There was a space which only existed between seconds, and it was filled with the recognition of disaster.
It was a lesson Applejack had learned after claiming her Element: the concept that a single instant could drive itself into the flow of time like a wedge. There would be something which had just happened, something which was about to happen -- and there would be a split. It was something which didn't last long: just enough to understand something strange was taking place and, after they'd all been through more missions, to internally groan with the understanding that it was happening again. But when the missions were under way, or if some of the more interesting aspects of her post-Bearer life were about to exert themselves...
It was the instant between seeing a kick being launched towards her face and the one where it hit. It was the split-second where rapid internal calculations instinctively figured for speed and force just before informing her that there was no chance to dodge. On one side of the divide, she would have spotted that certain twitch at the corners of Rarity's eyes, the other edge of the ravine served to launch the inevitable scream, and the gap contained no means of stopping it.
(Admittedly, that was one of the lesser-used gaps. The one Applejack used for seeing a Crusade go wrong qualified for a full-fledged chasm.)
Between something starting to go wrong and the moment it did, there was an instant where all you could do was know. You couldn't change anything. You couldn't stop it. The best hope was to roll with the impact and hope you came out more or less intact on the other end. And through missions and adventures, the little trials that came from being part of such a strange group of friends (or just from having to put up with Rainbow's idea of a good competitive time), she'd been through dozens of such temporal interspaces. She hated them.
Always enough time to recognize the approaching disaster. Never enough to change it.
On one side of the canyon, there was Snowflake...
She was heading home, and doing so with a little more canter in her trot than usual. The weight of the folded-up market cart hardly seemed to matter, and that was even with her having to haul back rather more product than usual. It had been a slow sales day, yes, and she usually hated those. Nothing near as bad as the Gala had been, but -- slow. A market day without the proper flow of bits moving into her saddlebags would typically rankle on just about every level, but...
Her hat (her hat!) was back on her head. Every so often, she would sing to herself as she trotted in solitude down the old road which led between Ponyville proper and the Acres, a path carved out of the settled zone by dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of Apple passages, and the normal timbre had returned to her voice.
She felt... light. As if her body only massed half of what it should, while retaining the same volume and strength. Every hoofstep seemed to push her farther than it ever had. A single light skip could have won high-jump Games events.
It was as if she'd spent her entire life carrying a weight. Something placed upon her as a foal, where the size of the burden steadily increased with age. A constant presence pushing her down, and the worst part was that somehow, she'd never even noticed. Direct confrontation might have had her deny the weight's presence, or just irritably ask why everypony else wasn't carrying their own share of the load.
Now the weight was gone. And as she half-skipped home under setting Sun on a late summer night (very nearly autumn now, with Summer Shut-Down just a few days away), she thought about the way Pinkie had recently described tradition: as chains which needed to be broken. But it was more that. It was walls which held you in. Walls which every generation added to, building up on the inner surface. The space within shrinking as the centuries passed, until there was just barely enough room for Applejack to stand, hemmed in by everything everypony had done before her, and they would have done it because everypony else had done it.
The chains were broken. The walls were gone. Her soul looked out across a new spiritual landscape and couldn't even find the horizon.
It was ecstasy, and it just kept happening.
She sang a few more bars as the trot continued. There was no real song within her efforts: she was more or less just putting out pure notes for the joy of it. A capella notes, to use the fancy, but if things worked out... well, the other voice was rather distinctive.
A glance backwards and to the left, towards another section of the cart's elaborate hinges and drawers. There was a place where Applejack's hitch unfolded from and near that, there was another hitch, a hidden one. The cart (which really didn't seem to weigh anything at all) could be pulled by a single pony -- well, a single earth pony -- but there was also the option for a team.
Most days, it was just her and when it wasn't, it was just Mac. A single pony pulling the cart to market, then bringing it home again. The other hinges hadn't been unfolded since...
If it works out. It's a long road, an' we might not get more than a few hoofsteps down the thing before one of us breaks away. Maybe both. Ah don't know if this is gonna work...
But she'd recognized that just before she'd done it. That she was taking a chance, one no Apple had possibly ever taken. Because she was her own mare, this was her road, she'd wanted to do it and then something incredible had happened. She'd done it.
Ah asked him out.
