//------------------------------//
// Seconds (Esle Ynopemos) 
// Story: ApplePie Prompt Tag Group Collab! 
// by Starswirls Beard 
//------------------------------//


By Esle Ynopemos


Seconds. She'd missed her by mere seconds. Applejack arrived at the platform just as the train pulled away. If she had arrived a moment sooner, she could have shouted, or leapt on the train, or have at least done something. But she was late. Late by seconds, and those seconds had cost her the one chance she had to tell her...

Applejack stamped her hoof against the wooden floor, thinking of all the ways she could have saved herself those seconds. She could have rolled out of bed a minute earlier. Skipped brushing her mane—it was under her hat, anyway, what did it matter if it was brushed? She could have eaten an apple on the go instead of sitting down to a bowl of oats for breakfast. She could have galloped to the train station as though timber wolves were after her instead of tiptoeing up to it like it was a sleeping manticore.

Hay, if she was going to indulge in could-haves and should-haves, she could have gotten over herself and said something weeks ago when Pinkie had announced she was leaving for rock country with no real idea when she would be back!

The train's whistle blew, and it sounded like a taunt to the farm pony's ears as it carried Pinkie away. She wanted to howl back at it, chase after the danged thing like a madpony. But she wouldn't catch it. Already the train was fading into the morning mist, racing toward the bend in the tracks that would take it out of sight on its way to far off places.

Applejack fell back onto her haunches, cursing herself for a stubborn fool. She'd just had to hang onto her pride til the last second, hadn't she? She couldn't have let herself realize what she could have had until that last moment it had sunk in what she was about to lose.

Seconds. Sun-and-stars-damned seconds, and they might as well have been years.

“Applejack?”

Her ears didn't want to believe the voice they heard. Applejack looked up, and there was Pinkie Pie, standing on the edge of the platform.

“Pinkie?” Applejack sprang to her hooves. “Pinkie, ya missed your train!”

Pinkie grinned and shook her head. “No, I caught it. But then my hoof got all tickly, and that usually means somepony really needs to talk to me.” She held up her hoof, as though expecting Applejack to see ticklishness somehow. She glanced at the train as it rounded its distant bend. “It wasn't anypony on the train, so I figured it must be somepony out here.”

Applejack felt a lump build in her throat.

The morning sun shone in Pinkie's bright blue eyes. “Applejack, do you have something you needed to tell me?”

Applejack did not let any more seconds slip past her. Tears gleamed on her cheeks as she smiled and nodded. “I surely do, hon. I surely do.”