The Dreamer's Secret

Odd Happenings

The two ponies made awkward eye contact with one another. Apple Bloom was lost in thought for a moment as to what to say or even what to ask the stallion. The other cheerful pony just smiled and stared into the filly’s eyes, as if in a constant state of euphoria. When the realization of everything that had transpired came back into Apple Bloom’s head, she quickly grabbed the pitch fork back in her mouth and pointed the sharp end of the tool towards the stallion. The blue pony turned his attention towards the pointed farming tool and raised a hoof to touch it, all while still keeping an innocent smile across his face.

“That looks sharp,” commented the stallion as he placed a hoof on one of the blades. He quickly reared back his hoof upon touching it and uttered strongly, “My word, that is sharp...” His smile turned to a glare as he questioned the filly, “Why are you pointing sharp things at me in the first place.” Even before Apple Bloom could answer, he immediately changed his mood back and questioned her again saying, “What’s your name?”

Apple Bloom was quite confused as to what had just happened. He was very spastic and random with her, maybe even more so than Pinkie Pie. At least she could make sense of the pink mare, most times.

She repositioned herself and tried to reply with the tool still in her mouth, “Oppalboom...”. She maneuvered the pitch fork a little closer to the intruder and inquired, “Orr nom?”

He understood the filly well enough to know what she was saying, but his expression told her differently.

He replied with hesitance, “I... I don’t know...” He leaned a bit closer to her and out of the way of the pitchfork.

He then asked with concern, “Is that normal? You know, not knowing your name and all?”

Apple Bloom finally spat the pitchfork out of her mouth and said dryly, “Not normal one bit, sir. You mean to tell me you don’t have a name?”

“I probably do, but isn’t it exciting?” His faced buzzed with a sudden spark of enthusiasm over his loss of memory.

He continued, “Can you imagine not knowing your name? The only thing that defines you from someone or something else? The one thing in your life that labels you as you! You could become anything now! You can start over and do anything you want to! No more will people remember your past, but now you can make new friends in new places if you choose so! You could even-”

“You fell from the sky,” Apple Bloom interrupted.

“I, uh, beg your pardon?”

“Look at what you did now to my barn!” She flung her hoof towards the new skylight he had created upon impact.

He scratched the underside of his chin and replied with a huff of disbelief, “How do you know it was me?”

“I saw you!”

He rose an eyebrow and asked slowly, “You... saw me?”

“Well, not you in particular. But I found you here where the thing that fell from the sky was falling towards.”

The nameless pony hummed in thought and concurred, “I guess you’re right, you little Sherlock Holmes, you!”

“Who?”

He looked away and laughed saying, “Oh, you know, Sherlock Holmes, a fictional detective created by author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Born on May twenty-second, eighteen fifty-nine and died July seventh, nineteen-thirty. I had a friend who was born in July. A swell month it is. A hot one too on top of that. He had a farm on the outskirts of a town I can’t remember... or at least I think he did? I’ve thought of thirteen reasons why I should have been born in July. Do you want to hear them?”

As he awaited her response, he energetically rocked himself with excitement on the haystack. She stood there dumbfounded by what he had just said. She finally shook her head vigorously to snap herself out of the bemused state she was put in.

“Well,” Apple Bloom began again, “what do you remember.”

The blue stallion thought for a moment, his eyes looked about the room as if following an invisible bird that had been trapped in the barn.

He then spoke as if questioning his own answer, “I... opened my eyes, saw you, said, ‘hi’- No wait, you know this already, you were there. Take this answer as you may, but, I guess I just, ‘woke up’... and here I am! All fresh and new I suppose.

“Where are you from?”

“HA!” he shouted with a burst of liveliness, “We can play this game all day...” He slowed his pace down and continued, “...and still... I... I wouldn’t know.”

He fell over in front of himself and grabbed hold of Apple Bloom’s fore hooves.

“Who am I, Apple Bloom! I’m not special! I’m a nobody if anybody!” She began to worry about his sudden emotionally outbursts and was wondering if he would accidentally wake up his family.

She tried to calm him down, “I, uhh, I don’t know. But... I’m not very special either.”

He looked up at her with a stern look and disaffirmed, “Untrue! You’re a filly for filly’s sake. You have a house and a dog and a family with friends and those friends have friends and families and dogs and houses and fillies like yourself too I bet! They all think you are unique and special and rather small, but being small isn’t always a bad thing, my dear. You can still get cheap tickets to the picture shows, but you can’t watch the nasty movies. Rubbish those things are anyway, they fill your head with garbage. I would know, I once worked at a picture show house... or did I?” He shrugged and stopped talking at that point.

She laughed at his randomness and replied, “Oh no, not that, silly. I meant my cutie mark.”

She arose above her with a quizzical look upon his face. He towered over her like any normal stallion around his supposed age.

Before he genuinely replied to her, he looked down at his legs and whispered to himself, “So this is what it’s like standing... so perplexing.” His attention narrowed back down on her again and he firmly asked, “A cutie-what now?”

“A cutie mark! Don’t you know what anything is?”

He dithered with a long, rising hum of a word, “Wwweeellllll, I don’t know a lot of things and would rather listen to you tell me things.”

He pounded his chest and gave his word to the filly, “As long as you tell me otherwise, I will not talk until you tell me... otherwise!” He flopped down on his haunches and gave his full, silent attention to the yellow filly.

