The Princess of Purple Apples
Little Apple Bloom was supposed to be feeding fodder to the cows but instead she was slacking off and hiding around the back side of the big hay bale stack near the barn. She laid on the bottom tier of the stack and yawned, swinging one limb over the side to stir the loose straw on the ground.
She couldn’t find the motivation to do her chores today. It was just a bad day to be working when it was so nice out. Still, she’d better find a way to get something done before her family noticed or she’d get an earful from her big sister, Applejack.
It was hard to relax anyway when she knew at any moment she could be caught and chastised, or worse. She'd just barely gotten her glider back after saying something smart to granny.
Apple Bloom sighed and slid off of the hay bale to her hooves. She plodded lazily toward the barn, intending to complete her given task but something caught her eye as she rounded the corner of the stack.
There on the side was a nook, a spot where a few bales had been carted away from the stack but in it there was a dark gap that stood out in high contrast against the wall of hay. Apple Bloom squinted at the shape but her brain couldn’t put it together.
The filly walked up curiously, pushed on the surface with one hoof and watched mystified as it swung open. It was like a door completely covered in straw so that it looked just like the side of a stack of hay bales. How weird. And even weirder was that it opened to a little hall that ended in a chain link fence. She continued in, mouth agape at the bizarre sight. The fence inside was actually a locked gate. It rattled as she stood up and leaned on it to peer through to the other side.
To her astonishment, the center of the hay bale stack was hollow with… trees in it. Apple trees, maybe three. Why were they growing inside here? In the branches she could see shiny purple apples hanging, the likes of which she’d never seen in the rest of the orchard. Above that, light was filtering down through a chain link ceiling and what looked like camo netting stretched across the void in the stack. It was trees with weird apples locked in a cage that was dressed up with straw and surrounded with hay bales. Really weird.
Apple Bloom strode up to Applejack and Big Mac who were pounding away on a new fence they’d been working on for weeks along the dirt road. “Hey, what are those apple trees in that cage thingy? I never noticed that before.”
Big Mac dropped the board from his mouth in surprise and immediately looked away.
“Uh, w-which trees are those, Apple Bloom?” stammered Applejack, hoping she’d misheard the question.
Apple Bloom frowned. “They’re in a hidden cage inside the hay bales. “Ya have ta know ‘bout ‘em.”
“Oh, yeah, those! Those are… the…” Applejack’s eyes darted around as she wracked her brain for some sort of half truth or disingenuous remark as a substitute for an outright lie which she couldn’t tell. “The… uh…” She surreptitiously kicked Big Mac, who’d pretended not to hear, with her hind leg. “Help me out here,” she muttered through the corner of her mouth.
Big Mac began to sweat. “They’re… They’re the special apples.”
“Right, the special apples,” agreed Applejack. “Special apples for the special customers who like… special apples.”
The two smiled nervously back at Apple Bloom, hoping that this would mark the end of her inquiry but of course it did not.
Apple Bloom squinted back at them. “What makes ‘em special?”
Applejack gritted her teeth. “They…”
“They taste different,” supplied Big Mac.
“Oh… Can I try one?”
The two side-eyed each other. “No,” they replied in unison.
“Why not?”
“They’re fer grown-ups,” answered Big Mac. “You wouldn’t like ‘em”
“But I could still try ‘em,” she whined. “I’ll just ask granny if ah could have one.” She began to turn away.
Her older siblings’ eyes bulged in alarm.
“Nope. Nope.” Big Mac shook his head vigorously.
“Listen, Apple Bloom,” argued Applejack sternly. “Best just forget about them apples. Plenty o’ other apples ta choose from. Those ones are expensive and we don’t have very many of ‘em. Understand?”
Apple Bloom looked back across the field toward the hay bales. “But… okay,” she sighed sadly.
“I’m not very good at this,” muttered Sweetie Belle, peering through the chain link fence. She stuck her tongue out as she grabbed the closest visible purple apple with her magic. She twisted it around until the stem snapped. Then she pulled it toward her. The weird fruit butted up against the fence where it was clearly too large to fit through.
“Now what?” grunted Sweetie Belle.
“Can you teleport it out?” asked Scootaloo.
