Hell Ain't Half Full Yet

by Cynewulf

Rating: teen
Tags: Alternate Universe, Applejack, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Mystery
Length: 7664

Applejack becomes unstuck in time and space on a train to nowhere.

Applejack falls out of her own world and into another when a bit of technically illegal treasure hunting goes horribly wrong.

Published 2020-05-03 00:00:01 UTC
Last updated 2020-05-03 00:00:01 UTC

Ticket to the Last Station

Late night and the great Canterlot rail train headed westwards, into the hungry all-black, and in car 7-A sat but one pony in the corner, her face straight ahead and her eyes like watch-lanterns out towards the windows.

It’s a curious thing for a dining car to be empty, even when it makes sense. Late at night, in the indifferent cold, it feels like there ought to be more seats full, more talking, more food, but there’s nothing. Just the machine-clatter, train’s claws on railroad bones, and the tangible lack.

Moth Light, her tail a pendulum, swallowed the lump of nothing in her throat. She tried not to think too closely about the machine-clatter. Chatta-chatta in her head, nails on the chalkboard in her brain. She hated it. She didn’t like how it kept trying to claw her back. There into the days Before. She didn’t like it one bit.

She’d distract herself. She’d do something else. She’d be something else that wasn’t sitting and listening to the trainclaws. Something nice. Something pleasing.

She dug through her loose saddlebag. Which was sprawled out on the red plush bench. It vibrated off and on, the rails speaking through it but not saying anything, just running little lines of movement up her hooves until she’d found her cards.

Long, slender things, the art beautiful and subtle and age-touched, were laid out in an elaborate pattern upon the small dining-car table. Their faces were set down gently, every card at right angles in perfect alignment. She checked this. She read the angles over and over with her naked eyes. Tindalos and his hounds in the corners, you know, she whispered to herself, and you’ve got to watch the gates. But you couldn’t stare too long or the mind would spiral into the vertices and you’d be trapped in the profane geometry of matter.

Moth Light shook her head.

Nine cards in the Mandala spread. She bit her lip and hovered over the card in the center, drew her hoof back, and then flipped the card with her magic.

The Nine of Swords, a mare in bed with tear-streaked cheeks and an array of swords above her, waiting to come down striking out of the night. Moth clicked her tongue.

The door to the dining car opened, and into it spilled the clawing noise of the train and the howling wind and the sky too-full of stars, and amongst these portents a pony that reminded her of sand and cinnamon apples at her grandmother’s table, that looked like the cover of an old novel, a stranger. The new pony’s hat was wide-brimmed and worn, and it obscured her face except for the edges of her chin. A ragged, dirty, patched duster obscured the rest of their form, its size obviously bigger than necessary, its wounds obviously from neglect as much as violence. Moth knew that it was a mare because this was the mare on the card, and of course, the universe worked this way.

Her head flashed up and around, and beneath the rim of her hat two lights gleamed, more stars in a world with too many. The stars settled on Moth, who did not shy away from them. These were the called for card’s stars, and had nothing to do with her, and so she was not afraid.

“Just you?” asked the mare.

Her voice sounded raw. It sounded like what she imagined dried out infected cuts felt like. “Aye,” she said.

“Right. And ye’ll not bother with none, will ya?”

“Aye,” Moth said a bit stiffly, not quite but almost insulted. Honestly. She was not that sort of Seer.

“I’ll ask again, a third time, if ye’ll say true--alone?”

Aren’t we all? She did not say. “Yes,” she said, firmly, finally.

The mare nodded and sagged, trudging along the seats to one picked seemingly at random somewhere near the middle, and then she sprawled out along the bench, her whole form stretched languidly in a puddle of clothing and metal bits and creaking.

A second card, and she turned it. Ten of Wands: burden, overcommitment, responsibility, duty. The second card, the ambition, the desires, the primal urges, the drives. A mare of sorrow driven by duty, or duty’s dusty frayed edge pretending it is a mare? A lone knight-errant, a solitary gunsmare, a country pony with a promise and a time limit.

She hummed.

The mare was still except for the up and down of her breathing, the up and down of her heart keeping her body moving. Ponies were soft machines which purred with life. Moth Light licked her lips.

“You.”

The mare shifted. She repeated herself.

“You.”

“Me,” agreed Moth Light.

“Watch the door,” said the mare. “If ye can bear to, crone.”

Respect, then, at least in name. She had that bit right. You call things what they are, call a crone a crone, and name her rightly. “I can bear it, traveler, if you can bear to tell your ways and days.”

“Then watch the door and conjure coffee,” replied the mare gruffly. “No cream, no sugar, keep it whole.”

“It can be done,” Moth said lightly.

“Aye.”

