//------------------------------// // Among the Shades // Story: The Last Apple Family Reunion // by crash826 //------------------------------// The stairs were dark, heavily packed earth, and felt more like walking down a hill in the orchard in winter than stairs. As she got closer to the bottom, they abandoned all pretensions - the stairs became a sloping ramp, a path of solid earth. Whiplike shoots and dark branches grew from the walls, forming supporting arches. Some swayed at her passing, shifting toward her and the candle in her hat. Applejack could hear the sound of rumbling, of tapping, far off in the Earth. At the foot of the stairs, Applejack alighted, tapped her back hoof twice on the last step (for good luck, like her pa had taught her) and surveyed her surroundings. They were mostly as she had expected of the Underworld, but larger. In the distance, she could see no cave walls - no roof. The only thing up there was a sky, velvet and dark with jewels like the night sky. In the distance, mausoleums - pale bone, stark against the night of diamonds. She had emerged from a great dark portal, marked with gold and ruby. At the feet, ponies - or things very much like them, at least, dark or washed-out images of ponies - waved at her and smiled. "Hello? Helloooo? Are you alright?" The head of the party, a stallion of an indistinct forest green shade, smiled at her. "Come on out of the door, won't you? Do you know where you are?" "Uh..." Here was where the difficulty began. Well, this and wrangling Cerberus, of course. "Well, Ah reckon I've got an idea. But Ah'd appreciate an explanation anyway." "Certainly!" The green pony nodded. "We are shades. This is the Underworld. And you, dear, have... passed away. I'm dreadfully sorry, but that is the way that things are." The others around him nodded and smiled in a nonspecific, friendly way. "Well, Ah'd suspected." Applejack smiled weakly. "Can't say Ah'm happy with it, but Ah might as well deal with what's in front'a me. Mind givin' me any facts?" "Certainly. Walk with us?" She nodded, and the green stallion waved an authoritarian hoof. Those around his babbled incoherently for a moment, then turned and made a spot for her. She walked into the crowd, and on another wave, it moved on into the night. "So what's your name, dear?" "Appleja--" Applejack caught herself. "--Fritter! Heh heh, hoo. Apple Fritter, that's right." It wasn't a great name, but she wasn't often at home to lying. "Well, Apple Ja-Fritter, I can tell just by looking at you that you must have lived a long and fulfilling life!" The stallion smiled. "After all, look at your coloration... even down here, you're so vibrant, so solid. I'm in what's considered excellent shape for any shade... but compared to you, I'm hardly even here!" Applejack (Fritter) smiled back at the... shade, she supposed he was. It was true - he was a bit washed, and she could faintly see, on the other side of him, the vapid, stretched smile of a mare such a pale blue that she was more like the distilled water that Rarity drank than a living being. "How come your friends ain't as chatty as you are?" "They... lived uninteresting lives. Mostly, they are just phantom imprints of their old selves." "What a frightful painting," added the blue mare. "Go ahead, try it on me! I laugh at anything," volunteered another. "...right." "Well, do you care to join us, Ms. Jafritter?" The green shade gestured to a group of fairly bright shades; they looked at her with palpable interest. But she had... No time at all, really. "Sorry, Ah've got somewhere ta go. D'you know how Ah could find... specific ponies? Dead ponies, Ah mean?" On the horizon, Applejack noticed more mausoleums, and presumably more shades. "Ponies Ah knew?" "Oh, everyone asks that." The shade's smile vanished. "No one ever wants to stay at first. I tell them that they most likely won't be able to find their way back. But no one listens." Applejack could detect a certain resigned feeling, as well as anger, in the curl of his lip. "But I hope you'll come back some time. And besides..." His eye glinted. "Unless they haven't been dead for long, you may not like what you find. Ponies change down here. And the older ones, down in the Pit..." He gestured with a hoof to the slope of the Underworld - which, she noticed, was downward all the way, only stopping to accommodate cliff faces and tombs. His eyes were hard. "You may search for a thousand years and never find them. And by that time, even such a strong shade as yourself will fade, dear. But don't let me keep you." And with that, he stamped his hoof again, and the clouds of the restless, mindless dead floated off with him, smiling. "Ah ain't got that long." Applejack walked down the slope. The Pit was dead ahead. "Not at all."