Applejack woke up screaming. She shot to a sitting position, eyes wide and heart racing. The sensations of her dream persisted, if only briefly, into the waking world, and she simply sat there for a few moments catching her breath in the wake of phantom pain. She remembered a loud noise, the shockwave knocking the wind out of her and sending her flying, wood chips pelting her skin as Rarity screamed. Had she heard other voices as well? She didn't have long to think about it, as the shock of vivid images lasted only a moment before slowly dispersing in the haze of her groggy mind. Strangely, even as the sights and sounds of her dream faded away, the conversation she’d held with Rarity remained fresh and clear, almost as if she could still hear her friend’s voice.
Her breathing evened out, her heart slowed, and a small smile found its way on to Applejack's face. She wiped at her misty eyes and pushed to her hooves.
She couldn’t deny the underlying, ever-present fear that had haunted her since she’d awoken far from home on a strange beach, but its hold on her had slackened slightly. Applejack knew that she could push through it, persevere in the face of it all. The lingering voice of Rarity’s encouragement had brought with it a sort of serenity with its assurance that everything would be alright.
Applejack and Rarity had known each other for years. For the vast majority of that time they had never quite seen eye to eye. The two of them had butted heads over most everything, from basic table manners to matters of family. When it came right down to it, the two were about as different as two ponies could be. Yet, by a series of events set in motion when they were both fillies, Applejack now considered Rarity one of her closest and most trusted friends.
She couldn’t say for certain why she was putting so much stock in a mere dream of her friend, but Applejack could feel that same trust in Rarity’s words. She felt an almost palpable sense of reassurance that flowed through her from head to hooves as if her friends were standing right behind her.
The sensation, and the memories of the dream, brought with them a new determination, replacing that which had been nearly crushed after the day before. She would make it home to them, all of them. It wasn't the first time Applejack had been out of her element, and she wasn’t about to let a silly thing like fear stop her.
With a confident smile on her face, Applejack snatched her hat up and placed it atop her head. The locket that had been lying next to it caught her eye, and for a moment she hesitated, her smile faltering ever so slightly. She picked the golden trinket up in a forehoof and flicked the face open. The joyous pony within didn't bring about the same feelings it had the night before. Instead of a dark reminder of what she was missing, it was a hopeful reminder of what she was going back to. Applejack's smile grew to nearly match the beaming grin of the pony in the picture.
Applejack clicked the locket closed and set it down carefully off to one side, before quickly strapping her knife to her left foreleg. The little rubber chicken sitting with its back against the rock hadn't moved overnight, and she shot it a grin.
"Whole new day," she said happily. "Best get out and make somethin' of it." The silence of the jungle was the only response.
It was then that Applejack realized how dry her throat was. She smacked her lips irritably as she strode out of the lean-to and into the dim light of dawn. The clearing was bathed in a deep red glow as the sun broke the horizon somewhere behind the trees. Applejack paused, one hoof raised mid-step. She'd never seen anything like it. It was something she would occasionally expect of a sunset, but never a sunrise. Looking up to the sky above the clearing, Applejack could see multiple blood-red clouds drifting by across a pink backdrop overhead. Applejack glanced down, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hoof. The crimson lighting painted her coat several shades darker, almost making her look like a different pony altogether.
Applejack stood there until the sun had fully risen and the sky was a normal, pale blue. The strange, red lighting was washed away in a flash. The scenery had looked so different in the dawn’s red glow, it was almost hard to believe Applejack was looking at the same place.
Blinking several times, Applejack shook her head and trotted out into the clearing. As nice as the naturally beautiful sight was, there was no need to get distracted. First things first, she took a long drink from her canteen, and then went to fill it up from the river, humming to herself as she did. After hanging the canteen around her neck, Applejack trotted back over to her shelter and fished a small piece of charcoal out of the smouldering remains of last night's fire. Moving over to the massive rock that supported her lean-to, she scratched another mark on the flat section of the boulder she'd dedicated to timekeeping. This brought the total count up to eleven.
Nodding, she tossed the charred bit of wood back into the smoky fire pit. Just then, her stomach grumbled loudly. She chuckled, cutting off in a wheeze when a slight pang hit her midsection, and trotted over to her stash of supplies. Staring at the coconuts and wildflowers available to her, Applejack sighed. Her first fresh coconut had been amazing, and she would never complain about some nice wildflowers, but after a week and a half of the same food, it was beginning to grow tiring. She was willing to do whatever it took to survive, but there was sure to be something else to eat growing on a tropical island.
