Here, in the core of everything she's ever cared about, the sky above is the same earth as below, and I can't imagine a more fitting place to corral her joys away. The moment my hooves touch warm verdant grass, I see fruit fields and farmlands folding up beyond the horizons—for they are the horizons, until they are not—and ultimately wrapping around to cast a ceiling that is simply another neighborhood's floor. I pause in my approach to the nearby ranch, tilting my muzzle up and gazing at crystalline lakes and flowing rivers that demarcate the different emerald properties from one another—except they are all one property, belonging to one pony and yet everypony, a family overflowing everywhere all at once, branching from and back to the one tree that ever needed to be planted.
It's simple. It's beautiful, elaborate, and warm. But—first and foremost—it is simple. Like she is. Like we all try to be. But fail.
This is not my first time here. I pray to the prairies beyond that it won't be my last.
My approach is as lazy as ever. This is a heaven where all the chores are done and all the meals are cooked and all the pies are baked and all the sorrows are shepherded off to shadows unknown. All measure of worry is sequestered into dark patches that I cannot venture to see. In such a spacious hollow of terrestrial splendor—precisely what illuminates it all?
She does.
Even from a gallop away, her radiance is blinding. I follow the music of her voice, approaching the epicenter of this realm like a blind mare wandering through an enchanted forest. Every tree hangs with crimson bounty. The path ahead of me is rich with plenty, eternally awaiting a grand, rapturous harvest. I can taste the fruit through my nose. Every breath. Every heartbeat. Delicious and pure. And her song saturates—her playful drawl and welcoming warbles.
“Better not wait too long or they won't be ripe no more!” Ahead of me—in a twirl and a toss of her mane—she hooves baskets full of produce to fellow equines and sends them on their merry way. She is living gold, full of freckles and friendship. Ten thousand years have dusted the depths of my mind, and it's still not enough to fathom the weight of her generosity. “So dun be too fastidious-like, y'all! Sit down and have yer fill! Nothin' is more delicious than the here and now! And—if I do say so myself—I reckon it's all plucked as fresh as can ever be! Just fit for a princess! You can mark my words!”
Friends, sisters, brothers—they all laugh and thank her for her hard work and labor. I spot droves of ponies gathering at an endless picnic table that wraps around the world and back to where I arrive at the sacred entrance to her solitary ranch. There are enough plates here to feed civilization ten times over, and every juice-stained muzzle above its place is smiling, fit, and full—but not nearly as much as her.
“Whew-wee! Boy howdy, if I dun admire a dinner that's served right on time!” She turns, her emerald eyes sweeping, bathing, then cascading all over me. A delightful rinse, without fail. “Well, good afternoon, sugarcube!” She says, as if it's the first time she's ever seen me. Of all the mortal innocence of that fragile, precocious world, hers flows the furthest. “Are ya fixin' to have yerself a plate of vittles? If so, kick yer horseshoes off and grab a seat!” She winks. Freckles like comets, flashing and returning and accompanying her country hum. “There's plenty for everypony!”
“A thousand apologies,” I say. I keep my smile reserved—a space beyond this warm, warm sphere that cocoons her. “But I did not come here to partake—at least not in the sustenance.”
“Pfffft! 'Sustenance?!'” She slaps her knees and guffaws. Even a heart as old as mine lifts with each squeaky chortle. “Did ya just fall off the train from Manehattan or somethin'?”
“The truth is a great deal more complicated.”
“Wait a tick...” She squints, those green pools bubbling with curiosity. “...there's a mighty fancy air about ya, miss. Have you been around these parts before?”
“Oh.” I sigh. Swimming. “A few times.”
“If I may be so bold, reckon ya got a regal taste to yer voice.”
I arch an eyebrow. “Is that a fact...?”
“Oh!” She jumps back so hard her hat nearly falls off. “Smack my brow! Miss Appleloosa! From that there pageant a few years back! Ya really did look pretty as a poem—what with that wreath of moonflowers you was wearin'! Am I right or am I right?!”
Another exhale. I can already feel this moment slipping. It only ever vanishes faster. I savor the last flicker of warmth with a soft breath. “I would say that's enough of a truth to suffice.”
“Ain't no such thang as a sufficient truth, Miss Applelossa.” She reaches into a bottomless barrel of apples and grabs a sample. “There's the way things is. No stretch to it.” She rubs the fruit against her fuzzy coat, adding an extra glint to its already immaculate shine. “If there happens to be a call for hidin' and shamin'—well...” She bequeaths me with the apple, along with a motherly smile. “...all that needs to be done is for us to change... then there's no need for any of that other nonsense, ya hear?”
I take the apple from her. The reflection on the surface has no face. I wonder who—or what—she sees when I arrive... if this “Miss Appleloosa” has nearly as much to regret about... and if it all too melts away nearly as easily when her consciousness drifts through this happenstance heaven.
“You, more than anypony else, deserves to know the truth,” I say in a dull tone.
“Now just what are ya goin' on about, Missy?” she side-chuckles.
“Namely the fact...” I look up at her. I must be soft. I don't want this place to collapse as well. I've witnessed that too much over the eons. “...that you will be seeing far less of me for a while.”
