Though Much is Taken

by Cynewulf

Rating: everyone
Tags: Adventure, Applejack, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 6927

A much older Applejack makes a perilous journey.

Applejack is old. Age has taken much from her. It has worn down her joints and muddied her memories, but it has not yet bowed her proud head, nor has it taken away her great heart. When a sick colt has only one hope, Applejack knows what she must do.

Though much is taken, much abides, and so Applejack must walk the trails through the Everfree alone one more time.

Published 2016-11-17 03:40:02 UTC
Last updated 2016-11-17 03:40:02 UTC

Much Abides

Applejack sat outside, flat on the ground and flat on her ass, waiting for some news.

She was used to this, waiting. She’d waited a lot. Too much, really, all things considered. Waited to grow up, waited for the apples to grow, waited for her ma and pa to trot back through the gate, waited for Big Mac to raise his body up from the fertile earth under a hot sun one day. Waiting.

This wasn’t anything like those waiting times, but it was close. She knew less, or rather, she always knew next to nothing when everything was tallied up, but usually she at least felt like she had something to go on in the here and now. For the first time in a long time, she had nothing.

The sun slipped further, bit by bit, below the horizon, and it shone in her eyes. Applejack pulled her worn hat down and grunted softly. Damn light. Day would be over soon enough. Doctor had to have an answer before it did, or else she was gonna show him just how much force an old mare could apply to a door.

She had done lots of waiting. That didn’t mean she liked it.

Few more minutes crawled past.

Well, he might be fine. Probably was. Waiting like this didn’t mean the news was sour. Didn’t have to mean that, after all. She’d waited and waited for her friends fillies and colts, and they’d been darlings, one and all. Same with her own. Waiting could be good.

Just didn’t feel good. It kept feeling that way. She made to rise, but before she had struggled back on four hooves, the door opened.

The village’s doctor stumbled out, expression blank. His curled mane fell in the way of his eyes, but she didn’t need to see them to read what was written large: the news was not good. Ponies have a way of broadcasting their futures even when they think they’ve perfected their manner. Live long enough, as she so often said, and you’ll see it too.

She didn’t wait for him to speak first. She was already in front of him and in his face by the time he’d opened his mouth.

“Prognosis?” she drawled. “What’s with him?”

“Well, Mrs. Apple, it’s, ah… It’s good that you found him when you did--”

“None of that. Answers. Been out here for an hour.”

“Right. It was a bit touch and go.”

The unicorn sniffed and looked away. Applejack didn’t dislike the village doctor, but she didn’t exactly hold him in high regard either. It wasn’t being a unicorn or the urban airs or the way he never seemed to do an honest day’s work if he could help it. No, honestly, it was just that he never seemed to want to meet your eyes.

“What was?”

He squirmed. “I’m not sure you’d understand, ma’am.”

“Yup, I thought that’s what you were drivin’ at. I ain’t slow. Just explain it. Or, no, hold on. I’ll do you one better, Balm. Start with the basics: is he going to be alright?”

“It’s… he could be.”

“Well?”

The doctor sighed and closed his eyes, and Applejack realized she had drawn closer. She backed away slightly. “Sorry,” she murmured. “Blood’s up a bit, you know how it goes.”

“I understand.” The unicorn rubbed at his face wearily for a moment and then continued. “Alright. I’ll be as to the point as I can. His parents are inside, and I don’t want to leave them for long. His horn is cracked, which would be bad enough but not the end of the world… if it were from trauma. A colt his age trips, takes a hard fall, lands on something harder than his horn, and it can be rough, but at that age they tend to be more flexible and as long as he doesn’t damage the root there’s a good chance he’ll mostly recover. This isn’t blunt force trauma. This is Ferrous Vein’s Syndrome.” He shook his head. “Celestia, I need a drink. It’s so rare that they don’t even teach it in school. I only recognized it as quickly as I did because I read a paper at Canterlot U about it, and thank Celestia I did, because otherwise I wouldn’t have bought him what time I have. It’s a magical disease.”

“What’s it do?”

