I am not who I think I am…
I am not who you think I am…
I am what I think you think I am.

(Thousand Words Contest II, 3rd place in Experimental)

It's almost what would have been Bright Mac's 40th birthday. Applejack can't help but feel nostalgic - and Big Mac can't help but ruin it.

Well, ruin is a strong word.

Written for A Thousand Words Contest II.

And I suppose it's a father's day special.

It's a wicked life, isn't it, Trixie?

That's how you really feel, isn't it, Trixie?

You'd like a different life, wouldn't you, Trixie?

Trixie, Trixie, Trixie... if only it were that easy.

Everypony has to live with their mistakes, after all.

Why should you get to be any different?

Thank you to Ice Star, Gay For Godot, and Themoontonite. Love you

Coverart edited from batshaped.

Pinkie's parents are missing, presumed dead.

Applejack is there to pick up the pieces.

Please heed the content warnings! This is a story very explicitly about grief, loss, and depression. Suicide is also an important recurring theme, and cannot be avoided!

Amazing coverart by my sibling, cereal (fimfic | twitter)

Preread by Otter and Sleps

For Bike's Applepie contest (folder | info)!! I love this ship and it's so so so rare, so I'm super happy to be contributing!

Highly recommended by the very generous PresentPerfect! Review here.

When a child is young enough to believe in truth and old enough to not have found it, fluid enough to need no foundation and rigid enough to want one, cynic enough to mislike the world and romantic enough to love it, then may they go wandering on dusty hooves through wood and plain and mountain, hungry for the warmth of other hearths and the caress of novel tongues and customs. And when their ears and eyes and heart and hooves are filled to overflowing, they must hope that the road has worn them to fit a door passed along the way.

A fairytale bildungsroman sort of thing, grown several times too large.

Death and violence are not frequent or terribly explicit, but they do appear.

In the midst of a battle to protect Equestria, Twilight Sparkle falls. For a moment—just a moment—she wonders if she should bother getting back up this time.

A treatise on 2020, written and published 12 days late. Blame it on the Gregorians.

A newly-minted Princess Twi comforts an ornery subject.

Generously, a crack at a "friendship lesson"-style moral. Might as well call myself Ham Fist, but hopefully it's a pleasant bit of fluff.

Mild treatment of depression and body dysmorphia.