Spark Notes

by Sharp Spark

Scootaloo and the End

Unlike the other colts and fillies, I always liked the end: that one last week before school started in August when the summer heat still pressed down like a sweltering weight on your back and the only reasonable response was to flee to the river. There the splashing and roughhousing in the cold water took on a certain kind of urgency, as if trying to wring out every last bit of uninhibited freedom from the dying season. Only when Celestia painted the skies orange would we slow down, unspoken understanding drawing us into languidness, floating in the cool water as we watched the sun set and the stars spread across the sky. On our way home, we’d trot so close our coats would brush against one another, whispering trivial secrets in-between muted giggling as fat fireflies blinked and buzzed in the humid air.

The whole atmosphere felt charged with a certain kind of subtle electricity that could at any moment burst into being and change us forever in some mysterious, unknowable way, even if we knew all too well that nothing would ever really happen. As the hours trickled away, we marched inevitably towards a too-familiar return to routine. The words on the papers and posters on the walls might differ, but we’d be hunched over the same old and splintering desks in the schoolhouse, wondering again how they could have shrunk half-an-inch, maybe a full, since we had seen them last. But all along there was the powerful sense of an impending shock, that the knowing glances and wry smiles that some of the adults increasingly directed at us meant that some huge milestone of growing up was about to strike right out of the blue, like a second cutie mark that we’d only be able to see once we had stumbled across it.

By the time I had realized just what form the end would take, it had already snuck up on us in a thousand creeping ways. There was no shocking twist or dramatic reveal, just tiny slivers of meaning piling up underhoof, never noticeable enough to require a conscious adjustment until you realized the ground you were standing on was abruptly a strange and foreign thing. I don’t think I even realized it myself, up until after Sweetie had already left. The particular chain of events had been so subtle as to be invisible, stretching back to when she had gotten cutie mark, if not before. It’s not like I could fault her – what kind of place was Ponyville for a singer? She could have joined the Ponytones, but everypony knew she was destined for a bigger stage. She never would have been able to completely mask the resentment had she stayed, just like she could never quite keep from slipping into what I mockingly called her ‘Rarity voice’ when the conversation turned to Canterlot, which happened increasingly often as we approached the cusp of adulthood.

And so when I recognized that the end was already upon us, when I finally admitted to the crackly tang in the air that any pegasus knew in their bones as a building storm, Sweetie had already departed a week prior, and Apple Bloom was days away from doing the same. I rolled it over in my head as I trotted down the path to Sweet Apple Acres, trying to twist the feelings inside of me into some recognizable shape, something simple that I could put words on. No easy answer came though as I walked between the neat rows of apple trees, watching them progress from thin saplings to heavyset, hulking things with gnarled trunks the closer I got to the farmhouse.

I caught a glimpse of yellow and red as the building came into view past branches heavy with fruit. Bloom had been watching from her room, the white shutters thrown wide to let in what air the occasional breeze stirred up, but by the time I arrived, she was already trotting down the steps to meet me in the yard.

She kept her thick, cherry-red mane long and untamed, and wore a green bandana loosely cinched around her neck. On another pony, it might have come across as rustic at best and country bumpkin at worst, but Apple Bloom possessed a kind of put-togetherness, a confidence in herself that shone through in her bright eyes and easy smile.

She turned that smile on me and I found myself instinctively looking down at the lawn instead. “Hey Scoots. Was beginning to think ya weren’t coming over to see me today.”

“Maybe I’m still not,” I shot back breezily. “Maybe I’m here to see Applejack.”

She let out a snort and when I looked up, her eyes had crinkled around the edges in that familiar way that meant she had already won. “Oh? I think she’s out harvesting in the north orchard. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled about having a set of fresh hooves for a few hours bucking.”

“Okay, okay, you got me.” I scrunched up my nose, rustling my wings and hoping she didn’t catch the nervous electricity that I felt running through my system. “How’re you? How’s things?”

“Boring. I trust ya got some crazy stunt for us to go try?”

I glanced off to the side. “Not really. I’m all out of ideas today.”

