I ran to the library, the moon high in the sky, I thought I would need to force the entrance open, but the lights were on, and the door was opened wide. I saw Spike leaving upset for some reason but I hadn't had time to figure out why. Just when I went in through the door her feathered assistant leaved the room too through the window, and Twilight was sited in front of a book smiling awry to me, she had books scattered all over the place but she was in her best face, or so I believed.
“Twilight, Fluttershy’s animals went crazy! And we have to find why!”
“Crazy! Who’s crazy!?, I’m not crazy!!” she said in a psyched expression,
I know it was late and she seemed to need some sleep really bad, but I had to tell her everything that had happened with Fluttershy earlier and that really seemed to take a screw out of her cuz her expression just twisted a bit more, but she had a secret reserve of Sweet Apples just below the floor, with only two left but she shared one with me, and I kept going on about my weird delusions, and asking for help I told her every I knew about the Hay world, but she just told me that didn’t matter. She wasn’t even listening to me! She only asked me for some Sweet Apples for Celestia’s nightly snack. I knew that if I ever returned to that place I was going to end like Rainbow Dash. I told her everything about my broken hoof, and their Boomstick! But Twilight just told me it was all just a dream, due to anxiety of a traumatic event, or something, but I felt she was totally ignoring my problem and she was just asking for Sweet Apples! So I tried to infuse some sense into her using my hoof but she didn’t like my idea, so I heard something about she getting the apples by herself, and then a glow of her magic turned my lights off…
“Not again” I begged with mah eyes yet closed. My entire body ached, but especially my right front hoof. I had some trouble trying to stand up, so I called for help to anypony out there, but just a guttural primal sound went out from my heart.
I wasn’t feeling good by any mean, I was just trying to get a word, ask for help, or say anything at all. That was the moment when I thought it could be all a dream due to a hit on the head. Convincing myself that it was just some sort of cuckoo hallucination, I calmed down enough my voice to be able of ask for help.
Surprisingly a lot of ponies answered, I thought for a moment that I was still in Ponyville before realize about the hay under my belly.
Forcing enough my three comparatively sane legs I lifted me up. With my head above I could notice an almost, if not fully, occupied stable. I didn’t recognize most of ponies there, but I saw some faces I didn’t wanna find there.
Apple Bloom between them.
“What the hay?” I said, and that was a perfect moment for it, then it hit me. Is curious how we ponies use some words too slightly; and one of these words is hay. I was just in that very same hay place we ponies call when something strange is going on.
“So this is hay” I thought, and I didn’t like it, it was smelly and my hoof was broken.
Then they pulled the doors open, and the Sweet Apple buckets started to arrive. After breakfast some ponies were taken away while others were quietly brushed in their stalls. I was being inspected on my leg. Without a good signal from the reviewer, Dirty Pie who was mudding Apple Bloom’s coat and was teaching her to jump still in a place, was taken away.
Carrot top was there too, but she was too thin for the heavy plow, she was attached to something smaller alone, and since the rest had being taken or were being saddled they took Apple Bloom for the job.
Dirty Pinkie face was like “What the hay!?” But Apple Bloom was ready and fired up for the job, and I couldn’t see more since I was left in my stall, between the filth and hay.
But then Twilight came in to my booth .
“Twilight, you have to help me!” I cried to her.
“Well, if you tell me your problem, maybe I can do something about it” she said somehow smiling.
“You have to use your magic to help us all to return to Equestria!”
“Very good then, just let me look for… how does Muddy Pie say? My magical spike of happiness! That’s it? Well, Hufity-Hoppity-Shablabla! And you’re princess now, or a tree, or whatever you want” Said Twilight giggling.
“Twilight, I’m serious here!”
“Well, then hit your hooves together and say three times in a row “go again, go again, go again, to that dream away” and you’ll be in your magical land with flying ponies then”
“TWILIGHT, MAH HOOVES ARE BROKEN!!! They are going to be here any moment, and they are gonna bring their boomstick with them!”
