• Published 29th Dec 2012
  • 12,587 Views, 1,189 Comments

Mother of Invention - zaponator



Awake and alone, Applejack will find a way to survive.

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A Sign Of Hope

Applejack regained consciousness slowly. First came her hearing. It was surprisingly quiet. The sound of the ocean's gentle waves calmly rolling across the sand was all she could hear, other than a single rustling in the bushes that was soon silenced. She wasn't sure why such quiet was surprising, but something about the situation felt off.

She felt coarse sand under her belly, and a dim light managed to pierce her closed eyelids. She could tell that she was wearing saddlebags, but the presence of her hat was unknown. Was she even wearing it? Applejack attempted to lift a hoof to check for her signature stetson, but the limb refused to budge from the warm sand as if it was made of lead. Her mind was feeling similarly shackled as her thoughts failed to resolve into anything coherent.

All of this observation had taken place over the course of two seconds, and it was at this point that Applejack came to a crucial realization. She couldn't breathe.

Her eyes shot open instantly as Applejack jolted into full wakefulness. Tears blurred her vision as she convulsed on the sand, then managed to violently cough up a concerning amount of salty seawater. Applejack rolled onto her side to avoid the pooling brine, still too tired to stand. She let out a long, low moan. Her head was throbbing and the sunlight only made it worse, forcing her to clench her eyes shut once more against the light. She clutched at her aching skull with both forehooves, only for her hooves to hit bare mane. Her heart nearly stopped. Her hat was gone!

With a feeble groan, Applejack managed to brace one foreleg against the ground and push up to her knees. She was too worn out to panic, she could barely move her body at all, but she'd be damned before she let her hat get lost. Even the simple act of crawling onto her knees made Applejack dizzy, and she paused to catch her breath. When she finally managed to crack open her eyes, she was greeted with a scene of destruction.

Applejack blinked, her pounding headache momentarily taking a back seat. The beach before her was ruined. Logs and bits of smashed wood were scattered all about, some sticking up out of the sand like a small forest of tiny trees all dead and broken. A couple huge logs had been sundered and tossed across the landscape, some of the chunks carving deep furrows in the sand where they'd landed. Torn bits of cloth hung from a few of the pieces of wood like the tattered flags of a defeated army gently flapping in the ocean breeze.

Supplies and equipment were likewise scattered, all of it utterly destroyed. Shattered glass bottles spread their shards across the entire beach in random patches. Food she'd spent days gathering was crushed and squashed into paste, smeared across the ruinous site like bloodstains on anything and everything.

The ocean waves, seemingly so peaceful and soothing before, smashed against the shore with more violence than Applejack had usually seen in them. Each white-capped breaker would bring with it more bits of detritus and destruction to add to the battlefield of Applejack's failure.

Applejack surveyed it all. She looked out across the utter destruction of her greatest work and suddenly couldn't summon the will to hold herself up. She collapsed back to her belly as her vision blurred, mercifully obscuring the pitiful sight before her.

The sound of the ocean was joined by the sound of Applejack's own laboured breaths. She wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. She eventually settled on crying.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Applejack was finally able to move again, she wasn't sure how much time had passed. The sun was still shining in the sky, so it couldn't have been too long. For it to be so bright, it had to be morning. The sun had just been setting when the storm had befallen her. This meant that Applejack had been unconscious all night. She silently thanked Celestia that whatever strange thing roamed the island hadn't found her during that time.

Applejack slowly, shakily pushed up to all four hooves and attempted to get her bearings. Her head was still killing her. She groaned as the sunlight shot a lance of pain straight through her eye sockets and into her brain. Shielding her eyes with a forehoof, Applejack stumbled towards the bulk of the wreckage in search of her hat.

First priority was to find her hat. Everything else could wait.

Fortunately, everything else wouldn't have to wait long. It took only a minute or two of wandering around the rubble before Applejack spotted her stetson. It was perched on the end of a length of wood that was itself stuck straight-down into the sand like an accidental hat rack. Or like a head impaled on a pike. That'd work too.

The hat was held too high up for her to reach, so Applejack turned around and kicked out at the piece of wood with a single hind leg. The branch barely rattled. Applejack let out a pitiful whine and lashed out several more times in rapid succession. After the fourth or fifth pathetic kick she finally managed to snap the waterlogged wood at the base. It tumbled over into the sand and her hat was thrown free. Puffing her chest out triumphantly, Applejack stumbled over and snatched it up.