“You know I don’t know how to do that.”
“Wait, there’s a gap in the fence here,” Scootaloo pointed excitedly. “Bring it out this way.”
“Did ya get it?” asked Apple Bloom who was still planted just outside the door at her lookout position.
“Almost… There!” Sweetie Belle yanked the apple free from the cage with a laugh and floated it to herself for a closer look.
“Get one for each of us,” proposed Scootaloo.
“I’ll try,” murmured Sweetie Belle. She captured another apple and fished it out through the same hole. Then she got another and gathered it with the other two in her magic field. “Apple Bloom,” she called.
“You got ‘em?” gasped Apple Bloom ecstatically.
The Cutie Mark Crusaders took the apples and scurried away to their clubhouse. Sweetie Belle set the bushel on the table and the three of them gathered around for a look at their bounty. Up close in better light they could see that they were covered in tiny silver sparkles.
“This doesn’t even smell like an apple,” began Apple Bloom, sniffing the fruit daintily.
“It doesn’t smell bad though.” added Scootaloo, turning an apple over in her hooves. “So letsssss… try them, I guess.”
Now a little skeptical, the three of them exchanged glances, waiting for somepony else to test the waters and report back.
“Fine, I’ll do it,” muttered Sweetie Belle. She floated one of the strange apples to her mouth and took a daring sized bite.
“What’s it taste like?” asked Apple Bloom, watching her thoughtfully chew the forbidden fruit.”
“It’s not sweet,” she mumbled. “It’s sour.”
Scootaloo shrugged, “But is it really good? Why’s it so special and off limits? I don’t get it.”
Suddenly Sweetie Belle’s pupils enlarged to twice their normal size as a tsunami of euphoria slammed into her brain. She looked down at the floor and then lifted her forehooves up in front of her face. She stared in slack jawed wonder as her legs began to grow, stretching and stretching before her eyes. She rose upward on her stilt legs, the clubhouse somehow also growing to accommodate her new height, up and up until she must have been as tall as the Apple’s barn.
“Woah! They make you so tall,” she giggled, looking down upon her two friends. “Scootaloo, Apple Bloom,” she shouted in elation. “You have to come up here with me. You can see everything!”
The two looked curiously at Sweetie Belle who was stooped over, laughing down at the clubhouse floor. Then they looked at each other and shrugged. They lifted their apples and bit into them in unison.
Apple Bloom looked at her own hooves intently, ready to see whatever it was that Sweetie Belle was seeing. In a moment she looked up to check on what the others were doing to find that Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle were frozen motionless like statues.
"What the," she breathed. Apple Bloom reached out and touched Sweetie Belle's side. Her flesh still felt like that of a living pony, just one that was entirely still.
Apple Bloom gasped in surprise as she began to sink into the floor. When she looked down, she was relieved to find that she wasn't actually sinking; the boards under her hooves were simply rising and falling rhythmically as if the whole clubhouse were breathing. A gust of wind came in through the door, carrying with it a cacophony of wildlife sounds which swelled in her ears. Bees humming, birds chirping, frogs croaking like all of nature was calling out to her.
Through the open door and every window, the sun’s golden rays seemed to be growing in intensity, brighter and brighter until she had to shield her own eyes.
Then a booming female voice that seemed to emanate from the earth itself sounded all around her. “Seek me.”
A chill of surprise went down Apple Bloom's spine. “Who are you?” she asked, squinting into the light.
The voice reverberated through her whole being once more. “Seek me, Traveler.”
Scootaloo looked herself over anxiously. “So do I just start growing or what?”
Suddenly she heard what sounded like Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle speaking in a single overlapping voice but deeper in pitch. “YOU WON’T GROW, SCOOTALOO.”
“What?” She looked up at them to see a white and yellow asymmetrical chimeran monstrosity possessing exaggerated composite characteristics of the two fillies. It had dozens of horns of all sizes and countless bows in its wild, undulating mane. On one side was a row of several pony legs almost like one half of a spider. They knocked their hooves on the floor as if trying to learn how to stand without the help of the other half.
Scootaloo rubbed her eyes, sure she wasn’t seeing right. “Y-you’re not my friends!” she stammered. “Who are you?”