The mare lay in the plush seat like a dead thing. She breathed, but from a distance no one could tell. Not that there was anyone else to tell but Moth Light, who noted all. They were both absolutely still, inanimate as the dining car was inanimate, moving less than it did with its rail-claws and its shaking and its sometimes-clattering cups hidden away.

Blinking, Moth Light moved her eyes without moving her head, sweeping them from the newcomer across the long tables and the deep black windows until she could see no more and turned her head towards the coffee machine.

With magic, her body still unmoving, she set the machine to work. The stranger-errant had asked, after all. It would be rude not to. Probably. If she were honest, Moth would confess she did not know much of rudeness in the normal equine sense. It was easy to mind your manners around the grinding gears of hell and very difficult around ponies, with their meandering lines and potentials. The maw of Tindalos, gathered at the corner of res, of Being, only pointed one way.

The mare’s bench was a part of a little cubicle, and she set the coffee down in the middle of the table, absolutely in the center, measured perfectly by her eye. There was no reason, ritually, for this. Moth Lite was just a nervous sort and much of what she did was to maintain her own peace of mind.

She then returned to her cards.

Moments later, she did not know how many, the stranger stirred and sat up. With eyes too keen for one so weary, she scanned the car and drank.

“You know where this is?” she asked.

Moth Lite blinked. “Where is anything? But no, I do not.”

“How’d you get here, then?”

“How did you?”

“Tricked.” She paused. “No, not quite. Made a mistake. Went right when I shoulda gone left, that sorta thing. Trusted when I shoulda verified. No, that ain’t it. You got a name?”

“I do.”

The stranger blinked. “Wait, did I ask you before? My mind, it’s all cobwebs and dust.”

“You did not.”

A pause. “Alright, then. Mine’s Applejack. I’m here on account of Rarity, I suspect. We were prying this… this thing, don’t rightly know the word, artifact of some such, and it went wrong.”

“And he trapped you here? This enchanter?”

“Enchantress, and nah, more like she mishandled it.” Another pause. What a strange pony, full of bluster and silence! “More like… it don’t matter. What do you know? Do you know anythin’?”

“I know many things. I do not know many more things. What sort of things do you need to know?”

“Right, that’s vague. I know this is a train, but it sure as hell ain’t like any train I’ve ever been on, and I’ve been on quite a few.” She glowered at the cabin. “See this here dinin’ car looks normal, but it ain’t. It’s off. It’s like it was built by somepony who don’t know what a plumb line is. Gives me the creeps. And the car before it was…” Her face went blank, not merely confused but actually slack, her muscles relinquishing control with no signal given. Her body seemed so much like a corpse, suddenly, a rag given shape by an unkind, rigid frame. But the moment passed. “Don’t remember,” she concluded weakly, as if waking. “Not important.”

“I do not know from whence you came. There is no specific order,” Moth said. “Each car is its own car. Outside is the grinding maw, and the dark, and inside is light. And coffee,” she added, gesturing. “I do not know much else on the structure of this train. I do not know what is in the dark, and I do not know why sometimes it is not dark.”

“Not dark?”

She nodded. “Yes. Sometimes. Not dark out there. I’d not look if I were you.”

Somehow, she knew that Applejack would look, if given the chance. She’d look without much hesitation. Somehow this felt absolutely certain. Moth Light considered for a moment what kind of pony had stumbled into her sanctuary, besides just ‘the kind that looks at things she shouldn’t’.

Grim, battered, and full of anger. Her eyes flashed, her voice had an edge. Capable, at least she seemed to be--toned and quick in her movements. A warrior, maybe, of some sort or another. She’d mentioned treasure, so perhaps an adventurer.

It didn’t exactly matter, but speculation was amusing. Speculation about safe things, harmless and controlled things, was always amusing. It felt like being in control. It felt like she imagined being in control would feel, because Moth Light was of the mind that few if any had ever felt in control when they actually were in control.

That was the joke of Tarot, at least to her. The uninitiated expected cards to spell out their futures, to enumerate their ways and days. Could it? In a matter of speaking it could. But they wanted specifics. Ponies wanted dates and decisions. They wanted to know where to stand and where to apply pressure, where to stick the wrench to foul up the machine of fate and where to press down to staunch the bleeding of the world. But that wasn’t the kind of future sight she could provide, because no one could.

The stranger, the Applejack, had noticed her cards.

“So you’re a fortune teller, I’m guessin’?”

Moth Light blinked. Nodded. “I am.”

“I never put much store in any of that. Seemed like the kind of thing fillies did at sleepovers and then put aside when it was time to work.” She pursed her lips, and seemed to waver. “This table’s big enough for one either side. You mind?”

Moth Light gestured.

Applejack sat and stared intensely at her spread.

Smiling, Moth did not volunteer anything. She simply turned over the next card and hummed. An interesting turn. She had not expected that, not on this one.