Applejack tried to think of what she had to do that day. Her shelter was sufficient for now, and she didn't need to gather any more firewood for another day or two. There was nothing immediately pressing that she could think of. That meant she had time to forage for something a little more interesting for breakfast. With a slight spring in her step, Applejack strapped on her saddlebags and set off into the jungle.
The air became hot and stifling under the canopy of the trees, but Applejack pressed on. As much time as she spent wandering through the dense jungle, she never found herself growing any fonder of the act. She’d give her left ear just for a nice, open dirt road or a wide field. The clearing was nice enough, but deep inside the jungle was just… sweaty. It wasn’t that Applejack never got sweaty, but the pressing rainforest didn’t even provide the space to break into a gallop and let the rushing wind cool her coat.
Still, she remained focused enough to keep careful track of where she was going. It wouldn't be impossible to find her way back to the clearing, as finding and following the river would be easy enough, but Applejack would rather not waste time wandering around lost if at all possible.
Even in the thick jungle air, the walk was relatively pleasant, as far as such things go. The usual rustling could still be heard every once in a while, but elicited nothing more than a flick of the ear from Applejack. She took solace in the crunch of wet leaves underhoof, and the damp, earthy smell in the air. Even if it was hot and suffocating, she was still in nature, and Applejack could certainly appreciate that.
Eventually, the monotonous brown and green was broken as Applejack spotted a flicker of blue up ahead. She sped up to a trot, angling towards the spot of colour standing out from the surrounding underbrush. As she moved closer, Applejack saw that it was a small patch of berries, growing in the sunlight provided by a gap in the canopy above.
Applejack laughed triumphantly, before quickly kneeling down and examining the berries. They looked like regular blueberries to her, but it never hurt to be careful. Blueberries didn’t actually grow near Ponyville, and had to be shipped in each harvest season. This, of course, placed them as just barely too expensive to be common. As such, Applejack couldn’t be sure that what she was looking at wasn’t some type of exotic jungle berry. She was considering leaving them alone, just in case, when another sharp pain flared briefly in her stomach. That settled it, she had to at least give them a shot.
She gave the berries a tentative sniff. They didn’t smell acrid or repulsive, as some poisonous plants did. As far as she could remember, they smelled like regular old blueberries. Applejack tried not to let herself get too excited, as one final test remained. She slowly leaned forward, and ever so carefully picked one of the blueberries with her teeth, ready to spit it out at a moments’ notice. She paused for a second, breathing slowly, before simply shrugging and biting down.
The taste shouldn't have come as a surprise. The blueberry did, in fact, taste like a blueberry. However, after spending so long eating the same stuff for every meal, it was the most delicious thing Applejack had ever eaten.
Applejack sat down on her haunches and shoved her face into the bush, snatching up mouthfuls of the delectable treats with reckless abandon. She ate quite a few leaves for her trouble, but couldn't care less as the flavour was overpowered by the wonderful wild berries.
It took a good few seconds of stuffing her face before sense and reason managed to fight off the hunger that had taken control of Applejack's brain. She sat back up, her muzzle stained purple, and held back the urge to dive in and consume every blueberry in the immediate area.
If she wanted them to last long at all, the blueberries would have to be a delicacy. There could very well be more growing around the jungle, but seeing as this was the first patch she'd ever seen, they couldn’t be very common on the island. She still wasn't quite full, but the edge had been taken off her hunger. It was a feeling she'd almost gotten used to over the past week and a half: the feeling of conserving supplies. Back in Ponyville, the weather patrol had made sure all the farms grew more than they could ever need, and Applejack couldn’t remember the last time she’d been left wanting for food. Of course, that was then. If she had to lose a few pounds to make her food last, then so be it.
Even that couldn't put a damper on Applejack's day though, and her smile held strong. The encouragement of Rarity's dreamt speech still provided her with hope, even as the words began to fade, and now she'd found a new source of food. No, it was still a good day.
Applejack considered packing all of the blueberries into her saddlebags, but decided against it. The patch was only a couple minutes' walk from camp, and any berries she brought back would only go bad if she didn't eat them quick enough.
