//------------------------------//
// Branches 
// Story: The Applejack Zone - A Pony In Hay 
// by TrollestiaSubject 
//------------------------------//

Even mah family and friends were beginning to be distant with me. Rarity was the only pony that invited me to her place after that and probly just to dress me up with black veils and to carry her Sweet Apples from the farm, Twilight had enclosed herself more than ever with her books or so we hoped, and writing a lot of her letters to Celestia, and Pinkie was almost the same; obsessively trying to create a pastry with the original flavor of the Sweet Apple and failing. And Fluttershy, well, she could be next to you and you could only notice when she eeped cuz she thought you saw at her, but frankly she has always been busy with her animals, and then, it sounded like the best excuse to keep her distance from me. I tried to talk about this situation with Rarity, I told her about my brother more silent than ever b’coz he was always busy trying with normal apples, he being the only pony involved with them anymore since they weren’t business anymore, and Apple Bloom, well, she was with her friends most of time, in fact Rarity hadn’t talked too often with Sweetie Belle either, and she tried to comfort me using fancy words to say that everypony was a spineless pile of shame; we all were Rainbow Dash’s friends, and nopony saw that coming, and right then we weren’t in disposition to face each other shames and guilts. And you know what, she was right! Rainbow Dash was always a loyal friend, and all the blame for what she did was… mine.


Rarity’s face didn’t show a lot of confidence in my last statement the first time I said it, but I had to be honest and accept that what Dash did was all my entire fault. That or maybe Rarity was just a little tiny bitie fatty, and her thoughtful cheeks seemed like her doubtful face.

I was being pretty honest with myself in that moment, and Rarity didn’t want to admit that she had enclosed herself below her cloths and jewels. And she was positively overweight, since Rainbow’s death she was depressed, and I had been going very often with apples to visit her, so I tried to pull her out of Carousel Boutique, and take away the apples from her, or at least make her pay for them. But she wasn’t ready yet, for any, and my head was already a mess, so she became angry with me, like a trodden rattlesnake in a cold day, and pushed me with the raw strength of her swinging flank to a corner with ponyquins stacked.

And now I wish that would had been the last time I saw Rarity.


Next morning I woke up with my face between the hay and the mud.
It was cold, and it felt so real.
My tears were real too.
Was this the dream?

A strand of colorful hair was between the hay.

I pushed my legs down trying to escape of the sight but I hardly did half way up.
The strand stood there, I had to try twice.

“Silly filly, you’re still dreaming that you’re the princess of your own farm”. Dirty Pinkie said springing merrily. Somehow this Pinkie seemed to be more bouncy than the pony at Sugarcube Corner.
“I positively agree with Pinkie in this. Look at you Applejack, you should do something for yourself” a ladylike voice said from a corner, No doubt whose pony was it.

And I don’t remember if I said “You’re gonna die, you’re all gonna die!” or if I just thought so. I was just expecting to the thing with the boomstick to go in to open my head like Dash’s.

But then when I saw to Rarity’s stall I found out more of her of what I had thought.
She was comfy lying over her hooves in pigpen at a corner near the entrance; the very same dirty hay in the ground, and no privacity at all. And she was definitely not a unicorn; still a pony but she looked more like a piggy.

This Rarity was surely a bit more fatty than a bit, this Rarity was like three bits fattier.
“What the hay is up with you!!?” I said. I’m sure I said it; I couldn’t just have thought it, even if I had tried.
“Well, how impolite from you, not everypony here is a pulling beast. I’m going to my contest, and I’m surely gonna win”
“Well I hope they qualify your… extra you.”  I said, and lifting her nose, maybe ‘cuz that was her only part she could lift, she turned her face away from me after a slight hum that made me happy before my deafening goodbye.

I was shaken in my hooves when the main door opened with that distinctively silhouette pulling open the door.

But he was just carrying buckets with sweet Apples along.  
Some more unknown ponies had their own share in their own stalls. 

Pinkie and I had one.
Rarity had a whole cart.
Mine looked tastier.
Rarity acted like if hers were better.

Then they took us all to work.
Pinkie and I had to tow.
Rarity had more Apples to finish.

That day we worked like real mules pulling stones and trunk out of the field.

And the sun wasn’t doing it any easier.

Neither the whip.


When they took a break they leaved us there leashed.

“Pinkie, I can’t stand it anymore”. I said falling over my hooves.
“Well, you need to warm up early every day, but you’re always… dreaming, with family, and sales” Dirty Pie said in a sarcastic tone that didn’t fill my ears with please, I actually was surprised she wasn’t saying anything about magic or dragons, but whatever. “Well princess, let me take out my magical horn of happiness to make “you” feel right. Do you think I like this job? My legs ache each morning; do you think I’m jumping in the morning because I’m happy? I have to cover my coat in mud to protect it from the bridle. But you just oversleep and dream, and now you’re crying. You better put up your best face or you’re going to finish like ol’ Rainbow Dash.”

I’m maybe getting up one or two words there of what she said, but I’m never gonna forget the way she did, she wasn’t happy there either, but she was doing her job, and I was just whining around.


That afternoon we saw Rarity, on a road with a village below, coming back from her competition; she had a blue ribbon with her, and was trotting proudly in front of us in her way back to the stables, her funny figure and white coat imposing against the red afternoon sky. We kept working in the field, but I felt glad for her, bcoz she has always been my friend, and I felt mad to her earlier and I dunno why. In that moment I felt like everything was alright.
If Just for a moment.


Later, after the job, they took Pinkie and me to our building as always. And I saw open a building that had always have been closed when we passed in front of it before.
And I had a strong bitter smell from the inside, like something rusted, and I catched the sight of metallic things hanged from the roof; many thin sheets, hung one against each other, colliding, and making a noise like wind-bells.
I saw the back of one of these things, taking away something like a piece of white hide while something red was pouring from the table to the ground.
When Pinkie and I were in our stalls, they brought us our buckets of Sweet Apples and leaved us alone, I didn’t want to talk any more to Dirty Pinkie and she wasn’t very talkative to me either.

That night after her dinner Pinkie was bluntly slept on the filthy hay floor, but I didn’t eat that fast and now I couldn’t eat; a gross smell was misting the air, they were grilling something.

Rarity wasn’t in her stall.


That night I couldn't sleep, and something in the air told me that these things ain’t vegetarians. 



When I woke up between the ponyquins I just wanted to say Rarity I was sorry, but she wasn’t anywhere in the Carousel Boutique. And I was really gladly she when outside since… I was just glad.


I didn’t have to look for her a lot, that afternoon somepony found a body aside a tree at Sweet Apple Acres.

When I heard about it I knew it was Rarity, I'd wished to be wrong.

Self-made said the guards.


She tried to hang herself, but she was a little chubby and her body fell off from her head.

Only she could use a stylized rope to hang herself from such height.

If she wanted something spectacular, she made it.

It was spectacularly grotesque.


I threw up apples for the first time in my life that day.

I had seen pony insides before.
Once.
It was… for the sorrow, I had too much inside for mah size.