“What’s it mean?” Applejack asked.

“It means nothing,” Moth said, still smiling. “It is only a game. It’s a story being told to no one, for no other reason than the curiosity of the one telling it, filled with images and the vagueness of suggestion.”

“Ha, I get it. I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m sorry.”

“You hadn’t, actually,” came the reply. “I was being honest, if cryptic. The cards tell a story. What did you do in your land?”

Applejack blinked. “Ain’t sure what that has to do with anything, but I done a lot. Farmed, tended orchards. Did some fighting. Most recently been involved with some enterprising ponies delvin’ in caves and whatnot.”

Delving. A nice way to put it. “Alright. You sound like a pony that understands numbers, who sees the world in equations. You must balance the books, yes?”

“Things make sense, or they don’t and somepony’s got it twisted. Yeah, that sounds about right.”

“That is a way of seeing, but it is not the only way.”

“I’ma cut you off, cause I think I know where you’re goin’. You’re headed for metaphors.”

“In a way. Stories. You can tell a story, a purely fictional tale, and it would mean something, yes? To you, at least, or to someone else. If I tell you a story about a lost pony who finds her way home, you could find meaning in that. Especially right now.”

Applejack snorted, but she smiled. “Yeah, I could. I might figure I could get home. No, I’m following you. But where’s the connection?”

“You can predict the future with equations. You can calculate how likely it is that the sky will rain or that a pony will pick one thing over another. Three boxes, and one times out of three you’ll pick the middle, or some such. But you could also feel your way forward using something else. Suggestion, thoughtfulness, the image. Signs and the things they signify, the mystery of your agency, stranger. Or, more bluntly, a tarot card spread does not tell you if a friend is false or when the sky will fall. But it can help you ask questions, and perhaps those questions will find such things, and perhaps they will just help you wake up tomorrow.”

Applejack bit her lip and furrowed her brow for a moment before giving a hesitant nod. “If I’m followin’, which I think I am--I used to whittle when I was thinking. Helped me focus on what I was thinking about. This kinda like that? It’s a way to think about whatcha gonna be and do.”

“Close. Close enough.”

“Alright, I’ll buy it ‘till it’s light. But then I gotta ask, if it ain’t for spookin’ curious fillies in the night time, then what’s the deal with this one?”

Moth Light lost a bit of her smile. “The Hanged Pony, one of the trumps. The trumps, the Arcana, they have meanings. Meanings for one way, and meanings for when they appear reversed. They are signs. The hanged pony… when the old Empire of the north punished traitors, it tied them like this, one leg hoisted high on a frame. They were vulnerable, aching, easy to hit. The hanged one is being punished, but note his face, his posture. This is not a panicked or miserable fellow. No, he is here with knowledge of whether he was right or wrong, and he has perhaps offered himself up. A sign that stands in for discernment, perhaps. Foreknowledge, sacrifice. Or perhaps it is not a man hanged by others, but one seeking his own entrancement between heaven and earth.

Traditionally? It usually read as being about contemplation. In the old stories ponies made up about these cards, a foolish pony began to consider his world, his mortality, the meaning of his world when he takes into his mind to hang himself by a leg to meditate. An odd way, I know. The foolish one will meet death, and talk with her, and behind him is fortune and justice, broken or unbroken. It is a long story. I will not bore you.”

She looked up and took the measure of Applejack’s face, and saw the spinning calculations in her eyes.

“I’d say he looks like somepony who knows why he’s there,” said Applejack, slowly, as if chewing each word first. “Like somepony who figures that it figures, you know? That he doesn’t wanna be there but it makes sense, that the world’s balanced and there ain’t any red ink in the ledger cause he did something worth being up there.”

Moth Light nodded. “And like that, you have begun to think. Were I reading for you, I would read you through the lens of this sign, considered you the signified and what you have asked or wish to ask as the fuel to burn my divinatory light.”

“I suppose. Sounds a bit high falutin.”

“Sounds a bit trivial, you mean, but I take no offense. After all, here I am with a full spread, entertaining myself. I had just begun when you arrived. In fact, you arrived precisely as I read the first card.”

“Yeah, which one?” When Moth gestured to the Nine of Swords, she recoiled. “That’s mighty unpleasant, weepin’ and swords. If I were superstitious, I’d say it was a bad omen.”

“It’s an omen of some sort, you could say,” Moth replied carefully.

Applejack leaned back. “Some of the family’s mighty invested in the whole Gaian business, but I’m not one for river baptisms and hymn singin’. Sure, I like all the old field songs and I enjoy the high days when everybody’s folks are makin’ sweetbread, but that ain’t what I live by.”

Moth hummed to herself. “What do you live by then, my errant friend?” she asked as she turned another card. A glance and she struggled to maintain her composure for a moment. It would not do to draw her attention. She was sharp, she would ask. Her face remained untouched.

