“A serene expression touched the air… not that anything could be heard… not from that far away, but she could feel it, a subtle change in pressure… a distant melody. She could feel it, somepony was playing her song.”-DJ Pon3_ The Legend of Link
“Applejack.. Applejack?”
Epona nuzzled the sleeping pony with her nose to no avail, Applejack was dead to the world. It was concerning… She had been trying for the greater part of an hour to awaken her friend and nothing had changed, if anything Applejack seemed even deeper in her slumber as the snoring had subsided. Applejack turned over in her sleep snuggling up to the nearest apple (a soft aged thing) as if it was a stuffed duck…or bear, or whatever it was foals cuddled with in Equestria.
Epona sat down with a harrumph and an exasperated “Buck me.”
She shivered. It was colder than it had once been, air rose from her breath as icy smoke, and the chill of night stood her coat on end.
How long had it been?
The sun had been high when they each slumped against their respective trees for a quick nap, tummies full from a big lunch, and bodies drained from a hard morning of apple bucking…
She must have been asleep… she counted out on her hooves, flicking her eyes from one to the other, maybe, two, three , four, six, hours… But it was very cool for a summer night, a thin layer of frost lay upon each blade of grass glittering like fairy dust, and there was this horrible smell.
She hadn’t noticed at first, too weary for strange dreams and then all too concerned for her new friend who despite the chill still slept soundly. But there was this smell.
A noxic musty sweetness, her stomach turned in the worst way in the notice of it.
The apples had turned and seen at a glance even the apple that the orange mare snuggled up to had gone soft, that was perhaps the best of them. The worst, the ones in the baskets, the ones nearest to each other shriveled and blackened, near dust. Apples everywhere, and none on the trees, all aged well past their prime, many sat as lumps of ancient goop on the ground.
“Buck me… buck me buck me buck me!“
The horror of the situation struck her chest like a drum, she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think.
How… How long have I been asleep!
And then she ran. Everywhere she looked seemed to be some new terror, shadows permeated the night, trees cropped up in the dark. What seemed not so long ago so full of green now bereft of leaves, emancipated from life. Long dead leaves crunched at the step of her gallop, the squalor of long bad apples squashed beneath her hooves matting the once white stockings of her fur in icky blackness and ilk.
She slowed as she came upon Ponyville proper, as the road passed from dust to cobblestone and the sound of her own hoof beats against the stone unnerved her. Better the quiet pace of a nervous trot, at the very least better to catch her breath, if not to avoid being heard by…
It unnerved her… How quiet everything was.
How could there be anything in this silence? A thought that somehow did not set her at ease.
She had never been around such silence… Not in Hyrule, not in Equestria, not as Epona nor even as Navi with her boundless knowledge had she ever known such uncanny laconism.
Indeed it was as if every object in town stood in resolute muteness, attendant to even her most restrained movement. The walls had ears.
She could hear her heartbeat, a steady but rapid thrumb, thrumb, thrumb. She could hear the very blood passing through her veins, the same pulsing throb of life.
Compared to the silence, her stifled breathing sounded like shouts, her hoof steps like thunder.
For a moment she thought she could hear her own sweat against her own face and back.
Wordlessly she steadied herself.
She imagined Link's gentle touch, his soft words of encouragement, the gentle singing of Malon, the feeling of a soft brush on her coat.
Breathe. It's ok. It's ok.
Buck me! It's not ok, in what bucked up reality would any of this be ok!
Breathe. It helps nothing to get worked up. Look around, figure out what happened, think!
Ponyville was silent, but why was it silent; on the street not a pony, not a creature stirred.
A thought struck her amongst a half-remembered dream. The mare in her dreams “I had tried to wake the others but I couldn’t-” and “The sun hasn’t come up in months”
Who were the others and…
Link!
With that single thought, every part of her was in accord, and for once everything was clear.
Again, she galloped, paying no mind to the thunder of her hooves, the echo of her clacking reflecting down the empty streets of Ponyville.
She skidded to a stop before the crystalline doors of Castle Friendship…
She heard something, beyond the cycling of her own bodily functions… no she didn’t hear… she felt it. Someone… some pony was playing her song.
Link!
He had to be ok.
Maybe the same force of chance that awakened her had also awakened her companion, she could only hope.
In a swift single motion, she pivoted bucking open the towering doors. The entry hall stood before her, walls of crystal ghostly in their translucence and beside the continued echo of her entry, near silent. It seemed to beckon to her, and she could hear it, someone was playing her song. But it was different somehow…
She felt herself drawn forward, the familiar sound a comfort, even amongst that dreadful silence. It was something she knew… but it was also alien to her… It wasn’t the sound of an Ocarina, nor was it the gentle singing of a well-known friend… No it was something else, and somehow just as comforting, just as alluring. It was her song… but it was different, deeper, richer… it was being played on… Strings?