“What doesn’t it do? Layman’s terms, it’s absolute bullshit, is what it is. It completely destroys the normal pathways that a unicorn uses to channel magic, but it doesn’t just block use. It turns it all back on the body. Not just active magic. Passive magic. It doesn’t… it doesn’t circulate, do you understand? Like blood does, except I’m being wildly simplistic because I’m not sure how to explain this to somepony without a horn. The pressure builds up and then... “ He sagged. “If we don’t fix this soon, it’ll burn him up from the inside out like a moth caught in a lamp. He’ll be a burned out husk, and I mean it very literally. It’s horrible.”

Applejack took a steadying breath. Age kept her soft heart from leaping forth. “Well, how’s it done, doc?”

He looked at her then as if seeing her for the first time. “What?”

“How’s it done? What’re you gonna do to keep that from happening?”

He shivered and stared at the ground. “I can’t.”

“Your pardon?”

“I can’t.” He shook his head. “I can’t. I don’t know how. I put a blocker on the horn but it’s a brute-strength solution and it will only work for a few hours. Hell, he’s already got thaumic burns all over his legs and neck. It’s a rare disease and it’s the kind of thing you specialize in… Applejack, do you know anypony, anypony at all who might be good enough with magic? If I could at least talk to them, we might be able to stabilize him long enough to get a carriage from here to Applewood, somewhere with a real hospital…”

“I know somepony.”

He stopped up short, and he looked up at her and she saw in his eyes such a light that it burned away much of her opinion of him. “Who?”

“Twilight.”

Balm’s brow furrowed. “Who?”

“Twilight. Twilight Sparkle.”

“I’m the only one who knows the way,” Applejack said for the fifth time. “I can move quicker and safer alone. Any more than me and him is gonna be too hard to go stealthy-like, and I’m still better in a fight than you, Ruby. Pardon, but I’ve been in more scraps than you as well, Mr. Trefoil. We’re wastin’ time arguin’ when I could be gone by now.”

“But…”

The stallion who was the colt’s father wavered.

Who didn’t know Miss Applejack, who lived on the hill? Alone, solitary, a monolith shaped like a pony. Who didn’t know of her fabled strength and her storied past? Old as age itself, sure, but the stallion who underestimated the lonely mare of Green Hill was a fool.

“I’ll take care of ‘im like he’s one of my own,” she said, lowering her voice. “I swear it on my pa and ma, and on my brother, Fields receive him. I swear it. I walked the woods when I was a filly and after and now I know it like yesterday. I’ll have him at Princess Twilight’s castle with time to spare.”

She did not know if she would. In fact, twenty minutes after she had volunteered to take him, she was starting to wonder if she’d ever leave.

“You’re sure the Princess will have time? Or will make time, or…” Ruby, a fat young mare of earth, sniffled and wiped her eyes. She was a good filly.

But damn foolish sometimes. “Of course,” Applejack said. “Don’t see why she wouldn’t. Ponies are important. Now, we gonna waste more time, or are you gonna help me get him secured?”

Trefoil swallowed and looked down at the unconscious colt he carried. The foal squirmed as if in pain, and no doubt he was. Applejack took a step closer and laid a hoof on his shoulder.

“Like he’s my own. I swear it.”

The first time she had entered the Everfree Forest in her youth, Applejack had been hopelessly lost.

She’d just been exploring, like foals so often did. The forest was right across the way, on the other side of the orchard. Why shouldn’t it be open and inviting to an inquisitive filly? And in all of the other woods of the world were just that. They were the epitome of adventure, hiding every little-trod path worth finding and a choir of bubbling brooks perfect for splashing.

But the Everfree is and was and no doubt will always be different from all those myriad woods.

The young filly who traipsed through those woods, her hair in a tight braid that swayed behind her swivelling head, knew next to nothing about the paths she walked. She had never heard of the castle-town of Everfree, nor its forgotten streets, nor the great chasm and the lonely ruin of the two sisters. She knew that it was, in a distant way, “spooky” but that means little to a sunlit child. She did not know that it was deep and dark and that it had always been a little wild. Even in the ancient days when two sisters ruled a nascent, optimistic empire from their proud fortress within the green, it was wild.

But it had been a more benign sort of untamed then. Ever free, and so it was named.

But after Luna, after Celestia, and after the peaceful burg of Everfree, the benign mischief became something else.