“SCOOTALOOOOOOO, WE KNOW WHERE YOUR CUTIE MARK IS! IIIIIT’S IIIIIIIN OOOOOOUR MOOOOOUTH!” As it said this, the creature’s mouth dilated to the size of a full grown pony, revealing rows and rows of sharp teeth in a ring formation like that of a shark’s mouth. An enormous rasped tongue erupted from the gaping maw and began snaking its way across the floorboards toward her while the legs twitched, struggling to propel the body.
Scootaloo screamed in terror and turned around, bolting for the door as fast as she could but her body moved as if she were underwater. The door didn’t even seem to be getting closer as she ran for her life.
“SCOOTALOOOOOOO!” wailed the creature.
Sweetie Belle wobbled into Ponyville atop her spindly new legs, almost up in the clouds now. They’d been growing slowly since she left the clubhouse and as a result, she’d made it back to town in record time with her much larger strides. The buildings looked like toys from this height but she could still see the little forms of ponies milling about their daily chores. Her smile grew as she spotted her big sister, Rarity, stepping out of a store with a mountain of parcels.
“Rarity,” she shouted excitedly. “Look how tall I am!”
Rarity looked up at her and smiled. “Oh, yes Sweetie Belle. You’re getting taller every day.”
“You can barely see me- I mean I can barely see you all the way up here,” she laughed as the world continued to recede from her view.
“I’m glad you’re here,” chimed Rarity. “You can help me carry some of these.” She set down her pile of boxes and watched as Sweetie Belle continued to yell at a trail of ants at her front hooves.
“Woah! Okay. This is getting a little too- THIS IS TOO HIGH!” Sweetie Belle yelped abruptly. She wrapped her limbs desperately around the base of a lamp post and screamed. “RARITY, GET ME DOWN!”
“Oh, Sweetie Belle, we can play your silly game later,” sighed Rarity, yanking Sweetie from the pole with her magic. “I need you to help me bring these back to the boutique. You can practice your levitation.” She floated a few parcels in front of her.
Sweetie Belle’s mouth dropped open as she zeroed in on a bright yellow bow on top of a hat box. She stared, wide-eyed, tousling the bow slowly with one hoof, mesmerized by the rustling fractal patterns rippling outward from the blossom.
Rarity watched Sweetie, waiting for her to respond to her request but she just kept quietly brushing the ribbon. “Soooo…” Rarity continued to prod awkwardly. “Just… grab a few and follow me.”
Apple Bloom laid spread eagle in the grass, staring up at the sky. The ground beneath her back was undulating softly, rocking her like a boat on a lake. She was absorbed in the sensation of everything. She’d never experienced so much all at once and yet been so at peace. It felt like she could hear everything for miles. There were ponies speaking in overlapping conversations that were nowhere to be seen. They must have been in Ponyville, she decided.
She smelled the grass and the earth and every apple in the orchard and the sky and outer space. She could count every grass blade tickling the outline of her body and every tiny pebble beneath her. She could even feel the worms passing through the dirt below that. It was like every cell of her body was running at full steam all at once to achieve this prodigious, nay, god-like, level of perception. Or maybe something inside her had been unlocked, allowing her to attain the mental capacity that ponies were always meant to possess.
"Seek me, Traveler," came the mysterious voice which seemed to be embodied in everything.
"I've heard you before," murmured the filly as she rose to her hooves, looking in every direction. "I know you. Who are you?"
To this she received no answer which in itself was a resounding reaffirmation to do as the voice commanded and find the answer.
Scootaloo continued galloping at full speed even though her lungs burned. The only sound she could hear was her own heavy gasps for air and the rustling of leaves and snapping of twigs beneath her hooves as she wove through the swaying trees.
Daring to finally cast a glance backward, she saw that there was nothing chasing her. Suddenly her hooves struck a rock and Scootaloo went tumbling to the forest floor. She arose panting from a pile of leaves which had broken her fall. Her head was swimming and her vision was distorted. Everything was blurred and warping before her eyes.
