The End of Ponies

by shortskirtsandexplosions

Chapter Fourteen: To Touch the Ground

The End of Ponies
by shortskirtsandexplosions

Chapter Fourteen – To Touch the Ground

Special thanks to Vimbert for Editing

Extra Special Thanks to Valhalla-Studios for Cover Art

The morning Sun was songfully bright. The world bloomed one orchard at a time as the radiant dawn spread its rays over the treetops and across the manes of three ponies in the throes of deep labor. On one row of apples, a red stallion and an orange mare bucked trunk after trunk with well-hardened precision. Across another flank of trees, within a soul's anchorage, Harmony filled basket after basket with red and green fruit, fighting steadily to ooze her way across the grand expanse of Sweet Apple Acres in a heroic race against time.

In such mechanical precision, the allied equines completed the last of the East Orchards. They stumbled breathlessly towards the Southern fields—or at least Macintosh and Applejack were breathless. Harmony cringed to see the siblings' natural bodies wearing down under the persistent hurdles that they were scaling to get the impossible job done. The morning's length of work had no effect whatsoever on the time traveler's projected limbs, and what she saw the previous day as an advantage in getting Applejack to open up had instead transformed into an obligatory crutch.

She briefly considered coming out with the truth—not just the truth about the “Act of Accord”—but the total truth, something three hundred thousand times more palpable than the confidence she had constructed so belatedly between herself and Ms. Smith. She imagined taking Applejack and Macintosh over into the shade and telling them all about the future, about the Cataclysm, about being the last pony, about how everything that the farmhooves saw and felt would someday end up in flames. It would certainly dwarf everything that they were struggling to accomplish then and there.

But would it help them?

The horrified faces of Ms. Cheerilee and her many foalish students flickered across Harmony's shuddering mind. Somehow, her guilt over that circumstance had severely degraded over the last several hours of scavenging and time traveling. But the prospect of seeing those same terrified faces plastered across Macintosh and Applejack—ponies whom Harmony especially knew—was something she never wanted to conceive.

And just what would knowledge of the future do for them? The curse of the trolls had sapped enough color from them as it was.

Applejack's farm was under attack by horrible monstrosities, and she was barely a day away from the biggest failure in apple bucking. Harmony realized that the family of earth ponies presently had enough truth to worry about. The gruesome future suddenly seemed like a very flimsy appendix to an ever prevalent, ever bleeding now.

Perhaps that is the way it had always been, Harmony wiltingly pondered. Lives are best lived without the knowledge of Death, and yet within Death. Was that what Spike was trying to convince her?

Harmony shook the shadowed clouds of doubt off her shoulders and bucked her worries away—forcing apple cluster after apple cluster to fall succinctly into the baskets. It was such a simple, mechanical, yet trying exercise. She could suspend herself into that task forever, and she knew very well that her two friends across the field could and would. There might come a time when the visitor from the future would tell the Apple Family the worst news they could ever hear. But right then—Celestia forgive her—Harmony's job was to help them, in the only way that she was capable of doing, in the only way she was ever capable of helping them, though she didn't yet know what that way exactly was.

The memory of her “Act of Accord” fabrication was an ever present, ever guilty spur in her flanks, making her vibrate over the green landscape with a quickening pace of fear, panic, and desperation. The colors of a living Equestria shimmered about her. She reveled in it; she had no choice. It was in her pony nature to breathe and sing from the inside out with that magnificent garden of delight. Yet, there was a numbness, a garrote wire of remorse that strung her—dangling—bare centimeters above the glistening grass that formed a springy soft floor beneath.

Harmony was there in body and spirit—though it was a fake body and a courageously dishonest spirit—but try as she might, she could never truly get her hooves on the ground. She didn't need wings to stay aloft the way she was; this farm... this home was not meant for her. It was never meant for her. Even as a filly, cradling a scooter along the fringes of a campfire, she refused herself relaxation like she refused herself the marshmallows that she herself had bought for all her friends at a campfire eons ago.

Applejack's strength had kept her from crying all these years. In a dark-lit parallel, Harmony's foalish determination had kept her from sleeping, so that the childish filly had settled for nocturnal shivers of loneliness in the random vacant hovels that her nomadic scavengings could afford. Harmony never needed a Cataclysm to be the last pony. For as long as she could remember, the filly's years were carved by the cold claws of isolation, a self-imposed crusade that superseded cutie marks or even prismatic idol-worship.

She never settled, never relented, never caved in to the invitation of another pony's bed to lie down in, for a dinner table to eat at, for a home to live, laugh, grow, and eventually die in. There were, of course, exceptions: Cutie Mark Crusader sleepovers, rainy days spent at Fluttershy's place, a trip to Twilight Sparkle's library; but all of those were mere childish excursions through the ether of juvenile whimsy, and nothing permanent, nothing she could ever handsomely afford herself. This was because—in all of her years of running and searching—Harmony could never be strong enough, or at least not so much that she figured she deserved any of those sweet and permanently endearing things. As a result, she had always been on the go, a scooter-shoving blur of audacious delinquency.

Even now—a dizzied and hapless time traveler who was being rubber banded back and forth through the ages—Harmony couldn't allow her hooves to touch down to the earth, to embrace something that was so warmly and invitingly offered to her. In tiny samples, she tasted of it, only to fall back into the numb limbo that this Entropan body was temptingly granting her: a safe and relaxingly static flux.

Spike had seen that in her, had plucked the thorns out from her frazzled brown body with those illuminating and wisened green eyeslits of his. He had told her in the ruins of Sugarcube Corner that it was time that she stopped running, and yet here Harmony was: having been thrown down a quarter-century's length of reverse-time, and the same creatures that had punctured her life to tatters—that had run all of her strength down into a paltry fetal sob against blood-stained bulkheads—were waiting for her once again. Spike was right, she never had a home. Until she could be sure that the Apple Family would, Harmony couldn't pretend to make sense out of her being there. She couldn't tell Applejack and Macintosh the truth about the bleakness of it all; she couldn't touch her hooves down to the earth.

As the sun crept to a high noon and the heat rose in vapors off the thick green leaves of the orchards, the three ponies trudged their strained hooves across the trees, and yet they barely made it past one third of the Southern Field. At that rate, success was not only difficult, it was inconceivable. Sweet Apple Acres leaned on the precipice of a veritable Cataclysm of its own. A lonely copper pariah found herself gazing forlornly at their home from a billion sighs away. It wouldn't have been her first time.

---

“I never thought I'd hear myself say this...” Applejack sweated through a damp mat of blonde hair as she slapped three stacks of burgeoning fruit baskets atop a wooden crate resting on a dirt path between apple orchards. “But this is startin' to look plum impossible.” She leaned against the cart and fanned her scalp with the whole of her brown hat. “What in the hay was I thinkin' when I made this contract?”

“You were thinking that your family needed to be rid of those horrible trolls once and for all, and in your desperation, this was your only option,” Harmony uttered as she stacked up a column of baskets herself. “But regretting the past only drags time, and we don't have much to thank time for right now.” She glanced briefly at the noonday Sun, then squinted her way across the horizon to where a thoroughly sweating Macintosh was slaving away at another row of trees with his kicking hooves. “I don't know about you, but I've always held the past in high regard. I think it makes for a healthier lifestyle.”