She put it on immediately, ignoring the sogginess of it and the rivulets of saltwater that ran down her face and neck as it settled atop her mane. Placing her treasured hat upon her head shielded her eyes from the sun, freeing up both forehooves as Applejack unslung the saddlebags from her back and set them down in front of her.

Priority two: assess just how much she'd lost. One of the flaps had burst open, which explained just how her hat had gotten loose. The book and her canteen were missing too, having both been stored in the same half of the bags as her hat. Fortunately, the other flap had stayed tightly closed, and had contained some very valuable items. The golden locket, Applejack took out and hung around her neck. The knife and sheath, as well, she pulled out and strapped to her left foreleg. The rubber chicken, for once, failed to elicit even the slightest chuckle from Applejack. She left it in the bag.

Once more strapping the saddlebags to her back, Applejack turned and set about the burdensome task of sifting through the wreckage. Her head still throbbed, and her limbs still felt limp as noodles as she shuffled about and poked at mangled bits of wood and frayed rope. None of the building materials would be salvageable, it seemed. Not even the rope had survived in any usable length. Applejack sighed.

Grunting and straining, she barely managed to shift a tangled heap of rubble that would've been child's play to her at any other time. Her work was rewarded, though, as underneath she found her old canteen. It was beaten up, definitely showing a good few more dents and scratches than it used to, but when she unscrewed the lid she found water within. It was still usable.

For the first time that day, Applejack allowed herself a tiny smile as she paused to take a long drink. She hadn't realized just how parched her throat was, and she managed to polish off the contents of the entire canteen.

The rest of her search was far less heartening. Rubble, destruction, ruin. Applejack shuffled along on wobbly legs from heap to pile to mound of junk. None of it had survived. Nothing. The entire beach was a massive testament to her failure, a graveyard to her last best effort. Her one chance of finally saving herself, smashed and strewn across the sand like garbage. Applejack was beginning to lose hope again—

Something caught her eye. A glint of gold sparked just on the edge of her vision. Applejack trotted a little faster over towards the anomaly. It was… the book. The inexplicable book that Applejack had been unable to open. It had a golden latch, but no keyhole. She'd only brought it to give to Twilight. Since it had flown out of her saddlebags, Applejack had assumed it destroyed. After all, paper and water never seem to get along very well. Yet here it was.

Applejack carefully prodded it with a forehoof, half expecting it to dissolve into mush at the slightest touch. Nothing happened. Curious, Applejack sat down and picked the book up in both hooves. Instantly, she tossed it back to the sand as if burned. It was dry. The book felt completely and utterly dry to the touch. Everything else was soaked. Her hat was sopping, her saddlebags were dripping, even her coat was damp. Yet the book had somehow stayed completely dry.

She took a deep, careful breath. Clearly, this was just another one of those things. Applejack grumbled as she picked the book back up. She tried once more to open it, but found it just as stubborn as the first time. Frowning, Applejack tossed it into her saddlebags and cinched them shut.

Her search of the wreckage all but completed, that led Applejack to priority three: figure out just where she was.

Even in its ravaged state, Applejack could clearly tell she was on a different beach than the first one she'd woken up on. In truth, that other beach was the only one she'd ever bothered to visit. Even when she'd done a bit of exploring of the island's interior, she'd never checked out any of the other beaches. Of course, this meant she had no idea how to locate her camp from anywhere but that one beach.

Applejack sighed. The quickest route would be straight through the jungle, but that would also be the most high-risk. Going around the beach until she came across somewhere she recognized could potentially take a huge amount of time –it was a big island– but at least it was a guaranteed method. Besides, her head still throbbed mercilessly and her limbs still felt all but useless. She simply wasn't up to bushwhacking.

So that settled it. Applejack took one last glance up to the sky, determining it to still be morning-time, though the sun was steadily edging towards noon. With that, she turned so that the jungle was on her right, the ocean on her left, and she set off down the beach. She didn't even once glance back at the destruction she left behind her.

The going was slow. Between her aching head and her wobbly hooves, Applejack made little progress as the sun continued its inexorable journey across the sky. After some unknown amount of time trudging along, Applejack came across a little stream that ran out of the jungle, down the beach, and emptied into the ocean.

