkled as her coat.
Applejack looked down at her stool like it was something blessed. “How was she? Was she okay?”
The barkeep frowned. “She seemed... she did not seem happy. But she wore a necklace bearing your mark.” She pointed to the three mud-smeared apples on Applejack’s flanks.
“Really?” Applejack eyes widened and she turned to look at her cutie mark, could hardly recognize it. “You’re sure she was wearing a necklace with my cutie mark?”
“Yes. I never saw her take it off. Does the necklace have some meaning to you?”
Applejack wasn’t listening. She looked down at the photograph of Rainbow Dash, blinking back the moisture building up in the corners of her eyes. “She’s still wearing it...” She looked up suddenly. “How long ago? Is she still in town?”
“Hmm... It could not have been more than ten moons ago that I saw her here. She stayed in one of my rooms for a few nights, and then she left for the Healing Lake. She said she was looking for something.”
Applejack opened her mouth to ask another question, but her voice caught when she realized what the barkeep had said. Ten days. She was only ten days behind Rainbow Dash. If she left right then, she could catch up to her in just ten days. She stood up. “Where?”
The barkeep waved her back down. “Sit down, child. Don’t be foolish. You can’t reach her tonight.”
“I need to leave as soon as I can. Where’s that lake?”
“The Healing Lake is many days’ journey away, and you are already tired and hungry. You will never reach it without resting first.”
Applejack opened her mouth to protest, but the barkeep interrupted her. “It will do her little good if you die in a puddle by the side of the road because you refused an old mare’s hospitality,” the barkeep said with a small smile. “Or do you not truly wish to see her again?”
Applejack rolled her jaw back and forth in silence for several moments and then sat back down with a huff. She was tired, and she was hungry. She couldn’t argue with that. “Tell me ‘bout this lake.”
“You have not heard of the Healing Lake?” the barkeep asked, eyebrows rising, She leaned forward, hushing her voice as if she were sharing some ancient secret. “I’ve never seen it myself, but they say a lake lies in the east whose waters are as warm as desert sand and as clear as a lover’s tears. They say those waters can wash away any wound.”
Applejack frowned. “Why was she goin’ there? Was she hurt?”
The barkeep slowly shook her head. “They say the Lake not only washes away wounds of the body, but of the mind and soul as well. And of the heart.”
Applejack chewed the inside of her cheek. It was just like Rainbow Dash to believe in some nonsense like a ‘Healing Lake’. “Where is it?” she asked.
“Around the lake, they say, stands a city, its name long lost, once vast and grand, the home of the Engineers, the very city where they dug deep into the ground and there found the magic of the earth, where they took it and twisted it to their whims.” The barkeep stood back, making wide gestures with her forelegs that Applejack thought looked more silly than dramatic. “And around the city lies a desert that stretches as far as any ocean, perhaps the greatest of the Engineer’s aberrations. Once plentiful farmland, now nought but sand and sun. There is a flooded marshland between there and the rain clouds that cover this place, but the road doesn’t go that far.”
“If the road doesn’t go there, then how am I supposed to get there?” Applejack asked, scowling. This journey to the lake sounded more and more like it would be long, and Rainbow Dash had already started on it. She would be well ahead of her by now. For a few short moments, Applejack had actually thought Rainbow Dash was within her reach, but now she realized how foolish that thought had been.
“There are many here who know the way,” the old mare answered, gesturing to the other ponies sitting around the tables. “Trading caravans travel to the City of the Lake often. If you wait, you could pay your way with one of them.”
Wait, Applejack thought bitterly. Wait, while Rainbow Dash flew on. “And when does the next one of these caravans leave?”
“I do not know, but I am sure I will be able to tell you in the morning. For now, though, your food is ready.” The barkeep smiled, laying a plate in front of her. “And I do have open rooms.”
Applejack ate her meal quickly—strange fruits and grains she had never seen before—picked up her photograph and saddlebags, and then paid for a single night’s stay. She tipped the barkeep, and walked up to her room. She found it to be more of a small, dark closet than an actual room. But it had a bed, and it was dry.
She dropped her things on the floor and collapsed into the bed’s blankets. After sleeping on the open ground for weeks, the mattress felt beautifully soft. She let herself sink down into the blankets and into sleep.
Just on the verge of sleep, she remembered.
She pushed herself over the side of the bed and stumbled over to her saddlebags. She pulled out the pendant she had stored inside at the start of her journey, many months earlier.
It was a single silver chain. At one end hung a storm cloud insignia, shooting off a rainbow lightning bolt. It looked very similar to one of the old Elements of Harmony, but where those were elaborately decorated, this was simple. It didn’t need to be beautiful, because nothing could have ever fully captured the beauty it symbolized.