Here is where the paths give out, all of them, one by one. They lead on and on and then swerve off into thick brush and of course a younger Applejack follows, seeing only further adventure in the deepening shadows. What was she thinking of, as her soft step trampled down the growth? Was she one of Celestia’s fabled Pathfinders, holding high the Sun’s torch, carrying news and Celestia’s favor to distant villages on the long frontier? Or an explorer with pith and nerve, cutting through the wilds of some Western jungle to find lost treasure?

But whatever she played at, the truth was that the path was alive and it betrayed her like all paths in the Everfree do with time. Walking along a ravine, the ground beneath her gave way and her hind leg fell, and with it went the rest of her, scrambling for purchase and finding nothing.

The colt slept fitfully on her ancient back. Heavily too. But Applejack didn’t mind. Not really mind. It was unpleasant, of course. Tiring, yes. But even before age had caught up with her, she had learned how to endure a great deal without faltering in her resolve.

Her eyes were always ahead. That was really the trick with this place, her father had told her before he left. You always kept your eyes on the road and you didn’t let it change on you. Keep it honest, keep it straight, keep it secure.

She’d made good progress, for a mare as old as she was. A younger Applejack would have been halfway there, but a younger Applejack would also have been more easily distracted.

The forest loomed on either side of her, great gnarled trees rising up towards the sky, casting their half-full branches over the little path she walked like a cage’s bars. The sun was almost gone now, but not quite. She’d be out of the worst of the wood before it finally gave up for the day. She knew this not because she’d planned for it, but because it had to happen.

It had been ages since she walked in these woods, she thought to herself as she maneuvered over a root in the path. Maybe literal ages. To be honest, and it was always her policy to be so, she sometimes struggled to remember her age. Usually she knew. Sometimes she would stop and blink for a second, like a recluse in the sun, and no number would come to her. When had she last walked the trails from Green Hill to Ponyville? Years, obviously, but how many?

She hummed, no real tune at first but it became one. An old song--all of her songs were old, and the word old started to lose meaning when she could say everything was old in one way or another--and one she’d played ten dozen times at least. Old harvest tunes never died, really. They just lay fallow like a field until the day you turned the earth up and then there they were, new again and waiting. She couldn’t remember the words. But that was alright, because it was the tune that really mattered. Words came and went, but the tune remained. And maybe the words came back again, if you sang the notes enough.

When Little Red was born, she decided. Yes. That was the last time she’d made the journey back to her first home. She remembered because Twilight had written her a very nice letter about it and had the mail pegasus in Ponyville deliver it. Or one of them. There were more than two now, after all, since the village was really more of a town. Ditzy had still been working at the PO before she left, sorting mail in the back. She began to wonder just how long they kept the old mare on when she heard something.

She did not stop, but her thoughts screeched to a halt. Her ears swivelled.

The noise did not repeat itself. The forest was silent again.

Applejack did not let herself be relieved. Relief was complacency, and she would not be complacent.

So instead she walked on, listening intently. The woods had a whole orchestra’s worth of different noises. More than that. A thousand little sounds, each its own entirely. Birds in the trees, though never in sight. Rabbits and foxes in the bushes, bats sleeping in shade, proud lizards which scurried to the top of the rare sunbathed rock. The Everfree teemed with life on top of life.

But there were other things too, and she listened for them. The strange grinding of wood on wood that marked the Timberwolf’s hunt. The scratching of the cockatrice’s claw. Even the warning hiss of the rocksnake she listened for, and she’d only seen one.

There it was again. A rustling. Not leaves, but something else.

She tensed, picking up her speed slightly. Whatever it was, it was just going to follow her. She needed to move out of its territory before it felt confident enough to strike.

Her mind reeled. Damn. Damn it! But again she did not show her feelings to the outside. The predators of the Everfree lived for the look of fear. Here eyes moved over the rough trail again, looking for any spot she might could turn and fight from, or any water she could cross swiftly. A river kept most of the Everfree at bay, if the beast’s need was not great. That which swam in the water cared less for ponyflesh, but it would gladly drag a wayward Timberwolf down into the depths on principle.

Again, the rustling, and its source suddenly became clear.

The colt shifted on her back and groaned softly. His left hind leg kicked, and his little horn rubbed along the back of her neck so that she felt the inhibiting ring’s cold iron.