“Boomstick! I’m pretty sure you know its real name, don’t you? But boomstick is a good one, I’ll have to remember”
“Twilight, what I’m going to do? If you can’t help me Ah dunno…”
“Well, you have to accept it, is normal for likes as you, it’s a natural part of your life, it was mean to happen all along. You just made it harder for yourself with, these dreams. I’m not magical, I don’t have any firing peak on my mane” She said raising her forelock, showing no horn.
“Twilight, you don’t understand? They are going to kill us all!”
“Not me! I’m an exhibition specimen; they use me to jump high, gallop funny, and learn tricks. Nothing bad is going to happen with me! You in the other hoof, you only seem to be alert to eat and work, and that’s it! Actually, I can’t really blame you for your dreams; I couldn’t stand the life in your hooves either”
“Twilight! The other world, Equestria! It’s real! You have to remember! You are my only hope in this moment!”
“Real hmm? Let’s see. Do you remember your parents?”
“Well…
“Any family?”
“I remember mah brother!”
“Oh yeah? And what’s him into? What does he like? What does he like to talk?
“He… hmm… apples? Well, he’s big and strong!”
“Oh my! No, Applejack, these are qualities you like. We’re talking about his likes”
“I remember Granny Smith”
“Well, of course you do, even I do. She was the mare Dirty Pie replaced, she was your first companion, you couldn’t forget her. Tell me; is she magical, does she fly?”
“She still alive”
“Aww, Applejack!”
“No! Little Apple Bloom is here! And she’s my sister!”
“Well, she’s going to substitute you; naturally you see her as a little you. See…? Everything is a dream!”
I fell crying in that moment, realizing that Twilight was right.
“Now I have to leave you, I have an important competition this afternoon.” these where the last words I heard from Twi.
That afternoon Pinkie was brought earlier to her stall, and I didn’t want to ask anything; she was brought alone, and she started to cry. I didn’t want to see in her way.
“I- I didn’t mean it. She, she was too small, I tried!” she said to me I guess. When I lifted my head, I saw two of them through the door, pulling out of the mud the small body of little Apple Bloom on the field.
And Pinkie never ended her crying.
Twilight came that afternoon; she was lying down on a cart, one like the one they used to carry Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash away. Her knees were wounded, practically exposed, and she seemed to be in a lot of pain, she was brought directly to my stall, and they took Pinkie away leaving no other pony in the building but us, while she was still grieving the ambiance with her far cries.
I didn’t felt like saying “I told you so”. She couldn’t hear me anyways.
The only thing worse than Hay; was to have somepony else to share it with.
They brought two Sweet Apples along, and you could bet they were the sweetest apples I had seen in mah life, one to Twilight, and the other for me.
She held hers between her hooves gleefully, she seemed to forget about her pain for an instant, and she smiled for a bite, for a chew, for a sweet moment she was never able to gobble down.
Mother sugar always loved me, when I heard to the sound I only could stand holding on my Sweet Apple.
I was wrong; the only thing worse than Hay, was to have been left alone in it.
Twilight was now in the hay the same way than Rainbow Dash, her little drops shinning. I didn’t know what to do, even if I had it was too late. Twilight never was able to gulp down her apple. I could see her first bite of it, still chewed on her exposed tongue. Her time ended on a chomp, I was too frightened of end like them, and all I could do then was vow to myself not to eat anymore apples ever again. It was the sweetest apple I had seen in mah life, no doubt of that; but I never tasted it. I held it like praying on it and giving it back. And the shoot never came, and I was left alone all again, and I started to dream again.
The morning had come, it always came. It came too late.
I felt a book fall down over my head and I woke up, I was below a pile of them in a corner of Twilight’s library. She wasn’t anywhere around, the place was a mess, but it already had been when I first came, I just didn’t mind on that before. A lot of books where piled out of the shelves and many more were sprawled open as if she had been looking for something.
