The Dreamer's Secret

One of Us

Golden rivers of sunlight poured into Apple Bloom’s bedroom. Shadows dispersed into their crevices and the lightening of darker colors became warmer as did the temperature of the room. A lingering smell of a morning meal finally found its way through the cracks in the filly’s door and ventured through her nostrils, awakening the pony. Apple Bloom arose from the wooden floor, a place where the sun rested in an affixed square. The kink in her neck suggested that she didn’t have the best night’s sleep. Dust wavered about her as she blinked in confusion as to why she was on the warm floorboards and not in her warmer, more comfortable bed. Her blank mind began to turn again and the cogs to her critical thinking skills started to spin.

Her eyes were fully opened when her memory came to. The yellow filly spun her strained neck around towards the top of her bed. The spin of the head was followed by a slap from her messy mane hair. The bed though was completely absent of the stallion from last night and was neatly tucked and made up again. A new panic arose from inside Apple Bloom and she wondered if he had been discovered by her family. She pushed herself up off the ground and scrambled to the door in a disorientated blitz of movement.

The door was easily pushed open and she hadn’t thought about it being locked from last night until she had eventually stopped, and she only stopped when she slid into the kitchen to find her sister sitting alone at the breakfast table. Thoughts of last night caught up with the filly; she had remembered her sister’s actions as their eyes met for the first time that late morning.

By this time, Applejack and Big Macintosh would have already been in the fields or finishing their morning chores. For Apple Bloom, it was a Saturday and she had no school, so she was use to waking up to a nearly empty house. It was strange seeing Applejack this early. Such a rare moment was this in the Apple Family that the yellow filly knew something wasn’t right.

An awkward elation of a smile formed upon Applejack’s face as she gestured her hoof up over the table. Breakfast was laid out before the two as she awaited her sister’s company. Applejack wanted to talk with Apple Bloom, but about what, the filly didn’t know. The small pony contained her rising suspensions of where the stallion might be and masked her concern with an emotionless veil, showing Applejack that she hadn’t had forgotten about last night. The two believed that one was bluffing the other and that each pony’s mind were on two entirely different subjects. The filly finally joined her sister and scooted her chair in.

“My, you’re up early,” Applejack noted as she began to eat. She continued with a mouthful of apple mush. “You seem to be in a rush, is something wrong?”

“No,” she lied in a gruff tone. Before the older pony could respond, she went off saying, “Why did you lock my door last night?”

Applejack swallowed while looking away from her sister. “Well...” The mare made eye contact with her sister again and said with increased authority, “Well, I didn’t want you sneaking out again last night! To be frank, I didn’t trust you!” Silence settled back into the kitchen. The older sister’s plans to make amends was already back firing because of her continuous anger getting the best of her. Her face reddened and she tried her best to hide it from her sister.

That night, after the whole ordeal between the two Apple sisters, Applejack laid awake in bed for quite some time. Her ill temper dug a pit in her soul as she turned what Twilight and Cheerilee said in her head. If she would have thought of all that Apple Bloom was dealing with at that moment, she would have been a little more held back, but instead her mind was hooked on the words she used and the tones she rose. She then planned to try and make things right by talking with her that morning and even making breakfast for her. She thought that maybe then they could get back to being sisters. Applejack hated herself and just wanted everything to be right again.

Applejack broke the silence and tried to repair what she had damaged, “I wanted to say that I’m sorry for getting on ya last night, Lil’ Sis. I... I really don’t know what came over me, and as your older sister, I should have handled things differently.”

Apple Bloom was only sparsely attentive to what her sister was saying. Her focus was towards the windows in the corners of her eyes, trying to see if maybe the stallion was aimlessly meandering through the yard. She tapped her hoof anxiously while the voiceless words from her sister went into one ear and out the other. Apple Bloom figured that he couldn’t have gotten far and that by waiting here in the kitchen was a waste of valuable time.