She would have to commit the location of the blueberries to memory, though. Applejack looked around, taking careful note of her surroundings. In all honestly, it looked exactly the same as any other stretch of jungle she’d visited. She doubted there was much chance of her recognizing it later by sight alone. After a minute or two of turning in place and observing all the indistinguishable trees, Applejack set off back the way she'd come. This was a much better method of memorizing the location, one that she knew for sure would work. Applejack had always possessed a good sense of direction, and by the time she reached her clearing, she knew exactly how to find her way back to the blueberries just by tracing her steps. She went back and forth between her camp and the patch of berries a couple times, just to be sure. Better safe than sorry.
After the third round trip, Applejack was finally satisfied, and plopped down on her haunches back at her camp to rest her legs. It really wasn't a long walk, but she had been taking her time and paying close attention to her path, so it was already mid-morning when all was said and done.
She sat there, pondering what to do next. There was still most of a day left, and it wouldn't do to waste it. She drifted in idle thought for a moment, before shooting to her hooves in a flash. Eyes wide, Applejack realized that she had been so intent on waiting for rescue that she'd never actually considered making herself easier to find.
It hadn't even crossed her mind that she would have to make herself known. She had been completely confident that Twilight Sparkle, the most magically gifted unicorn in Equestria, would have no trouble at all locating Applejack with some sort of spell or enchantment or… some other magical whatsit. Besides, as much as she tried to stay humble about it, Applejack was an Element of Harmony, and that technically made her vital to Equestrian national security. Even the princesses themselves would likely employ their own magic in bringing back one of the Elements.
Only they hadn't. Applejack had paid it no mind until then, figuring they just needed some time to prepare the necessary magic. While that was still a possibility, Applejack only now realized that there were other possible answers. Perhaps things were worse than she'd initially thought. If something had happened to her friends, particularly Twilight, then the princesses' attention would surely be occupied.
Applejack pushed those thoughts out of her mind. Dwelling on such things would be of no use to anypony. Really, her friends could be fine, and it could be that there simply wasn't a spell for finding lost ponies. Though Twilight not having a spell for something did seem far fetched—
Applejack shook her head, refocusing her thoughts on the task at hoof. Twilight, Pinkie, all of her friends were perfectly fine. That didn't change the fact that magical rescue might not be coming, and that meant she would have to look to more conventional methods. The earth pony way. Wasting no time, Applejack strapped on and packed her saddlebags. Her spirits were still high, but now her jaw was set with a hard edge of determination. Conventional methods, she could do.
She set off at a brisk trot through the jungle, heading in the general direction of the cave if her memory served. Her destination was the beach, so any direction would technically do, but from what Applejack could tell the closest shore was the one she'd woken up on, and the easiest way to find it was to at start at the cave.
When Applejack had climbed up that mountain and gotten her first good view of the whole island, she’d estimated that it would take about one full day to cross the island lengthwise, east or west, and only a matter of hours to travel the whole island north or south. If she had been correct in her estimates, then getting to any beach at all would prove no trouble.
Unfortunately, Applejack had made her assumptions based on her usual trotting speed. She could set a good clip, normally, and could keep it going for hours upon hours if the situation called for it. What she had failed to account for was terrain. Applejack had never had to travel through thick jungle before. She was an open plains and dirt roads kind of pony. The closest she'd ever experienced was the Everfree Forest, and even that had hard-packed dirt paths. No, as proud as she was of her improved skills at navigating the deep jungle, she still traveled a great deal slower through the underbrush and trees. If she had to come up with new figures based on what she remembered about the island's size, and her new knowledge of its difficult terrain, Applejack realized that it would take at least twice as long as what she'd originally thought, and that was being generous.
So it was that Applejack was heading back towards the cave. She knew it was only a couple hours from her new shelter to her old one, even through the rough terrain, and the beach was another trip of about the same distance. Still, the damp and suffocating air of the jungle soon made Applejack wish the walk was even shorter. She paused, sitting down to take a long drink from the canteen around her neck. As she glanced skyward, she caught rays of sunlight shining down through the scant gaps in the canopy overhead. The light wasn't terribly bright, even for what Applejack had come to expect when deep within the interior of the jungle. She found herself longing to be under open sky again, and quickly pushed back to her hooves, setting off at a slightly increased pace.
