The Hollow Kingdom of Big Macintosh

Exhibit W

"Wait, Rarity, can we talk about this?"

"There is nothing to discuss. I don't want to hear or see you ever again!" she shouts at him over the steadily increasing rainfall. Through the puddles she stomps her way back towards her house, but Big Macintosh his hot on her tail despite her constant stream of complaints. "Just go back to your little farm and spend time with your stupid apples!"

"Hey, now don't go calling apples stupid." A member of the Apple family would normally go berserk over that kind of blasphemy, but Big Macintosh sensed that there was something more important than the good name of apples at stake here. To think there was something that was more important than the time honored Apple tradition of apples surprised him. More surprising still is that the thing in question, or rather pony in question, is Rarity. Macintosh considered her a friend, but there is no reason to consider her as anything more. That is, there shouldn't be a reason, but he can think of one. He can think of one, crazy reason. "This is about more than just missing our appointment today, isn't it?"

"Why do you care?" Rarity yells at him, still not giving him the courtesy of looking back at him. She also doesn't say anything further, leaving him in the figurative cold instead of just the actual cold.

"If I hurt you somehow, I want to make things right!" He isn't sure what he's talking about, but he is certain he'll make any promise right about now to get her to stop and face him. He doesn't get this, so he continues making promises. Something has to get through to her. "Whatever is, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to... forget. I'll make it up to you. I'll do anything, anything at all! I mean it!"

Rarity stops with a start. Big Macintosh stops too. They are only a few feet from Carousel Boutique's front door. The rain is coming down hard, but neither pony pays it any mind. The rain is appropriate, so neither pony can complain. They can only continue forward.

Rarity turns and faces Big Macintosh. Behind all the rain, it is impossible to tell if she has been crying at all. She is composed because she is serious. She has always been like this, but Big Macintosh reminds himself that he has little basis for such a claim. At least, he should have little basis.

"You're hiding something," Rarity tells him, much to his surprise. She can read the signs, signs Big Macintosh didn't even know he had put up. She'd done the math, and something didn't add up. There is this "x" she must solve for, this variable that changes the meaning of the outcome. "There is something you're not telling me, Applejack, or anypony else for that matter. Am I right?"

A silence cannot hang in the rain, but it tries its best. Something about the rain makes Big Macintosh speak faster or perhaps decide faster. He can tell her. He can bear all. He has to start somewhere, so where he stands is as good as a place as any. He clears his throat, his way of subjugating himself for arrest. One he speaks, if he is heard, there will be no turning back.

"Yeah, you're right."

Big Macintosh realizes his greatest fear is that he is hallucinating right at this very moment. He can't know if Rarity is really standing before him, and this scares him. He would rather confess to being crazy right here and now than pour himself out to a rain soaked porch. This is different than before. This is turning over a new leaf, and Big Macintosh doesn't see that as a crime. The time let the world impress a stigma upon him has come.

"Tell me your secret," Rarity asks him. He must believe, after seeing her day after day, that he can tell the real from the fake. He has faith that shames even the most devout believers, but faith amounts to nothing in the wake of a well hidden, well cultivated lie. Never before had Big Macintosh tried to make the pony before him disappear, but at the same time he had never hoped the image before him would not fade away.

"I see things that aren't there."

"Things that aren't there?"

"Yeah." This is the simplest way he can put it. Perhaps there is some essence of "being there" within his hallucinations, but this is not the issue of the hour. The technicalities of his condition are not being put on trail, but the thing as a whole. Big Macintosh himself is the object up for debate. His hallucinations are, as he has come to realize, a part of him. "You probably think I'm crazy."

"Of course I think you're crazy!" Rarity shouts at him. Big Macintosh isn't sure what he expected her reaction to be, but he's a bit insulted that his confession didn't appear to shake her. She was still yelling at him as if he'd told her he had an odd looking wart on his butt. "If you really think those things are there!"

"Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't," Big Macintosh tells her, trying to get her to understand a little more. "I tried and I tried to sort out reality from illusion, but it's been a battle I've been destined to lose. I don't know what I should believe anymore. I can't even really be sure that you're here."

Rarity slaps him across the face.

"Is that real enough for you?"

Big Macintosh could argue, but he lets the issue drop. He knows better than that. Besides, Rarity is uninterested in pursuing it either.

"Tell me something else!"

