The light of the midday moon saw Applejack dragging a large, plush quilt through the cold dirt toward a cart full of zap apples.
Not only zap apples- zap apple jam, zap apple butter, zap apple cider, zap apple juice, and about every zap apple dish Granny could possibly think to make. They were hard to come by, them zap apples, in the sense they were difficult to acquire and even more difficult to use. They didn't, in Applejack's opinion, taste quite as sweet or crunch quite as deliciously as apple apples, the kind that were depicted in images sewn, patched, and embroidered lovingly on Applejack's favorite wagon quilt.
Short clouds of dry dust bloomed in the quilt's wake, and were immediately sucked up into an irate Granny Smith's equally dry nostrils.
She dissolved into a sneezing fit, and the deluge of- ignored- shouting and screaming was stemmed for a blissful moment. Applejack took advantage of it by rolling her eyes.
"YER GONNA GETCHERSELF KILLED!" Granny coughed when she was finished, squinting and shaking her clenched hoof. Her shriveled eyelids struggled with the dust, scraping painfully down her retinas. "You walk inna that castle dressed like that, actin' a fool- an' KABLOOIE!"
Meanwhile, Applejack had arrived at her destination- the apple cart- and was gracefully throwing the quilt over the boxes, crates and baskets full of zap apples. It caught on the air for half a second, gracefully fluttering, and settled comfortably with a sigh and a puff of dust.
"I just think I oughta let the princess know," Applejack said, beating yet more dust off her simple, pink linen dress (that was made first and foremost for square dancin'), "we're farmers, not wizards. It ain't natural, livin' like this."
"HAVE YOU LOST YOUR SEED-SPITTIN' MIND?!"
"I told you, I'm just gonna try and talk some sense into her! It ain't like I'm askin' her to abdicate! I don't got a death wish. She's gotta at least appreciate our product if she's willin' to order this much plum outta nowhere." Applejack spat on the ground next to one moderately ornate wheel. "Trust me. I'll get her to see reason if it's the last thing I ever do."
"IT WILL BE, ON ACCOUNT A' THE FACT YOU'LL BE ROTTIN' IN A DUNGEON THE REST O' YER LIFE!" Granny bellowed. She turned bodily back toward the barn, spine cracking. Applejack winced. "BIG MACINTOSH, WHERE ARE YEH?! COME N' RESTRAIN YER SISTER!"
"Ain't no use," he grunted. He was leaning on a fencepost three paces ahead of Applejack's cart, wearing the yoke for his plow like a vestigial limb. With the harvest over and the rest of the orchard barren and dark as a desert night, he was out of work and out of bucks to give.
Granny kept carrying on, even as her granddaughter slipped under the harness and pulled the cart away from her with a heaving grind of wheels on uneven ground.
Applejack wasn't all that upset. She didn't want herself to leave either- her heart was all twisted up and sour in her chest, from fear and who knows what else- but she had always been stubborn. She wanted to change something, and she was going to try, even if it only did as much as a bit down a gutter.
She had to try.
As she passed Big Mac out the gate, his eyes followed her, and in a voice about as soft as she'd ever heard, he said: "Good luck."
-
Even as sick as Applejack was of the night time, she had to admit that the princess's castle, stark against a starry blue backdrop, was darn purty.
It was also imposing and ominous, but that didn't make it any less beautiful.
Heart pounding an infinite drumroll in her throat, Applejack dragged her cart out of the trees and onto the castle path.
She had to haul her cart up a huge flight of stairs up to the pair of great double doors punched into the wall. Immediately upon her heaving, panting arrival, a guard pony demanded her name, address, and an itemized list of her cargo, his slit pupils piercing her skin from under the ornate crest of his helmet. He ordered his comrades to search her belongings, and soon enough she had a whole battalion digging around under her quilt like termites and lechers.
"What's this?" one of them barked, a big lumbering pale one with blue eyes and nicks and holes in the stretched out skin on his wings.