“Yer philosophy is just as inspirin' as yer physique, Miss Harmony.” Applejack winced against the fanning of her hat but nevertheless managed a gentle smirk. “I swear—I wish I knew yer secret. If I had bucked nearly as many trees as you, I would have died of heat stroke by now.”

“Hey, I eat my oats. So sue me,” Harmony mumbled as her amber eyes scanned the horizon. An invisible line of leather bodies scoffed at her. She shook it off and returned to the skin she was donning. “Applejack, I might be a bureaucratic clerk of Canterlot, but I consider myself to be... an engineer by trade.” She blinked at the words coming out of her mouth, but stammered on regardless: “I really wish I could... I dunno... hammer together some device that could mechanize this whole operation and make it work a billion times faster for you.”

“Nuh uh. Nothin' to it.” Applejack upturned her nose and slapped her hat back onto her head. “It's a trademark of the Sweet Apple Acres harvest that everythang is hoof-picked. We never cater to none of them factory contraptions the likes of which you see all over cities like Stalliongrad or Manehattan. With the way of progress and all, you witness less and less homely businesses like the Apple Family's farmstead across Equestria these days.”

“Still, there's got to be a way to make this process faster! If we could just do something grandiose yet organized—to fill all of these baskets with apples!”

“Well...” Applejack rubbed her chin with an orange hoof. “Hmmmm... nahhh.”

Harmony squinted hard at her. “Miss Applejack, I have more ears than you have corn.”

“Well...” Applejack fidgeted, then nervously smiled. “I was just recollectin' this one time my friends and I paid my cousin Braeburn a visit over yonder in his pioneerin' town of Appleloosa. They grow apple orchards out in the desert and—to this very day—they cut harvest time in half by allowin' the local tribes of buffalo to perform their ritualistic stampede down the dirt roads between the rows of fruit trees. The shakin' of the earth made by all them mighty buffalo's hooves cause the apples to fall off all proper-like. Then the buffalo get a free share of the bounty! The whole thang is what paved the way towards happy Appleloosan coexistence!” She smiled proudly.

Harmony stared at her with bored amber eyes. She droned, “That is by far the stupidest thing I ever heard of.”

Applejack cleared her throat and shrugged. “Well, t'ain't like I was the one who thought of it or nothin'.”

Harmony ran a hoof over her amber-streaked mane and scrunched her forehead in thought. “But...” She tongued her lips, blinked, then brightened with a goofy grin. The wall of midnight trolls disappeared before the suddenly blossoming fields of her mind. “I think I know of something stupider.” She even giggled. “And it just might work! Come on!” Harmony galloped towards a row of trees beyond Macintosh.

Applejack stumbled to follow her in a swift canter. “Whatcha got in mind, copper-bottom?”

“Grab a bunch of baskets and I'll show you—And for the love of flamestones, stop calling me that!”

---

Under the glittering afternoon Sun, Harmony finished setting the last of many baskets up against two parallel rows of apple trees. She stepped back besides a blinking pair of siblings and smiled at her own hoofwork.

“Right—So here's the idea.” She spun about and smirked at them. “You guys know that I have this freakish stamina—am I right?”

“Eeeyup.”

“Right—Well, I think I can make use of it.” Harmony twirled again and pointed a hoof at the trees. “Rather then buck all of these trees one at a time, I'm going to shoot for hitting them all at once—or, well—close to it.”

“And how in tarnation to you plan to do that?!” Applejack asked with a righteous lift of her eyebrow. “I've seen you tackle trolls in the dark like nopony's business, but apple trees are a delicate matter!”

“Are not! You said so yourself yesterday, did you not?”

“I... Er... Uhhh...”

“Right—so, let's see if I can put these things”—she flexed her wings—“to use. Applejack, I'm gonna be flying fast and low across these trees; so I need you to gallop quickly in order to keep up with me.”

“To keep up with you? Sugarcube, what in the hay do you need me runnin' along with you for?”

Harmony glanced at her. She wanted to say she needed Applejack close by because she only had so much range to her soul's anchorage. She wanted to say that she was awfully afraid that this stunt might accidentally fling her back into the future on green tongues of flame. She said, “I need somepony to spot me as I strike the trees, and I also wanna make sure that I'm not hurting the orchards any. Deal?”

“Mmm...Fine.” Applejack eventually grunted to Harmony's satisfaction. “Let's just see how this goes.”

“You do the sight-seeing.” Harmony smirked and hovered up into midair on copper wings. “I'll do the rest.”

“You've got my attention already.” Applejack broke into a light trot. Beside her, Macintosh stared with sweat-stained curiosity.

Harmony took a deep breath. “Here goes.”

She gulped. She reached her hooves up for her goggles, realized she didn't have any in this timeline, and rolled her eyes. Regaining her composure, Harmony flew towards the edge of the orchards, banked around, waited for Applejack to break into a full gallop, and then—“Nnnnngh!”—Harmony rocketed into a high speed glide down the “trench” of apple trees. She curved her wings, flexed her legs, and immediately veered to the left.

At high speed, she slammed hard into one wooden trunk hooves-first, flexed her knees, and bounced off at a seventy-five degree angle. Spinning in mid lunge, Harmony brought her hooves around and landed against the tree on the opposite side. With another thud, she bounded off, spun, flew across the “trench,” and landed against the next opposite tree. This whole interchange of tree-bouncing proceeded at an alarming speed, so that, in swift measure, the pegasus had ricocheted against two rows of apple trees. She resembled a copper pinball in her precision, all the while the galloping Applejack on the ground gazed in blinking amazement.

Her dizzying task done, Harmony landed, skidding across two and a half meters of splashing soil. She exhaled hard, spun around, and inspected her work from afar. To her dazzling joy, every single one of the trees that she had collided with had magically lost its supply of fruit—dropping them like an astounded audience's roses into all of the neatly arranged baskets resting against the trunks.

Macintosh whistled shrilly. Applejack came to a sliding stop and marveled. “Son of a bridlemaid! That's the fastest I've ever seen a non-magical pony pluck an orchard of its fruit! I swear, y'all pegasi never cease to amaze me!”

“To be honest...” Harmony dusted herself off and smirked through a frazzled spray of settling black mane hair. “I wasn't all that sure it was gonna work until I tried it. Pretty cool, huh?” She blew an amber streak out from her brow and smiled the earth pony's way.

“Miraculous is what it is! Macky, what do you think?”

The red stallion nodded in earnest, grinning.

Harmony breathed momentarily as if she had come to the surface of a frigid lake for the first time in hours. The world glittered around her with sudden dazzlement. The trolls ever so briefly returned to the gray malaise of yesterday and tomorrow, and all that stood before the last pony was the joyously vibrant now. There was no better feeling than being useful, and for the briefest moment it excused every vicious lie she had forced herself to construct in front of Applejack. Soon, though, that moment ended, and the time traveler was thrown back into the sweat-stained situation under the desperate ring of Applejack's voice.

“Any chance y'all might be able to pull that trick off a few more times?” Applejack stammered. She gulped, “And when I say 'a few more times,' I mean a hundred more times? Perhaps across the rest of the southern fields? That is—if you're able.”

“Does Bruce talk like he's got marshmallows in his mouth?”

“The hay is that supposed t'mean?”

“It means, simply, that I'm liking this idea.” Harmony gave a trademark smirk.

---

The rest of the afternoon blistered by with insanely mechanical precision. Applejack and Macintosh would line up the baskets, Harmony would concoct a flight path, the orange mare would get a galloping start—and together they roared down the rows of orchards, two columns at a time, with the copper pegasus breathlessly pinballing her way from tree to tree so as to drop the apples by the hundreds.

