AJ's Religious Experience
The world moves on, the days pass, with the light coming and going out of the window that is the one link to the outside world I know of. I can’t see out of it, as it stands higher to me than any building I know of. It hangs high on a wall that could hold back the all the oceans of the world, and it stands there silent and unmoving, despite the storms and winds I know are going on outside by the simple noises they make.
How long has it been since I’ve seen those outside lands? Weeks? Months? Years perhaps? It’s hard to know, if only because every day blends together into the next. I would say this was because the world is unchanging, but that would be an utter lie I told myself for comfort in the middle of the night. No, my world is chaos too often for it to be unchanging, but it’s not truly without its schedule.
Outside the window, the first rays of the sun are peeking over the horizon. Shafts of light shine into the room, dust motes sparkling in those shimmering corridors. The noises of the outside world slowly begin to filter into the room from beyond, and soon the sound of a rooster crowing echoes about the place, shaking the walls a little as the wake up call reaches the ears of the room’s other occupant.
“Yeah, yeah, Reginald, I’m up already, you bird brain,” complains the cowgirl, her voice loud, but not quite eardrum shattering. This was something of an adaptation I’d discovered over the time I’d spent here that my ears adjusted to the sounds. Where before I’d been left on the ground, screaming in agony, now the noise seemed almost normal, though rising off the ground, I was forced to remember how abnormal it all was.
Long, huge pillars covered in orange fur fell to the earth. Their massive weight slammed down hard into the wood that made up the floor, and the vibrations they sent to me were of such magnitude that I felt my teeth rattle despite my attempts to hold my jaw still. Worse was when the back legs slammed down, with all that weight behind them. I was literally thrown off the ground, landing with a grunt on the floor after flying into the air.
“Consarnit. I told them to let me sleep in today. Out all night saving Equestria from Shadow whatsits,” she complained, and then stomped out of the room, giving me a good view of her body was she marched towards the door. She was a pony. Applejack as I’d long since been made aware. A member of the extended Apple Family, and current head of Sweet Apple Acres, despite only being the second oldest Apple on the farm.
Her body moved like a mountain to me, so far away in the distance that had I been normal sized, she would have been covered in clouds, which would have scattered at her passing. Strangely, her every movement, despite her size, seemed deliberate. Her joints moved with the ripple of muscles, a powerful ocean of flesh behind her fur giving power to her frame, and allowing her to pound her way across the room.
As she left, I got into a knelt pose, just like they’d taught me when I was younger, and prayed to her. It was a morning ritual of my own now, so long after appearing. I didn’t close my eyes, though. That was because you were trying to see your god in your mind’s eye, but I didn’t need such tricks myself. Not now, not here. Here was a goddess in all but name, right before me, and she walked the earth with legs that shook the heavens themselves.
Once she was at the door, she opened it, and outside I saw her siblings, the other two Apples on the farm. Their sizes were still massive compared to mine, but they compared to her in different ways. One was yellow, with a red mane and pink bow on her head, but came only to Applejack’s barrel. That was Applebloom, the youngest of the three siblings, and often a source of food for me, when she and her friends would come into AJ’s room to snack, while thinking of ways to Crusade.
The others was more massive even than AJ. But where she was controlled power, with every movement for a purpose, this one was an ocean, one that crashed on heedless of what was in front of it. His strength was undeniable when he walked, his hooves pounded the floor strong enough that I could feel him, even when he was Downstairs, a place I knew not to go. Worse, he spoke only rarely, I knew his name was Big Mac only because of his sisters saying it for me once.
The trio soon were called Downstairs by the Voice. The Voice was an unknown, and so I thought of it only as the siren call of work to them. They grumbled and griped, but they would soon heed the Voice’s words, and exit the home, doing their daily works. I knew those to be the pounding and shaking of the ground, as they did things that I assumed were farm life stuff, but I would never see with my own eyes.
With the three out of sight, I made my rounds, rising from the spot I’d chosen to sleep on last night, this one near the edge of her bed, as the Crusaders were to meet today, and I figured I would be able to grab some crumbs. The first stop was under her dresser, where I kept my stash, grabbing a crumb from what had been a cake, one Scootaloo had demolished and allowed to rain down into my world.
Scarfing down the slightly stale bit of bread, I drank from a drop of liquid, I think it was juice, though juice of what I didn’t know. It had been the hardest thing to retrieve, but I’d worked at it, and through my efforts, had liquids to drink that weren’t drops of sweat from Applejack’s body. I didn’t mind the taste of that stuff, as I once had, knowing it came from her, but I knew it wasn’t good for me to subsist on it, so I was grateful to Sweetiebelle for giving me this bounty.
