CHAPTER 1
“Anything yet?” The question remained poised in the air, a simple interrogation into the unknown, bearing the full weight of the impending future. The three crusaders, faces bathed in the sun like the triumphant victor of a race, the rays etching the warmth of success into each tired wrinkle around the eyes. