Applejack Gets Lost

by MagicS


River Rafting

Applejack pushed her way through the dense jungle. Over gnarled roots and past thick hanging vines that tugged at and tried to tie her up if she wasn’t paying attention. Darn place was humid as anywhere too. As if the world was mocking her she saw a bunch of pineapple plants, palm trees, lemon trees, lime trees, banana plants, mango trees, just about any other fruit she could think of besides apples.

Applejack was getting real tired of this.

She thought she could hear a river somewhere through all the trees but the foliage was far too dense for her to see anything. In fact she couldn’t even tell what direction she was going in anymore, everything just blended together and there were no paths. She just had to walk over and under trees and push herself past more and more bushes.

This is getting to be a real hassle I could do without.

The sheer heat and humidity had her coat matted and wet. Trying to wipe it off got her nowhere. All she ever saw to drink while she was struggling through here were puddles of pretty gross looking standing water. Applejack wasn’t quite so desperate.

She wished she could find that river to take a big drink from it, and then dunk her whole body in, that’d be nice. Tripping and falling over numerous roots and plants had gotten her pretty dirty and sore after all. There had been a lot of little monkeys running around in the jungle that kept throwing rocks and stuff at her too. She would’ve retaliated but the voice of Fluttershy in her head made her hold back.

After using a vine to swing over a pond full of snapping crocs, Applejack thought there might be a break in the jungle up ahead. There looked to be light coming through the trees in front of her, it must’ve been a clearing or the edge of the jungle.

“Well that’s a relief.” Applejack whistled and headed forwards with renewed vigor.

She only tripped over a root twice more.

Pushing past the huge fronds of a fern, Applejack made it out of the jungle. Part of it at least. What she ended up seeing in front of her now wasn’t all what she expected. Maybe a clearing, or the start of some grasslands or something. But a wide, clearly well maintained, gravel path? No, that was unexpected.

As well as all the ponies traveling down it.

Applejack watched as dozens of ponies made their way down the gravel path, beyond the path it looked like the jungle started up again, and looking to her left she saw that the path went all the way down to a river. So she was right about there being one. There was also a large wooden building with a dock right at the river’s edge. A boathouse and marina? Applejack decided she might as well check things out, if she could get on a boat it would probably beat traveling through the jungle.

As she made her way down the path she started taking note of the other ponies. Most looked pretty rugged, wearing camping gear, carrying full packs of supplies, they seemed like explorers or adventurers of some sort. But there were also a few normal looking families just wearing big smiles and carrying bags that probably just had a lunch or something in them.

Applejack raised an eyebrow at it all, deciding to find out about things she walked over to one of the friendly looking families to say hello.

“Excuse me y’all.” Applejack asked a mother and father walking with their young filly. “I’m not from around here, can ya tell me what this all is about?”

“Oh sure!” The father responded brightly. “You look like you just walked out of the jungle, are you an explorer?”

“Uh, not exactly.”

“Well, just so you know the part of the jungle on that side of the road.” He gestured to the jungle she had come from. “Is the last safe part of the jungle to travel through in this area. Here, look at the other side.” He pointed with his hoof to the far end of the gravel road where the jungle started up again. Now that Applejack really looked at it she saw a number of signs were lined up along the jungle’s edge and a long chain belt held up by wooden posts stretched all the way down to the river and all the way back up the road as far as Applejack could see.

“What’s dangerous about that jungle?” She asked him.

“That’s called the Poison Jungle!” The little filly answered excitedly. “The trees, the plants, the animals and insects, everything in that part of the jungle is poisonous!”

“Don’t scare the miss now, princess.” Her father patted her on the head and turned his gaze back to Applejack. “But she has the truth of it, travel is impossible through there, even the air is toxic because of the humidity. Poison vapors leak out of the trees and plants.”

“Wow, well thanks for the heads up. So if ponies wanna get past all that they take a boat down the river?” Applejack guessed.

The family of three grinned back at her. “Not quite.” The father said. “You see while some ponies go down the river to get through the Poison Jungle a lot of us just raft it for fun! This station here rents out inflatable rafts to ponies and then further down the river after you pass by the Poison Jungle there’s another station where you stop off and return them. There are plenty of roads and paths leading on from there too. Rafting the river is a lot of fun, we do it every year, the rapids are exciting and there are always partiers and some islands in the middle of the river where you can stop off and grab a bite to eat. It’s great!”