The result was akin to mowing a large yard of all its red spots, so that the entire Southern Fields were harvested clean of fruit within the span of four hours. As the Sun sloped its way down towards a darkening horizon, the hope within the hearts of the three equines brightened immeasurably. There were still two whole quarters of the whole Acres left to cover, but if that day's unfolding held any legitimate prophecy of the next morning to come, the last day of Apple Bucking could prove to be a miraculous day.

Harmony felt it. With the crisp golden hues of the coming sunset, her projected self's eyes glazed to witness a day's work phenomenally accomplished. She was a dizzy, loopy-brained, frazzled-winged pony from the twirling effort of it all, but somehow the numbness almost equated sore muscles, so that the time traveler sensed—to her reverie—the signs of having done a fine day's job indeed.

Applejack and Macintosh—of course—were at their limit. This was no more evident than around the twentieth time of stacking baskets onto the back of a wooden cart. Harmony hummed to herself, ready to soar off towards another row of apples, when Applejack all but collapsed directly in front of her path.

“Sugarcube—Seriously—for all that is holy in this heapin' crazy world, let's take a moment's breather, ya reckon?”

Harmony giggled foalishly, cleared her throat, and murmured in a more adult voice: “Y-Yes. Sure thing, Miss Applejack. I'm... I-I'm really sorry. I guess I just got carried away—”

“Oh, heavens to Betsy!” Applejack slumped down onto a rich emerald hillside of green grass. “Please, by all means, get carried away more often! I haven't seen that much fancy flyin' and laborin' since Twilight Sparkle became Team Organizer of last year's Winter Wrap-Up!”

On a whim, Harmony feigned ignorance: “This Twilight Sparkle must be some pegasus!”

“Oh, shucks, no.” Applejack laughed. “She's just a fancy bookworm of a unicorn who really knows how to organize stuff. But I do love her to death.” She took a deep breath and gazed across the glistening, fruitless trees of the Southern Acres that remained from a long day's work. “And just like you, she helped me when I needed it most.” A soft smile fluttered across Applejack's face, and she rested her sweaty muzzle down over folded hooves. “Mmm... This last year or two has been a true sight, to think that I would make such wonderfully fine friends.”

“You're a lucky mare, Miss Applejack,” Harmony said, a touch of somberness returning to the last pony's voice.

“Most of the time, I reckon,” the farm mare murmured. She glanced the pegasus' way with a forlorn pair of eyes. “I don't suppose the same brain noodle of yers that thought up that ricochet-apple-buckin' trick has also come up with a dazzlin' solution to our troll problem by now?”

Harmony sighed long and hard. The numbness returned, and with it came a phantom sea of bright beady eyes. The waning day was a living time bomb, and the shorter and shorter fuse sparkled with green flame. “I'm very sorry, Miss Applejack,” Harmony coldly droned. “I like to think that I'm pretty good at multi-tasking, but I've been so absorbed in getting all of those apples down—I can't say that I've managed to come up with a good plan.” She squatted down in the grass besides Applejack as a lulling evening breeze drifted pleasantly across their manes. “And even if I could headbutt my one-track-mind against it, I'm not sure I could come upon an epiphany any faster.”

“Y'all have done some mighty fine work on our trees, Miss Harmony. But in all seriousness,” Applejack muttered in a sad face, “I cannot ask you to use yer same pegasus skills against those varmints after nightfall. It just ain't proper. Nopony is invincible. Not even you.”

Harmony thought of a rusted weathervane, a shattered green cutting knife, and Granny Smith's shuddering breaths. Applejack was as lucky as she was thoughtful to have worried about Harmony's projected safety. When Harmony briefly considered arguing against her, the frigid catacombs of her mind reminded her of a weeping teenage filly bleeding in the womb of the Harmony. “Thinking I'm invincible wouldn't have kept me alive all these years,” Harmony uttered without thinking.

“I beg yer pardon?”

Harmony sighed into the breezy afternoon. “Nothing.” She smirked the earth pony's way. “If Twilight Sparkle was here, what would the 'Team Organizer' do to solve your troll problem, you think?”

“Mmm—Twilight has a lot of talent, I reckon. She's dispensed with an Ursa Major, a hydra, and a hooffull of parasprites. But where she shines in craftiness, she loses out a tad bit in courage. Not to pop her balloon or nothin', but if that Canterlotlian unicorn saw them beady-eyed trolls in the dark, she'd run straight back home to Spike.”

Harmony squinted the orange mare's way. “I'm from Canterlot. Aren't I brave?”

“Nah, yer just freakishly convenient.” Applejack smirked.

Harmony giggled, her laughter joined by the earth pony's.

Silence once more calmly permeated the hilltop as the two basked under the shade of a passing cloud. The sun's rays burst through the wispy beds like golden harpstrings. It was the second setting sun in so few hours, and Harmony's breath left her in no less swiftness as she drank it all in.

Briefly parting the curtains of Entropan numbness, she closed her eyes and rode an invisible green slide down past twenty-five years of nightmares, so that she sailed beyond it and landed on the same springy hilltop, only with tiny orange hooves, a flowing pink mane, and happy violet eyes that drank in the same memories that had suddenly melted into reality before the time traveling pegasus. The surreality of it all gave her a runner's high, as if she was galloping at forty kilometers an hour inside the glass shell of her projected soul self. Any second, she felt as if that glass would break—and she would be back in the land of ashen emptiness. Upon opening her amber eyes, the same warm world blossomed gracefully around her, so that the last pony was divinely tempted to curl it all up like a blanket and sleep there forever...

But this world—this past was not hers. It belonged to the orange pony resting beside her, the same pony who was presently murmuring: “I reckon my folks would be ashamed of me.”

Harmony jolted, her mental hooves a scant centimeter away from having touched the ground. She flashed Applejack a bizarre look. “What gives you that infernal idea?”

The farm mare had taken her hat off and was absentmindedly bending the brim of it in a spinning circle as she solemnly gazed beyond the blades of grass beneath her. “It's one thang to be strong—and I've always committed myself to that. But I also know that the Apple family has had an age-old tradition of being dependable, of being honest. Heck...” She glanced apologetically at Harmony. “...I was even fused to the Element of Honesty. Did y'all know that?”

Harmony opened her mouth to answer—blinked forth an image of a scoffing foal seated before a campfire—and eventually uttered, “I don't get out of Canterlot much, Miss Applejack. Maybe you could fill me in?”

“Hmmm—It's actually a very long and boring story for those who weren't involved. I reckon I only recite it to my friends and their lil' siblings because it means so much to them.” Applejack took a deep breath and gazed off towards the goldening horizon. “But let's just say that my honesty was once put to the test, not just as a piece of my character, but as a piece of something so amazingly magical that it shaped my very own destiny, a destiny that would unite me with the best friends anypony could ever have in the whole wide world.”

She produced a strong, happy breath—and yet it faded as she dusted the hat off and planted it once more atop her blonde mane.

“Well...” Applejack muttered, “I sure as heck haven't been all that honest lately, what with me tryin' to drive you off my farm the very moment you showed up to help Macky and me and the rest of us. I think my problem is that I get so wrapped up in the duty I have to Ma and Pa's legacy that I sometimes betray the gritty things about myself that makes me so valued among my friends. Bein' truthful is a major part of that, and when I hide the truth, I just crumble in on myself. Trolls are horrible things, but they're hardly an excuse for me to lose the one thing that makes me truly strong.”

