Six Stages of Grief

Chapters

I: Denial
II: Depression
III: Bargaining
IV: Anger
V: Shotguns
VI: Acceptance

I: Denial

I remember learning that the whole "five stages of grief" thing was a load of hooey after my parents died.

Mac and I just quit talking altogether. It wasn’t a joint protest or anything, just what the two of us thought was the best way to handle everything that was going on inside us. I knew that if I talked I was gonna be honest, and if I was honest I was gonna say some ugly things. Mac, I think, couldn’t figure out how to put anything he was feeling into any words at all. Apple Bloom, bless her heart, was too young for any of it.

You can imagine how that affected my family. My remaining family, that is.

My Granny took the two of us to see a shrink, which didn’t go so good on account of us being all clammed up. We mostly sat in big smelly chairs and got talked at for an hour or so a week. Sometimes we’d get to do a jigsaw puzzle while we got talked at. Not the worst thing in the world, I guess.

I'm getting off track.

Point is, when the shrink talked about the stages of grief, he talked about it like it was inevitable. Like I had to go through each stage in turn, taking my time with each one, never straying from the path. And that ain't how it works at all.

You can do them in any old order. You can get caught in a loop. You can spend eternity on one stage and never make it to the greener pastures of acceptance. The five stages is more a list of things that you might experience, but even then it ain't exactly exhaustive.

When my parents died, I was all anger.

I screamed. I broke things. I hit my brother. A lot of things I regret.

I spent long nights just wailing wordlessly into a pillow. Wondering why it happened. Angry that it happened at all.

So much anger.

I remember being warm. Always sweating, a little sheen on my forehead. Always finding it hard to breathe. Everything was small and stuffy and hot. It didn’t help that it was the height of the summer. Not that I think losing my parents in the dead of winter would have eased the pain.

I couldn’t help but remember it, though, as I looked across to Pinkie Pie.

She was herself, in a way. Her mane was still all puffed up and pink. She wasn't crying or anything. Just staring out the window of the train at the scenery that rushed by, little beads of sweat trickling down her face every now and then.

I dunno. I guess that’s not very much like Pinkie at all, now that I’m saying it.

“Say, uh…” I cleared my throat. “I hope you won’t mind teaching me the ropes on rock farming.”

Pinkie looked over at me, and her eyes were sorta glassy. Not like she was gonna cry. More like she just couldn’t see through them right. “Sure! That sounds kinda fun,” she said, softer than usual. “Y’know, if I have time.”

I chuckled. “What is it you think you’re gonna be doin’?”

She shrugged as she turned back to the window. “I dunno. Hanging up posters, talking to the police… whatever it is ponies do when someone goes missing, right?” Then, much softer, she added, “I’ve never had someone go missing before.”

And, to be honest neither have I. I don’t know any more than she does. I don't know if you do anything at all. A part of me thinks that, when someone goes missing, everyone just sits quietly in a room until they come back. Or until they hear otherwise, I suppose.

Just sitting.

Maybe talking.

Maybe talking about nicer things.

Because I can’t really picture talking about what’s actually happening.

“Well, I’m planning on stickin’ around for a while,” I said. “I’m sure there’ll be plenty of time to show me around.”

That made her smile. Not her usual toothy grin, but I’ll take it. “Okay. Sounds good, AJ.”

The train rattled along the tracks.

Thin rays of summer sun stretched up over the horizon, but I doubted it could get much hotter than it already was. The air was stale and sticky and I just couldn’t help but remember the way my cheeks had burned as I cried.

Pinkie stared out the window.

And I stared at her.

I wondered how long it would take her to cry.

The Pie Family Rock Farm ain't the most comforting place in the world.

Maybe that's just me talking—I realize I didn't grow up there—but there really isn't anything warm or fuzzy or homey about it at all.

The first thing I noticed about it was… well, it was the area in general. The train don't come close to dropping you at the farm's doorstep, and so the two of us had to shlep a mile or so across barren, blown-out, apocalypse-type desert, carrying Pinkie's life in bags along with us. To her credit, she didn't complain. Maybe she was just used to it.

Despite my occasionally stubborn quirks of personality, I make it a point not to work myself silly in the dead heat of the summer. The buzzing in my ears and the sweat trickling down the back of my neck reminded me why that was.

As we approached the ancient log fence, Pinkie picked up her pace from a shuffling amble to an hopeful trot, and I did my best to keep up with her.

"Slow down, there, Pinks," I called. "Unless you wanna help me out with some a'these bags."

She looked over her shoulder at me, and I caught a glimpse of her unburdened self. "Huh?"

I sighed and chuckled and shook my head. "N-never mind!" I yelled back. "You go on ahead, now!"

Pinkie nodded and broke into a canter, her saddlebags pounding against her sides. Somehow—despite all logical laws of the universe—the bags balanced on her back only bounced happily up and down, never in danger of falling.

That mare really does things her own way.

I hiked my own load back into a more stable position and forged ahead. I couldn't say my energy was renewed, but seeing Pinkie rush towards her sisters like that made me feel a little more secure. Strange as their relationship is, those girls always come through for Pinkie.

I stopped for a moment. Just to catch my breath. The sun is baking, and there isn't even one speck of shade to rest in, so standing still hardly helps… but I do it anyways.

It was as I stood, panting and sweating, trying to get a better grip on the bags, that she said, "You're here."

I jumped and dropped a few bags as I whirled to face the toneless voice.

Maud stared back at me. That mare was practically a rock herself. It's no wonder we didn't spot her earlier.

"Hello to you, too," I wheezed.

Maud just stared back at me.

She was wearing a frock, and yet not sweating even a drop. What's her gotdang secret?

I sighed. "I know I wasn't invited," I said, since this somehow felt like an interrogation. Maybe because I was sweating bullets and she was just staring at me without blinking. "I was just—"

"It wasn't a question."

I cleared my throat. "Oh."

She kept staring at me. She was far enough away from me that I thought she could take me all in without moving her eyes at all, so I figured that's what she was doing. That, or she was boring holes right through my skull to watch my brain grind its gears.

Joke was on her. I was too hot to think at all.

"Where are the others?" she asked.

It took me a minute to realize who she meant. "Oh. You mean Twilight and them?"

She blinked.

I took that as a yes.

"They, uh… they didn't wanna overcrowd," I explained. "Small house and all. Pinkie seemed to think I'd be helpful."

Maybe it was the haze, but I could have sworn I saw Maud's cheeks tighten. Like she was squinting.

"On account of the farm?" I prompted.

Maud looked around her.

I was starting to wonder just how much 'farm' was in this rock farm, too.

"Oh."

I nodded. "Yeah…"

Maud's staring continued unbroken. If anything, I was mostly just impressed by her stamina.

"I also… y'know, I know what it's like," I mumbled. "To lose your parents."

Maud's jaw tightened. Barely there, but I could feel it. "That isn't why Pinkie Pie asked you to come."

She gave me a longer look.

I didn't know Maud all that well, to be honest. What I did know was that, even though she might seem fairly one-note on the outside, her mind operated on more levels than most folks.

The look she gave me was on a level I couldn't understand in the least.

"You're honesty," she said.

It seemed like a question, though she hardly said it like one.

"Y-yeah," I replied.

"Hm." She blinked. "Maybe that's why you're here."

I cocked my head. "What's that s'posed to mean?"

Before I could even get the words out, Maud was turning to leave.

"We should go up to the house," she said.

"Uh… s-sure thing."

I gathered the bags, clumsy as a three-legged dog, and hobbled after Maud.

I swear you could see the curve of the planet out here. As Maud and I walked, separated by that beat-down fence, I could see the farmhouse come into view like a ship on the ocean's horizon. A few more steps and the silhouette of Pinkie caught in an embrace by her other two sisters became clear against the beige of the distant mountains.

I wondered what Pinkie might have said. I sure as sure know Marble wouldn't be saying a word as long as I was around, and Limestone seemed the type to seethe in quiet anger. A bit like myself, I suppose.

"Applejack's here," Maud announced as we drew close, in a voice hardly louder than her usual speaking volume.

The Pie sisters pulled apart to look at me.

Marble was crying. Not a surprise.

Limestone's face was flushed and crinkled like a used tissue. Also not a surprise.

Pinkie, despite knowing I was there, looked up too. Yet another inscrutable Pie-family look twinkled in her eyes.

"What in the hay are you doing here?" Limestone demanded.

Marble only wiped tears from her cheeks.

I had hardly opened my mouth before Maud cut in:

"She's here to help Pinkie," she said. "And the farm."

Like those were two separate things.

Pinkie nodded. "AJ's a farmer, too," she explained. "And I thought she could help until mom and dad come back."

That sent a wave of discomfort through her sisters. Limestone's face contorted all the more, Marble seemed to hold back even more tears, and even Maud seemed to at least stiffen.

Who really knows, though?

But then, as quickly as the wave came, it seemed to ebb.

"Uh… great idea, Pinkie," Limestone said, without elaborating.

Marble nodded her agreement.

Maud, however, remained silent. She hardly even moved.

"Well… I gotta get my stuff upstairs," Pinkie said at last. "Can you girls help AJ get everything up on the porch maybe?"

Limestone grumbled her agreement and jumped off the edge of the porch. Marble and Maud mutely turned to follow her lead.

Pinkie watched a moment, like she was supervising, before pulling open the beat-up screen door and disappearing into the old farm house.

Limestone snorted as she vaulted the fence. "Pinkie sure doesn't know how to pack light, does she?"

"She didn't know how long she was packing for," Maud said simply.

Marble wordlessly picked up a duffel bag in her mouth and headed for the porch, though something in the way she looked at Limestone made me think she agreed.

I couldn't say it wasn't familiar. Mac, Bloom, and I had certainly developed our own little dialect over the years. It felt weird to be on the outside of one, though.

Maybe that's what it feels like to be on the outside of any family.

The porch steps groaned under my hooves. It was old, soft wood. The kind that feels pliable. Like it could give way any second. If you looked at it the wrong way, even. All it did, though, was complain if you stepped in the wrong spot.

The Pie sisters knew all the right spots to step on.

"Thanks," I said.

"We'll get the rest upstairs for ya," Limestone said. "You're sweating like a hog."

I chuckled. "Me 'n' the heat ain't the best of friends."

"That won't improve while you're here," Maud said.

Marble shook her head solemnly.

I made a weary sound of defeat as I looked out across the barren plains of the rock farm.

"Applejack?" Pinkie called. "Are you coming?"

Maud caught my eye and gave me one more slow blink.

I didn't know what to do in return.

"I'm comin'!" I shouted after Pinkie, only a bit of hesitation in my voice.

The screen door stuck in its frame as I tugged on it, then slapped shut behind me as I crossed the threshold.

I had been here before. A holiday or two. The lack of winter-y decorations only served to make the place feel empty. A lot of blank walls and bare rooms. Well… a lot is relative, I guess. There weren't many walls or rooms in here in the first place.

The stairs creaked under my hooves just the same as the porch, but I climbed them anyway. They'd get used to me soon enough. Or I'd get used to them, I guess.

I crept down the hall, peering into each room in turn until I happened upon Pinkie's.

She was spreading a quilt out on the bed. I'd never seen the quilt before. I was sure of it.

When she was apparently happy with it, she turned and came face to face with me.

She gasped. A little squeak like a toy. "Oh! There you are," she said. "Boy, you almost spooked me."

"I'm breathin' heavier'n a cow in heat," I said. "How could I spook ya?"

Pinkie hesitated, then shrugged and hummed a quick "I dunno".

I just stood there, watching her putter about and play house, getting everything squared away just so. Even with all her stuff weighing me down, I stood there.

Her tail swished.

I wanted to feel lighter. I wanted to feel like she was at least being optimistic, like it hadn't hit her yet and maybe she could take a minute to settle in before it all came crashing down.

But I didn't.

I felt the crushing weight of the life in her bags. Not the sort you pack for a quick trip.

I felt the absence of the rest of the girls. They weren't the type you sidelined for something like this.

Not a short trip.

Not a solvable problem.

On some level, she knew that.

She knew the statistics. She knew the way it all looked. She knew what the police had said and the way everything was shaping up.

But she hummed to herself. She buzzed around the room, unpacking one thing at a time, making this house her home again. A constant buzzing and humming to distract herself from it all.

She was like a shark. If she stopped swimming…

Only that ain't true.

I dropped the bags.

You're honesty.

"Hey, Pinkie?"

She looked over at me, eyes wide as dinner plates. "Hm?"

Maybe that's why you're here.

"Uh… why don't we sit for a sec?" I suggested, making my way to the mattress. "I'm mighty tired. Need to catch my breath."

Pinkie looked down at the bed. "Sure," she said. "Good idea."

I eased myself down.

The bed creaked, too.

Pinkie sat down beside me. Her cutie mark touched mine, and I felt how warm she was. She only looked straight ahead.

I sighed. "So," I said. "How long you think we'll be here?"

"I dunno," Pinkie said. "How long does it take to find missing ponies? A few days?"

I chuckled, dry and humorless. "You've packed for more than a few days, sugar cube."

Pinkie didn't say anything.

"I just wanna make sure you know how… how this stuff tends to go," I said carefully.

She looked up at me, putting on an air of innocence that I saw straight through. "What stuff?"

I held my gaze with her for another second or two before shaking my head. "Pinks…"

The room was quiet.

There aren't many quiet moments with Pinkie Pie.

She's the type to share. She makes her feelings known, good or bad, the second she feels them. It's a type of honesty, I guess. I can respect that.

But it makes the quiet moments with her kinda frightening.

"Full-grown ponies don't just disappear," I whispered, as firmly and kindly as I could. "You know that."

Pinkie stayed quiet, but her lip quivered momentarily.

"I just don't want you to… I dunno. To get lost in the hope that—" I didn't even wanna say it. The words got stuck in my throat as I pressed into Pinkie's side. "In the expectation that everything's gonna turn out okay. You get me?"

Pinkie made a small grunt. Otherwise, she was still as a statue.

"I'm not tryin' t'be a… well, I don't even know what to call it." I leaned away from her and pulled my hat down towards my brow. "I think your sisters are worried that your optimism is gonna cloud your judgement. Now, you're a lot of things, but stupid ain't one of 'em."