As she tried to stabilize on all four limbs, she heard another crack. She looked down to see a dry, broken bone beneath her hoof. She took a step back, looking around her to find a pony skull sitting nearby. Scootaloo gasped before finding even more bones. The ground was absolutely littered with them. Every snap she'd heard while running must have been a bone.
"Where am I?" she whimpered.
"Mom?" she called. "Dad? I don't want to be here!" She looked around fearfully for whatever might have left all the bones. “I wanna go home.”
Scootaloo kept wandering the forest, looking for anything or anypony who could help her get back home. She came across a pond and was reminded of how thirsty she was. But she couldn’t drink this water, she thought. It was stagnant and probably not good for her, That’s what her parents had taught her anyway.
She looked down at her reflection in the water’s edge, fantasizing about lapping it up. Suddenly she saw a little splash break the image. As it settled again, she saw a gaping hole in her cheek. To her horror, a piece of her face had fallen off, revealing naked white cheek bone beneath. She gasped as part of her chin fell away and plunked in the water.
"No!” she cried in a panic. “No, no, no, no, no!" She held her hooves to her face to try to keep the pieces from falling but they wouldn't stay. Her whole face was disintegrating. When she looked again in the water there was nothing but an exposed skull with eyes screaming back at her. She bent down and frantically tried to scoop up as much of her face as she could from out of the pond. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before and she didn’t know what to do. Maybe- maybe if she brought all the pieces to Twilight Sparkle, she could put them back together, thought Scootaloo.
With her forelegs clutched full of face pieces, she whirled around and slammed straight into another creature.
"Oof!" She stumbled backwards, almost into the pond. Reflexively she let out a yelp and began to cower. Before her was a big black and white dalmatian dog.
"Scootaloo, friend, there is no need to fear,” began the dog in a soothing tone. “What are you doing all the way out here?"
“Woah… a rhyming dog who knows my name,” breathed Scootaloo. "How did you recognize me without a face?"
The dalmatian frowned and leaned forward. She looked deep into Scootaloo's eyes and shook her head in pity. “The Everfree Forest is dangerous at night but it’s even more so when you’re high as a kite.”
Scootaloo reached up to scratch the dalmatian's head. “You’re a good girl but you don’t have a nametag on your collar,” she murmured, looking at the golden ring around the dog’s neck. “I’m gonna call you Scrufty.”
Scrufty furrowed her brow. “My name is Zecora; you’ve met me before. I watched your scooter when you went in the store.”
Scootaloo’s eyes widened. “Wow, that’s crazy. I know a rhyming zebra named Zecora but she’s a zebra instead of a dog.”
The dalmatian rolled her eyes. “Follow me. You’re a long way from town. You should wait in my hut until you come down.”
Sweetie Belle walked into Rarity's boutique, floating a hooffull of boxes in front of her. She took one look at her surroundings and dropped them all carelessly, nearly trampling them on her way to the clothing rack.
Rarity drifted in from behind, humming a tune merrily. She set her boxes down nicely in the corner and gasped when she saw Sweetie dreamily scanning her eyes up and down a midnight blue ball gown she’d floated off of the rack. She’d never known her little sister to even notice her work, much less look fondly over it. It was all but background noise to her if not an annoying distraction which kept Rarity from doing fun things with her.
“Woah,” panted Sweetie as if she had just galloped to the boutique. “It’s so beautiful! Look at all the sparkles, Rarity!” She brushed one of the little iridescent stones sewn into the garment with one hoof. It shimmered like a rainbow star against the dark cloth backdrop.
“Oh, do you like those gems? I really do think they pull the whole thing together.”
Tears began to stream down Sweetie Belle’s face as she was overcome with beauty. “There are so many colors,” she sobbed. “I don’t even understand.”
Rarity embraced her little sister excitedly in her forelegs. “Oh, Sweetie Belle, I’m so happy. I alway knew one day you’d develop a passion for fashion. I just didn’t think it would be so intense and all at once... Eck," she said, releasing her. "You're quite sweaty today."
Apple Bloom followed the golden glint of light shining from the building just up the street. She’d come to associate the light with the voice and had been following it since she left the farm. Now in Ponyville, she’d finally located its origin and was sure that she was about to find the answers she sought.
