Treehouse
by Present Perfect
The rock cut into her shin, and with a cry of pain, Apple Bloom tumbled to the ground.
The rattling, clanking contents of her pack pressed into her cutie mark, causing her to groan. She squeezed her eyes shut. The last time she'd tripped over that particular rock, she'd spent the night alone in the forest. She'd crawled as far as her broken pastern would let her, then cried herself to sleep. When her brother and sister had found her the next morning, they'd banned her from venturing out alone ever again.
"I thought I done moved ya once already!"
Birds rose in a clamor from the treetops above her. Once again, she found herself hurt and alone in the Whitetail Woods.
Warm blood trickled freely from the short, jagged cut on her leg. She reached into her saddlebags for the bandage roll, a necessity ever since an encounter with a bramble patch. That time, she'd thought for certain she'd smelled a timberwolf, despite them not normally living in this forest, and desperation had driven her to chance the thorns. The thicket would definitely have saved her from a true threat, but the regrets of stinging cuts and gouges overwhelmed any congratulations she might have given herself.
"Sure seems like forever ago..."
Wrapped tightly, the bandage stanched the flow of blood. She wouldn't stay in the woods long today, so infection didn't concern her. Just one more little excursion, one final task, and she could go home to rest with everything at last in place. Breathing sharply in through her nose, she hoisted herself up, her cut leg taking weight with minimal pain. She turned to face the steep, rocky rise and the path beyond that only she knew.
The discovery of her special talent had fueled her decision to return to these woods and continue the project. She'd cut a usable but invisible trail through thick trees and pristine undergrowth. She'd moved wood plank by plank across the small lake in the forest's heart until she'd grown strong enough to fell trees on her own, and then made a rope bridge for return trips. And that didn't even include all the days and nights of relentless planning. Despite the myriad injuries and delays, despite the seemingly insurmountable enormity of this undertaking, she knew straight to the marrow of her bones she could finish it.
Even finding the right spot to build had presented a formidable challenge. She'd almost missed the tree -- an oak that, as a sapling, had witnessed Nightmare Moon's banishment -- nearly passing by an otherwise perfect spot. From the slope, she could just make out its sprawling, writhing limbs through a tangle of trees whose trunks barely matched those branches' girth. Scootaloo would have jokingly referred to this forest as a "wingbreaker". Those conversations had always ended in awkward silence.
Her friends ultimately had presented the most insurmountable of obstacles. It had become easier not to spend every moment with them as they grew and pursued their talents individually. The necessity of making excuses faded, though the guilt over her obfuscations never lessened, not when both Sweetie and Scootaloo so enjoyed describing da capo arias and death-defying stunts. She just couldn't let on in the slightest what she did on those days she vanished from everypony's radar, not until after she'd finished, no matter how long it took.
And of course, Sweetie could never know.
Rain the night previous had left the ground muddy and unstable, and the gravel slipped beneath her. Her chin reached the top of the rise before the rest of her, sending stars of pain shooting through her vision. As she struggled to her hooves for the second time that afternoon, something shifted in the satchel on her back, threatening to spill out.
"Not yet, ya don't."
She reached back with her uninjured hoof and pushed the red plastic handle underneath the canvas, its metal clattering against wood. Rolling her shoulders, she readjusted her pack until it felt stable atop her withers once again.
Scootaloo's mounting adventurousness had only added to the difficulties of maintaining secrecy, both from her as well as the others. For a time, Apple Bloom had considered giving everything up, her venture having meant something different when she had first started it. There had come kisses stolen behind the barn and nights spent in the old clubhouse, one ear perked for possible interlopers. Time and again, little voices in her head would say, "You have what you want. It's over. There's no need for this struggle and toil just to create a symbol."
And then she would tell those voices to shut up. She couldn't let so much effort and pain go to waste. Finishing would simply cement everything she had poured her heart into. It would celebrate what they had become, and would last as long if not longer.
The hill presented the most difficult part of the journey, as she no longer needed to swim. She paused at the top to catch her breath. From it, the path straightened, broken only by the trees too scrawny to lumber. The undergrowth thinned, and a ring of tree stumps heralded the mammoth, ancient oak and its lodger.
The walls she had crafted from broken, shaped boards, pilfered after a barn collapse. Paint and siding had gone a long way to both strengthen them and make them presentable, at least from the outside. Within, the crooked seams and mismatched nails spoke of her inexperience and lack of real building supplies in those early days. The piecemeal construction schedule had led to some sections weathering the elements longer than others. After her grounding, there had come a particularly nasty winter, during which the northeastern corner of the lower level had collapsed. The voices had returned, suggesting smaller, more easily accomplished projects and strangling her drive for completion nearly to the point of death.