“Your commitment?” Harmony asked.

Applejack looked back. “My character.”

The pegasus smirked. “Oh, Miss Applejack, I don't think you'll ever have to fear losing that.”

“Everypony stands to lose somethin', Miss Harmony. It's the facts of life. At least when I'm honest, all I have to lose is all I have to give. Truth works in a circle like that, ya reckon?”

The time traveler held her breath. A blistering opaque divide stood between her and this earth pony, an obstruction that she had fabricated to make this entire day possible. Twelve hours into the exercise, and Harmony was nowhere closer to piecing together a solution to the Apple Family's troll problem. It made simply sitting there an atrocious sin, and listening to Applejack's confessions a triply festering wound. Harmony summoned the strength to speak from the one pit in her soul that could still shine: the part of her that respected, admired, and even loved this blonde shade of the past sitting before her.

“If there's any 'truth' that's obvious to me right now, Applejack,” Harmony nudged her and smiled. “It's that your parents would be proud of you, in spite of any glaring errors you think your character may have.” She motioned towards the distant sight of Macintosh strongly drawing a wooden cart full of apples down a path and into the red barn. “You've looked after your siblings with loving tenderness—Your brother is one of the finest specimens in all of Ponyville—”

“You would think that, copper-bottom!”

“Hehehe—I mean he's a strong and resourceful pony, an example to all other farmers and citizens who share this land with him. You've also got an adorable younger sister who's obviously well-mannered and well-to-do, which is another sign of your responsible care and attention. And then your grandmother—such a wonderful soul—she's healthy, happy, and certainly very proud to be living on a farm that you have shouldered for all these years.”

“Shoot, darlin'.” Applejack lowered the brim of her hat some. “Yer makin' me blush.”

“What I'm trying to say, Miss Applejack, is that you should be happy and proud. If not for your parents' sake, then for your own.” Harmony smiled and waved a hoof across the green expanse of the Acres. “You have a family. You have a home. You have...” Her lips trailed as she blinked at her own words floating off in the golden breeze. “...you have harmony.”

“Heheheh—” The farm mare raised her hat back up to blink. “I reckon we most definitely do have you in our company, sugarcube.”

“That's not what I meant—” The time traveler began, but felt her heart stop. Somewhere in the nightlit recesses of her mind, a homeless foal shivered in the loft of an abandoned barn, blanketed with warm tears. “...huh.”

“I just want my folks to look down from Gultophine's bosom and see that I've done the right thang with this here farm.” Applejack let loose a sigh and slid her hooves back and forth in lazy circles across the grass. “But, I suppose if I stress that wishin' a mighty bit too hard, I'll never enjoy this life, this home, this... harmony. That would be a mistake... an honest mistake.”

Harmony gulped a lump down her throat and glanced curiously the earth pony's way. “How...Erm—If you don't mind me asking—How did...uhm...” She winced at her own audacity. “I-I'm sorry—”

“Hmm? What?” Applejack blinked innocently at her. “Ya mean to ask how my folks died?”

Harmony bit her lip. “Look, seriously, forget about it. I didn't mean to pry—”

“No, it's quite alright. History is history, ain't it?” Applejack smiled softly. “I do my best only to sweat the future.”

“A wise precaution.”

“Ahem.” Applejack sat up straight, cracking the joints in her spine as she exhaled forth a story laced with years of repetition: “Ma and Pa weren't just yer average farmhoofs; they were important members of Ponyvillean society. Pa was the head planner of many local sharecroppers, and he also rounded up the Apple Family Reunions single-hoofedly every other year. And Ma...”

Applejack smiled proudly.

“Ma was 'Ponyville's Pride and Joy.' She didn't get that purdy title by pickin' daisies. No, she was an important member of the town's cabinet. Barely two years after marryin' into the Apple Family, she got elected to Head of Ponyville's Community Council. For nearly a decade and a half, she overlooked every Winter-Wrap-Up and Summer Sun Celebration, as well as leadin' fundraisers for many local charities.”

“Really?” Harmony beamed, her face awash in joyous revelation. “I had no idea.”

“Of course you didn't—she was a celebrity by Ponyvillean standards. She never did set hoof in Canterlot.”

“Er... R-right.” Harmony blushed. She gulped and remarked, “I saw the dates on their graves. They must have died around the same time.”

“Mmm...Yup.” Applejack somberly nodded. “It was a horrible accident. So many ponies in town were affected. Have ya ever heard of the Everclear Mine?”

Harmony's breath left her in a gasp, all the while the pegasus grimaced as if a knife had been sliced down the center of her invulnerable copper chest. Her eyes instantly rounded and she wiltingly murmured, “Y-your parents were in the Everclear mine collapse?” She swallowed something dry down her throat and gazed groundward. Her heartbeat was nearly bursting through her neck as she shuddered to say, “Oh Miss Applejack, I-I'm so sorry.”

“Oh, they weren't in the mine when it caved-in,” Applejack clarified, momentarily ignorant of her companion's sudden lapse in breath. “That tragedy was reserved for several dozens of unfortunate workers—as everypony who's lived around here knows. But my folks?” She hesitated briefly, before summoning a courageous smile of pride from deep within her orange-coated frame. “They were the first to arrive on scene the moment they caught word of the disaster. Ma drew the relief wagon while Pa tried to climb his way down into the ruined shaft in search of survivors. Together, they managed to get at least eight workers out before more help came. Of course, nopony quite realized that a huge underground node of infernite had been pierced in the depths of the Everclear Mine. Nearly every worker pulled from the site died within a week from polluted lungs.”

Applejack took a deep breath.

“Includin' Ma and Pa—Gultophine rest their souls. Nopony could ever say they weren't the dependable types, down to the bitter end. It's inspirin', really, even if it is dang tragic. Later, they built a memorial at the site of the collapsed mine, and Ma and Pa are the first listed among the names of brave but ill-fated rescue workers. The Apple Family visits it at every reunion, and our hearts have always gone out to everypony involved in the tragedy.”

Harmony was hearing Applejack's account, and yet her mind was in another world, a very cold and lonely world that permeated her memories long before any single fleck of ash dotted the Wastes of Equestria.

Applejack took one glance at her and raised a concerned eyebrow. “Harmony? You didn't... You didn't know anypony who was taken by the Everclear Mine, did you?”

Harmony cleared her throat and bravely stammered, “In a manner of speaking, y-yes. Yes I did.” She inhaled sharply and smiled the best she could the farm mare's way. “But, like you said, Applejack. It's only worth sweating the future, yes?”

Applejack smiled and stole a new friend's phrase: “A wise precaution.”

Harmony nodded. “Now I understand everything,” she said after taking a somber breath. “Dependability, courage, and strength—It runs in your blood, doesn't it? Somehow I wouldn't doubt that if a supply of infernite exploded underneath the very foundation of your barn, you too would be on the scene to help anypony out. I know this may seem like a stretch, Miss Applejack, but I believe you can extend that same quality to the fervor with which you've tackled these trolls.”

“Or attempted to,” Applejack remarked. “Ma and Pa were courageous and selfless, but they never went in over their heads. Nopony knew about the infernite. But these here trolls...” she sighed, “I should have gotten the hint that they weren't ordinary varmints from the first day I layed eyes on them scary leather flanks of theirs. Oh Celestia, what have I gotten my family into?” She collapsed to the ground in a groaning heap.