She pushed open a door and entered a great banquet hall with long tables prepared for a decadent feast. Every sweet delicatessen imaginable was set out meticulously in countless silver multi tiered platters. Standing before her was a magnificent pink bird, perched on a stand, preening as it waited. It glowed with the divine golden light she had been following.
"Are you the Traveler?" asked the bird, eyeing her like a jeweler eyes a new diamond.
"I am,” replied Apple Bloom. “Are you the one who summoned me from afar?"
"I am not," squawked the bird.
"But you possess the golden aura," she argued, staring intently up at the creature.
“I am a Waypoint Sage,” boasted the bird, puffing itself up proudly. “I possess a great deal of knowledge about a great many things. Abandon your frivolous quest, young one and all you see here can be yours."
Apple Bloom shook her head. "What I seek is worth infinite fold what you can offer me."
"Okie dokie, Loki," chimed Pinkie Pie, looking down at her from over the counter. "But I'm just saying most ponies come in here to get cake, not to find mysterious voices."
Suddenly a golden lizard emerged from the plumage atop the bird’s head, radiating a golden light.
“It’s you then,” breathed Apple Bloom, wide-eyed.
The lizard possessed a vacant expression but spoke clearly and without the use of its mouth. “No, Traveler. I did not summon you either. You have rejected worldly pleasures in pursuit of knowledge. You have passed the second trial.”
"The second trial?" Inquired the filly. "What was the first?"
"Heeding the call," answered the lizard, licking one of its unblinking eyes. "Very few can hear it; even fewer answer. It has been ages."
The golden aura evaporated from the creature and Apple Bloom could see that its true color was green. She turned as the brilliant light pierced inward through the windows of the banquet hall, just as it had when she first saw it at the club house.
Apple bloom looked back at the lizard. “How many trials are there in all?”
“There are four,” answered the lizard. “Onward, Traveler.”
Scootaloo walked closely behind Zecora, trying to ignore how the forest wouldn’t stop moving. It seemed to be in a constant state of agitation, wanting her to leave, ready to lash out at her for her continued intrusion. She looked around the dalmatian to see that they were traipsing straight toward the open mouth of a giant misshapen face. It didn’t look like any building she’d ever been in.
Scootaloo stopped in her tracks at the sight. “I-I don’t know about this place.”
Seeing that her companion was no longer following, Zecora did an about face and circled back around. “I promise you there is nothing bad in this space. In the Everfree Forest, there is no safer place.” The dalmatian headbutted Scootaloo’s rump to push her ever closer to the gaping mouth.
Scootaloo whimpered and leaned back on her haunches in a panic as she slid across the threshold. The sound of growling and howling met her ears. As she cast frightened glances about the interior, she could see twisted and fanged demonic faces watching her from within the walls.
“Nope!" she blurted. "Nope! Nope! Abort! We’re not safe here! We have to leave, Scrufty!”
"Just relax, Scootaloo and lay on the bed. The things that you see are all in your head."
Scootaloo's whole body shook as her head brushed against an enormous spider web. She screamed and flailed her forelegs.
"It's just a hammock," cooed Zecora. "I'll help you inside." She lifted Scootaloo into the hanging net and set her down snugly. "Now keep your eyes shut till you finish your ride."
I can't just sit here in this place, thought Scootaloo, swaying gently in the web. They're going to get me. The things in the wall. They were still watching her.
The Dalmatian walked away and began rummaging around the den for something. Scootaloo carefully extricated herself from the web and broke into a full bore gallop. She rocketed out of the mouth, scarcely believing that nothing ensnared her on the way.
Back in the ominous woods, she was fleeing for her life again with no clear sign of a pursuer, only galvanized by a raw, unspecified terror nipping at her ankles.
There were eyes reaching arms everywhere and an inescapable malicious presence that could only be felt. Impaired by her distorted vision, Scootaloo tripped on a log at full speed and went sprawling in the dirt. She rolled down an embankment, coming to rest in a small clearing. For a moment she just laid on the forest floor, panting and wheezing before finally struggling to a sitting position. Overwhelmed by the fact that she was lost, disoriented, alone and afraid, she began to sob. “Help!” she screamed. “Somepony help me!” She looked up at the sky because it was the only thing that wasn't moving. “Help!” she beseeched the clouds.
Suddenly a glint of light appeared high above and a bolt of lightning split her vision, knocking her back with a deafening shockwave. She looked up wide-eyed as electrical arcs snapped. As the dust cloud settled, she saw the iridescent form of a pony with a mane that was almost too dazzling to look at.
“Woah,” she quivered, not knowing if she should be afraid.
The mysterious pegasus flipped her mane and struck a pose. “Yeah, I get that reaction a lot.”
Scootaloo squinted at the surprise visitor. “Princess… Celestia?”
“Now that, I’ve never heard before,” laughed the pony. “But I’ll take it.”
That raspy voice, she thought. It has to be… “Rainbow Dash?” she cried.
“The one and only.”
Scootaloo staggered to her, tears running down her face. She wrapped her forelegs tightly around Rainbow’s neck and began to sob.
“What are you doing out here all alone?” asked Rainbow.
“I don’t know,” she whimpered. “I just wanna go home. Take me home.”
“You got it.” Rainbow wrapped her forelegs around Scootaloo’s midsection and fluttered her wings for a vertical takeoff. “You’re lucky I was on my way back from Cloudsdale,” she laughed
Just before they rose above the trees, Scootaloo spotted Zecora waving to them. She waved back. “Bye, Scrufty.”
“Who’s Scrufty?” asked Rainbow, confusedly.
Sweetie Belle swam through a neon kelp forest where the water around her changed colors faster than her brain could process.
"I want it to be like this forever," declared Sweetie Belle breathlessly.
"Me too," replied Rarity, guiding a swatch of cloth through her sewing machine without looking up.
Sweetie did another pass, slaloming through the length of the clothes rack, moaning softly in wonderment. “The seaweed tastes furry, she giggled.
"You know, it's silly," continued Rarity, checking the seam she’d just made. "I was actually starting to think that we were growing apart, me completely caught up in my own work all the time without even the slightest clue what was going on in your life. I'm so happy that's not actually the case."
Sweetie Belle left the rainbow water and wandered out through the boutique door as her sister continued her monologue which became a soliloquy unbeknownst to her.
Everything in the world around Sweetie was bendy and dancing which only served to heighten her euphoric jollity. As she walked, she began to hear an exuberant voice shouting from somewhere. She looked around and spotted a gathering of ponies writhing around a little stage on the edge of the park where a unicorn stood. As she got closer she saw that the blue pony was adorned with a floating, shimmering liquid rippling about her head and back. She couldn’t make sense of it but it was entrancing and she wanted to touch it.
Sweetie Belle dove into the crowd and was suddenly in a labyrinth of vines. Slowly she worked her way through the tangle, all the while hearing excited cheers and clopping hooves. Despite the vines’ best efforts, they could not stop Sweetie and she soon found herself standing before the unicorn and her incredible fluid garment. It glistened vibrantly as it stretched and gathered but it never broke apart. “This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” gasped Sweetie.
“Why thankyou,” answered the mare on stage, playfully rippling her fluid field. “You have a real eye for talent.” She turned back to the audience as her voice rose in volume. “For my next trick I will need a volunteer from the audience.”
Several excited hooves went up.
“How about… my new favorite audience member?” She pointed at Sweetie Belle. “You there! Come up on stage."
She’s going to let me touch it, thought Sweetie as she wobbled up the single step of the short platform, mane frazzled, face flush and damp with sweat.
"What's your name, little filly?"
Sweetie Belle looked up at the blue unicorn who appeared to be cloaked with a metamorphosizing body of water and was suddenly completely dumbstruck. "Uhh… Um… Uhh..."
"Looks like somepony is overwhelmed with admiration to be in the presence of the great and powerful Trixie," laughed Trixie. The audience laughed as well and she continued to wait while Sweetie Belle fumbled painfully for her name with mouth dumbly agape.
"Um… Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-"
Trixie's face fell as she realized that Sweetie Belle seriously wasn't going to be able to come up with her own name. This was a mistake, she thought, but it's too late to back out now.