As much as the jungle still impeded her forward motion, Applejack was certainly becoming ever better at traveling through it carefully. Where once she would have left a swath of destroyed underbrush in her wake, Applejack was now able to move with barely a distinguishable trail. At least, not that she could see. It was inevitable with days and days of virtually constant practice, really, but it was still a small point of pride.
Applejack only wished she could tell one mass of trees from another in this blasted forest. She still had no way of knowing for certain if she was actually taking the right path. Countless trees surrounded her on all sides, indistinguishable from one another. The stifling humidity was beginning to cloud her head, and Applejack soon lost track of just how long she’d been walking. She shook her head to clear away some of the fog, and pushed onwards defiantly.
Finally, Applejack spotted a few palm trees intermixed with the taller, more leafy trees that made up the rest of the rainforest. Gaps began appearing in the canopy overhead, and Applejack knew she was finally nearing the edge of the jungle. In no time at all, Applejack found herself surrounded by more palm trees than anything else. Applejack turned her gaze upwards. The canopy that had felt so oppressive when she'd first stepped off the beach and into the jungle now seemed like nothing at all. It was downright thin when compared against the dense inner jungle where Applejack now resided. The sunlight that shone through the leafy covering was bright as day compared to the constant dimness that surrounded Applejack whenever she ventured outside her clearing. Looking down, Applejack could see that even the undergrowth had thinned considerably. It seemed strange that she'd had trouble making her way through this just a week and a half ago.
While the scenery was nice, Applejack didn't want to waste any more time. She continued trotting along, and soon caught sight of her destination on her right. As it turned out, her path wasn’t quite as accurate as she’d thought, and Applejack had nearly passed right by without noticing. She took a hard right, and her corrected course circled almost completely around before finally approaching from the front.
The trees and bushes thinned out, the ground ramped upwards, and Applejack found herself staring up at a tall mountain with the open mouth of a dark cave sitting at the foot of the steep, stark cliff.
Applejack stood at the rainforest’s edge, at the bottom of the treeless hill that led up to the cave. She almost considered returning there briefly, thinking back on the three nights she'd spent safe inside. Then Applejack remembered what she'd found when she'd taken a deeper look inside. If the perfectly smooth walls and corners hadn’t been strange enough, there was the strange symbol she'd found on the wall. The so-called cave clearly wasn’t natural. Applejack shuddered. Maybe some other time. She turned quickly and strode back into the jungle.
Once back under the cover of trees, Applejack sat down, unstrapped her saddlebags, and set them on the dirt in front of her. She licked her lips and withdrew a hoofful of wildflowers that she’d packed. Lunch was a luxury she couldn't generally afford if she wanted to conserve food, but Applejack also knew the importance of eating on a long day of hiking. She munched idly on the tasty petals, and took an occasional sip from her canteen to wash it down. Her thoughts turned back to the cave as she sat there. There was a curiosity about the place that worked to draw Applejack in, ominous as it was. Of course, she’d stopped for lunch, not sightseeing. Forcing down her curiosity, Applejack quickly finished the rest of her meagre meal and put the saddlebags back on. Wasting no more time, she stood up and set out once more.
The trees continued to thin, and palms became ever more predominant. Still, Applejack walked and walked. She moved forward with determination, the air around her feeling a little lighter and easier to breathe as she neared the end of the jungle. Applejack clambered over a log that had fallen over her path before pausing to check the position of the sun. While she still couldn't see it through the canopy, its rays were shining from almost directly overhead. She could tell by the slight angle of the beams that the day was just entering afternoon. Applejack nearly sighed as she realized how late it would be when she arrived back at her camp, but quickly stopped herself. It wasn't as if she was wasting time. She was only wasting time when she wasn't moving.
With that thought, Applejack continued her trek. Fortunately, she was even nearer to the end than she thought. A bright light appeared up ahead, and Applejack's pace quickened slightly. She trotted forward with a wide smile. The light grew brighter, larger, nearer, and in a matter of seconds Applejack reached it, leapt forth, and burst out of the jungle completely.
Her hooves landed on soft, warm sand, and she closed her eyes against the sudden, blinding light. The effect of her recently meagre diet on Applejack’s strength was made apparent yet again as her legs were starting to ache from the scant few hours of walking. She knew that the return trip would be just as long, but still Applejack sighed happily. There was a certain familiar joy to be found in the feeling of burning muscles, and she relished in it just as much as she might after a long day of applebucking. Besides, the first leg of her journey was finally complete, and she would have plenty of time to recuperate before heading back.