“O...kay. Righty then!” She perked up and explained, “A cutie mark appears on your flank when you discover your true, special talent. It could be anything really.” He nodded in silence, keeping his eyes fixed on the filly. She felt he was waiting for her to say something else about it, but she didn’t know what else to talk about.

“All the big ponies have them,” she stated, “especially in town.” He nodded once more with a grin of happiness. “Oh,” she added, “you can talk now if you’d like.”

“Well about time!” He barked at her. “I mean,” he said more softly. His face had reddened with embarrassment as he continued in almost a whisper, “sorry, I mean... well... sorry I didn’t... I, well, I...” He stopped, looking off out of the barn doors towards Apple Bloom’s farmhouse. He smiled and began to walk away from the filly towards the doors of the barn.

Apple Bloom watched him walk away and was puzzled by his actions. She called out to him, “Where are you going... I’m over here.” She couldn’t tell if he was avoiding her or if he couldn’t hear her as he continued on out of the barn and towards the farmhouse. She exited the barn and watched him walk up onto the porch and face the front door. The stallion pressed up against the screen door to the house, placing his ear on the wooden frame.

“Uh,” she hesitated, “you pull it open.” She didn’t exactly know why she had wanted him to go in her house anyways. She had just met him no more than ten minutes ago, but she felt sympathetic towards the lost stallion. These odd happenings of events that had passed over tonight would have made any filly do the strangest of things.

He continued to do his own thing as he slide himself against the edge of the house and off of the front porch. He maneuvered around the flowers in the garden beds and finally came to a glass window. He tried opening the bottom of the window while pressing his face against the glass, leaving smudge marks behind.

“Blast it,” he stammered with annoyance, “blast these... these roundy-long things!” He looked down at his hooves and threw them into the air while continuing his rant, “Fling these blasted things into the farthest X-Ray jet from this pebble in the sky! Utterly useless!”

His sudden anger frightened Apple Bloom, but her fear only lasted a moment when it was replaced by the laughter that followed. She began laughing at his attempts to open the window with his tongue in the crevice of the seal. She laughed so hard that tears began to form in her eyes. She put her hoof up to wipe them away and as soon as she removed her hoof, the stallion was gone. Her eyes widened with panic at the scene of where the pony once was. She saw something moving in the window he was trying to get in before and realized immediately that it was him.

“How... did he just...” She couldn’t quite make out the sentence she intended to form from the shock of the unexplainable thing she had just missed. Apple Bloom watched him walk out of the window’s sight and raced towards the front door to meet up with him. As soon as she galloped up atop the porch, the door suddenly swung open.

“Apple Bloom!” The filly froze still and came to an abrupt halt.

She stammered in response, “Applejack! I, uh-”.

“You best start explain’n yourself, young missy.”

The orange mare stood their in the doorway in her stripped pajamas, giving her sister the most grave look Apple Bloom had ever seen.

“What in the hay are you doin’ up at four in the apple pick’n morning?” The orange mare’s eyes adjusted above Apple Bloom’s to see the newly formed hole in her bright, red barn.

She gasped in horror, “My barn! What did you do! You tell me right now! You hear me?”

“...Cutie Mark Crusader’s... Rocket Scientists...” she hesitated with a plastic smile across her face.

Applejack brushed the sweat from her bed-head mane and held herself on the door frame. The new chore that stared her in the face about gave the mare a heart attack as she panted for air. She grabbed the front of her nightshirt and cooled herself off while shaking her head in disappoint at her sister.

“You and your... friends. I swanny...”

She then grabbed the filly by the back of the collar and pushed her in the house saying, “I’m double’n- No, triple’n your chores tomorrow. You gonna wish you had two more sets of hooves cause by the time I’m done with you, your’s are gonna be worn thin and covered with blisters!”

Apple Bloom didn’t fight with her sister, she too was tired of it all and accepted defeat. Applejack drug her up the stairs and practically threw her into her room. Applejack stood in the bedroom doorway and gritted her teeth with frustration. Apple Bloom not only noticed her sister’s fuming anger, but the surprising tears that streamed from her eyes as well.

Applejack faltered, “Now I have enough to worry about! I don’t want you out and about this late ever again! I’ve got enough weight on my back already and I’m about tired of all this going on! Now get to sleep!”

She slammed the door closed at that last remark, leaving the filly in the dark of her bedroom. Applejack even placed a chair in front of her sister’s door to keep her in. She sobbed the entire time doing so and shambled back to her bedroom.

Apple Bloom spun around and noticed something was in her bed. She crept around her bed and discovered that the nameless stallion was in her place. He had curled himself up to fit his entire mass on the twin mattress. He had grabbed all of the covers on the bed and surprisingly took all of the covers from Apple Bloom’s closet. She tried to exit her room to see if she could sleep on the couch, but soon realized that she was locked in. She huffed with annoyance as the stallion began to sleep talk.

“Well thanks a lot for getting me in trouble,” Apple Bloom whispered as she curled up on the wooden floor next to her bed.

The stallion was in deep sleep, but oddly replied, “Hey... Hey! Mario... look what I made.... It’s a football... I chiseled it.”

Apple Bloom didn’t even respond, but laid her head on the cold floor and drifted off to sleep.