She'd asked Snowflake out on a date. And he'd said yes. (Well, a word equivalent to 'yes'.) They were going to date, and she was still trying to figure out what that first date was going to be. Normally, she asked ponies out during the winter and had the actual dates during spring, with those dates taking place on the Acres. After all, there was no better way to learn about a pony than through working alongside them. For a few hours. Sun-raising to Sun-lowering counted as 'a few,' although just about everypony she'd gone out with prior to this seemed to feel the definition was actually 'until she takes her eyes off me' and when she looked up again, it would be to find grass springing back into place where hooves had recently been, a supposedly-exhausted body having found just enough strength to get out of sight. (She saw some of those ponies again, although it was hard to make out their features when they kept their heads down all the time.) This time, spring was moons away. It might be possible to put him to work on co-moving cider barrels...
Or maybe somethin' else. Somethin' more... standard. Everypony-else standard. Ponies do other things on dates. Ah could ask 'round for a few hints. (Although 'Where?' was a serious question: the romantic lives of her friends currently ranged from 'Are y'kiddin'?' to 'Aw no, not again...') Ain't like Ah'm lookin' for a typical Acres date, since Ah didn't ask out the usual type of pony. Ah could ask Fluttershy or Rainbow what a pegasus first date is usually like, but 'Shy would jus' hide under her couch an' anypony tryin' to pick up Rainbow usually gets tired of all the flight an' tortoise talk by the third drink. So Ah'd need somepony else t' tell me what a pegasus would --
That was the border of the moment. The absolute edge of the canyon. The last instant where she believed her inner hooves to be on solid earth.
And then she realized her soul had been walking on air the whole time. She just hadn't noticed until now and it seemed that until you noticed, you couldn't fall...
Ah jus' asked Snowflake t' go out with me.
Ah jus' asked a pegasus on a date.
Her body stopped moving, fast and hard enough to have the hitch ram into her shoulders: she barely noticed. Her deepest self was staring out across the spiritual space where the walls had once been, towards a place where no horizon could be found. There was only a road, a new road, her road, and no way to see where it led.
Walls confined. They imprisoned. But they also set boundaries. They were familiar. She'd been within the same walls for all her life, walls built upwards and inwards over generations, and now they were gone.
Applejack had never encountered 'agoraphobia' as a term, would have needed to have it explained, and still knew what it felt like to have that terror applied to her own soul.
A pegasus.
Well... technically a pegasus. That was the evidence produced by visual examination, something which had been more than sufficient for her entire life. But the most recent mission had happened, and now there was a new category. Something Snowflake occupied, one of the earliest to have been placed within it -- and to Applejack's knowledge, nopony had told him yet. He still didn't know...
She was stock-still under dimming sky now, with carefully-crafted chill drifting across the fur of her back. Simply a reminder of how close the Shut-Down truly was, and in no way the feeling produced by centuries of Apples in the shadowlands staring at her in cold fury.
Her head dipped. Green eyes were half-closed, and her hat (hers now, truly hers, she'd made that decision and she had to remember it was hers) nearly slipped.
Is that why it was him? Because he's one of the hybrids? Ah could -- rebel without goin' all the way, because there's that bit of earth pony essence in him?
She'd seen it, hadn't she? Not from her own family: there were those whose marks took them away from the farms, but an Apple was always an Apple. From -- Pinkie. The baker had galloped away from the fallow stone fields, found a new life, new parents -- but ask her who she was, and the surname would still be Pie instead of Cake. There were times when her oldest friend among the Bearers started to identify herself as a rock farmer first, and Applejack knew there were geology guides in the attic. Pinkie had changed -- but there was something at the base which might never shift.
Was that it?
Her eyes completely closed, and Applejack delved within. Still under nearly-set Sun, searching for answers as light faded away. Forced herself to answer, no matter how much it might hurt, and there was every chance that pain would come. (The first part of the pain: she was starting to understand that now.) For the hardest aspect of bearing Honesty was being fully truthful with herself.
No.
Ah've been lookin' at him for a while. Ah jus' -- told mahself not t' think 'bout it, because he was a pegasus. Noticed him the first day he touched down in town.
Although to be fair, it would have been hard not to notice. Snowflake's landings had a certain, for lack of a better word, WHUMP! And once she'd looked towards the sound -- she'd kept looking. It was hard not to look and after a while, some ponies became aware of just how hard it could be to stop. Snowflake wasn't visually appealing: he was visually arresting. A first-time viewer's attention could wind up confined within a very small cell. And she hadn't found him the least bit attractive --
-- took a while, didn't it?