I had but just finished my own meal, when a sudden pounding alerted me to the return of one of the siblings. This had not happened in many months, and while I knew I should scuttle to one of the many safe spaces, I couldn’t help myself, and instead looked out on the landscape beyond the dresser. My eyes then beheld the return of the Goddess, her orange colored fur swaying in the wind of her passing as she brought what looked like a glorious feast into the chamber.
It was a stack of pancakes. I knew that, somewhere deep in my mind, but to me, it was an unexpected prize, as a tray with that much food was enough to feed me for beyond forever. I had no illusions about her giving me such, but I knew too that she would leave crumbs and the like just flying around. Such was worth staying around for, so I darted from my hiding place, to just beneath the cover of her bed, as she climbed into it.
Without a word from above, the sounds of chewing, chomping, and swallowing soon echoed from the Goddess, as the bed creaked and groaned with each movement. The sky over my head, made of interlocking pieces of wood beneath a mattress, shook and rattled around, as if a storm of epic proportions were happening far above, and soon, a rain of crumbs began to fall like manna from heaven.
Praying once more to Applejack, I drove myself forward, to grab as much of the bounty as I could before the meal was over. I knew that, also from my own observation, the cowgirl was a bit more fastidious than her sister’s friends. This bounty would only last til the meal was over, whereupon she would sweep away all that might sustain, a Goddess of fortune who took as much as she gave from me.
My legs, strengthened by the need for food, were swift was the wind, the burning of my joints nothing, the heaving of my chest not worth noticing, as I grabbed up all the pieces of bread that I could, filling my arms with them, and then rushing away, straight back towards my hiding place, where I would feast in the evening like I had not done in many moons, enjoying the fruits of my own labors.
“Remember to clean up real good, AJ! The family’s comin’ for a visit next week, and we gots to get this place spic and span afore they get here for the Summer Sun Celebration!” shouted the voice, and I wondered what Celebration she was speaking of. It seemed to be of import to Applejack, who jerked her head to the side, and then swallowed powerfully, my eyes drawn upwards to her, and watching a bulge in her neck descend into her chest, vanishing beneath her skin.
“Right! I’ll get this done up before noon!” shouted back Applejack, before returning to her meal. She took only a few quick minutes to finish it up, before walking the tray out of the room, dishes rattling and clinking on her back as she did so. Thinking it was safe to relax, with her gone from the room, I laid back against the inside of the dresser leg, and looked out over the day’s earning with a joyful skip in my heart.
Then I heard the pounding of hooves returning, and soon I heard the scrape of bristles on hardwood floor, as expected. Applejack was cleaning the room, and I could avoid her by just staying in this spot beneath the dresser. That was how it usually went, at least, and I was so confident of my safety that I didn’t even watch as she swept away the remains of the meal, my eyes only on my stash of food and drink.
All at once, my overconfidence shattered, as suddenly the world shook, and the close sky overhead rose upwards into the heavens, exposing the space beneath the dresser to light for the first time in forever. You could even see, probably at Applejack’s level as well, where the wood had gone pale due to sunlight exposing it over the years, where the stuff under the dresser was far darker in shade.
Those were not the thoughts I was thinking, however, as panic gripped my heart, and made me nearly drop dead on the spot. I looked up, and straight into the eyes of my Goddess, and her gaze bore down on me like a mountain. Her lips curled into a sneer, and then her beautiful features were replaced by a forest of bristles, that came down towards me, and blotted out the light above.
The forest slammed down into the ground, and the wind it made was such that it was like a hurricane. I felt the air ripped from my lungs as I tried to scream, so all I got out was gasping wheezes, before I was dragged into the sky, spinning in the air with the dustmotes that were scattered about. The leg in which Applejack held the broom moved, and the air moved with it, a current, no a tide of wind, carrying me along for the ride.
I spun as I flew, unable to do anything to control myself. The world moved in crazy ways, going into an indistinct blur after several moments, and leaving me forced to close my eyes, lest I lose what little food I’d gotten down. Still my gorge rose in my gullet, and I had to swallow more than once to keep my cool, until finally, mercifully, I landed somewhere, slamming hard into the ground.
I laid there for a long moment, just letting the feeling of my sore body tell me I was still alive, and not yet slain by the Goddess’ own hoof. Instead the beating of my heart, counted in lots of five, gave me purpose, for the longest time, before finally, I was forced to rise up, and look around me, finding I was in an odd place, even compared to the world I had been inhabiting for these many ages.
The ground was skin toned, for one thing, with what looked like sickly trees of varying hues, though mostly darker ones near the bottom, growing out of it. Worse, it was warm, and my already not well hydrated body began to quickly complain of how I was sweating, leaving me gasping for air. Stumbling to my feet, I began to try to move towards one of the trees, and soon tripped over my own feet, falling into a pile of something.
