It was a cool Spring morning on Sweet Apple Acres, the morning light bringing a warm embrace to all, the air damp and chill from the dew that graced the young blades of grass so delicately. The crisp blue sky was dulled slightly from fog, a sense of privacy surrounding the orchard in a content aura. The morning had just begun to ring with the happy chorus of birdsong, and a drop of condensation joyfully ran down the cheek of a large boulder.
The stone had existed from the beginning, before any creature in the land, since the hellish birth of the peaceful terrain in which he now sat. He had watched the neighboring town sprout from the settlers’ original village in a heartbeat, seasons changing in the blink of an eye. No effort of the pony inhabitants concerned him; civilizations seemingly came and went like mayflies to the ancient stone.
On this particular morning, however, something caught Tom’s attention like nothing ever had before. An orange pony, wearing what Tom would assert to be a rather silly brown hat, trotted down the gravel path. Tom winced, his brothers assaulted so by the careless creature. The distasteful equine carried with her a small seedling, which she carefully transplanted a short distance away from Tom, humming contently with the avian orchestra as she went about her work.
The boulder turned his attention to the seedling. It was unlike any Tom had seen before—a wonderfully curvaceous specimen, its stem reached courageously for the morning light. Tom smiled an inward, bittersweet smile; he knew that all things must end, but he was struck by the hopefulness with which the plant carried itself. He decided to name this tree; it deserved a name befitting its courage, its steadfast dedication to grow into a strong and independent tree. He decided to name her… Bloomberg.
Tom had, of course, witnessed the lives and deaths of thousands of trees. He could see a great number from the hill on which he sat day after day, but with Bloomberg’s arrival, all of them seemed dull and utterly devoid of any individuality. It was only Bloomberg that brightened Tom’s eternal existence; it was only Bloomberg about which Tom could really care.
Bloomberg was a hearty apple seedling, and she observed the world around her with youthful vigor. She noticed scores upon scores of hearty trees in the orchard, and someday, she wanted to be just like them. She smiled to herself at the sight of a large boulder that sat atop the hill on which she was planted; the stone was merely a few yards away from her. It had a strong, guiding look to it; it reminded her of her father. Not that she knew her father, of course; Tom’s stony visage just had a very fatherly look to it.
As Bloomberg grew into a sturdy sapling, Tom smiled to himself. The seasons seemed to slow; Tom’s apathetic view of the world around him gradually brightened into a kindly observance, a protective gaze upon the rolling hills of the orchard, upon Bloomberg. It filled Tom with joy that Bloomberg—his Bloomberg—would succeed so greatly in her quest to someday blossom into a sturdy apple tree. Tom, for once in his ancient lifetime, was happy. All his life, he felt—the troublesome and violent churning inside an unstable volcano, even being crushed and superheated between layers of igneous and metamorphic rock—was worth it for this moment, for Bloomberg.
There Tom and Bloomberg sat, entirely enthralled with one another. Bloomberg hardly noticed the fruits of her laborious photosynthesis and cellular respiration being taken from her, and Tom could barely concern himself with the wearing of the winter ice upon his features. They had only one regret, a regret that they shared.
Tom and Bloomberg were, however tragically, a handful of long yards apart. All Tom wanted was to roll against the hearty young tree and forever be one, to share his most intimate of feelings with her, to witness every moment of their lives together. All Bloomberg yearned for in her life was to lean gently on the stone, to cradle it in her wooden embrace, to live her life beside the only one she could ever love. But it was not to be.
Tom despaired. His Bloomberg was unreachable; he could never confess his true feelings for her. Tom cried softly, condensation rolling down the bitter minerals that composed his features. How tragic that he could never touch the one he loved, that the one thing that made his existence worth anything was just outside his grasp! Was he truly to be born into this world, suffer so, and have no purpose? Surely it could not be! —But it was.
Bloomberg, so wrought with agony at their separation, barely noticed—or could indeed care at all—when she was rooted up by an orange equine and put on a train, only distancing her further from her only love. Bloomberg gazed silently at her lover as she was carried away, despair wrought upon the cracking bark of her aging body, every fiber of her being protesting the very injustice that separated them so! If they could not be together, what truly could? Was all existence in this world for naught? Was that what her life was to be? It couldn’t! It wasn’t.
Tom sat there, bitter rain starting to pour down on the hill. If he couldn’t live with his only love… he wouldn’t live at all. And so, on that dark night, his ancient existence, a wealth of sentient knowledge that the creatures that passed him could not begin to comprehend, snuffed itself out. A pall of darkness overtook the hill on which the lifeless and unforgiving boulder sat, certain hues softly fading along with him.
As Bloomberg was planted on a hill overlooking the young town of Appleloosa, she shuddered, feeling her lover fade from the world. With him went her will to live, and the sturdy tree that sprouted from such a courageous and robust seedling began to wither sadly, a crack of thunder announcing a downpour of revolting and bitter rain, Nature herself mocking the two lovers.
* * *
A flash of light pervaded the scene.
A large boulder, discarded as a worthless stone, dropped onto the hill, far away from its corrupt purpose in Ponyville, and rolled gently, coming to stop against the withered and lifeless husk of a dead tree on a hill overlooking the town of Appleloosa.