Pinkie shuddered. "I'm not being stupid," she said through clenched teeth.

"I-I know," I stuttered. "I just—aw, shoot, it's comin' out all wrong."

I tore my hat off my head and crumpled the brim between my hooves. Pinkie watched.

"I just know that, when my mom was sick, I would've liked to hear the truth," I said. "No use getting fed shiny, happy lies and putting off what's got to be done."

Pinkie looked at me. Suddenly, like I'd said something she couldn't quite believe. Wide-eyed. A little scared, even.

She reached up and snatched a bit of her mane between her hooves, tugging at it with a feverish speed and strength. It seemed, with each stroke, to deflate. To straighten. To fall, silken and flat, against the side of her face. Just like her sisters.

"Pinkie?" I asked.

She swallowed hard and kept pulling.

"P-Pinkie. Talk to me, okay?"

Pull. Pull.

Harder.

Faster.

"Pinkie."

I put my hooves on her.

Not hard. Just firm. Sudden and strong and trying to be comforting, both on the bit of her haunch beside mine. A little shake for clarity.

She paused.

"Pinkie?"

"They're dead, huh?"

I stuttered something. Not words, exactly. Just sounds. Whatever jumble was at the front of my brain.

"It's gonna be okay," I lied.

I didn't mean to.

Pinkie was quiet.

Her hooves weighed down her mane, now straight as an arrow.

"It's gonna…" I swallowed the lie. "I'm here for you."

She didn't reply.

But her rear hoof rubbed against mine.

II: Depression

The first thing that went into disarray after my parents died was the dishes.

It's funny because, the whole time my mom was sick, the dishes still got done. And it's not like it was just my dad doing them. We all took turns—expect for Apple Bloom, of course.

With things like that, it's not so much that you lost the pony who used to take care of it. It's that dishes and laundry and dusting and showering all stop mattering. Every time you roll over in those sweat-stained sheets, you gotta think to yourself if it's worth getting up to do any of it.

And, just as you're about to convince yourself that it is, you remember that your parents are dead.

And you just don't care.

And you go back to sleep.

So part of the work was the farm, sure. It takes a lot to keep up a farm when you lose two of the folks helping to keep it all moving—half the ponies who were running the show at the time. But a lot of it was the house. Changing the bedding. Dusting the corners. Doing the dishes.

I started there.

It was while I was doing the dishes the next morning that Marble Pie found her way into the kitchen and plopped down at the table.

I hardly noticed her. The only thing that tipped me off was the sound of the table wobbling. She's quieter than a mouse in new-fallen snow, that filly.

I looked over my shoulder, up to my fetlocks in dishwater. "Oh. Howdy, Marble."

She tucked her mane behind her ear. "Mhm."

I nodded, and turned back to the stubborn bit of egg stuck to the fry pan between my hooves. "You holdin' up okay?"

There was a long pause. I twisted to look at her again, and she only offered a small shrug.

I offered a taut smile. "Yeah. I know it."

She gave me an identical smile in return.

“Well, I'm here to help with whatever you think needs it,” I said, plunging my hooves into the dishwater once again. “You just say the word and I'll—well, you know what I mean.”

I cast a playful look over my shoulder, and Marble blushed.

She was a blusher if I ever knew one. The type to flush at any old thing. I used to be the same way.

I rinsed off the last of the suds from the fry pan and set it in the drying rack. The sink emptied with a gluggada-gluggada-gluggada, and I wiped my hooves on the red-and-white towel draped over the handle on the oven door.

Marble pulled her hooves into her lap and sort of cringed away from me when I came to sit across from her at the table. She did it in a way that showed she was trying hard not to, but I sure didn’t draw any attention to it.

The table rocked when I put my own hooves on it. Enough that I made a little sound.

“Huh,” I said, testing the table’s range of motion. “This table always been wobbly like that?”

Marble thought about it, then nodded.

“Too bad,” I said. “It's nice. Old.” I ran my hooves over it, slow and steady. Mac sometimes called it my ‘carbon-dater’—I could guess down to the decade on most old furniture.

Marble cleared her throat, a sound I’d never heard from her before. When I looked up at her, she tapped the tabletop gently with one hoof, then pointed at me.

I pointed to my own chest. “Me… the table?”

Marble only stared wide-eyed back at me.

I took my hooves off the tabletop, and it wobbled again.

Marble made an insistent sound.

“You want me to fix it?” I asked.

She nodded firmly.

I looked down at the table and sighed. “Well, I… I'd need some tools,” I mused. I tried to work it through in my head. Nice, old table like this—I couldn’t just slap on a tennis ball and call it fair. “A saw and some furniture polish should fix her up. Oh—and a tape measure.”

Marble nodded again and jumped up from the table. Quickest I’d ever seen her move for sure.

She paused at the threshold and made another little sound, a practically toneless grunt that would have been meaningless had she not also tossed her head towards the front door.

“I gotcha, I’m comin’,” I said, scrambling out of the chair. It howled as I kicked it out from under me.

Marble, despite the introversion rivaling Fluttershy’s, led me with confidence out of the farmhouse.

Another blazing hot day. I squinted, reached for my hat, and found that my head was in the nude this morning. It had been a long while since I’d forgotten to put that hat on. I tried not to let it distract me, and shaded my eyes with one hoof instead.

Marble circled the side of the house and pointed to… something.

I ducked my head and sped to her side.

She was pointing to a shed.

“You got tools in there?” I asked.

She shrugged.

“Well. They’re either there or they’re nowhere, right?”

She nodded.

“C’mon, then,” I said, waving her along. “I’ll need some help carryin’ things back to the house.”

The shed was as musty and dusty as you’d expect the oversized tool chest of a broken-down house to be. I mean, I get it—there’s a lot you’re willing to just put up with when you’re working a farm and cooking every meal from scratch. A wobbly table or a loose doorknob won’t exactly hit the top of the priority list. Even busted pipes are more likely to be wrapped up in duct tape than given any genuine TLC. So the shed probably didn’t see much use.

I coughed and waved away the cloud of dust and pollen and who knows what else. Marble sneezed delicately.

The shed was mostly taken up by a great, big thing that looked like a ride-on lawnmower, but I knew better than to think anyone around here was cutting the grass. It was probably something to do with digging up rocks. Or burying rocks. Who knows how any of that works at all.

There were a few shelves installed on the walls, mostly holding toolboxes and other stuff that wouldn’t fit in a toolbox.

And there were a few guns. Big ones. Shotguns.

I don’t typically like guns. For a lot of reasons. But guns are a fact of farm life. I guess even rock farming.

I couldn’t for the life of me think what might be threatening the rocks that would need to be shot.

I thought it best not to ask.

“Alrighty, let’s see what we got here…” I muttered, just trying to fill the silence.

One shelf up over my head held a newer-looking toolbox and a rather large saw. I took those down (with some effort) and passed them over to Marble.

“Do me a favor ‘n’ see if there’s any furniture polish in there,” I said. “Your folks might have stashed some in the house somewhere. Or they might not have it.”

Marble wordlessly did as she was asked. The toolbox creaked as she opened it and, after a moment or two rooting around, she held up a small bottle.

I squinted at it. “That’s grease. Not quite what we’re lookin’ for.”

She set it back in the box and pulled out another bottle.

“That’s the stuff,” I said. “Now we’re in business. Step back while I close up.”

Marble quickly gathered the supplies and took a few steps out of the swing of the shed doors. They were sorta flimsy, like any shed. They didn’t really close as much as hang lopsided from the doorframe.

“You ever do any fix-it type stuff around the house?” I asked Marble.

She shook her head.

“That’s okay. I’ll show ya what I do so you can help out your sisters, alright?”

A little smile.

She nodded.

Everyone likes to be helpful.

“Alright. Let’s get a move on.”

And we walked back up to the house.

Fixing the table was a breeze. Measure twice, cut once. A little polish on the raw edges. I showed Marble every step, a lot more patiently than I typically have for things like wobbly tables.

We were quiet. I didn't say anything, besides the occasional "right here" or "push harder" or "nice work". We sat sweaty on the cool tile floor side by side.

When we were done, the table didn't wobble anymore. Still, we sat on the floor, tucked away under the finished table like it was a blanket fort.

"Feels good, don't it?" I said.

Marble nodded. She ran one hoof along the leg she'd sawed down and smiled to herself.

I sighed. "Pinkie still hasn't come down, huh?"

Marble looked over her shoulders at the stairs, hopeful for a moment, before solemnly shaking her head.

"Ah, horseapples…" I rubbed one hoof along my brow, trying to dissipate the headache that had suddenly sprung up.

Marble made a small sound of agreement.

I hooked one hoof around the tabletop and hauled myself up, hard as it was to leave that little kitchen fort. My head rushed, but I shook it off.

Marble watched me for a moment, then pulled herself towards one of the table's legs with both hooves. She looked like a filly clinging onto her ma's—

I closed my eyes. Steadied myself.

"You don't think Pinkie has anything that needs fixin', do you?" I said.

Marble blinked. She raised her eyebrows and shrugged, not so much in the ‘I don't know’ way as the ‘you should go find out’ way.

"Right…" I mumbled.

I stuffed the remaining tools roughly back into their box and clicked the locks shut. Marble stayed still under the table, tracking me with only her eyes as I crossed the kitchen.

"I'll let you know how she's doing," I said. I wanted to tack on a little platitude, like "I'm sure she's just fine," but I couldn't bring myself to lie.

I climbed the stairs with the toolbox on my back. The steps squeaked and squealed under my hooves.

The door to Pinkie's room was closed.

I knocked.

"Mornin', Pinkie," I called, cheerful as I could. "Marble 'n' I are doing a little home renovation today. You got anything that needs fixin'? Squeaky window? Broken knob on your chest a'drawers?"

I pressed my ear against the wood of the door, but heard nothing.

"Pinks? You in there?"

Still nothing.

I hesitated a long moment, my hoof hovering before another knock.

It's always hard to know exactly what to do. Sometimes you wanna give privacy. Sometimes you don't wanna risk leaving someone alone for even a second.

But I know Pinkie.

"Pinkie?" I called again. Softer. "Sugarcube, I'm coming in."

I pushed open the door.

There was a bit of motion as Pinkie gathered her blankets and rolled away from the door. That quilt—the one I'd never seen before—was lumped up like a mountain range along her steadily rising side.

She didn't say anything. I took that as a good sign.

"Howdy," I said.

She curled up a little tighter. The mountains came together. I caught a glimpse of her pin-straight hair as it slipped and pooled on the pillow.

She hadn't been in here long enough for things to really get bad, but the heat of the sun through the beat-up blinds was enough to cook her sweat and tears into a recognizable smell. Salty and thick.

"Look, I'm not gonna bug ya," I said, kicking the door shut behind me. "You just point and I'll get to work."

Pinkie didn't point. She just breathed.

I waited. Nothing changed.

I remembered this. The laying. The curled-up quiet, too tired to even cry. The big emptiness of a silent room.

"Alright," I said. "I'll start with those blinds, then."

Pinkie moved. I guess to cover her face. It was hard to tell.

I just walked slowly to the window and set the toolbox down beside me. Fixing blinds was a piece of cake, even though it could get a bit tedious. These were wood. Much more forgiving than plastic.

I set to work. Wood glue and sandpaper. A quiet job.

Pinkie didn't stir.

I did my best not to look back at her. That would upset her. She didn't like being seen like this.

Slow work. Just like the table.

Not talking. Just being there.

I thought about how much I would've liked to have someone be there. Someone who wasn't hurt like I was.

The quiet started to get to me, though, and I think I started humming. Little songs I remembered from lots of little places. Pieces that bled into other pieces. A mish-mash.

I ain't exactly musical.

I get by, though.

Humming turned to scatting, and scatting turned to singing, and soon I was crooning like a lonely barn cat.

"Cotton in my ears… scotch on my tongue…" I sang, sanding in rhythm. "But when I'm with you, baby, I stop feelin' numb…"

Pinkie sniffled.

I did my best to ignore it, instead swishing my tail back and forth across the floor to cover up the sound.

"Uhm… Applejack?"

I froze up, but didn't turn around.

"Whatcha singin'?" Pinkie asked. Her voice was all strangled from crying, even though I hadn't heard a peep from her all this time.

I chuckled. "A song my mama liked," I said. "Sorry. Sometimes I just get a songbird caught in my throat."

Pinkie sniffled again. I heard the blankets rustle around her, too. "I like it, too," she said. "It's nice."

I didn't have a chance to think about it. I just turned to look at her.

I don't know what I thought I'd see, but I was surprised she was still pink at all. It seemed to me that all the color should've gone, but here she was. Colorful. Even though her mane was flat and she was hunched over in her blankets.

Her eyes were pink-red too. From crying. Or from not crying. Or from not sleeping.

She was just sort of slack. Everything weak and wilting, like a plant shriveling in the sun.

It made me sad.

But I smiled anyway. "Aw, I'm sure my mama would love to hear you say so," I told her. "I think she made it up. But I don't really remember."

That maybe wasn't the right thing to say, even though it was honest. Pinkie crumpled even more.

"Anything else I can fix for you?" I asked. "Finishing touches on these blinds."

Pinkie sighed. "I dunno. My closet door doesn't shut all the way."

I raised my brows. "Yeah? Easy fix. I can get that tightened up and oiled for you."

"Mmkay," Pinkie mumbled as she burrowed back into the blankets.

"Okey-doke," I agreed.

I went back to work. The blinds rattled as I sanded and scraped. It sounded like big, wood wind chimes. That particular kind of thunk.

"Could you…" Pinkie cleared her throat. Her voice was muffled by the quilt. "Could you maybe keep singing?"

I smiled, even though she couldn't see it. "Sure thing, sugar cube."

A few days went by like that. I'm not sure exactly how many, but enough.

I would wake up early, make some breakfast for the girls before Maud and Limestone went out to the fields, then deliver up Pinkie's portion and get to work.

Slowly, she started talking again.

I would ask questions I knew the answer to just to hear her talk.

"We said the carpet next, right?"

"Mhm."

"You want me to sing for you today?"

"Okay."

"You like your breakfast?"

"Yeah."

