Equestria's End

Chapters

In Media Res
In the Halls, II
In the Halls, I

In Media Res

Once upon a time, there was a little pony who didn’t want to feel quite so lonely any more.

But, of course, there’s more to the tale. You see, he didn’t want the company of others. That wasn't his interest. No, what he wanted wasn't entirely not to feel lonely. What he truly wanted was to get rid of loneliness itself.

Now there are some creatures who can live without others just fine. There’re creatures in this world who are happy that the only face they see each day is their own reflected in a mirror. But ponies aren’t like that. Not one bit.

A pony needs the company of others like a sound needs the air, like the day needs the sun. Like a changeling needs love or a windigo needs hate. And so this little pony’d look out at the laughing groups, and feel jealous. He’d find his mind straying at idle hours towards the idea of being like them, happy amongst the company of others. He’d find himself lying awake at night with the caustic ache of knowing your future perfectly clawing at his chest.

And he hated it. He hated every bitter, soul-tearing moment of it. He hated that he was being forced to feel this way without any choice of his own, that he was being made to feel what he knew he had never wanted. And in the twisted holds of his heart, he hated the very drive that made him feel lonely; more so, in fact, than he hated being lonely itself.

He hated it enough that he’d do anything to get rid of it.

And so he made a plan.

Ten

Rarity huffed out once, her breath fogging up the window's glass. She tugged the curtains closed before turning round and returning to her previous distraction of pacing about the cafe’s shadowy innards. It had been night outside, a bright, unnaturally red night that was filled to the brim with ponies: some laughing manically, some sobbing openly; a few carrying wagons piled high with a mismatch of items large and small, but most of them carrying nothing whatsoever.

All of them were running.

Rarity reached the end of one circuit and turned around, her back now pointing towards the door leading outside and her eyes staring into the cafe’s darkness. She’d stacked all of the chairs and tables away earlier, giving her a completely clear space to pace about on. Their shapes jumped out at her as she passed, murky and half-formed inside the darkness. A sudden patch of cold caused her to shudder as she walked through it. She’d been here before.

A few seconds later, and Rarity had reached the apex of yet another circuit round the cafe. She stopped, standing quietly in place. The tip of her hoof started tapping impatiently as she frowned, eyes darting blindly about the darkness. She reached out to take the letter from a saddlebag that simply wasn't there.

Nine

There was a light tinkle as somepony opened the door behind her. Rarity stopped what she was doing and turned, pupils widening as they adapted to the outside's glow. There was a unicorn in the doorway; she could tell by the figure’s horn. A tumultuous sound poured in through the open door: the thunderous pounding of hoof against cobblestone and pleading cries for help. A few familiar names were shouted out too, the voices calling them triggering a mild surge of recognition within her. Rarity smothered the emotions before they could spread.

“Twilight?”

“Where are the others?” the unicorn asked, still hanging around the open door uncertainly, head turning this way and that as she looked about the room. "Didn't they get any of the letters I sent them?" Rarity relaxed. That was Twilight; that was her voice.

“I’m afraid that you’ll be getting only little old me, Twilight. Rainbow Dash said she needs at least three more cycles with the zebra, and Applejack’s still chasing after Fluttershy. Goodness knows where the two of them will have gotten to. And Pinkie’s—”

“Still probably off being Pinkie Pie somewhere,” Twilight finished, stepping fully into the room. The door swung slowly shut behind her. Too slowly, unnaturally slowly: as if something was holding it in place and controlling its motion. And yet Twilight's horn was dark.

“Twilight?” Rarity took a step forwards, and Twilight’s features became a little clearer against the gloom. She was wearing some sort of full-body costume, but that hardly mattered to Rarity right now. “Twilight, are you...” She reached up and softly tapped her friend’s horn. “Are you using magic?” Her target snorted.

Eight

“It’s good to see you too, Rarity.”

With a faint smile of amusement on her face—or at least, Rarity supposed it was; the darkness made it hard to tell—Twilight brushed Rarity’s foreleg out of her way as her own hooked up and pulled the two of them firmly together. Rarity stiffened at first, but then relaxed into it after a heartbeat’s pause, her leftmost leg mimicking Twilight’s in sliding over her friend's shoulder. The screams of the ponies in the background grew louder as some creature from the Everfree’s depths roared out. If the two of them heard any of it, they gave no sign.

Twilight's breath felt hot on Rarity's neck, and it brushed against her mane and coat uncomfortably. And yet Rarity relished in the feeling; it had been several weeks since she'd last seen or heard from any of her friends, and cycles upon cycles since they'd last been together, all of them as one. Twilight's letter had been both a surreal and happy thing, like the ending of a penal sentence inside a wide-open gaol. Rarity hadn't been used to being the stranger in the crowd, to having to keep away from social contact. She still wasn't, truth be told.

She wanted to say 'I've missed you', but the words caught in her throat.

Seven

Twilight broke the hug first. Halfway out of it, Rarity stopped her, her hooves clasped tightly onto Twilight’s head. She leaned in, frowning, then jerked back with a gasp.

“In Celestia’s name, Twilight! What in Equestria's happened to your eye?”

Twilight tugged herself back and out of Rarity’s grasp, hoof already up and pulling the eyepatch around her left eye back into place. Her hair fell forwards, covering her face from view as she moved. Rarity realised where she’d seen the clothing before, now: Twilight was aping her future self to a point far beyond what was either literal or acceptable. A small, nagging part of Rarity that she loathed having slyly pointed out that at least her friend had had enough good sense to stay far away from that mane cut.

Eyepatch back in place, Twilight stood up a little straighter. The red light of the outside glimmered off of her rightmost eye; Rarity wondered how'd she managed to miss that before, how she hadn't noticed that only one of Twilight's eyes was shining.

Six

“I traded it,” Twilight said, her voice hard and firm. “It was a good trade. I’ve finally got an idea of what to do next, Rarity. Of where to go next. We've finally got a chance."

“But your eye, Twilight. It was your eye! And... And who? What sort of pony would trade you an eye for... for...” Rarity gasped again, stumbling backwards. She threw Twilight a look containing equal amounts of reproach and horror. “You didn’t... You didn't do this for your magic, did you Twilight?” She shuddered. “Please, please tell me you didn’t—”

“Of course not. Would you relax?” Twilight walked forwards; the light from outside was stronger now, bathing the room in a thick, red glow. Cutlery stacked along a table top underneath the curtained window shone and gleamed as the light danced off them. Twilight turned towards it, her head angling to one side as she appeared to consider the curtains. “How much longer do we have?”

“Half a minute. Maybe more. I... I don’t usually like to watch it to the end.” Rarity smiled, and it was a sad, strange sort of smile, as if the meaning of it had been intentionally lost somewhere between sadness and joy. “I prefer to wake up at the start. Even if it is always a dreary Monday morning, and oh, even if it is always raining. It’s just...” She snorted, softly, the smile still on her face. "Beautiful."

Five

“Erm... Rarity, do you mind if I...” Twilight gestured towards the curtains.

“Oh! No, no, go right ahead. Don’t mind me at all, Twilight; I shall simply turn my back.” Rarity did so. There was the thump of fabric hitting the walls as Twilight tugged the curtains open, and more red light washed into the room.

Rarity held her breath as Twilight prowled about, her hooves knocking into things and disturbing them into a clamorous rattle. There was a clatter worthy of an orchestra as Twilight's clumsiness offended the spoons. Rarity's hoof flew up to her face as she tried to suppress a giggle. She shouldn't be laughing; not now, of all times. This should've been a sombre, quiet time.

And perhaps it would've been, twenty cycles ago.

“Four minutes and a half left, give or take around fifteen seconds. We'll leave when this cycle's ended. It's just too risky to be moving around outside right now.” There was the banging of hooves against the cafe's floor as Twilight walked towards Rarity. The sound stopped suddenly, before starting up a few seconds later with two constant, grinding sounds accompanying it.

Four

Rarity cocked her head to one side, just in time to see a chair sliding its way across the floor all by itself, without the expected glow of unicorn magic.

“You know, you never did get around to telling me quite how you’re managing to do that,” Rarity said, sitting down carefully on the chair Twilight had slid up behind her. She glanced to her side; Twilight was sitting next to her, turned towards the window. The whole of her front was bathed in red. “Care to spill the beans?”

Twilight smirked, her one eye swivelling round to wink at Rarity. “There’s no light around my horn, either. I don’t think my problems with magic are going to be too much of an actual problem until I've been through a few more cycles. I estimate I’ve got around fifty left before I’m out.”

Rarity frowned back at her, though there was a smile dancing round her lips. “Ah ah ah. You've got to actually tell me, Twilight.” She shuffled back into her chair, bones cracking as she stretched out her stiff lower legs. “No wriggling out of this one with talk about what it is rather than how you actually do it. I want to know how.”

Twilight rolled her eye. “Fine. I'll tell you. Control.”

Three

“Control?”

“Control. You see, Rarity, most of the techniques we use to cast magic are... sloppy. The basic method of spellcasting is woefully inefficient, to the point that—” Rarity raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Nothing. I just never thought I’d see the day when you, of all ponies, would be disagreeing with the established order on how to cast magic.” Twilight sat up a little straighter, her body twisting more towards Rarity’s.

“Hey, I’m the mare who wouldn’t keep quiet about Nightmare Moon, remember? I’ve... questioned the established order before.” Rarity’s eyebrow refused to go down. “And there was that other time with Princess Cadance; I wouldn’t keep quiet about that! And I’ve... um...”

“Proposed a few radical changes to Canterlot’s filling system?”

Twilight fumed, but she did so silently. In fact, that was what most of the world was now: Silent. Most of the outside's screaming and cries for help had stopped. They always did around this time.

It's funny how, near the end of something precious, the seconds seem to last for hours.

Two

“I ran across Sweetie Belle this cycle.” Rarity’s voice was quiet, small. All of the earlier mirth that had animated it had vanished. Twilight unfolded her forelegs.

“Oh, Rarity. You didn’t...”

“I did.” Rarity smiled again, her eyes focusing on nothing in particular. “Though I'll confess I didn’t quite mean to. I was just making my way through Ponyville when I bumped into her, and she was just so... so angry with me. I've never seen her quite so angry before. S-she wanted to know where I’d been, a-and she just spoke to me like—” Rarity stopped and breathed out fully; when she spoke again, her voice was calm. Controlled. Firmly under hoof. “Oh, Twilight. It will go back to normal, won’t it? If we can stop this, everything will just be... normal again, right? It won’t be, it can’t be—it just can’t be permanent.”

“Everything’ll be just fine, you wait and see.” Twilight’s hoof patted Rarity slowly on the shoulder. Her white hoof reached up and grabbed hold of it tightly. “How... How many times is that now?”

“Seven.” Twilight’s hoof jerked once, but Rarity’s grip held it in place. “Seven times.” Rarity breathed out again in one long, belated breath.

“Any more, and she’ll try to kill you. You know that, right? We get only seven chances to talk to somepony before they...” Twilight’s tongue darted out, wetting her lips. “You can’t see your sister again, Rarity. I won’t... We can’t afford to lose you, got it? We don't know what'll happen if one of us dies...”

“That's the last thing I want, Twilight. I am hardly one to go willingly. I’ll make sure that it never comes to that.” Her grip tightened. “And I’ll make sure it never comes to that.”