Applejack let out a shaky sigh. Just that. Just the foal moving a bit against the blanket wrapped around him. Nothing hunting in the shadows.

Young Applejack had collected herself in the bottom of the ravine, and sniffled as she lay against the rocky earth.

She had been lucky, really, to fall as she had. Torn, but alive, and lucky besides, but she didn’t appreciate any of it. She was hurt, and she was alone, and the Everfree was no longer fun or exciting.

When the tears subsided, she began to call for her father, and then her brother, and then for anypony at all. She shouted all the names she knew, even the ones of ponies she had never met.

There was a faint echo, but nothing more. She tried to climb the walls, knowing it wouldn’t work, and she was not surprised when she made no progress. She paced.

Eventually, she began to wander along the bottom of the thin ravine, squeezing between the fallen rocks that broke up what could be called a path only with a great heaping of charity. Her steps were unsure, and each one hurt at first, but soon the pain in her legs was a dull ache. The sun moved in the sky above, and as it did she found herself closing in on the end of the ravine with a dry mouth and little energy.

So she stopped again, and looked around. No path up.

More calling, until her throat felt scratchy and her voice sounded rough. No answers.

So she went back the way she came, and when she felt she could, she kept calling. Over and over and over, until she thought she could cry out no more, and at last, she heard someone answer.

She looked up, wildly, and saw him. Her father, shouting down at her from the lip of the ravine. And she stopped, fell back on her haunches, and wept to see him.

The colt woke when she stopped for a moment to take a breather.

Softly, he stirred, and then groaned. Applejack licked her dry lips and then spoke.

“How are you holdin’ up, little one?”

“Where am I?”

“I’ll get to that. How is your head? Your horn?”

“It hurts.”

“Know it does, hon.”

“Where are we? Where’s mom?”

“They’re back home,” Applejack said, sighing.

She had been leaning on a tree, but she righted herself again and shook her body. If he was awake, she needed to be moving. In her imagination, she saw him waking more and more as the ring lost its strength.

“Why?”

He did not seem afraid. Not yet. Foals were more resilient than that, and he did know her.

“You’re sick, sug.” Applejack kept her voice even and soft as she walked. There was a pause, not in walking but in talking, where she stepped lightly over the severity of his sickness. “I’m takin’ you to Ponyville so you can get better.”

“But why is my mom not here? She’s always here when I’m sick, Miss Applejack.”

“I know, I know. She wanted to be. But I had to take you to Ponyville and it weren’t safe to go in a group.” Applejack dropped her voice a little lower. “You ever play hide and seek?” He hummed an affirmative, so she continued. “Well, little sugarcube, we’re gonna play like that. Gotta be real quiet-like, alright?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Good. You’re a good colt, Bright Light.”

“Will we be there soon?” he whispered.

She tried not to let herself sound anything but casual. “In just a spell. Pretty soon now. We’ll see the old Sweet Acres. You ever seen it?”

He moved on her back. “I play in Miss Potato Flower’s orchard sometimes.”

Applejack snorted. “Peaches. You want somethin’ good, you always go apples. Well, the Acres are bigger. Just trees as far as the eye can see, longer than the sky sometimes. And there’ll be the old barn, and the new one beside it. Your parents ever let you have a sip of cider?”

“Not yet, ma’am.”

She smiled as she ambled down the path. “Well, probably for the best, you are a little young. But I bet you a bit they get it from the Acres if they ever have any. You’ll like it, I know you will. And then the town.”

He grumbled an affirmative and settled, and Applejack passed by a deep ditch and thought again.

The truth was that Applejack was terrified of the wood. She always had been.

Being able to navigate a place, being able to risk it and come out on the other side, did not mean that it was safe or that one felt safe in any way. She learned with time to respect the wood, and if any lost soul wandered in she was the first to go looking, but it was not as if she went in willingly.

Twilight Sparkle, fool of a Canterlot unicorn, had just stumbled in and of course Applejack had come with her. Of course she had. There was no way in Tartarus she was going to let that sort of pony go into the dark alone, not while she could still stand.

But walking the false trails with a whole gaggle of mares wasn’t her idea of safety by a long shot. She’d tried to keep her wits about her, but with every word or hoofstep her confidence had eroded. Too many ponies, too much noise.