Apple Bloom broke her sister’s speech with the sudden chirp, “I need to go.” Her eyes were still glued to the windows as Applejack sat back puzzled.

“Wha-what do you mean?” she clamored, searching for the right words to say while not ruining their hastened kinship again. “I made breakfast and I thought that maybe-maybe we could spend more time with one another today. Is it something I said? Did I do something wrong, again?”

“No!” she spat out while hopping off her chair. “I just need to... to meet up with my friends! That’s right! I need to go! The Cutie Mark Crusaders need me!” She ran out the door with a spurt of morning energy.

Applejack didn’t even move. She didn’t know what to do entirely. She didn’t want to keep fighting against her sister, so she decided to just lay off and let her do her own thing, for now. From the back door moseyed in Big Mac, the louder thump of his hooves could identify him from any part of the old house. He made his way to the kitchen and over looked the odd scenario. He was met with the strangely depressed Applejack at a full table of breakfast foods.

“What’s going on?” he drawled.

Applejack hastily turned towards her brother and tartly replied, “Nothing! That’s what!” She scooted herself out of her chair and back onto four hooves. “We need to have a sit-down with Apple Bloom soon, that’s all I got to say about that!” She stamped out of the room, leaving only Big Macintosh behind.

He stressed to himself in a long breath, “Mares. I swear.” He sat himself down and began eating their untouched breakfasts, not letting anything go to waste.

Apple Bloom raced through the yard and towards the barn where she thought she might meet up with him again. She pushed open the doors to the cowshed and began quickly eyeing out the place to see if the intruder was here. She discovered nothing to her advantage and left the barn as quickly as she came in. She figured another idea of where he might be and turned her pace towards the location. She squeezed through the fencing to the Apple Orchard and began to make her way back to the scene where that large orb was.

When the bare spot in the field came into sight, it looked empty and with no signs of a blue stallion. She was short of breath upon arriving and flopped herself down on the cut stump in fatigue.

She turned herself over and threw her hooves into the air saying, “Where in the wide world of Equestria is this fella’?”

“Equestria?” A voice called out from behind her. She rapidly turned to finally spot the stallion in an apple tree. He clumsily clung onto the tree with three hooves wrapped around a branch and another holding a half-eaten apple. He continued, “What’s an Equestria?”

Instead of answering his question, she demanded, “What in the world is wrong with you? Breaking into my house, then wandering off... Has anypony spot you yet?”

He smirked and replied, “An answer for an answer!”

With that response, she tried playing his game finally, “Fine... what’s your question again?”

“Equestria. What is it?”

“It’s this.” She stamped her hoof on the soil and continued more elaborately, “This is Equestria. The place you and I are.”

“The town? Cause you said there is a town near by and I wanted to go see it, but I thought I shouldn’t go without a tourist guide, so I waited for you in this place here! I knew you would come back here. I saw a big red guy over yonder a while ago. Is he an intruder too?”

She stood silently, waiting for her mind to conjure the right response.

“No, the town’s name is Ponyville. And that ‘big red guy’ is my brother who tends the fields with my sister. I’m pretty sure if he caught you in his fields you would have been kicked out of here in a buck of a tree.” She immediately digressed with a hoof pointed at him, “Another thing. You ain’t going to town.”

He replied in with a laugh while trying to climb his way down the tree, “Why not? I’m normal enough?”

“Far from it. If ponies see someone as old as you walking around with a blank flank then they’re going to be mighty suspicious about who you are... and not think you’re normal.”

He finally made his way safely towards the ground and approached the filly, saying, “Pish-pash, Applesauce! You’re full of it, kiddo.” He rubbed his hoof on her mane and began to walk past her with a confident stride.

She raced over in front of him and stated, “You’re not going into town! Trust me! They’ll question you and kick you out and think you’re some sort of monster-pony!”

She tried holding him back while walking, placing her two hooves on his chest while pushing back as hard as she could. He continued to walk perfectly without any sign of restraint from the opposing filly. He was sliding her back with her hind legs still firmly situated in the ground, dragging dirt and grass in their wake. The yellow mare finally slipped and butted her chin with the ground. She was amazed at how strong he was and how nothing she tried seemed to slow him down.