She had bounced back by constructing the upper story, external staircase, and roof the next year, then had set about fashioning rooms. For shingles, she'd used bark from the forest. Once she'd started cutting her own trees, she had even shored up the roofing with mud and thatch. That roof now brought her the most joy to behold. The whole edifice stood sound against cold, rain and snow, but the roof especially testified to her ability to conquer any problem laid before her.
Well, almost any problem.
Her chest tightened. The finality of today's undertaking suddenly overwhelmed her. Yet despite the clanking metal and its wooden companion shifting irritably on her back, a certain excitement, a buoyancy, warred with the anxiety. Without a doubt, she was experiencing what it must feel like to stand at the cliff's edge, wings spread, before kicking off. Lightness and giddiness would couple with a sense of dread, not just a feeling, but an innate assurance of the finality of this flight, as every one before it. Dreams would rest on the certitude of muscle and feather; if those dreams were never meant to be, only gravity would remain.
She swallowed and blinked, wiping her bandage across her face. "Been comin' out here by myself for years, so why I gotta feel lonely now?" The dried blood smeared under her eye.
She shook her head and reached into her pack, retrieving the painted wooden plank for a moment. Seeing it drove the hesitation away like a candle to frost. Stirred to approach the rope ladder, she began her climb, the cut in her leg twinging.
Metal clanked dully against the planking of the deck as she finally relieved herself of her burden. That excitement, still strange and indescribable, mounted. One last task, and she would finish. What that would mean, "finished", lay outside the realms of her understanding.
Taking up the hammer she had shaped to match the one on her cutie mark, along with a mouthful of nails, she held the sign above the door and began to pound. The familiar rhythmic ache driven into her skull dissolved the lingering dread. Out here, just her, the wood and the trees, where nopony else knew where she'd gone or saw what she did, she found peace.
Four nails. She had considered using one, and stringing up twine so the placard could swing freely, but the threat of wind or animals sending it to the ground had led her to the more practical course of action. She looked at it once more, nodding with a self-satisfied smile. Then, gathering up her satchel in her mouth, she pushed the door open and entered.
Though a gas lantern sat on the small wooden end table just inside the doorway, she ignored it. She knew where to find the shutter latches in the dark and how many paces it took to get from room to room. If she closed her eyes, the location of each door and each piece of furniture revealed itself to her. She belonged to this house just as much as it belonged to her. And now, it belonged to another.
"Here you go, Scoot," she said with as much brightness as she could muster in the gloom. The dropped satchel revealed its contents: a dented, slightly rusted scooter, polished with good intentions that failed to restore its metal to newness. She unfolded it and stood it up. It listed to one side, the kickstand still holding its weight despite having rattled loose at least once in every ravine around Ponyville.
"Do ya like it?" She closed her eyes and let her head swivel. "It's got everything, even an upstairs. I been buildin' it for a long time now. I'm sorry I couldn't tell ya sooner, but I just... I had to make sure everythin' was right, or it wouldn't-a been... proper."
A soft laugh barely escaped her lips. "Kinda sound like Rarity, don't I?" She drew in a breath through her nose, steadying. "Anyway, it's yours now. Yours and mine, if you'll have it. If you'll have..."
The words stopped, and she scrubbed once again at her cheek. Those words should have come ages ago. For a few minutes, she simply breathed, looking but not seeing, thinking but not remembering.
"I'll leave you two alone now," she whispered, "so y'all can get acquainted." She backed through the door, closing it behind her, her soft touch coaxing but the tiniest click from the doorknob.
She took a long, greedy look through the trees at the view she never thought she would have a chance to leave behind. To the east, filaments of purple and orange reached up from what little of the horizon she could see through the treetops. Lightness pricked at her withers, and it took a heartbeat before she could identify the feeling. She did not, she could not, regret a moment spent in the construction of this place, but with its completion behind her, the shackles, self-made or otherwise, evaporated. It would stand here as a silent testament to her ability. Nopony would ever lay eyes on it again. She could carry that sense of accomplishment with her as she moved into the world and never returned. Ahead lay only freedom.
She turned her face to the sky and smiled, then started down the ladder. As her red mane sank below the surface of the decking, her gaze rested for a moment on the placard nailed above the door, painted orange and yellow, with its single word in large red and purple block letters.
"OURS"