A weary laugh escaped her lips as she shambled over towards the glorious source of fresh water. She followed it a little ways into the jungle, just to be sure she was clear of the salty influence of the sea. Just as soon as she was satisfied that there was nothing but clear fresh water before her, Applejack plopped down on her belly, set her hat down in the grass, and shoved her whole head into the stream.

The sweat and tears covering her face were washed away by the cool current, and her dry throat was quickly quenched as she gulped down as much of the refreshing liquid as she could. Her lungs started to burn, but Applejack hesitated. She thought of how everything she'd ever tried to escape the island had failed. Even the bottles, she'd thought somepony would've found by then, had never even gone anywhere. Nothing she'd done had mattered at all. How easy it would be to simply let go. She could let herself remain underwater until she just… faded away. No more pain, no more being trapped away from home. She could forgo all of her problems so very easily. It wouldn't even take long.

Applejack shot upright with a loud gasp. She coughed and gagged for several moments as her lungs painfully re-inflated. Her deep, heavy breaths echoed through the trees as she pounded at her chest with a forehoof, releasing yet another cough. When she was finally able to get her breathing under control, Applejack merely sat there shuddering. She'd been so close to giving up.

She stared at her reflection in the water, and the pony that looked back at her seemed so tired. Her eyes were bloodshot, staring out from deep sockets. Her short-cut mane hung in ragged, sopping tatters that partially obscured the sides of her haggard face. She shuddered one last time then turned away.

It was just her recent, crushing failure getting to her. That, and a pretty severe blow to the head. Either way, she couldn't afford to give into feelings like that. She couldn't afford to be so impulsive. There were still things she could do. Something was clearly keeping her on the island, so the only path left before her was to find out why and how. To do that, she needed to figure out exactly what was so special about this Celestia-damned island in the first place. Whatever it was hiding, Applejack would have to find it.

The thought of a clear goal was somewhat heartening, and Applejack nodded confidently before filling up her canteen from the stream. That done, she slapped her hat back on her head and trotted towards the beach. She didn't even spare a glimpse at her reflection as she left.

Whether because of her new determined attitude or because of her short but refreshing rest, Applejack found her pace a little quicker as she trotted along down the beach. The sun was just reaching its zenith above her, but still she hadn't seen anything familiar in her trek. Strictly speaking, she was bound to end up at a familiar beach eventually. That was just how it worked. Of course, she could've landed anywhere, so there was also the possibility that she would end up circumnavigating the entire island before reaching her destination. That would certainly be bad.

She was pretty sure that she'd awoken her first morning on the east side of the island. She couldn't remember exactly, and thinking too hard made her headache spike in intensity. She could only hope that was the case, as she clearly remembered the sun rising over the ocean when she woke up among the wreckage of her raft. That meant she was on the east side of the island now. If her suspicions were correct, then she would find familiar ground without too much trouble.

Of course, the sun was directly overhead at that point. So Applejack couldn't say for sure if she was still on the east side of the island. She had to be. She hadn't been walking that long, had she? It was hard to tell just how far she'd gone. Applejack stumbled to a stop and turned to look behind her. Hoofprints marred the sand in a relatively straight line, going back for as far as she could see, only disappearing into the jungle once where she'd found the stream.

She glanced skyward again. The sun was already hanging over the jungle in its afternoon phase. Applejack shook her head, but quickly regretted it. She growled through clenched teeth. As if the pain wasn't bad enough, now her head injury was making her lose track of the time. Grumbling under her breath, Applejack set off once more down the beach.

She walked and walked, hooves dragging through the fine sand. Every so often she would pause to take a sip from the canteen, making sure to conserve it as much as possible. There was no telling when another source of freshwater would be available. Applejack pulled her hat down a bit, shielding her face from the hot afternoon sun. She considered stepping off the beach and into the shelter of the jungle canopy, but decided that the undergrowth would slow her already lacking progress too much to be worth it.

After some unknown amount of time staggering down the beach, Applejack spotted something in the distance. As she rounded a bend in the beach, she spotted a vaguely straight shape that seemed to be jutting out of the shore and into the ocean. She squinted, trying to identify the structure, for it was certainly big enough to be a building of some sort.