One

The two sat in silence for a few seconds longer, until Twilight broke it by getting up and trotting towards the window. Rarity held her breath for half-a-second more, before turning round to watch her.

The town of Ponyville was burning, flames and sparks pouring like rainwater off of the tiles and rooftops. Town Hall and the buildings around it gleamed a bloody red under the flames' light, parts of them already twisted into black sores of charred and ruined substance. The street was empty now, everypony having long since ran to places Rarity knew all too well. They’d have headed for the hilltops, for Sweet Apple Acres. A few would even be brave enough to try going into the Everfree Forest itself.

None of them would be safe. Just as they hadn’t been safe last cycle, or the cycle before that, or every cycle that had ever been. For the moon was falling, and there was no place you could run.

Of course, it wasn’t just the moon falling that’d cause the end of the world. The sun would also be crashing into the earth half a world away from here. Rarity had never seen it happen herself; she’d never gotten that far away from Canterlot, from the point where the moon finally met the earth. She had never had a good reason to. She’d have to ask Rainbow Dash what it looked like next time they met.

“Rarity?” Twilight said calmly, without turning round, her back still pointing towards Rarity as she stared out into the burning night. “Do you remember what I said earlier? When I said I’ve got an idea of what to do next?”

“Of course I do, dear. You said it only a few minutes ago.”

“Six minutes, to be precise.” Rarity rolled her eyes. Trust Twilight to be Miss Prim and Punctual, end of the world or not. “Anyway, what I'm trying to say is—” She turned round. She was smiling. “What I mean is that this time’ll be different.

“I’ve got a plan, Rarity.” Twilight’s singular eye was filled with some wild kind of hope, enough for Rarity to believe in it too for just a few seconds, even with the burning fragments of the moon falling in flaming shards behind Twilight’s head. “I’ve got a plan.”

There was a fantastic burst of light, as if everything that ever was had shone out for all it was worth just once, releasing every last photon that had ever fallen on its surface out into the world in a single, shining instant.

Zero

The world ended.

Ten thousand and eighty

A few seconds later, Monday began, wet and cold and gloriously alive.

One week

In the Halls, II

Had I but breath inside my lungs,
I’d sing again the ancient songs.
Rebirth them with my withered tongue
And shout them till the rafters rung

So all would know that I still live,
As do all those with such a voice.
That I lay not within my grave
But took as much as I had gave

And walked in death under the earth,
King of the mountain underneath.
That I knew what the bond was worth,
Yet took it, ‘fore the world went worse.

For yes, I lied, because I knew
Just what would wake if we were slow.
That day by day threat of it grew
Till all would end when it was through;

And so I made the bond with them:
Bound all our race onto its kin.
Surrendered all our p’wers of fen
And field and glade: we lost them then,

And — empire turn (to?) dust,
Watched all — south be lost.
For I took — (earth?) — trust
And gave it — (knew?) —

To — End
— (was?) —

From the Canterlot Archives of Rustic Poetry, circa 1400 BB. Author unknown, most likely unicorn. Piece found carved onto a crystal fragment recovered from the Canterlotian Mines, 462 MB. Most likely pre-Classical/late-Dissonant era graffiti. Considered incomplete: sixth, seventh and further stanzas rendered unreadable by fractures in the crystal.

Applejack woke with a start, bed covers sliding aside as she rose, and immediately wished she hadn’t.

Every inch of her hurt, and hurt hard. The tendons in her arms strained to keep them bent, and a dotted pattern of bruises across her chest and back twinged under each stretch. There was a hollow in her stomach boiling under acid, unattended to indigestion eating at her chest.

The bed had been too soft, too, months of camping without bedding having inured her to hardness, making the comfortable coarse. She had told Braeburn she’d’ve been better off sleeping on the floor, and by the feel of things, she’d been right.

“Darn it... Complacent,” Applejack muttered to herself, stretching against her body’s urge to relax and rubbing heated relief into her arms and legs, fur piling up before and hind her hoof. Her tail ached too, the hair-fibres feeling loose and badly in need of combing. She shook it out, wincing as a fine spray of sand scattered into the air.

They pinged off walls, curtain and ceiling to the sound of a murmured rustle. She paused; there was no sound of annoyance from Braeburn. She figured he must still be asleep. Grabbing her adopted hat off the tip of the bed pole, she rolled out to the floor.

The room she was in was a shadowy thing, painted in those quiet greys of the early morning. Her neck panged as she looked round, still sore and stiff. It was the only room in the house—this one having no upper floor—which had left Braeburn sleeping opposite her on an oddly shaped settee. The covers were half wrapped round him, half trailing onto the floor as he lay on his back, legs folded over his stomach. A corner of his mouth was shiny with dribble.

She looked away, fiddling with her hat. It wasn’t as scratchy a thing as her replacement for the first, but wasn’t as sturdy either, being flimsy to the touch. Still, it fitted just fine, and Braeburn had been right: she hadn’t felt the same without a hat upon her head. She tossed her mane round, feeling the thud of it going from one neck-side to the other, and smiled as the hat stayed on.

She looked around again, not wanting to go back to bed but not able to stray too far away from her cousin. She sniffed once. The room and bed were musky, stinking of unwashed Braeburn. Her eyes darted round before latching on to a nearby window, lurking behind the curtains. There.

She opened them outwards, letting the milder air of Appleloosa in. The sun glinted out at her, a gold sliver on the horizon cut jagged by the Macintosh Hills and lip of Ole Childe’s Barrow. The town itself was near-empty, with only shop keepers prowling about, preparing for the oncoming day. Applejack gulped greedily at the air, sighed and then twisted herself back in.

Braeburn was still a bachelor—very much against the best efforts of the mares around him—and so his house was kept in that type of squalor known only to privacy. Applejack’s frown deepened as the light revealed a bin overflowing with rubbish and a scattered assortment of clothes across floor, furniture and—by dint of the curtain rails—ceiling. Hoofprints formed from sand and ash marked where she had been.

Something else, though, held her eye. There were four bumps around the room: four parts standing proud from the floor, white cloth covering all of them. Applejack grabbed one of the covers in her teeth and tugged, dust filling her mouth, nose and the air about.

It was a waggon wheel, large and dull, set into the floor with an axle holding it in place. She reached out and pushed at it, the rim much thicker than her hoof. It failed to move.

A spark danced across her mind, filling it with memory. She looked round the room with new found appreciation: she could remember what this'd looked like years ago, in motion, moving. She lifted her hoof up again and rested on it, the oily smoothness of the metal contrasting with patches of old dirt and fossilised grasses.

She could remember the day when the waggons had come to Ponyville.

They’d rolled past just as promised, metal wheels sparkling in the dusk and engineering so fine only the bent grasses after betrayed their passing. Big Macintosh had ferried her out upon his back, this being in the days when she was still small enough to carry, about the same age as Apple Bloom was now. She’d placed her hooves on his yoke, stretching up high to see just that little bit further, a froth of emotion in her chest.

A fete had been set up around Town Hall to greet the expedition, filled with tents packed with candied apples, popcorn, candy floss and other sweets whose aromas ruled the memory. There had been other foods, too: tables piled under with apples, hays and pies, but Applejack had been young, and the sweets had owned her attention. More so because she'd had to wait to get at them.

The expedition had been an Apple affair, built by Apple hooves and funded by Apple bits, and so the Apples of Ponyville had come out to meet their cousins who ran it. They’d left the fete behind, crossed over the bridge and rejoined their family halfway, between a static town and a mobile one.

Granny went under a mob of cackling old mares instantly. Her hoof had been shaken more than twenty times before they dragged her over to join the other matriarchs.

Applejack had jumped off Big Macintosh’s back as the stallions called him over, empty saddlebags strapped to their sides and trailing sacks clutched in their mouths. The talk amongst them had been of supplies and distances, of whether to try crossing the Bogg or play it safe and go through San Palomino. Voices had risen and fallen as the debate went back and forth.

Applejack had followed them, dancing between legs like moving tree trunks and trying to keep out of the way. They’d spotted her and, laughing, let her tag along, a sack of her own dragging through the dirt and tangling up her hooves.

Braeburn had been with them too, wiry and teenage, his teeth like marble and mane-stubble like a leafless tree. He’d been Macintosh’s age, maybe older, and had spent the most time with her brother, all talk and close distance. A shared uncle, watching, had called out something that made him blush; she couldn’t recall what. It couldn’t have been that bad, though, for the uncle was a kindly sort. Applejack regretted not being able to remember his face: it’d been him who’d slapped her first ever hat upon her head.

The waggons were as big as houses up close, some bigger. The spokes of their wheels were thicker than her, formed of Everfree heartwood over an iron core. Spurs of wood stuck out from the front, forming a triangle with the earth: harnesses for the stallion team who pulled it.

She’d asked to enter one, and Braeburn had acquiesced. The ladder had been hard to climb, not made for foals, and she’d scrabbled up the last few steps with Mac’s head pushing her behind.

The inside was a house, with holes for windows, chairs bolted to the floor and great fur-piles for beds. They’d told her, coming out, that the waggons would be made into houses when they got there, the wheels sunk into the ground and chocked. There were no resources in the desert; they were bringing all with them.

Hours had passed trailing back from waggons to town, with the fete inside getting louder and more alive each time they came. The sweet piles grew smaller too, and seeing her expression, her brother had let her off two rounds before the end. She stuffed her mouth with cotton candy, plastering her face with it. Cup Cake had stifled a grin as Carrot Cake’d led her over to a trough filled with water.

She’d turned round, and sometime between her eating and her dunking, the land about Town Hall had become packed with ponies.

Granny Smith had danced creakedly under the rising moonlight, all wide eyes and gasping smiles. The air itself was laughter, stomps and music. Applejack had hidden beneath a table with a bunch of other foals, and a fussy white-unicorn she now figured as Rarity. She had watched the crowd blur past, too old to dare loose into abandon her individuality, and far too young to have known of its benefit.

But a different type of bond had formed behind the flickering tablecloths. A bright-blue pegasus of three had begun to cry from hunger and sleep somewhere past eleven, and Applejack and two others had slunk out to solve one of them.

They’d crept back minutes later, plates upon their backs and food atop of that. The crying'd stopped as munching started; laughter and gossip had followed that. Somepony’d spotted bright eyes inside a tent across the dance. She’d crawled her way over beneath the hidden shade of the tables, grass tickling her belly and the scent of trodden food filling up her nostrils. Nopony had been there.

Later, when the night was out and flecked with stars, she’d walked home with her family, Big Mac too drenched with sweat to ride on. The air’d been cool and carrying the party’s dregs up to them: sounds of music and the stink of tomorrow’s cleaning. She’d looked back occasionally to see lights like sparks weaving their way from the fete to where the waggons stood in a wide semi-circle past the bridge. She'd waved out the hat her uncle gave her, and was sure some of the shadows waved back.

They'd gone by the time she’d reached the hilltop next morning, only the dirty village and a line of compressed grass gone south showing that they’d been. Her brother’d found her there half an hour later, and nudged away the disappointment through the surety of pancakes.

The promised letter’d arrived one morning during breakfast, years later. It’d been a warm day, lit under the golden light of the early summer sun—just seven weeks before the thousandth Summer Sun Celebration. The crumbly taste of toast laden with butter overrode her memory briefly, poignant in its vividry.

Granny had brought the letter in, hooves clacking on the wooden floorboards with a creak now and then where one had loosened. They’d called Apple Bloom down and then’d gathered round the kitchen table, eager for news.

