Applebloom threw open the door to the Cutie Mark Crusader’s club house and threw down her saddle bags. She immediately ran across it, gathering several items as she went, and slid across the floor to come to a stop at one of the treehouse’s windows.
Carefully, she lifted a tiny watering can and sprinkled just the correct amount of water onto the specially prepared soil in a small violet-glazed pot. Once the water was added, she removed a tiny fleck of the soil and dropped it in a small glass tube, checking the pH. It was at about this time that Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle arrived.
They did not enter the tree house quickly, nor with nearly as much enthusiasm as Applebloom. In fact, they looked somewhat somber, and, upon seeing Applebloom once again at the window, they turned to each other and exchanged knowing glances.
“Do you want to tell her?” asked Scootaloo.
“No,” said Sweetie Belle, “but I think I have to.”
Sweetie Belle walked slowly toward her friend. “Applebloom?” she said. “It’s…” She sighed, and then took a deep breath. She did not want to admit it either, but she just could not maintain the hope any longer. “It’s been five weeks.”
“Five weeks, two days, fourteen hours and…” Applebloom checked a clock nearby. “Five minutes.”
“And you know what Starlight said.”
“Starlight isn’t a botanist.”
“Neither are you,” said Scootaloo, standing beside Sweetie Belle.
The room fell silent, and after a long and painful pause, Sweetie Belle continued. “She said that the root node she saved was very small. And that if it survived, it would come up in two weeks.”
“And it’s been a lot longer than that,” said Scootaloo.
Applebloom turned around, and she had tears in her eyes. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that we tried, Applebloom. “But it just didn’t work. The cutting was too small. He’s…he’s not- -”
“Don’t say it!” shouted Applebloom. “He IS coming back! I know he is! I grew him once, and I can grow him again!”
“No, you can’t!” said Sweetie Belle firmly. “That pot is empty! There’s nothing alive in there anymore! He’s gone, Applebloom!” She felt her own face growing hot with tears, and she wiped them away. Five weeks, and she was still crying. She wanted to move on.
“You…you both think that?”
“I don’t know what I think,” said Scootaloo. “But you and I both know. No matter how hard we wish it…the dead don’t come back.”
“But he’s not dead! Not yet! Not if I keep caring for him!”
Applebloom turned back to the pot and stared at it for a long moment. It was true, she knew. Too much time had passed, and nothing had sprouted. It had taken every ounce of willpower she had to keep herself from digging into the soil, because she knew that if she did, whatever root system the horseradish had established would be destroyed.
There was nothing there. For the first time, Applebloom comprehended the fact that she might never come home from school to find a green shoot coming from that pot. That the horseradish might never return.
“I…I understand,” she said.
“Come on,” said Sweetie Belle. “Let’s go for a walk. We can get ice cream. I’ll even pay for it. You’d like that?”
“I would,” said Scootaloo.
“So would I,” admitted Applebloom.
They started walking toward the door, and Applebloom looked back one more time. When she did, though, something caught her eye.
“Wait a minute!” she said, running across the floor.
“Applebloom!” sighed Sweetie Belle, “we just went over this!”
“No, no look! LOOK!” cried Applebloom.
Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo both crossed the room. They had experienced this before. Sometimes Applebloom would thing she saw a shoot or a sprig, only for it to turn out to be a piece of soil or a small fleck of fertilizer. They both looked in, expecting once again to see nothing.
Instead, though, they both instantly realized that they saw a tiny green nub emerging from the pot. Then, before their eyes, it stretched upward into the light and unfurled into a single green leaf. Only a second later, the soil below began to move. As they watched, a tiny horseradish climbed through the surface and into the light.
“I told you! I told you!” screamed Applebloom.
“Slap my butt and call me Fluttershy,” swore Sweetie Belle.
Without taking her eyes off the pot, Scootaloo slapped Sweetie Belle’s rump. “Fluttershy,” she said distantly.
Applebloom stared down at the horseradish. The pot it was in only had a five-inch wide mouth, and the expanse of soil looked huge compared to the horseradish. It must not have been more than two inches across, and yet it looked just like a miniature version of what it had once been.
Carefully, Applebloom stuck her hoof into the pot. The horseradish looked at it, confused, but did not otherwise react.
“He doesn’t recognize us,” said Sweetie Belle, her mood immediately falling. “What if- -what if he’s not the same horseradish he used to be? If he doesn’t remember?”
“There’s a way to find out,” said Scootaloo. She reached up onto a shelf and brought down a water-damaged record. She slowly crossed the room as the other two fillies watched and put it on a portable phonograph. She set the needle with her teeth, and the tune began to start playing.
All of them looked to the horseradish, and it continued to do nothing. There was no response- -at first. Then, slowly, it leaned to one side. Then the other. Then it gathered enough force to begin rocking to one side, jumping twice, and then rocking to the other and repeating the action.
The Crusaders burst out laughing, even though they were all crying too.
“It’s him! It’s really him!” cried Applebloom.
The horseradish looked up at her, and seemed to smile before its eyes widened with shock as it fell to the side, landing in the cushy dirt below.
“Oop! Let me help you!” Applebloom reached in to the pot and very gently picked up the horseradish. It righted itself on her hoof, and then knelt down and hugged it.
“You’re back,” she said.
The horseradish nodded. Their friend had returned to them, and all three of the fillies could tell that he did not intend to leave them again. ~1.>��>\U`