“Hey...” Harmony rested a hoof on her shoulder. “Don't fret. Neither of us may have an answer, but focus on the apple bucking at hoof, and I'm certain that a solution will come to us.”

“Ya'll Canterlotlians must have faith that can move mountains.”

“When we're inspired, you bet!” Harmony smirked. She rose to her knees and offered the earth pony a hoof. “You said that your character of honesty fitted the destiny you have with your friends, right? Well, I think the qualities of your life fall into a similar cadence. You've got family, you've got a home...” She smiled bravely. “...and you've got yourself some harmony—What's the worst that could happen?”

Applejack gently grasped onto Harmony's limb and lurched up onto all fours. “I reckon you plan to show me?”

“If it's nearly as much as you've shown me, I would be happy to oblige,” Harmony said, then motioned with her mane towards the red-tainted fields under golden sunset. “C'mon. If we work together, I'm sure we could knock out a few more orchards.”

Applejack trotted enthusiastically after her. “Think y'all might do me a favor and knock my exhausted flank out in the meantime?”

“Nah. I might damage your hat.”

“Pffft.”

---

Barely half an hour later, Harmony was out of breath. It was not her own exhaustion that spurred forth this lapse in energy, but rather the infectious weariness wafting off of Applejack and Big Macintosh had overwhelmed her. She sat, slumped against a tree, watching and waiting as the two earth ponies set up another line of baskets beneath two rows of trees. In a matter of minutes, the game of orchard pinball would resume. Harmony expected it to be a numb and frivolous exercise, like the entirety of that day had become. Still, even if she worked with the heated frenzy of the Harmony's boiling steam, the apple bucking would not go fast enough, and the howling night would not come slow its approach enough.

The time traveler shut her amber eyes, and as soon as she did the gray ash returned. The twilight of the future had followed her back in time, limping, reminding her with every blink that she was just as much a creature of misery as the beasts that had so haunted the Apple Family's pristine home. There was no fitting word to describe the irony of this bitter sandwich, of two groups of adversaries converging upon a single point in finite history that didn't deserve either one of them. For the briefest of moments, Harmony wondered if Princess Entropa had planned this, had plotted and designed it from her lonely cosmic cloud of exile. Perhaps this was revenge for the pegasus having so brazenly stolen her coat, for believing—even for a green-flaming millisecond—that she actually earned the chance to gallop back and forth along the streams of reverse-time.

But if the last pony in all of Equestria didn't earn this, if she didn't deserve the chance to transcend—however briefly—the chronological barriers that had imprisoned her forever under the cascading twilight coffin of isolation, then who did?

Harmony tiredly opened her eyes. Once she had done so, one image stood in the foreground of the glistening Acres. Fatefully, it was none other than—

“You don't look half as exhausted as you should be, child,” Granny Smith uttered. “I've seen you makin' yer fancy hoofwork across them trees. It's by far the most amazin' thang I've ever seen.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Harmony said with a gently prodding smile. “You've lived a long life, Ms. Smith. I hardly deserved to be flattered that much.”

“But y'all deserve it, nonetheless,” the lime-coated mare murmured. On wobbling legs, she strolled around the tree to which the time traveler was slumped. “If we had yer lickety-split flyin' talents two days ago—or even yesterday for that matter—we may actually have had a legitimate reason to contract the apple delivery so dag-blamed early.”

“It's easy to mourn the lengths of time we've failed to do proper things with,” Harmony philosophized out loud. “But all that will do is waste more time. I like to deal with the situation in front of me as it comes into fruition. Equestrian history was built by ageless ponies doing the exact same thing.”

“You wear 'time' like a second skin, don't ya, Miss Harmony?”

Harmony's copper nostrils flared. “You have no idea,” she groaned.

“Yer right. I reckon I don't.” Ms. Smith pivoted her gray head to gaze down at the filly. “Tell me, if you would, Miss Harmony: do you enjoy Stallionivarius because his strings speak to yer soul, or is it because they speak to yer heartbeat?”

“Where I come from, Ms. Smith, a heartbeat is something I force myself to imagine.”

“Think you'll ever tell my family just where you do come from, darlin'?”

“I...” Harmony's face wretched like a filly who had been stabbed in the leg. The shattered image of Granny Smith's green carving knife appeared in a bodiless cloud, easing her spirit ever so slightly. “I hope that I'll never have to.”

“I reckon that's just up to us to discover,” Ms. Smith remarked. The utterance was just as dry to hear as it was to produce. “Hmmmph.” The elder smirked slightly. “How goddess-like, to leave the likes of us to our own devices.”

“Ms. Smith...” Harmony viciously sighed, shaking her copper head. “I am not a—”

“Of course not.” Granny Smith squatted down with a breath besides Harmony, eyeing Applejack and Big Macintosh from afar. “But my family's future is cradled in yer hooves no less fragile-like, hmm?” Her gray eyes were half as piercing as they were warm. She said, “If time has afforded you any less wounds than it has thoughtlessly deposited on my lap, then heaven help us if you're any less respectful of the gifts you have to wield.”

“Ms. Smith, even the greatest of gifts only goes so far,” Harmony said. Once more, her mind's eye was assaulted by the gnashing teeth of a sea of pale leather. She clenched her eyes shut and ran a hoof over her face. “And so deep,” she added in a shudder.

“It makes me wonder, Miss Harmony.” Granny Smith's voice was like a gray cloudbed that hovered majestically over a jutting mountain. “Just to what depths have you gone? What dark and winding chasms have you navigated to be here, and to be here so solemnly—that it makes an old lady such as myself amazed to hear it in yer voice?” She gulped. “You can't be this young mare sittin' before me. You just can't. Yer somethin' different, somethin' grander, somethin' darker—my family doesn't have the gumption to comprehend it, and I suddenly think that all of the scholars of Canterlot thrown in a grand heap together certainly couldn't wrap their noggins around it either.”

“What are you trying to say, Ms. Smith?” Harmony finally surrendered with a wilted breath.

“What I'm sayin', Miss Harmony, is that I forgive you.”

Harmony blinked her eyes open at that. She gazed at the lime-coated elder. “You... f-forgive me?”

“AJ, my granddaughter, is an angel. And most of that comes to her 'cuz of her natural well of honesty. Honest creatures know how to take hold of this world's glorious light and shine it for all the gatherin' ponies to see it and marvel. But you—yer a different kind of a creature. You can see this world for its darkness, and you can see a whole lot deeper into them shadows than even my eyes can venture, and I've seen my fair share of darkness in this life. Miss Harmony, I can't pretend to know what horrible shadows are haunting this farm, but deep in my heart I am glad—thankful and blessed—that you're here to do yer dangest to stifle it from us. That's an amazin' strength—a separate strength, the likes of which even Applejack could respect, though I'm startin' to reckon she won't ever have the grace to—or myeslf for that matter.”

“Ms. Smith, please believe me.” Harmony stood up as the farm siblings trotted towards her from a distance. The baskets were ready, the trees were ready, the ever dying afternoon was ready. She only wished that she was ready. “It is never, ever about grace.” Harmony gulped. “It has always and shall always be about desperation.”

“I reckon even a goddess wouldn't know about that.”

“They don't have to know about it. We do.”