“Oh?” Her ears curve. It's the first dip in her otherwise ecstatic countenance that I've witnessed since arriving. “Duty's callin' ya elsewhere, darlin'?”
“Quite the opposite, really,” I say. “My sister and I. We are... … … retiring, for a lack of a better term.”
“Pffft! Puh-lease, sugarcube.” The dazzle in her eyes is the same as her freckles. She hoofs another smattering of apples to even more visiting neighbors before pointing them in the direction of the equatorial picnic table. “Just how can anypony retire from bein' a beautiful, purdy cowfilly?”
My heart falters. I almost lose my anchor, threatening to scatter this subconscious projection into a million broken pieces. Only now have I fully remembered what I will miss the most about this place. Such pure, unmitigated, heartfelt admiration—for all that lives and tastes and works to live and taste another day.
“I suppose it's far too complicated to explain.” I swallow a lump down my phantom throat. I can't revel in those emerald pools. Not anymore, or else I might melt permanently into this place. “And... it doesn't mean that I will never ever return to this... domain.”
“Heh. Well that's a relief!” She leans back against a tree and tilts the brim of her hat back. “A friendly face like yers would be a shame to be missin' out on, regularly...!”
“It's yet to be determined who... or what will take on the labors that I have personally seen to nightly since time immemorial...” I gaze off at the horizon that bends to become the sky and then the sunrise and then the sunset and then back here. “And it won't be my first sabbatical, as it were.” A delicate breath. “I was gone for a very... very long time before.”
“The way I see it...” She shrugs before plucking a string of grass from the soil below and chewing it betwixt her teeth. “...so long as yer sure of yerself and what yer doin' for other ponies, then yer right where you need to be.” This is followed by a sharp wink and an even sharper smile. “But you'll be missed somethin' awful, all the same.”
I look at her straight. It is here—in this sanctum that she's conjured—that I somehow feel the smallest. If only she knew what brought me back here. If only I could say it.
“It fulfills me.”
She cocks her head curiously at that. “Miss...?”
“All those years that I was gone—all the generations abandoned under the veil of abject darkness—I was not certain just what state of collective subconscious I would return to. I had pondered over the countless nightmares that had been fostered in my absence, the terrors and fears and abysmal pits that I would have to rescue so many hapless minds from. And then—on my first night of governance—the first trot I made... … … was to here.”
“Is that so...?” Her ears twitch. Awaiting a crown, perhaps—except she already has one. I could not be any more humbled. “Was it everything you hoped for?”
“It was...” I start. “It is...” I stumble. “... … … warm.” I gaze off, imagining a new moon, forever frozen in darkness, save for the tears. Frozen. Still there. “Warmer than any flame of war in all the wretched world's epochs and...” A click of the tongue. Dull music, compared to her. “...I realized the nightmares were only ever... me.”
“Now, that dun seem quite right, Miss Appleloosa.” Her face is long. Soft. A new pool to drown this hollow home, and perhaps that's why it ever had a vacuum to begin with. It was in want of apple filling, delicious and wholesome in all the right places, so that there's no room left for my doubts. “You seem like alright ponyfolk to me. And even if you made a few mistakes along the way—reckon t'ain't nothin' so big that they can't be fixed.”
“...and so I came back...” I look at her again. The tiniest I've ever been. A little pony in her shadow. Perhaps a seed to contemplate the tree she branched from, but ultimately hopeless. Wanting. Weening. “Again and again and again. I... I could not help myself, I suppose. You... have given me so much hope... merriment... and truth these past few years of night, Miss Applejack.” I stand as tall as I can, which is also deliciously futile. But it no longer pains me. A portion of this upcoming retirement is to measure ourselves among mortals—my sister and I—and I can't thank a more apt teacher. “I wish there was a way I could properly thank you... especially since I... w-won't be blessed with visiting quite as often as I would desire to.”
She merely shakes her smiling head. “No need to go into all that hogwash, ma'am.” She pulls her hat off and bows. Gold touches earth—and the sky ripples with her voice. “It's simply our hospitality.”
I smile. “And what fine hospitality it is.”
“Now...” She stands back up from the tree, slaps her hat back on her head, and motions towards the barn. “...since we've gotten that out of the way... won't ya join us for a good ol' fashion hoedown? Everypony from a hundred towns over have come to join the fun! Would be a shame to miss it!”
“I'm afraid I cannot,” I say. “I must be departing now.”
“Awwwww... well, the moment you come back to this here ranch—Miss Appleloosa—you'll be as welcome as the moon in June!”
I open my eyes.
A marble floor stretches beyond the throne.
Dim blue torches illuminate a stretch of polished granite that frames a balcony overlooking the Equestrian countryside. Starlight bathes the pastures and fields in the shadow of the Canterlot mountains. Somewhere—a tiny speck amidst the great gray malaise of it all—a little pony dreams not of yesterday's life or tomorrow's death.
But of now. The space between beats. And the warmth of excitement that comes with contemplating just how right everything is when you're exactly where you need to be.
“I know.”