A bit of his mane stuck out of his helmet, tickling his neck. It shimmered like a gemstone in the artificial lights, a mesmerizing, glittering pastel rainbow, the colors changing with every angle, just that one little tiny lock of hair.
She could hardly imagine what the rest of his head looked like.
With a horrible jangle, he withdrew her banjo. A string was clearly broken.
"S'an instrument, sir."
He glowered at her. She cleared her throat.
"For playin' music."
"I know what it is," he snapped. "This wasn't on your inventory."
"Ain't like it's a weapon. I'd carry it anywhere else if it were convenient, sir."
"Moonstone, relax," said another guard, a wiry one with a slate blue coat and ruddy eyes who was tilting a jar of jam in front of his snout and squinting. "If it's not dangerous, I don't think it's an issue. Just don't go around playing it in the halls when everpony's sleeping, alright, little lady?"
"Yes, sir," Applejack ground out.
"All right, you're all set. The throne room's a straight shot ahead, there'll be a servant at the door you can ask for directions. Good luck!"
"Little lady. I'll show you a little lady," she grumbled as she heaved her cart gradually towards yet another set of stairs.
The castle was bustling with ponies- the working kind, toiling at the walls and standing guard and barking orders at haggard servants, and the other kind, decked out in dresses and suits sparkling with opals and quartz and seashells like galaxies in the moonlight.
They were pretty, granted, but much like the view of the castle, they made her legs itch to turn around and go home.
The servant at the door looked awfully familiar, but Applejack couldn't remember where she'd seen her. She took one look at Applejack's dusty, simple dress and scowled a subtle, dainty scowl, her eyes dragging over it like she was reading a particularly gruesome scene in a novel. Applejack cleared her throat noisily.
"I'm here with a zap apple delivery."
"I see. The kitchens will be that way. Take a right, a left, another right, and then when you're done, leave out the back, if you please."
This was it. Applejack drew herself up to her full height and swiped her hat off her head, pressing it humbly to her chest.
"Actually, I was wonderin' if I could get an audience with the princess."
The servant gasped. She expelled her next sentence with a splutter and no small amount of spit, her eyes bugging out of her head.
"An audience? With the princess? You!?"
"Yes ma'am. I've got a few samples here for her to try, if she's keen on that. She can send me and this consarned cart home if they ain't to her taste, but I'd imagine she'd like to know if they were a'fore she started feedin' the castle on 'em."
"Ridiculous! Absolutely ridiculous!" spat the servant, as if Applejack hadn't spoken. "Have you lost your mind?! Go down the hall and out of my sight before you start asking me if I can schedule you tea with Nightmare Moon as well-"
Somewhere beyond the doorway, there was a loud boom. The servant shut her snout with an eep and a trite jump.
"Make way!" barked another voice, far away and muffled. Applejack couldn't tell you where she'd heard it, but she definitely had. "Make way for the princess! Guards, at attention!"
The sound of marching hooves drew closer, and there was another slam. The door before her creaked, and then swung open, and the light of the moon mixed with the turquoise flickering of the torches on the wall.
There stood the princess, flanked by two rows of guards, her eyes ranking bored and imperious over the scene in front of her. She let them fall, lazily, on Applejack, whose hat was still clutched to her chest with a trembling hoof.
She looked just the same as when Applejack first saw her, all that time ago.
"Ah. The apples." Her voice was smooth and dark. "It took you long enough."
Applejack's tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth when she tried to open it. "Er- pardon me, ma'a- yer highness, but the zap apple harvest only lasts a day a year. Honest to goodness, I loaded up this cart and hauled it here soon as it was done."
"Wonderful," she said in a tone that implied the opposite. Applejack's favorite quilt was enveloped in bright blue magic and tossed rudely into a wall, where it crumpled with a thud and hit the ground like a murdered animal. A multicolored apple flew through the air. She sniffed it disdainfully.
"It has been.... a long time."
Applejack watched with morbid fascination as her rows of razor teeth sunk into its flesh. A bit of juice slid down her chin.
