//------------------------------// // Farm // Story: Scarlet // by Skijarama //------------------------------// The first thing Scarlet felt as she came back to the waking world was the warmth of thick, soft blankets covering her body. It was a strange sensation, given that the very last thing she remembered feeling was unfathomable exhaustion and the cold hard ground rubbing painfully against her flesh as she collapsed onto it. The second thing she felt was the soreness in her muscles and the burn in her legs. It wasn’t nearly as intense as she remembered it, giving her the impression that her wounds must have been treated. Slowly, she lifted her forelegs and felt over them, over each other, and over her chest. Sure enough, she felt bandages bound around her to cover her wounds and prevent them from bleeding any further. But who had treated her? It couldn’t have been Lens, they had run out of bandages before they even began to run… The run. Scarlet’s eyes snapped open as she involuntarily gasped through clenched teeth. Primrose! What had happened to her?! She immediately looked around and tried to sit up, but a sharp flare of pain in her side sent her falling back onto the pillow with a hiss and a groan of pain. Her eyes screwed themselves shut as she forced herself to breathe, and soon enough, the pain died down. Then she opened her eyes again and looked around more slowly. She was resting in one of two simple beds that occupied a small, square-shaped room. The walls were made of wood logs, while the floor was made of cobblestone that didn’t appear to have been cleaned all that recently. An end table was right by her bed, an unlit candle rested on it along with a wooden bowl, though Scarlet could not see its contents from here. A shuttered window was set into the wall above the table, through which Scarlet could make out the sounds of birds chirping and distant, muffled voices calling to one another. Her eyes eventually settled on the only other bed in the room, while she wondered if she was alone. What she saw made her smile with unbounded relief, and she couldn’t repress a heavy sigh. For there, resting on her side under the blankets, alive, was Primrose. “We must have made it, then,” Scarlet thought to herself, slowly peeling the blankets off of her body with her hooves so she could assess her own damage. She cringed when she saw just how much of her was covered in bandages. Both of her forelegs were wrapped from the elbows up, and pretty much her entire barrel had received similar treatment. She looked like a mummy from old Somnambulan hieroglyphs. Suddenly, the door swung open, and a dust-brown earth pony stallion stepped in. His mane and tail were both short but scraggly, colored a vibrant dark red. A bushy mustache protruded from his upper lip that Scarlet could only imagine would soak up a lot of milk. He had a wide-brimmed leather hat on his head and a dark blue bandana hanging from his neck. His eyes were focused first on Primrose, but quickly flew to Scarlet when he realized that she was awake. His emerald green eyes widened in surprise. “Oh! Well, howdy, ma’am,” he greeted, his voice perky and thickly accented. “Ah wasn’t expectin’ y’all to be awake, yet.” “Well, I am,” Scarlet replied before slowly moving to sit up, careful not to agitate her injuries like she had before. The stallion was at her side in a heartbeat, his hoof gently pushing her back down by her shoulder. “Woah, hey, easy now, miss,” he said soothingly until she was on her back again. “Just cause yer awake don’t mean yer ready to be up and about just yet. Y’all were all pretty banged up when ya came in.” Scarlet eyed his hooves as he pulled back. They were rough and strong, and she could tell that he could put a lot of power into them if he wanted. She sighed and nodded, resigning herself to his treatment. “Fine… what happened to me?” The stallion pondered her for a moment before leaning back and adjusting his hat. “Well, that friend of yours, Lens, came runnin’ into town a couple days ago at sunset, hollerin’ and screamin’ that he needed help. My wife heard the commotion and went runnin’ over to see what was what, and she brought y’all back here to our house and took care of you.” Scarlet blinked, her muzzle morphing into a frown. “I… I’m sorry, but… a couple days?” she asked, surprised. The stallion nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Y’all were on death’s door…” he said, his tone noticeably grimmer. “Slash wounds, exhaustion, bruises, muscle strain… Why, if y’all showed up even a minute later, Ah don’t think you’d be alive right now… either of ya.” Scarlet’s eyes drifted past the stallion to Primrose, concern building up in her chest. She licked her lips and spoke slowly and tentatively. “Is… is she going to be alright?” The stallion turned to the slumbering foal, a faraway look in his eyes. “Aye… Wind reckons she’ll make a full recovery. She’s a tough little one, Primrose is.” Scarlet’s attention returned fully to the stallion, the realization dawning on her. “Wait, you know her name? Then… you must be…” The stallion took off his hat and held it to his chest as he dipped into a polite bow. “Sure as sugar. Name’s Apple Juice, at yer service. Yer Scarlet Frost, and that…” he turned and smiled down at Primrose again. “...that’s Primrose.” Scarlet was