After a few seconds, Applejack was able to tentatively open her eyes. She blinked several times against the brightness, allowing her vision to adjust. The bright sunlight reflected off the shining blue sea and the pure white sand of the beach. The sight of the ocean took Applejack's breath away just as much as it had the first time, if not for the same reason. The waters were a darker blue than before, swelling and shifting like nothing Applejack had ever seen. Countless whitecapped waves broke on the surface of the roiling sea, contrasting against the deep, dark blue like stars in a night sky. The turbulence stretched out to the horizon, as far as Applejack could see, and came as close as waves crashing upon the beach before her. The noise was intense, a constant swooshing roar that intensified whenever a particularly large wave smashed against the sand. A huge gust of wind blew across the waters, nearly knocking Applejack's hat off before she clamped a forehoof down on her head to hold it in place. The gust died down, but a strong wind remained, violently whipping Applejack’s tail and rustling what was left of her short-cut mane.
"Land sakes…" Applejack took an involuntary step back. She was unfamiliar with the ocean, and didn’t really know what to expect from it, but she had no idea that it could get this… terrifying. She could feel the sheer power within the thrashing waters, just waiting for her to step a little closer, close enough for the angry sea to lash out and pull her away with one of its massive waves.
Just as Applejack was considering returning another day, she remembered the dream she'd had the night before. Her eyes hardened, and a determined look crossed her features. She could do this.
She walked out on to the beach, holding her hat down against another gust of wind. First things first, Applejack took off her saddlebags and set them down. Then she took off her hat and used the saddlebags to hold it in place on the sand, taking extreme care not to badly crush or damage the weathered stetson.
With her effects safely out of the way, Applejack squinted her eyes and cast her gaze over the whole of the beach, running her eyes up and down the coastline. After a few seconds, she spotted what she was looking for and trotted off towards it. Applejack approached a large piece of driftwood, mostly straight, and about twice as long as a pony. It would do nicely. She wrapped her forelegs around it and awkwardly dragged it backwards along the beach, leaving a furrow in the sand.
The next hour or two passed by with much of the same. Applejack found large pieces of wood washed up around the shore, and dragged them one by one back to a central location, a wide stretch of clear beach not far from where she’d originally woken up.
As she worked, a pattern began to appear, and finally, Applejack dragged the last piece of wood over. She was grunting with effort for each step she took, and panting for breath, but she managed to get the final piece into place. Stepping back and wiping her the sweat from her forehead, Applejack admired her work.
Four huge, wooden letters were laid out on the beach, spelling out the simplest message possible: 'HELP'. Applejack had made them large enough to be visible even from an airship, though she knew those rarely ventured far from Equestrian shores. There was still the hope that she was close enough to her home for airships to fly out to her, but even if she wasn’t, the message would be easy enough to spot from the deck of any seafaring ship as well. There was no way anypony within sight of the beach could miss it.
Glancing upwards at the thought, Applejack blinked in surprise. The beach provided her with an open view of the whole sky, right to the horizon, and Applejack now saw countless white, puffy clouds drifting across the endless expanse of blue. It was a stark change from the literal cloudless sky that usually hung over the island. Applejack supposed it was no surprise, though. With no weather ponies to control the weather, it could hardly be expected to be ideal all the time. At least the sun was still shining brightly.
Shrugging and paying the cloud cover no more mind, Applejack walked back over to where her saddlebags lay. The afternoon was wearing on, and there was one last thing she had to do. She put on her hat, and then reached for the bags themselves. For a moment, the dark stain on one of the flaps caught her eye in the bright light of the beach. She shuddered briefly, but quickly refocused and fished deep within the bags, pulling out several pieces of paper that flapped and buffeted in the wind. Lastly, she withdrew a quill and inkwell.
Applejack had to hobble back over to the treeline to get out of the powerful gust of wind that threatened to rip the papers away at any second. She found a large, relatively smooth rock at the edge of the jungle and sat down next to it. Next, she spread one piece of paper flat on the rock and uncapped the inkwell. She picked up the quill in her mouth, leaned towards the inkwell, and hesitated. Only then did she realize she had no idea what to write. She wanted to ask for somepony to come get her, to tell them where she was and how to find her, but she couldn't. She hadn't the slightest idea where she was, or how to get there. The thought made her deflate a bit. Her ears folded back against her head as she pondered the futility of even sending a message.
She perked back up, her eyes hard. No, she did have something to say. Applejack dipped her quill in the ink and began to write. She could tell her family, her friends, that she was alive.
She told them not to worry, that she was fine. She told her family to stay strong and take care of each other and the farm. She told her friends that she'd see them again soon. As she wrote, she spoke each word aloud under her breath. It was an old habit that she’d never quite kicked.
“I’ll be back before you know it, so don’t get too worried. I just wanted to make sure you all knew I was fine,” she mumbled, the words flowing easily into letters on the paper. “Don’t let Big Macintosh hurt himself trying to harvest all by himself. We can handle a smaller harvest, and it ain’t worth risking your health over.”
Applejack paused, leaning back slightly to look over her letter. As she did, the harsh winds gusted against her back, and the sound of the raging ocean reached her ears. Applejack sighed. There was a certain solace to be found in such a simple and familiar task as talking about farmwork, and Applejack couldn’t deny that it had been nice to lose herself in it for a moment, but she was only distracting herself from what needed to be done.
Once more, she leaned towards the paper, quill in mouth. “I’m afraid I don’t rightly know where I am at the moment. I don’t even know how I got here. You all must be worried sick, and maybe even a bit scared, but trust me when I tell you not to worry. I’m fine, and I’m coming home, no matter what it takes.” Hearing the words out loud, even if they were spoken by herself, stirred something inside Applejack, and she found herself sitting up a little straighter.
“I may not know where this place is exactly, but maybe you can get somepony else to figure it out. To start, I’m on an island…”
Applejack wrote down everything she could about the island. She spared no detail, from the geography to the plant life she could name, to the lack of any other living thing that she could see. Of course, she also mentioned the fact that other ponies had apparently lived there once, though they seemed to have left long ago. It wasn’t much to go on, but maybe somepony with better knowledge of geography would catch something in the description that would lead them to Applejack. The only thing that she left out was the strange… something that had stalked after her twice now in the night. That likely wouldn’t help them find the island, and it would only worry her family needlessly.
Finally, she ended the letter, mumbling to herself as she wrote, "I love you all. I'll never give up, so don't give up on me," she muttered around the quill in her mouth, finally signing it with a simple, "Applejack."
A warm feeling settled over Applejack as she looked over the letter, content with her work. At the top she addressed it to Ponyville, Equestria, hoping that whoever found it would be able to get it where it was going. She carefully copied it down onto the other five pieces of paper she'd brought with her. Once she'd read through all six copies of the letter, double checking each of them, she reached back into her saddlebags. From within the bags she brought out six empty glass bottles, each of them with a cork in the top. Applejack rolled up one of the letters, uncorked a bottle, slid the letter inside, and popped the cork back in. She repeated the process for the rest of the letters as well, before sticking them all inside her saddlebags. Before getting up, a thought struck her, and she stowed her hat inside the saddlebags too. It wouldn't do to lose it to the high winds, after all.
Applejack walked back out onto the beach, bracing herself against the gusting wind as she approached the water. She wasn't sure how long she'd been writing for, but it almost seemed to have gotten darker, though she was pretty sure that was her imagination. At the very least, the ocean hadn't calmed down one bit in the few hours Applejack had spent at the beach. If anything, it had only gotten worse. The waves crashed harder than ever, and only added to the constant roar that assaulted Applejack's ears.
When she did finally manage to reach the water's edge, Applejack sat down and set her bags on the sand in front of her. She pulled the first of the bottles out, reared back, and tossed it with all her might out over the water. It flew high and far, before landing with a splash far from shore. The next bottle sailed even further, passing over the first bottle as it drifted slowly out to sea. The rest followed suit, Applejack's impressive strength sending them far enough out that they would be pulled out into the open ocean. Celestia willing, at least one of them would be picked up by a passing boat or wash up on some distant, civilized shore. Applejack knew that at least one of them would make it. One of them had to. Her friends and family would know she was okay.
