Grief makes you do crazy things.
I tried to hang onto that thought as we pressed through the forest. Who knew such dense woods were right on the rock farm’s outer edges? Maybe that’s what rock farming did to the landscape. Maybe rock farming killed things.
Kill.
It was a word you didn’t say.
I remember telling that to Smolder and Gallus one spring afternoon. They were joking. Joking the way omnivores do about death and dying and murder, because it’s a part of their lives. It’s something you have to be okay with. Something you have to joke about.
Ponies aren’t okay with it, I’d told them.
Ponies call it the k-word, I’d explained.
You can’t say it. Not even for a laugh. Not even when you mean it you can’t say it.
And Pinkie had said it.
She had meant it.
Still did. That shotgun strapped to her, slapping her side like an innocent saddlebag as she picked through the brush in the pitch, pitch dark. Each time it hit her flank, she had to be thinking it. Had to be hearing the echo of that promised shot—BLAM—just like I was. Had to be thinking about the way it would feel to pull that trigger and take the kick-back in the shoulder and know that you’d done it.
That you’d killed. That you’d killed and you couldn’t take it back and you just had to live with the blood and the bullet and the death.
Or maybe she wasn’t thinking that at all. Maybe she was just trying to get out that wound-up spring energy, that anger, by stalking through the woods after the thing that did this to her, and at the last second she’d choke and it was her that’d get killed.
Oh, Celestia.
Grief makes you do crazy things.
I’d seen them.
I knew them.
I couldn’t let them happen again.
But I just kept putting one hoof in front of the other. Running my mind in circles. Hearing the echo of the shot in the barn.
BLAM
A flash.
I looked wearily over my shoulder and caught a glimpse of light. A powerful, white beam cutting through the darkness.
And a second.
And a third.
Distant, behind layers of trees and branches and brush. But the way they moved—natural, if shaken—made it clear that my late-night panic had consequences.
“They’re lookin’ for us,” I hissed suddenly to Pinkie. Sudden even to me. “Your sisters—their flashlights. They’re lookin’ for us.”
Pinkie didn’t reply. She just pushed on, focused completely on the next step.
“You oughta be careful.” I did my best to follow, but couldn’t bear to take my eyes off her to watch my step. “You’ve got a gun. Maybe they’ve got one, too. We shoulda told ‘em, Pinks, I don’t want this to end with—”
“It won’t,” Pinkie said.
“Now, you can’t be sure a’that,” I scolded.
She didn’t reply.
Just kept picking through the brush.
The bad ends were starting to tangle up. Missing ponies, threats of bears. Blood and death and shotguns. Bullets. Claws. Dead bears. Dead ponies. Too much to think about. Too much to imagine. Too much to protect her from.
I swallowed hard. Tried to keep my breathing under control. Tried to keep from shaking.
It was cool out here. That was… bracing. A break from the constant heat out in the fields, or even in the house. Out here, in the shade and the night, you could almost forget it was summer. Crickets chirping. Cicadas humming.
Almost nice.
Until
BLAM
“Just what are you planning to do with the… with the body?” I asked softly.
Pinkie was quiet for a moment. She hadn’t thought about that. “Bears die in the forest all the time, Applejack,” she said at last. “I think it’ll be okay.”
She thinks.
“What if it ain’t?”
She thinks.
“Pinkie, what if it ain’t okay?”
She stopped.
I stopped.
For a long moment, she was quiet. I braced, thinking she was gonna ready the shotgun, thinking that explosive sound was gonna rip through the woods and suddenly we were gonna have to contend with whatever or whoever was left dead in its wake.
I felt the bile rising in my throat.
I felt my heart thudding in my chest.
And then she said, “you have to trust me.”
And I said, “I don’t think I do.”
Which was the truth. And the truth she needed to hear.
She turned to face me. “Then why did you come with me?” she hissed.
I took a deep breath. “Because someone needs to be here if it goes wrong,” I said firmly. “If I didn’t come with you, you were gonna try to do it alone. I know you.”
“But—”
“I don’t trust you. That’s why I’m here,” I repeated. “Now, for the love of Celestia, be careful. Your sisters are out here lookin’ for you. Don’t take a shot you ain’t sure of. And don't get so caught up in runnin' through the brush that you get yourself shot.”