Having to move the show along, Trixie interrupted her train of thought. "It's okay, you don't have to-"
"Wait, wait," blathered Sweetie, putting her hooves to the sides of her head to help keep her thoughts from leaking away. "I- I- I- I- know this... Just give me a few min-"
Trixie covered Sweetie Belle's mouth with her hoof and turned to the audience.
"My lovely assistant here is going preform a great and powerful magic trick all on her own."
Trixie produced a top hat from a prop box and levitated it up high over their heads. “Observe, an ordinary top hat.” She spun it upside down and on its side so that the audience could see inside. “Nothing inside.” Then she floated it to Sweetie Belle. Assistant, grasp the hat if you please.”
Sweetie grabbed the sides of the hat and stared awestruck down into the black pit. "It's like a hole you can hold."
"Kid, you sound like you're on something great and powerful," muttered Trixie as she used her magic to straighten the hat in Sweetie's grip. “Now then, assistant,” she continued in her booming stage voice. “Repeat after me these magical words: arius magnifico!”
Sweetie Belle’s face contorted in a snigger and then she launched into a full blown laughing fit and soon everypony but Trixie was laughing along with her. “Those are funny sounds,” she giggled.
“Please just do it,” Trixie almost cried. “I haven’t eaten in two days.”
Sweetie Belle panted down from her hysterical outburst. “Okay… Okay… What were the sounds again?”
“Arius magnifico,” repeated Trixie with a pinched face.
“ARIUS MAGNIFICO!” shouted Sweetie Belle immediately at the top of her lungs. Her eyes flew open as a flock of doves blasted out of the hat right past her face and up in the air.
The audience gasped in amazement and clopped their hooves.
"Looks like we have a budding magician in our midst," declared Trixie.
Sweetie Belle watched a downy feather float down slowly from the sky. “I created birds!” she shouted in ecstacy. “This is the greatest day of my life!”
The audience burst into raucous laughter and began flinging dozens of bits at the hooves of the two unicorns.
Trixie stared bewildered at Sweetie Belle. “Uh… Thanks, whoever you are.”
Apple Bloom solemnly entered the great stone temple where many faceless pilgrims had journeyed but none of them had heard the call like she had. Her hoofsteps echoed through the hallowed structure as she made her way to the back where sat the grey mare that she was certain had summoned her.
She glowed with the golden light. Her eyes swiveled about independently in a seemingly erratic fashion, aware of Apple Bloom’s presence and all others, now, then and yet to come. Upon her back was an array of what must have been a thousand wings in a magnificent splayed halo. When she spoke, the temple quaked and her voice sounded like multitudes speaking in unison. “Welcome, Traveler. Which path do you choose: the beautiful cog in the ordinary machine or the ordinary cog in the beautiful machine?”
Apple Bloom swallowed the lump in her throat as she paused before the throned Watcher. “Neither. I choose to be the machine itself.” She tried to hang onto her nerves as the temple rumbled in response.
“You have passed the third trial, Traveler. You may now face the fourth and final trial, but a warning: A pair of eyes which always sees forward misses much but is blissfully ignorant. The unchained eyes can see all but are burdened by the weight of the universe.”
“I am prepared,” declared Apple Bloom resolutely.
The Watcher began to glow brightly, her feathers and blond mane whipping about in a powerful gale. “We are the architects of the unseen. We are the ones before the alicorns. We are the ones who were and will always be. Steel your spirit and receive the revelation of all!”
A golden aura enveloped Apple Bloom and she lost her breath. Her field of vision began to stretch as her eyes became untethered and independent of one another. The whole world around her became a seamless sphere encapsulating the entirety of existence infinitely in all directions and for a moment she thought maybe she was not ready after all. A cutie mark of a silver mobius band appeared on her flank.
Her eyes swiveled alertly in her sockets, keenly aware and intune with every atom in the multiverse. “I can see,” she murmured. “I can see… forever.”
“Um, Apple Bloom,” called Derpy worriedly. “There’s a lot of ponies waiting behind you. Did you want… stamps?” she shrugged.
“I understand,” whispered Apple Bloom, gazing through Derpy’s face.
“Apple Bloom?” interrupted Applejack as she burst through the post office door. “So this is where ya are. We’ve been lookin’ everywhere fer ya.”