It'd been short: a telegram, sent by Heliograph. Length would’ve been expensive, so it cut straight to the quick: “We’re here”.

They’d laughed and drank a pint of fresh apple juice from their best trees to celebrate. Apple Bloom, giggling, had chased Winona round the table before beginning a two hour pleading session with Granny Smith to save up funds for tickets. Big Mac had chewed on his stalk contentedly, his eyes dull but the slow smile spreading ‘cross his face more than revealing his emotions.

Applejack had nodded, and then gone out to check the orchard.

She’d walked through it calmly, the grass wet with dew and cuckoo spit, and the air about alive with the calling of birds: a meadowlark had trilled out nonsense as she passed. A few pegasi above her’d trailed through the washed out air of morning, shunting clouds to and fro and scattering the early mist with a crack of vibrant tail.

She’d reached a tree, paused and—

“Cuz?”

She shivered, pulled roughly out the memory, and turned. Braeburn was blinking sleepily at her, still upside down with legs curled to his chest.

"What cha' doing with that wheel?" he mumbled, mouth only half working. Applejack tore her hoof away as if she'd just been caught stealing it.

"What? I ain’t doing squat to it." Then, a few seconds later: "I’m rememberin’." She walked away, passing between the strait of bed and sofa and over to the table in what passed as the kitchen. "What ingredients've you got for breakfast?"

Scraps and parts of other meals were what he had, but Applejack had spent enough time cooking pre-apocalypse to know how to make it work. She was lucky in that most of his eggs smelled right and only a few were clear in their whites. Likewise, his mushrooms didn’t stink as much of the cabbage near the bottom, though she doubted anything could.

Regardless, minutes later the oven was alight and the smell of cooking omelets filled the room, waking Braeburn fully and agitating Applejack’s stomach.

He set the table, pulling cutlery and plates from places Applejack hadn’t known existed. After having been exposed to the rest of the house, she wasn’t quite sure if they were clean, but a quick inspection proved her wrong. She slid her food onto it.

Braeburn, of course, started talking as soon as he was completely up. The conversation drifted aimlessly until he finally asked her just what she was doing in Appleloosa in the first place.

“Got a friend to meet in Manehatten.” She pushed a cut of omelette round her plate, eyes tracking it. “I was down round Los Pegasus, and thought I’d pass through here on the way.”

“Well that was right nice of you. How long you stayin’ for?”

“Wednesday morning, latest.” Braeburn de-enthused.

“Now that right there’s a shame. We’ve got the Harvest Moon Festival all set and ready for this Wednesday evening—or at least, we will have. Shame you’re gonna be missing it. Sure this train of yours leaves morning?”

Halfway through cutting into her omelet, Applejack paused and inspected the fork. There was a slice of stained-on gristle caught between the prongs. Scratching it off with her knife, she returned to eating, unconcerned.

“Eeyup.” A memory stirred. She smiled, then refocused. “I’ve got things to be doing in Manehatten ‘fore Friday, and that’s the only train going through here that’ll get me there before then.” She didn’t mention why.

Braeburn was seated to her right, mouth filled with food that sprayed out as he talked; thankfully, none hit her.

“Right shame.” He spun his fork round with one hoof. “The Harvest Moon festival’s a big event for Appleloosa this year. Been five whole years now we’ve had a harvest. Longest anypony’s been able to get anything to grow down south since the days of the Lyin’ King. Why, when I heard you were down here, I thought you’d come down just for it.”

Applejack swallowed. “Nope. Just passing through, Braeburn.” He looked heartbroken, so she decided to throw him a bone. “Scheduled a whole extra day for you, though. Set aside today and yesterday for my favourite cousin.”

He bounced back like a ricochet: “Well I guess then, seeing that Monday’s gone, we’ll have to cram as much Appleloosa into today as we can!” He swallowed, eyes then swivelling downwards. “After breakfast,” he amended, foregoing fork and employing face. His voice, slightly muffled, continued to rise out: “Gosh darn it if you don’t cook the best grub I ever tasted. Why, I don’t even think we’ve got chefs here that could beat you.”

He led up with another question: “So why aren’t any of your friends here in Appleloosa?”

She thought of the long nights scouring train stations. Of the hours spent wandering round a city in riot, calling and searching. Of the sight of white sails in Balitmare sinking into the horizon, of the Tall Tale skies dotted with volcanic flames and hailstorms of pumice. She hadn’t understood why Pinkie’d refused to go with them at first. She figured she knew now.

“It’s complicated,” she replied through a mouthful of egg and toasted mushroom, then dropped into silence as she swallowed.

Something tickled at her scalp. Reaching up, Applejack hooked out a mangled piece of twig and leaf. She looked down at her arm and noticed, amongst the bruises, earth-stains large enough to make her seem skewbald.

“You got anywhere to clean up round here?”

Braeburn looked up from his plate, omelette still not finished and with specks of it sprinkled round his muzzle. “Sure! There’s a water trough round by the side, the one nearest the mill next door. You can’t miss it!”

Morning had dawned, leaving the room’s colour spliced somewhere between gold and pink in a ruddy wash of light. She laid her hooves on either side of the table and pushed, rattling her plate and both of their cutlery. She trotted to the door and, swinging it open, went outside.

Morning may have dawned, but Appleloosa was still deserted: the shopkeepers from earlier having long since set up and retreated inside. The deck grumbled under her as she paced over it, taking the downwards steps two at a time. The sun, now risen, glared at her, but her new hat succeeded at keeping it from her eyes.

She looked around; the mill was to her right, sails already cutting through the air. Parts of it creaked at times, but other than that it was strangely silent. A charm, perhaps; she considered it for a moment before realising that she didn’t much care.

She found the water trough quickly, a stone thing underneath a tap and makeshift shade next to the mill that probably wasn’t built with Braeburn’s sanitary requirements in mind. She dunked her head into it anyway; the water was lukewarm and saturated with sand across its bottom, but it was fully up to the task of cleaning her. She pulled out, leaving drifting leaf fragments and brown, underwater clouds behind.

She carried on washing, scooping the water out and rubbing it across her legs. The sun grew warmer across her back, its heat feeling like it was falling onto sunburn, fiery against the tenderness, contrasting strangely with the mild water running over her coat. A creak up from the deck alerted her to Braeburn’s exit as she was busy soaking her left hind leg.

“Whoa. Well, I can’t right say I’ve ever seen somethin’ like that before.”

She didn’t look round, and it took her a while to realise that she probably should’ve. Water still dripping from her mane and muzzle, she tossed a look over her shoulder.

Braeburn was on the deck, his hoof one step down and the rest of him in frozen motion. His mouth was open and his neck was craned back, eyes scanning over the sky under a halfway frown. The curls of his mane drifted in the breeze.

She knew what he was looking at; its novelty was long since lost on her. Still, he expected things that weren’t, and she hadn’t the heart to tell him the truth. She looked up.

The whole sky was the almost orange of dawn or dusk round the horizon. It was a weak sort of pink right now, but over the coming week that colour would ripen, growing hard and more intense. Had she any drama in her soul, she’d have called it the thickening of blood or the reignition of an ember blown upon and not cared about the actuality. But she hadn’t, and called it as she saw it—that same sort of colour you get when you close your eyes and look at a lamp: that glowing pink of the inner eyelids.

“Yep.” Applejack swallowed, staring up. The coat of her face, flattened by the water, crinkled as she frowned. “Ain’t never seen anything like that before today.”

The stairs squeaked; Braeburn was mobile. She broke her gaze, blinking.

“Do you reckon it’s down to the sandstorm or something?” Braeburn said, approaching. “Sky that colour ain’t normal, that’s for sure.”

She pretended to consider it, her face long since used to handling an almost lie. “Could be,” she ventured. “You’re right, though. It sure ain’t normal.” She shook, water arcing off her in a stream of rainbows, and returned to washing.

Braeburn joined her and, without much ceremony, dumped head, hat and mane into the trough. Bubbles blossomed round his neck for a few seconds before he pulled back out, sparkling like a unrefined jewel. Applejack snorted.

“You quite done?” she asked as Braeburn leaked before her, water tumbling out his ears.

“Reckon so!” He beamed, teeth dazzling in the early sun. “Ain’t nothing like a head dunking to wake you up after sunrise. Phew-wee.”

“So.” Applejack kicked at the ground, spared a glance for Appleloosa, then looked back to Braeburn. “Whereabouts are we going first? Appleloosa don’t look like its changed that much.”

“Hold it for one apple-bucking minute there, Cuz,” Braeburn said. “You’ve gone left that watch of yours back inside the house. Saw it laying on the floor just under the bed as I walked out. Want me to go ‘n get it for you?”

“Nah. Forget about it,” Applejack replied. She started walking, and a heartbeat later, Braeburn followed. “I ain’t gonna be needing it for a while yet.”

Appleloosa stirred around them, curtains twitching apart and doors swinging open—foals, stallions and mares walking blinking out to stare into the sky. It was bigger now than when she’d been here first: still as open to the desert, but no longer quite as empty. Shacks and smaller houses had sprung up round the greater buildings, and the huge waggon wheels that’d been propped up everywhere were now long gone.

Braeburn cut ahead of her, obviously leading them somewhere. She followed. Dust clouds formed around their heels

Ponies called out to them as they passed. A few struck up talk about the sky, most blaming yesterday’s sandstorm, but a bright-pink mare from out of town laying blame upon a volcano out over the sparkling sea, which was a new one to her ears. Hats of sizes large and normal bobbed up and down as the conversation flowed back and forth.

Braeburn did most of the talking, leaving Applejack’s mind and eyes free to wander as they meandered slowly down the street. For the first few minutes, Applejack tried to wonder just where Braeburn was taking her, before realising she didn’t much care about that either. It was a relief just to walk with someone, to listen to ponies talk nearby and not fear replying. As long as she was smart, what she did here wouldn’t matter; she’d be gone long before tomorrow.

Her hoof stirred up a pebble, bouncing it before her. She aimed, then gave it to the air, soaring. Bored again, her mind turned to the immediate past.

She remembered a pole, tall and straight: a wooden curiosity in the middle of a desert. She spoke:

“Braeburn? I got somethin’ I wanna ask you about. I saw this... this pole-like thing in the desert. Wooden—about half a house tall. You know what it is?”

Braeburn’s face was disappointingly unconcerned. “Ain’t never heard of or seen anything like that, cuz, and I know near everything both in and round Appleloosa.” He paused to wave at two ponies leaving a house up ahead, their faces tired and blinking and staring skywards.

She opened her mouth to press the issue, but paused as her sense of duty kicked in, angrily. It proclaimed her sidetracked: distracted. Breaking the promise she’d made to herself whilst limping out of the orchard not a single night before. Less than a week from now, all of this would be gone, rewritten: exchanged with a mirror image. The world wouldn’t be saved through her sweating small stuff. As harmless as it seemed, a slip—any slip—could potentially end her and thus doom them all. She focused.

Braeburn turned back, mouth half-open. She spoke before he could: “Forget about it. Ain’t important.” He was eyeing her strangely, so she lifted something else from her mind to occupy him: “Where’re we going now?”

The look faded as Braeburn grinned. “Well, as I see it, if you ain’t gonna stay here for the Harvest Festival, we’re just gonna have to get you involved in the making of it. Appleloosa’s more than just a collection of buildings and an apple orchard. It’s the ponies who live in it. I’m plannin’’ on introducing you to them all.”