It was almost cute. She was terrifying, but she had a muzzle and eyes and makeup that was caked on too thickly and a nose that wrinkled when she bit into an apple.
"Hm." She licked her lips. "It isn't a mushroom."
"Is that a fact," Applejack muttered under her breath.
Her movements uncoordinated, she meandered over to the cart, closed her mouth around the handle of a basket with a checkered dish towel tucked over the contents and approached Nightmare Moon with her head held high, although her knees knocked together and the sweat on her belly was cold. She hoped with all her might she'd have good enough luck to live through this.
"Beggin' your pardon," she said sweetly, voice high, tongue brushing the handle of the basket as she spoke. "My granny's a whiz with an oven, and she baked you a few treats for tryin' that might taste a bit better than the raw ingredient, on account of the sugar."
"Sugar?" the princess scoffed. She stared down her nose at Applejack. "What exactly do you take me for?"
Her tone was scornful, but the look in her eyes was mild. Intrigued. It emboldened Applejack.
"Someone with taste buds?" Applejack closed her eyes, trying to keep her expression cheerful, although she was bracing herself to be struck by lightning or dissolved in a magical beam. "Not a pony in Ponyville could bring themselves to turn down my family's cookin'."
Applejack stumbled forward as Nightmare Moon's magic yanked the basket out of her grip. Her teeth ached, and she held a hoof to her mouth as she watched the princess peel away the towel.
She took a small bite of the apple fritter. Chewed. Paused. Looked at Applejack again.
"You say your entire family can cook like this?"
"Well- most of 'em."
"Good. You will be staying here in the castle for as long as I see fit. Cook these apples for me well. You are dismissed."
"W-wait-"
Nightmare Moon looked at her and her throat locked up.
"Yes, my beloved subject?"
Applejack should have said it then. She didn't know when she'd be able to speak to the princess again. She didn't know how long she'd survive working here, away from her family, an emotion far beyond the annoyance and exasperation she felt right then festering in her heart... but in that moment, surrounded by ponies with slit pupils and looking the mare who could color the sky with a swish of her horn straight in the eyes- her courage failed her.
"S'nothing."
"I should hope so. Take those apples to the kitchen at once, and it would do you well to make yourself at home there. Now leave me- I have business to attend to in the northern wastes."
With a flick of her sharp wings, Nightmare Moon led her marching guards down the stairs Applejack had just ascended, their clanking armor filling out the sound of their hooves pounding the stone. Once they reached the bottom, they all took off at once like bats from a cave, scattered and silent.
"I guess I'll go change out the accursed lavender, then, if you're leaving," Applejack heard the purple-maned servant hiss.
She sighed, hooked herself up to her cart, and dragged her sorry self down the hall to the kitchens.
Applejack couldn't fall asleep when she was supposed to. She wasn't happy to be there, to say the least. On top of that, her bed was too soft- nothing like the hay-stuffed mattresses back at the farm- and the bedclothes were too thin. Where was the heavy quilt laid overtop three crochet blankets and a sheet?
All the lights went out at bedtime.
Applejack's new quarters were, to her surprise, a might bigger than her bedroom back on the farm. It seemed like less ponies actually lived and worked here than what it looked like, so there was plenty of room to spare. She took a candle holder with a fancy handle off the otherwise barren dresser, the only other item of furniture in the room, and lit it with a match from the matchbox in the pocket of her dress, which also contained an all-purpose swiss knife and a glob of tree sap wrapped up in tinfoil- gum, if she got hungry and had nothing to eat.
The castle was smaller than it looked, too, but still a lot bigger than the farmhouse. You couldn't hear ponies snoring or rummaging around for a midnight snack through a foot of stone, the walls didn't creak, there were no pigs honking or hens clucking in pens outside the windows. It was quiet save for the vast echoing clop, clop of her ambling hooves. Quiet and dark.
Applejack would be ashamed to admit it, but she got lost very quickly.