“Heh, well that sure does sound like a lot of fun. I’m not much looking for recreation right now though, but I guess I do still need to get down the river. Thanks for filling me in.” Applejack smiled and started to walk with the family as they both went down to the station.

The line was a bit long but it moved constantly and Applejack eventually walked right into the building and out the back, there seemed to be all sorts of rooms and stuff but the line to get rafts and go out to the river just made a straight line through it all. There were three burly stallions passing out rafts to ponies and sending them on their way to the ends of the dock. When Applejack made her way up to one of them she quickly realized there was a problem.

“Uh, I don’t have any money to rent a raft.”

The stallion stared at her with a flat expression. “Do you not know how renting works?”

Applejack scowled. “Look, I know how renting works thank you very much, I just didn’t know where I was and I’ve been through a whole bunch of messes and I don’t got any money, okay?”

“No, not okay. No money, no raft.” He shrugged and motioned for the next pony to come over.

“Now wait just a-”

“Hold on!”

Applejack turned her head at the familiar voice that cut her off, that father from earlier was coming towards them.

“What is it?” The burly dock stallion asked him.

“I couldn’t help but overhear, here-” He gave the stallion a few pieces of what looked like copper to Applejack, they certainly weren’t bits. “I’ll pay for her raft.” He turned his head and smiled at her.

Applejack blushed in embarrassment and kicked at the ground. “I really owe you one now, thanks.” She wanted to refuse him at first but his generous smile told her that would be a fool’s errand.

“Oh it’s no problem at all.” The father said as the stallion pulled up a yellow raft sized for two ponies with a single double-ended paddle in it.

“Smallest we got. Single seaters didn’t have enough room for supplies and bags.” He hoofed it over to Applejack, who propped it up on her back.

“See you on the river!” The generous father waved goodbye to Applejack and ran back to his family, who were already getting ready to head out on their much larger raft.

Applejack was about to follow them out when the dock stallion called out to her. “Hey! It’s your first time on the river isn’t it?”

Applejack cocked an eyebrow at him. “Yeah, why?”

“Then I gotta tell you to keep to the right when the river forks. Did you read any of the signs on the way here?”

“Uhh...”

The stallion sighed. “Look, just be careful out there and try and return the raft in one piece."

Applejack grumbled and went down the dock. The waters were already pretty choppy even here and the river clearly got even rougher and faster farther downstream, she could see the white water from the rapids plainly. It probably would end up being pretty fun getting tossed around by them. She grabbed her raft and held it in her hooves, there were certainly better ways of getting into the river but for right now Applejack decided she could be a little carefree.

“Geronimo!”

She jumped into the river on top of the raft, water splashing up around her, bouncing off the top of the water and quickly being taken away by its current. Grabbing the paddle she steadied herself and started paddling to get into the middle of the river.

I may not have been looking for fun but if it just decided to come my way I aint gonna complain.

Applejack joyfully paddled her way downstream, navigating the rapids, waving to other rafters, fighting to keep her raft from being capsized by some of the bigger rapids. It was the first time in a while she’d been able to just have fun like this. She was thinking of stopping at one of those islands that father mentioned for food when she remembered that she wouldn’t be able to pay for anything. Oh well, she could grab some fruit on the other side of the jungle probably.

It was a nice day too, when she was inside the jungle the humidity was stifling but out on the water it was just pleasant to have the sun right above her in a cloudless sky. The fast rafting down the water even gave her a nice breeze.

She turned a bend in the river and came face to face with even more rapids, these ones big enough that her raft got airborne a couple of times as she was bounced around them. But Applejack held herself steady and didn’t end up taking a plunge in the river. The paddle worked really well for keeping her dry.

“Going a lot better than the class trip with Rainbow Dash so far.” She said to herself, hopefully she could erase that bad memory with this good one. And hopefully there were no Biteacuda’s in the water here.

Applejack idly wondered if the jungle on the other side of the river was poisonous too, maybe she could’ve just gone to that side in the first place. It’s not like she had any set route she was going on. But it was probably better to not chance things and just keep going down the river now until she got to that other station. The river started to curve like a snake, making for a fun ride as she had to paddle hard against the current to keep from accidentally running into the edge of the river. When that stretch ended she came out into a wider, slower, section that had a big island in the middle. There weren’t any trees on it but a lot of rafts had been pulled up to the shores and there were some small shacks built on it. Obviously a hang out for rafters to relax and get some food at in the middle of their journey.

But Applejack just sped by that, waving at the ponies on it.