When the colt woke again, he complained that his legs hurt and that his head hurt and that, generally, he hurt. So she talked. Whenever he complained, she would ask him questions, and he would answer, and soon he was busy whispering in the quieting wood and had forgotten to be in pain.

Not that that would work forever, she knew. It was working less and less.

“You like stories?” she said at length, when the sky that showed through the trees was finally dark, and the sun was all but gone.

He hummed and nodded against her neck.

“Well, you know, I went into these woods with a princess once. Course, she weren’t a princess then jus’ yet. She was just a unicorn like you.”

“What?” He stirred. “Who?”

“Princess Twilight, of course.”

“But she’s a princess! Were you a guard, Miss Applejack?”

She chuckled. “No, but sometimes I felt like I was a babysitter. Least I felt that way about Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy sometimes, for different reasons. The former on account of she couldn’t keep her little nose out of trouble for more than a minute, and the latter ‘cause she was a wiltin’ flower. Had to drag her up a mountain once. There was a day my back remembered.”

“I know those names. Mr. Hyacinth said they were Elements of…”

“Harmony,” Applejack finished for him when he couldn’t continue, her voice a little ragged in her ears. But she recovered. “Yup. Harmony. Elements of and all that. We all were.”

“But I thought you were just a farmer!”

“No law says you can’t be both.” She shrugged, or tried to with a colt on her back and her plodding pace. “Well, she was new in town, see? And she had a lot of excitement and sometimes not so much common sense. But she was a decent sort, Twilight Sparkle was. You know about Nightmare Moon? Hyacinth teach y’all about that in school?”

“Uh-huh. But I didn’t know that was you. Rainbow Dash is a Wonderbolt, so I knew about her.”

“Well, guess I don’t look like the pictures no more.” She chuckled, and then coughed. “Well, I’ll tell you what it was like.”

And she did. She told him about the broken bridge and the talking serpent, about the shadows that writhed and the trees that threatened. About brave, ridiculous Pinkie Pie and laughing, loyal Rainbow Dash. About the manticore, and how Rarity had been quick to the attack and how Fluttershy’s kindness had sent it on its way in peace.

Her voice rose and fell, and at times she forgot to whisper. Twilight struggling to understand, and her new friends gathered outside the chamber, dismayed for themselves and for her.

“And she wasn’t there when you got back?”

“No, caught up in the air, like. Bought near gave me a heart attack, but we found her just in time. She’d gotten all tangled up with that Nightmare. Charged her! You ever seen one of those old pictures of unicorns chargin’ each other with their horns?”

“It looks dumb.”

She laughed. “Yeah, thought so too. But Twilight told me they put their horns in case-things and that did ‘em well. Wouldn’t know, myself. But then she realized it weren’t about the stones. We were the Elements.”

She mentions each of their moments, and how Twilight perceived them.

“Knew she’d be alright,” Applejack said. “Told her so. Saw our friends beneath her.”

But she does not say that she saw herself, freckled and young, clinging to the edge of a ravine for a second before falling down and down into the abyss below. She doesn’t mention how she felt ever jagged stone on the way down, or how she lay astonished at the bottom. But she remembers it vividly.

The colt quieted. She had almost thought he was asleep before he spoke again.

“Miss Applejack?”

“Yessir?”

“I feel really bad.”

She winced. “I know you do, hon. We’re halfway there, alright?”

They were not halfway there.

“Okay.”

“Why don’t you rest? I’ll wake you if I see anything worth wakin’ you over, alright?”

“Yes ma’am.”

She was alone again.

Well. She was alone again in a matter of speaking. One was never really alone in the Everfree. The Everfree teems with life. It is bursting at the seams with it. Bears and Timberwolves, vampiric bats and every manner of varmint that scurried along the ground. At home she had feared no incursion, but now she was the incursion. She was the invader.

Half an hour passed, and she could hear the river that marked the halfway and she let out a long sigh. Finally. She’d have a stretch of downhill after she crossed, and that would cut down on travel time. She was taking too long, and she was losing the last of the light.

Losing. More like she’d lost it already. But her eyes, not keen as they once had been, were not failed yet.

She followed the river, her spirits lifting higher the louder it became.

