The path

by Riverdart

Rating: teen
Tags: Applejack, Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Alternate Universe, Other, Tragedy
Length: 2227

Applejack relives her father's final moments.

Applejack wakes up in a forest, with her mind wiped of memories and only one way to go.

Along a path that seems never-ending.

As she walks, memories are revealed to her.

Published 2015-09-07 22:50:01 UTC
Last updated 2015-09-07 22:50:01 UTC

Waking

Author's Note

Hi!
So this is my first story, please don't have high expectations, i just wanted to try and do an MLP story for this website :)
Anyhow, this story is set from Applejack's point of view and her memories are cleared.
Thanks very much for reading :twilightsmile:

Waking

I could hear nothing. It got to me like parasites eating your crop; slowly at first, sneakily, and then all of a sudden the apples are gone and nothing but dust is left. I wasn’t concerned about my lack of sight, or the smell of… well, nothing. Floating in whatever I was floating in, my hooftips found nothing but a cloak of darkness. I was not worried.

But the silence...

They describe death as a creeping blackness on the edge of your vision, like storm clouds rocking and rolling on their bed of mist. If I am dying, they were totally wrong. The opposite comes. Light, bright greeny yellowy purpley light explodes in the corners of my eyes as if four meteors smashed into the earth at the same time. The light, still there, starts to expand, with thousands of squiggly slithers of pure light all racing as if chased by some furious monster living under my eyelids. After what seems like an hour, but could have been a year for all I know, the worms stop moving and start to settle. My sight starts to form, and where there is light against dark I can put together the jigsaw of the world I have a woken in. The last worm finds its place and lies still. I gaze around, using only my eyes. There is no need to move my head just yet.

I am facing a path.

Panic flashes across my chest. This path… The strip of untextured, brown, something gives me an immense feeling of deja vu, and, of course, fear. My heart tells me to run, turn away and never look back. My head tells me... what is my head telling me? It is like nothing I’ve ever felt before. A mixture of guilt, sadness, curiosity and so many other unnamed feelings bombard my head and heart making me feel dizzy.
But I know one thing. I have walked this path before.

My legs are strong; they do not tire as I trek down this straight length of brown. The ‘trees’ on either side are cylinders of white, reaching up as far as my eyes can detect. I suspect there are leaves somewhere near the top, but it is not necessary to look up at this time. I shift my gaze forward, to the challenge in front of me. The path continues and then… it… stops. I too, command my legs to stop striding. A glint of light catches my eye. I realise that a small glass of water sits at my feet, looking inviting. I reach forward and take it out of the air, clasping it in my mouth.

A nagging voice in the back of my mind shouts at me;
AJ! This is not normal- glasses do not hover! I ignore it. I am thirsty and it is not… Applejack, Stop. You need to calm down and think. You are accepting EVERYTHING here as normal. You need to Think! This place is getting to you. And you know it.

I once again ignore the voice and down the water. I release the glass and let it drop to the floor. The sound of glass breaking fills my ears and I sigh in pleasure. The first sound I have heard in a long amount of time. The path is no longer broken; It continues into the distance. I keep walking and leave the glass shards behind me.

The walking routine has gone on for days now. Walk, drink, walk, drink, walk, drink and etcetera. When I am only about half way through my walking shift something different, not routine, comes into view in front of me. I shriek. My pa’s cart, my pa’s cart, THE cart- is here, here! I gallop over, covering the distance between us in a matter of seconds. It has been tipped over, but the green and red paintwork is still visible.

I gently nuzzle the grooves expertly carved into the wood. A picture of a green apple, lovingly painted by my father. Under the name is a tiny apple, but red this time. It is my apple. I did this. It was me. I have the sudden urge to curl up into a ball and cry. But I don't. I am strong. And suddenly, a memory surfaces. I sink to the ground and take shelter under the cart. This could take a while.

“She had nothin' to do with it!”
My pa shouts, exasperated. My ma purses her lips together and looks at my bedroom door. I take a sharp breath in and step back away from the tiny gap where the door was supposed to meet the wall. Ma's voice rises to a shout.
“You son of b*tch of course she did it- you're just protecting her because you're WEAK! You need something to cling to, so you can survive. You may have sucked in Applejack into your little sink hole, but I AM NOT falling into your trap! It is OVER!”
I stumble over a cardboard box, trying to get through my little door, but I crash to the floor just as ma slams our front door in my pa's face. I stare after her, pain and hurt etched across my features. Pa turns towards me, a sad smile on his face.
“Ya... heard that, then...?” At my tiny nod, he crouches in front of me and takes my skinny little hooves in his strong, worked ones.”Ahm sorry, li'l apple. What your ma said... it was mostly true. I do need somebody... not necessarily to cling to, but ta protect. Amma a defender at heart, and your ma, when I met her, well, that was when she... ya know...” He falters, remembering what ma was like when they had first met. “Anyhoo, she's gone, l'il apple. S'just me an' you now, again.”
he pulls me into a hug, and the memory fades.