“Well, my pa always said that it was a sin to be rich, but it was a damn shame to be poor.” She grinned and it was not the nicest grin. “I agree with him, so I got no desire to be poor, and I’ve not the kind of steel in me to be too high falutin rich. One way is starvin and the other way is livin’ fat and decadent-like. You make bits, you make bits into more bits, you keep busy. That’s how I live, sister.”

“A workmare’s ethic,” Moth said, a bit listlessly before continuing on as normal, her tone even. “Fair enough, fair enough. Though, if you are a businessmare like this, one who understands a deal, then perhaps you will be so kind as to balance our ledger.”

“Your what now?”

“This trade is rather one-sided, no? I have told you of my craft, but have only shreds of your story.”

“Oh.” There was an awkward beat. “Well, I guess ain’t no harm in it. Right. You ever been to River’s Run, little town south of Canterlot?”

“I’ve passed through on my journeys,” Moth Light lied.

“So have many a pony, its the kind of place you pass through and remember only as a signpost. Well, not far from there is an old imperial ruin, you see, and I’d reckon at least a mile of crypts and burrows. The ruins are a proper dungeon for critters now, a place for them to fester and get big. Lot of warped magic’s down there, gnawin’ on stone and makin creatures into the wrong sorts of creatures. Lot of Imperial treasure, somewhere, if it ain’t been taken already. Same as lots of other ruins from before the crystal ones went away in a flash.”

“So you were an adventurer.”

“I was, yeah. Licensed and chartered even, had a whole party on the books ‘til the Princess started wantin’ a bigger cut of us. Royals,” she said, communicating pages in two syllables and looked about to spit before remembering she was inside, and in a rather well decorated train car at that. “Anyhow, we went rogue, and I’m still a ‘venturer, but of a more rough sort. More of a bandit, if you ask the law, but the law also ain’t worth shit, so.” She shrugged. “I’m a bandit who doesn’t do much normal bandit stealin’, which is hard to explain.”

“I see. But you mentioned the ruins?”

“Yeah, got sidetracked. Ruins near the Run, full of defenses and critters and gold and magic. Figured it’d be worth hittin’, and I knew folks in the area who might be interested in buyin’ magic items. Also knew the local innkeep. She’s a lovely gal, dependable, shrewd, only flaw is she ain’t learned how to kiss since I started and she definitely hasn’t gotten any better when drunk. But she wouldn’t rat me out to the sheriff, so I don’t mind, and she’s sweet. Shy and Rainbow were with me, like always, but we needed some magic for the job so I spent a few days waiting for Twilight Sparkle. She’s a mage from the academy in Canterlot, some kind of prodigy, she’s teaching and studyin’ at the same time, ain’t sure how but I don’t ask. She’ll come along on jobs if they’re close enough and we give her a generous cut, and she’s discrete. Well, mostly. Talks too much,” Applejack said, and a lopsided grin cut her face. She was warming to her tale, and Moth was only too happy to engage with her and keep the card from both their sights.

“A powerful mage and a trio of bruisers?”

“A pair. Shy’s a druid from the woods near Ponyville, where I grew up. Not the best at fighting, but her healin’ is right on point and you’d be amazed what a druid can do for you in the wild. She’s back up to the two of us, and Twilight’s our all-purpose mage. But she suggested we hold off.”

Applejack stopped her story and looked around with a bemused grin. “You know, I’m thirsty. They got anything ‘sides coffee in here?”

“Water from the dispenser,” Moth replied. “I believe there’s wine on the wall. Other spirits too, perhaps.”

Applejack rose and wandered over to the small bar and whistled. “I’ll be damned. Whiskey too.”

Moth looked down at the card and felt… a strange feeling. A lump in her throat. She wondered if she should keep going. She was halfway through.

Applejack sat back down with a riotous kind of smile and a glass. “I’m gonna be frank. You don’t look like the type to want in on some Wild Pegasus.”

“That is correct.”

“More for me,” Applejack declared and hummed happily as she poured herself enough to nurse for awhile. “Now, I was story tellin’.”

“I have a feeling that you were the sort telling tales in taverns.”

“I’m never bad as Rainbow. For one, I don’t lie. Mostly, I don’t lie. Most of the time. Rainbow? Every other word. But anyhow, Twilight thought we needed one more. See, way she saw it, we had our brawlers, she was a striker and utilitymare, and we had a fast mover, but we didn’t have the most important part of a raid down below. Gotta have a burglar.”

Moth Light raised an eyebrow. “A thief? That seems like the last person one would want to associate with.”

Applejack shook her head. “Nah, I mean like, somepony light on their hooves, somepony who’s got that grace, y’know. A pony who has the sleight of hoof of a thief, I guess, but not necessarily is one. You bring them along if you got something you wanna grab in a ruin or need some pony whose quiet-like.”

