*BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP*
You slowly open your eyes. The rays of the bright sun shine through your window, signaling a brand new day. As your eyes fully adjust to the light coming into your bedroom, your ears pick up the ringing coming from your alarm. You move over to the edge of your bed to turn off the annoying beeping and you glance at the time glowing from the clock on the alarm - 8:00. Perfect time, as always.
You always preferred to wake up early, even when you’re not working. It gave you enough time to do your various activities and duties throughout the day, while also giving you just enough time to have a good night’s rest at the end of the day.
Today happened to be Tuesday: Market Day. Most of the fruit and vegetable stands would be out today in Ponyville Square, and you were in dire need of some more food. All that late night snacking has been leaving your kitchen practically devoid of anything to eat and you always told yourself that you’d limit your eating, but you always kept coming back to the pantry at night. You’re surprised you haven’t developed some kind of illness from eating so much fruit and vegetables.
Besides Tuesday being Market Day, though, you also remembered that today was your day off from work. You were a member of the weather team (Well, the only members were you, Rainbow Dash, and some other Pegasus whose name you can never remember) and usually dealt with clouds and such, but today’s forecast was scheduled to be sunny and clear all day long, so you and the rest of the weather team had the entire day to do whatever you felt like.
Giving your legs a little stretch, you hop off the edge of your bed and start making your way towards the bathroom to get yourself cleaned up and ready for the day. Before you exit bedroom, though, you glance at a picture that hung on the wall next to your door.
In the picture stood a stallion, a mare, and a young colt. The young colt you recognized as a younger version of yourself. The other two were your parents.
Your parents….
Memories of your life back in Las Pegasus began filling your mind, memories of your parents and your old home. You haven’t seen them in years, and you doubt that they’re even still alive….
‘No,’ you thought to yourself, ‘I shouldn’t be thinking like that. There’s still hope. There always is.’
You were always optimistic during painful times. It helped relieve stress on your part and made life seem more enjoyable than if you weren’t. This optimistic nature of yours is what helped you earn your cutie mark: a heart surrounded by different types of musical notes. The heart represented your kind and loving attitude towards most ponies you meet (Most meaning that there were still some ponies that bothered you to some degree) while the notes represented your love for music.
You’ve always loved music, ever since you were young. From Maretallica to DJ PON-3, it didn’t matter what genre of music it was. As long as it had a beat that you could enjoy, it was beautiful music to your ears. Your affinity for music led you to acquiring all sorts of musical instruments that could be used at your disposal, even some you still have no idea how to play (Seriously, how can anyone learn to play a cymbalom?). Music was everything to you, and you thought that it was going to play huge part in your career when you grew up.
You thought, that is, until the incident when you last saw your parents….
“Ok, seriously,” you thought aloud, “I need to get my mind out of the gutter. There’s no use worrying about the past. They’d want me to be strong, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
You push the painful memories out of your mind and continue on your way towards the bathroom to clean up and get ready for the day ahead of you.
1 Hour Later
You finally arrive in Ponyville Square and take a look around you. You see ponies everywhere carrying bags and baskets filled with a plethora of various fruits, vegetables, and other assorted goods. Stands and carts are lined up all around the area and down multiple streets, each carrying their own type of goods they’re hoping to sell and make a profit out of. You look at the list that you’ve been holding in your mouth and make sure that all the items that you need are written down.
‘Let’s see. Eggs, bread, milk, celery, oranges, strawberries, grapes, carrots and… oh yeah! Apples! Almost forgot about those’ (You’re probably the only pony in existence who would forget about buying apples. Seriously, what kind of a pony would forget to buy apples?!).
Cursing your forgetfulness, you proceed down the square and quickly try to find the apple stand first before doing anything else.
