Applejack and the Smiling Skull
There was a desert. It was a lonely place, but the sun bleached skull seemed to find decent company among stones unnaturally smooth. It sat where it had been sitting, and still it remained grinning. No corner, no nook, no shadow of the desert escaped its hollow eyes.
Do not take this persistent smiling to mean that the skull was happy.
It was not.
But do not take the previous statement to indicate that the skull was unhappy either. It had transcended such emotions. It may or may not surprise you when I say that such emotions are of vital importance to the equine condition. The lack of, is well...lacking.
It was like waiting in a Doctor's office.
Forever.
In response to this infinite tedium, it could only smile.
It was unfortunate.
The snakes and the spiders do enjoy skittering across the emptiness of bone, but they were a bit busy today (It was Tuesday, of course) The skull found itself with even less to do than usual, now that it was lacking for companionship. But, perhaps someone new would wander by, and stop for a chat.
Stranger things have happened.
Hollow eyes watched the surrounding lands, and the stones and the shifting sands. Occasionally, it found a spare hour to glare at the cacti. The cacti are not to be trusted.
But, neither are the snakes, or the spiders, or the desert itself.
I doubt that you will find solace in the fact that the snakes and the spiders and the desert do not trust you either.
You are not to be trusted.
Your unworthiness of trust was no cause for worry, for the skull. In fact, nothing worried the skull. The skull was fine. It could be nothing but fine.There was once a time, where it worried about things. Oh, how it did worry about things! It worried about responsibilities, it worried about loved ones, it worried about any little thing at all.
So many things to worry about after all, but not for this skull, not anymore.
This desert contained many things.
It is expected, for a desert to contain these things: the vast seas of shifting sand, spiders dedicated to suspicious, and occult tasks, and the hostile plant life, barely green, although still with envy. But we are not interested in these typical things, now are we? Are ponies apt to enjoy tales written about things that are typical? Things that are boring?
NO.
And that is why I am sure you are questioning this desert, and its significance. It seems to be an ordinary desert, containing ordinary desert things, which may not be of any relevance to you or your life. But the fact that this desert has come under discussion today, might implore you to suggest that this place does contain something of interest, something that has yet to be mentioned.
You would be right, if you were to suggest such a thing.
This desert does contain something unusual, somepony of interest, somepony worth mentioning.
That is Applejack.
She had been walking for a while. She would walk for a little while longer.
She was not far from the skull, but still she could not see it.
It grinned.
The sun robbed her body of moisture like cruel and calloused hands slowly wringing the water from a dish rag. The shuffle of each hoof kicked up small puffs of dust. A stray step met a stone, and it skittered away to disturb its neighbors with tidings of some gargantuan creature.
The sun was hot.
It rose in the east.
It set in the west.
It will do you well to remember things, but she forgot why she was walking.
Where? For how long?
The sun was hot.
It rose in the east.
It would set in the west.
It is a good practice to repeat known facts, because they are things that you know, and they are proof that indeed you do know something. Things that you know can be very comforting when faced with all the things you can never know.
The sun was hot.
She was carrying heavy things.
No, not her saddlebags. Those were abandoned a couple days back.
The ribbons spilled out on the sand, every color but blue, every number but one flapped in a light breeze.
She couldn't remember how she got where she was, but she remembered the ribbons.
They were still heavy.
She kept walking.
The desert was rocky.
She did not know how far she had walked, but if it was miles, than each was rockier than the last. Each shuffling stride cleared pebbles from her path as a ship might carve a path through water.
Applejack's canteen was a fourth of the way full, when she came across stones, some the size of houses, jutting up from the sand like whales breaking the surface of the sea. She shifted the warm sand, until a shallow hole was hidden from the sun by long shadows.
For a heartbeat, after she met the cool sand, she remembered what comfort was. The joy faded with the recollection of aching limbs, but still a hint of pleasure remained, though it was little more than a sigh on the breeze. She gazed out at the desert, at its surface with its rocks. She gazed out at nothing, the nothing that still somehow clings to small patches of somethings. Or perhaps the small somethings, that still clung to patches of nothings. But that discussion is for another time.