But there was a moment. There was a moment along the trail when it bent to pass between two trees, around a great ragged outcropping, where she found herself in a small corridor of wood and rock and dirt, where she stumbled and the river echoed all around her. There was a moment then where she lost the way.

All of a sudden, the forest which she had kept at a distance, not looking at too closely, not really looking at, came crashing down around her. She had thought looking meant merely being alert, or that being alert meant merely being prepared to see movement, but she had been wrong. She had seen nothing.

The colt shifted on her back, and felt the cold iron of his inhibitor ring and for a moment she imagined she felt magic crawling down her back, cold arcane fire, and with startling clarity she remembered Twilight’s magic and what it could do, how it had unmade and remade right in front of her. How she had always feared it but never said so, how she had never trusted it but would never hurt a friend. And now it was on her back, on her neck. It was like a dagger and a clawed hand cupping her throat and she began to sprint, stumbling again and again, more falling forward than running, missing jutting roots by inches.

The light was totally gone now. It was all dark, partially stars, a crescent moon above and precious little to see by but she could hear the churning waters ahead and nothing else. In her mind’s eye she saw the timberwolves move among the trees at either side. She felt them, even, running alongside her to nip at her legs until she fell and then they would be on her. The wood on wood grinded in her ears.

She lost her balance and tumbled down. Only panicked strength gave her enough time to correct herself and land flat on her stomach. She slid down, and the colt on her back rioted, waking in fear, and they fell together towards the water.

She lay there, next to the riverbed, shaking. The colt started to cry, and she could not muster anything to say to him. There were no tumberwolves. Just a silly old mare and a frightened child and a river. Just that.

There was dirt in her mouth and she spat it out and retched before coughing and saying: “Bright? Bright, it’s alright. I tripped, young ‘un. You’re going to be alright.”

But he did not stop crying. She squirmed out of the bindings and she rescued him from the same and held him. He’d caught a rock on his forehead, below his horn, but the ring was in place. She trembled.

“‘S alright right,” she said. “You’re fine, sugar, you’re fine.” She rocked him. “I didn’t mean to scare ya. I didn’t…”

Two workers eating breakfast under the apple trees are the first to see her emerge from the wood.

One is a giant, a full two heads higher than his companion and rust-red. The smaller is brown as tilled soil with a constellation of white freckles. Both are earth ponies and both know every inch of the acres, and they know that not many ponies come shambling out of the Everfree around dawn.

The smaller squinted at the figure for a moment. “Who the sam-hill?”

But his companion was already moving. “If you don’t recognize her, Summertree, then you’re dumber than you look. C’mon.”

Summertree, baffled, lagged behind as Red raced through the orderly trees of Sweet Apple Acres, making a beeline straight for the figure. As they got closer, he found her tugging at his memory. An old mare with graying hair, a ratty old hat, and a long braid? Three apples?

He came to a stop in front of her alongside Red.

“While I’ll be damned if it ain’t Granny Jack,” he said, blinking in the early morning gloom.

For her part, Applejack glared at him. “Call me my full name or I’ll introduce you to Kicks McGee, varmint,” she growled. “Now which one are you? Bet you you’re one of Bloom’s litter.”

The old mare approached and stuck her face right in his, and the farmer backpedalled. “Now, I--”

“Shush, you. Let me see… nah, you ain’t Bloom’s. Whose are you?”

Red cleared his throat. “Gran, he’s a cousin. I think you’re getting distracted. There’s a foal tied to your back. Care to explain?”

Applejack blinked at Summertree a moment longer, and then shook her head. “I… Sorry, been a long night. I need to get to Twilight immediately. Ain’t got much time. Last time he was awake he was hurtin’ something fierce. You! Cousin. I want you to go runnin’, you hear me? All the way to town, go bang on Twilight’s door ‘til you wake her, tell ‘em I got a sick pony for her. You, Red, you’re gonna find me a cart and I’m gonna put this poor little colt in there.”

Red nodded and ran. Summertree staggered off towards town, confused.

And Applejack kept walking.

She met Red before she’d left the field, breathing hard with shaking legs. Seeing other ponies had given her a brief spark of energy but she was losing it fast. Her sister’s son took the colt from her back and laid him in a cart before, despite her protests, doing the same for her.

“I’m fine,” she said. “You hear me? I’m fine.”

“That you are.”

