• Published 29th Dec 2012
  • 12,586 Views, 1,189 Comments

Mother of Invention - zaponator



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

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Still Alive

A loud gasp echoed throughout the cave as Applejack shot to a sitting position. Once again she was covered in sweat and breathing hard, but thankfully without the soul-rending sound and sickly wrong feeling. A small comfort, really. As she rose to her hooves and placed her hat on her head, she idly added disturbingly vivid nightmares to her list of problems, which only seemed to be growing longer lately.

Sunlight was streaming in through the entrance of the cave, finally allowing Applejack to check just how far back it went. She turned around, and blinked in surprise. The cave continued all the way back until the sun no longer reached with its rays. There was no sign of a back wall anywhere. The curiosity Applejack felt at this was overpowered only by the concern that anything could be back there, waiting in the deep darkness. Deciding that she should get out of the creepy crevice sooner rather than later, Applejack tested her weight on her right forehoof. She was pleasantly surprised to find that it only provided minor discomfort. Running on it would be a no-go, lest she risk further injury, but as long as she kept to a relaxed pace she figured that she'd be able to go with her plan of finding a higher vantage point and getting her bearings.

A wide smile spread across her face at the thought that by the end of today, she should have some idea of which direction to head for home. Last night had been frightening, the most frightening night of her life in fact, but Applejack was a mare of action. She wasn't going to cower in a cave all day on account of something that had only ever come out at night so far. Checking that her hat was secure, and squaring her shoulders, Applejack stepped out of the cave. Judging by the angle of the sunlight, and the fact that the glowing ball was not visible in her decent sized patch of sky overhead, it was still fairly early in the morning. This was perfect, as after last night the earth pony had no intention of staying outside after dark. Still, she didn't know how long her quest would take, so she decided she'd best get a move on.

The first thing she did was take a few steps away from the cave in order to better examine the cliff it was set into. As she had suspected, the solid wall of stone extended straight up for a good ways, before tilting inward and out of sight from her current position. This mountain would be perfect for her vantage point, but she had no path to get up from her current position. It seemed that the best course of action would be to circle around until a less steep section presented itself, rather than go out looking for another mountain entirely. Applejack made sure to note the landscape surrounding the cave mouth, in order to make it easier to find on the way back.

The grassy land sloped downward away from her temporary shelter. There were no trees on the hill leading up to the cave. Instead, the land was covered by nothing but grass right down to where the land leveled out, and a solid line of dense trees and undergrowth stood tall and imposing. She noted a large moss-covered boulder sticking out of treeline as a good landmark. Her ears twitched at a familiar rustling sound, and out of the corner of her eye she could have sworn a bush moved. She whipped her head toward the offending bush, but after a minute of watching it intently it remained still. Normally she would be far less jumpy at a slight sound, but the sound wasn't what bothered her. The complete lack of any of the other sounds she expected from a jungle bothered her.

Shaking her head to clear it of worries she could do nothing about, Applejack turned and started walking, keeping the steep mountain on her right. Her walk was punctuated every minute or two by the single sound the jungle seemed able to produce, but she was no longer bothered by the rustling. She didn't even bother to stop and look after the first couple of times proved just as fruitless as ever.

The pace she set for herself wasn't very fast. She thanked the Princesses that her hoof wasn't hurt badly, and desired to keep it that way by walking instead of trotting. Even at a relaxed pace, the tropical heat made it fairly hard going. The ground beneath her hooves was covered in short grass, the rocky soil near the mountain prevented anything more substantial from growing there. The wall to her right would sometimes curve at a constant rate, and sometimes go on perfectly straight for a while before turning sharply. Currently, the stone was straight as an arrow, but Applejack could see that not far ahead it cut out of sight with a sharp right turn. Mere minutes later, Applejack rounded the corner to finally spot her goal. The search had taken her a couple of hours, and a few times she'd started to wonder if a path up the mountain even existed, but the sight before her finally validated her arduous trek.

She was now looking at the 'back' of the mountain, providing she thought of the side with the cave as the front. Of course the path up the mountain just had to be located as far away from her starting point as physically possible. Not that it was a path per se, really the mountain was just far less steep on this side. The grass all but stopped about ten feet up the incline, giving way to gravel and small rocks. It looked like it might have been the site of a landslide at some point in the past, but if grass had been able to grow at the bottom then it must have been a long time ago. The incline continued up for a good long way, eventually flattening out about a third of the way up the mountain. Applejack nodded to herself, a resolute look taking over her face. A third of the way was certainly a start, and really it was the best she could hope for at this point. She had already used up hours of daylight reaching her current location. It was getting on to mid morning, and she shuddered at the thought of not making it back to the cave by nightfall.

There was only one thing left to do before heading up; she needed to find water. Now that she wasn't stumbling around in a daze after waking up on a strange beach, she had a much easier time of it. She quickly located a source in the jungle not far from the foot of the mountain, and took a long drink in preparation for her ascent. All it had really taken to find it was a clear head and a good knowledge of the outdoors. Some of her friends might have said that a bit of luck was involved too, but Applejack was never one to subscribe to the idea of luck. She had never believed that 'luck' was what had given her farm the best apple orchards in Equestria, or that 'luck' had found her the five best friends of her life, or that 'luck' had enabled them to save Equestria from certain doom multiple times. No, luck had never done anything for Applejack. Everything happened for a reason. It was that belief that had gotten the farmer through many a rough period in her life, and it was what would get her through this one.

Realizing that she had wasted precious minutes of daylight with her inane introspection, Applejack hurried back toward the mountain. Her forehoof still handicapped her pace somewhat, but all in all she made good time, and was soon standing at the base of the slope. The possibilities she could find up there replayed in her mind. The best option would be to spot civilization of some kind and catch an airship home. Failing that, she would have to attempt to locate Equestrian landmarks, which shouldn't be hard with the number of distinctive and tall mountains in Equestria. If even that failed to produce results, she would simply have to find out which direction led further into the continent and further away from the ocean, and hope to find her way back to Equestria that way.

None of those options could happen while she sat down here thinking about it though. She adjusted her hat until it was situated just right, breathed deeply, and took the first step of the long climb up the mountain.

Author's Note:

Edited by Pilate, because he's awesome and stuff.