“I see. And did you find such a pony?” Moth asked. Beneath them, the train-claws shuddered. Applejack startled, eyes wide and darting for danger. Moth Light did not react beyond settling back into place.

“I, uh, yeah. Yeah, we did. Figured that as the Run didn’t have any ponies that fit the bill that weren’t on the shady side, Twilight and I took a jaunt down the road to find the pony that landed me here on this train.”

Some of the story-joy, that rush of spinning a yarn, had faded from her face. It was to be expected: few were used to the train. Few could ever be used to it, and even fewer comprehend it. The creaking, the clattering beneath them, it tended to tear at the soul when listened to.

And that was the problem, that you couldn’t avoid listening for long.

You could go longer than you expected you could--at first, the noise is impossible to filter, impossible to ignore, tragedy and curiosity in a perfect package just at the edge of sight. It’s waiting for you to find it and wonder about it until your need to know its insides grows and manifests along the edge of your fingers like an itch, like bugs crawling on new-shaved skin, unbearable mind-erasing prodding.

With time, it can be adjusted to. A bit. Moth adjusted more than most. Moth adjusted to everything more than most.

“What was their name, this pony?”

Applejack had started staring just to the left of her, at nothing, below the window. Not looking out. She would, of course, but she was trying. She grunted, as if asking Moth to continue, and when nothing else was said she looked up in a kind of dazed befuddlement. “Oh, sorry, lost my train of thought. Ha, train. Clever. Yeah.”

Moth offered her a rare, true smile. It was better to be polite, even when it does not matter, or so she believed. It is better to smile at the damned than to spit on them, if only for your own sake.

Applejack continued, seeking comfort and not seeming to find it, telling her story between drinks, smiling for a time before snapping to attention or letting her voice trail or her silences go on too long.

“Twilight and I rolled into Ponyville, and went straightaways to the local ‘venturers house. The guild and I aren’t officially in business, but like most that stayed in the game after the licensin’, they understand. I pay them a bit and they post a fake job with certain words signifyin’ its with unlicensed folks, but it seems like its a normal contract for adventurers. I stop in at Pinkie’s on the way to the old farm, tellin’ her I’m back for a spell, fillin’ her in. Loves stories, she does. Loves ‘em. Loves… yeah, so she mentioned that there’d been a few new fellows in the trade plyin’ the area, and she knew ‘em, so I told her what I needed and she said she’d see.

“We went home, I introduced Twilight to my sister and the big oaf, my brother. He never quite accepted that I went rogue in the eyes of the crown, but we don’t bother none past a certain point, just ain’t quite right, even with kin. Everypony has their own business that’s theirs. Twilight and him hit it off on account of them both bein’ ponies of letters. It was nice. I wish I could go back. I was cradlin’ old-school apfelwein, warm and mulled, the way we been makin’ it since Canterlot was a border fort. Wish I had some.

“The next day, Pinkie drops by and says that someone’s taken our job listing, someone she knows. I ask her who, and she says she’ll show us, and that’s when we arrived at the little outfitters in town.

“Her name’s Rarity, no other name, just Rarity, a peasant’s singular one--if you ask her she’ll tell you Rarity Belle, but like most of us, it ain’t what her records say in the shrine scrolls. Legally speaking, lowborn like us just get the one name. Twilight adored her. It was mutual. I wasn’t sure of her. She didn’t seem like an adventurer at all. She had airs. Just put ‘em on, careless as you could.

“And you didn’t approve of this, I take it. When you say put on airs…” Moth let her voice trail off.

Things on the window pane behind Applejack pulled at her gaze but she would not look. She was wiser than that. Didn’t do to look at them or get them excited.

“A common pony actin’ like a noblepony puts me on edge. It’s hard not to take it poorly, like she’s climbin’ all over the rest of us. Ain’t fair to her probably. But its a feelin’, not a fact. But her magic was good. She was precise, careful, and more than that she was discreet. Pinkie vouched for that especially--Rarity’s something of a social rogue, it turns out. Has a little shop in the city, one in the village, goes between them, carries her loot back home. Turns out the dressmaker to the stars does more than sew. She robs them blind over cognac.”

Moth smiled because smiling was a kind of motion, and motion told Them, the ones on the windows, that you were alive, or at least still moving. They kept their distance from those with the quick of life, or at least the picture of it.

“So she was a thief. I was right then.”

“Aye, this one was, and a good one too. I didn’t believe it at first, but she produced her spoils and I recognized every one from the broadsheets in Canterlot. Normally I don’t take too kindly to pickpockets, but Rarity’s vain. She’s an artist. The artistic thief doesn’t steal from adventurers in a joint venture. It’s too vulgar.”

“So there is honor amongst thieves.”