Pinkie set her jaw.
She nodded.
Before she could take another step, though, we heard it:
A rumble.
That low, rattling sound I’d only ever heard near Fluttershy’s animal sanctuary. A growl. Deep and throaty, bigger than anything Winona could manage.
Pinkie’s hoof went right to the shotgun. Just one.
I stiffened.
“That was it, right?” she whispered.
“Y-yeah,” I said. “I reckon so.”
I swear it shook the ground when it walked.
Even in the dark, even as far as we must have been, I swear I could see it. Lumbering. The way the fat in its legs must have shook with each step. Its coarse fur, matted and dark with mud. And blood.
Soon its own.
BLAM
Just the thought made me nearly jump out of my skin. The jump made me stumble backward, and Pinkie took it as a sign to start on ahead herself.
“I think it came from this way,” she whispered. “Just keep quiet.”
“I know, I know…” I whispered back.
And then we were off. Low to the ground, but flying. Running towards the shape in the dark instead of away from it, like everything in my mind and body said I ought to be doing.
Grief makes you do crazy things.
Maybe that’s all grief is. Maybe it’s a shape in the dark that you run from, cower from, only look at out of the corner of your eye. Maybe it’s a monster that takes your parents and roams the woods, waiting for another chance to strike.
Maybe you have to run after it. Maybe you have to gun it down.
The smell hit us next.
It smelled like death.
It wasn't one I was familiar with, but I knew it when it hit me. Stale and… and salty and fatty. I could smell the slickness of blood and viscera.
Pinkie smelled it too. She made a sound like she was trying not to gag.
As the smell crawled its way into my chest, I realized that it wasn't entirely unfamiliar. I picked at the thread in my brain and unraveled a memory of Winona, having stomped a shrew to death out behind the barn, taking a roll in the carcass before I could pull her off.
That's what predators do, right?
They roll in the carcass?
The pictures flashed through my mind. The sounds. The bear grunting. Joints popping, ribs cracking. A gruesome celebration of death.
I wanted to vomit but I don't think it would have helped. The smell had made a home in my stomach already.
Pinkie's steps were wary, now. Like she was fighting through the wall of the smell, like it was molasses.
"It's coming from everywhere," Pinkie strained to tell me.
I took in a quick gasp of a breath. "Sonuvabitch probably rubbed his scent on every tree in the area."
Pinkie peered into the darkness. "I don't see it."
"Just be quiet a sec," I said. "We'll have to listen for him."
Pinkie's hooves rustled in the brush as she tried to stand still. The energy still ran through in loops, I'm sure, and she could barely contain her fidgeting.
As we stood, I silently hoped that the fear would get the better of the anger, and she would give up on the hunt. I figured there was at least a shot at it.
Then, from behind us. Something moving.
Pinkie and I froze completely.
"Was that—"
"I think so."
Pinkie swallowed. She wanted to say something—I could tell from the way she stuck her neck out and chewed slowly, intermittently on her lip. Even in the dark, I was starting to make out those details.
Motion again. Another rumble and the snap of a branch.
Pinkie's hoof went to the gun. She readied it as best she could, but I could see that the weight and the balance was unfamiliar to her. She fumbled with it in a funny way. Like someone looking at a modern art exhibit or something.
More motion. Stumbling through the brush.
Pinkie shook slightly. I heard the rattle in the shotgun.
I closed my eyes. I knew the bear was creeping up on us, now. That any second I'd feel his breath and Pinkie had better pull that trigger and send it down. Down in one shot.
Oh, Celestia.
Grief makes you do crazy things.
I clenched my jaw.
The rustling grew closer.
Here it comes.
"Ready?" I whispered.
Pinkie didn't answer. She only stood there shivering.
"Pinkie?"
Another quick
snap
in the brush and Pinkie whirled on her heel, the rifle let out a soft
chk
as it readied against her shoulder and I saw her eyes squeezed shut and I hit the deck and I heard the grass
shhhht
swallow me up safe and sound as I waited for the shot the explosion the—
"Don't shoot!"
A pause.
The shotgun hit the ground.
Thud.
"Limestone?"
My hooves came off my head and I pushed myself back upright. Sure enough, Limestone stood before us, a light strapped to her forehead.and shining through her wild bangs.