“Well, there’s Cutie Mark Plan X...”

That was our inside joke, from years and years prior, back when we had met together at the clubhouse after school one afternoon and made up an entire list from A to Z of different occupations we could try and get our cutie marks at. We ended up sticking to it far longer than I think any of us actually expected, spending most of a month running from one end of Ponyville to the other in pursuit of one hare-brained scheme after another. Up until we got to X, that is, and between Apple Bloom’s doubt that ‘xylophonist’ was actually a word and a mutual utter bafflement about where to find one, we had decided to take the day off, lying around the clubhouse and shooting the breeze. There had been a lot of ‘Cutie Mark Plan X’es since then, days when we had collectively agreed to take a break and just sit around discussing everything or nothing. Just enjoying the company of friends.

“Cutie Mark Plan X sounds pretty good right now,” I said, meaning it. I bit my lip, doubt still churning in my stomach.

“Great!” Apple Bloom didn’t seem to notice. She turned and took a step towards the orchard, towards the path that I knew led to the grove where our clubhouse lay nestled in the branches of one particularly big tree.

“Wait.” I took a breath. “I was thinking… Why don’t we go to the barn instead?”

Apple Bloom halted, one hoof frozen in the air, and from that angle I could just barely catch a glimpse of her face, her eyes wide and mouth parted. She recovered in an instant, turning her head further away so I could no longer see her expression. “Sure,” she said.

I don’t know what I really expected. It wouldn’t have surprised me to have gotten no reaction at all, or maybe that slight head tilt and flat stare when she thought I was being silly. But that had confirmed it.

She knew what I meant. It wasn’t just me. She remembered, too.

---

The day that I met Apple Bloom wasn’t the day of Diamond Tiara’s cuteceñera. It wasn’t the night of the previous Summer Sun Celebration either, of which I can only recall a brief flash of terror huddling under a table with some other fillies, followed by hours of grownups pointlessly yelling and arguing about what to do, at least up until Rainbow Dash and the others saved the day. Pun intended.

No, I first met Apple Bloom nearly a whole year before, back even before our cutie marks were a matter of concern. The memories have always stuck with me, at least the beginning and end. I can still smell the wet bouquet of earth – I was digging a hole in my front yard, though I can’t recall whether in pursuit of some imaginary treasure or just as an expression of typical childish spite towards at my preternaturally patient mother. Either way, my only real achievement was covering myself in damp dirt, and I remember looking up from my shoulder-high hole to see my mother standing at the picket fence, exchanging gossip with a neighbor. And that’s when I heard her quiet, “Oh my,” and realized that something bad had happened, though I registered it only through the intense self-interest of a filly: I knew without a doubt the cherry pie she had spent all morning baking would be going somewhere else.

And that’s what happened, as was my mother’s usual habit with her carefully constructed baked goods. On a lucky day, her pies or tarts or turnovers would last to grace our dinner table, but far more often somepony else’s need would be judged superior, and our pastries would be carefully carried across Ponyville, to the doorstep of somepony unfortunate. My mother considered that her special talent – I saw it a grave dereliction of duty towards her perilously dessert-deprived daughter.

And that was how I saw it then, too, even if I experienced some brief guilt once she relayed word about just what the Apple family’s loss was. But then she started speaking of their daughter who was my age, and how I was expected to accompany her and try and ‘cheer the poor dear up,’ and that laid my ears flat once more. Over my protests and through a hasty bath that I fought hoof and tooth, she dragged me across town to Sweet Apple Acres, that sweetly tempting cherry pie firmly planted between the wings on her back and out of my reach.

It wasn’t that I had anything against the Apple family. I didn’t even know them. I was simply wrapped up in the casually cruel self-interest of a twelve-year-old. We passed by one of the Apples on the walk in, a teenaged colt who was already bigger than my father, kicking trees out in the orchard that didn’t even have apples on them. But when my mother raised her voice to call out, he stomped off further into the orchards without a single word. We saw the next oldest when we got to the farmhouse. She answered the door on the first knock, red rimming her eyes and strands of straw-colored hair askew from the ponytail she compulsively tugged at as she talked with us. She took the pie to place in the middle of a kitchen table I indignantly noted as being already full of casseroles and other pity pies, and then ushered us into the living room as she called for her sister to come down.

It would have been nice to say that I thought I saw something special in Apple Bloom from the very beginning. I didn’t. What I saw was a shrimpy little filly – as if I could talk there! – wearing a horribly old-fashioned bow and an expression of unconcealed antagonism, as if I had personally insulted her recently departed parents, if not caused their demise to begin with.

“Lemme guess, you’re here to say how sorry you are for me?” Apple Bloom said, the twang of her voice not softening the venom.

“If I do, are you gonna start crying all over everywhere?” I shot back.

Our respective family members immediately stepped in, chiding the both of us for our lack of manners in that awkward disapproving stage-whisper common to parents..I remember glancing up at Apple Bloom and being surprised to see her facade of hostility crack for a minute into a wry grin that I couldn’t help but mirror.

And that, as they say, was that.

We were inseparable from that point onwards. I had never met a filly like her. When we galloped across the orchards in impromptu races, if I won, she wouldn’t sulk or make excuses like the colts did. She’d just stick her chin out, give me a steady stare, and challenge me to something different, like catching frogs. We were constantly testing one another, pushing one another, and she could hold her own against me and then some. It got to be that I’d get out of bed, shovel down my breakfast, and dash away first thing in the morning, heading to Sweet Apple Acres with me head full of Apple Bloom and the next crazy idea for us to attempt. I think my mother only allowed it because she still felt sorry for the Apples, but we were both all to happy to use that to our benefit.

I don’t know how long that time lasted. In the haze of childhood, it seemed like forever, one glorious golden summer of adventure spent with someone who had come out of nowhere to claim the place of my irreplaceable best friend forever. In less-poetic reality, I know now it had to be a month at most, probably less, but that demonstrates the impact Apple Bloom immediately made on me, and what I can recognize now as my childish infatuation with every aspect of her.

And then things changed.

We were in the upper loft of the barn, transforming it through our imaginations into the deck of a pirate ship as we took turns forcing each other to walk the plank and fall the short distance into a pile of hay below.

Author's Note:

This is the most fragmented of the pieces I ended up releasing, and the one I most wished I had ever completed. It's written outside my normal style, mimicking a YA novel. I got the bug to try that out after reading The Miseducation of Cameron Post, which I recommend, at least if you like YA coming-of-ageish things. My intention was to write a very bittersweet romance thing between Scootaloo and Apple Bloom, with Scoots kissing Apple Bloom slightly after this point and AB pushing her away and growing very distant, at least until they came together as the Crusaders later on, with Sweetie serving as a sort of bridge but some walls still in place. They're both extremely young, and don't really know what the feelings mean or how to handle them. And then back to the present/future scene, where Scoots and AB talk briefly about it from a bit more mature of a perspective and reflect on what could have been, even as they realize it's not a thing that's going to be able to happen. And they move on with their lives. And that's it.

I really really wish I had managed to finish it, even though the style is admittedly overwrought and that third scene is by far the super hard part. Oh well.

Comments

[Sharp Spark]

7334524
You are now fully into the part of this collection that consists of unfinished stories, unfortunately. There's bits in all of them I really like, but they're also all incomplete and doomed to languish that way.

[PresentPerfect]

Damn, I do wish you'd finished this.

[Icy Shake]

I think I may have missed out on ever really doing the straight coming of age thing, certainly at the same age. Don't think Huck Finn and Tom Jones really count. Not sure if it's something you ever really outgrow, though, at least not as long as you still have things you're leaving behind, or the memory. The feeling I got from this suggests perhaps not.

7297702 7334524 7408984
You and me both. But glad we got what was here.

[Meridian Prime]

I've liked a lot of these little stories, but this is by far my favourite so far. It is, as you said, very much not your usual style, but you've done an excellent job of capturing it.