“Okay, now, how does this thing work?” said the little filly with red mane to herself, as she shook the stone in her hand. The thing was a creation of her own imagination, and should have, if she did her homework right, have granted her wish. Right now though, the thing was just a glowing rock in her grip, nothing more magical than that.
“I know I got the potion right,” she complained, walking back over to the cauldron and book she’d set up in the corner of the barn. The book had been something she’d ‘borrowed’ from Twilight’s library in the ‘Castle of Friendship’. Apparently it had been there when the alicorn had moved in, and while she’d gone over it, she’d told Applebloom it should have been safe, considering it was just a bunch of potion mixtures. Mind, she’d probably meant for the young earth pony to stick to the ingredients listed in the book, but Applebloom had been learning from Zecora how to make potions, and had picked this specific one because it sounded easy to modify.
“Let’s see, stone from the river for flow, zap apples for power, poison joke for focus,” she read off. Mind, those weren’t the things listed, but she didn’t have most of the plants in the book, probably why Twilight had let her have it. She probably hadn’t expected Applebloom to know how to substitute ingredients. Not that it seemed to be working. The stone was supposed to be a wishing rock, something you could grind between your hooves to make anything happen. But it talked about a subtle warmth, and a dim glow for the thing. Her rock, in her hoof, was glowing like a lightning bug in the middle of summer, but was cool to the touch.
“Maybe it still worked. Only one way to find out I suppose,” she said to herself, and held the small stone in front of her. The thing, despite the glow, was easy to stare into, like she was looking into a star, rather than the sun, and she could almost make out a roiling mass of clouds deep within the stone’s glowing hide. Smiling, for reasons she wasn’t sure of, she brought her other hoof in front of her, and pressed against the stone’s firm form.
“Make me a big pony, bigger than AJ, or any other pony. Then she can’t just write me off as a little pony no more,” she said, and then pressed. Before she had really applied any pressure through, the thing crumbled like a dirt clod, scattering bits of itself to the wind. Worse, she felt a shock like static electricity in her hoof, causing her to shake it without meaning to, letting the whole thing fly away.
“Aw, ponyfeathers,” swore the young filly, as she shook her hoof a bit more, trying to get feeling back in the limb. After she finally could stand on her foreleg again, she looked about the barn expectantly, figuring the stone’s effects should be immediate, at least from what the book said. Sadly, after almost a whole minute of waiting, nothing seemed to happen, and she sighed in frustration, kicking at the dirt in front of her. Getting up, she walked over to the book, and slammed the thing closed, before using a nearby bucket to douse the flames beneath her cauldron.
“Suppose I should see what Scoots and Sweetie are doin this afternoon,” she said to herself, as she began to clean up after herself. Putting away her tools, back in their places where Big Mac had them, she didn’t even notice that the ladle, which she’d had to strain to get, was now low enough for her to reach easily. She also didn’t notice as she picked up the cauldron in her hooves that the thing was way lighter than it had been, even as she dumped it in the cesspit behind the barn. She did notice, however, as she grabbed a rag to clean up some spilled potion, that the ceiling was a bit lower, mostly because she smacked her head into a low hanging beam, making her rub her head in pain.
“Huh, what’s goin on?” she said to herself, looking upwards, only to find that the roof of the barn was way too close to her. Stunned for a moment, she realized quickly what was happening, and a broad grin suddenly broke out on her face.
“It worked! Itworkeditworkeditworkeditworked!” she began to cry out, bouncing on her hooves, and sending shocks into the ground that shook the whole of the Apple Farm. Of course, her elation at her sudden growth spurt came to an end when her bouncing caused her head to smack rather painfully into the roof of the barn. It was at that moment that she realized that she was still growing, already so large that the barn was starting to feel cramped.
“I better get outside,” she said, and made for the door. Pushing herself against the frame, she was shocked to discover that she was too large for the double doors, her body stuck even as she tried to crouch down and crawl through the opening. Trapped inside, Applebloom started to panic, her breath coming in deep gasps, as her body continued to swell. Soon, her head was pressing against the barn roof, even if she was down on her belly on the floor, and then her legs were shoved painfully against the walls, causing her to groan, trying her best not to cry as she felt her limbs go numb from the loss of blood flow.
Curled into a ball, she felt the barn get tighter and tighter around her body, feeling every foot of growth, until finally, the barn creaked loudly, like a great windstorm was blowing around it. After her ears felt like that would pop from the sound, something finally gave, and the wooden boards of the barn broke with a great crack, filling the air with a sound like an explosion, even as her body uncurled, hurling bits of wood miles away, and finally letting her breath easily, taking in huge gulps of air.
