//------------------------------//
// In the Before 
// Story: Timed Ramblings 
// by Midnight herald 
//------------------------------//

 	“You brushed your teeth and your homework’s all packed up? Yeah, that deserves a story alright. What d’ya want to hear? You want a story about Apple Bloom? Yep, I reckon I got one of them hanging around for ya. Alright, here’s how it goes...”

One day, Apple Bloom was going into the Everfree forest to visit her friend Zecora. Yeah, that’s right. The zebra. So anyhow, she’s going along the path, all alone, when she hears this awful din. There was somethin’ caterwauling and wailing to wake the dead. She goes off the trail and follows the sound, and what does she find but little baby manticore, all caught up in a thornbush.

“Is this story true, mama?”
“‘Course it is, sweetpea. I’m telling it, right?”
“But you said she met a manticore. There aren’t any manticores that aren’t in zoos.”
“Remember, this is from back in the before, when we still had the Everfree. Manticores ran free back then.”

Now, manticores didn’t have the best reputation, since they tended to try and eat ponies on seeing ‘em. But the thing that was great about your Auntie Apple Bloom was that she looked, she listened, and she made her own judgements on what she saw and heard. And she took one look at that manticore, and she didn’t see no monster. She saw a lil’ bitty baby, lost and hungry and hurt. So she calmed it down and worked it outta that bush, slow and steady-like. And she decided right then and there that she was gonna raise it.

So she comes back to the old home place, ‘bout two hours late for dinner. I had already decided she was getting a talking to, with her crazy ways, when she walks right on in, scratched up from branches and thorns, with her new pet on a piece of rope. I just about lost it at that, lemme tell ya. She talked me down and explained her crazy scheme to me, and I eventually saw some reason. I went and talked to Fluttershy about giving her help with it, but your Auntie was dead set on taking care of that little fella on her own. She spent three hours a day working with him on obedience, and by the end of the third month, we had one heck of a guard-animal. And he was loyal to her, too. Woulda followed her to the end of the earth. He was her closest companion for nigh on two years, all because she stopped to help ‘im out in the first place. That’s the way things went in the before. Now you should be getting to sleep, sweetheart.”

“Why don’t you tell any Apple Bloom stories from these days, mama?”
“I don’t have any, sugar.”
“What happened to her?”
“Why’re you asking so many questions? Have you been talking to Twilight lately? I knew I had a smart little daughter.”
“But what happened to her?”
“That’s a story for another time, sweetpea. I promise I’ll tell you when you’re older, but right now you wouldn’t understand it all. It’s a scary story, and it doesn’t have much by a happy ending. Some day I’ll let you know, but for now, I think we’ll stick to the happy ones. G’night, sugarcube. Sweet dreams.”