Applejack was bemused. “So your plan for showing me Appleloosa is roping me into helpin’ with setting up a festival for it?”

“Sounds about right.” Braeburn flashed a smile at her, sunlight glinting off his teeth, then struck the ground with his hoof. As dusty sand rose round them, he said, “Come on, now. They should be settin’ up things down by the orchard, and I want to get there early so I we can be as much use to Appleloosa as we can!”

The orchard. It’d be a deathtrap of almost broken branches and loosened trees now, given Monday’s sandstorm. She could remember what’d it’d been back walking through it the night before, back when they’d passed beneath an unattended section. Each creak had been like thunder, and each snap louder still. She’d been a fool to go in there before, but that idiocy was sourced from sleeplessness. There was no chance of her going back in there now.

Head shaking, she stood her ground. “I can’t Braeburn. I’m sorry, but I just can’t.”

He turned, his look confused. “What? C’mon, cousin Applejack. We’re going to be late.” His head lowered, ready to drive into the side of her. Legs muscles tightening, she twisted as he pushed, shaking him off.

“I said I can’t! Look, I... I can’t go in there.” She swallowed, thoughts racing internally but not finding one easy excuse. She could think of no reason she could give him but the truth: bold, honest and dangerous. He couldn’t be allowed to know; she wasn’t that cruel.

So she gave a part of it: “Look, I’m needed in Manehatten. Really, really needed. That orchard’s going be darn close to falling to pieces right about now. I can’t risk going in there, I can’t risk not gettin’ to Manehatten. It’s important, Braeburn.”

“But cuz! We’re needed in there to stop it from falling to pieces! There’s a whole festival going on in there tomorrow evening: everypony in the whole town’s gonna be beneath them branches, and we’re needed to make sure they don’t fall down.” He stomped a hoof. “The reason you don’t wanna go in there’s the very reason we need to in the first place!”

She shook her head, the hat upon it feeling almost constricting, tying her mane down. Its edges scraped against her ears. “I can’t,” she said, and prayed it was enough.

And eventually, it was. Braeburn kept on looking, though; she could feel his eyes upon her, burning. At long last, he sighed his disappointment out.

“Guess it ain’t too right of me to be askin’ you in the first place,” he muttered, and Applejack felt of a part of her twist. “Ain’t fair to expect somepony else to put themselves in harm’s way for another, even if they’re family. You commend ‘em if they do, but ain’t no call to be mad at ‘em for not.”

Applejack swallowed, her eyes avoiding his. She felt wrong. She done similar things before—turned down help to those who needed it, walked without a qualm through a city burning—but doing it to family, to one she knew, felt different. Was different. It was easier to slip, here: easier to think that life was normal. Which made it all the harder to act knowing the truth,

“Ain’t no reason we can’t get you helping out with something else, though!” She looked up. His grin—that unquashable part of his character engraved in near every memory she had of his face—was back and beaming. “Given that grub you rustled up this morning, I reckon the food from the kitchens is gonna be a whole heap load of better with us two inside it. C’mon!” He trotted past her, jerkin flapping lightly.

With a smile of her own—weak and quivering, yes, but present—she followed after.

They walked in silence, though it wasn’t oppressive, being more the type of mood which words would weaken. Strange, given her companion was Braeburn, but welcome. They passed by Salt Block tavern, tipping their hats to the ponies leaning against it and an old mare brushing sand from off its deck. They nodded back.

There was a crowd up ahead, fussing in a semicircle. All ponies member to it were dull earth colours, being bay or chestnut with a few buckskins amongst them. Their manes, unbound by clothes or orn’ment, swayed back and forth like the grasses of a prairie; their coats gleamed with sharp white bands under the light of the risen sun.

Their voices rose too, getting louder and gaining distinction as Applejack and Braeburn passed by. Scraps about damage to the apple orchard and the off-colour of the sky blurted out from the wash of noise now and again, startlingly clear.

A feeling nagged at her hindbrain as the corner of her eye noticed something wrong. She looked to the side opposite the crowd to see Braeburn keeping pace with her, his ears flat and his head lowered, eyes tracking the ground. She looked back round, and her eyes caught hold of another's within the pack of ponies, bright green and staring.

Not your buisness she told herself, head angling back. Just keep on walking. Can’t risk yourself. Can’t be complacent. Just wait out Tuesday and then go to Manehatten.

“You,” a voice said, and the babble silenced.

She looked over her shoulder. The crowd was parting. A dark colt—no, a wrinkled stallion: old and bald, with an absence for his mane and a stump of silver tail—walked out from that. All eyes were on them, now. Most were fixed on Braeburn.

The stallion nodded to them. “I wasn’t aware that you’d be here.” His voice was dry, deep, and it carried.

They stopped, sand flying from their hooves. Braeburn coughed, then spoke: “My town, Nut Cone. I haven’t really got anywhere else to be.”

“Not you.” He nodded again, slower this time, the direction clearer. “I’m speaking to Honesty.”

Applejack stared out at them, lips pursed. Whatever this was, it wasn’t friendly. There was a texture in the air between them, a conversation held in shifting stances and blown out snorts. It was the sort of tension Pinkie would’ve loved dissolving with a suddenly popped balloon or some other method of bang.

“Element of,” Braeburn corrected from next to her. “And she don’t need to be informing the Seeders of anything, now does she?”

Seeders... He was telling her who they were, she realised. Cluing her in. She glanced over the crowd’s heads and saw them: the travelling carts of the wandering pilgrim ponies—the Seeder carts of her great grandpa and grandma, coated with baskets and bits of plant that dangled off them

“Perhaps not.” The stallion—Nut Cone, Braeburn had called him—was speaking. “But still, we have no interest either in her status.” He looked at her, his eyes the dark green of a tree viewed from in its branches. “You planted the tree, didn’t you? The... The ‘Bloomberg’ I believe you named it.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “He’s what you’re here for? You’ve come down here to take seedlings from Bloomberg?” Her surprise doubled at the lack of denials from them. “I knew he was a good tree and all, but I didn’t think he’d been enough to attract Seeder attention.”

“The pattern growth of the trunk may be unique in all of Equestria,” Nut Cone said. “So yes, we are here for ‘Bloomberg’.” The skin about his eyes tightened. “Though it appears the tree is not what we expected, being ferried as it was several hundred miles south from the Heartlands.”

“Well you can't go round getting huffy at me for that,” Applejack retorted, ears springing up from the horizontal position they’d adopted as his conversation went on—it felt strangely like she was being scolded by Cheerilee for some misdemeanor. “Bloomberg was a gift for my cousins down here, not some special tree for y’all to come and look at.”

The crowd bristled back. “That 'gift' is quite possibly a one of a kind specimen,” Nut Cone replied. “Uprooting it from its orchard and carting it by train to a completely different clime is—”

“Unnatural!” someone from out the crowd erupted. Nut Cone’s lips peeled back, teeth baring as he turned around. The gap in his speech, however, was deafeningly present, and yet more voices rose to fill it: “Not normal,” somepony else cried. “You’ve angered the Liar!” from another. “Yeah, it’s your fault the sky’s gone—”

“Don’t be absurd!” Nut Cone barked, and the crowd shrivelled before him. The three brown seeds stamped on his side flashed as he paced before the crowd. “That tree was brought here six years ago! How could it have any effect on what’s happening now?”

He stopped, drawing himself up. The crowd shrank further; he seemed more and more like an angry teacher to Applejack’s eyes, his voice cowing like a promised lash. “And I’ll hear no more talk about The Liar from any of you. We may be in his lands, but we shall not grace him with our thoughts.” His head roamed across the crowd, and Applejack could tell where he was looking from the gazes they averted. “Don’t be fools,” he hissed. “He is a bogeyman, and nothing else.” He turned.

His manner changed, voice quieting: “Applejack of Ponyville, isn’t it?” He nodded to one side, and a colt with a quill & ink cutie mark appeared out of the crowd, paper clutched in one hoof and a pen held in his mouth. “If the tree does turn out to be unique, then we’ll be needing your name for the records, so your being here does somewhat make up for wasted time.”

He blinked at her as she said nothing. Applejack was still lost in the change of events. “Confirm your name, please.” The words were drawn out, each syllable stressed.

“Oh, is that what you’re after?” Applejack blew out a half-whistle from her mouth, and smiled. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m Applejack. And I’m the one who raised that tree from an apple-pip.”

He nodded, the colt scribbled and, with only a few glares back—aimed more at Braeburn than at her—the crowd turned away, closing inwards like a clam.

Braeburn set off immediately, seeming more than happy to be out of the situation. Applejack followed after him, with only a few glances back at the retreating crowd behind, still chattering out talk into the morning’s air.

“Cuz,” Braeburn said moments later, when the babble of the crowd had fallen to a distant murmur. She nodded, and he continued, “D’ya reckon you could help me get a letter off to one of the Princesses? Either the royal ones or that Twilight friend of yours? Them Seeders been nothing but trouble ever since they got here.”

“Can’t.” Though she briefly wished she could and then hated herself for slipping, for forgetting it’d make no difference. “Only way to talk to the Princesses is through Spike, and he’s over in Canterlot right now. And I admit to not being quite sure where ‘bouts ‘my Princess’ Twilight is right now.”

Helping save the world, if she knew her. Twilight might be many things, but Applejack trusted her in a way she didn’t trust the others. When Twi had turned away from the search, she’d known it was for the best and not because she’d given up hope.

“That’s a shame. I was hoping you could help get rid of ‘em for us.” Applejack glanced over. The face on Braeburn was glumness itself.

“Well, at least you know that they wouldn’t be here if Appleloosa weren’t something special.” He straightened up, head rising as she spoke. “They’ll have only come here because they know how important the place is. Seeders don’t show up for any old copse of fruit trees.”

“Something special’s right,” Braeburn agreed, his stance on Appleloosa’s greatness the same as it’d always been. “Did you know we had the Princess Luna herself down here for last year’s Harvest Festival to help out with the Singing Moon, and she said there ain’t been anything half as successful as this place for longer than she’s been alive.”

“O’ course, she has missed more than a thousand years of it,” Applejack pointed out. “So I wouldn’t be putting too much trust in her being right.” Braeburn pooh-poohed her.

“She’ll have asked her sister, and besides: you reckon she didn’t look down once during all that time she spent on the moon? And that if she did, that she’ll have looked down anywhere other than where Appleloosa’d be? Naw, what she says is right: Ain’t never been anything like Appleloosa in all of Equestria. We’re making history here just by living.”

Applejack glanced over at him, snorting a little at the smug prance to his walk. There was no better way to get Braeburn out of a bad mood than to get him talking about Appleloosa, even if his thoughts on Luna being as dedicated to the place as he was were misplaced. Perhaps intentionally; those last few lines had stank of self-mockery.

The town opened up in front of them into an wide field of light grass and loose sand. A few ponies were on it, hatless, with their manes bound onto their necks and their tails bunched up so tightly they looked almost cropped. There were sticks in their jaws: thick wooden things with indentations along the end, grooves inside the wood. A few were dressed in white robes that were seemingly torn to pieces, bits of them looking one sharp tug away from coming off.

And they were dancing. Slowly and moving to differing rhythms, yes, but dancing still. They twisted in place, rearing up and battering their hooves off of their partner’s before dropping back down with a thunk onto the ground. A pair twirled and slammed their sticks into the earth, birthing dust clouds in time to an invisible beat, before breaking and beginning to move again. Spinning, twirling—dancing.

