The Softening
An hour before dawn...
Maybe two...
Four colorful equine bodies lay slumbering across the bed and floor of Twilight Sparkle's foalhood room. Gentle breaths echoed against the walls, and a light snore or two could be heard.
Shadows and silence...
Then... ... ...
Creaaaaaaaaaaak!
The door to Twilight Sparkle's room slowly tilted open with a patch of dim light. The silhouette of a farm pony stood in its frame. A petite figure with wings was draped over her back.
"... ... ..."
Applejack peered left...
She peered right...
Boldly, with baited breath, she trotted forward on the tippy-tips of her hoofsies. She had to hop once or twice to avoid stomping on Fluttershy or Rarity.
At long last, she reached the far end of the room where two empty sleeping bags lay. One was appropriately simple. The other one was loud and obnoxious—even in the dim light—featuring lightning and wonderbolt emblems.
Holding her breath, Applejack squatted really... really low. Still balancing Rainbow across her flank, she gripped the clasp of the sleeping bag's zipper in her teeth. Slowly, she peeled the thing open with a low rattle. A few hooves and fetlocks stirred and twitched beside her.
At long last, after an agonizing motion, Applejack succeeded in opening the bag. Sucking her breath in, she heaved Rainbow Dash over her shoulders and laid her gently down inside the mat.
"Mrmmmmff... guhhh..." Rainbow's lips moved slightly. She reached a fetlock out—its fuzz as soft as sighs—and brushed it against Applejack's hoof.
Applejack grimaced, her heart racing. She gently pushed Rainbow's hoof away, then slid the rest of her body beneath the lip of the sleeping bag. All that was left was to tuck her wings in after her... but this proved far more difficult than she had expected. Applejack ultimately resorted to swift, jabbing motions... almost grunting with the effort to shove those wings in alongside the petite pegasus' slumbering body—
Pluck!
Something lifted ceilingward and twirled in the air like a pixie.
"...?!" Applejack looked up. "...!!" She grasped for the object, juggled it, then grasped it in two trembling forelimbs. She held her breath.
It was a loose blue feather... Rainbow's... and it was softer than soft itself.
Applejack found herself frozen inexplicably in place... even as the sound of shifting satin tickled her ears.
A pony was sitting up.
Gasping, Applejack looked all around in a frantic sweat for a place to hide the one and only evidence of her and Rainbow's belated arrival. Ultimately, she lifted her hat and stuck the damned thing between it and her blonde head. She stood prim and proper like a house cat in time to smile back at the bleary-eyed pony...
...who turned out to be Pinkie Pie.
"Mrmmmfff..." The mare rubbed her fuzzy face. "Applejack...?" She rubbed it again. "Is that you?"
"Uhhhh... eeyup!" Applejack smiled, twitching. "Go back to bed, Pinkie!" Her voice was hoarse.
Pinkie's blue eyes peered inquistively through the icy shadows. "You're not just getting back from a midnight excursion into an emotionally existential crisis, are you?"
"Errrr..." Applejack gulped, fidgeting in place. "Even... if I was... would that be any better than that snazzy dream y'all should be gettin' back to right about now?"
"... ... ..." Pinkie Pie blinked. "... ... ..." She grinned stupidly. "You got a point there! Nini!" THUNK! She fell like a corpse back into her sleeping bag. "Shnorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!"
Applejack exhaled wheezingly. She leaned over and zipped Rainbow Dash's mat up.
"Mrmmmmffff..." With a dumb smile, Rainbow Dash curled up, her body shifted ever so slightly in the direction of Applejack's warm touch.
"... ... ..." Applejack lingered in place. It took iron resolve to remove her hoof from the sleeping mat... and the residual warmth of the exhausted pegasus.
Slowly backing up, Applejack stumbled to her own mat. She lay down—stiff as a wooden board—and stared up at the glow-in-the-dark stars dotting Twilight's ceiling. Her eyes were wide open... and not a single cell in her body was feeling remotely sleepy.
She knew that she had to force it.
So, out of habit, Applejack plucked her hat off to lay over her eyes...
...and that's when the blue feather fell onto her chest.
The mare gasped audibly. She covered her muzzle before she could wake anypony. A few bodies shifted under their mats... but were still again.
Fighting a sour lump in her throat, Applejack looked at the feather lying on her chest. As she breathed, it fluttered from her breath... tickling her. Enticing.
It was such a tiny, pathetic, threadbare thing. Applejack had every reason to throw it under a random chair or crush it to a fibrous pulp and toss under Twilight's bed...
But she didn't.
She could only stare at the thing... paralyzed...
When at last she couldn't stare any longer, she did something strange.
She put her hat over it. Hiding it.
Suddenly, Applejack could breath better. Sleep wasn't any easier to find. The constant tickle of the feather against her chest kept her locked in the moment. But for some reason...
She didn't mind.
Nor did she mind the breath that fluttered closest to her.
Applejack turned her head aside. Calm, melancholic eyes swept the darkness and found color. Her color.
Rainbow was just a few breaths away, and yet Applejack realized she could make out her breaths from all the other mares. In some strange way—she figured—she always could.
The thought tickled her like the feather. And when she stopped fighting it—Applejack discovered—it lulled her into a calm state of mind.
And... not long after...
...darkness.
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...And there it is.
And now the feather stands explained. Well, we're about due for a facehoof moment. Care to oblige, Pinkie?
Always on point, that mare.
This origin is much more exciting than it has any right to be.
Applejack and Rainbow Dash have remarkably similar yet unique problems.
I mean they're both helpless at handling their feelings but in different ways.
Pinkie is such a scene stealer.
with an off switch.
Also, kinda anticlimactic how she got the feather, I expected her to snag it from Dash while she slept, not to just take a molted one.
8441782
Whoops. Muhbad. Is fixed.
Well I must say, this is so much more interesting than I thought it would be. When the feather first came to light, I admit I thought nothing more of it then some Keepsake that Applejack had of Rainbow Dash. But it's so much more than that isn't it? The feather itself acts as a sign of not only her enduring love towards our petite little Pegasus, but also of her blind, bullheaded denial of these feelings.
Did you notice that she was starting to lose control simply by looking at the feather until she covered it with her hat? She keeps it close, but out of sight. And not once during all of these chapters has the thought consciously crossed her mind that Rainbow Dash is in love with her, or that she could reciprocate these feelings.
She's still in a form of arrested development, still that scared little child Standing on that cloudy Hill wondering why she's so alone in this world. She Needs love. To love and to be loved, or she will suffer the same fate as Rainbow Dash in the end.
Go back to sleep, Your Grace. Its just a bad dream.
CRILLY.
—its fuzz as soft as sighs—
LOL wow I don't know how but I vow too somehow someway work that line into something
Ponyfeathers, we lost her.