She finally dashed a few paces in front of him and blurted out, “Just follow me for a bit. I’ll take you into town as soon as...” She looked away thinking, still figuring out the plan as she went along. “As soon as my friends can figure out what to do with you.”

He finally stopped and with a puzzled look questioned, “Friends? You have friends?”

“Uh, ya? Who doesn’t?”

He looked over and stared into the distance. He somberly said, “I don’t know if I have friends.”

“Well, you don’t know a lot, do ya?”

“...I don’t know...”

She went along with her original idea and told him, “Hey, so, will you listen to me and do exactly as I say? I promise that I will take you to my town as soon as I get my friends together and talk.”

He rubbed his hoof under his chin and replied, “Let me check my schedule...” He reached his hoof around his side and pulled a large grandfather clock out and rocked it to its side, making a tremendous thud as it hit the ground. Apple Bloom jumped back in fright of the random event and couldn’t believe what she was seeing. He peered over into at the face of the now broken clock and read it for a few good moments.

“How in the hay? Where did this-”

“Shhh... I’m listening for my schedule.” He placed his ear on the clock face and nodded his head a few times. He murmured to it, “Uh-huh... yes... yes... go on... talk dirty to me... okay... and yes, extra mayo-Okay!” He shouted, now brightly smiling at his filly companion.

He beamed. “I can make room for your shenanigans today!” She wasn’t sure if he was being serious or sarcastic at that last remark.

She pointed over to the now broken clock on its side and said, “So... where did that come from exactly?”

“Oh, I had it with me.”

She raised an eyebrow at that retort. “You had it with you the whole time?”

He replied as if it was a common answer. “Yes, of course!”

She simply rose her hooves and uttered in defeat, “You know what, forget it. I don’t care where it came from. Let’s just go.”

“Right! Onward, pony!”

The two were walking away from the scene when Apple Bloom stopped and asked, “So you’re just going to leave it there?”

“Yep!”

“In the middle of the Apple Orchard?”

“Yes!” She gave him a silent, irked expression, waiting for him to explain himself.

He finally did with an assuming tone, “I mean, how am I going to use a broken, grandfather clock? This was the only time I was going to use it, and now that it’s broken. It’s no use to anyone. So, I’ll just leave her here to deteriorate. I mean, it is wood... mostly.” She nodded her head and rolled her eyes while turning back around.

The two proceeded through the Apple Orchard with little to no diversions, however at one point, Apple Bloom did have to hold him by the hoof so that he wouldn’t wonder off. Finally the two made it to the other side of the Orchard where the Cutie Mark Crusader's base of operations was located. The ponies went up into the fort and the filly lead the stallion in. The blue stallion had to duck his head to enter the small building and when he did, a growing smile began to form across his face.

“Welcome to the Cutie Mark Crusader’s Clubhouse!”

“Is this where you live? What a fantastic house to live in!”

The yellow filly replied with a sigh of irritation, “No, you were in my house last night, remember?”

The stallion then took a second look around the place they were in and reinstated with less fondness, “Well then, what a terrible clubhouse this is.”

“Thanks...”

She turned back towards the door and replied, “I want you to stay here until I bring my friends over. It shouldn’t be too long of a wait.”

“What shall I do to wait and ensure you that I won’t escape?”

He brought up a valid point as his question halted the small pony in her tracks. She didn’t really think this through and began to scan the messy clubhouse in search for an activity to keep the rambunctious stallion occupied. He watched her anxiously as she sifted through bins, chests and drawers. He sat down in the middle of the room and rocked himself around as his eyes kept on the filly. Apple Bloom pivoted towards him with a box of crayons in her mouth and a notepad in her hooves.

She dropped the items in front of him and asked with hope, “Do you like to draw?” He beat the crayon box with his hoof and stared blankly into the paper.