Applejack picked up her pace a bit as she made for the odd sight. As she grew ever closer, Applejack slowly recognized the structure. It was made of wooden planks supported by thick wooden legs that ran along both sides of it. It extended out over the ocean like a bridge to nowhere. From what she could see, it was a dock.

She allowed herself a small smile as her pace increased to a jog. It seemed there really was a silver lining to any storm cloud. In this case, the silver lining came in the form of the third pony-made structure she'd managed to find so far, and more importantly, a third chance to find some answers.

They did always say that the third time's the charm.

It turned out to be in worse condition than it had appeared from afar. When Applejack was within spitting distance, she could see that most of the boards had rotted off or collapsed. A few of the supporting legs were cracked and sitting at an angle, and one or two had snapped clean in two and fallen over. The wood was old and splintered, all of it clearly rotten and weathered beyond any usefulness as a building material.

Applejack finally arrived at the dock, panting from the short run. It extended far enough over the water that she could see plenty of room to moor boats, but unfortunately there wasn't so much as a single sign of any such vehicles. There were no strange symbols painted on the wood, just simple, natural brown. There didn't appear to be any crates or supplies stored on it. For all intents and purposes, it was the least informational thing she'd discovered so far. The gentle ocean waters lapped at the dilapidated structure, continuing in their glacially slow quest to wear it away to nothing, and Applejack felt like the island was doing the same to her resolve and sanity.

Sighing, Applejack turned the other way and ran her eyes along the dock as it went inland. It didn't simply end at the first touch of the sandy beach. The structure extended across the sand, suspended only a foot or two over the beach, all the way to the grassy land at the treeline, where it met up with—

Applejack blinked. She stared at where the dock ended for several moments. She rubbed at her eyes with a forehoof, as if that would make any difference. It never did. There, at the base of the dock where it met land just in front of the jungle treeline, was a building. Finding a building, any building, was noteworthy enough, but this one was different from all the rest. It… looked perfectly fine. While the supposed cabin had left only an imprint on the ground and a cellar below, and the greenhouse had been reduced to a chest-high wall and an overgrown mess of plants, this third building was almost perfectly intact.

Applejack started towards it too fast, stumbling a bit and very nearly face-planting into the sand. She caught herself, steadied her hooves, and trotted a bit less briskly towards the small building. It was cube-shaped, far too tiny to be a house. There was a single large window on the front looking out over the dock and the ocean beyond. The corrugated siding was painted a greyish blue, and the building was topped by a flat roof.

The closer she grew, the less excited she became. Up close, the building's condition no longer seemed so pristine. The paint, she realized, looked like it was originally a much brighter shade of blue. As she neared, she realized that it had simply faded over time until the grey metal was almost visible underneath. In some places, it was visible where the paint had flaked and chipped, leaving bare patches of corrugated steel every so often. The window was actually broken; the only glass that remained was in small shards around the edges of the frame like transparent shark teeth.

While her excitement was less than it had been, Applejack was still nearly prancing as she finally reached the building. Even if it was more damaged than she'd thought, it was still the most intact structure she'd come across by a wide margin. She first approached the window and peered inside. Of course, even the inside was in a bad state. The roof had collapsed in the center, leaving a gaping hole that bent inwards at the edges and allowed sunlight to stream through. The floor, where it wasn't covered by fallen roof, was made of cheap tiles that had grass pushing up between the cracks. A couple of tiles had even been shattered to make way for small plants. Dust covered everything in a thick layer, even saturating the air, visible in the shafts of sunlight pouring through the roof.

There wasn't much in the way of furniture, but it was plenty compared to the other two buildings she'd explored. To start, the window she was currently looking through actually had a counter directly in front of it on the inside of the building. Behind that was an old wooden chair that had fallen over backwards and had a leg broken off. On the counter was a small magical lamp, but Applejack didn't believe for a second that it still had any juice in it. Along the wall to Applejack's left were a series of filing cabinets, and along the wall to her right was a short wooden table that was currently empty of all but a thick helping of dust. There was a small trash can in the corner, but it too was empty. Lastly, in the center of the back wall, was a plain white door. Applejack only hoped that it was unlocked, since she didn't want to chance the sharp glass edges of the window.

She trotted around to the other side of the building to check the door. As expected, there was a very familiar symbol stencilled on the outside in black paint. It was a bit faded, and the top of the triangle had chipped off, but the words 'NEC DI NEC DOMINI' were visible clearly enough.