“Amongst these, anyhow. So we headed back to the Run and headed down into the ruins.”

Applejack eyed her whiskey. Moth traced the pegasus wings on its glass extrerior, wondering if the bottle had always been there, waiting for her, or if it had been born the moment she burst into the car.

“Sorry, was just thinkin’. I’ve been having… So, by now, I’d be at least feelin’ it. Would I? I don’t know how long its been,” Applejack said.

“It hasn’t been that long,” Moth replied.

“Ah. Well. Story. So,” each word was a guttural staccato thump, like a drunkard’s hoof knocking on the door. “Rarity, that bitch, she was the one that got me here. Told you that. We were in there for three days. Went longer than it was supposed to. The maps, you see, they’re wrong. Or they’re old, or something. Ruins and dungeons and what not, they change over time. They’re alive.”

Much like the train, Moth noted. She did not say this aloud.

“But we hit the bottom eventually, slow descent down a long ravine where the ruins were split open, like a mouth opened up out of the dark. The bottom was filled with relics. The whole place was a stockpile once, and I knew it would have some unpillaged rooms.”

“Curious that it would be left behind. Or that anything would, really. These ruins you speak of seem awfully convenient.”

Applejack gave her a lopsided grin. “Don’t it seem a bit off? It should. Adventurers all have theories. We don't talk about them much, not unless somebody’s drunk or new and spooked. It’s just too unexplained and frightening. Too real. Nopony can go down there if they’re thinking about how the walls grow when nothing’s there to see them.”

“I imagine the prospect would be grim. The treasure is convenient and the walls live. If I might… it sounds like they aren’t ruins so much as--”

“Carnivorous plants,” Applejack blurst, then grimaces. “Ignore me, sorry, just… That’s what I always said it was like.”

“Dungeons beneath the ground that lure in delectable morsels and devour them alive. Impossible beasts bigger than you can imagine, wider than your eyes can track, and they don’t even need to feed. They choose to, for purposes unknown.” Moth Light smiled, this time just to smile. “How delightfully grim.”

Applejack leaned back. She looked… ill, frankly. “Well, finishin’ up: we found the motherlode at the lowest point. It was a gem the size of my head suspended in some kind of magic field-producin’ contraption. The unicorns worked on it and I waited, and when I was helping Rarity…”

“Something happened.’

‘Something,’ Applejack said, her voice low. I remember… bits. The field came down, and we rushed in, but I heard someone callin’ for me, and I turned and didn’t know which voice it was, and somethin’ hit me from the side.’

“Something? Was it Rarity?”

“I’ve a feelin’ it was. Maybe stealin’ something powerful like that was worth the vulgarity of offing a few of us.”

“Grim. But believable. Does it fit her character, as you knew her?”

Applejack furrowed her brow and shook her head. “I don’t know.”

She stood up, leaving the bottle behind. Poor pony, Moth thought to herself, only now letting her own gaze fall to the cards. She contemplated pulling them up, sparing them both. But she knew that wasn’t how this worked. She’d started. She had to finish.

Only a few more left, after all.

She flipped another card.

Applejack paced the long car, keeping her eyes down and forward. The sounds of her hooves on the carpet might have bothered her only companion, were it not for her intense downward stare. The connection was for the moment severed.

Another card, another.

The minutes crawled by, on claws like trains, scrabbling at cold iron and ravaged earth.

“You know, I don’t think that Fluttershy jumped in.”

Moth looked up. “Pardon?”

“I mean, when we were under the ruins. When we went for the crystal, whatever it was, I don’t think Shy went for it. Why…” She shook her head.

Moth Light looked down at the last card unflipped. She’d gone so fast, she’d barely paid attention.

“Why did she not? Didn’t we all? Thought that was the plan.”

“Why did you rush? Was there some sort of time limit? Were you trying to escape urgently?”

“I… I don’t think so? I think we…”

Moth Light raised an eyebrow. Bless her, this rogue. She was a distraction from the last card on the table.

“You what?”

“Hold on. I’m tryin’ to remember it all. The… the set up was…”

She drifted back to the table and sat down with a heavy, irritated sigh. “The crystal was… I don’t remember. Why don’t I remember? I remember the security set up around it. Layers of fields that would hit you with a shock that threw you back and burnt you if you touched them. Twilight would work to disrupt the fields so that Rarity could dash in and carefully jam some kind of unicorn thing on the beams projecting it all. I don’t know how, but the magic didn’t start up again after that. We weren’t in any danger. At least, I don’t think we were? I don’t… I don’t remember anything around us.”

Moth was quiet. She tilted her head. She hoped the story would continue.

“I couldn’t stop staring at it. I couldn’t… I missed them calling me. I was supposed to be helping.”

“What were you supposed to do?” Moth asked.