Outside the sky was a perpetual nightfall, neither the sun nor the moon were moving up or down, and just a small line of dawn was burning at the distance after a well darkened night in the most part of the sky, and the moon was loosely colliding against the stars, whirling everything randomly inside and hypnotic nightly firmament.
Ponyville seemed to be empty but I didn’t dare to suppose an hour of the day, no lights where on like in the library, and many doors were open but nopony was around, buildings simply abandoned. Without anywhere else to go I went on my way to Sweet Apple Acres. Before reach the full length of the way there I noticed something hanging from the trees; they were bodies of ponies all over the field.
You could find them hanging as far you could see. in my run amid the trees I found workers from the farm and many ponies from Ponyville hung motionless there, Carrot Top, Colgate, Derpy, Berry Punch, a lot of them, and the furthest I went more recent seemed to be the bodies, at the point I found out some ponies still moving while hanged up there, and even yet hangings themselves. I tried to stop them but they were too many and most of them weren’t even reacting to me, as if they don’t care. When I heard somepony crying, it was Bon-Bon, she seemed to be the only pony with a bit of consciousness around, but she was tying a rope too, when I asked her what was going on; she just told me, she was doing that cuz Lyra did, and pointed to a tree nearby from where a lifeless Lyra was hanging on, I was so shoked that I starter to run again until ah crashed with a brown stallion, when I asked him, he told me they just wanted to be part of the apples, and he didn’t gave up on hanging himself even after I had thumped him to the ground a couple by my own, they all were mindless, and I ran away from there too, I didn’t care where, I was just running, you know; like in these dreams you run and run, but you never reach anywhere. I had to prevent more ponies hang themselves but besides the obvious and not-very-appealing solution, I couldn’t think something better while I was running senseless around.
Then I found out Apple Bloom. Hanging there with her two little friends near, from other trees, and I went frozen to the brim. The wind between the trees was the only sound besides the ropes tightening after the ponies falling. I should have never asked Apple Bloom to steal those seeds from Zecora. Then I heard some weeping again, it wasn’t mine, I had cried already all I had.
“I didn’t let her taste the Sweet Apples till I could create a pastry with the same flavor, when I thought I had reached the closer that I could I gave them the raw apples to compare.” Pinkie Pie said between sobs, she was stained in flour, coiled over the roots under Apple Bloom’s tree. She had been there all along but I hadn’t noticed her before.
Much to my grief I had thought only one way to prevent more ponies from hang themselves, and now I didn’t have any more time if this was going to be an option.
I had to burn all the trees.
Wasn't easy, in my despair I started running silly, holding a torch from the house in my mouth, but once Ah give it a little more of time and they catched the fire, it spread pretty fast by its own.
While I was running between the trees firing the field, I could see a red line of dawn rising up against the nightly sky from the fire I had started. Other ponies didn’t even care the fire, the kept on hanging themselves, among the fire achieving or not. By then I think Pinkie was the only pony that hadn’t died hanged or in the fire. She was trying to turn off the flames with a water cube from Only-Pinkie-knows-where; I knew she couldn't do it alone, so I let her be. Meanwhile I was setting more fire, but then she tried to stop me, she wanted to save the Sweet Apple trees and I couldn’t let that happen, we ended facing each other and I didn’t want to harm her, but in that moment I recalled how surprisingly strong was Dirty Pie, and the true is this Pinkie wasn’t weak or slow either; but then you came around to give me a hoof; and I’m still mad at you for that. She was my friend and you shouldn’t intervene! That’s when I told you to leave and keep on burning the trees, and well, While Pinkie and I were fighting, she was crying, she didn’t really want to hurt me I guess, but she had to, she had to stop me from burning the trees. Now I think she possibly knew what’s going to happen if I accomplished, but she didn’t have time to prevent me, but I had never saw her that crazy before. At the end I had to kill Pinkie Pie with my own hooves, I found her crying, and she died crying, in a puddle of mud from her own bucket and tears.