He spoke emotionlessly, “I don’t know...” He then rose his head back up towards the mare with a grin of satisfaction.

“But! I’ll find out!” He immediately tore open the box with his teeth and scattered the crayons across the tree house floor. He tore a few pieces of paper from the notepad out and tossed those out amongst the room as well.

He began to fumble the crayon he had chosen in his hooves, trying to get a good grip on it. Through trial and error, he was drawing with his two fore-hooves pressed on each side of the blue crayon. He started diligent working on whatever he intended to draw; his tongue was pressed out of his mouth and his eyes were transfixed on the white canvas in front of him. Apple Bloom only smiled as she silently left and then quickly spurted towards the town to gather her friends as fast as she could.

About twenty minutes later, Apple bloom, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo approached the treehouse. To the yellow filly’s surprise, the clubhouse was still intact, but whether or not the stallion was inside was soon to be discovered.

Scootaloo hopped in front of the two other fillies and affirmed the situation over with the group, “So, let me get this straight, Apple Bloom. In our clubhouse is a fully grown stallion you think is an alien from outer space without a cutie mark that landed in your barn, slept in your bed and is now drawing with my personal crayons, correct?”

“That’s right, Scoot. Now I brought you girls here to figure out what to do with him.”

“He’s a blank flank, right?” Sweetie Belle squeaked in. “Maybe he could join the Crusaders?”

Scoot approached the white unicorn and spat, “Boys can’t join the Crusaders.”

“Who says?”

“The rules!”

“What rules? We don’t have any rules except you have to have a blank flank to join. In fact, I thought Babs was a colt for the first day we met and I thought he was cute.”

Her lips puckered up in sudden embarrassment. She had said too much and the two others gave her very concerned looks as her face reddened more.

“I- err... I don’t think so anymore because I know she’s a she and not a he...” A light, forced laugh followed the end of her sentence to try and cover up her previous mistake as a joke.

“Anyways...” Scootaloo said while looking away from the two.

Apple Bloom continued Scoot’s thought, “Anyways, we need to see if he’s even still in the club house.”

“What do you mean if he’s still in the club house?” the pegasus pony asked.

“Look, let’s just go up there and see him already.”

“I don’t know, girls...” Sweetie Belle hesitated, twirling one hoof in her hair and looking towards her other hoof on the ground. “What if he’s a weirdo... or a murderer!”

“Come on, Sweetie Belle,” Scootaloo denoted, “We all know he’s a weirdo because Apple Bloom says he doesn’t have a cutie mark and that he’s suppose to be from, ‘outer space’. And if this guy was a murderer, Apple Bloom would have never told us, because Apple Bloom would be dead!” The white filly shuddered at that last word and placed her hoof up against her mouth.

The three finally made their way up to the door of the club house and opened it. When they peered inside, the trio stood with their eyes goggled in astonishment.

Sweetie Belle leaned over towards Apple Bloom and whispered, “How long did you leave him alone, again?”

She whispered back, “Twenty-so minutes.”

The room was figuratively turned upside down and the walls were scribbled all across with multiple hues of crayon colors. The notepads were obviously not enough for stallion’s imagination as the walls served better canvas space. He was in his own world and had no idea the three entered the club house as he continued to scribble in the very corner of the room.

His drawings were very strange to the fillies, odd contours of undefinable markings which made out to be some sort of language encompassed hyper-detailed schematics of mathematical formulas, astrophysics with planets and all, and other strange things the others had no idea what to make of. Before one of the three could speak, he turned and smiled at the them with a green crayon in his mouth.

“Apple Bloom! How do you do? I have something to show you!” He slide over to a few stray pieces of paper on the floor and began to turn them over and place them together. The trio watched on in silence as he began to form a larger picture from eight smaller pieces of notepad. He stood up to get a better picture of the entire piece once it was all laid out in front everypony.

“Impressed?”

Scootaloo narrowed her vision, deeply looking over the artwork and asked coldly, “What is it?”