She turned her attention to the rock which had been shading her. She ran her eyes over its rough surface, before resting a cracked hoof upon it. She said to her rock, "Thank ya kindly, friend,"
But it was not her friend.
She was disappointed, but not surprised, at the silence that replied.
It was a rock.
Since she could find no outlet for conversation in her companion, she slept until the sun is slipping down below the west. Sleep is always a fine way to pass the time, when one is too weary to keep walking.
One will often find, they must find shelter themselves from sun, and sleep in the company of rocks. One will also find they grow tired of sleep, as well as rocks. Rocks do not make the best of company, after all. All rocks do, is sit tall, and look proud. While they offer good shade, they do not make for long term companions.
They are rocks.
They do not offer shade out of kindness, they are just there.
By whatever force one is kept from light, when neither moon or sun are within sight, rocks offer little comfort. In darkness, they are cold and callous. Not to mention as traveling companions they are a bit heavy. She did not regret her time spent among rocks.
We all have found ourselves in the company of rocks, at one time or another in our lives.
She waved goodbye, weakly.
The time spent sitting among stones seemed little more a dream. She left them behind to continue walking.
That morning the sun had rose in the east.
It slipped behind the west.
The moon hung in the sky, a lantern at the end of a far hallway.
She smiled skyward, as if at an old friend.
No water left.
There was something in her path, a shade of darkness darker than the night surrounding.
She stopped.
It is a cactus.
She dropped her weight unto the sand, and stared at it.
The cactus stared back.
"Well I'l be," she said in her drawl.
"That's a funny thing, now ain't it?"
She ran her hoof over the edge of its single flower.
"I ain't never known cacti had eyes like that,"
The eye that existed in the center of that flower blinked at her. It could have said many things.
But it did not say anything.
It only blinked. Or perhaps it winked. It is difficult to say, since it only had one eye.
She pierced the side of the plant with what strength she could summon and a sharp stone.
The cactus only watches.
~
The only thing there is left for her now is the distance, but leaving causes her pause, for it fills her with a sensation that will be named only by your own imagination. Her vision too, was filled with things only you can imagine, unnatural colors and things that she could have sworn moved in the corner of her eye.
The skull stood witness, as she dragged herself up the sand dune, for a need to see the stars just a little closer, a need that far outweighed thirst or hunger.
"Finally, finally!" The thoughts rang out true, but what did the skull use to create these apparitions of the mind? Surely, a thing like a skull has long been incapable of such a task, incapable of manufacturing thought. The space was empty! Not a cell, not a spider, only dust and sand remained.
And there it was, beyond all reason. Thinking, without a second thought, like a bee taking wing.
What a thing to witness and how it did witness.
The grin was as wide as it could be, and as Applejack finally reached the summit she croaked "Finally...finally,"
She halted, but inches away from completing the step and forever changing the skull from structure to rubble. She withdrew her hoof.
Face to face they were, finally, finally.
She opened her mouth, perhaps to question the hollow space that still possessed the power to meet her gaze; the hollow gaze that was not at all hollow. She opened her mouth, but finding nothing to say, she closed it, just in time to shield dry gingivi from grainy, biting winds.
She brought her lips into a smile, and could only stand smiling, at the thing that could only smile back.
She laughed. She threw her head back, gullet toward the heavens, and laughed. It felt nice, she hadn't laughed in a while. It was a dry laugh; it cracked like dirt under the strain of heavy sunlight, it screamed like a mouse trapped within merciless coils, and it croaked like burrowing frogs rising to meet rain long overdue.
She laughed. It felt nice, she hadn't laughed in a while.
And then she stopped. She looked at the stars that were now just a little closer, before flopping down on the ground beside the empty face, with the ease that one might sink into a comfy, well loved chair.
"Mirage, vision, hallucination, I don't think I rightly care. I'm thirstin' for conversation,"
The skull grinned.