quiet for a few seconds. Eventually, she looked away, regret slowly starting to claw at her heart. “...She used to stay with you, didn’t she?” Apple Juice nodded, adjusting his hat and heading over to the end table. “Sure did. She stuck with us for around six months. Got along real well with my boy, Apple Star,” he started to explain before picking up the bowl and bringing it down to Scarlet’s face. “Water. Drink up, ya must be thirsty.” Scarlet complied, taking a few healthy gulps and sighing with satisfaction when it was pulled away. She hadn’t realized just how dry and rugged her throat had been until that moment. “Thank you,” she said, resting her head back. Apple Juice smiled. “Mah pleasure, ma’am,” he said before peeling back her blankets himself and studying her bandages. He gave a low, contemplative hum before nodding in satisfaction and putting the blankets back. “Right, Ah think yer bandages are good for now. Wind musta changed ‘em this mornin’.” Scarlet watched as he stood up from her and went over to Primrose’s bed. Her eyes widened when he pulled the foal’s blankets back, revealing the bandages wrapped around her torso. The deep red coloration was far worse than on Scarlet’s, staining almost the entirety of her chest. Apple Juice sighed and returned the blankets to their original place. “Poor thing… nopony deserves what she’s been through…” Scarlet sighed and looked away, guilt and regret gnawing at her heart. “...Forgive me,” she suddenly blurted without even thinking about it. “It’s my fault… I allowed this to happen.” “Nah,” Apple Juice shook his head and sat down on the edge of Prim’s bed. He reached down and gently brushed some of her long and wild mane out of her face, his lips curling up into a tender smile. “Wasn’t yer fault… accordin’ to Lens, y’all saved her life more than once…” His smile faded, and he looked at Scarlet directly. “Although, Ah gotta admit to bein’ curious. How did ya meet her? Why are ya travelin’ together?” Scarlet winced and closed her eyes. She hesitated for a moment before speaking up. “...I found her hiding in my wine cellar in Swanrun one night. She was trying to get out of the rain that was falling and… my home was her choice. She must have gotten startled by a thunderclap or something, as she shattered some of the older bottles. Some shards got stuck in her legs in the process, and I had to clean her up. “After that, we were attacked by a pony following her. A Nightblade named Silent Edge…” she shuddered as memories from that night briefly flickered before her eyes. “...We barely got out with our lives. We figured that Silent must have been after her because of her lamp, and so I thought we should go to somepony who might know more about it.” “Ah’m guessin’ that’d be Lens, then?” Apple Juice noted. “He knows a lot, keeps spewin’ all kinds of trivia, and he’s taken to answerin’ all kindsa questions my boy has.” “Yes,” Scarlet confirmed with a nod. “He and I go way back. I thought he could tell us more about the lamp so we could figure out what to do next, but we were attacked again before he had a chance. We ran together, and we planned to come here anyway… but…” “Silent caught up to ya,” Apple Juice summarized, drawing a slow nod out of Scarlet. He hummed in thought before rising from his seated position and trotting over to her bedside. She looked up at him, and the two locked gazes for a time. Then, Apple Juice smiled down at her. “Well… thank ya kindly for takin’ care of Prim for us. We’d all thought she died after she left.” Scarlet was quiet for a moment before deciding it was her turn to ask some questions. “What about you? How do you know her?” Apple Juice glanced back at Prim, his ears drooping somewhat. “Aw, shucks… was about two years ago, at this point. It was the middle of winter, and the snows were a lot worse than usual,” he began, bringing over the chair and sitting down in it. “One night, durin’ a blizzard, my boy was watchin’ the snowfall through the window while Wind and Ah were makin’ up supper. Then, out of nowhere, he hollers and tells us that there’s this little filly trudgin’ through the snow outside.” The stallion looked over at Primrose again, his ears folding back entirely, and deep sympathy in his face. “First we thought maybe she was somepony else’s. We got a lotta foals in this community, ya know. But… we all realized we didn’t recognize her, and we saw how skinny she was. Then, outta nowhere, she just… collapsed, face down. “Ah ran out and brought her inside to warm her up. Poor thing, she was so skinny Ah was worried Ah might break her like a little twig just carryin’ her inside on my back. Could see her ribs showin’ and everythin’. Wind set to work patchin’ her up, and Ah went out to talk to everypony else and see where she came from.” “And, of course, nopony knew her,” Scarlet deduced. “Eeyup, not a soul. So we let her stay in the spare bedroom and figured we’d ask her when she woke up,” Apple Juice went on. His brow furrowed and he sighed quietly, looking down at the floor. “Thing is, when she woke up, she weren’t in a talkin’ mood. She was… angry. Aggressive. She tried to bite at us anytime we got close, told us to leave her alone, let her go… that kinda thing. She was like a little monster…” He scratched the back of his head and looked over at Primrose again. “...Lookin’ back on it, Ah think she was tryin’ to push us away. Poor filly’d lost so much so fast she musta been scared of havin’ anypony else… cause she thought she’d lose ‘em too.” Scarlet eyed Primrose, her heart withering in her chest at this new information. “...What happened next?” she asked after a few seconds of quiet. “You said she got along with your son.” Apple Juice adjusted his hat and nodded. “Aye, that she did. See, my boy’s tough, but at the time, he was dumb as a bag of hammers, lemme tell ya. Didn’t wanna take ‘no’ fer an answer from her, ya see,” he explained, briefly chuckling at his own description of his son’s prior intelligence. “But Ah think that stubborn insistence of his was what won out, in the end. While Prim was recoverin’, he kept goin’ up to her, talkin’ to her, showin’ her his toys. Ya know, foal stuff. “She shrugged him off at first, but eventually, she slowly began to open up to him. Told him her name, fer one thing. Showed him her lamp… Eventually, she began to calm down and lighten up ‘round us. ‘Course, she had plenty of time. We weren’t gonna just let her wander off into the world when the snows were still comin’ down, and she was still recoverin’.” “By the time the snow melted, and spring rolled around, she was practically part of the family,” he smiled at the memory, chuckling to himself. “Played with mah boy, talked with us, asked us questions, even helped us where she could. Once she opened up, she was just the sweetest lil’ thing, Ah swear… didn’t even look like she wanted to go anymore.” Scarlet’s own face slowly lit up with a small smile, a gentle warmth filling her veins. “She was lucky to find you…” “And we were lucky we saw her,” Apple Juice added before continuing on. “She had a few quirks, of course. Aside from bein’ terribly shy around everypony but us, bein’ weak as a wet noodle, and havin’ more scars than any foal ought to have, both on her body and in her mind… I ain’t no genius or nothin’, but even Ah could tell that the little girl was scared of somethin’ none of us knew about.” “Silent Edge,” Scarlet clarified, her eyes narrowing with disdain and hatred. “The Nightblade. He’s been chasing her for five years, long before she ever met you.” “Well, that’s probably why she left, then.” Scarlet tilted her head, her anger swiftly being replaced with solemn curiosity. “...What happened?” Apple Juice sighed, took off his hat, and set it off to one side. “Well, see, one day, Ah sat down with my boy and my wife. And we talked, and we talked, and we eventually decided that we wanted Prim to stay. We wanted her to join the family. Ah mean, she was practically our kid already in every way but blood. We… we wanted to make it official. And we asked her, and… well, she was reluctant, at first, but she said yes in the end. We had a nice big meal that night to celebrate, and she seemed so happy. Was like a whole world of weight had been taken off her little shoulders.” He looked down at the floor, his ears folding back again. “But, well… few weeks later, we all woke up and suddenly, Prim had just up and gone. Ran off in the middle of the night, and only left us a note sayin’ she was sorry, but she had to go. Told us she loved us and would miss us, and that she’d come back someday, but… never happened… until you brought her back.” Apple Juice looked up at Scarlet, his green eyes boring into her amethyst ones. He gave her a large, warm smile. “So thank ya, miss. Thank ya fer bringin’ our little rose back. And thank ya again fer savin’ her life. Ah dunno how Ah can ever repay you.” “Think nothing of it,” Scarlet replied with a smile of her own. “And thank you for tending to her wounds. I may have only known her for a fraction of the time you did, but…” she looked at the foal again, her vision starting to haze over with tears of joy as she fully embraced the fact that she was alive. “...In that time, I have come to care deeply about her.” “Ah can tell, ma’am, believe me,” Apple Juice replied before standing up and pushing the chair back into the corner. “Anyhoo, Wind’ll wanna know yer awake, and so will Lens. Just lay down and get some more rest, yeah?” “Do I have a choice?” Scarlet asked with a roll of her eyes. “Ah mean, sure,” he replied with his hoof on the handle. “Could choose to get up and wander ‘round, but ya risk hurtin’ yerself and openin’ yer wounds up again.” “That isn’t a particularly compelling alternative,” Scarlet deadpanned. The stallion gave a quick bark of laughter before replacing his hat on his head. “And that’s why ya rest up,” he declared before stepping outside, although this time, he left the door open. Scarlet listened as the sound of his hoofsteps faded before the sound of another door opening was heard. When it shut, the house was plunged into silence, save for the quiet breaths Primrose let out with every exhale. Scarlet looked over at the filly. Her face didn’t look peaceful, so to speak, but compared to the near-death grimace she had been wearing before, this was a significant improvement. Although, a few strands of her purple mane had fallen in front of her face again, making her eyelids twitch with irritation.  With a tender smile, Scarlet lit her horn with magic and gently brushed the locks back and behind Primrose’s ear. With the annoyance gone, Scarlet watched as, finally, the foal smiled.