---

Another hour and a half of frenzied apple rattling, and the swathing band of harvested trees ended clockwise at the crest of the dipping western acres. The three courageous farm ponies strained and struggled to the bitter end, only stopping their relentless pursuit of the hanging apples the very moment that they could no longer see the fruit, for the Sun had sunk below the crest of the amber horizon.

A sleepy darkness was falling over every contour of the orchards; bright green leaves dulled to gray foliage as Harmony finished her last sideways dance across a line of swaying wooden trunks, with Applejack breathlessly sprinting beneath her to provide a line of sight.

Granny Smith had wandered out of the farmhouse, shuffling westward on brittle bones in order to light several lanterns flanking the dirt path leading to the barn. The final harvest wagon was being filled to the brim with baskets upon baskets of juicy bounty. Big Macintosh took a swig of water from a nearby trough, tightened his muscles for one last daylit haul, and pulled the large wagon across the farm towards a woodshed where he had earlier crafted a complex locking mechanism to thwart trollish fingers overnight.

The trolls...

Even as Harmony fluttered wordlessly towards the wilting grass underhoof, she grimaced at the darkening sky, at the cooling breeze, at the spreading shadows from the forest wall beyond the fence, but most of all she shuddered at the grand void in her projected brain where she had long hoped a solution to the Apple Family's plight would present itself, a solution that she had fought for, bucked for, and outright lied for.

The last pony had struggled long and hard with trolls over the years. She had brushed elbows with the demons of the mist, had learned how to discern their cries from the generic howls of the wasteland, had earned several scars—on her flank and on her spirit—for having underestimated the violent and riotous abominations that infected the bosom of future Equestria.

For outlasting trolls beyond the Cataclysm, Harmony's solution was—as a matter of fact—the utter lack of a solution. The only way to deal with the creatures was to avoid them, which is why she ultimately took to airship. The monstrosities had utterly robbed her of any semblance of a native land, long after horrific circumstance had utterly blasted that same earth under her hooves to ashes. Trolls were undeniably stupid creatures, and yet they could thrive in lifeless oblivion. They would ultimately inherit the future.

Before Harmony's curved eyes stretched the finest sample of land she had ever seen—in either lifetime, both joyous and joyless. There was no other spot in Equestria that matched the lushness and purile beauty of Sweet Apple Acres. It was the finest example of the juxtaposition of natural beauty and earth pony spirit.

While the rest of Equestria died under flame and ash, it would take a veritable sinkhole to wipe out the breath of life forever imprinted on that part of the world. To see it all fall so mercilessly under the chaotic teeth of tomorrow's monsters was a travesty. Fighting for the rainbow symbol or scavenging a ruined city for magic flame were the only excuses Harmony ever had to go to blows with these creatures, and on every occasion she had only survived by galloping cowardly away from the fiends.

But here, in the fertile crescent of Princess Celestia's homeland, upon the gracious land sweated, bled, and died for by generations upon generations of Applejack's family, where would Harmony find the excuse to run?

“There's so many of them,” the copper-coated pegasus murmured.

“What was that, sugarcube?” Applejack trotted around the shadowed edge of the wagon as Macintosh pulled it away. She panted from a day's worth of galloping after the flying apple-bucker and straightened her hat while gazing at her curiously. “You finally got an idea in that fancy noggin of yers?”

Harmony wanted to tell Applejack that it was impossible. She wanted to embrace a pony whom she trusted, sobbing to her all of her pain, agony, and sorrows of having to deal with those creatures, of having to shudder at their bounding steps when she was trying to signal kindred spirits with an artificial rainbow, of having been stabbed and skewered to a bloody mess in the center of a demolished Ponyville. In the depths of her hardened soul, Harmony could not deny that her only salvation ever against the drooling menaces was none other than a miraculously rampaging dragon out of nowhere. But this was not the Wasteland; this was the past, Sweet Apple Acres, and it was the end of the evening and the prelude to a sea of leathery bodies weaving their way out of the woodwork. And Scootaloo was not the last pony; she was 'Miss Harmony,' and Applejack was waiting for an answer.

“To be honest, Miss Applejack, I think we've done all that we can possibly do,” she murmured, gazing aside with glazed amber eyes. “We've collected as many apples as we can. I think the next step is to seal up the woodsheds, batten down the hatches, and keep a guard on what your family has harvested up until now. So long as everypony's eyes are in the same place, the bounty just may survive the night.”

“And what of the west and north fields?” Applejack gulped.

Harmony exhaled coldly. “That will have to be tomorrow's concern...”

Applejack rubbed her chin with a muddied hoof. She paced a bit, smirked, and glanced up with a glint of hope in her green eyes. “Them creatures' weakness is the Sun, ain't it? Y'all reckon that lightin' a whole heap of torches might drive them off all scaredy-cat-like?”

Harmony's vision twitched. She remembered a lonely pink-haired filly in the moon craters of post-Cataclysm Equestria. The last pony had made the same assumption as Applejack. After lighting over fifty torches, she had created a burning perimeter around her shelter while starting work on her first zeppelin. The long and short of it: she never finished that airship. She barely made it back to her hole in the ground with her skin intact.

“No, Miss Applejack. Torches only serve as toys to trolls. The next moment you know, they'll have your entire homestead burned to the ground in a blink.”

“Shoot. Yer sure about that?”

“Trust me.”

“Well...” Applejack took a deep breath and snapped a few cricks in her neck. Her lips hardened into a rocky frown. “Macintosh and I never rightly expected them traps of ours to work. In fact, we knew it would come down to fistihooves at some point or another.”

“Meaning?”

“We've already been plannin' to come to blows with them varmints,” Applejack said with a tired smile. “I reckon tonight may be the night we just try eliminatin' the dang creatures.”

Harmony's eyes narrowed on the farmfilly. “Define 'eliminating.'”

“I'm sorry...?”

“What do you and your brother plan to do with the trolls when you have them in your sights?”

“Well, y'know—We'd thrash 'em mighty fierce!”

“Just that? You'd 'thrash' them?”

“Erm...”

“Would that be it? You would smack them upside the head and expect them to walk away? You'd expect all of them to walk away because they just got a bunch of bruises?”

“Well, uh, no, I guess we would... you know...” Applejack shifted where she stood on all fours. “...we'd have to put'em all out to pasture. Literally.”

“Miss Applejack, have you ever killed something before?”

“K-killed... something?”

Harmony somberly nodded.

“Well, shucks—Sweet Apple Acres has had a long history of dealin' with all sorts of pesky annoyances: snakes, fruit flies, worms, possums, even a lone wolf here or there. As a matter of fact, some of my earliest memories are of diggin' up these bothersome moles from the ground with my Pa. Now there was a pony who knew how to work decently with indecent thangs.”

“That's not the same, Miss Applejack.”

“It ain't?” She blinked nervously.

Harmony paced around the orange mare, icily staring her down. “Would you be willing to kill something, Miss Applejack? And I don't mean just anything—but thinking, breathing, crafty things—Things that know your fears and weaknesses, just as they have fears and weaknesses of their own. I'm talking about things that, to eliminate them, you have to stare down the eye-twitch of their souls and witness as every waking breath of hate and desire is sucked from their memories, because you are taking it all from them against their will. It takes more than a sharpened pitchfork or a heavy shovel to kill something that has sentience, Miss Applejack, because no matter how much you flatten a monster into pulp, you cannot deny—even in the most hidden part of your Epona-granted heart—that even that very monster had a home, had a mother, and that it was birthed into this world by the same breath of nature that gave ponies their song and dance.”

Applejack bit her lip and gazed defeatedly into the shadowed soil of the land. “N-no. No, I reckon I-I couldn't do that, nor Macky for that m-matter...”

Harmony smiled painfully. “No pony should ever feel like they could. We are creatures of life, Miss Applejack. We thrive on peace, on friendship, on all the things that make this world good and magical. The last major war of ponydom was one thousand years ago. And there's a reason for that—It's taken Equestria that long to recover from the senseless wounds carved out of our civilization when the Lunar Republic took up arms against its brothers and sisters.” She gulped hard and stared towards the last scant lines of golden light gleaming over the western horizon. “It would be a dark day indeed when ponies could kill without remorse. Something... something earth-changing would have to happen...” Harmony's breath lingered in a bitter murmur. Her nostrils smelled a tinge of copper, and were normal once again.

“Then if we can't wait them out, and we can't throttle 'em for good..” Applejack dusted her hat off and sighed. “Then just what in the hay do we do?!”

Harmony silently prayed—Not so much for an answer to Applejack's question, but instead for a reason—any reason—to not have to answer her right then and there. The supernatural result was a pattering of foalish hooves, and then a chirping voice that lit up the otherwise darkening air.

“Wow! You got all them apples bucked in one afternoon? That's so amazin'!”

“Apple Bloom!” Applejack hissed. “What have I been tellin' you all month about comin' out of the house on yer lonesome—Especially after dark?!”

“But I'm not alone!” The crimson-maned filly shook her snout. A girlishly bright hairbow adorned her head, brightening the scene like a newborn comet as her giggling voice carried on. “You and Miss Harmony are here with me!” She winked at the visiting laborer and exclaimed: “I saw all them fancy tricks you were performin' in the fields, Miss Harmony! Bouncin' around between trees like the livin' spooks: that was so cool!!”

“Apple Bloom...” Applejack grumbled, rubbing her own face with a weary hoof. “We're a tad bit busy here, sugarcube—”

“Granny Smith says that you like her kind of music! I always thought everypony but her was far too young to enjoy all them wailin' strings.” Apple Bloom made a wretching face, then smirked, her bright amber eyes matching the pupils of the stranger whom she was staring at with amazement. “Y'all ever heard of DJ P0N3?”

Harmony fidgeted, making a great show of not noticing Apple Bloom's existence. She shivered slightly.

“Miss Harmony?” The tiny filly raised an eyebrow. “Are you feelin' okay?”

“Come on, darlin'.” Applejack half-trotted over and nudged the foal with her snout. “Back into the house. Git!”

“But Sis! I was just askin' her about music—”

“Don't you 'But Sis' me! It's high time for supper, bath, and bed! There's still a lot of apple buckin' to be done tomorrow, so Macky and I gotta hit the hay early. And when we sleep early, that means you sleep earlier!”

“Awww—But, AJ—!”

Harmony cleared her voice. The two siblings froze and glanced over as the pegasus bravely, bravely pivoted her face to look young Apple Bloom in the eye. She gave a nervous smile and said, “Apple Bloom, you're never too young to appreciate a good symphony when you hear it. Your Granny not only has good tastes, but she's got good memories to go along with them. She only wants to share that kind of stuff with you and your brother and sister because it's like sharing a part of her as well.”

“But it's all so boring and stiff-like!” Apple Bloom wretched. “Gimme a fast beat and something cool to dance to, ya reckon?”

“You'd be surprised how 'boring and stiff' music could be a pleasant thing to dance to as well.” Harmony grinned. “Especially if it reminds of you good times”—she gulped slightly but overcame it with a wink—“and good friends.”

“Wow—Yer purdy deep, Miss Harmony.” Apple Bloom blinked, then grinned girlishly. “Is that how you got yer cutie mark?”

“M-my cutie mark?” Harmony blinked at the tiny crusader in a brief bout of amnesia.

“Don't mind her.” Applejack sighed and nudged her little sister again. “She's in that call of the cutie phase. I bet even Canterlotlian pegasi can relate.”

“Don't I know it.” Harmony smiled and trotted over before lowering her snout before the blinking foal. “If you must know, Apple Bloom...” Her mind hovered over the hoofsteps of Ms. Cheerilee's ghostly words as she uttered, “This mark of mine means that I am a Servant in the Royal Court of Canterlot. I perform communicative and ambassadorial tasks for Princess Celestia. Sometimes I even act as her direct messenger, flying across the lengths of Equestria, maintaining peace and order among all ponydom.”

“Wowwwwwww...” The filly cooed. She produced a dreamy grin—near drooling—and she asked, “Just what is that dark loopy shape in the middle of the black crest?”

“It's an infinity symbol.” Harmony breathed, blinked dumbly, and ultimately muttered, “It stands for... uh... infinity?”

“How'd you earn that? By talkin' around in circles?”

“Apple Bloom!” Applejack hissed again. “In the house! That's quite enough!”

“But maybe if I started talkin' up a storm of fancy thangs, then I could get a cutie mark as amazin' as hers!”

“Believe me, sugarcube. If that was the case, you'd be covered from hoof to mane in tons of them black loopty-loops by now. Now get along, little doggy!”

“But I only meant to be neighborly!”

“Don't you have school to rest for tomorrow, kid?” Harmony smirked.

“Pffft—As if! It's a Saturday!”

“Oh.” Harmony blinked. The last pony narrowed her eyes and accidentally murmured aloud: “What comes before 'Saturday' again...?”

“Heeheehee! Silly Miss Harmony! Friday! Everypony knows that!”

“Apple Bloom—”

“I'm a'gettin'! I'm a'gettin'! Don't get yer hat in a twirl, sis!” The foal scampered off, giggling.

Applejack shook her blonde head and trotted back towards the pegasus. “Don't mind her. What—with her two bubbly 'crusader' friends and all—she's a regular hoof-ful.”

“She's awfully sweet, though,” Harmony said in a melancholic breath that she tried to hide. “I already see in her the same friendliness as her grandmother.”

“And the same stubbornness.” Applejack rolled her eyes. “But who am I to say? Heheheh...”

“Heehee—Gotcha.” Harmony breathed, then with a furrowing of her brow she uttered: “By the way, who's DJ P0N3?”

“Beats me; one of them record scratchin' music banger-uppers that all the foals have gone plum loco for these days. Don't care much for the tunes myself. Only popular song these days I've come close to fancyin' is Buck to December by Trotter Swiftly.”

“Yeah, okay, sure.”

Applejack inhaled the grand darkening evening around them as she watched the distant form of Big Macintosh loading the crates full of apples into a woodshed before barricading it up.

“Heavens to Betsy,” she groaned. “I've about galloped myself to the bone with all of the day's apple buckin'. Macky may not look it, but he's bound to collapse any moment too. And yet—though I know we're both tuckered out like hungry snakes in a mice stampede—it'd be a sure-fire miracle if we get a single wink of sleep between the two of us. Every night, it's the same dang thing. Even if them trolls didn't want our blood, they whoop up something fierce. I'm surprised downtown Ponyville hasn't heard all the hollerin' and racket these last few weeks. There's no sense in hidin' it, Miss Harmony. I'm severely lackin' any hope of the rest of them apples survivin' by the time we try buckin' 'em loose tomorrow.”