The river was starting to narrow again and she could see the fork coming up. A big rock jutted out of the river at the end of a jungle covered peninsula, it made for a pretty eye-catching sight.

Doing like she was told Applejack paddled on over and went down the left side of the river. It was slightly calmer looking than the right side but still had its own fair share of rapids, but nothing she couldn’t handle at this point.

Now her journey down the river was actually just starting to get calm and relaxing. The day was turning out pretty well all in all. She met a nice family too.

Applejack was actually thinking of just laying back for a second, pulling her hat over her face, and taking a nice nap in her raft.

The sounds of splashing in the river and a pony crying for help put a stop to that though.

“Help! Help! Somepony, anypony!”

She heard it from her left and looked over to see a pony struggling to stay afloat in the steady current of the water. Applejack grabbed her paddle and started to speed over to him. She was careful to not accidentally run her raft over him, as she got close she held the paddle out to him.

“Grab on!”

The pony grabbed onto the paddle, holding on for dear life as Applejack tried to pull him up onto her raft. Thanks to her strength the soaked stallion was yanked on board, coming to rest in the other seat behind Applejack. He shook his head a bit to get his senses back before thanking Applejack for rescuing him.

“Wow, thanks, that was a real close one. I’m not the strongest swimmer.” He told her, he had green eyes just like she did with an ashen white coat and a black mane that was stuck to his face thanks to the water.

“What happened to ya?” Applejack asked him.

“Oh, I was fishing. Name’s Spool by the way. Anyways I was fishing at the edge of the river on some of the rocks that are out a bit further in the water. Makes for a better place to fish you know? But well, I kind of slipped and fell in.” He chuckled in embarrassment.

Applejack shook her head at him. “Well you’re lucky I was around, name’s Applejack too just so you know.”

“Yeah, really lucky. Rafters don’t come down this way at all.” He said with a vacant expression as he stared at the jungle as they drifted on downstream.

“Uh, what?” Applejack tilted her head in confusion. “Why don’t rafters come down this way? Isn’t this where everypony is supposed to go?”

“Huh? No way, you’re supposed to stick to the right on this river. The way we’re going there’s a waterfall just around the next bend.”

Applejack sat there for a second as she stared at the nonchalant stallion.

“You don’t think you should’ve mentioned that immediately?”

“Yeah probably.”

Applejack growled as she dipped her paddle back into the river to try and get them to one of the sides, the river was already bending and “just around the next bend” made it seem like she probably didn’t have a lot of time to save them.

But as she put the paddle back in the river a Biteacuda jumped up, grabbed it in its mouth, wrenched it out of Applejack’s hooves and swam away with it.

She stared with her mouth wide open at what just happened.

“Wow, don’t see that every day.” Spool said ambivalently, like despite his words it wasn’t really anything special.

“Are you kidding me right now?” Applejack asked to nopony in particular.

The current continued to carry them to the bend, and now knowing that there were in fact Biteacuda’s in the water, Applejack wasn’t too keen on the idea of trying to paddle out of harm’s way with her hooves. Spool was equally useless, just nervously drumming on the side of the raft as doom approached. The water seemed to be steadily speeding up and they were in the very center of the river, they’d never hit one of the sides or any rocks or anything that might stop them. Jumping out and swimming was out of the question. What was Applejack going to do?

Their raft rounded the bend and the cascading top of the waterfall appeared in front of them.

“This ain’t gonna be fun.” Spool said from behind her.

Applejack could only nod in agreement.


Again. Water hurt.

Applejack swam to shore, dragging Spool by the tail with her teeth, and collapsed. Luckily her hat didn’t drift off too far and she was able to recover it as well. She was wet, bugs were buzzing around her, the heat was going to make things unbearable, and the raft was wrecked. The only upside was that at least it didn’t seem like the jungle around them was poisonous.

Spool coughed up some water and sat up. “Hey, we made it.”

Applejack glared at him. “Look, I’m too tired to do much else but since you’re from around here can you at least answer a couple questions for me?”

He shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

“Okay, first off, do you know how I can get to Ponyville from here?”

Spool cupped his hoof under his chin for a second. “Hm, name isn’t ringing a bell. All I know is this one place where people sit around watching a turtle.”

Applejack sighed. “Great. Well my other question is do you know where I can find any apples to eat?”

“What are apples?” He raised an eyebrow at her. “Are they like pineapples.”

Too tired to rant, Applejack just groaned and rolled over onto her back and stared up at the sky. The day had not been as fun as she was hoping. But about as fun as she expected.