We talk for a while, a lot longer than I wish we had. She has so many questions; so many questions that I wish I could answer. What happened, Twilight? Who else is left? How did you survive? And of course, the one that cut right to the heart of it. Why did it happen? I wish I could tell her, I truly do. I tell myself that there will be a time and a place for that, once its all over I'll tell her the whole story. I don't know if I was hoping that, by then, she'd be ready to handle the truth or if I was just hoping that I could stall until it wouldn't matter any more. Either way, I keep that part of the story to myself.
What I do tell her is that theres no way that we were the only ones to make it through the storm. I show her one of the scrolls that I had been studying; a list of what I refer to as "Building Blocks" as we go through it. I tell her that they are all things found fairly close to here, all things that should have survived our little disaster. Thats all I tell her; all I get the chance to tell her before she runs for the door, the list clenched tightly between her teeth. She grabs my old saddlebag, throws the scroll in one, and takes off on that banged-up little scooter of hers. And thats the last time that we talked together, just the two of us.
...Zap Apple Jam: tricky stuff to make, even trickier to find so long after the last harvest. But would Granny Smith have really sold off her entire supply without saving some for her family? I don't think so, and apparently, neither does our little Filly. She races down to Sweet Apple Acres as fast as those little wings can carry her. The road to the orchards isn't as badly ravaged as the one she had taken to town. That is, not until you get to the orchards themselves.
She reaches the edge of the Apple Family's land, only to find that its been reduced to a charred ocean of fallen trees, smoking piles of what were once apples, and gaping crevices. Those fissures are growing, not terribly fast, but consistently. If you listen close you can hear the earth giving way around you, splitting apart as if it was slowly being ripped open from the inside. Don't listen too hard though, otherwise the thunder of the occasional tree or two tumbling over each other as the abyss opens up underneath them might deafen you.
But is any of this going to stop her from getting in there? Ha, not a chance... After all, its not just the first Building Block that she's heading in there for; jumping her scooter from trunk to trunk, staying airborne as long as she can each time, her wings battering the air behind her. She's not skidding across fallen limbs and broken branches just to find a little jam from some bizarrely colored apples. She's not plowing head-long through smoldering piles of fruit and compounded ash because I asked her to. There's a bigger reason that she's there, and in her eyes, a far more important issue that's drawn her so far out of Ponyville. Why else would she have chosen to head out there first? After all, that list I showed her was in alphabetical order... So what would make her skip right to Z?
Well, no time to take guesses on that now. Suffice to say, that other reason is what's driving her to plunge ahead through all of these scratches and burns that she's getting covered with. Its all thats keeping her going as the trees around her begin to shift beneath her wheels, cracking and rolling as a new fissure opens up nearby. And if she wasn't so determined to find an answer to that question that's been haunting her since she woke up in the midst of all this destruction, she would have been lost in the ensuing avalanche of wood, leaves, and ash as the ground gaped open in front of her.
Of course, she finds a way out, her wings saving her at the last possible second, propelling her to solid ground. So what is it thats been keeping her going this whole time? What's in her head that's driving her forward? Forcing her to continue rushing toward the farmhouse as fast as she can? What is it that makes her charge head-first through the front door, reducing it to powdered ash as she crashes into the now-ceiling-less rooms within? Well... if I had to guess? ...I'd say, it was friendship...
* * * * *
She doesn't find what she's looking for in the farmhouse. Not in the front hall as she breaks through the door. Not in the living room, or the bedrooms. She scours it all, but no sign of her target. Finally she gets to the kitchen, where she finds the Zap Apple Jam tucked away in a cupboard. She finds old Granny Smith nearby, but the sight is too much for her. She doesn't dwell on the thought long; neither discovery was what she was really here for after all. But just as she's about ready to give up and set her course for the library, she hears something through the shattered remains of the kitchen window. She can't place the sound at first, but after listening for a minute she realizes its what it is. It's one of the most familiar sounds in the world to her ears, just a little distorted by the wind and cracking of the earth... From somewhere in the backyard, she hears crying.
It's not what she's hoping for; well, it is, it's the voice she was hoping to hear. But there's no doubt she had been expecting cries of joy at the knowledge that another made it, not the sobs of grief that she's following now. She barrels toward the backdoor, ash and dust coating her once more as she passes right through what was once a solid slab of wood. The grass she rolls onto is green, lush, and very much alive; completely devoid of the craters that cover so much of the rest of the landscape. There are still two apple trees standing within this little clearing, and two figures beneath them; one yellow, one grey.
Our filly's a little hesitant to go any closer; she knows what she's about to see already, she saw enough of it when she sped through Poniville earlier, no matter how hard she had tried not to. But then a CRACK behind her makes her jump, and she turns to see a quarter of the farmhouse collapse into hole in the ground. Now half the house is gone, now the whole thing, but the fissure doesn't stop there. It's cutting into that last little swath of life left in the orchard, and it's moving fast. The filly decides its now or never, she speeds away, heading for the two figures under the trees.
The tall one is staring at something in the sky, the smaller, yellow one weeping in front of her, her head bowed and her eyes clamped shut. She can barely see the smaller one's face from under the hat covering her head, a wide-brimmed wrangler's hat that's far to big for the poor girl it's sitting on. She doesn't hear the house collapse into the crevice, doesn't notice the earth splitting apart around her. She doesn't even notice the pegasus on the scooter coming toward her. How can she, after everything she just went through, everything that she witnessed over the last few hours. Her farm destroyed. Her home torn apart. Her family... well... you get the picture.
So what do say to a filly who's seen too much? ...Ours doesn't know, but she says this. "Applebloom... We have to go... Please."