They looked ridiculous. Stifling a snort, Applejack asked, “What’s with all the Piaffe dancers?”

She glanced over to Braeburn when no reply ame, and then laughed openly, her voice higher and louder than the dancers’ bashing hooves. “Oh, Braeburn, no! You can’t be telling me y’all went and invited some Piaffe dancers to your festival?”

“They’re an Earth pony tradition,” Braeburn responded. Applejack smile failed to fade. “They’re as much a part of the Harvest Festival as the feast and the bonfire! Of course we gotta have them.”

“Have they put the bells on yet?” Applejack replied. “And done the jingly jangly dance?” Braeburn snorted air—though there was a grin on his face, she knew it—and strode off. “Has one of ‘em started dressing up as the ‘beast’ yet? Are y’all missing any foals?”

There was no response given, but still Applejack laughed, following after. It felt good to laugh. She had missed this, she realised: talking to and bantering with another pony. It was like a void in her soul being filled.

“Hey!” They stopped, both of them, and turned. There was a mare trotting towards them from the dancers, a sort of lemonish-lime colour to her coat under a cobalt mane and red neckerchief. She blinked at Applejack, eyes narrowing before they widened.

She said “Applejack?” at the same moment AJ said “Fiddlesticks?”

Braeburn stepped into the confusion: “You two know each other?” He turned to Applejack, a quizzical half-smile on his face. “Cuz, I didn’t know you knew Fiddlesticks.”

Applejack knew her only vaguely. She was from around Ponyville, but not really a part of it, her work as a Canterlot Archiver keeping her moving across Equestria. She opened her mouth to state this, getting as far as “Well sure I know her, she’s—” before Fiddlesticks interrupted.

“Her friend!” Applejack found herself pulled into an impromptu hug, the neckerchief tickling her nose. “We’re good friends from Ponyville, yes we are. Me and your cousin? We’re the best of pals, really, the best.” Fiddlesticks turned to her; their eyes met. “Right, Applejack?”

She knew that look, both having given it and having received it from her friends. ‘Play along,’ it said. ‘Please, just play along.’

Before she could organise a response in her mind, Fiddlesticks was speaking: “I’ve, erm, left my... my hat over by the fence! Would you mind if Applejack came with me while I’m picking it up? There’s... There’s girl things that we really, really need to catch up on together, so—”

“No need.” Braeburn’s left hoof was up with the flat of it pointed at them. “Gentlepony like myself ain’t gonna let two ladies walk all the way over there when he’s got two good sets of legs. I’ll go and fetch it myself.”

She looked, and saw where he was pointing. The distance was too large. Applejack started, moving forwards abruptly, Fiddlesticks sliding off her in a rush of protesting muscles. “No, Braeburn, don’t you dare!”

“Cousin Applejack, mind your manners.” He was trotting off, eyes closed and not looking back. “You stay right here, you hear me! Keep ahold of her, Fiddlesticks!”

He was gone.

“Applejack, listen, we don’t have much time,” Fiddlesticks hissed. “Just keep on playing along, I swear it’s for a good cause. I’m not trying to trick your cousin or anything, really.” Fiddlesticks paused. Applejack spared a moment from watching Braeburn leave to glance over to her side. Fiddlesticks’ lip was between her teeth, rolling in and out of her mouth as she chewed at it.

Fiddlesticks’ saw her watching, spat it out then wailed, in one long, extended sentence, “It’s just that you cousin’s really nice and cute and male, and I’ve been alone for ages now, and he’s not taken and neither am I, and I know it’s only been one day and I’m probably coming off as really strange right now, but he’s so gorgeous and it’d be really, really, really useful if he thinks I’m your friend because that way we get to talk and hang out more without him thinking I’m doing it just to spend time around him, which could be seen as creepy, and it also makes it more likely he’ll realise that I’m really the one for him and—”

She ran out of breath explosively, cheeks bright red and pulsing as she sucked air in then blew it out. Her eyes, wide and with a desperate edge to them, were locked on to Applejack’s, unblinking. It was the most unnerving thing she’d ever seen.

“It’s okay. I ain’t gonna tell him.” Because it really didn’t matter. Braeburn had left, and she’d been foolish to think his company mattered. She’d been complacent. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

“So’s”—huff!—”yours!”—phew! Fiddlesticks tilted her head back and gazed upwards, catching her breath. She looked adorably silly.

Applejack’s ears perked forwards as she smirked back, amused despite herself. “And what secret’s that, Sugarcube?”

Fiddlesticks’ head remained pointed upwards. “That I saw you in Ponyville Sunday evening, and it ain’t possible for you to have gotten here before tomorrow by normal transport.” Something cold settled in Applejack’s chest as their eyes met, Fiddlesticks' head turning downwards. She couldn’t remember that Sunday anymore, what she’d been doing or what it had been like. It was all too far away in time.

“Only two trains from Ponyville to Appleloosa between now and then, and one’s Sunday and the other’s later on today. And I was one of the only ponies on the Sunday one, so I know you sure as hay weren't. It’s okay, though. I ain’t gonna tell either.” She stopped, and looked back up at the sky. “Element of Harmony business, right?”

“Sure.” Applejack looked at the floor, away from Fiddlesticks’ face. “Element business.”

She looked up. Fiddlesticks’ head was down again—her breath re-caught and tethered into order—and her gaze roamed over Applejack’s face, openly curious. Applejack stared back, her gaze shifting by degrees into a glare. It was getting harder and harder not to hate this mare who taken Braeburn from her. Harder still when she was being staring at.

“Element business,” Fiddlesticks muttered, looking away. “Huh. That sounds—” Hoofsteps, loud amongst even against the dancer’s backdrop, reached them, interrupting her. They looked up.

Braeburn was approaching, a second, pure-white hat bouncing atop the first on his head. Fiddlesticks’ head turned suddenly towards her, hissing, “Where are you two going?”

Applejack replied “Kitchens” without thinking, and then Braeburn was before them, flicking the hat from off his head to a neat landing right on Fiddlesticks.

And there was a frown on him, like he was angry about something but not sure what. She’d seen that look before, on the face of her granny, brother and sister. She knew just what it meant. He looked over to her, and realised.

“So,” Fiddlesticks started, and the two of them looked away, back over to her. “I’m going to be helping out in the kitchens today.” She smiled, eyes wide and trying to catch his. “Where are you two working?”

“AJ’s working in the kitchens,” Braeburn replied, nodding over to her, frown gone and familiar grin back in place. “But I ain’t gonna be.”

Fiddelsticks’ eyebrows shot up. “I,” she managed, but Braeburn was still talking, and no interjection could dissuade:

“Some of us have got to help out in the orchard, clearing out the branches some of us are a mite too scared off to help out with.” He nodded at a Fiddlesticks who was wide eyed and staring, her mouth making these little ‘O’s just to break them seconds later. “Good thing they we came across you, Fiddlesticks! If you’re going to the kitchens, then you can take AJ with you and free me up for getting down to the orchard.”

“I...” Fiddlesticks managed again, the syllable slightly stronger this time, but without any accompaniment. Braeburn, though, seemed to take it as the start to an oddly pronounced ‘yes’:

“Then it’s all settled then!” He broke off, trotting away from them. “See ya tonight, AJ,” he called out, not looking back.

Applejack’s ears were flat, but her voice was flatter: “See ya, cuz.” For the first time, she felt truly glad to be leaving come the next morn. But still. It didn’t matter. Finding Fluttershy did. She just needed to keep her head down and wait out Tuesday. Getting supplies could wait for Manehatten.

“But... But...” Fiddlesticks, meanwhile, was still a different type of lost. “He was meant to be going to the kitchens!”

“Well, he ain’t.” Applejack felt the urge to act, to move, and did so, kicking out her limbs and stretching the memory of Fiddlesticks’ weight off of her back. “Seems like you’re the one doing that now.” Fiddlesticks continued to look both lost and young. Applejack tried to remember just how many years younger she was, before figuring it was pointless: the cycles would’ve surely changed that number by now.

Her companion pulled the hat off her head, ran it over a hoof mournfully and then looked over to Applejack. “This isn’t even my hat,” she whimpered.

Applejack took pity on her. “Just leave it here; its owner will find it sure enough.” She put it down next to the side of a building where near abouts anyone could see it. “C’mon. Let’s go. We’ve got ourselves a kitchen to find.”

The Hedgehog

Category:

Non-hostile unless exposed to naked flame. Most likely a result of magical misfires during the Discordian era. Considered well integrated, unlike most monsters of the Paronomasia subgenus.

Habitats:

Equestrian Forests. Occasionally, within farm orchards. Often seen wandering between woodlands along well-worn tracks tragically mistaken for roads. Attention, Monster Enthusiasts! If the road you are on is empty and surrounded by broken vehicles, it is likely not a road! Get off!

Lack of a track does not guarantee an absence of wandering Hedgehogs. They are considered migratory and will often create their own paths, so watch out!

Diet:

Grass, water and bushes. Has been known to eat trees. Will not eat dead wood or other Hedgehogs.

Description:

Has that bush been rustling for too long? Are those trees moving without permission? If so, you are probably dealing with a Hedgehog. Or a Hydra. Turn to page thirty-two if the monster has more than one head.

The Hedgehog is made of the same stuff as a Timberwolf (page fifteen), being primarily formed from wood. Unlike a Timberwolf, though, the Hedgehog is made from living wood, leaving its branches leafy-green and full of life. It is known to flower in winter, the fruit of which ripens in spring and is considered a delicacy by Griffin chefs.

Appearing in shape as a large boar or sow, the Hedgehog wanders between Equestrian forests seeking sustenance for itself. And that’s where you come in, Monster Enthusiasts! A Hedgehog will head along direct routes between forests regardless of ponies or smaller buildings, but despite its Ursa Minor-esque size, it is not a significant threat! If a Hedgehog is encountered in your local area, please do your best to keep the locals calm, controlled and out of the way.

Do not attempt to use fire to ward the Hedgehog away or direct it elsewhere: Hedgehogs treat open flames as a significant threat, and they will stomp violently upon any seen.

A young or baby Hedgehog is referred to as a Twiglet, and is roughly the same size as an average pony. Be advised: approaching a Twiglet for snuggling is a good way to get on the sow’s bad side, and she will not hesitate to stomp on both you and loved ones! Keep a cautious distance at all times and tether foals if necessary.

Excerpt from ‘The proper care and feeding of Monsters’, part of a series by the company who produced “That’s where all that extra rainwater comes from!” and “Your horn and You: A foal’s first guide to magic”. The series was outlawed in 973 MB by The Canterlot Court for claims over inaccuracy and bad advice, though surveys show many are still in use within rural libraries.

In the Halls, I

Once upon a time, long before the foundation of Equestria or even the loose union of the three tribes, there was a great king of the earth ponies.

Yes, the earth ponies once had kings. As too did the pegasi and the unicorns, though only the latter fondly remember theirs. The pegasi chose to forget after they betrayed their king, though some tell the tale differently.

But that is a story for another time and another place, where its meaning will hold more relevance.

Now, this king was great and his kingdom was wide, stretching from mountain to coast across the vast southern plains, far past the central spire of the Canterlot mountain. He ruled it as justly and fairly as only an earth pony could, treating all of his citizens as his equals. I say citizens because, although easily in the majority, he did not rule over earth ponies alone, and neither were all his citizens ponies.