“I don’t need coddlin’,” she said, but she did not climb out. Red was already hitched up, and they ambled down the road towards Ponyville. “Just need to get ‘im there, or I’d give you a piece of my mind, young Red.”

“I know you would, Gran.”

“That flighty cousin of yours sure ran quick.”

“He’s a bit younger.”

She snorted. “Well, we made do with Caramel, can’t get much worse.”

Red laughed. “You mean the same Caramel that married Golden Bloom? Cause that his son you sent packing.”

They laughed, and then Applejack looked down at the foal in the cart and she lay beside him. Her bones hurt. Her legs hurt. Her sides hurt. Her back hurt.

Seeing Ponyville changed… well, it hurt. But not in the same way. Not as much.

The colt stirred, and she scooted closer so that she was all around him. It reminded her of…

A mare sat outside, flat on the ground and flat on her ass, waiting for some news.

She was a pegasus, but you could see that she wasn’t pure-strain. Not that it mattered to anypony, but you could tell. Her legs were too muscular, her body a bit too heavy, things like that. Again, not that it mattered.

She preened. There’s preening and preening, so pegasi say, and this was the latter. She didn’t clean up her wings so much as harass them in a fit. It was something to do.

Her hat lay beside her, the new synthetic monster hide the Princess had invented, Magic bless her, with its little strap to keep it tight in the air. A little insignia proudly stood upon it, pinned to the front for all to see.

She waited and waited. And waited. Time passed.

Not going in was driving her up a wall. The more she waited, the worse it got.

She just wanted to go in. That was what she would do. Give it five more minutes, and then with one kick she’d break down that damn door, breach the threshold, bumrush any attendants or hangers-on, and get her some Luna-damned answers. Just five more minutes, and--

And then the door opened, and a bleary eyed Twilight Sparkle stepped out.

She was older, much older. Not quite ancient, but aged. To anypony who had seen her or her picture in the days when Ponyville was just another farming village, she would seem… different, yes, but not different. Not in the ways that mattered.

Her hair was a bit shorter now, and cut neatly. Glasses sat lazily on her nose now, but otherwise this was the face of that same inquisitive mare who had went looking in the Everfree for magic.

She was taller, or at least so the waiting mare had been told. To her, the Princess had always been taller than the ponies around her, and of course she should be. Princesses usually were. Stood to reason.

She bowed slightly. “Princess.”

And Twilight Sparkle, as she always did, bowed back, a bit deeper. “Yeoman.”

The mare sighed. “Really? It’s just right protocol and such. Jus’ cause you say I don’t gotta, it doesn’t mean I need to be rude. Yer grace.”

Twilight chuckled wearily. “Of course, Honeycrisp. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”

“I wouldn’t need to have waited if she’d just done the sensible thing,” growled Honeycrisp. “That mare’s a handful, I tell you. Wouldn’t know what to do with myself if she hadn’t’ve made it. Plum fool.”

“I won’t say it wasn’t a bit reckless.”

“That colt alright? He’s alright, ain’t he?”

“He’s doing wonderfully. She got him here with perhaps an hour or two to spare,” Twilight said, and yawned. “Mm. You know, I do believe that cousin of yours can sing alto. It was a rather interesting way to wake up this morning. My captain of the guards had to be escorted away so he would stop bothering me with apologies.”

“That’s cause, if we’re bein’ all frank and such, my brother is a lout and he ain’t tough enough to guard nothin’.” She grinned. “Well, ‘cept maybe that pretty unicorn he’s got his eye on. I told you ‘bout that?”

Twilight chuckled. “No, you hadn’t. I’d love to hear.”

The grin faded. “How about my ma? She alright? She is… right?”

“Applejack will be fine. You should go see her. She’s just very, very tired.” Twilight sighed. “Your mother is a wonderful mare and my dear friend. The only one still with me, in fact.”

The princess looked away for a moment, Honeycrisp knew not what at, and then turned to stare right into the pegasus’ eyes.

“I have a favor to ask you.”

“Anythin’.”

She said it quickly and she meant it. Twilight was more than her liege. Twilight was family.

So it was she did not startle when the request came in an almost desperate little whisper. “Please, make her stay. I know she does not like the new Ponyville. I know it is too crowded. But please.”