After a moment, the other two sisters stumbled through the brush and into our light.
All of them had blinding lights strapped to their foreheads. They weren't armed with guns, thank Celestia, but each of them wielded some less-lethal weapon against bears.
Limestone carried an air horn. Maud had what looked like a can of pepper spray hanging by her side. Maybe bear spray. Even Marble had a pan strapped to her chest and was holding a big wooden spoon.
There was a long moment where no one quite knew what to do. Eyes flicked from pony to pony, hoof to hoof, on and off the shotgun. Calculating. Writing the story.
Then Limestone’s eyes landed on me.
“You.”
I took a step back. “Me?”
“You let her…?” Limestone gestured to the shotgun. “Y-you were supposed to talk her down!”
“Talk me down?” Pinkie repeated softly.
“Now, hold on a second,” I spat. “I ain’t Pinkie’s handler, okay? I’m just here to—”
“Here to what?” Limestone seethed. “To be the hero?”
“Excuse me?”
Maud put a hoof on her sister’s shoulder. “I think what Limestone means to say is that it feels like we’re on different teams,” she droned. “And that you made the teams.”
Marble made a small sound of discomfort and cowered behind her older sisters.
“That I made—” I choked on my words.
“Yeah, and now Pinkie’s toting a gun around in the woods,” Limestone said darkly. “And you let her.”
“I didn’t—”
“You did,” Maud interrupted.
“Mm,” Marble added.
“C’mon, Pinkie, we’re going home,” Limestone said, and she reached out for Pinkie.
To grab her and drag her away, like she was just a foal who’d got lost during a family shopping trip. Not a full-grown mare with a mission. And a gun.
Pinkie mutely dodged her sister’s attempt to hook her foreleg around her own.
It threw Limestone off. I could see it in her eyes. She froze for a second before trying again.
Pinkie took two big steps back.
“Pinkie—” Limestone growled, lunging for her again.
“Stop!” Pinkie swatted her sister away.
Limestone’s eyes flashed with something dark. Marble and Maud rushed to her side, I guess in an effort to back her up, but seemed to fall short of knowing exactly what to do.
“You’re not doing this!” Limestone spat at her. “No one’s letting you—”
“No one’s letting me do anything!” Pinkie shrieked.
Silence.
Forest-leveling silence.
Only Pinkie’s breath heaving.
She took a moment to compose herself and then, barely holding together as she shook, she said, “I’m not a little kid.”
The sisters stood resolute. Nothing changed in their faces.
“I know mom and dad always treated me different,” she said, gun shaking in her grip. “But I don’t understand why all of you thought you had to treat me that way just because they’re… they’re gone.”
Limestone flickered. A little look back at Maud.
“I’m putting down the bear,” Pinkie said. “Because dad isn’t here to do it.”
And I saw it.
I saw that moment. What it was for my brother.
The harsh yellow-white of the headlamps turned to the clinical fluorescents at the hospital. Pinkie’s shotgun a much less literal pen. The way her lip trembled, the way she faltered, the way that—even now—she wasn’t sure if what she was doing was right or best or even okay. She just knew she had to.
And, oh.
Oh, it all opened up.
I saw family in her the way she saw it in me.
I saw the determined scowl of Apple Bloom as she faced down another self-imposed challenge. I saw Mac’s strong stance as he plowed, pulling an enormous weight steadily along behind him. I saw my Granny’s surprising resilience. My mother’s kindness and humor despite it all, even bedridden, even dying. My father’s endless emptiness as he imagined a world without.
She was family.
And I loved her.
Oh, I loved her.
I loved her anger.
I loved her pride.
I loved her stubbornness and her resilience and middle-sister outcast rebelliousness matched with pony-pleasing peacemaking perfectionism—I always had, hadn’t I?
Ah, feathers.
It hurt.
“Pinkie…” Limestone murmured, her voice faltering as she looked at her now-unfamiliar sister.
No one else spoke.
I can’t tell you what they saw, but all three of them looked at Pinkie like she was someone entirely new. Looked her up and down like they were being introduced to a stranger. And maybe she was to them. I don’t know.
Limestone took a hesitant step forward. Pinkie took a small step back, fighting it all the while.