That king was King Orchard, and he was the first to ever lie.

Applejack shivered once and flicked another shard of wood onto the campfire.

The deserts were cold at night. That'd been the first thing Applejack had learnt about them as a filly all those long years ago. So, when she had finally made it over the arching ribs of the Macintosh hills and out onto the great central plain, she'd made certain that she'd be carrying enough dry-wood with her to form a fire, even if it did weigh the same as a wagon filled with apples.

It had also left her with precious little space to pack the other essentials she had needed. Clothing and bedding had been kept to a minimum, meaning she slept on the ground with no blanket or barrier between her and the world. It didn’t really bother her. She was used to brushing the dirt off of herself by now.

There were enough partially dried up riverbeds around the place that drinking-water, whilst being hard to get ahold of, wasn’t something she needed to lug about with her everywhere. She’d been lucky in that regard.

As for food, well... Applejack knew exactly what to carry with her.

The apple she was eating was hard to the hoof but soft on the teeth, the flesh of it being beautifully easily to bite into. Applejack swallowed another chunk of it, small flecks of its green skin pasting round her lips. Her tongue flicked out and swiped them off; a small, silver watch held by a chain around her neck danced under the motion. She swallowed.

The apple tasted good. She wondered if it was one of her own, bucked from the Sweet Apple Acres' orchards by her or Big Mac months and months ago. In another life.

Last week, Applejack corrected herself, before taking another bite. Just ‘cause I’m still getting older don’t mean that the rest of Equestria is too. We’re the one who’re outta place here. We shouldn’t go round marking things by our standards when we should still be using theirs.

She swallowed, and then tried to go for another bite. Her teeth hit the apple’s core, hard and bitter. She tossed it into the campfire next to her without a second thought. The sparks disturbed by the landing flew straight up; the air about her was unnaturally still, leaving the glowing dot's vertical pathways straight and unbroken.

The end of the world always seemed to manifest itself as a local thing. What’d be fire and brimstone in one corner of the globe would be ice and hoarfrost in another. Out here, near the Badlands and sand-sea of the San Palomino desert, it was quiet and unnaturally calm. It’d used to unnerve her.

Still, there were always some similarities. Some common themes that didn’t quite hold to a certain place. Little marks to remind you that, no matter how personal it seemed, the apocalypse was horrifyingly indifferent.

Applejack rummaged around in the saddlebags next to her, her hoof clunking and shifting its way through everything she’d packed. She felt the familiar round, lumpy smoothness settling into her hoof soon enough.

She took out another apple and bit into it. It tasted good. Sated, Applejack tilted her head back—hat shuffling about with it—to stare at the reason she was still awake this many hours past dusk.

There was a fiery line stretching from north to south across the sky: a great, bleeding scar carved like a gash into the heavens, separating the pitch-blackness of night from the cheery blue of day. It looked as if somepony had just laid their hoof on the horizon’s edge and pushed, shoving it out to a third of the distance between the rim of the earth and the centre of the sky. Applejack was camped inside the larger, darker sector: the part of the world still firmly entrenched in night. The stars above her head twinkled out as if nothing at all was wrong.

Applejack could remember learning in school that night and day were really part of the same thing. That if you ran fast enough with your eyes pointed up, and somehow managed not to fall over, you could see one melting into the other. That there were only slow shades of difference between them: that the two were really one.

Apparently, that wasn't always the case. Sometimes, she wondered if this was just an end of the world thing, or if this is what it’d always looked like. One hemisphere dark, one hemisphere light. Night and day as distinct opposites.

She took another bite out of her apple. She swallowed. Her eyes never left the sky.

It was a type of vigil, in a way. A method of reminding herself to look at what was there rather than what she wished was there, of reminding herself that everything was not alright. It was all too easy to just lapse into a certain complacency. To tell yourself the lie that one cycle was exactly the same as the last, and that there was no point in doing anything ‘cause there was nothing you could do. No way to stop it.

This here was a problem. There was a reason they were being given second chance after second chance: Applejack was sure of it. They had to be the ones to fix whatever had gone wrong, and they had to do it together.

She tore another bite out of the fruit, teeth chewing and chomping on its flesh as she carried on staring skywards, challenging the abomination in the atmosphere to blink. It had never indulged her, not in all of her wanderings across Equestria after one flighty pegasus. And, in turn, she had never indulged it. She would keep on staring until the end.

Well, almost till the end. The last few minutes had to be dedicated towards making sure she was ready to cope with crossing between cycles. The turn between moments could be frighteningly sudden, and it was best to make sure she was prepared for it. You had to be vigilant: a slip could easily cost you something precious. Like the time a colt had ran, screaming, into her, and knocked her hat clean off her head a second before the cycle had ended.

She’d gotten a replacement hat, of course, but it simply wasn’t the same. It didn’t crinkle right, and it smelled kinda funny. She’d wasted one cycle trying to see if she could catch the old one in the brief moment between it leaving her head and the world ending—the instant in which it'd exist as a visible, touchable thing inside that cycle—but she’d fumbled the catch the first time around, and she couldn’t afford wasting a second cycle on it.

Finding Fluttershy was more important. She could only hope that the description of her getting the Manehatten Express was correct. Not that she’d know if it wasn’t, of course. The cycle ending would soon clean any and all evidence away.

She just had to catch the same train as it passed through Appleloosa on an early Wednesday morning, and hope that the guess was right.

The watch round her neck started ringing suddenly and loudly, breaking the quiet of the night in an overly dramatic fashion. Applejack quickly gulped down the rest of the apple, disposing of the core whilst her mouth was still full, and levered the watch open, gently. A delicate flick of the hoof switched the alarm off as her eyes flickered over its ticking face. She ignored the watch’s inner inscription.

Two minutes left. More than enough time. She threw another wary glance back up at the horizon cutting across the sky, but—aside from a faint, red glow to either side of the divide—nothing had really changed.

Looking back down, she reached up and pulled the hat up and off her head. She flicked it down onto the ground next to her, disturbing the sand that made up the floor in the process. Two scarfs were quickly retrieved from out the disorganised jumble of her saddlebags, the gap they left behind being quickly replaced by a scrunched up ball of hat.

She wrapped the first scarf around the top of her head, and then carried on down, covering off the rest of her neck and securing her mane in place. The second was wrapped around the lower half of her face, masking her mouth and nose from the air. A joint knot fastened the two of them firmly together, only giving her a little space in which to move her head.

She threw another glance up at the sky. The red stain around the horizon was thicker now, and spreading. Parts of it had bled down into the dark crack that the Macintosh hills made inside the sky. She had less than a minute.

She gave her saddlebags a final, confirmatory shove. She wasn’t going to risk them going the same way as her hat, even if the only possibility of somepony else having touched them was probably imaginary. Probably. Still, she was too far out into the Equestrian wilds to be complacent. A lost saddlebag could wind up being the end of her.

None of them quite knew what would happened if one of them died. Consensus had been that it was a thing best avoided anyway.

Finished and content with her levels of preparation, Applejack sat back and waited for the world to end.

And waited.

And kept on waiting.

After a few seconds of this, she gave her watch another quick glance.

The end of the world was one and a half minutes late.

“What in tarnat—”

Sand

Suddenly, in the millisecond trapped inside a blink, there was sand everywhere, clouding up her vision and slapping into her sides like condensed chunks of the air. For the first few seconds, it actually staggered her, forcing her down into an unsteady crouch and almost succeeding in tipping her over.

Its attempt was counteracted before it could really begin. Firm muscles built from a lifetime spent at work hardened, raising her back up. Her hooves ground into the floor, anchoring her to the unmoving base beneath the shifting upper layers. She tried to open her eyes, but the sand and flecks of dirt bit them into closing.

The switch between cycles must have happened. She may have missed the actual moment, but the change itself was clear: the eerily calm night of one cycle had been replaced by the harsh, vibrantly powerful sandstorm of another.

The wind itself felt like a living thing, screaming and howling its displeasure as it flowed around her, tugging desperately at the scarfs wrapped around her head as if anxious to rip them from her. The campfire had been put out in seconds; the flames themselves had been left behind in the transferal, but the wood and ring of stones around them were present and currently being scattered around by the storm.

The stupid thing was that Applejack had been expecting it. The last town she’d called in to had made mention of a sandstorm round these parts. What she hadn’t been expecting was just how fierce it would be. The scarfs worked well at protecting the majority of her face, but the sand stung against her eyelids badly, even after she'd scrunched them up as tight as she could get them. A hopeful foreleg raised in front of her head helped in only a vague sense of the meaning.

She wished she’d had the good sense to buy that pair of goggles the salespony had offered. She felt foolish for thinking she could do without.

She’d been complacent, and now she was paying for it.

Complacent... The saddlebags!

Applejack’s winced as the wind hit her face, her front leg having snapped down as she spun to where she’d left her saddlebags. She was fortunate in that the turn placed the wind behind her, leaving her face guarded against the worst of it. She winced her eyelids open into a thin crack of light and glanced quickly around.

Small particles of sand were leaping like living things around and away from her, their bouncing arcs unnaturally high and long. The world around her had dimmed to a murky, brownish haze that faded into black less than a couple of metres away. Her sides were already caked in a clinging layer of sand and dust, as if the wind was determined to make her into a true 'earth' pony.

The saddlebags were nowhere to be seen.

Thoughts and various scenarios, most bleak, flashed through her mind as she stood there. The world around her felt small, distant: like the memory of a dream. The wind felt like a current of boiling water swarming around her. Her breaths felt hot and stagnant against the cloth that clung around her mouth.

She gulped, swallowing down a hard ball of spit.

The saddlebags couldn’t have gotten that far, could they? The cycle’d only been going for a few minutes now—perhaps less. They shouldn’t be that far away...

She took a step forwards, hoof sinking into the swarming, bubbling sandbed. It was like walking inside a thicker, browner water: one that was determined in its efforts to drag her underground. The skin around her hoof itched as the sand forced its way past the hairs of her coat.

Enduring the feeling, she took another step away from what remained of her camp, and then another. A third followed after it as Applejack ploughed her way forwards, out-stubborning the storm just as she had friends, work and end of the world before it.

Her eyes darted towards any dark shape as she moved, only to dash her hopes against every black rock they turned out to be. After a few minutes that felt like hours, part of her began to worry that she wasn’t even heading in the right direction.

The world around her turned darker, like a thick mist that had been painted brown by a demented artist. The constant rippling of the ground and murky nature of the air robbed her of her sense of place. Applejack had never felt more lost in all her life.

Well. Not quite.

She carried on, driving her way through the sandstorm. The wind almost succeeded in unfastening one of the scarfs, tugging half of it off and flapping it round like a child desperate for attention. One of her hooves reached up and tucked it firmly back in; the wind took advantage of her unsteady position with a renewed attempt to topple her over.

Hoof back down, she paused for a moment, catching her breath. The sudden hilarity of what she was doing gripped her. The saddlebags would be long gone by now; she'd come to terms with that half an hour ago. She was wading through a sandstorm in a direction that only vague hope told her was correct, after an object she knew she wasn't going to find.

Why in the hay was she still walking? What was the point?

Stubborn old mule. Heh. Guess I am nothing more than a silly pony after all.

She almost laughed, but the scarf was in the way. She felt a sudden urge to rip it off, to just let the wind have what it’d been battling her for every step of the way. What was the point in keeping it?