Laying there on the ground, trying to catch her breath, Applebloom was soon made aware that her problems weren’t quite over yet, as her mane brushed up against the orchard, her hair curling around the trees so tightly that when she raised her head, she actually tore a few of them from the ground, causing her to realize just how tall she was getting as she rose to her feet. Beneath her stretched apple trees as far as the eye could see, but they looked like really weird grass to the filly, who continued to get larger and larger.
“Oh geeze, I gotta get outta here ‘fore somepony gets hurt,” she said, and quickly began to gallop through the orchard. Her hooves, originally only just taller than the trees, quickly grew now that she had the space, and before she was halfway out of the orchard, the trees had become just carpet beneath her, her every tread smashing a dozen of them at a time. She realized how dangerous she was too, as a small blue blur shot out from under her hoof suddenly, startling her and make her land on her butt, as Rainbow Dash flew away, gripping about her nap being interrupted.
When she finally reached the other side of her family’s farm, right at the edge of the Everfree, her body was taller than the mountains about her, and she could visibly see them shrinking even as she watched. Panicking again, twisting round and round as she tried to figure out what to do. Even as she spun, her body got bigger, and the space between the two sets of trees, apple and wild, grew smaller and smaller, until finally she had to balance herself on a single hoof, or risk smashing either her home, or Zecora’s, neither of which sounded pleasant.
“I need to get somewhere no one lives,” she said to herself, looking around. In the distance, she could the great desert, but that was where cousin Braeburn and the buffalo lives. Northward was the icy wastes, but that was the Crystal Empire and stuff. The oceans were pretty deep, but even if she could leap to them, the seaponies would probably be pretty mad at her when she landed, and the wave she made would probably wipe out the whole coast, which was the exact opposite of what she wanted.
“Huh?” said Applebloom, as she looked up and spotted a big ball in the sky. Quickly she realized it was the moon, and more importantly, no one lived there. Looking around, trying to find some better place to jump to, the young filly decided to risk it, and with a great hop, curling her legs and then bouncing, she leapt from the surface of her world into the sky, hoping she had enough power to carry her towards that big white orb above. She kept her eyes closed the entire time, to avoid seeing what would happen if she fell back to earth.
Then she flew, her body becoming weightless, and making her stomach do flips inside her as up and down became meaningless, her hair frizzing out to all sides before she flattened it back down with her hooves. She kept her eyes tightly shut though, trying to estimate when she would hit the moon, only to realize after a few minutes that she was still waiting, and slowly peeked one eye open. What she saw through that was just inky blackness, and she was forced to open both wide to see what was going on.
Specifically she was spinning, her body tumbling through space. In her vision, she saw her world, a tiny sphere, now the size of a baseball to her, with another pea sized thing circling it. Worse, she was still growing bigger. Apparently the more space she had to grow, the faster she did, and even as she watched, her world went from baseball, to ping pong, to a single tiny dot, and then vanished in her sight, leaving her circling a great big burning ball of fire that was Sol Equus, Celestia’s sun.
She only realized it then, but she hadn’t breathed at all since she left the world behind, and she touched her chest to find her heart was still beating, but slowly, like once a minute or so. That seemed...weird, all things considered, and she tried to focus on that detail for the moment, to ignore her situation, as the sun began to grow smaller quickly as well. It went from many times her size, to only about as big as Big Mac, and then smaller than her even as she watched it, her mind reeling at the implications.
‘I gotta get outta here,’ she thought to herself, ‘swimming’ into the sea of stars to put some distance between her and her home. Her body only seemed to grow even faster from the movement, however, and soon she saw that her star was just a tiny pinprick of light behind her, as she glanced back at it. As she was watching it, she felt a sudden hot sensation in her mane, and quickly smacked it with her hoof, causing a few charred strands of hair to come off in her grip. She’d run into a star, a big red one if she was looking at it right, and all it had done is singe her.
Swimming even more frantically now, she actually looked behind her to see her galaxy spread over the sky, a swirling disk of a million stars, all circling a great black hole in the center, making her stop for a moment in aw. She was witnessing a sight no one anywhere had seen before, and something about the beauty of it made her feel so small and insignificant, even as the galaxy shrank from a vast ocean of stars, into a mere pool, and then into something she could hold in her hoof, even as she watched it.
Swimming again, avoiding galaxies as best she could, Applebloom went as fast as she could, outpacing light itself with every stroke of her legs, and only stopping when everything before her was darkness, an unending void that stretched away into infinity. Looking back behind her, a glowing mist seemed to fill the void, and she realized, with a start, that she was witnessing the universe itself, the clockwork of creation turning, and still, it grew smaller, as she grew larger and larger, becoming an existence unto herself.