It was a beautiful autumn day in Equestria.
The clouds were painted with an array of soft, calming hues as though the sky were a canvas. The droplets of cool, frosted dew clung to the scarlet, canary and peach leaves, which cluttered the dry ground in heaps like miniscule mountains. The air was tangibly crisp.
On the creaking porch of the old Apple family house, in the shade of the bare limbs of a massive oak, a carrot-coated mare sat, curled in the chestnut wood arms of an ancient rocking chair. It swung gently black and forth in the lightest of breezes, the only sound disrupting the serene silence was the occasional click as the legs of the chair rolled against the floor.
Applejack lay in a frozen motion, swinging to and fro with the rhythmic heaves of the chair, allowing the harmonic hush to lull her to sleep. Her breath curled from her placid smile in fog-like clouds, which rose swiftly before vanishing into the early evening sky.
A faint tingling lullaby sounded from the wind chimes above her, rustling Applejack from her near-dream state.
"Applejack?" a soft voice cooed. Though her faded Stetson swept over her eyes, the cowpony mare instantly placed the voice as her sister's.
"Yes, Applebloom?" she said calmly, lifting her hat ever so slightly. "What do ya need?"
"Ah was wonderin' if ya could help me with ma English homework, ah don't quite get it." Applebloom queried innocently, a well-sharpened pencil poised in her mouth and hovering above her homework sheet with the anticipation of a vulture above a carcass.
Applejack contemplated then situation for a moment, which seemed an eternity to her younger sister. The mare gulped, praying her nervous ticks had gone unnoticed -- the faint shuffling of her hooves and the twitching of her ears.
Painstaking moments having passed, Applebloom's patient smile had contorted into a look of confusion.
"Applejack? Did y'all hear me?"
~ ~ ~
"I-I... um..."
"Well?" the teacher barked, his hoof tapping audibly on the desk to demonstrate his growing frustration. His temple crinkled slightly, a vein throbbing visibly beneath his beige coat.
"Ah'm sorry... ah wasn't paying attention." Applejack murmured, sinking into her chair. From somewhere in the long, dismal classroom came a giggle, followed by another hushed chuckle. The teacher stared on, his expression stoic, at the filly for what seemed to stretch on for hours, before heaving a loud, pained sigh.
"Miss. Apple, this is the fifth time I've caught you daydreaming this week alone! You're just bringing this on yourself."
Another laugh. A quiet snicker. It echoed in the filly's mind.
The teacher turned swiftly on his heel, his disheveled and fatigued eyes turning to the blackboard. With a length of powdery alabaster chalk levitated in a mellow chestnut aura, he wrote something. She followed attentively, her eyes locked on the chalk as it rose and fell, drawing tedious lines.
She struggled to make sense of it, squinting and racking her brain for any shard of comprehension.
The first word was her name. A-p-p-l-e-j-a-c-k. Big Macintosh had taught her that one a few weeks ago.
"Can you spell it out, Miss. Apple?' the teacher asked with a sneer, his hoof gesturing to the unknown words. Applejacks' heart sank, and a peculiar, fluttery feeling rose in her gut that could only be described as 'butterflies'.
"No..." she murmured, her voice falling silent to the expecting classroom. An elbow dug sharply into her side, causing applejack to wince in pain.
"Hey, Apple. Speak louder." Berry Punch laughed, her voice taunting.
"Um, no..." the filly said, slightly louder.
"Excuse me?"
"Ah can't read!" Applejack cried. Her hooves flew to her mouth, which hung agape in shock at her own outburst. "I-I... I can't read." There was a chilling, poignant silence. It hung in there, unbroken and untainted. It was bitter.
And after that fleeting moment of hush, the room burst into laughter. Her classmates erupted into a chorus of scorn. Applejack glanced up briefly, only to see the teacher too, was laughing.
"Stop!" Applejack sobbed, burying her face in her hooves as tears leaked from her eyes in an unceremonious cascade of sorrow. "P-please! Stop! Don't laugh at me..." As it was to be expected, the laughter, the taunts and the teases and the relentless name-calling did not cease there. No, it only escalated.
Each hour that Applejack endured of this torturous hell was only the prelude of her pain.
Sighing dejectedly with tear-streaked cheeks still flushed and puffed up with her constant crying, Applejack slung her saddlebag over her back, piling her textbooks and whatnot in before closing the flap with a resonating click. Foals throughout the schoolyard were laughing and whispering. She could only detect fragments of these hurtful conversations, but even the occasional word was enough to bring tears anew.
Idiot.
Loser.
Dork.
Twit.
Poor Applejack even heard words uttered about her that Granny always told her were rude. Swears. The b-word.
"Hey, Apples." a filly cooed maliciously from above. Applejack glanced up to see Bonbon and her friends had crowded around her, all wearing the same smug smile.
"Please don't call me that." she muttered.
Another filly stepped up, with a silky and curled pink mane bouncing behind her. "Please don't call me that." she repeated, her voice whiny and mocking, with an evidently dramatized southern drawl.
"Nice one Cheerilee." another one giggled.
"I just wanna go home." Applejack said, trying to step beyond the sea of bullies. Applejack tripped, her forelegs collided with a hoof Lyra Heartstrings had stuck out. "Oof!" she cried as her chin dug into the gravel, catching and scraping her flesh. Tears stung her eyes as she fumbled to her hooves, faced with another cheer of amusement.
"Aww, but Apples!" Cheerilee pouted. "We're not done with you yet. We still have a game to play."
"Yeah." Bonbon chimed as she took a sweeping step forward, nearing Applejack. "We only wanna play. So spell this out for us, Apples: A-P-P-L-E-S I-S A-N I-D-I-O-T."
"I, um.."
"Well? Spell it out! Say it!" Lyra snapped.
"Apples is an... i-dee-uht." the filly whimpered, rubbing her hoof against the tender flesh on her chin. "Apples is an idiot."
Apples is and idiot.
Those words never stopped haunting Applejack. Every time she even had a sliver of doubt in herself, those words would scrape at the back of her mind. She was so afraid of being a failure. Of finally living up to their taunts. And for the longest time...
she believed them.
It wasn't until several more minutes of laughter and malicious jokes that Applejack was set free and the crowd of bullies scattered, still giggling and gossiping amongst themselves. Luckily, the filly managed to slip away unnoticed from the regular, beaten cobblestone path she always took home, instead scampering away and ducking in a tiny groove in the earth, which lead to a winding gravel road through the emerald forest.
When she arrived home, her cheeks were still puffed and rosy with tears, and she hid her face from Granny as best as she could as she galloped up the stairs to the secrecy of her room.
"Applejack, are y'alright?" Granny Smith queried in her hoarse, wizened voice.
"Just dirt, granny. Just got dirt in my eyes when I was playing with my friends." Applejack lied with some difficulty, as she was found to be extremely honest. However, her grandmare returned to her knitting quickly and never mentioned it again that night, fully satisfied with the response.
The filly hastened into her room, closing the door quietly behind her. She buried her muzzle in her forelegs, her face colliding with the pillow with an almost-comical 'poof'. And she gave up.
Her tears flowed freely like a stream of water rushing from the fresh cracks of a breaking dam. Her sniffles and wails were babbled and muffled in her pillow. And long after she had cried herself dry, she still whispered into the blankets the same four words.
Apples is an idiot.