She held it for a long time, tracing the lightning bolt with her hoof. She pulled it over her head and put it on. Then she laid back down on the bed. She fell asleep wondering if she was lying in the same bed Rainbow Dash had slept in.
__________________________________________________
The first time, Applejack hadn’t understood what she said.
“What?” Applejack asked.
Rainbow Dash stood by the window on the opposite side of their bedroom. Not stood, really, Applejack noted, but slouched, all the pegasus’s fiery determination and brash spirit missing. Rainbow Dash looked up into the clear sky, as if searching for something she had lost. Applejack felt glad for the blue sky. It would make the funeral easier, if only a little.
Rainbow Dash turned away from the window to face Applejack. She took the pendant bearing Applejack’s cutie mark off of her neck and laid it on the dresser beside her, her face like stone. “I don’t love you anymore,” she said again, plainly.
That time, Applejack heard, but she still didn’t understand. “What?” she asked again.
But Rainbow Dash didn’t answer. She turned around and leapt out the window. For a brief moment, she dropped below out of sight, but she immediately rose up again. She went higher and higher on strong wings that trembled in the wind. And that was the last time Applejack would ever see her, though she didn’t know it then.
Applejack didn’t follow her, not at first. She thought, maybe, Rainbow Dash simply needed some time by herself, to understand what had happened. Maybe she needed to face her grief on her own, to cry where no one else could see her. She deserved that much. So Applejack didn’t follow her, not at first.
That afternoon, Applejack gathered with the rest of the mourners in a field outside Ponyville and prepared to say goodbye to her friend, and rest her beneath the earth. One by one, some in pairs, and some in groups, everyone arrived. There were family, and friends, most everyone who lived in Ponyville, even the Royal Princesses.
Everyone but Rainbow Dash. Applejack became angry. After everything, to not show up at the funeral? She felt it the deepest of betrayals, an unforgivable offense. How could Rainbow Dash be so insensitive, as if it didn’t enough matter to her to even bother showing up? Applejack knew that wasn’t true, that Dash hurt just as much as everyone else, but her absence was just wrong.
Celestia herself spoke before the crowd, ever eloquent, strong, and graceful, soothing their grief with gentle words. But Applejack, too focused on the one empty seat, hardly heard a word of it. She found herself unable to speak when her own time came, afraid the anger would seep into her voice as she spoke to the crowd. Under her breath, so no one could hear, she apologized to her friend, and wished her a quiet sleep.
When it finished, she ran home, ready to call Rainbow Dash every name she had ever heard and a few more she would think up on the way over, and demand an explanation. But their home was empty, and there was no sign of Rainbow Dash. As she left to look for her outside, Applejack didn’t notice that the pendant was no longer on the dresser.
She went to Rainbow Dash’s old house, only recently moved out. Its walls were still covered in trophies and ribbons. But she wasn’t there either.
And then Applejack became worried.
She asked her friends for help, and they searched all through Ponyville, but to no avail. Finally, someone told her they had seen Rainbow Dash take the final train to Appleloosa.
At the train station the following morning, she promised her friends and family that she would be back home with Rainbow Dash soon. They wanted to come, but Applejack insisted on going alone. Rainbow Dash was her responsibility, and she would be back in just a few days anyway. After a short farewell, Applejack boarded the train and left.
But Rainbow Dash wasn’t in Appleloosa. Ponies there told Applejack that the pegasus had already left. She had taken another train further south. The ponies at the next station told her the same thing, and the next after that. Applejack followed the trains as far as the lines went, and when the tracks ended, she traveled by hoof. First through the Badlands, and then past the border of Equestria itself. She chased rumors and hearsay of a pegasus that left a rainbow trail through the air in her wake.
Finally, she passed over a great mountain range, and down into the country known only as the Wildlands, the vast, primitive land to Equestria’s south. Some said the first ponies to ever have arrived on the continent settled in the Wildlands first. But they had abandoned it long ago to travel north to the fertile fields of Equestria. No one knew exactly why though. Perhaps famine or disease. Or something worse, like magic that had been twisted and folded over itself until it became something broken and malformed.
Many in the Equestrian aristocracy claimed that their family histories stretched all the way back to first ponies who journeyed out of the Wildlands, though none of them could ever prove their claims. Around campfires in Equestria, fathers told their wide-eyed foals stories of hideous monsters and ferocious beasts that roamed the Wildlands, of majestic ancient cities and strange foreign peoples, of fantastic magics and indescribable wonders, and even of a hidden, long forgotten power capable of defying even death.
That was where Applejack went, traveling in the opposite direction of her ancestors. Every step took her farther away from home, and closer to Rainbow Dash.