With one last sigh, Applejack strapped the bags back on and stood up. If she moved quickly, she would have no trouble reaching her camp well before nightfall. She didn't want to be stuck in the jungle after dark. There was something far worse than darkness that came with night on the island, and she didn't want it… Applejack shook her head, blinking several times. She didn't want it to… to… she didn't…
Applejack staggered to one side. The beach felt like it was shifting beneath her. She lowered herself carefully to her haunches, put a forehoof to her head, and waited for the island to stop spinning. A slight, throbbing pain built up just behind her eyes. It wasn’t the worst headache she'd ever had, but it certainly wasn’t a pleasant sensation.
The pain worsened for a few seconds, and Applejack clenched her eyes shut at the sudden spike of pain, before it finally ebbed a bit. It was still present as a dull ache, but it receded enough for Applejack to inch her eyes open. She blinked. It definitely wasn't her imagination: the day had grown much darker. Her balance seemed a bit better, so Applejack tentatively pushed to her hooves, looking out over the treetops of the jungle to the sun hanging in the western sky. It wasn't there. The sky over the entire island, which was already cloudy before, had been completely and totally covered by dark, foreboding clouds. The sun was obscured behind the dark gray shroud, blanketing the entire island in shadow. A quick glance over her shoulder showed the clouds extending out over the ocean for miles, though there was a sliver of blue sky visible, it was far, far away from the island itself.
Applejack was struck speechless, her hooves rooted to the sand. Wild weather was well known for being incredibly dangerous, and wild storms were the worst by far. She had no idea how it had moved in so fast, but wondering about it wasn't about to help anything. Suddenly, Applejack felt very exposed, alone on the stark beach.
Rain began to fall, adding a steady pitter pattering to the already cacophonous sounds of the beach. There was a bright flash in the clouds, accompanied by an ominous rumble of thunder that tickled something in the back of Applejack's mind. She shook off the feeling. She needed to get back to the relative safety and shelter of her camp, and quickly. As she started walking back towards the jungle, the rain picked up, and more thunder rumbled in the distance. Applejack paused halfway back to the treeline, glancing up at the ever angering storm above her. There was something about it that she couldn’t quite put her hoof on. It was a strange sensation, a niggling feeling in her head that just wouldn’t go away while she looked at the stormclouds.
*KRAK-BOOM*
A sudden burst of lightning nearly blinded her, but it didn't. Applejack could see perfectly clearly as the bolt of nature's fury flashed across the sky, arcing down towards the earth only to stop dead several hundred feet above the forest canopy. Before her mind could even begin to process the strangeness of the sight, a wave of deja-vu stronger than any Applejack had ever felt overcame her, the excruciating feeling of something just on the tip of her tongue almost more than she could bear. Her headache worsened, flaring up from a dull ache to a sharp pain.
Applejack blinked several times, trying to pull her scattered thoughts back together. She felt something wet dripping down her muzzle and rubbed irritably at her nose with a forehoof. Something more than rain soaked into her coat and she glanced down at her foreleg just as another bright flash of burned away the dark. Red glinted in the brightness, standing out starkly against her orange coat. Blood.
The metallic taste had just reached her tongue when a sudden spike of pain hit her. Applejack gasped loudly, clutching at her head with her bloodstained hoof. Her vision flashed white again, though from the lightning or the pain she couldn't tell.
"Cross my heart."
Her head felt like it was splitting open. Applejack's mouth opened, but no sound came out. She hurt too much to even scream. She lowered her head as her nose bled profusely. Blood dripped from the end of her muzzle, staining the white sand beneath her with splashes of scarlet like some sort of morbid Hearth's Warming decoration.
"I'm sorry."
Again, pain worse than anything she’d ever felt ripped through her head. She blinked her eyes, trying to clear the tears from them, and realized that she was lying on her side on the rough sand. The rain was steadily picking up, and lightning flashed again somewhere over the island, arcing downwards but never actually touching ground. Applejack coughed and tried to push up to her hooves, but another skull-rending flash of pain sent her back to the ground with a yelp. She lay there, panting, for several moments. The wind began to howl, punctuated by distant thunder, and she felt another surge of deja-vu at the sound. Immediately she began whimpering, knowing what came next.
"You're still one of the bravest ponies I know."
She finally screamed when the wave of pain hit. Her voice echoed out into the jungle. The wind roared through the trees. The rain was coming down hard in sheets. Lightning and thunder raged constantly. Again, Applejack tasted blood.
"Sometimes you just have to 'buck up', as it were."
Then everything went black.