It took several seconds of pawing around to realize what it was I’d fallen into, and more importantly to know where I was. I’d fallen into dirt, or perhaps grime would be the more proper term. A bit of stuff had mixed in with musk and sweat at the base of one of the ‘trees’, causing it to congeal into a goop that now covered my body, almost swooning me with the sheer odor of it, as it refused to be shaken off my skin.
I was on Applejack, somewhere on her body. My flight must have taken me up high into the air, my swirling path moving up and over the cowgirl, before I slammed into her. That thought almost made me feel sacrilegious, had I been thinking of that sort of thing, rather than trying to rub the gunk that clung to my body. It coagulated and moved with me, my attempts to clean my skin of it proving futile as I grabbed onto one of the hairs, and started to rub.
That was when I discovered the gunk was stickier than I was strong, clinging to the hair in a way that made it impossible for me to pull away from it. It did, however, provide me with a way to climb the thing, which swayed and moved as I went up it, surprised at how something only as thick as a tire to me, could hold up under my weight, as I rose towards the part of the hair that turned orange, and then finally, out into the open air.
I took a deep breath the moment my head was above the swaying hairs on Applejack’s back, for that was where I was, riding her like some show pony. My view is of her rippling muscles as she walks around her room, slowly sweeping up the piles of dust and debris, cleaning her chamber, and destroying all my stashes, leaving me with nothing to live on save what I could gather tonight.
My thoughts of starving were interrupted as the ponytail that Applejack wore her mane in whipped around, passing overhead with a sound much like a jet flying too low. It left drops of sweat in its passage that fell like musty rain around the hair, and then swung back around, the mass of the thing sweeping through the hair on her back, becoming coated with the grime of the workday as it went, and soon coming to me.
The wall of blonde hair smashed into the hair I was in, and then rubbed against it. Like a filter for water, it dragged itself up the length of the hair, rubbing it with its own follicles, and pulling off all the dirt and grime with its passage. It came to me, and I shut my eyes tight, expecting to be smeared into nothing by the hairs, but as luck would have it, the hair I was stuck to was not so tightly bound as the rest, and with a cracking sound, it came loose from her skin, tearing away, and being drawn off by the ponytail.
I screamed, able to hold my breath in me this time as I was moved by the Goddess, the world not a sickening blur, but more of a horrifying one as it passed around me, showing me everything from her perspective. Her room, so large to me that I’d only walked its length once, was barely large enough for her bed and dresser, and she had to be careful moving around to avoid bumping into anything.
My view of her world jerked suddenly to a halt, as Applejack shook her head, moving her ponytail up and down like it was in an earthquake, and leaving me rattled a bit, unable to keep two thoughts together as the world in my vision spun. When I’d recovered enough to see anything clearly, the sky overhead was already darkened again, and this time with a flat hoof, that made me cry out in fear, but my condition meant I could do nothing but stare.
The hoof touched down, and I felt a tingle in my skin as some pull attracted me towards it. Like a magnet, it tugged at me, trying to draw me away, but the hair to which I was stuck by grime would not let go. It would not be denied by something so small, however, and with a ripping sound, I felt myself be drawn into the sky once more, and looked down, thinking I would see the hair broken into a million pieces.
Instead, I looked down to find the hair was whole, it was I who had broken. Adrenaline flooded my body, making my heart pound faster than a machine gun as I stared down at the trail of gore and guts below me, streaming out like banners. I saw bits of my spine, and something I was sure was intestine, just far enough away that it shook and rattled around in the air, flopping about like blood soaked balloons.
Then I stopped again, and found myself being stared at be huge green seas. The eyes of the Goddess were again upon me, and I was less than half of what I had been when she’d seen me as nothing but trash. Now she just grunted, her look of disgust telling me all I needed to know, before her mouth opened, and an ocean of spit flew towards me, splashing around me, and filling my lungs with her saliva as I tried to breath through it.
I didn’t feel the world shift, but the light changed, and I knew what came next, even as my world turned to darkness. The weight from behind me was suddenly from above, and then I felt it push down, the spit sliding away, until I was pressed into the hardwood floor, with Applejack’s hoof above me. With a sound like fireworks, that filled my body with red hot agony, I felt my ribs break one after another. Inside me, my organs were shredded by shards of bones, and then finally, I felt a pressure on my skull, like a vice. Mercifully, it lasted only a moment, before I was taken into darkness.
“What in tarnation?” asked AJ as she moved her hoof through her mane, pulling at it to drag out something that felt like a burr. When she looked at her hoof, she didn’t see anything that could have been the cause, but she did see she needed a quick bath before the family started arriving, though for a quick fix, she spit onto the offending hoof, and then ground it into the wood, before continuing to sweep her room clean.