“Prin… Twilight,” Honeycrisp said, and tenatively crossed the space between them. Twilight leaned down and they embraced. “I been tryin’ to get her to move back for a decade or more. All my brothers and sisters did too, you know.”

“I know.”

“I’ll try. I promise you that.”

“It’s… it’s all I can ask, I suppose.”

“You can ask more, jus’ without any guarantee.” Honeycrisp sighed. “I’mma go in to see her, alright?”

Twilight nodded, and then let Honeycrisp pass. “I’ll be in my study. Come see me, regardless. I’d like to keep the colt here, but I also think he may be more comfortable at the Acres. Would that be acceptable?”

“Course,” she said, walking into the sitting room.

Her mother was on a couch, her chest moving up and down smoothly now, but not as it once did. The colt was in one of the other rooms, sleeping soundly. She was glad that he was safe, but it was hard to feel quite as concerned with her mother right there on the bed, knowing what she had done.

And what did she feel about it? It wasn’t as if the old mare were helpless. Not exactly. Apple mares lived forever, seemed like, and stayed fit longer than they probably had a right to. If any pony her age was going to brave the Everfree alone, Applejack would be the one to do it and come out fine on the other side.

She hadn’t been hurt, apart from some scrapes and such. Tired, yes. A little confused and hungry, yes. But fine. Just a long walk for somepony no longer used to them.

But, standing beside the couch, it was hard not to think about what might have happened.

So she sat down on her haunches, sighed, and gently tapped her mother’s shoulder. Applejack opened her eyes, blinked, and yawned as she stretched.

“That you, Crisp?”

“It’s me, ma,” Honeycrisp said.

“Well, I’ll be damned. Wondered… Mmm. Wondered when you’d show…”

“Yeah.” Honeycrisp leaned in and nuzzled her mother. “Yeah. Wish you’d told me you were comin’. Coulda prepared a bed and made you somethin’ nice. Or sent Red out with a cart.”

“I don’t need a cart.”

“Course you don’t, just for politeness sake, mama.”

Applejack grinned. “Well, maybe he can take me back.”

Honeycrisp sighed. “I was… I was gonna talk to you about that.” She took Applejack’s foreleg between her own and rubbed it. “Ma, I think you should move in with me and Clementine. She’ll be just fine with it, and I want you ‘round, and… and you scared me.”

Applejack roused, and made to say something, but she stopped. Honeycrisp was shaking her head.

“No, lemme finish. I’m so proud of you. You saw that colt and you wanted to help. Right away, no hesitation. I know you did. And you did it, and he’s fine now, but… but they told me you’d been wandering around in the woods by yourself and I was worried. I know you can handle yourself. I know you can, you’re a strong mare and you always have been. But…”

Applejack didn’t say anything.

“You told me to always be honest with you,” Honeycrisp said. “Well, I miss you. And I worry that one day you’re gonna be all alone out there in Green Hill and somethin’ is gonna happen and then I’m gonna have to tell everybody and…”

“Hush.”

She looked up and found her mother looking back.

“Let’s… But I have a house.”

“I can have it picked clean and put back together perfect in an afternoon and you know it. I got a whole clan here ready to help you. Who want to, even.”

“I don’t wanna be a burden.”

“You aren’t.” Honeycrisp nuzzled Applejack again. “You never could be, in a million years. A hero ain’t a burden. The town’s all abuzz ‘bout you, you know? But I wasn’t surprised when they told me. Sounded like something you would do.”

Applejack snorted. “Ponies’ll be impressed by anything.”

“Sometimes. You knew what he needed right away. I’m just asking you to be honest ‘bout what you need, Ma. Just think about it, okay? I know you’re stubborn. I am too. I just want you to be honest with yourself.”

Applejack nodded. “I’ll think about it. He’s alright, ain’t he? He’s fine?”

Honeycrisp nodded.

“Good.” Applejack lowered her head and let out a long sigh to beat all the others. “I’m glad. Reminded me of you, he did, little as he was…”

Honeycrisp stroked her mother’s mane for a moment, and then realized she’d fallen back asleep. Smiling, she rose and stretched. She’d bring Clementine and their son next time. She wasn’t giving up. Her mother had saved one life, and she would be damned if she didn’t try to save another.