It turned to conversation soon enough. That mare's a chatty one. It wasn't quite as much as usual, but it was talk, and I encouraged it as much as possible.

One morning, I was surprised to find Pinkie already sitting up.

"Well, hey there," I said, brandishing a tray of food. "I made some flapjacks this morning—all the fixin's. That why you're sitting up?"

Pinkie scratched her head. "Uh… my lightbulb blew," she said, pointing to the lamp on her side table.

Sure enough, it was dark.

It wasn't much of an answer, though. I guess it popped and woke her up.

"Aw, shoot." I set the tray down on the end of the bed and circled to the lamp, giving it two experimental clicks. Sure enough, nothing. "Well, no big deal. I'm sure I can turn up some new bulbs somewhere in this house."

I turned to go, but Pinkie made a little sound.

"W-wait," she squeaked out.

I turned back. "You okay?"

"I think there's some in the closet," she said. "On the top shelf. I just…"

Her sentence trailed off. She made no effort to pick it up again.

I could make a guess where it was going. I remembered being scared to open the cabinet where the dishes were because my Mama's favorite was in there, and I didn't wanna see it.

You don't really think straight when you're that depressed.

I nodded slowly. "Okay," I said. "Eat your breakfast, Pinks. I've got this."

Pinkie didn't touch her food as I crossed the room and opened the newly-repaired closet.

She was right: there was a box of light bulbs up there. There was an unlabeled shoe box up there, too. I figured that's what she was avoiding.

"Alrighty. This'll be quick," I said, mostly to myself.

I walked back over to the side table and sat down in front of it. The shade lifted off easily. It was a little dusty, and so I placed it down carefully on the floor next to me.

Pinkie leaned back in her bed, like it was a hospital bed, and watched me. Very intently. Her hooves twisted in the blankets. The breakfast tray rattled softly.

The light bulb squeaked as I unscrewed it.

"How are you doing today?" I asked.

Pinkie made a small sound. "I dunno. I didn't wanna lay down anymore."

"That's good!" I said.

"Mm…" Pinkie moaned noncommittally. "I still feel… I dunno."

I pulled the used light bulb out and set it on the carpet.

Pinkie sighed again and slid down a bit so she was laying flatter on her back, then rolled towards me and onto her stomach. Her mane drizzled off the side of the mattress like a waterfall.

She watched me. Quietly. Closely.

"I feel bad," she said.

"That's only natural."

"I feel like a bad sister," she said.

I furrowed my brows. "What do you mean?"

Pinkie buried her face in her hooves. "They're all working together and stuff," she said, her voice tightening as she drew closer to tears. "And I'm just… up here. By myself."

I nodded. "You don't have to be here by yourself, Pinkie."

"Yes I do."

"You don't," I said. "Your sisters are worried about you. I'm sure they'd love to—"

"I just wanna be with you, Applejack."

Huh.

I stumbled over my words. "You, uh—th-that's okay, too," I stuttered out. "You know I'm here for you as long as—"

She didn't wait for me to finish, just lunged at me and threw her hooves around me and started crying.

I almost said something, but I decided not to.

I just stroked her mane. Gently.

III: Bargaining

When your mom is sick and your dad's depressed and you're just a confused little kid, it's easy to convince yourself that you can fix things. Just be better, be nicer, help around the house. Get good grades. Learn to cook your own breakfast. Help bring in the harvest.

But parents aren't wobbly tables or beat-up blinds or squeaky closet doors or blown-out light bulbs. There isn't a toolbox in the world that can stop someone from dying. Not forever.

Then your dad pulls the trigger and your mom pulls the plug and it's your fault.

Because you weren't good enough.

And it hurts worse than if it'd just happened, because it's your fault now. You did this, you let this happen, you didn't try hard enough and your parents are dead.

So, in a way, it was good that Pinkie didn't wanna get up. At least from her bed she wasn't trying to fix it.

For a while, she stayed there. I brought every meal up to her, and we ate together on her old and lumpy mattress, and she would lean against me and listen to me talk about anything that wasn't parents or family or sadness.

We talked a lot about Winona and Gummy. And Spike's allergies (he apparently developed a quartz sensitivity and it was driving Twilight up the wall with worry). And a radio program we both liked. Light things. Silly things. Tiny frustrations.

She was tired. She didn't talk much. I carried those conversations happily.

But then, one day, she came downstairs.

We were all surprised. Maud and Marble were struck completely silent as she stood on the threshold, staring into the kitchen.

"H-hey, Pinkie," Limestone said. "You're up."

She said it darkly.

Maud shot her a look.

"Uh. I mean. You're up!" she tried again, more cheerfully.

"Hi," Pinkie said. Her face was blank, no emotion at all—just a wide-open innocence and emptiness as she experienced a world beyond her bedroom. "What's for breakfast?"

I bolted up from the table, chair squealing under me. "Anything you like!" I said. “I-I’ve got eggs fried, scrambled, and poached, I’ve got toast and fruit and—you want flapjacks again? I can make flapjacks! Or waffles! Do you girls have a waffle iron?”

Pinkie just stood there, numb and wide-eyed. “Uhm… I guess I’ll have some toast.”

“Toast, comin’ right up,” I said, already whirring away to start the preparation. “With butter, right? A nice golden brown?”

Pinkie shrugged.

“You got it, Pinks.”

She hovered in the doorway for a moment longer, just staring at the breakfast table with those glassy blue eyes.

“Why don’t you sit here?” Limestone offered, pulling out a chair for her.

Pinkie nodded.

I turned my back and began the preparations for her breakfast. I couldn’t say I’d ever actually cooked the mare a meal, but I’d eaten with her often enough to know exactly how she likes her food. Not that she’s picky, of course. She’s never been picky. She likes everyone and everything just as they are.

But she really likes sugar. And butter. And extravagance.

And coffee.

Marble made a small sound. Not much more than a peep. Certainly not a word.

“I’m okay,” Pinkie replied. “Just a little shaky. Do you ever get shaky? I feel like I’m… shaky.”

Maybe no coffee.

“You’ve spent almost a hundred and twenty consecutive hours in bed,” Maud informed her. “Your muscles have already started to atrophy.”

I made a small sound of discomfort. “Is that a fact?”

“No biggie,” Limestone cut in, ignoring my remark completely. “We’ll get you back on your hooves. A little farm work will help those muscles—right girls?”

“Correct,” Maud said.

“Mhm,” Marble added.

Pinkie actually smiled at that. “Thanks,” she said.

There were still a lot of things about the Pie family I didn’t quite get, I guess.

A bell rang, and a piece of perfectly done toast popped out of the toaster. I grabbed it and slapped it on a plate, slathered it in butter and dropped it in front of Pinkie.

“There y’are,” I said. “Now, you just say the word and I’ll get you anything else you like. I’ll even run out and pick up takeout if you want. Hayburgers or stirfry or some pizza—anything at all. Does that sound good?”

Pinkie looked up at me. “Just the toast for now, AJ. Thank you.”

I gave her a squeeze around the shoulders and nuzzled into her mane. “Well. You just let me know if you change your mind.”

Pinkie didn’t say anything, but I felt her lean a little harder into me. Felt her shoulders swell with a deep breath. I think she even tilted her head up to meet my snout, but only the tiniest bit.

When I pulled away, the Pie sisters were staring at me.

They quickly looked back down at their food or out the window.

Pinkie picked up her toast and took a small, timid bite. Her tongue poked out the corner of her mouth to lick away the butter that clung to her fur.

I pulled one of the two remaining chairs out from the table and sat down. “Uh… speaking of the rock farm, do y’all need any help with that today?” I asked. “I’m more’n happy to suit up and get out there.”

“There is no suit for rock farming,” Maud corrected me.

I thought about making a frock-related joke, but decided to hold my tongue. “Well, whatever you need, then.”

“Maud and I have been okay the past few days,” Limestone said. “We’re downsizing, anyway.”

She almost finished the thought.

Two less mouths to feed.

But she held it back, as well.

That was all part of the dance, I guess. Keeping to the light topics. Weaving around the dread, but weaving around the fun, too. Couldn’t make jokes. Couldn’t talk about the worst stuff. Just small talk—but small talk with friends. With family.

It never felt right.

Pinkie took another bite of her toast, and the crunch broke the silence. “So… did you guys hear anything?”

Limestone knit her brows. “Hear anything?” she repeated. “What, like… last night?”

“From the police,” Pinkie prompted.

She said the word slowly. Like a hiss. Like it was hard.

“O-oh.” Limestone’s face fell. “Maud?”

Maud cleared her throat. “There have been no new developments, as far as we know,” she said. “The… physical evidence is stalled.”

It was the first time I’d ever heard Maud hesitate at all.

“Well… you don’t really think it was a…” she licked her lips, then whispered, “a bear?”

A bear?

It caught me a bit off guard.

A bear.

I thought…

I dunno what I thought.

Pinkie hadn’t told me. I hadn’t thought to ask—so preoccupied with taking care of her and the house and the girls that I—I mean, not that I would have asked, otherwise. It’s not the sort of thing you ask. It’s the sort of thing you leave alone and wait for someone to offer, and they either do or they don’t.

“Pinkie, we kinda hafta go with what the police tell us on this one,” Limestone said, a twinge of frustration creeping into her voice. “If they say it’s a bear, then it’s a bear. We have to live with that.”

“But what if—” Pinkie stopped herself. She didn’t really know what-if. “What if it wasn’t?”

Limestone sighed.

Marble looked down at her hooves.

I think my jaw just hung open. I didn’t know what to do or say, and I didn’t dare take a guess.

“More than half of adults missing for over twenty four hours are not found,” Maud said. She evidently didn’t feel the need to elaborate. I don’t know where she got that statistic.

Pinkie stared at her.

Glared at her.

A look which grew from nothing, a sharpness not in her features but in the actual look. In her eyes. Deep down. Slow and seething and directed.

Maud weathered it like it was nothing.

“I think we should be looking,” Pinkie said simply.

Not a timid request. Not a stray thought. A direction. An action. An order.

“Pinkie, it’s—”

“Don’t ‘Pinkie’ me!” Pinkie shot back. “I… I think we should be looking! And I don’t think you should all treat me like I’m stupid just because I let myself be sad!”

Complete and total silence.

Utter vacuum.

Accusations piled on accusations.

Pinkie shot up from her seat and grabbed her plate. “I’m gonna go do what we all should be doing and read about bear attacks,” she said. “C’mon, AJ.”

I froze.

The sisters stared at me—all four of them—daring me to make a move.

I swallowed hard. “Uh… in a minute, Pinks,” I wheezed. “I’d like to… to talk to your sisters, here.”

Pinkie snorted softly and turned to go, her flat tail dragging along the hardwood behind her.

The four of us sat in silence as Pinkie left. We listened as she climbed the stairs. As she pulled encyclopedias off the shelf. As the door to her bedroom closed behind her.

Maud was the first to break the silence. “You cannot let her do this.”

Limestone scoffed. “No duh, Maud. She knows that,” she said. “Letting Pinkie get all caught up in her crap is never a good idea—right, AJ?”

“W-well, I—”

“It needs to be a bear,” Maud said. “Otherwise, she’ll never get over it.”

“Right. Exactly,” Limestone agreed. “You’re gonna stop her, right?”

Marble looked up, too. Looked me right in the gotdang eye.

I stuttered something breathy and nonsensical. “Well, why me? Huh?” I spat. “Y’all are perfectly capable of telling her off. Why do I gotta be the one to do it?”

Limestone rolled her eyes. “For the love of—because you’re Applejack.”

Maud stared dead at me.

Marble nodded.

“I… don’t follow.”

“You’re Applejack, for crying out loud!” Limestone repeated. “The great, mythical Applejack. Fights the good fight, does no wrong, the best and the brightest and the only pony Pinkie ever talks about.”

I blinked. “The only—”

“She loves you,” Limestone said. “You know that, don’t you?”

I sighed and slumped back in my chair. “I know, I know,” I said. “Why do you think I’m out here?”

The sisters exchanged a look.

I tried to share it, but it wasn’t a look that was meant to be shared.

“No, no,” Limestone said, a note of confusion in her once perfectly sharp voice. “Like… she loves you. She is in love with you. She has been since she met you. Probably before that, even.”

Marble nodded.

“It’s true,” Maud agreed. “Pinkie talks about you more than your other friends. A noticeable amount.”

“But—” I stuttered again.

The girls stared at me.

I paused, took a breath, and let out a small, nervous chuckle. “No. you’re mistaken. That's not—”

“We know her,” Limestone said. “She loves you.”

“But—”

“I don't know that she knows that she loves you, but she does.”

Maud nodded.

Marble cracked a small, sympathetic smile.

I huffed softly and shifted in my seat. I could feel myself starting to blush, and did my best to force it down, but it only seemed to make it worse. “Well, how in the hay can you be so sure?” I demanded. "Pinkie loves everyone."

The girls exchanged another look.

Limestone heaved a sigh. “Well, you're right. Pinkie does love literally everyone,” she said. "She's the friendliest pony in the entire universe, and she loves everyone she meets.”

I rolled my eyes. "That's what I said."

“Pinkie only has one setting when it comes to love,” Maud added. “You probably love different ponies different amounts. Pinkie loves everyone the same.”

“Now I know that ain’t true,” I argued.

“We know how it sounds, but… well, Pinkie’s always been kinda weird when it comes to that stuff,” Limestone said. “Like… social stuff. It’s not like she actually loves strangers as much as she loves her own family, it’s just that she doesn’t get how to separate things.”

Marble nodded along.

I scowled at all three of them.

“When we were younger, she'd drag home strays like they were her best buddies, which turned to having them at family dinners, which turned to sleeping over…” Limestone laughed lightly as she internally reminisced. “She's never actually dated anyone in so many words, but I think that's because her boundaries are blurry. She doesn't know the difference between family and friendship and romantic love. It's all the same to her. It's all a 10/10 on the love scale.”

My skepticism softened.

That… did sound like the Pinkie I knew. Sweet as all get-out, but strange in that way. A confusing way of being that I couldn’t quite picture.

Admirable though. I’d give her that. The world would be a better place if we were all a little more like Pinkie Pie.