"S'pose I'll just wander in circles till I get back t'where I came from," she muttered around her candle.
Her eyes darted from corner to dark corner, toward the seam of the wall and the floor as the light of her candle passed over it like a ship in the night.
It felt as if Nightmare Moon would ooze out when she wasn't looking, crawl through the dark until all at once her power was pressed up against all the flesh in the room and the ceiling bulged and Applejack was... dead.
Applejack wanted to live to see another harvest, another cider season, another sunny day selling apples in Ponyville square. That was what this was all about. She wanted to believe she had the resolve to fight for it, but she was just one pony- she could kick the shit out of a varmint, to be sure, but Nightmare Moon wasn't just any varmint, and if she tried to imply she was fonder of the old regime she'd be a baked apple before she could say 'back in my day...'
Her candle illuminated a wooden window pane. She couldn't see much outside, just courtyard- everfree trees, alive despite it all, and a large statue of the princess. Looming over all that, the moon.
It made Applejack's heart twist to look at it. There was a mare in that moon, but it wasn't the same mare who'd lit up her parents' wedding, it wasn't the one she'd looked up at sitting on the porch in Granny's forelegs, listening to a lullaby. That one was a statue below it, reared up to charge but never putting her hooves down, cold and unkind.
Sighing, she took a step past the window, and her candlelight fell upon the face of a bat pony.
Applejack hollered like she hadn't hollered in years. Her teeth released her candle, it clattered to the floor and went out with a fizzle. She panicked, thrashed and bucked the air like a mare possessed- before she heard screaming laughter and stopped dead in her tracks.
There was a clank as the guard hit the floor, laughing so hard it sounded painful. Her eyes adjusted slowly, the static darkness receding until she could see his ever-so-slightly luminescent yellow eyes flashing open and closed as he rolled around on the thin carpet in the middle of the hall, wings folding and splaying out depending on how close they were to being crushed.
"That's enough, now," she gritted out. If there was any light at all, she'd be worried about her cheeks going pink. "Aw, stop it, ya big gas barrel-"
"Sorry," the guard gasped, "sorry, sorry, it's just- oh my god, you scared the shit out of me! Hooo boy."
"I- I scared you?"
"Yeah, I was falling asleep!"
"Y'aint nocturnal?"
"Bro, I don't know if you noticed, but it's always night time."
Applejack doffed her hat in frustration. "Don't make fun a'me!" she spat.
The corner of the guard's bright eye turned up- she couldn't see his mouth, but he was smiling.
He hauled himself on the ground with a sound like clinking water pipes and took a smooth step forward to sweep up her hat with his wing. He deposited into his begreaved hoof and took another step forward to gently place it back atop her head.
He winked- and then snorted, and dissolved into laughter again.
Applejack wasn't amused- she was annoyed and exasperated and confused... but she wasn't scared anymore, either.
Face flushed from the fright and the embarrassment, heart still on its way to calming down, she shook out her warming legs and grumbled under her breath.
"I guess every kind's got its fair share a' lunatics..."
She leaned down to pick up her unfortunate candle. The poor thing was stuck to the carpet by a goop of warm, hardening wax. She put a hoof down for leverage and peeled it off.
The guard stopped laughing with a contented sigh.
"You're the apple cart mare, right?" he said, wiping a tear from his eye. "What are you doing up?"
"Applejack," she said, "and I was just takin' a walk. Couldn't sleep." She pulled out a match, lit it, and held it up to the candle- but it was hopeless. The top was mangled beyond repair, the wick buried in a mound of wax. She sighed and shook the match until it went out.
"Lemme throw that away for you," chirped the guard. He snatched the candle out of her hoof and started to walk away- but stopped to turn his head and tell her "I'm Stalacflight, by the way. See ya later!"
"Hey, wait- can I ask you for some-"
He took flight and zipped around the corner.
"-directions."
Author's Note
i wish i had motivation to write this whole story in one go but idk if itll ever get finished... im really proud of the concept though. not a writer so the execution's probably not perfect :)