She was utterly lost. Her only map had been inside those saddlebags. She might have outlived the end of the world more times than she could rightly keep track of, but nopony could survive hunger and thirst in the depths of the desert. The magic that took them from one cycle to the other didn’t protect them against harm or hunger. Twi had made sure of that during their first few weeks, back when figuring out what the heck was going on seemed just as important as trying to stop it.

Twi. The others. With difficulty, AJ suppressed her thoughts, blocking off the direction they were trying to tug her down. The feelings and urges she’d felt earlier retreated, leaving her uncertain and confused.

Stubbornness reasserted itself, overthrowing black-comedy’s brief reign inside Applejack’s mind. If she wasn’t going to give up just yet, then she might as well keep walking.

Applejack pressed on.

She’d lost track of time hours ago.

Or, at least, it felt like hours. Could’ve been minutes.

She didn’t know.

The wind’s temperaments were a more important thing to keep track of, anyway. She knew it like the shape of her cutie mark, now.

Knew when it’d tug at the watch dangling round her neck. Knew when it’d try and rip off her scarfs.

Knew when it’d rub against her back with a surprising tenderness, like her hoof stroking along Winona’s back.

Winona.

Her lips were so dry. She tried licking them, but found that the inside of her mouth was just as bad.

She carried on.

There was a dark outline before her, tall and black and worryingly thin.

The wind had died down a while back. She’d only just noticed.

She should have been paying attention.

The shadow unnerved her. It didn’t feel right inside the storm. It was out of place, like a clown inside an opera house.

Like Pinkie in an opera house.

Same thing, really.

Heh.

She moved away from the shape, cutting a path into the wind's flow.

Taking swift advantage of her foolishness, the wind finally succeeded in snatching one of the scarfs from her.

The exposure of her face to the outside was like a slap, hard and almost concussive in its ferocity.

She reached up to quickly try and catch the scarf, but paused.

There was something lurking in amongst the dirty, sandy wind: a hint of something familiar in the boiling air.

She sniffed and smelled apples.

Her saddlebags had the only apples for miles around.

She turned back towards the shadow, eyes seeing it in a new light. Hunger and thirst spurred her first stumbling steps towards it.

Then hope retook the saddle, and she leapt forwards, hooves stumbling over the slipping sand, the wind now almost desperate in its attempts to trip her. Something weak throbbed inside her chest—some small certainty of place that’d been birthed following a rainbow's memory halfway across Equestria, from the foggy streets of Manehatten to the cooling shades of Sweet Apple Acres. It felt as if she knew, utterly knew, that the bag was going to be there.

It wasn’t, of course, but something else was: something that was most certainly not another barren rock.

The shadow's source was a black, hoof-thick and cylindrical column of wood that stretched up into the sky like an arm pointed in accusation.

Another gust of wind shoved into her side, barging her into the thing. The wood speared into her, causing a painful exhalation, and shook a dose of clarity into her head. Still slumped in a heap against it, her eyes ran up at its length, and then, with some disbelief, back down to the point where it sunk into the earth.

It'd hardly moved at all. The thing wasn't even shaking.

Forgetting about her saddlebags for the moment, Applejack pulled herself back up onto her hooves, eyes blinking stupidly at the thing as her mind processed what'd just happened.

Applejack prided herself as an apple-bucker. She knew she was good; maybe not the best, but good. Damn good, even. Part of that came with knowing exactly how much force went into an action, even one she hadn't originated. If she was part of the action, part of the motion, then she knew. Or at the very least, she could make a better estimate of it than most.

There'd been enough force put into that shove to rock even the mightiest and firm-rooted of trees, and this thing had barely shuddered.

Unnerved was right. Apples or not, she felt an uneasy rumbling in her chest over her proximity to it. The wood scratched across her as she tried to move away from it, and yet no splinters dug into her coat. It had a sort of paradoxically rough smoothness to it.

A second burst of clarity gripped her. She was being silly again. She’d lived through an apocalypse, and yet it was something like this that spooked her? She didn't have either time of effort enough to waste on this, not when she still had shelter to find.

Had that been what she was looking for? Shelter?

Yes. Probably. It would make sense in this kinda weather.

She pushed herself sleepily away from the wooden pillar, staggering like a colt fresh from his first lick of salt as she paced back and forth, eyes combing the ground in wild, erratic sweeps.

Her ears pricked up as she heard something off in the distance.

It was a sharp, tearing sound—one that was louder than the wind to her, louder than anything she’d ever heard in her life. It ripped through the clouds of tiredness and thirst that permeated her head; she could no more ignore it than she could the midnight screeching of an unhappy foal. If anything, the two sounds were eerily similar, both drawing upon some ancient, primal urge to protect.

It was the sound of a splintering tree branch.

She took to her hooves at once, unthinking. The sheer ridiculousness of her reaction did not cross her mind, and neither did thoughts as to what a tree was doing in the depths of the desert. All she knew was that there was a tree—she knew that sound instinctively; she had no doubts the tree existed—and that it needed her. Figuring out why could wait.

Applejack could be a very silly pony when she wasn't thinking straight.

The wind died down around her, broadening the dirty sphere that was the extent of her vision. Slumped piles of sand, dirt and pebbles were spread across the ground in frozen waves. Leaves and broken branches carpeted the ground too, scurrying about the place each time the wind blew like foals playing some childish game.

For a pony who was on the verges of giving up, who had trekked through a sandstorm for enough hours that the lowest parts of the horizon were beginning to lighten, Applejack ran fast. Her stubbornness, it seemed, was partnered and supported by a healthy reserve of stamina, and although she panted heavily, not once did she slow down or stop.

Dark walls rose up from the gloom and broke aperiodically into her miniature world. They appeared on either side, indicating that she was probably in some sort of gully or deep crack into the landscape. It would explain the now-hushed voice of the wind, at any rate.

The smell of apples was stronger now, as were the bitter traces of smoke. Underneath the hubbub of the foaming air outside was the call of voices: pony voices. Hope bit into her heels, spurring her run into a full on sprint.

She burst out of the gully's confines and into the shadowy hints of a wide field filled with tall, swaying silhouettes: trees waving back and forth like the mane of the earth rippling in the breeze. Dark, pony-shaped figures flickered and jumped about the scene, carting round writhing bundles of rope that they threw over the tree tops, binding them into rigidity. Every so often, a thunderous crack of wood splitting marked the loss of one more to the wind's antics. Frantic cries and urgent calls for help greeted each one.

And Applejack responded to them, racing out into the ongoing calamity without any clear reason in her head as just why she should.

The moments that followed her entrance were a timeless, insubstantial thing. Her attention faded in and out of focus rapidly, leaving her memories of what had happened previously vague and only tangentially related.

One moment found her sprinting with a partner towards a creaking and dangerously swaying tree, their hooves pounding in a joint union of beats into the shifting earth. There had been the tug of a net trailing along the ground behind her, bouncing and jolting and yanking at the rope clenched hard between her teeth. Her partner had called out to her, and she'd nodded her head in recognition. The briefest flash of a green, dirty pony had danced into her peripherals; his gaze had been focused on the bundle she was dragging along.

She'd halted just before passing under the tree's outer branches, spinning in place and heaving the net round and into the air. It'd unfurled mid-flight, solitary ropes falling from the main net like unwanted and discarded threads; they'd found a new use as her partner and two others caught onto them, clamping down and hugging the net tightly around the tree.

The red apples had glinted like stunned fish between the woven bars. Odd branches stuck out at random from the now lumpy tree-head, clawing angrily about as the wind ghoulishly animated them. Most of them had been snapped off by the storm barely a moment after moving.

She dropped her rope and ran to catch one of the dangling others. All of them had raced quickly round the tree in a circular procession, weaving the ropes into a firm knot around the trunk and tying in the tree's loose branches. The action had thinned the tree's size down into a thin blade of leafy material that cut into, rather than stood against, the wind.

Another moment—curiously unconnected—found her chomping down onto a rope of her own with six other souls inside the roaring quiet of the storm. The wind had bellowed as it found them, then laughed as it bashed into the constrained tree and threw the ponies holding it down from side to side. One pony had dropped their rope to yell for help; the tree'd resonated angrily in response, almost ripping the rope out of Applejack's mouth and making a fair attempt at taking most of her teeth with it.

The wind had pulled at her mane suddenly, and Applejack realised with alarm that her second scarf had been lost without her noticing. The realisation stole a moment of concentration from her, and when she was next paying attention, the rope was out of her mouth and the tree's trunk was cleaved in two. Her companions in trying to secure it were gone, taking the net with them and leaving what was left of the tree to snap and tear under the wind's brutal caress.

She'd joined them moments later, not even giving herself time to grieve. A flurry of leaves had accompanied her in her exit, the wind dangling them around her eyes and waving the pathetic things in her face as if trying to rile her.

It'd worked. She'd thrown herself with even more abandon into the fray.

A third moment found her shoving a pink-maned stranger out of the way of a falling branch; a fourth and fifth found her having the favour repaid by shadows whose names she'd never know. More scattered moments found her racing through the dying night and oncoming dawn, caked in mud and twigs and broken leaves and chasing after a half-remembered cry for help. Others found her awakening in a heap on the ground, the world ringing and swirling around as the wind still roared and the other ponies still raced against it. Each time, she'd fought off the impulse to cave in, to give up. She'd carried on.

She'd out-stubborn this catastrophe, too. Help in trying to avert a crisis that would only repeat a week later. But her thoughts were scattered and tired, and the utter pointlessness of what she was doing did not occur to her.

And it was only when the wind had finally given up more than a few hours past dawn that she too surrendered, curling up beneath the branches of some great tree and falling heavily to sleep.

“Hey! Hey, Applejack!”

She knew that voice.

"Hey there, Cuz! What are you doing here?"

She knew what it meant, too. Somehow, impossibly, her wanderings had taken her to Appleloosa.

“Are you asleep? I don’t think you’re asleep, but if you are asleep, then all you need to do is say so and I’ll leave you be!”

Well, perhaps not impossibly. She had been camped within spitting distance of it, after all.

“I’m gonna take that as a ‘I am actually awake, but I’m pretending not to be’. ‘Cause it is.”

Her half-awake brain eventually added that it’d also explain the whole orchard in the desert thing.

“C’mon, Applejack. Aren’t you even gonna say hi?”

Last night’s worries suddenly felt very, very silly.

“AJ, I know you’re awake. Your nose always starts twitching when you’re trying to ignore someone, and it’s twitching up a storm right about now.”

Applejack mumbled sleepily in response, shuffling slowly round to turn her back towards the speaker. The lumpy hardness of a root dug uncomfortably into her side, and the watch's chain gnawed into the rubbed-red ring it had carved around her neck last night.

"You really gonna try and sleep there? We've got some of the best beds in Equestria right here in Appleloosa, y'know! Why don't you come and try them?" There was a pause in which the speaker obviously expected an answer.

Applejack did not satisfy him; a new avenue for discussion was quickly found. "Where's your hat?"

Applejack reached up to try and tug a hat that simply wasn't there down over her ears. She sleepily realised that there was no way to stop him without talking to him, and groaned, loudly.

"Braeburn"—Applejack shifted round onto her front—"I'm right fine and dandy exactly where I am, thank you very much. You'd best be just leaving me here. You can sit down over there some—" She waved a hoof off into a vague direction and ended up hitting the tree. "Dangit!"