I scratched my head with one hoof.

“That sounds like her, doesn’t it?” Limestone asked.

“Yeah, yeah…” I muttered.

“So take our word for it,” Limestone said. “We know her. She loves you. You didn’t notice because she’s… Pinkie.”

“It’s a perfectly acceptable reason,” Maud added.

“Mhm,” Marble agreed.

I rubbed my eyes.

I had a question, but it just felt… I dunno, stupid. So selfish, given the circumstances.

“You want to know why she likes you,” Maud observed.

My hooves dropped to the table, and I’m certain I flushed a dark shade of red. “What? No. I-I never said—”

Limestone scoffed. “I mean, c’mon, Applejack,” she said.

I raised my eyebrows.

Limestone raised them back. “You’re actually serious?”

I didn’t know what to say. I just shrugged.

Limestone leaned back in her chair and folded her legs over her chest. “You're smart, strong, aloof, and you look like that,” she said. “Enough said.”

Marble actually snickered.

Maud seemed unfazed.

I growled softly to myself. “Yeah, but—”

“You're also abrasive, stone-cold honest, and you let her do the talking,” Limestone interrupted. “Most ponies might be fed up with that pretty quick, but that's what she grew up with.”

I looked at the ponies sitting across from me.

Rude, brash Limestone. Overly-direct Maud. Quiet, ever-listening Marble.

Now that they pointed it out, it was hard not to see it.

“Those aren't character flaws to her, they're familiarity.”

“Hey, who says they’re character flaws?”

Limestone only chuckled in response.

“You're everything she loves about her family and her friends in one pony,” Maud said. “It makes sense that she’d fall in love with you. It’s practical.”

I could barely laugh at that as I buried my face in my hooves on the kitchen table. The girls didn’t say anything out loud, but I was sure they were communicating just fine without any words at all. Just pointed looks and hoof motions. Probably at me. Maybe some in Pinkie’s direction.

“What am I supposed to do?” I mumbled.

There was a pause.

“Huh?”

I lifted my head. “I said, ‘what am I supposed to do?’ About Pinkie?” I repeated. “I’m here to help her with the farm and junk, not… whatever y’all want me to do.”

“We don’t want you to do anything,” Maud said. “We just want you to know.”

“She's a little nuts because this is the first time she's ever lost anyone,” Limestone added. “And now she's scared she's gonna start losing other ponies, too. And she's Pinkie, so she doesn't know how to cope with that.”

I clenched my jaw.

“Look, you have leverage we don’t in this situation,” Limestone explained softly. “Just… go be with her, and try to get her off the police crap. Show her you’re not going anywhere.”

Show her you're not going anywhere.

I'm sure she didn't mean it to hurt the way it did, but that little bit of advice walloped me in the chest. I remember thinking that way. I remember clinging to my dad's leg, thinking 'please, please don't get sick'.

If I'd known then the sort of sickness my dad had, maybe it would have worked.

All I knew was that I couldn't stand to lose one more pony. I thought that while I looked at my mama laying in her bed in the hospital: at least my dad is still here.

And then he wasn't.

I pushed away from the table wordlessly.

The sisters all perked up and watched as I turned to go, heading up the stairs once again to Pinkie's bedroom.

Suddenly, it all felt like grade school again. Like I had to act different because now I knew Pinkie like-liked me, and she had cooties or something that I was supposed to avoid. My face burned as I rounded the landing and climbed the second small flight of stairs.

I walked down the hall and placed a gentle hoof on Pinkie's door.

Just… be there.

Let her know you're not going anywhere.

Get her to lay off the research.

I took a breath and opened the door.

Pinkie looked up at me, doe-eyed and stunningly emotionless, from a hunched position on her mattress. In front of her was an encyclopedia, open to an image of a grizzly bear.

The bright, shocked look in her eyes softened when she saw me. "What did my sisters say?"

Pinkie is in love with you.

"Uh… nothing you don't already know, I guess." Not totally a lie. Unless it was. "They're just worried aboucha. They wanna make things easier for you, but they don't know how."

Pinkie huffed and looked back down at the book. "Well, for starters, they could stop acting like they're not sad and scared," she muttered. "They make me feel like such a baby sometimes. Even Marble."

I heaved a great sigh and walked to the bed. It creaked under me as I sat on the very edge. "It's nothin' to do with you," I said.

Pinkie scrunched up her snout and made a small sound of disagreement.

"I remember Big Mac bein' just the same way." I shook my head and chuckled dryly. "It was just his way. Mine too, if I'm honest. Some ponies just clam up and ignore it, 'cause they don't know what else to do."

Pinkie grumbled again. She hunched over further, her straight and silky mane slipping out from behind her ear and forming a curtain between herself and me.

Before I could think about it, I'd reached out with one hoof.

I gently pulled her mane away from her face.

Behind it, she was burning. Fuming and hot, tears running down her cheek.

But that little bit of innocence returned. A bit of surprise that I'd done what I did.

"Hey," I said.

Pinkie sniffled.

"You know we all love you, don't you?"

Pinkie hesitated, but nodded once.

"Sometimes ponies do funny things when they're grieving," I said. "Your sisters ain't immune to that. Neither are you."

I nodded to the book.

Pinkie suddenly looked betrayed. "But I—"

"I'm not gonna stop you from readin'," I said. "I just wanna put things in perspective."

Pinkie turned away from my hoof. "I don't want perspective," she seethed.

I sighed again. "I know it."

"I want to do something."

"I know."

"I want to fix it," Pinkie said, her voice suddenly breaking through stronger than it had been before. "I want them to fix it!"

She looked up at me.

She didn't look much like Pinkie Pie.

Her face was a splotchy red, that patchy sort of blush that comes through when you're crying and trying not to cry. Her fur was cut through with well-trodden tear tracks. Her eyes were red and glassy. And now, with that glare replacing the blank slate she'd worn lately…

But I didn't let it phase me.

I just looked at her. I let my own face do whatever I thought was best—a crooked, sympathetic smile and may or may not have looked sincere.

Pinkie tried to hold her glare, but it quickly dissolved.

"Why won't they try?" Pinkie asked softly.

I shrugged. "It's just not where they are right now," I said. "They might be tomorrow. They might have been before you got home."

"That's not fair."

"I know."

"Why can't we all do it the same way?"

"I dunno. I wish you could."

"I thought being home was gonna make me feel better," Pinkie mumbled. "But I just feel so lonely. Like my sisters aren't even here."

I swung my hind legs up onto the mattress and scooted to a position across from Pinkie. "How's that?"

Pinkie made a small sound and screwed her eyes shut. "I thought Marble was gonna be… just so sad. Like, holed up in her room crying sad. And Limestone gets so angry! I thought she'd be angry, but she just seems awkward," she said. "Maud is trying to be funny, which is just so… weird."

I furrowed my brows a bit.

Not exactly my read of the situation, but certainly a read.

"It's just… weird," Pinkie whispered. "Sorry. I guess it doesn't make any sense."

I shook my head. "That makes perfect sense."

Pinkie's hooves climbed up, and she hugged herself tightly. "I dunno…" she said. "But… I am glad you're here, Jackie. Since you're normal."

Jackie.

Pinkie was the only one who called me that. I honestly don't know why—it was a perfectly acceptable nickname, but only she ever seemed to use it.

It warmed me. A glimpse of the Pinkie I knew.

I leaned over and put a hoof on her shoulder. "I promise I'll be as normal as I can," I said, a little smile on my face. "And I'm not going anywhere. Okay?"

Pinkie allowed the shadow of a smile to cross her face. "Okay."

"Okay," I repeated. Firm, but loving.

We looked at one another for a long moment. Just seeing each other. Knowing we were both there, both safe, both somewhere.

The longer we looked, though, the more Pinkie's smile seemed to fade.

"Now," I said, breaking the silence. "What's all this about grizzlies?"

Pinkie blinked. It took her a moment to break out of her glassy-eyed confusion, but she refocused on the paper in front of her and began scanning the text.

She sighed, apparently out of frustration, then spun the book to face me. "You look."

I bit my lip, glanced at Pinkie (who avoided my eyes), and started to read.

"Uh. Well, let's see here…" I muttered.

The South Equestrian Brown Bear, more commonly known as the Grizzly Bear, is a subspecies of Brown Bear residing in the Southern forested regions of Equestria. Grizzly Bears possess long, powerful claws adapted for digging, and are commonly found on the outer regions of forests near equine activity. Grizzly bears have been known to observe ponies and mimic their food-acquiring actions; sightings of Grizzlies retrieving food from trash cans and even harvesting fruits and vegetables from farmland are not uncommon.

While Grizzlies are typically concerned with protecting their food and their young, and prefer not to interact with ponies, attacks are still a possibility. Practicing bear safety is usually enough to stave off lethal encounters—traveling in groups of six or more, properly storing food and trash, keeping one's distance from any Grizzly, etc.

I scratched my head with one hoof. "I dunno. The usual, I s'pose," I said. "Have y'all ever had bear problems before?"

Pinkie looked up at the ceiling, lost in thought. "When I was really little, I guess," she said slowly. "I remember my dad bought a rifle after he thought he saw a bear digging up rocks in the northern fields."

I scowled.

"But that's silly, right?" Pinkie tapped her chin. "I mean… that a bear would dig up rocks?"

I looked back down at the book. "Well… maybe not as silly as it seems." I spun the book around to face Pinkie again and pointed to a passage. "It says here that Grizzlies watch ponies to figure out where food is. Maybe a Grizzly watched a… a potato farmer or somethin', and thought the same trick would work."

Pinkie's eyes slowly scanned the text. She seemed to have trouble staying focused, and she blinked blearily a few times before giving up.

"It's not impossible," I said, taking the book back.

Pinkie only sighed. She wouldn't look me in the eye.

I chewed harder on my lip.

It was hard.

I feel like I'm saying that a lot, but it's so hard to say anything more than that. Maybe I'm just not so good with words, but I really do feel like there aren't words for it.

I feel guilty no matter what I do.

I feel like everything I say is a mistake.

I feel like I'm not doing good enough at taking care of her.

And that's hard.

I guess that's why it slipped out.

"But… well, your folks were prepared, right?" I offered.

Pinkie looked up, suddenly hopeful. "Right."

And I regretted saying it even more than keeping it to myself.

Even so, Pinkie's hope was faint. Clouded by doubt and rationality.

Pinkie.

Rational.

I coughed. "So. There's that, then."

Pinkie stared at me a moment longer. Then she nodded, deathly serious, and looked back down at her hooves.

There was quiet.

There's a game you play with grief. Especially the uncertain kind. You bat around hope and chance like you're playing badminton, wondering if maybe, maybe, maybe… I think the doctors called it "bargaining". I feel like I remember that.

I think there just comes a point where you'd trade anything to fix it. And, for a while, you pretend that you can.

But the trouble is that you're always pretending. That sense of doom, that cloud over your head , never truly goes away. It still hangs there. And sometimes you catch yourself hoping, and you suddenly feel so stupid and small.

Stupid for being sad.

Stupid for pretending not to be.

Everything you do is wrong.

I sighed. "Can I ask you a question?"

Pinkie looked up. She didn't say anything, just gave me those wide-open eyes.

I swallowed. "If the police are wrong… what do you think happened?"

It was like it was the first time she'd ever even thought about it. "Um. I dunno."

I looked at her. Watched the gears turn. Watched the thoughts form and unform. Watched the theories unravel. The hope unravel.

"Well… well, the police found b-blood and Grizzly fur," Pinkie said, a struggle in her throat. She cleared it. "Maybe… maybe they shot a Grizzly and it didn't die. Maybe they followed it into the woods."

I nodded.

"There was a rifle missing," Pinkie added.

A rifle missing.

No happy ending starts with a rifle missing.

Pinkie didn't pick that thread up. She just let it hang there, loose and unburdened by explanation.

I can see the story the police must have pieced together from all that. A Grizzly attack, probably on Pinkie's mom. Maybe a death. Maybe dragged off to a cave somewhere—there were caves around here, weren't there? Pinkie's dad grabbing a rifle and heading out in a late-night hunt that ended just as poorly as it did for her mom.

It was hard to think about.

I suddenly found myself wondering how all of this unraveled. Was it Marble who went looking for them? Limestone who found the blood and the fur and the missing rifle? Did they hear gunshots from bed? Did they start their day as usual only to sit at the empty kitchen table, wondering why their parents were getting such a late start?

I looked over at Pinkie.

Her thousand-yard stare was unbreakable. Right down into the mattress.

I wanted to hug her, but it didn't seem like the time.

I cleared my throat.

She looked up at me.

Are you okay?

Can I give you a hug?

Do you really love me the way your sisters say?

"You never finished your toast," I said.

Pinkie blinked. "Oh. Yeah."

"Are ya hungry?" I asked.

Pinkie thought about it, then shrugged.

I sighed. "Yeah. I getcha."

I closed the encyclopedia and dropped it off the side of the mattress. Pinkie rolled over onto her back and squirmed into place against her pillow.

"Applejack?" she asked softly.

"What is it, sugar cube?"

She hesitated. "What… what happened to your parents?"

I had been expecting, I guess.

Kinda silly to think I wouldn't be asked at some point.

It still caught me off-guard, though. A question I'm never really ready to answer from a pony I didn't want to upset any more.

But I guess… what's upsetting to me might be camaraderie to her.

"Uh. They were sick," I said.

Not exactly a lie, but not exactly the truth.

"Oh," Pinkie said, like she hadn't been expecting it. "For a long time?"

I sighed. "Their whole lives, I think."

"Are…" she trailed off, thought about, then said: "are you sick, too?"

Was I?

"I don't really know," I said.

Hollow.

Shaky.

I didn't.

I didn't, and that was the first time I'd really thought about it.

Was I sick?

Sick like my mom?

Like my dad?

"I hope not," I squeaked out.

"Promise?" Pinkie said softly.

I looked at her. "Hm?"

She closed her eyes. "Promise you're not sick?"

I stuttered wordlessly for a moment. "Pinkie, I—"

"You have to promise, Jackie."

I closed my mouth.

Promise.

Promise not to get sick.

Not like dad.