You soon find the stand you were looking for. The sign on the stand read “Sweet Apple Acres” and was filled with apples and apple treats. Heading the stand was a mare who seemed to be about your age or slightly younger. She had a golden-orange coat and blonde mane that was tied at the end with a hairband. On top of her head was a Stetson hat and her cheeks had a few freckles that helped give her that southern look. As you approach the stand she immediately notices you and gives you a smile and nod of her hat.
“Howdy there partner! My name’s Applejack, and this is the Sweet Apple Acres apple stand, home of the most delicious apples in all of Equestria! Whatcha need? We’ve got apples, apple fritters, apple pie, caramel apples, apple dumplings-”
“Oh, just a dozen apples will do, thank you”, you interrupt her before she starts naming off every known apple recipe known to ponykind.
“Sure thing partner,” she says, “One dozen of our best apples coming right up!”
You put the basket that you’ve been holding on your back and put on the stand so that Applejack has a place to put your apples. As she begins filling your basket with apples you proceed to check off the “apples” on your list to keep things more organized.
After Applejack finishes putting the apples in your basket, she looks at you and says, “That’ll be five bits please.”
You grab from the pouch around your neck and pull out the five bits that Applejack requested. You place the bits on top of her stand, grab your basket filled with apples, and give her friendly wave goodbye.
“Thanks for coming partner,” you hear Applejack say as you start to leave, “hope to see ya again real soon!”
You answer back, “Thanks, hope to see you again too!”
That’s one stand down, eight more to go.
Seven Stands Later
“Thanks for shopping!” Says the stallion running the grape stand
“Anytime!” You answer back.
Whew! After a long day in the market, you’re finally done! Or… at least you THINK you’re done. Better check your list to make sure you’ve got everything written down.
‘Let’s see. Apples, check. Celery, check. Oranges, eggs, bread, milk, strawberries, grapes, all check. Is that really everything? Still feels like I’m missing something. Wonder if I wrote anything on the back.’
You flip your list over and notice that there actually is something written down on it: “carrots.”
‘Oh, yeah, forgot about those…’ (You mentally punch yourself in the face for forgetting not once, but twice today already. You really need to think things through more often).
As you glance at the clock tower above Ponyville Square, you notice that there’s only five more minutes until all the stands close up for the week.
“Ah, crap,” you say to yourself, “I need to book it if I’m gonna reach the stand in time!”
You then take off in a run trying to locate the carrot stand before it closes, searching all around the square and up and down the streets for it. You eventually spot a stand with a picture of carrots in front of it, a mare with a yellow coat and orange mane standing behind it, and another mare with a yellow coat and pink mane standing in front it.
‘That has to be the stand!’ You think to yourself and you sprint as fast as you can to the stand before it closes.
As you’re sprinting you take another look at the clock tower. One more minute.
‘Ok, I can do this!’
Just as you turn your gaze away from the tower, though, you notice that you were a lot closer to the stand than you once were and that if you don’t slow down now, you’re going to run into the stand and hurt yourself and possibly somepony else.
Trying to stop as fast as you can, you plant your hooves down on the ground, hoping that the traction from the ground will slow you down before you hit the stand. As you attempt to slow down, you see the mare in front of the stand about to leave.
As she turns around, though, she quickly sees you coming towards at an alarmingly fast rate. Her eyes go wide and she stands still in fear, not sure what to do at the moment.
You see her staring straight at you, horror filling her eyes. You immediately start to panic.
‘Oh crap, come on, come on!’
You still are no closer to slowing down, and you are now just a few yards away from her. You realize that impact is inevitable.
Since you know that you’re going to run into her anyway, you might as well take an optimistic approach to it. No use in panicking when you know the inevitable will happen.
‘Maybe it won’t be so bad. I mean, hospitals are actually really cool places. You get to sit around, be lazy, eat free food, who doesn’t want that kind of life! And maybe the mare I run into won’t get it as bad. Bills wouldn’t be that much of a problem anyway. It’s the least I could do for-‘
Before you finish your thought, you see the mare a couple of feet away from you. You close your eyes and hope for some kind of miracle.
Hope is all you have now.