“Don't give up, Miss Applejack,” Harmony said, gazing at the darkening treetops to the west and north. “I'll keep an eye out.”

“I beg yer pardon?”

“It's the least I can do until we meet again in the morning,” the time traveler said. “Somepony has to stand guard.” Harmony dizzily teetered as she thought of so many pale bodies in the shadowed clusters of endless apple orchards. It would be a long, long night indeed. “I can't even begin to fathom the shame of leaving your family here on your lonesome.”

“You ain't goin' back to Ponyville or nothin'?”

“Ponyville?” Harmony made a face. “What do you mean...?”

“I figured y'all was stayin' in a hotel or something while you paid us a visit on behalf of the Court.”

“Oh—Pfft.” Harmony smirked. “I never went to a hotel—” She caught herself in the middle of that, winced, then reiterated: “That is, I'm fine, Miss Applejack. I came here to Sweet Apple Acres to help you, and I'm not leaving until the jobs are done—Both of them: the apples and the trolls.”

Applejack stared at her long and hard. Slowly, a sweet smile crept over her orange features. “My sweet suntanned flank! I won't let you go floatin' around all night like some headless horse! Come on, copper-bottom!” She tugged at the pegasus' tail hairs.

Harmony gave her a double-glance. “Excuse me?”

“Excuse yerself. Yer stayin' indoors.”

“Indoors where?”

“In the Apple Family Household, ya strawhead!”

Harmony's heart skipped a beat. The green world spun loops beneath her dangling hooves. Instinctually, she barked: “Oh no, AJ—er—Miss Applejack. I can't. Besides, somepony's gotta keep an eye out on the forest for when the trolls come out—”

“Fat lick of good that'll do when you fall out of the sky in a dead slumber from overworkin' yerself! You may have a talent at airborne apple buckin'—but every filly has her limits. I'd never live right with myself if I left you out here in the cold to fend off them varmints on your lonesome. Yer gettin' a proper meal and a bed to sleep in—”

“Miss Applejack, I'm fine—”

“Yer the one thing that's standing in the way between tomorrow and my family's farm goin' up in flames!” Applejack snapped back. Then, she blushed slightly, and added “Metaphorically speakin', of course.” She cleared her throat and gazed at the pegasus in earnest. “I spent the better part of yesterday tryin' to shoo you away, not knowin' a gift horse when I looked her in the sweet face. And yet, you stuck it out with us, Miss Harmony. You saved Macky's life. You saved my life. My Ma and Pa would be rollin' in their graves if I didn't pay you back with the best thang we've always had to give: sweet tastin' apples and a place to lay yer head. Now are you our guest or ain't ya?!”

Harmony stared breathlessly at her. In a hazed blink—under the phantom scents of crackling embers and melted marshmallows—she saw a sisterly face gazing at her over an upside down hat bouncing with three juicy apples. In an age long dead, the simplest of gifts had helped the foal last another shivering week on her own, spent liquidly in the warmth of delightful dreams, of having someponies to call a family, of having someplace to call a home, of the simple harmony of the fleeting thought, as her moments were always fleeting, as this moment right here was fleeting.

The last pony bravely cut it off at the head. She may not have been strong enough, but she certainly wasn't stupid. “I would be honored to be your guest, Miss Applejack.” She smiled savoringly, as if she knew she could never smile again.

“Alrighty then!” Applejack smirked and proudly nudged the stumbling pegasus towards the farmhouse. “And if y'all don't mind me sayin' so, sugarcube, the first order of business is givin' you a bath!”

Harmony blinked crookedly. “Uhm... O-kaaay...”

Comments

[oblivion2k]

I broke into tears when Dinky started to speak as Rainbow Dash. I don't know exactly why, but this rocked me to my core. I'm sure these won't be the last tears I shed tonight though, onto chapter 15....

[seekque]

At the scene where Fluttershy falls at the waterfall and is saved a contradiction occurs to her coughing and her breathing before and after Ditzy says, "Is she... Is she d-d-d-d-dead?".
Also the follow scene where Fluttershy regains conscious up to the to the point where Fluttershy says "Every second that we waste debating this is another moment better spent in tracking down the caves", I picture her sitting down speaking very weakly half conscious before trying to get up and press on at, which point Harmony grabs hold to steady and proceed to take her back. None of which is given any description but left to ones colorful imagination.
After having come/gone so far do you think a mother would bother to say something like this still with her young's life on the line, "Please. It's still your royal authority at hoof”?
Doesn't Fluttershy refer to Spike as a 'baby purple dragon' instead of a "infant purple dragon" via ep1? Also imo this, "It is hard to tell, nor is it my place to find out—", is just to far ooc.
OK *sighs* what appeared to be a case of a simple tranquilly resolved family moment in the last chapter has sprung forward into this one, which isn't a bad thing, but its re-appearance in my opinion came way out of left field. To which I am referring re-surfaced at/is, -She wants to know about her father. She needs to know about her father.”-.
Small correction from -a eulogy- to -an eulogy-.
*gets to the ending* Well that was an interesting ending to be left on another cliffhanger lol.

[seekque]

66678 I was more shocked than brought to tears, though it did give me a sudden sharp pain and sense of "wow".

Oh Jebus. Dinky channeled the future. ALL of it. @@ Haven't gotten any further, but...grief, the HELL there will be to pay if Dinky remembers all this. @@;

at the end: dem quotes...

[KMCA]

Okay, I'll say it, Derpy's life is worth it to get more out of Dinky. Right bloody there is the biggest clue she can possibly get... Must read more

[BrighterG]

Dang... Dinky being used as a mouthpiece for some great spiritual being trying to discourage Scoots from reforming the future... I wanna kick the Onyx Eclipse in the face now... Great chapter by the way!

[Apple Cloud]

Wow. Just wow. Another astonishing chapter. I wonder about this onyx eclipse thing

[Thumper]

I have finally found something about your writings that didn't sit right with me.
Why was Harmony so adamant against going into the Everfree to save Dinky?
It wasn't until after she was already in the forest that she stumbled upon the Ursa Den and realized it was where Fluttershy's future corpse was.
So why was she so hesitant?
Maybe it's just something that I'm overlooking completely.
Other than that small issue, I've never had a complaint about any of your stories.
They are, by far, the best I've ever had the pleasure of reading.

[Ponky]

Ugh, that was so long. Really good, though.

Penumbra, penumbra, penumbra...

The part where Dinky was channeling whatever cosmic entity knew Scootaloo was terrifying. Great stuff there. Lots of her bold words seemed to hint at the cataclysm, but that sealed the deal and freaked the squirrel crap outta me.

Anyway... Lots of sad. Sad, sad, penumbra, sad.

Cool organization, as usual.

[FloydienSlip]

"I don't care if she was talking about Father Winter, Uncle Solstice, or Aunt Menopause!

Wonderful chapter.

[Riverwing]

I knew it, it's not possessed ramblings, she's prophesizing.

[AppleTank]

This explains every bumbling fortune teller. They must be half insane in order to be accurate. To bad their insanity makes them hard to understand.

[Tom the bomb]

Omg omg omg omg omg
Mind = blown
I just understood the significance of rainbow dash saying that harmony was right!!!!!!!

[Soldierpony]

2253680 Why has it taken everyone so long to figure this out?

[Prismic]

Here's chapter 14!

[Warrior Kitten]

3687019
I don't get it

[Winter Rosario]

Buck to December by Trotter Swiftly

No. Just. No. The puns. No.