Applejack reached out a hoof and pushed on the door. It opened, but she had to fold her ears back against the hideous screech of the hinges. A lack of oil for however many years tended to do that. Nevertheless, Applejack stepped through the door with a smile. This time, there would be answers.

She immediately went for the most important fixture: the filing cabinets. There were three of them along the wall, all that could fit in such a small building. Now that she was inside, Applejack could really appreciate just how little room there actually was. She had to step over the fallen chair just to move around. Clearly, this was not a house or even much of an office. It seemed to be something of… a checkpoint. Somewhere that ponies arriving or leaving at the dock would stop and submit papers or register or some such. Or something like that. Applejack couldn't be sure, as she'd never been one for bureaucracy.

Shaking her head, Applejack focused back on the task at hoof. She trotted to the nearest filing cabinet and carefully opened the topmost drawer. Empty. There wasn't a single shred of paper inside. Applejack felt a cold feeling building up in the pit of her stomach. Each of the three filing cabinets had three drawers, and Applejack quickly opened the next one down. It too was empty. She tore open the third and final drawer with wide eyes, only to be greeted with the exact same amount of nothing. She swiftly turned to the next cabinet. One of them would have something. One of them had to. Alas, each and every drawer was dry as a bone.

"Come on, come on, come on…" Applejack muttered under her breath as she searched the third and final filing cabinet. The cold feeling in her gut only grew as it proved as empty as could be. She sat there, staring at the litany of open and empty drawers, for several seconds. Her breathing grew heavy, and suddenly that cold feeling ignited into something hot: rage.

"Come on!" she roared in frustration as she slammed the drawers shut with a savage kick. The metal was left with hoof-shaped dents across the front wherever she'd closed a drawer. Applejack snarled, she gripped one of the filing cabinets in both forehooves, and with a wordless scream she tossed it across the floor. Even with her slowly failing strength, she was able to send it sliding across the tile and under the table where it impacted the far wall with a loud crunch.

Applejack's nostrils flared, but the crash had sent a cloud of dust into the air. Within seconds, she could feel herself teetering on the edge. She could feel it coming. Her eyes widened, she tried to lift a hoof to her muzzle, but it was too late.

"Ah-chooo!" Applejack sneezed hard enough that her hat slid forward to cover her eyes.

She stood in silence in the aftermath. Her frustrated rampage had been brought to a rather anticlimactic and early end, but it was probably for the best. There was no sense risking hurting herself, even if she had been expecting to find a little more this time.

Her sigh wafted across the settling room as Applejack pushed her hat back into place. She hadn't gotten any answers so far, and it was silly of her to expect any now. She was only wasting time—

Applejack froze with her hoof still on top of her head. She blinked slowly. Her sneeze had managed to blow the impressively thick layer of dust off the rectangular wooden table… and it had revealed something underneath.

In the blink of an eye, Applejack zipped over to the table. She stared, wide-eyed, at the large piece of white paper that had been hidden under years of dust and decay. It was purely black and white. In the bottom right corner was the triangular symbol Applejack had seen so much of, and covering the rest of the paper was simply a bunch of lines and shapes and symbols. One large shape took up the center, and contained all the other shapes and symbols within. Applejack tapped at her aching head, cursing her recent injury as she tried to make sense of it all.

Then it clicked. Like a flash, Applejack realized what she was looking at. Her hind legs gave way under her, and she collapsed to her haunches. Her eyes were wide as saucers, totally unblinking. She may or may not have been breathing, but she couldn't be bothered to check.

It made so much sense. It wasn't simply random shapes, it was topography. Most of the symbols were still undecipherable, but Applejack could see, now, that the 'large shape' taking up the majority of the page was so much more than that. It was an outline. She could see how its edges were lined with beaches. She could now recognize the shape of two large mountains, one in the south and one in the north.

It was a map. She'd found a map of the entire island.

The third time, as it turned out, really was the charm.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Unfortunately, the map didn't prove any help at all in finding her way back to camp. She stared at it for a while, but it turned out the island had many rivers criss-crossing it, and her little clearing could be on the bank of any of them. Trying to locate the lake didn't help much either, as there were a few different lakes and none of them had any real defining features on such a basic map.