I looked at Pinkie, and the way she'd screwed her eyes shut, trembling with the thought of losing someone else. Just absolutely shaking like a leaf in the middle of her twin bed, in the middle of her favorite quilt I'd never seen before, in the middle of her childhood bedroom that was now far too small for a pony that still felt like a kid.

Slowly, gently, I lowered myself down next to her.

I gathered her up in my legs. All four. An all-over embrace that was only as tight as a blanket cocoon, but I hoped that it was what she needed.

She resisted.

That surprised me.

But, then again, it didn't.

"I promise," I whispered. "I promise, Pinkie. I'm not gonna get sick like my dad."

Pinkie shuddered, and the resistance stopped.

"Promise?" she repeated.

"I promise."

"You're not lying?"

"I'm not lying."

"You're not gonna go missing?"

"I'm staying right here."

She tangled her forelegs into mine and pulled me closer.

"Promise?" she whispered, barely audible through the thickness of tears rising in her throat.

I nodded. "Promise."

IV: Anger

I think I mentioned that, after my parents died, I was pretty much all anger.

I get anger. Anger is a reaction that is as honest as it is active, and as aggressive as it is vulnerable. I've gotten a lot of things accomplished with anger. Sometimes a spiteful fury is the only fuel you need.

The bad thing about anger (which shouldn't be a surprise) is that it hurts ponies. Ponies other than you.

I hurt my brother.

I hit him. A lot.

And I still feel badly about that. Who wouldn't?

He took it, given the circumstances. I think he would've felt guilty not taking it. That's what grief does to you—it makes you feel guilty for not taking abuse from your loved ones. Makes you feel like you have to be the outlet for the feelings that ain’t your fault.

Anyway.

After a while of taking it, Mac was fed up, but he didn't feel like he could push back at all. Not with words, and certainly not with hooves.

So he took me outside, sat me in front of an apple tree, and he told me to buck.

I did. I bucked apple trees until I could hardly feel my legs. Woke up the next morning feeling like I'd gone ten rounds with a pack of timberwolves only to get run over by a train, but it got it out of me. It used up the anger and left me with a big empty nothing.

Nothing was preferable.

I could tell anger was on the horizon for Pinkie. Before you get well and truly angry, you wind yourself up like a spring, and boy howdy was she wound up but good. It was an invisible thing, easy to miss, but I knew her. I thought I did, anyway.

I was trying to know her better. Let’s put it that way.

The point is, I saw the signs of a great, big, angry blow-out a-coming, and I decided it would be for the best if I got Pinkie out of the house for a while. Took her out to the fields. Got her in a position to smash rocks or whatever it is that needed doing out here anyway.

The fact that she even agreed told me everything I needed to know about her mental state.

Pinkie tied her hair up with a ribbon and slipped a blue bandana over her forehead. I didn’t even know she owned a bandana. I guess she meant for it to keep the flyaways out of her face.

We got to work early. Before-the-sun early, when all farmwork should be done. It was still hot, though. A lingering heat that bled up from the ground.

Pinkie walked me through the rock fields, and I had the creeping feeling of being someplace completely and entirely dead. It wasn’t like walking through the orchards early in the morning, where you have the nagging fear that something will jump out and get you—it was just empty. Completely barren, completely flat. Drier than the dictionary. No temperature at all in the air, and a steady baked heat rising from the ground.

“Summer is corundum season,” Pinkie told me. Her saddlebags smacked her sides in a steady rhythm as she trotted up ahead of me.

I looked up. I’d been staring at my hooves. “Oh yeah?”

Pinkie looked over her shoulder at me. “Yeah. Rubies and sapphires,” she explained. “We need to plant some aluminum and aerate the soil.”

I could hear the Maud in her.

“I… see,” I said.

“Do you know how to split rock?” Pinkie asked.

I blinked. “I don’t reckon I do,” I admitted. “Unless it’s anything like bucking apples.”

She didn’t laugh. “Eh… not really,” she said. “That’s okay. I can do it.”

I nodded. “I think that’s for the best. You just point me to the aluminum and I’ll get to planting, okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed.

Her pace slowed, and her saddlebags stopped slapping against her flanks. She took a turn to the right and started fussing with the rusty old latch on a wooden gate. The gate led into a field that, at least in the dark, appeared exactly the same as all the fields surrounding it.

I don’t think that light would have made a difference.

Pinkie slipped her saddlebags off her back and pawed through the left pouch. I watched, eyes wide and bleary in the early-morning darkness, as she took out a few little sacks and piled them up at my hooves.

“This one is aluminum,” she said, pushing me a little brown rucksack. “I’ll split the rock, and you drop the beads in.”

I peered down into the bag. I was pretty sure these were just little balls of aluminum foil, but I didn’t say nothing about it. “How far apart?” I asked. “Three inches? Four?”

“Doesn’t really matter,” Pinkie said as she loaded everything back into her bags.

She gave her bags a kick, and they skidded away.

For a moment, she thought. Remembering, probably. Her eyes scanned the surface of the rock with purpose—somehow, some way, she knew what she was looking for.

She swept the area clear (of what, I don’t know) with her silky tail, and turned to me. “Stand back,” she instructed.

Stand back?

“Jackie.”

“Stand back. Got it.” I scrambled backwards a few steps.

Pinkie seemed satisfied. She looked back down at the ground, moving her hooves slowly over the surface of the dusty, rocky earth. Almost like she was looking for something. A pin or a button. After a bit of that, she switched to tapping, her ears pricked like she was listening for something. An echo? I’ve no earthly idea.

She was deep in concentration. Deeper than I’d seen her before. The shell-pink tip of her tongue crept out the corner of her mouth as she chased a feeling I couldn’t understand.

Tapping turned to stomping. Just her front hooves. One at a time, then together. Like a fox pouncing a shrew.

And then, in an explosive grunting and cracking, she stomped as hard as she could, and the rock split. Clean open. In the blink of an eye.

I’d never seen her do that before.

She looked up at me, panting as she caught her breath.

The look in her eyes had changed. I saw a glint of something that, at least for Pinkie, was unfamiliar. Dark and sharp. Pleased with herself in the wake of the destruction she caused.

“In there,” she said simply, breathlessly, pointing to the crevice.

“I-I got it,” I whispered.

Pinkie nodded. She turned, walked a few paces, and got to work on a second row.

I spilled some of the little beads of aluminum into the crevice, and they vanished. It was so dark out, and the crevice was so thin and deep, that I thought they may have tumbled all the way down to the center of the planet. Swallowed up completely by the void Pinkie had opened.

“So, uh…” I cleared my throat. “How long has it been since you did this?”

Pinkie didn’t look up. “I dunno,” she said. “A while.”

I chewed my lip. “Did you help out when you were younger?”

Pinkie sighed. “Not a lot. I didn’t really like it,” she told me. It was the sort of thing that should have been said with a twist of laughter, but her voice was entirely even. “I should’ve, though.”

Yeah.

Familiar.

Pinkie slammed her hooves into the ground again. Opening another chasm. Another concussive sound that echoed across the plains.

I coughed. “I remember feeling that way,” I said softly. “After my parents… but, y’know, once I started working the farm, it was like it was my way to be close to ‘em. Even though I hadn’t really been old enough to do it before they, uh… before they died.”

Pinkie grunted.

It wasn’t exactly dismissive, but it also wasn’t exactly warm.

“You’re good at it,” I said, hope in my voice. “Rock-breaking. Or however you called it.”

“Splitting,” Pinkie corrected.

“Yeah. Rock-splitting.”

She didn’t say anything. Just brought her hooves down on the ground with all her might, unleashing a yell along with it that shook me even more than the impact.

Then she shook it off. Like it was nothing.

“They found my parents,” she said.

And I’ll never forget how she said it. This little, chip-on-the-shoulder, brushing it off way. On an upswing. Like she was getting ready to ask a question, only to realize halfway through that she understood perfectly.

I think I made a sound. A stutter or something.

“It was a bear after all,” she continued, her eyes only ever fixed on the ground. “It got both of them.”

I stuttered again. “When did—h-how did—”

“Late last night!” Pinkie said, with surprise bordering on furious disbelief. “After we went to bed. And I couldn’t sleep and I heard…”

She trailed off.

She stared at the ground.

She wasn’t crying, which I think scared me the most.

“The police came, and Maud went to identify the…”

The bodies.

“I think I knew,” she said. “Somewhere. I just didn’t want to admit it. But it feels weird now because… I dunno. I feel weird.”

I wanted to say ‘it’s okay to feel weird, it’s a weird thing’.

I wanted to say ‘it’s okay to be relieved that it’s all over’.

I wanted to say something.

Anything at all.

But it was all jammed up in my throat like peanut butter.

“I heard them talking about it.” Pinkie kicked at the ground, like she was kicking a can. “You know what they said?”

I blinked. “Uh…”

She looked up at me. Sudden. A snap. “Limestone said ‘let’s not tell Pinkie Pie, she isn’t ready to hear this,’ and Maud said ‘keep your voice down or she’ll hear you,’ and even Marble was down there crying.” Spitting. Venomous. “Even my little sister is treating me like a baby. Like I can’t handle it.”

I shook my head. “That’s not what they think,” I said. It was a reflex—I didn’t believe it.

“It is!” Pinkie yelled. Her voice was strained and high, like she was being choked. “It’s exactly what they think! And they’re—they’re such hypocrites, because they’re losing it, too!”

I bit my lip.

I didn’t say anything.

Pinkie stomped hard on the ground, then paced off to one side. “I know Limestone’s been hurting herself with the farmwork, and Marble cries herself to sleep every night—most nights she has to go throw up out her window she’s crying so hard—and Maud is just… it’s like she’s not even there!”

Screaming.

Raw and loud and squeaking and breaking.

She pounded the ground again. Let loose another wordless howl as the ground split under her.

“Pinkie…” I said softly. “Let’s just—”

“There’s no let’s!” Pinkie yelled back, pointing her hoof accusingly at me. “There’s no let’s, we’re not doing this together! Everypony is doing it alone because they feel like they have to protect me, because—because I’m the only one of us who’s ever even happy!”

She let loose with both rear hooves, kicking up a cloud of dust and a spray of gravel.

“I’m always happy!” she yelled. “Do you know how hard that is, Jackie?”

I swallowed. “N-no.”

“I’m always happy—I’m the happy one!” she waved a hoof in the air, rolling her eyes at the idea. “I always keep everyone together. I always swoop in and cheer everyone up. I’m always nice, and I always explain my sisters to everyone else—oh, this is Limestone, she has anger issues! I know Maud’s too honest, it’s just how she is! Marble looked you right in the eye before running away? That means she likes you!”

She gnashed her teeth as she took another swipe at the ground.

“And then I—I let myself be sad, and I let myself feel my feelings, and that’s so hard!”

Her voice broke.

“It’s so hard.” She stomped again. “And they treat me like this. They don’t tell me my parents are dead.”

It was the first time she said it.

I knew that for sure.

“It’s not fair.”

“I-I know,” I said.

She sniffled. “It’s not fair. How they treat me.”

“I know it, sugar cube.”

She sat down.

She looked at the dusty rock between her hooves, spiderwebbed with cracks.

She sniffled again.

“Why am I like this?” she whispered.

My mouth hung open, wordless, like a damn trout.

“Why are you—”

“Why do I have to be happy all the time?” Pinkie asked. “Why can’t I be sad and be okay? Why can’t I just… be okay?”

Her face crumpled.

A deep, total crumple. Like a used-up tissue. Or a wrinkled-up coat. Like something grabbed and mashed and tossed aside.

She started to cry.

And I just stood there. I just looked at her and watched her cry because I didn’t know what to say. It felt like all the words I’d ever said or ever thought of saying were caught in a knot on the back of my tongue, and if I tried to say one they’d all come out in a nasty meaningless hairball.

She cried.

Then she hit the ground.

Sudden. Sharp. One hoof.

Not to work. Just to do it—just to hit something.

And the look in her eyes changed.

She hit the ground again. An experiment.

And the floodgates opened.

Pinkie sent a flurry of loose, formless punches at the earth, one right after another, no time to properly take the impact or hold back the power or even feel what it was doing to her.

She just punched. And cried. And yelled wordless, meaningless yells that disappeared into the wide-open fields. Swallowed by the sky.

Rocks flew. The earth crumbled away.

She was bleeding.

And, when I saw the blood, I ran to her side before I could think whether it was a good idea.

I grabbed her from behind and pulled her away. Her hooves kept pedaling for a moment, and she fought me, reaching for the ground. A strangled argument may have squeaked out of her before I sat down hard on the rock with her up in the air.

She was small.

I never thought of her as small, but here I was holding her as she squirmed against me, tried to get away, and she was small.

“I just—”

“It’s alright, now,” I said softly. “I’m not gonna let you hurt yourself. It’s alright.”

She blubbered something else.

Then she stopped fighting.

Pinkie went limp in my arms. She squirmed again, and I let her spin around and bury herself in my chest.

I held her. She shook like a leaf and she rubbed her face deep in my coarse fur, matting it all with snot and tears and spit, crying and grabbing me and shaking me back. Pawing at me for something to hold onto. Squeezing too hard because she hurt, and she needed me to hurt too, and all I could do was stand resolute and squeeze her back.

“Why am I like this?” she said. Again and again. “Why, Jackie? Why am I like this?”

“‘Cause you’re stubborn.” I pulled the silky locks of her mane away from her face, through the tracks of tears that cut down her cheeks. “Just like me.”

She kept on crying.

“You’re too stubborn to not be happy,” I said. “You’ll be happy when everyone else has given up on it, just because you can’t stand to be any other way.”

She wiped her face on me. “Doesn’t that make me stupid?”

“No!” I shook my head. “No, no, no. Never.”

“But—”

“Never,” I said. “I… I love that about you, Pinkie.”

She sorta stiffened. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” I squeezed her a little tighter. “I do. ‘Cause I can be real pessimistic, y’know. It’s a problem of mine. I need a little sunshine now and then. Or… more like all the time, I think.”

She made a sound. Might have been a laugh.

Good enough for me.

My hooves fell to her withers. I could still feel her shaking, there, and tried to hold her still. Tried to… I don’t know. Hold her together, I guess. With little strokes in little circles. I don’t think it really worked, but I could feel her falling into me harder and harder.

