//------------------------------// // Worth It // Story: Applejack Gets Lost // by MagicS //------------------------------// Falling down a hill kind of hurt. Applejack learned this the hard way while she rolled down a hill after taking an unfortunate tumble due to some loose earth beneath her. Now it wasn’t like falling down a mountain but this was still a rather large hill and the side Applejack was falling down was pretty steep too. She may have been able to stop herself but since she was still going the direction she wanted she decided to resign herself to what was happening and just keep rolling down until she came to a stop. Painfully rolling over and bouncing off a hard rock showed the downside to that decision but Applejack held on. If she only ended up with a few bruises and some pained grunts every time she hit something that was a fair enough trade for her. “This-” Smack. “Really-” Smack “Hurts.” Smack. As long as she wasn’t hitting her head it was a fair enough trade at least. And so far that hadn’t happened yet. So the rolling continued, occasionally she’d hit a bump and bounce up for a second and other times she’d hit a smooth patch and slide down in the dirt, scraping up her whole coat. For the most part she simply rolled like a barrel of apples that had been tossed downhill. It would probably have been embarrassing if any of her friends saw her like this. Especially Rainbow Dash. Or any of her students. Or Big Mac. “Ow!” Applejack yelled out as she rolled through a thorn bush, becoming covered in small prickers from head to tail. At least her hat was staying on. But she was really gonna want to take a bath or shower soon after all this, all the cuts and dirt mixed together were definitely not good for her. Probably going to be pretty darn dizzy once this all stops… The sun was beaming down at her the whole time too, as hot and unforgiving as ever. The weather really had been her enemy the whole trip and the sun especially was blazing hot and made her travels harder. She couldn’t imagine what it might’ve been like if she didn’t have her hat to block some of it and give her face a little shade. The amount she sweated since first getting lost… not that she was ever lost… was already monumental and it would’ve been even more so without her hat. It wasn’t raining though. The hot sun was still better than that. If it was raining she’d be caught in a mudslide. No random earthquakes or hailstorms either, so that was good too. Applejack did try to look at the bright side of it all and while she could have done with it being just a little cooler or cloudier out today she knew things could be a lot worse too. But it was getting a little hard to keep her mind on the bright side of things when she was rolling over sharp rocks. She was sure she had more than a few cuts from that now too and she could feel all the loose pebbles stuck in her mane and tail smacking around every time she rolled over. Which was frequent. Although Applejack couldn’t see it her radical tumblings were bringing her closer and closer to a flat ledge on the side of the hill, she was rolling straight towards it and the old dying tree that was propped up at the end of it. With a loud thump Applejack rolled right into the tree and sharply wheezed out in pain as the wind was knocked out of her. She had to just lie there for a few moments as the world got back into focus but at least she had stopped spinning. The tree was still wobbling as her disoriented eyes looked up at it, if she had been able to get her bearings earlier she would’ve noticed the rotting fruit that was about to snap off the branch and fall on her face. But she didn’t. The fruit, a peach, splattered all over her face, the core of it clonking her right between the eyes. Applejack grumbled in annoyance as she sat up, wiping away as much of it as she could with her hoof. Falling off a cliff, going over a waterfall, being hurt and beat up in so many other ways and now this. She wasn’t sure if she’d be less or more happy if it was a rotten apple that had fallen on her. Still a bit sticky but with as much of it off as she could get Applejack shook her head to clear away any lasting dizziness. It was then that she felt the ground start to shift beneath her. Eyes going wide she looked at the tree as it began to fall away, dead roots, pulling the dirt with it as the entire ledge Applejack was on broke away and it all went tumbling down the hill with her with it. “You can’t be serious!” Applejack yelled out before she again started rolling end over end, this time in a storm of dirt, rocks, and a decrepit peach tree. The river flowed in front of Applejack as she stood on its embankment. There was no bridge where she stood and she wasn’t about to go walking down or upstream to look for one, she was staying on her straight and true path to Ponyville. The downside to that now was that this river wasn’t exactly calm, it may not have been what one would call raging exactly either but it would still be a little annoying to try and swim across. “On the plus side I really could use a dip in there,” Applejack said as she looked at her haggard appearance. Her mane and tail were frayed and disheveled, countless cuts and bruises dotted her body, mud and dirt caked almost every inch of her, barely letting any of her natural orange coat through. I look like a right mess. Applejack frowned at her own appearance before she slowly started to walk into the river. It wasn’t very deep but still enough where shortly in her hooves could no longer touch the bottom. Despite her sore and beat up body Applejack was still Applejack and she had the strength to fight against the river’s current as she swam across it. The water continually beat against her head and tried to force her downstream but she wasn’t about to lose to it. She’d been through too much and far worse to lose to a measly little river. A fish smacked into her side. Applejack grunted in annoyance but ignored that as best she could and kept swimming. The ground on the other side slowly rose up to meet her hooves but it was slick and soft and difficult for her to get a steady purchase on it, she had to keep wading until the river pretty much only came up to her neck before she could actually walk. Finally she dragged herself out of the river, her legs and underside covered in a fair bit of mud but at least the rest of her had gotten a good wash. She shook like a dog to get any extra water off her and walked on some more. One more obstacle down, hopefully none or very few left to go. “Not much of a chance of that.” Applejack sighed and looked up at the sky to see the sun just barely past the noon position. The weather was better than yesterday, that was good at least, the cloud coverage was light but just enough to keep things nice and temperate. As Applejack started to walk through the forest on the other side of the river the mix of shade and sunlight proved to be the perfect combination to keep things even. Not too hot and not too cold, now her only problem was that she still wasn’t on anything that could remotely be called a path and she still had to struggle over uneven terrain, push through bushes, and try not to twist her ankle on any rocks or burrows beneath her. As she walked through a bush a branch she had pushed out of the way came back to thwack her right in the face. Applejack just grumbled and took it. She didn’t want to overreact and explode in anger or anything, she just wanted to push on and get to Ponyville. “I aint stopping until I get home.” Applejack tugged her hat down tight over her head. “No more detours, no more distractions. I’ll walk all day and night if I have to.” Pushing herself through the thick brush she couldn’t see what was coming next, so she wasn’t able to stop herself from falling off and rolling down a slope in the forest. It was just a small little slope but Applejack still tumbled head over heels down it and landed flat on her stomach, groaning from the hard landing she unsteadily pushed herself back up and took a look around. She was in a much more open area now, in fact… “Huh, found a road.” Applejack said, looking down at the dirt road she was in the middle of that cut right through the forest she had been walking through. And looking forward in the direction she wanted to go she saw the road continue on for a bit more before it hit the edge of the forest, going who knows where after. But that wasn’t all she saw. There was a sign right on the side of the road at the forest’s edge. Applejack frowned and walked towards it. She was understandably wary to see signs at this point. They had not been friendly to her in the past. It took her only a minute to get down the road to the edge of the forest, she could hear birds chirping and the sun shining outside, unbroken by the canopy of the trees. With a pause she glanced at the sign, there was only one word on it and an arrow pointing down the road out of the forest. A happy, exhausted, smile broke out across Applejack’s face. “Finally, a good sign.” PONYVILLE