“Helping Rarity. She was doing the careful bits, but I was keeping her supplied. I was supposed to give her the little artifacts Twilight had in her bag so that she didn’t have to look for them, and she could just grab them right out of my hooves.”

“So she was closer than you were,” Moth said. “But you ran in and didn’t see her?”

“I’m… Gimme a bit.” Applejack’s face contorted. She looked almost physically pained. “I couldn’t tear my eyes away, right? Couldn’t… Coudn’t hear. She got distracted calling for me and Twilight couldn’t hold her dispel any longer and Rarity got singed. She was so mad, but I apologized and she calmed down and asked me to be more careful. We stopped for a bit. They looked at me funny. I didn’t like it.” Applejack swallowed. “Made me nervous.”

“What do you usually do when you’re nervous?” Moth asked. Her voice was still so quiet.

“Don’t handle it well. I mean, we all know why. Everybody knows.”

“I may not,” came the reply.

“I’m usually all business, I swear it. But even I get the willies. That ain’t so unreasonable. But veterans know that the underground will leach your mind. Like it’s dissolvin’ you already--remember, bein’ alive and all?--it gets inside.”

Moth thought about the car behind this one. She thought about the train claws and their noise, and knew Applejack thought about the noise also.

“I can imagine.”

Applejack swallowed. “So one of the things you learn, being in the business, is how not to let any of that kind of weakness show. Ponies start gettin’ funny ideas that you’re slippin’ for real. That you might be actually about to go, instead of just a little spooked. And I was just spooked. Nothing breaks me underground. I’m not afraid of it.”

“But you were distracted.”

“Yeah,” Applejack almost grunted more than she said. “I was. It… It was beautiful. That wasn’t why. I just couldn’t not. It was right there. But it was beautiful.” She blinked. “Damn it all. We got back to work, I didn’t get distracted like that. I felt like I had to get this over with, get in there, grab whatever it was and run. Why can’t--”she paused, her chest heaving as she leapt from her chair and stared directly at the door she had just come from. “Why can’t I remember what it was? Damn you. Damn you! Why--?”

“Applejack.”

Applejack rounded on her, and Moth swore that if she hadn’t been a pony she would have bared fangs. “Who are you, really? Did you do somethin’ to me? Did you bring me here? What, was it your bauble?”

“I did not… It was not mine. I have never seen the object,” Moth said carefully, leaning forward. Her hoof covered the last card. “I am not the one you should be concerned with.”

“It’s like leeches in my head,” Applejack said. Her eyes were wide, so wide. Too wide. Not impossibly wide, not yet, maybe later. Maybe, she thought. “It’s like leeches swimming. Why can’t I remember? They ate it.”

Moth closed her eyes, clenched her teeth. She hadn’t asked someone to come from the wrong door! That wasn’t on her. It would be over soon, anyhow. It always was. The encounters which sour the fastest are always the most interesting. When the warmth flows out on a gust of wind and you are aware of the sudden absence, and so instead of a slide into knowledge and retreat you trip and plummet from a great height into a painful sputtering and then silence. Or, in this case, you fall into Applejack’s wild gaze.

“Moth’s your name, right? I didn’t… that is the name.”

“It is.”

“I don’t think Rarity did it. I think I pushed her out of my way.”

Moth nodded. “I think you did.”

“I don’t think it matters. Just guess I wanted to finish my story. Stories oughta… yeah.” She took a deep breath, but somehow did not relax in the slightest. “What’s in that car? And why… what’s in that car?” she repeated.

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?” Applejack’s voice went from lost and trailing to hard and sharp as a falchion-edge.

“Because you would not understand, and if I told you the words would refuse to lodge in your mind,” Moth Light said truthfully. “They would wash off. They are oil and you are water.”

“Who are you?”

“I am just a traveler, and I am stuck here as much as you are.”

“And why am I here?”

“I don’t know why anything is here.”

Applejack glanced down. Moth was very still. Her hoof was over the last card. It was a bit obvious, wasn’t it?

“Read it. What is that one? Is that mine? It for me?”

“It is, aye.”

“Read it. What’s it say? Tell me.”

“I thought you didn’t hold sto--”

“I ain’t askin’ you, I’m tellin’ you. Read it.”

Moth Light shook her head and lifted her hoof. “A tower, its top alight, its crown blown to bits by lightning, and fire beside and beneath and ahead, a fool falling from a great height wreathed in flames, the Tower’s head struck down.”

Applejack grimaced. “Celestia. That picture is gruesome. I hate it.”

Moth Light shrugged. “It is what it is.”

She gathered her things swiftly.

“What’s it mean?” Applejack pressed.

“It means that the fool meets his end when his high perch is destroyed. It means a lot of things! It can mean nothing,” she lied shamelessly, not wanting to be touched or handled. She had been struck before.