Y'look, an' y'keep lookin'. But y'don't see, 'cause there's so much t' look at. Ah saw what Ah thought he was, not who. But when Ah started t' learn 'bout that part, the things he's too shy t' let out...
Took a while. But then Ah was lookin' when Ah thought nopony could see. At a hard worker, an' he's that, ain't he? At somepony who's been so good for 'Shy, watchin' the cottage when the missions come. Jus' about being her brother...
There was a reason for that. Fluttershy and Snowflake had several things in common. One of the most significant was invisible, and he still didn't know.
Ah asked him out because... if he was an earth pony, Ah would have asked moons ago. Ah looked an' told mahself it didn't mean anythin'. Ah was never gonna do more than look. Find an earth pony. Marry an earth pony. Keep the blood pure an' that way, the magic is always in the family. Make sure there's a next generation for the Acres, an' the tools t' make 'em bloom.
Except... she'd officially given up on part of that, seconds before she'd actually asked him. Told Twilight she needed to dip into the library exchange program and eventually, that would mean books on agronomy. Farming through science instead of magic. Even if the new road went nowhere, she'd recognized that the Acres were going to need more than the Cornucopia Effect from two ponies could provide, not with Apple Bloom on the way to a destiny away from the farm and Granny...
Her head dipped a little more. Moisture welled under closed eyelids.
...Granny's gonna die. Maybe there's a few good years left for her. But eventually, she'll go to the shadowlands, she'll see everypony who's been waitin' for her in the last pasture, she'll be happy -- an' the Acres will still be here. Mac an' Ah ain't enough. If we didn't have kids yet, then we'd either have t' hire ponies t' come boost the Effect, or -- switch over. Ah've been thinkin' 'bout the agronomy route for a while, 'cause Ah couldn't find nopony an' Mac... Misery or not, the snort remained instinctive. Fluttershy's gonna date before he does. Ah knew we might wind up goin' science. Ah've been gettin' ready for that for moons now.
But Ah asked Snowflake t' go out with me. Ah did that. No matter how long Ah might have been -- wonderin' 'bout it -- Ah went an' did it.
Apples marry pure.
Could she be the only Apple who'd even dated outside her race? She couldn't seem to recall any of the more scandalous family rumors: at the time when there had been those in the household who would discuss such things, she'd also been too young for them to say anything around her. But there must have been somepony. The time of curiosity would begin, those first tentative investigations into the strange feelings which arose around other ponies, and then -- a little feather-dusting, a touch of horn-sticking, and perhaps all done on the sly. It seemed as if based on sheer cumulative odds, at the very least, somepony on the family tree would have had an interesting experience within a haystack.
(She'd actually been waiting to have The Talk with Apple Bloom, and had been doing so for some time. Unfortunately, any early interest her sibling might have had in other ponies had been subsumed by the Crusade, and so The Talk About Dating had been repeatedly preempted by The Talk About How Sane Ponies Try T' Find Their Marks, Generally Startin' By An' You've Already Stopped Listenin' T' Me, Haven't You? But things had happened in Ponyville while the mission had been going on. The Crusade had broken, and her sister had been apprenticed to Ratchette. Training in mechanical engineering, taking something she was already a little good at and trying to become better. Taking instruction from -- a hybrid. A pony who didn't know...)
But when it came to marrying -- pure. Earth ponies only, to make sure the magic would remain in the family line. The Apple family tree currently bore one pegasus, and that was a graft: adopting the child of a lost family friend. (She wasn't sure just who that cousin might be going out with, and was suddenly afraid to find out.) And just before she'd asked Snowflake out, she'd told Twilight --
"-- but the way I figure it, if this goes as far as it could... there's a lot worse things than kids who can fly."
How far am Ah goin' with this? Ah jus' asked him out, Ah don't even know if we're gonna be good t'gether, Ah asked a pegasus t' go out with me an' when the rest of the family finds out --
-- Ah'm shiverin'.
Ain't cold enough yet for that, not for a moon or two. Ah'm scared.
She focused, fought back against the vibrations, made all four knees stop knocking. Eventually, it was down to a little tremble at the tip of her tail.
"It's mah road," she whispered. "Mine and no other. Ah'm trotting down it. Ah decide where Ah go, where it leads. No walls, no chains, not no more. Ah'll date who Ah like an' if somepony don't like that, they can --"
-- hate me?
Decide Ah ain't part of the clan no more?
What's this gonna do?