He ignored her.

Of course he did.

"Did you leave it back in Ponyville?" Braeburn asked. Applejack groaned again, hoping that the sound would be enough of an answer. It wasn't. "Say, did you bring all of your friends with you this time, or did they stay back in Ponyville to watch over the hat?" Applejack's eyes cracked open; she had finally resigned herself to getting up. "How long are you gonna be staying in Appleloosa for this time anyway? Can’t imagine you’d want to spend too long away from your hat."

"Don't know, and I lost it," Applejack mumbled, utterly resigned.

"What's that, Cuz? I don't think I heard what it was you just said."

Applejack sighed out, disturbing a few leaf fragments in front of her face. "I said that I don't know how long I'm here for, Braeburn, and that I lost my hat some time ago."

A thought triggered in her head, a warning about the precise meaning of what she'd just said, and all of a sudden, Applejack knew exactly what'd happen next.

"You... You lost your... hat?"

"I... Yes. Yes, I did."

There was a pregnant pause in which the world stood still and Applejack rose further into lucidity. After it had stretched out for too long, she blinked once and lifted her head off the ground.

Braeburn was standing like he'd just stared a cockatrice in the eyes, stock still and with a distant look of stunned surprise on his face. His leather jerkin flapped idly about, stirred by the same gusts that were ruffling out his mane and tail.

The world was calmer now, the wind having dulled into a soft yet persistently nagging breeze. Fat, fluffy clouds drifted about in isolated clumps inside the wide sky. The sun was pleasantly warm, its light coloured in the rich gold of an autumn's afternoon. She was lucky. It was still Monday. Tuesday would be an utterly different day.

"You sure?" It seemed Braeburn had returned to her. Applejack stared him in the eyes, and nodded. "Well, that's a huge problem to be sure... Hey, I know!" He rose suddenly up onto his back hooves and reared excitedly. "I'll go get you my second-best hat! Hold on, cousin Applejack. I'll get you out of this here predicament soon enough!"

Another warning flared inside her mind. As annoying as he could be, Applejack had no intention of squandering any of her chances at something for no good reason. And, whilst the exact workings of the cycle's magic had eluded her, Twilight's experiments had made one thing clear: If you talked or nodded at or somehow interacted with somepony and then let them get around twenty-one metres away from you, they wouldn't be so friendly the next time you tried talking to them. Keep on doing it, and even your best friend could turn into your worst enemy.

They'd never carried the experiments past seven times. It got dangerous past that.

For the most part, though, Applejack didn't take any of that into account. Instead, she reached up, chomped down on Braeburn's tail and yanked him onto his back before he could begin charging off anywhere.

"Ah!" He toppled down next to her, missing the tip of her nose by less than an inch. Applejack spat out his tail:

"Phtoe... Braeburn, listen..." Applejack paused and licked at her lips, frowning. Her face scrunched up. "Your tail tastes funny."

"That'd be my new cologne!" Braeburn was apparently unperturbed with being yanked onto his back. "I put some of it on last night, and I guess it's still got a bit of kick left in it. Do you like it?"

"It tastes of stallion."

There was a pause.

"Cuz, I am a stallion."

"I... Look, Braeburn—"

"Yes, Cuz?"

"—It don't make much sense for you to go all the way to Applelossa—"

"It ain't that far. We're only out in the orchard."

"—Just to go and get me a hat."

There was another pause. Applejack rose up onto her legs, and then began to kick them out one at a time, stretching. Her back rippled as she clicked the bones in her spine back into place. Dust and broken twigs fell off her sides.

Braeburn was up with her a few seconds later, a frown on his face. "But... But Applejack. You need a hat! An Apple—"

"Braeburn."

"—isn't really an Apple if they ain't wearing something: imagine what Big Mac would be like without his yoke or—"

"Braeburn."

"—Applebloom without her bow! It just ain't right, and you without a hat's—"

"Braeburn!"

"—the exact same thing. Why, I don’t think—"

Applejack gave up, deciding the best policy was just to let Braeburn talk the worry out of him. There was no real stopping her cousin from talking both your hind-legs off and making a decent attempt at your front ones once he’d gotten started.

Celestia knew, she had experience.

She gave a tired glance round the orchard. By the looks of things, the storm hadn’t done too much damage, but that it’d rolled through there was obvious. Leaves and twigs and broken branches were littered everywhere, and a fair chunk of the grass had been coated with sand and dirt. What wasn't coated had been trampled flat; presumably, some of that was her doing.

Earth ponies trailed in and around the orchard, most carrying step ladders and baskets filled with gathered detritus. A few glanced up at the two of them as they strolled past, and frowned. Made sense. Applejack had probably used up one chance with half the town already.

Best to try and keep her interactions to a minimum, then. No point using up what might come in useful later on. That, and having an entire town angry with you for no reason’s never something to aim for in life. She wondered if she could get Braeburn to help her pack; he could certainly talk enough for the two of them. All she'd have to do then is keep out of most ponies' way until Wednesday, and then she'd be leaving Appleloosa far behind her.

She flicked her attention back to Braeburn, who had finished speaking at some point and was now wrapped up in giving her an expectant look.

“Erm... pardon? Didn't catch that last bit, I'm afraid.”

Braeburn was not opposed to the idea of more talking.

“I said if you ain’t gonna let me bring the hat to you, you should really let me bring you to the hat. After all, more time spent in Appleloosa’s always time well spent.”

"Well, I ain’t gonna argue with you, Braeburn, ‘cause that’s what I was trying to say.”

"Well then, why didn't you just say so!" His head butted into her, forcibly nudging her along. Applejack was too tired to resist, and slumped forwards into an easy pace away from the tree. "We could have got going ages ago! Fancy spending time out here when you've got Appleloosa sitting all pretty right on your doorstep. You shouldn't go wasting time like that, Applejack."

Wasting time. That's what she'd done last night in driving herself to exhaustion over an event that would just reoccur a week later. The utter idiocy of her attempts to save the trees struck her forcibly: she could have injured herself badly or worse, and for what?

At that moment, Applejack became ashamed. She'd forgotten her predicament and given in to the moment. That she was tired and muddle-headed didn't matter; she should be better than this. She held herself to a higher standard than that. Her saddlebags had been an unfortunate slip; this was near-unforgivable.

If a tree branch had fallen on her, or if she'd never found the orchard at all...

She searched for a way to shake the feeling, and found inside her mind a question.

"How'd you know I was here, anyway?" Applejack muttered.

“Ponies recognised you from the last time you were round these parts, of course! Mentioned that you were out sleeping under Bloomberg.”

Applejack glanced back as Braeburn carried on chatting away contentedly. The tree she’d been sleeping under was indeed Bloomberg, and, much to her relief, he looked like he’d gotten through the storm with only a few tousled branches.

She blinked at him again, and sleepily twigged that the net around him was missing. Somepony must have removed it whilst she was still asleep, which was surprising seeing as how she was usually a light sleeper.

She tuned back in:

“—and so then I high-tailed it out here to see if I could find you. And sure as Appleloosian pie’s the finest thing in all Equestria, there you were. Anyway, Cuz, you haven’t told me what time you got into Appleloosa? You can’t have been here too long or else I’d have heard about it before now.” Braeburn frowned. “Though I didn’t know you were sleeping in the orchard until somepony told me. Huh. Guess my ear ain’t as close to the ground as it used to be.”

Applejack nodded, having gotten momentarily distracted by the orchard again. There was something off putting about it, something that wasn’t quite how she remembered it.

Well, it has just been hit by one doozy of a sandstorm, she thought. But... that don’t feel like it's right reason. Broken branches ain’t what's wrong here. There's something else...

But, then again, it wasn't relevant to her mission. She dismissed the feeling.

They passed by two ponies who were busy working under the dappled shades of the trees' branches. One of them was a bright-blue, and the other one a dark green. Both were male. The blue one had his front half perched inside a tree, and his back half balanced on the tip of a ladder. The green one was at the other end of it, using his weight to anchor it in place. His head turned towards them as they approached, watching them with a bored look.

Applejack stared at him. A few heartbeats later, he started staring back.

She didn’t know him, and that was the only thing she knew for certain about him. But he looked familiar, having one of those faces photographers looked for to represent the common pony: dull, unthreatening and featureless. She glanced down at his flank, but his trowel shaped cutie mark wasn’t much help.

He was still staring back at her, an uncertain look in his eye. His eyes narrowed, and the frown on his face switched from one of puzzlement to one of recognition.

“You,” he muttered, nodding towards her. “You were there this morning. I remember you helping me to secure one of the trees.” His eyes crossed over to her neck. “You’ve lost your scarf.”

“Hat too,” Braeburn chipped in. Applejack glanced over to him; that was unusually... short coming from him. The colt seemed to have much the same idea, for his attention turned to Braeburn. To Applejack's further surprise, it soured.

“Oh, go walk off the earth, Braeburn.” And with that, he turned his attention back to the ladder with the audible huff and stomp of heel of one who wants their dismissal noticed.

Applejack was having none of it. “Hey, who d'you think you—” Braeburn rammed into her, sliding her quickly away from the two colts. “Braeburn!”

“Sorry, Cuz, but I couldn’t let you cause a scene back there. Things between me and the... between me and him ain't so peachy right about now, and there ain't no need for you to get caught up in our problems.”

He trotted off quickly, their conversation apparently ended.

Applejack was still having none of it.

“Hey!” She caught up with him quickly, regulating her pace so that they were walking level. The watch thumped loudly off her chest and her back legs twanged under the increased effort of walking at this speed.

Braeburn flicked a glance over at her, and increased his pace.

“I’m talking to you, Braeburn.” He walked a little faster. “You come back here right now, you hear?!” He didn't stop, but did turn his head to speak.

“Look, Cuz, as much as I’d like to tell you it ain’t really something that needs telling.” Braeburn kept walking, making sure that Applejack couldn’t get any closer to his side. Whatever it was that was between them, it was bad enough to make even Braeburn quiet.

Applejack almost stopped. She almost turned around and declared that if Braeburn was going to be so stubborn about telling her, then she’d just go ask the colt himself. She wouldn’t have actually gone and done it, of course, but Braeburn would’ve cracked all the same. And then she’d know what sort of little problem it was that’d come between her normally amicable cousin and another Appleloosian.

But that was just it: it was only a little problem. Right now, right at this very second, the gears that'd break the world in their teeth were already beginning to whirl and grind, and it was them that she was racing against. Whatever secrets Braeburn was keeping from her weren’t her true concern, because the world was ending and she was one of the six tasked with somehow stopping it. Problems like a potentially divided town became pale and petty before a great big problem like that.

Applejack didn’t have time to waste on this. She had to gather supplies and leave; she had to reach Manehatten and hopefully find Fluttershy. She had to stop the end of the world before she made a slip so big that her ability to do so would be gone forever.

That was what was important, not trying to fix some problem that’d only undo itself a week later. She couldn't afford another slip this cycle, not even for family.

And so she said nothing, and followed Braeburn silently into Appleloosa.

i) A physical interaction with an inanimate object by a member of the Altering group [see 1. ii)] shall repeat at precisely the same time and place inside all following cycles [see 1. i)], unless acted upon by a member of the Fixed group [see 1. iii)] before the end of any cycle, whereupon the repetition shall cease.

See Exp. 9. B–G for further research and related hypotheses.

Excerpt from Twilight Sparkle's Field Notes on the Apocalypse