The enlightened filly turned to face Applejack. “Sister, cast off the hedonistic shackles of your mind and ascend to an infinite plane of understanding and harmony with all existence.”
Applejack frowned. “What in tarnation-” She stopped short when she caught sight of Apple Bloom’s pupils and she knew exactly what had happened. She nervously side-eyed the line of ponies who were all somewhere between annoyed and captivated by Apple Bloom’s behavior.
“Uh… oh, are you not feelin’ well, sugar cube?” she began in an inordinately loud voice so that the whole room could hear. She pretended to check Apple Bloom’s temperature, placing a hoof on the seriously baked filly’s forehead. “Oh, dear. Ya feel warm. Better get on home.”
“None of this is real. We're in a cartoon. Taste of the forbidden-”
Applejack slapped a hoof over her sister’s mouth and wrapped a foreleg around her midsection, whisking her out the door like a surfboard in the grasp of a surfer leaving the water after a shark sighting.
Apple Bloom laid in her bed, head pounding, her eyes half-lidded. “Mah cutie mark disappeared,” she moaned in despair. “And ah forgot what the meanin’ of existence was.”
“Pretty sure ya never had those things,” Applejack chuckled.
“Ah saw all the way to the end a pi. Ah don’t even know what pi is er why it matters if ya see the end of it. When Ah ate the apple, mah brain felt like twenty pounds a taters in a ten pound sack. Now it feels like one pound a taters in a ten pound sack.”
Applejack shrugged. “The most important thing is that yer safe… and that yer not gonna tell no pony ‘bout the special apples or what happened to ya.” She smiled hopefully.
Apple Bloom’s eyes flicked over to her. “Ah never said that.”
“You don’t want yer older siblin’s gettin’ in trouble do ya?”
“No… but I guess I just don’t understand. Grown-ups eat those apples on purpose?”
“Sure do,” she nodded.
“But why? Everythin’ was just so weird and confusin’.”
Applejack shrugged. “Some ponies like it like that and It can be different for everypony everytime. It also helps if ya know what yer in fer beforehoof and ya didn’t. Lotta things don’t make sense or aren’t safe at yer age. Big Mac said they were for grown-ups and he meant it.”
Apple Bloom gestated on this thought for a few moments, staring at the ceiling. “Applejack, have you ever tried the-”
“Well, gotta get on them chores,” blurted Applejack. “Lost a lotta daylight lookin’ fer ya. Stay in bed till ya feel better.” She kissed Apple Bloom on the forehead and left the room abruptly. She walked down the stairs and out onto the creaky porch of the old farmhouse where she exhaled deeply. That was bad but it coulda been worse, she thought to herself. ‘Least she didn’t seem ta like it.
Applejack watered the garden and the fields. She dragged several hay bales into the barn the hard way. Then she stopped at the base of the big hay bale ziggurat and wiped the sweat from her brow. She took a moment to absorb the cool breeze and listen to the relaxing birdsong drifting from afar. Suddenly she heard what sounded like giggling, giggling coming from inside the hay. She frowned in worry and then bolted around the corner to the hidden door which, as she feared, was wide open.
Inside was Sweetie Belle sitting on her haunches amongst a pile of purple apple cores, munching ravenously on yet another apple.
“No, Sweetie Belle! No!” shouted Applejack, lunging forward to slap the fruit away.
Sweetie Belle turned to her, grinning with flared pupils. “I’m an alicorn now! I’m the Princess of Purple Apples!”
Author's Note
I made a The Princess of Purple Apples Playlist with songs like...
Sweetie Belle's Good Trip:
Upside Down and Inside Out by OK Go
Too High for the Supermarket by The Uninvited
19-2000 by Gorillaz
Scootaloo's Bad Trip:
Cinema by Floater
Down in the Woods by Richard Hawley
Who was in My Room Last Night? by Butthole Surfers
Apple Bloom's Spirit Quest:
Mushroom Men by Les Claypool
Spill the Wine by War
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite by The Beatles.
Thanks for reading!
Ignore the date on the last post and don't be afraid to leave a comment if you have a thought.
If you’d like to support this insanity, you can buy one of my novels.
