//------------------------------// // Version 2.0 // Story: Appledashery Vol. Two // by Just Essay //------------------------------// Applejack lay on her side in bed, staring into the shadows. She couldn't sleep. There was no such as sleep. Only darkness and the great void between sunrise and her mind. It occurred to her that she had experienced other nights like this... nights of nothing with no slumber. Only now—with the weight of all her thoughts—it pressed against her every square inch with excrutiating persistence. She wished for peace and quiet—and truly she had it. But she couldn't even pretend to enjoy the succulent tranquility on account of the throbbing rush of her own heartbeat pulsating in her ears. At long last, the pressure drew her out of bed. She began walking... to where and for what purpose, she did not know. She strolled out of her room and shuffled lazily... limply down a gauntlet made of pony faces. Family faces. The dead and the living and the ghosts in between. As she shuffled through the labyrinthe of her own house, she passed by the rooms of her closest kin. Granny Smith, Big Macintosh, and Apple Bloom were all asleep. Their combined breaths kept the house alive and shifting. Every door was open... and yet everypony seemed so far away. At one point or another, Applejack found herself lingering in a doorway or two, staring into the shadows... contemplating the warmth beyond the snoring sounds within. She stood still. She didn't want to. Something deep inside Applejack—something burning and wrestless—made her long for a full-speed gallop into the moonlight. It was crazy. But somehow—resisting that urge felt even crazier. Applejack was confused. More than that, she was alone. She shuffled around even more. She saw more photographs... more faces. Each picture had a story to it, and she had recited them all in her mind a thousand times before. Only now—in a burst of lucid intensity—she realized she was only ever remembering the first time she heard those family tales. She never imagined what it must have been liked to first tell them... to remember them... to pass them along. And then—as Applejack imagined the possibility of passing them along herself—she froze up inside. She felt mortified... scared... But she also felt excited too. It was a discomforting thing to be invigorated. The shadows grew darker. The breaths of her sleeping family became louder... and dense. It used to comfort her... but now the familiarity was almost suffocating. Applejack was being choked by everything she knew... and everything she knew was all there was to life and all there ever could be. She knew this. She expected this. She pledged allegiance to this. And suddenly—with the liquid grace of a dying flower—it was losing all its color. All that loomed beneath was darkness... like the clouds that had gathered over her parents' grave one dull, dismal day long ago. She wanted to tell somepony... but there was nopony to tell. At long last, she limped back to her room... and it was only after crawling back under the sheets that she experienced an even more startling revelation. Her bed was large... ludicrously huge. Lying on her back in the middle of it, she felt paralyzed by the ocean of a mattress... adrift in shadow. So very small and alone. So she did something she hadn't done since she was a foal. She grabbed her pillow... and hugged it tightly along the middle of her body. Then even tighter. And when she murmured breathily into the darkness... she wasn't calling out for her Ma and Pa like she did when she was a child... but the lump in her throat was the same as it was back then. In fact, it tasted even more sour... for it was a brand new sadness. Moisture lined Applejack's eyes. She brought a limp hoof to it... feeling the foundation of tears. There was no sobbing... for the mystery of the matter drained away the emotion, and Applejack found herself floating on a cloud of confusion. Long, long and unto the dawn.