"Anything or something specific?" Big Macintosh asks, his smart-aleckness earning him another slap.

"Did you ever believe," Rarity starts to ask, but she pauses. There is fear behind her fury, but that is the nature of fury. Without fury, she could never finish her question. "Did you ever believe we were in love?"

"... Yeah."

"Why did you stop believing?" Her question sounds more pleading this time. Big Macintosh does not know what to make of it, but he has a hunch. He has a frightening inkling of an idea.

"We seemed distant and then I realize nopony else acknowledged our being together," he told her. "When I noticed that, it all just slipped away from me. It wasn't real, so I didn't let it have any real effect on me."

He gets slapped again.

"But it was real!"

There is a chance this is not real either. Big Macintosh knows he could be hallucinating again. Thinking like this will drive him truly crazy, but he can't help it now. He opened the door, and now the rain is getting in. He is not sure where to go from here, what to believe from now on.

"Even if you say that-"

"How can I prove it to you?" she yells at him, rain streaking down her face. He does not answer, but she doesn't care. She embraces him roughly, squeezing him around his next and burying her face where his harness meets his chest. She is trembling while she holds him, fear sapping her strength right out from under her. "Do you know what it was like for me?"

"Nnope..."

"I knew we were growing distant, sinking into a predictable rut we might not get out of. Do you remember what I told you the day before you left?" Rarity asks him, and it comes to him. He remembers it as clear as day. "I wanted you to come by the shop in the morning. I was going to ask you to go on a trip with me, to see Canterlot and Manehattan. I thought we just needed to get away for a bit. I told you it was very important and not to forget, but you never showed up. I took it as a sign that we were over, and sure enough you didn't even seem to notice me in public.

"I never really accepted it," she tells him, finding the strength to hold him tighter. "I thought it had to be some sort of cosmic fluke. I thought that one day you would walk in through the front door of the boutique and ask me what I wanted to talk about. It got so bad that I asked your sister about you, about us. She claimed it never happened either, but I guess we never told her. Even so, I got the perfect excuse to have you over day after day. I hoped something would happen to bring you back to me. I didn't care if we had to start over, I just wanted things to make sense again. If you ask me, I'm the crazy one."

Big Macintosh lets himself believe, for a moment, that what he is hearing is true. If he never imagined Rarity, he never kissed a hallucination. If he never imagined Rarity, he never made love to a phantom. If he never imagined Rarity, he never fell in love with just a shade. If these things are true, he has a way to reclaim his reality. He can set the world in order. Most importantly, he can make things right.

"If I choose to believe in you," he says to her, putting his hooves on her shoulders and moving Rarity so he could look into her eyes. "Do you promise not to be a lie?"

"I've always been here, and I'm not going anywhere," she tells him. That is all the needs to say. That is all he needs to hear. For now, there does not need to be anymore standing about in the rain. They seal their pact with a rain soaked kiss.

For two lovers who spent so much time apart, a kiss is enough to elevate the mood. As they continued to remember the sensation of each other's lips, their lust spiked. Without breaking from one another, the managed to stumble into the boutique and shut the door behind them. They tracked rain and mud onto the floor, but neither noticed; however, neither party wanted to soil perfectly good bedsheets with all the precipitation in their coats.

Big Macintosh took her in the doorway. He didn't do it to make things right or sort out the real from the fake, he did it because he wanted to be intimate with a pony he cared dearly for. He let his old feelings gather about him as he forced himself as far as he could into her. She had waited in tense anticipation of this moment everyday since he left, and its arrival was such euphoria she couldn't help but orgasm while Big Macintosh began to tread her familiar hallways.

They continued on in this manner for the rest of the day. After the first round, Rarity offered him her shower to get the rain off. After making love in said shower, they tried their best not to fuck while drying each other off. After failing that, they tried to have dinner, but that too was interrupted by the perceived need to penetrate and be penetrated. They finally just retired up into Rarity's room where the lovers could do as they pleased for as long as they wanted without any sense of guilt.

All good things must come to an end, and end it did. Now they sleep soundly wrapped around one another. Their sleep is dreamless for they dreamed while awake. They must awake from that dream when morning light enters in, but for now they can enjoy simple bliss. It would be easy to end the story here and simply say they lived happily ever after, but there is still more to tell.

It would be irresponsible to stop now, and so the story continues.