“I know it hurts,” I said.

She swallowed. A thick, wet sound. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I said. “With the… the sibling stuff. I remember being so mad at Mac because he was the one to—well. Not that it matters.”

Pinkie pulled away. “The one to what?”

I looked away. “Uh. Nothin’. Just… y’know, it was hard on me, too. When my parents died,” I said softly. “I was angry at everyone and I took it out on Mac.”

Pinkie blinked. “Because he… he did something?”

Consarn it.

“It’s not—” I cut myself off. “N-no. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

Not technically a lie.

“But he did do something?”

Consarn it.

I let out a tense sigh. “Pinkie…”

“What happened?” Pinkie asked. “All the time we’ve been friends… you’ve never talked about what happened to your parents before.”

She pulled away completely, wiping at her face with one hoof. The distraction, however unintentional, had stopped her crying almost completely. She just stared at me, now. That doe-eyed, blank look that I realized now was the absence of anything and everything. The look she gave when she couldn’t smile, and didn’t know how else to be.

I tried to sigh, but it came out a bit of a growl. “It’s… not a time I’m proud of,” I said softly. “So I don’t like to talk about it.”

Pinkie didn’t even say it.

She just looked at me. Her face was caked in tears. Her mane silky and thin, like my Granny’s, floating around her face.

I’m not proud, either.

I sucked in a sharp breath. “My mama got sick when I was five. Terminal. Not sure we ever found out what it really was. If we did… well, my Granny don’t exactly like talking about it.” I reached up to scratch at the side of my face. “She was bedridden in a month. Coma in two.”

Pinkie’s face started to melt again, but she stayed quiet. Her eyes glassy. Her lips thin and taut.

“We kept her alive for a while. A year. Even though she was probably in a lot of pain, and we… we pretty much knew she wasn’t gonna turn around.” I pulled my hat off my head and held it to my chest. “It was… it was actually my dad who fought so hard for her to stay on life support. He didn’t really do much other than sit by her side. He was heartbroken.”

I felt the word leave my mouth, and right away it left a bad taste.

“No. He wasn’t heartbroken—I mean, he was, but he was depressed. That was the big fish, y’know? He was depressed. And he didn’t get help. He just…” I swallowed. “I dunno how long he was thinking about doing what he did, but I think watching his wife waste away was too much for him. And rather than do the humane thing and pull the plug, or help his three kids through the hardest possible thing, he went and made it even harder.”

I felt the heat in my cheeks.

I crumpled the hat between my hooves.

“Applejack, I—”

“He shot himself.” It was the first time I’d ever said those words, and they felt ugly and wrong in my mouth. Yet they came out again: “He shot himself. In the barn. With the shotgun we used to scare off timberwolves.”

Pinkie put a hoof to her lips.

I took a few hard breaths. Heavy and tight and hot.

“Granny found him. Had a heart attack.” I sniffled. “Big Mac took me ‘n’ Bloom in the next morning to say goodbye to our mom before they pulled the plug.”

Pinkie’s lip quivered.

“I was just a foal, so I blamed him. For years I blamed him and beat up on him,” I said. “I thought he did it. I thought he decided it was time. I didn’t understand that it costs money and… well, y’know. All that. Wasn’t ‘til I was his age that I was sure they wouldn’t let him make that choice. The things you think your big brother can do…”

I shook my head.

It was almost a nice memory. Almost a wish to be that innocent, to see the world that black and white.

“All I’m trying to say is… well, I dunno what I’m trying to say,” I admitted. “Just that I’m here for you, I guess. If you want more’n that, you’ll have to dig it up yourself.”

Pinkie looked at me. A long, pained look that was more than just the emptiness she'd been stuck with lately.

After a long moment, she fell forward and hugged me again. Tight. Legs pinned to my sides.

Not quite as tight as usual. But still tight.

I wheezed softly. "It's alright, now. Been a while since all that. I got through it."

Pinkie sighed into my mane. "You were mad?"

I scoffed. "Boy howdy, was I mad. I was mad at everyone and everything."

"So… it's okay for me to be mad?" Pinkie asked. "Even at my sisters?"

"Of course it is." I nodded and patted her on the back. "Just don't beat up on 'em too hard. That's what I'm here for, okay? They're grieving too. They're making mistakes too."

I felt Pinkie's jaw clench and unclench. Her head rocked from side to side against my neck.

"Okay," she said at last.

"Okay," I agreed.

"Could we keep working, then?" Pinkie asked.

I looked to my left and saw that the sun was beginning to creep over the horizon. Those early rays, tiny as they seemed, were still powerful enough to start me sweating.

Nowhere to hide from that sun out here.

Ah, well.

"I think that's a swell idea."

I should have known better.

Pinkie’s not stupid. It’s the last thing I’d call her. Rainbow Dash, maybe—stupid and reckless. Twilight sure can act stupid when she gets herself all tied up in nonsense.

But Pinkie…

She’s smart. She’s smart with ponies—has to be. She knows her way around a conversation, around a relationship. She knows everything about everyone, exactly what they love and what they need and what, above all else, makes them happy. For some reason, the same logic don’t apply to herself, but credit where credit is due.

And she’s stubborn. She knows what she wants and she does it, and she won’t react well if you put yourself in the way of it.

Most of all, she can’t stand being rejected. Any part of her. Her happiness, but also her sadness. Her anger. All parts of her—non-negotiable.

I know that.

I do.

That’s why I should have known better. Why I should have expected what she did next.

She waited until night. Long into the night. Long after her sisters had sat her down to tell her the news she’d already known. Long after she’d tucked herself under her covers and turned out the lights.

I had been sleeping on her floor. She liked me close.

I guess she waited until she thought I was asleep, and just happened to guess wrong. It must be hard to tell in the dark and the quiet of the night.

She slipped out from underneath that old quilt and crept to the door. Hooves light on the hardwood. The gentlest twist of the knob you could ever imagine.

I let her. Thought she needed water and wanted to get it herself. I thought it was a good thing. A sign that she wanted to be independent. I was proud of her.

Then the screen door clapped shut.

I sat up. Bedding thrown off me in a second. Up and to the window in another.

Pinkie trotted down the front porch steps and paused.

Why?

Was she looking for something? Someone? Hesitating?

I thought—hoped—that maybe all she wanted was some air. The summer night had a certain freshness to it. Maybe all she wanted was a cool breeze on her face and a moment alone.

But then she turned.

She circled the house.

I couldn’t see, but I knew:

The shed.

The shotguns.

I ran.

I clattered down the stairs and out the front door, not caring who heard or who woke. I think I may have shouted her name once or twice, but I have no idea what made it out of my sleepy lips.

All I knew is that I had to put myself between Pinkie and the shotgun.

I barreled out the front door and down the porch steps. They screamed back at me, but I didn’t care. Hardly felt it. It was like one long fall—one tumble towards the pony I had pushed to something unspeakable.

“Pinks!” I forced out at last. “Pinks, wait!”

My hooves beat the ground.

The world fell away.

I saw her against the dark of the shed, her pink coat glowing in the dark.

She looked over her shoulder at me. Those wide, innocent eyes she had when there was nothing left in her chest to feel for real.

She was holding a shotgun.

“Pinks!” I screamed. “For the love of Celestia, you put that down!”

She just froze.

She let me tumble to her, grab the shotgun, kick it across the rock.

She just stared.

“What in the hay are you doing?!” I scolded. “What do you think you’re doing with that?! Why would you—wh-what are you—”

She just stared.

The words stopped coming.

“You didn’t wake anypony up, did you?” Pinkie asked softly.

“Did I—” I scoffed. “I don’t rightly care if I did! Now you come right back inside and—”

“Jackie, I wasn’t—!” She cut herself off, stomped her foot on the ground, and made a sound of frustration. “I wasn’t.”

“You…” I looked at her.

Her eyes were clear. Even as blank and late-night sleepy as they were, they had a clarity that I trusted. An honesty.

“You… weren’t?”

Pinkie bit her lip and shook her head.

I swallowed.

She wasn’t.

I sucked in a slow breath and tried to calm my racing heart. My gaze wandered back over to the shotgun on the ground. “Then… then what?”

Pinkie clenched her jaw and, without answering, moved to the weapon. Hefted it. Examined it carefully. It was heavy—I could tell by the way she held it. The way she tensed her legs and shoulders.

“Pinkie.”

“I’m gonna kill it.”

It was a harsh word.

It sounded ugly in her mouth.

I wished she could unsay it. I wished she could take it back, snatch it out of the sky and jaw it back into her mouth. I wished we could lock up the shotgun and never, ever think about that horrible urge ever again.

I wished I couldn’t picture it.

But she couldn’t.

And I could.

“Pinks, I—”

“Please don’t try to talk me out of it,” Pinkie said.

It was remarkable how much like herself she sounded. How utterly and completely normal, like she was asking someone to walk her to the market or see a show with her. Like she was begging not to be left alone late at night.

“I… I thought about it all day,” she continued. “And I’m not being stupid. But I just—I just need to. I have to.”

“You don’t.”

“I do!” Pinkie shook the shotgun, and I heard metal rattle. “I just know I do.”

“You don’t!” I pounded my hoof on the ground. “You—I won’t let you! You can’t take that back, Pinkie! You can’t un—”

“I know!” Pinkie cut me off. Harsh. Sharp. Loud.

Her face was flushed.

She looked down at the ground. Her grip on the shotgun slackened and bit. “Jackie, everyone treats me like I… can’t. Or like I’m dumb, or too innocent, or too optimistic to get stuff.” She blinked forcefully. Thinking. “I know I’m a mess. I know I fall apart over the littlest stuff sometimes, and I know I make life hard for other ponies when I… y’know.”

I couldn’t even respond.

My eyes were glued to the shotgun.

My tongue was tied.

“I’m angry.”

“I know,” I whispered.

“And I’m sad.”

“I know it.”

“And those feelings have to go somewhere,” Pinkie said. “And, for once, I’m gonna put them somewhere they deserve to be.”

I heard her.

All I saw was the gun in her hooves.

“It’s… it’s what my dad would do,” she whispered. “Would have done.”

I remember, when I was grieving, I did the strangest things.

One thing I didn’t do for a very long time—in fact, I still hardly do—was talk about my parents. Even in a nice way. Even remembering.

But, even if I didn’t talk about them, I thought about them constantly. And a lot of the things I did were because of them.

Pinkie’s quilt I’d never seen before. The top self of her closet, filled with trinkets I didn’t know, couldn’t match to her at all. The bandana she pulled over her mane. The ribbon she used to tie it up. The look in her eyes when she was sitting for breakfast, when she was working the fields, even now as she looked down at the gun in her hooves.

They weren’t hers. They weren’t even her sisters.

It was the shadow of her parents. Ever-present in her mind, even if I couldn’t recognize it.

I could now, though.

I saw the thoughtful, tired eyes of her mother. The stoic and harsh jaw of her father. The way she held onto them, and them to her. Like ghosts.

I swallowed hard.

And I said, “okay.”

Author's Note

If you've made it this far, thank you so much for reading!! This story will finish tomorrow with a double update :) I hope to see you there!

V: Shotguns

Grief makes you do crazy things.

I tried to hang onto that thought as we pressed through the forest. Who knew such dense woods were right on the rock farm’s outer edges? Maybe that’s what rock farming did to the landscape. Maybe rock farming killed things.

Kill.

It was a word you didn’t say.

I remember telling that to Smolder and Gallus one spring afternoon. They were joking. Joking the way omnivores do about death and dying and murder, because it’s a part of their lives. It’s something you have to be okay with. Something you have to joke about.

Ponies aren’t okay with it, I’d told them.

Ponies call it the k-word, I’d explained.

You can’t say it. Not even for a laugh. Not even when you mean it you can’t say it.

And Pinkie had said it.

She had meant it.

Still did. That shotgun strapped to her, slapping her side like an innocent saddlebag as she picked through the brush in the pitch, pitch dark. Each time it hit her flank, she had to be thinking it. Had to be hearing the echo of that promised shot—BLAM—just like I was. Had to be thinking about the way it would feel to pull that trigger and take the kick-back in the shoulder and know that you’d done it.

That you’d killed. That you’d killed and you couldn’t take it back and you just had to live with the blood and the bullet and the death.

Or maybe she wasn’t thinking that at all. Maybe she was just trying to get out that wound-up spring energy, that anger, by stalking through the woods after the thing that did this to her, and at the last second she’d choke and it was her that’d get killed.

Oh, Celestia.

Grief makes you do crazy things.

I’d seen them.

I knew them.

I couldn’t let them happen again.

But I just kept putting one hoof in front of the other. Running my mind in circles. Hearing the echo of the shot in the barn.

BLAM

A flash.

I looked wearily over my shoulder and caught a glimpse of light. A powerful, white beam cutting through the darkness.

And a second.

And a third.

Distant, behind layers of trees and branches and brush. But the way they moved—natural, if shaken—made it clear that my late-night panic had consequences.

“They’re lookin’ for us,” I hissed suddenly to Pinkie. Sudden even to me. “Your sisters—their flashlights. They’re lookin’ for us.”

Pinkie didn’t reply. She just pushed on, focused completely on the next step.

“You oughta be careful.” I did my best to follow, but couldn’t bear to take my eyes off her to watch my step. “You’ve got a gun. Maybe they’ve got one, too. We shoulda told ‘em, Pinks, I don’t want this to end with—”

“It won’t,” Pinkie said.

“Now, you can’t be sure a’that,” I scolded.

She didn’t reply.

Just kept picking through the brush.

The bad ends were starting to tangle up. Missing ponies, threats of bears. Blood and death and shotguns. Bullets. Claws. Dead bears. Dead ponies. Too much to think about. Too much to imagine. Too much to protect her from.

I swallowed hard. Tried to keep my breathing under control. Tried to keep from shaking.

It was cool out here. That was… bracing. A break from the constant heat out in the fields, or even in the house. Out here, in the shade and the night, you could almost forget it was summer. Crickets chirping. Cicadas humming.

Almost nice.

Until

BLAM

“Just what are you planning to do with the… with the body?” I asked softly.