Before the gap could close, though, the rumble returned.
Pinkie stiffened. Her grip on the gun returned with a renewed strength and direction.
The other Pie sisters drew silently together. Maud switched off her headlamp, and the other two swiftly followed, plunging our party into near-total darkness just moments after our vision had adjusted.
Only breathing. Heavy and hot in the dark. Stuttering with fear.
I stumbled forward, my eyes trained on a smudge ahead of me that I was certain was Pinkie Pie.
The ground, once certain, felt uneven. Filled with pits and hills and hidden stones.
The tall grasses tickled my chest.
I heard the heavy chk of the gun against Pinkie’s side as she stepped forward. The darkness in front of me moved with her, but it all felt like shifting blobs of the darkest blues and greens, all swirled up and tangled and confusing.
Another step.
Another stumble.
Soft sounds of grass parting. Hard sounds of the gun.
Another step.
Warmth.
I grabbed onto it. Pinkie for sure.
She made a small sound and tried to throw me off, but I hissed a quick “hey” and, at the sound of my voice, she quit fighting.
Okay, I thought.
We move together, then.
I twisted my right forehoof into her silky tail and we started to walk towards the sound of the bear. The growling, rumbling, thudding. The sound of something broken dragging itself through the woods towards the object of its misery.
The sounds of the other Pie sisters crossed behind us, nervous and uncoordinated. I’m surprised Marble was still standing. I guess an old-fashioned shot of adrenaline is good for just about anyone.
Breaths came fast and hard.
The gun rocked against her flank.
The smell hit again. Garbage, rot, and death. Strong. Directed. Hot. On a breath?
The bear’s breath?
Pinkie hit the ground and I came with her. Chests in the dirt. Grass tickling my cheeks, now.
The smell.
Celestia, I had to cover my nose. ‘Smell’ don’t even begin to describe it—it was a feeling. A weight. A dark cloud that hung over us, pressing down. I wanted to burrow into the dirt to escape it. I wanted to throw up just to get the taste out of my throat.
I wanted to stop it. But it just kept coming.
I wanted to melt into the ground. But it just kept coming.
I wanted to run away but I knew it would keep coming.
I wanted to run.
My hooves almost carried me off all by themselves. My mind knew that was death for sure, but my instincts told me to do it anyway.
Ain’t no way that bear could smell us over his own stench.
We were safe if we were still.
We were safe.
I don’t know that I believed that, but I thought it.
I pressed it into Pinkie, my hooves on her flank or her back or something, just a pressure that meant nothing and everything. A pressure that said ‘I’m here and I’m staying until this is over’ but also was only hooves on flesh and maybe that’s all it felt like.
Pinkie started to retrieve her gun.
I felt it pull out from under one of my joints, that hard edge of the butt that I thought was a branch and really it was a gun I was laying on.
That hot, sticky, metallic taste sprang into my mouth. I tried to swallow it down, but it bubbled up twice as strong.
A step. A thunderous step. Fat and muscle shaking as that enormous paw hit the ground.
Legs like tree trunks.
I closed my eyes. It wasn’t much different back there, still dark colors swirling and flashes of things—BLAM—that made my eyes spring back open anyways.
I saw it.
My eyes were adjusting to the darkness and I saw it.
A bear.
A grizzly with matted fur and shiny black eyes and
Well, it was so much smaller than I’d thought.
I don’t know why. I knew how big grizzlies were. He was about that size.
But he was small.
It struck me.
Pinkie nestled the shotgun into a notch on the branch in front of her. She shook, and the gun rattled, and it was the loudest gotdang sound I’d ever heard in my entire life.
And I thought oh.
She’s going to choke.
I thought oh, the bear is going to charge and she won’t be able to pull the trigger.
I thought oh, we’re going to die.
And the bear saw us.
And it lumbered our way.
Smell of death on us.
I crawled over Pinkie and she wheezed as I squeezed all the breath from her lungs and
My hoof on the trigger
The Pie sisters in the grass I heard them heard Marble gasp and choke on her fear
Hoof on the trigger wrap around feel the resistance
And I was Mac killing my mother
And I was my father killing himself
Brace for kickback
And I was Pinkie killing my grief
Her grief
Our grief
And we were killing the bear
And
BLAM