The colt gave a displeasing sign of irritation and spat out, “Open your eyes! ... It’s the equine circulatory system, duh. You see, the red crayons make up low oxygen carrying veins and the blue crayons make up the subcutaneous fatty veins. And you wouldn’t believe what I found! I found glow-in-the-dark markers which I used to draw the major and minor organs with, however you’re gonna have to wait till night to see it in its awesomeness!”

Scootaloo turned towards Apple Bloom and said, “I thought you said this guy was cool, not a nerd like Twilight!”

“Oh, I’m cool,” he said while roughly patting the top of the pegasi’s pegasus’s unless I’m unaware, Scootaloo is only one pegasus purple head, “as cool as the inside of a black hole.”

Sweetie Belle finally spoke up in a distraught and frightened tone, “Rarity says that if she finds me in a room with another stallion, she’ll hang me by my hooves in leave me out to dry for a week.”

Apple Bloom approached the unicorn and comforted her, “He’s not like that, he’s alright. In fact, he’s more like a kid than us, heck, he doesn’t have his cutie mark yet!”

“Technically...” he started, pondering on thoughts about his supposed age, puberty, and other apposing facts to her statement, but stopped himself to give Apple Bloom’s friend a break.

“Well, okay, whatever you say, talking horse creatures.”

Scootaloo was overlooking the rest of his drawings on the walls and asked aloud, “What are these supposed to be then?”

“Ha! Oh... you know... thoughts...”

The white filly’s courage had risen and she said to the stallion, “Apple Bloom says you don’t have a name.”

“Oh, I do have a name, Sweetie Balls, I just can’t remember it. Nearly everything has a name once you think about it, except I can’t remember mine. But if you want to think that way, sure, I don’t have a name.”

She had awaited that response, or at least the end of it, to ask the burning question, “Could I give you a name?”

He burst into glee as he placed his hooves on each of her cheeks and shook them vigorously saying over and over again, “Yes! Yes you can! Yes you can!”

He then pivoted her head with his hooves still on her cheeks towards Scootaloo in the corner of the clubhouse. He stated, “She can’t though, she doesn’t like my drawings.” He motioned her head now towards Apple Bloom and said, “She can’t either, she’s boring and annoying.”

“Hey!” the earth filly called out, but the nameless pony ignored her.

The stallion and Sweetie Belle met eyes again and their faces were at close proximity with one another. He told her, “Only you can name me! I can decline your given names, but eventually we’ll come to an agreement.”

She, surprisingly, smiled back and the blue stallion let go of her face. She rubbed a hoof underneath her chin and thought about his future name.

She then sang out the answer with delight, “Sweetie Belle Two!”

“No.”

“Ah, it was worth a try...”

She tried again while the other two watched the process take place. She began to rattle off different names as he shook his head in lack of approval. Her silly and simple names seemed to disapprove with him and she was about to give up on the whole thing.

“I don’t know if I can think of any more, my head’s starting to hurt.” She began to look around the room for inspiration and that’s when it finally hit her.

“How about... Sketch! Because... from what I see... you like to draw! And another word for draw is sketch!”

She awaited his response with an eager gleam in her eyes. His eyes looked about, pondering on the given name. He showed signs of uneasiness about the name, and those signs worried the unicorn of her choice. He saw the sadness beginning to build in her eyes and he surely didn’t want her to be sad.

He finally answered, “Okay.”

“Yaaaaay!” she rejoiced as she hopped around the stallion in utter bliss. “New Cutie Mark Crusader Sketch!”

Apple Bloom approached him saying, “Well, Sketch, me and Scoots were talking about what to do with you, and we decided that we will bring you into town.”

He softly breathed the word, “Yes!”

The yellow earth pony continued, “We’re taking you directly to the smartest, purpliest pony in town to figure out why you don’t have a cutie mark.”

His brief joy came to sudden stand still as he rose his eyebrow and repeated her, “Purpliest?”