Pinkie was quiet for a moment. She hadn’t thought about that. “Bears die in the forest all the time, Applejack,” she said at last. “I think it’ll be okay.”

She thinks.

“What if it ain’t?”

She thinks.

“Pinkie, what if it ain’t okay?”

She stopped.

I stopped.

For a long moment, she was quiet. I braced, thinking she was gonna ready the shotgun, thinking that explosive sound was gonna rip through the woods and suddenly we were gonna have to contend with whatever or whoever was left dead in its wake.

I felt the bile rising in my throat.

I felt my heart thudding in my chest.

And then she said, “you have to trust me.”

And I said, “I don’t think I do.”

Which was the truth. And the truth she needed to hear.

She turned to face me. “Then why did you come with me?” she hissed.

I took a deep breath. “Because someone needs to be here if it goes wrong,” I said firmly. “If I didn’t come with you, you were gonna try to do it alone. I know you.”

“But—”

“I don’t trust you. That’s why I’m here,” I repeated. “Now, for the love of Celestia, be careful. Your sisters are out here lookin’ for you. Don’t take a shot you ain’t sure of. And don't get so caught up in runnin' through the brush that you get yourself shot.”

Pinkie set her jaw.

She nodded.

Before she could take another step, though, we heard it:

A rumble.

That low, rattling sound I’d only ever heard near Fluttershy’s animal sanctuary. A growl. Deep and throaty, bigger than anything Winona could manage.

Pinkie’s hoof went right to the shotgun. Just one.

I stiffened.

“That was it, right?” she whispered.

“Y-yeah,” I said. “I reckon so.”

I swear it shook the ground when it walked.

Even in the dark, even as far as we must have been, I swear I could see it. Lumbering. The way the fat in its legs must have shook with each step. Its coarse fur, matted and dark with mud. And blood.

Soon its own.

BLAM

Just the thought made me nearly jump out of my skin. The jump made me stumble backward, and Pinkie took it as a sign to start on ahead herself.

“I think it came from this way,” she whispered. “Just keep quiet.”

“I know, I know…” I whispered back.

And then we were off. Low to the ground, but flying. Running towards the shape in the dark instead of away from it, like everything in my mind and body said I ought to be doing.

Grief makes you do crazy things.

Maybe that’s all grief is. Maybe it’s a shape in the dark that you run from, cower from, only look at out of the corner of your eye. Maybe it’s a monster that takes your parents and roams the woods, waiting for another chance to strike.

Maybe you have to run after it. Maybe you have to gun it down.

The smell hit us next.

It smelled like death.

It wasn't one I was familiar with, but I knew it when it hit me. Stale and… and salty and fatty. I could smell the slickness of blood and viscera.

Pinkie smelled it too. She made a sound like she was trying not to gag.

As the smell crawled its way into my chest, I realized that it wasn't entirely unfamiliar. I picked at the thread in my brain and unraveled a memory of Winona, having stomped a shrew to death out behind the barn, taking a roll in the carcass before I could pull her off.

That's what predators do, right?

They roll in the carcass?

The pictures flashed through my mind. The sounds. The bear grunting. Joints popping, ribs cracking. A gruesome celebration of death.

I wanted to vomit but I don't think it would have helped. The smell had made a home in my stomach already.

Pinkie's steps were wary, now. Like she was fighting through the wall of the smell, like it was molasses.

"It's coming from everywhere," Pinkie strained to tell me.

I took in a quick gasp of a breath. "Sonuvabitch probably rubbed his scent on every tree in the area."

Pinkie peered into the darkness. "I don't see it."

"Just be quiet a sec," I said. "We'll have to listen for him."

Pinkie's hooves rustled in the brush as she tried to stand still. The energy still ran through in loops, I'm sure, and she could barely contain her fidgeting.

As we stood, I silently hoped that the fear would get the better of the anger, and she would give up on the hunt. I figured there was at least a shot at it.

Then, from behind us. Something moving.

Pinkie and I froze completely.

"Was that—"

"I think so."

Pinkie swallowed. She wanted to say something—I could tell from the way she stuck her neck out and chewed slowly, intermittently on her lip. Even in the dark, I was starting to make out those details.

Motion again. Another rumble and the snap of a branch.

Pinkie's hoof went to the gun. She readied it as best she could, but I could see that the weight and the balance was unfamiliar to her. She fumbled with it in a funny way. Like someone looking at a modern art exhibit or something.

More motion. Stumbling through the brush.

Pinkie shook slightly. I heard the rattle in the shotgun.

I closed my eyes. I knew the bear was creeping up on us, now. That any second I'd feel his breath and Pinkie had better pull that trigger and send it down. Down in one shot.

Oh, Celestia.

Grief makes you do crazy things.

I clenched my jaw.

The rustling grew closer.

Here it comes.

"Ready?" I whispered.

Pinkie didn't answer. She only stood there shivering.

"Pinkie?"

Another quick

snap

in the brush and Pinkie whirled on her heel, the rifle let out a soft

chk

as it readied against her shoulder and I saw her eyes squeezed shut and I hit the deck and I heard the grass

shhhht

swallow me up safe and sound as I waited for the shot the explosion the—

"Don't shoot!"

A pause.

The shotgun hit the ground.

Thud.

"Limestone?"

My hooves came off my head and I pushed myself back upright. Sure enough, Limestone stood before us, a light strapped to her forehead.and shining through her wild bangs.

After a moment, the other two sisters stumbled through the brush and into our light.

All of them had blinding lights strapped to their foreheads. They weren't armed with guns, thank Celestia, but each of them wielded some less-lethal weapon against bears.

Limestone carried an air horn. Maud had what looked like a can of pepper spray hanging by her side. Maybe bear spray. Even Marble had a pan strapped to her chest and was holding a big wooden spoon.

There was a long moment where no one quite knew what to do. Eyes flicked from pony to pony, hoof to hoof, on and off the shotgun. Calculating. Writing the story.

Then Limestone’s eyes landed on me.

“You.”

I took a step back. “Me?”

“You let her…?” Limestone gestured to the shotgun. “Y-you were supposed to talk her down!”

“Talk me down?” Pinkie repeated softly.

“Now, hold on a second,” I spat. “I ain’t Pinkie’s handler, okay? I’m just here to—”

“Here to what?” Limestone seethed. “To be the hero?”

“Excuse me?”

Maud put a hoof on her sister’s shoulder. “I think what Limestone means to say is that it feels like we’re on different teams,” she droned. “And that you made the teams.”

Marble made a small sound of discomfort and cowered behind her older sisters.

“That I made—” I choked on my words.

“Yeah, and now Pinkie’s toting a gun around in the woods,” Limestone said darkly. “And you let her.”

“I didn’t—”

“You did,” Maud interrupted.

“Mm,” Marble added.

“C’mon, Pinkie, we’re going home,” Limestone said, and she reached out for Pinkie.

To grab her and drag her away, like she was just a foal who’d got lost during a family shopping trip. Not a full-grown mare with a mission. And a gun.

Pinkie mutely dodged her sister’s attempt to hook her foreleg around her own.

It threw Limestone off. I could see it in her eyes. She froze for a second before trying again.

Pinkie took two big steps back.

“Pinkie—” Limestone growled, lunging for her again.

“Stop!” Pinkie swatted her sister away.

Limestone’s eyes flashed with something dark. Marble and Maud rushed to her side, I guess in an effort to back her up, but seemed to fall short of knowing exactly what to do.

“You’re not doing this!” Limestone spat at her. “No one’s letting you—”

“No one’s letting me do anything!” Pinkie shrieked.

Silence.

Forest-leveling silence.

Only Pinkie’s breath heaving.

She took a moment to compose herself and then, barely holding together as she shook, she said, “I’m not a little kid.”

The sisters stood resolute. Nothing changed in their faces.

“I know mom and dad always treated me different,” she said, gun shaking in her grip. “But I don’t understand why all of you thought you had to treat me that way just because they’re… they’re gone.”

Limestone flickered. A little look back at Maud.

“I’m putting down the bear,” Pinkie said. “Because dad isn’t here to do it.”

And I saw it.

I saw that moment. What it was for my brother.

The harsh yellow-white of the headlamps turned to the clinical fluorescents at the hospital. Pinkie’s shotgun a much less literal pen. The way her lip trembled, the way she faltered, the way that—even now—she wasn’t sure if what she was doing was right or best or even okay. She just knew she had to.

And, oh.

Oh, it all opened up.

I saw family in her the way she saw it in me.

I saw the determined scowl of Apple Bloom as she faced down another self-imposed challenge. I saw Mac’s strong stance as he plowed, pulling an enormous weight steadily along behind him. I saw my Granny’s surprising resilience. My mother’s kindness and humor despite it all, even bedridden, even dying. My father’s endless emptiness as he imagined a world without.

She was family.

And I loved her.

Oh, I loved her.

I loved her anger.

I loved her pride.

I loved her stubbornness and her resilience and middle-sister outcast rebelliousness matched with pony-pleasing peacemaking perfectionism—I always had, hadn’t I?

Ah, feathers.

It hurt.

“Pinkie…” Limestone murmured, her voice faltering as she looked at her now-unfamiliar sister.

No one else spoke.

I can’t tell you what they saw, but all three of them looked at Pinkie like she was someone entirely new. Looked her up and down like they were being introduced to a stranger. And maybe she was to them. I don’t know.

Limestone took a hesitant step forward. Pinkie took a small step back, fighting it all the while.

Before the gap could close, though, the rumble returned.

Pinkie stiffened. Her grip on the gun returned with a renewed strength and direction.

The other Pie sisters drew silently together. Maud switched off her headlamp, and the other two swiftly followed, plunging our party into near-total darkness just moments after our vision had adjusted.

Only breathing. Heavy and hot in the dark. Stuttering with fear.

I stumbled forward, my eyes trained on a smudge ahead of me that I was certain was Pinkie Pie.

The ground, once certain, felt uneven. Filled with pits and hills and hidden stones.

The tall grasses tickled my chest.

I heard the heavy chk of the gun against Pinkie’s side as she stepped forward. The darkness in front of me moved with her, but it all felt like shifting blobs of the darkest blues and greens, all swirled up and tangled and confusing.

Another step.

Another stumble.

Soft sounds of grass parting. Hard sounds of the gun.

Another step.

Warmth.

I grabbed onto it. Pinkie for sure.

She made a small sound and tried to throw me off, but I hissed a quick “hey” and, at the sound of my voice, she quit fighting.

Okay, I thought.

We move together, then.

I twisted my right forehoof into her silky tail and we started to walk towards the sound of the bear. The growling, rumbling, thudding. The sound of something broken dragging itself through the woods towards the object of its misery.

The sounds of the other Pie sisters crossed behind us, nervous and uncoordinated. I’m surprised Marble was still standing. I guess an old-fashioned shot of adrenaline is good for just about anyone.

Breaths came fast and hard.

The gun rocked against her flank.

The smell hit again. Garbage, rot, and death. Strong. Directed. Hot. On a breath?

The bear’s breath?

Pinkie hit the ground and I came with her. Chests in the dirt. Grass tickling my cheeks, now.

The smell.

Celestia, I had to cover my nose. ‘Smell’ don’t even begin to describe it—it was a feeling. A weight. A dark cloud that hung over us, pressing down. I wanted to burrow into the dirt to escape it. I wanted to throw up just to get the taste out of my throat.

I wanted to stop it. But it just kept coming.

I wanted to melt into the ground. But it just kept coming.

I wanted to run away but I knew it would keep coming.

I wanted to run.

My hooves almost carried me off all by themselves. My mind knew that was death for sure, but my instincts told me to do it anyway.

Ain’t no way that bear could smell us over his own stench.

We were safe if we were still.

We were safe.

I don’t know that I believed that, but I thought it.

I pressed it into Pinkie, my hooves on her flank or her back or something, just a pressure that meant nothing and everything. A pressure that said ‘I’m here and I’m staying until this is over’ but also was only hooves on flesh and maybe that’s all it felt like.

Pinkie started to retrieve her gun.

I felt it pull out from under one of my joints, that hard edge of the butt that I thought was a branch and really it was a gun I was laying on.

That hot, sticky, metallic taste sprang into my mouth. I tried to swallow it down, but it bubbled up twice as strong.

A step. A thunderous step. Fat and muscle shaking as that enormous paw hit the ground.

Legs like tree trunks.

I closed my eyes. It wasn’t much different back there, still dark colors swirling and flashes of things—BLAM—that made my eyes spring back open anyways.

I saw it.

My eyes were adjusting to the darkness and I saw it.

A bear.

A grizzly with matted fur and shiny black eyes and

Well, it was so much smaller than I’d thought.

I don’t know why. I knew how big grizzlies were. He was about that size.

But he was small.

It struck me.

Pinkie nestled the shotgun into a notch on the branch in front of her. She shook, and the gun rattled, and it was the loudest gotdang sound I’d ever heard in my entire life.

And I thought oh.

She’s going to choke.

I thought oh, the bear is going to charge and she won’t be able to pull the trigger.

I thought oh, we’re going to die.

And the bear saw us.

And it lumbered our way.

Smell of death on us.

I crawled over Pinkie and she wheezed as I squeezed all the breath from her lungs and

My hoof on the trigger

The Pie sisters in the grass I heard them heard Marble gasp and choke on her fear

Hoof on the trigger wrap around feel the resistance

And I was Mac killing my mother

And I was my father killing himself

Brace for kickback

And I was Pinkie killing my grief

Her grief

Our grief

And we were killing the bear

And

BLAM

VI: Acceptance

I remember thinking that the whole "five stages of grief" thing was a load of hooey after my parents died.

It’s not that I wasn’t angry. Or sad. Or wanted them back.

It was that last one. That lofty goal of Acceptance.

It doesn’t ever seem possible. It feels like a distant, unreachable goal invented by some quack doctor, some shrink, to make you feel guilty for not being better already. Not going back to normal. Another clever way to torture yourself when you’re already crying so hard you’re dry heaving up the dinner you never ate and you’re laying in a sweat-stain puddle and you just feel like it would be easier to never love anyone ever again, or maybe die.