Rain is your friend, Pa had always said. When we ploughed together at the first sign of a shower he would stop and help me jump in puddles under the apple trees. He always said the rain was a 'gift from the sky'.
The rain slamming into the ground now was more than just the clouds dribble. The droplets were huge, bombs of what I hoped was water, erupting like volcanoes as they hit the ground. I was drenched from head to toe, the Cart didn't provide much protection at all from those monstrous droplets outside. As I huddled in the tiny space, another memory fought its way through the barriers of my consciousness. I sighed. These are painful.

“Ya'll did it? Ya sold 'em all? Oh, l'il apple, ahm so proud! Ma own l'il gal; partner in trade!” Pa squeals like a 'li'l gal' himself. “Do ya'll think thems'l believe ya noo? I shrug, but the lump in my throat has appeared once again. What if the judge still didn’t believe me even after I gave them that 'evidence'? Pa was happy though, his smiles are so rare now. I was willing to let him have his little fun before I dumped my own special bucket of cold, hard reality on him.
After all, he deserved to have a break from the truth.

The memory has left a disturbed feeling in the pit of my stomach. But there isn't time to think about it now. The rain has stopped. I must get going. I don't know where exactly I am meant to go, but I know I must get there quickly. I take a lingering glance back at the cart, then turn around to head down the brown path.
I don't look back.

Thwack! The club smashes into Ma's face, like a hand into cloth. Her head is indented, but like a balloon filling, there is the noise of air being sucked into her face. Sssssss... I automatically jump, swinging round my club, is there a snake? The years on the farm with dad affected me more than ah thought, then.
Ma- or the monster that looks like ma- advances towards me, something similar to a growl escaping her throat.
“ You killed him... I know you did, Applejack.”
I try to block out her voice.
And there, in the corner of this clearing I came to, is a small barrel. Perhaps there might be something to help me fight her -no, it- inside? I thrust my entire face into the barrel and close my teeth around...

A rope. To be precise, a rope used for herding and lassoing cattle. I push aside the guilt welling up inside me and face ma. She eyes the rope, screeches and charges towards me, her features convulsing as she gets closer. I fling the rope at her face and dive for her back legs, gripping my hooves round her ankles as I hit the brown ground, she wriggles in the rope thrashing her hooves about wildly. I push my home-made club into a loop in the rope, twist, loop... ma herself taught me the ladylike way to tie up your hair, and it seems ironic that I am using against …. her.... now. My handiwork finished, I step back. Ma wriggles, utterly intertwined with the rope. This probably won't hold her for very long, but I have a feeling once I leave this clearing, the ma-monster will cease to exist. I look around for the exit, and dash quickly through it. As predicted, The ma-monster's anguished cries cut out as I walk away.

Several glasses of water later, The path starts to steadily incline upwards. The routine stays the same though. Walk, drink, walk. And then my routine is cut short. The path has been getting smaller and smaller as I continued, but I chose to ignore it. Now the path has completely disappeared. But I don't care about that now. This view is what fascinates me. A huge forest of birch trees stretch as far as the eye could see, their long white trunks protruding from the ground like nails sticking out of a certain door. I notice several cuts in the forest though, wounds in the leafy green skin of the woods. And that's when I see them. The ponies. Now I have noticed one, I am noticing all of them. Hundreds, no, thousands of ponies, walk in this forest, down brown paths so close to each other, so very nearly seeing each other, but always seconds too late. They occasionally stoop and pick up a small glass of water, downing it and then continuing on their journeys. Several take shelter in all manner of things, like a tent or a giant teapot. Or a cart.
Some of them fight various figures in clearings like mine. The monsters are all ponies, so it Is sometimes hard to tell who is the Monster and who is the Walker. Walker. I like that name. We deserve to be called walkers, I think. After all, walking is really all have done for the past... week? Day? Year? I look up again.
Some ponies, Standing on hills like mine, gaze over the forest just like me. Have I been watched every step of my journey too?
“Applejack...”
Ma's voice makes my blood run cold. The monster is back.

The rope is stuck around her neck, half choking her. She shuffles forward.
“Its time, Applejack. Time for you to fly.” She advances, and I have nowhere to run because the path ends in a steep incline and her teeth are so sharp and she’s got her hooves outstretched and Oh Celestia she's pushed me! And suddenly I’m slipping...slipping... falling. The monster's hooves are the last thing I see as I fall of the cliff and into the abyss of darkness.

Epilogue
I feel my memories pushing against each other pushing for top spot, like they are balls in a ball pit, and sometimes one is forced out of the ball pit and onto the floor. I can no longer remember the day I first started to wear my hat, or the first Christmas -and last- we had had as a family, all together, all happy. Then bigger memories started fading; The farm, gone. The house, gone. Ma's face. Gone.

Eventually the only thing I remembered was The Day. I remembered every detail. It was march, Pa's birthday party.
I remember the pie, a tiny apple pie, covered in orange icing.
I remember the party, just the two of us, awkwardly trying to dance on our own as Winter wrap up played in the background
I remember the knife, covered in crumbs from cutting the pie.
I remember the triumph quickly replaced by terror as I stepped back from what I had done.
I remember pa's blood on my hooves as I fled through the wastes, tears streaming down my face.
I tripped, landed in the dirt, curled up.
I remember my body shutting down, my eyes closing, my breath slowing.
I remember dying.

The memory fades.