So it was that Applejack found herself once more trotting down the beach to the tune of gentle ocean ambience. The map had been tucked carefully, almost reverently, in her saddlebags. She'd wasted nearly half an hour trying to plot a way back to camp with the thing, but she still couldn't make heads or tails of most of it. It'd take some studying, but Applejack was confident she could puzzle out the map with enough time.

She was practically bouncing just at the thought of it. Finally, she had a solid shot at some real answers. It wasn't a gamble like the bottled messages, the 'help' sign, or the raft. What she had in her saddlebags was a sure thing. It was a trump card, an ace in the hole. It was only a matter of time.

The dark thoughts that had plagued her that morning after her failure, the idea of simply giving up, all of that seemed so foreign now. Applejack could barely even believe she entertained such a silly idea. She'd practically given up hope after one little set-back, but she'd been fortunate enough to find that hope again shortly thereafter.

Hope. That's what it was. More than anything, the map gave her something to work towards, something long-term, something to hope for. It was a sign of hope when she needed it most. Applejack wasn't one to believe in coincidence. Everything happened for a reason, and she wasn't about to let her sign of hope go to waste.

By the time she reached familiar beach, the sun was already descending behind the jungle trees. Her legs ached from nearly an entire day of walking, but a smile was present on her sweat-stained face. She slowly hobbled across the all-too-familiar stretch of sand, carefully observing the whole area to be sure she was in the right place. Once she was confident enough that she'd found her destination, Applejack gave a curt nod and headed straight into the trees.

There was no way she was making it back to her camp before nightfall. It was already late evening, and the clearing was several hours away on a good day. She was tired, she was hurting all over, and she'd already been walking for longer than she cared to remember. It was certainly not a good day. At least, not for her body. In other respects –Applejack gave her saddlebags a little shake– it had certainly been a good day.

Still, she was practically dead on her hooves, and she needed a place to rest her head safely. Applejack made her way through the jungle on a path she knew by heart. She trekked through the undergrowth, swatting aside bushes with a bit more effort than they'd usually take. Finally, the trees thinned out, the canopy broke up overhead, and she emerged into the clear area surrounding one of two mountains.

Applejack sighed in relief, then began the longer-than-usual climb up the taller-than-usual sloped base of the mountain. After the arduous ascent, she arrived at the perfectly symmetrical entrance to the perfectly symmetrical cave that'd been her home for the first couple nights.

It was a strange thing to feel nostalgia for such a place.

Trotting inside, Applejack collapsed to the floor and unslung her saddlebags. She laid them out in front of her, then took off her knife and placed that beside her. Lastly, she placed the locket and her canteen alongside the knife for safekeeping and turned to open the bags.

She withdrew the map with the care one displays while handling an ancient relic that might fall apart at any time. Contrary to her extreme caution, the map was actually in shockingly good condition. Considering the decayed state of the buildings she'd found, Applejack would've expected the map to crumble into dust if she so much as looked at it funny. Instead, it felt as sturdy as any brand new piece of paper, if not more so.

Probably some freaky unicorn magic. Or plastic, maybe it had plastic in it. That'd probably make more sense.

Shaking her head to clear it, and immediately wincing in pain at the action, Applejack unrolled the map on the cave floor. Her eyes scanned over it meticulously, trying to pick out any interesting landmarks. A lot of the symbols were just shapes and lines thrown together: a circle with an 'x' in it, a black triangle, a square with two perpendicular lines inside. Some of them were easy to identify, but seemed meaningless without any context: a tree, an exclamation point, what appeared to be a pegasus wing, but could be some species of bird – though she'd never tell Rainbow Dash this, Applejack honestly couldn't distinguish between a pegasus wing and a turkey wing.

Finally, Applejack's gaze settled on one spot in particular. It was easy enough to identify. After all, the island only had two mountains, and only one of them was on the southern edge of the island. On that mountain, there was only one cave entrance, and its position was easy enough to make an educated guess at.

Applejack stared, eyes locked on what could only be her current location. There on the map, plastered over the very cave she was sitting in, was a circle that was slightly larger than most others. Contained in that circle was a bold, capital letter 'A'.

Applejack finally allowed herself to grin. She had no idea what it meant, but damn if she wasn't going to find out.

Author's Note:

Many thanks to the ever-beautiful Aatxe360, and Pyromitsu. Besides their intense sexitude, they also make for pretty swell editors.