My Granny always likened it to a field of landmines. When you first start clearing a field of landmines, there’s one just about everywhere you step. Everything hurts all the time because you’re always stepping on a landmine, and that mine is blowing up the others in a horrible chain reaction, and the hurt is so constant that all you can do is sit still and hope that nothing explodes.

But time goes on. And the more landmines that blow up, the fewer there are to step on.

And soon enough, you’re crawling into bed in the evening and you realize that nothing exploded all day today.

That’s what acceptance is, I think.

It’s not going back to normal. Because honestly, even if you clear away every last stubborn landmine, your field is still gonna be torn to hell and back.

Acceptance is when, for a long time, nothing explodes. And it’s only late at night, when you remember how long it’s been since your mind blew up, that you think about it until you’re crying so hard you can’t breathe.

But even then, you can recover.

I think it’s going to be a long time before Pinkie goes a day without setting off a landmine. But that’s okay, because the other thing they don’t tell you about the five stages of grief is that you’re not broken for living through them. You’re not useless until you Accept and Move On.

You’re fine.

You’re just grieving.

And that’s allowed for as long as you need it.

Pinkie’s mane hasn’t puffed back up yet. Not really. Not the way it was. But I think she missed it, and so she’s started putting these big loose curls in it. It doesn’t bounce the way it used to, but it flows down her shoulders real nice, and it has some motion back in it. Some life. I’m sure Rarity would have better words for it than me.

Today, though, she’s left her mane pin-straight and silky smooth. No kinks or loops. Just long and heavy. Part of it is tied up in a black ribbon to match the one she’d tied around her neck.

Despite it all, she seems lighter. She walks from room to room not feeling that weight as keenly as she had the week before. Only occasionally stepping on a landmine.

Maybe it was all the distraction. This was something of a party, after all.

I don’t know that she sees it that way.

Just then, Pinkie brushes past someone, holding an empty tray. Her step is light, almost bouncy, and she catches my eye and gives me a little lopsided smile.

I smile back. I can’t muster much of one, but I try.

She says something to some fellow I’ve never seen before, then squeezes her way through the crowd to join me in the kitchen.

“I guess ponies really like my blackberry cream puffs,” she comments, a twinge of joy in the remark. “I think I’ve got way better sweet treats out there, but… well, it was my mom’s favorite, I guess.”

She catches my eye again.

I look down at the floor and chuckle nervously. “Well, then, that’s mighty sweet, I’d say.”

She seems to agree. Something in the flourish she adds to her motion as she produces another ready-made tray from the fridge. It makes my heart skip a beat.

Pinkie pulls the aluminum foil off the tray and crumples it into a ball. She’s just about to swing back into the heart of the wake when she looks down at the cream puffs and… hitches. I don’t know exactly how to describe it. It’s just a little hiccup as she stares down at the neat rows of pastries.

“Um…” She sets the tray back down. “Jackie, would you mind taking these out for me? I think I’m gonna get some fresh air.”

I knew that look.

That was a landmine.

“Sure thing, sugar cube,” I say, reaching over her to pick up the tray. “In fact, I think I might join you. It’s getting a little stuffy in here.”

Pinkie looks at me.

“If that’s okay, a’course,” I add.

Pinkie smiles. “Yeah. That’s okay.”

I weave my way through throngs of relatives with the tray high over my head. Wakes are a funny thing--so many of the ponies here are just friends of friends, folks who don't even have the wherewithal to be sad, and yet feel guilty for being bored or uncomfortable or confused.

A few of them look my way. A lot of them don't. I spot Fluttershy sat beside Marble on an overstuffed couch, and wonder how they’re communicating at all. Guess it doesn’t matter, really.

Rainbow Dash and Twilight are crumpled together halfway up the flight of stairs. Funny how neither of them quite know what to do with themselves in a situation like this. They're just juggling food and drink, trading bites and sips of things and looking out over the crowd every now and then.

Twilight catches my eye and offers a weak smile. I give her a nod. She looks back at Rainbow.

Rarity is sticking by Maud, their odd little friendship bubbling up now as they chatter about… I dunno. Rocks, I guess. I still can’t read Maud so good, but she seems engaged, at least. Distracted.

That's pretty nice, I think.

I eventually wind my way through all the strange ponies and slide the tray of cream puffs between two other trays of goodies Pinkie whipped up the night before. Like it was nothing. It’s like a special bonus talent of hers. Though, being honest, I think Pinkie’d find it in her to sprout wings and horn if it’d get a laugh out of someone who needed it.

She’s special like that. The rules don’t quite apply to her the way they do the rest of us.

I get the tray settled and turn around, just barely dodging a rather elderly relative who seemed to have a little trouble seeing.

“Sorry, dearie.”

“That’s alright. You be careful, now.”

I tip my hat and brush past her.

The house is still small as it always was, but it feels like a gotdang labyrinth trying to get back to the front door. After some creative hoofwork, I find myself back at the kitchen’s threshold, and decide to duck out the side.

The screen door claps softly behind me.

Pinkie is standing by the banister. She has one forehoof up on the rail, running it gently back and forth as she looks out over the farm towards the woods. She looks back over her shoulder at me.

“Howdy,” she says.

“Hey now,” I say. “That’s my thing.”

She smiles at that. Pats the rail beside her.

I pull my hat off my head and sidle up against her. The summer sun, at its peak, warms the very end of my snout that sticks out from underneath the awning. I close my eyes and breathe deep.

Smells like warm dirt out here. Familiar to any farmer, rock or apple.

I wipe my forehead clear of sweat and jam my hat back on.

“How’re you doin’?” I ask softly.

Pinkie sighs and pulls a wavy lock of her mane out of her face. She pulls it sorta straight when she does that. Pulls the wave out of it. “I’m okay,” she says. “I’m… sad.”

I nod. "It’d be weird if y’weren’t.”

“Yeah.”

"Yeah."

She’s quiet.

“How long did it take you?” she asks.

I look at her. “To—” and the question hasn’t even left my mouth before I realize what she means. “Oh.”

She gives me a look. Shame and hope in one.

“Uh… I dunno,” I say. “It ain’t that simple. I mean, I s’pose I did more’n just lay in bed before the month was out. I didn’t start talking again for a while after that. And after that, I was still mean and angry and…"

I lose the words.

It's all a mish-mash. All the stages blended up in a thin, beige mush. Its aftertaste still lingers in my mouth.

"Even now I still… I still wake up wanting my mom sometimes.”

I whisper it.

Pinkie hears it anyways. “Oh.”

I see her distant stare and suddenly my own hurt doesn't matter. I shake my head, make a little dismissive sound, and shrug loosely.

“But I guess I go most days without thinking of ‘em,” I say, quickly and casually. “And that means I go most days without missin' ‘em. I think the thing that helps is to remember the good stuff, y'know? Make an effort to stop missin' and start celebratin'."

Pinkie nods her head slowly, as if she's pulling the words apart. It's only in the silence that I realize what I said.

"I'm sorry," I say. "Sounds stupid now I've said it out loud."

She shakes her head. “Not stupid.”

"Oh, it’s what everyone says," I mutter. "You could get that advice from dang near anyone."

“Well, then, it’s stupid when they say it,” she says. “But I believe you.”

I look at her.

She looks pretty, but that’s a stupid thing to say, too.

I say it anyway.

“You look pretty today.”

She blushes, but she doesn't smile. "I don't really think black is my color."

"Ah, who cares?" I pull my hat off my head, give it a dusting, and chuck it into a nearby rocking chair. "You're right, you'd look even nicer in blue. That don't mean you don't look nice right now."

She uses her sister's trick and disappears behind her hair.

“Jackie?”

“Yeah?”

She's quiet. Searching for the words for the very clear thought she'd had.

“Thank you."

Thank you.

For what?

For nothing and for everything.

I hardly did a thing. I stood around and laid around and fixed a table and her closet door. I changed a light bulb and planted little balls of aluminum foil in the rocks.

But I also killed a bear.

Or someone did. One of us. Both of us, maybe.

I can still feel the kickback. The ache in my shoulder.

“Aw. Shucks.” I look down. It wasn't what I'd wanted to say, but I guess it'll have to do. “Wasn’t nothin’. I’m always here for you. You’re… you’re my friend, Pinkie.”

She looks back at me, her face still all screwed up from looking out at the bright, hot fields. Then her eyes readjust to the shade, and her brows soften, and her pupils balloon to more than twice what they were as she looks at me.

And the word ‘friend’ doesn’t seem like quite enough.

“You’re my friend,” I say again, as if saying it right will fix the way it came out the first time. “And… I dunno. You’re family, too.”

Pinkie smiles. Not her usual face-splitting grin, but a genuine one nonetheless. “Did my sisters tell you about how I said I was going to marry them when I was little?”

I can’t help it. A snort sneaks out. A little laughter after that. “No, they sure didn’t,” I say. “All three of ‘em?”

“All three.” Pinkie hangs her head, partly in shame and partly to hide the embarrassed smile that twists up her face. “Yeah… it’s silly, but I wish I could go back and be like that again. There’s just so many rules when you’re a grown-up.”

I don’t say anything.

She looks up suddenly. “Not that I wanna marry my sisters!”

“I know!”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“I know.”

“I just mean—” She huffs softly. “I don’t know what I mean. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I say.

A little breeze blows over the farm, whirls through the porch, and lifts Pinkie’s mane off her neck. It’s a warm breeze, but the motion is… something. We lean into it together.

“I think the most important thing in the world is to be with ponies who feel like family,” I say at last.

She looks at me.

“Is that what you meant?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, see?" I nudge her gently on the shoulder, and she sways. "I knew what you were tryna say.”

Satisfied, I push away from the rail. The porch moans under my hooves as I settle my back against the banister and lean on one elbow.

Pinkie just watches.

“That’s the point, anyway.”

She blinks. “Of what?”

“Of being with ponies,” I say. “Of… of finding ponies to be with. I dunno. It’s all to build a family, ain’t it? However that looks. Like brothers and sisters, or like friends, or like… I dunno.”

She’s quiet for a long moment.

I look into the house through the dirty kitchen window. Not much to look at in there but the table I’d fixed, and the treats Pinkie had baked resting on them. A quiet scene, but one built by the two of us.

“Like… us?” Pinkie suggests.

And I, of course, think she means the six of us.

“Yeah. Of course. What else would we be?”

And she looks at me, and I realize that ain’t exactly what she meant.

“Or… like, us us?”

Pinkie swallows. “It’s silly.”

“Never.”

"It is."

"No, it ain't."

"It's only because you spent all this time taking care of me…" she murmurs. "I just--I just cling onto anyone who… y'know."

I do. But I pretend I don't. "Who takes care of you?"

She sighs. "Who helps. Or… or is there for me."

I nod. "Yeah. I get that."

I do.

I really do.

"Jackie?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I just be honest with you for a second?"

I give her a look.

Her face flushes. "Oh. Right."

"Go on, Pinks," I say.

She nods. "I think, um…" She trails off for a second, looking out at the farm. "I think there's a lot of parts of me that I never took the time to understand."

I raise a brow. "Oh yeah?"

"I am who I am. I've always been me," she continues. "But I think I was me so easily for so long that I almost never thought about it. Unless something… happened."

I knew what she meant by 'something'. I'd seen a something or two in the time I'd known her.

"I give myself a lot of credit for understanding other ponies, but I think I only ever understood the happy side of them." She looks down at her own hooves, turns them over, really inspects them. "I don't think I know me very well at all. Even when I'm happy. I don't know why, though."

I think about that.

I think back on all the time I've spent with Pinkie as I look at her face, and as she looks out at the farm.

She's different. Any fool can see that. Not just from before her parents disappeared, but from the first time I met her. She's… more. She's older. She's not quite as simple as she once was.

I wonder why that is.

"I couldn't say," I tell her. "I don't think there's always a 'why'. Sometimes there just is."

She nods.

She thinks about it. I think she thinks about it, at least.

"Jackie?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I be honest with you again?"

I only chuckle.

"You're really important to me."

I bite the inside of my cheek. "Well, you're really important to me, too."

"No, like--" She cuts herself off. I see her hooves curl as she tries to find the words. All she says is, "not like that." So quiet, and yet so strong. So forceful and certain.

I reach around in front of her and hook my hoof around her shoulder. Before she can say anything, I've pulled her close. She's practically sitting in front of me now.

She doesn't look at me. Her face is screwed up like she's staring into the sun but she's just staring down at the wood floor of the porch, her cheeks a blotchy pink-red from anger and embarrassment and sadness and everything other thing going on inside her.

"I know" I say. "And you're important to me, too."

"Not like--"

"I love you," I say.

She goes stiff. For a moment, too shocked to do anything at all. Then the disappointment washes over her, and she almost tries to correct me, but I get in first.

"Not like that," I say. "Not like how we all love each other. Not like how you love your sisters, or how I love my parents. A different way."

She looks at me. "How?"

I hold her gaze for a beat before I tear myself away. "I don't know any better than you do," I say. "We have a lot in common that way. Getting our lines all blurry and breaking all the rules."

She pulls away. Only slightly. Hardly felt.

My heart stops because suddenly I could be wrong. I could have read it all wrong--her sisters, too. Could have insulted her by saying that the way she loves her family is the same as the way she loves me is the same as love love is the same as--

She kisses me.

It's quick. It's scared. It's a dry, soft peck on the cheek, with lips trembling and hooves trembling and everything so uncertain and so embarrassed and just barely making it there at all.

But, even though it's all those things, it restarts my heart.

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay."

"No, it's not. I need to stop--"

"It's what I meant."

She stops.

"It's okay," I repeat, and my heart is in my throat as I say it. "It's… that's what I meant."

Her eyes are wide.

Her mane flows down her shoulders in soft waves and curls. Not the same bounce, but still with some chaos. Some originality.

She doesn't smile, but I don't think it's because she's not happy. Just blindsided.

She reaches up and grabs me. Quick. Blink of an eye, and she's squeezing me tight and I'm almost rocking backwards and tumbling off the porch.

I grab her back.

It makes me laugh. Not a funny laugh, like Pinkie usually gets. The one that sneaks out when you're happy and relieved and surprised and all you can do is laugh in little breathy bursts.

She laughs too.

It's a beautiful sound.

I hadn't realized just how much I'd missed it.