Applejack took a step forward and then retreated when Moth tensed up. “Sorry. See? I’m fine, you’re fine. I ain’t gonna… I just need answers.”

“No you don’t,” Moth said flatly. “Everypony thinks they need answers, Applejack, but they do not. They need many things, like shelter and survival and to be seen and known. They need food and water and light, and light is the most important, but they do not need answers. They cannot eat answers or taste them, they cannot sew the truth into cloth for their foals, they cannot build of it a roof for their heads. It gives them nothing. They profit little from answers to their supposedly important questions. You want to hold the world to account for how your aesthetics and your hooves failed you, and you know why they did, and still you ask for answers.”

Applejack was on the other side of the carriage now.

“What the hell.”

“Or where,” Moth said to herself.

“I do need answers,” Applejack shot back. “I need… There’s holes in my head. I don’t know what I came out of or where I am, and to survive I need to know.”

“Do you?”

“Like hell.”

“And knowing would save you.” It was not a question so much as a challenge. A sword laid out across the empty space to bridge them. “What you actually need to do is sit down and breathe, Applejack,” she said after a pause, this time more gently. “Just sit.”

“Sittin’ ain’t gonna help me. Gods above, I feel like I’m gonna crawl out of my own skin. What is wrong with this train? Why does it sound so…”

“Alive?”

“Fuck, yeah, that.”

She did not say: you hear the train clawing up whatever is beneath, ground or flesh or something alien to both, and you feel the train breathing now, finally. You feel the veins in reality pulsing.

“You should sit.”

“Answer literally any of my questions and I’ll sit--”

“You are not dead.”

Applejack blinked at her. “Did I, uh,”

“Did you ask that? I don’t even remember. But you wanted to. You are alive. Now sit, Applejack.” The last was almost pleading.

Applejack returned to her seat. “S-sorry, just…”

“We all have our moments,” Moth lied. “You are in a strange land, and you are feeling… strange.” She shrugged. “So, for my own benefit, and to keep you on something else. In the end, you did this--”

“--To myself, yeah.”

“Yes, to yourself. We do the worst things to ourselves,” she lied, again, knowing full well that the worst things are done to us by Others, that the worst possible thing was an Other, lying because it was easier just as she had lied before to Applejack.

Lying was extremely easy, and Moth Light had found in her life, long as it had been, that lying was in fact one of the most consistently profitable and prudent things one could do. Truths were very heavy, and tended to not be worth much in the long run. You waited until you found a hole that fit them and then you wedged the truth in and left.

Applejack swallowed.

“You, uh, you got any cards? Like, playin’ cards?”

Moth laughed. “These cards here were playing cards originally. I know how to use them that way.”

She gathered them up and began shuffling the deck.

Applejack still seemed uneasy, as was proper. Her eyes shifted from place to place. How long, till she stared out the windows a fraction of a second too long? Any moment now. Probably.

“Where are we going anyhow? Do we ever get off?” Applejack asked. She wasn’t crazed so much as… well, lost.

“You could go to other cars,” Moth said, her voice casual, conversational. “You could go back or forwards. This car does not have a door to, ah. There.”

“There?”

Moth’s smile in response was thin and meaningful. “Yes. There. Out there.”

“So I could keep goin’. I could. What’s ahead?”

She kept smiling.

“Right. And behind?”

“You were there, and you do not know.”

Applejack’s brow furrowed. Carefully, with studied intent, Moth dealt cards. One fell, left the others behind and landed haplessly on the table facing Moth. Applejack blinked and leaned a bit closerto look at it.

“What’s this?”

“Appropriate,” Moth said. Applejack cocked an eyebrow at her.

Applejack also really looked at her for the first time. She had a face that was easy to forget, but hard to really get out of your head. Her eyes dark. They were dark just like the windows were dark, the ones which almost begged to be looked at, but which she had been warned away from--dark in a way she found hard to focus on. Her smile was wide. A bit too wide. Applejack for some reason thought of a knife cutting the corners of her mouth. What a smile.

“What’s it mean?” she asked hazily.

The card was flipped the wrong side towards her, the picture depicting two strange creatures, almost wolves but nothing like wolves, all sinew and disquieting flesh, braying at the moon--and upon that moon a Face, eyes boring out of the card and into you. The moon was a sickly yellow, a diseased color, and on either side monoliths framing an ambigous sky, their roots in a lush, almost too lush, verdance.

THE MOON the card read, flipped on its head.

“What’s it mean, about the moon?” Applejack asked. “IIt’s upside down, right? Is that meanin’ anything? What’s it mean?”

Moth smiled wider. And wider. And Applejack did not get any answers.

Author's Note

I don't even like the song this story title is from. It's like, eh.

I'm doing stuff again... not that anyone cares. But its nice, I think?