She had broken the Secret. She was going to be teaching a unicorn -- well, alicorn in body, still mostly a unicorn in her head -- the songs which the land could hear. Answer. And after all that, with so much already having changed, with no way to take any of it back... she still had more to lose.
Ah could lose mah blood family. All of it. And if this don't work out between me an' him, Ah'll lose them over nothin'.
She couldn't take back the words she'd said in front of the others, the ones which revealed what earth pony magic truly was. She wouldn't go back on her promise to Twilight: her friend needed training, and knowing you could sing while not knowing how was begging for a whole new level of disaster.
But there was something she could undo.
Ah know where he lives. Been by there a few times, but never tried t' drop in. No need. But he's on the ground, in a normal house. All Ah have t' do is knock on the door. Tell him it was a mistake. We can't do this. Don't have t' tell him why. Don't need t' say no truth Ah don't want to. Jus' call it off an' leave.
Sure, our spaces ain't that far apart in the market. Ah can see him, when he's out of the tent. He can see me. But Ah don't have t' look. An' after a while... he'll stop. He might not even think 'bout it too much. Jus' go back t' his life. He don't date any more than 'Shy does. So it ain't like he'll be missin' much --
But he'd agreed to go out with her.
He'd looked -- happy.
(Uncertain. Panicked. The face of a stallion who'd just taken a kick to a wound which had never healed. But then he'd been happy...)
We marry pure.
We.
If Ah'm on a new road, is there a 'we' any more?
Her head tilted up. Green eyes opened, looked at newly-raised Moon. She was just about officially late. It wouldn't be all that long before somepony started to worry, left the Acres to try and meet her on the path. Her brother might even take the fastest route to Town Hall, desperately trying to learn whether a new mission had pulled a sibling away, so soon after the last one. A mission she hadn't even been able to tell him anything about, where he'd just been worried to the point of illness as he watched her move about bare-headed and speaking in tones more suited to Manehattan than her parents...
(She'd just about lost her accent, during that time with her relatives. She'd taken her cues from family upon returning, recovered as much as she could. The effort required to speak normally was both subconscious and reflexive, but she still had slips...)
What would mah Daddy say?
Sky and stars gave her the answer. Applejack stood still within the chill breeze, feeling her fur ruffle as she received the only response anypony ever gained from the shadowlands. Silence.
But in memory, she was under Sun, in the heart of a lost spring. A smaller body standing next to something so much greater than she was. Somepony who loved her, protected her, and never lied to her. They'd been looking out over what would one day be her land, and... there had been too much of it. Too much for a little pony. She'd been... afraid. And he'd seen it.
So he'd done what he always did. He made the fear go away.
"We harvest the Acres one tree at a time. That's how it works, Applejack. One at a time, enough times, an' it'll always add up t' the whole thing."
He knew. He always knew, when it was somethin' important.
Enough hoofsteps, one at a time, taken down the road is a journey. Enough trees the same way is a harvest. Enough days is -- Her eyes closed, opened again. -- a lifetime.
Strictly speaking, the philosophy had practical limits: she'd learned that the hard way when Mac had been injured and 'one tree at a time,' divided by one pony, had mostly equaled falling asleep in some rather awkward positions. But for the most part, it held. One tree, one step, one day. Everything was cumulative, as long as you kept moving forward.
She'd broken the Secret. She'd volunteered to teach her friend. She'd asked a pegasus to go on a date with her.
Applejack dropped her gaze. Stared at a path carved out of the settled zone by dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of Apple passages. In that sense, the road belonged to all of those who had ever trotted down it.
When she'd asked Snowflake out... well, the market had been just about empty by then, and she hadn't exactly been speaking for the benefit of a mass audience. Anypony nearby would have heard his much louder response, but not what she'd asked. Given their mutual professions, farmer and labor-for-hire, the natural presumption would have been that she'd just asked him for some seasonal work on the Acres. In that sense, the rumor mill wasn't even thinking about grinding the truth down into unrecognizable fragments, and no lies would be circulating. It was potentially possible to keep the whole thing secret until the first date began.
But the mission had taught her about some of the ways in which secrets could backfire. The price you paid for having them at all.
The road belonged to those who had carved it out. But it was also hers, and she wasn't that many hoofsteps away from home and family. She was sick of secrets. And the only way she was going to find out what they thought of her decision...
Get it over with.
She pushed her shoulders against the harness, got the cart moving again.
Her hat. Her decision. Her life. But it had always been a life which was spent with family.
Ah need you, Mac.
Ah need you not t' be stupid.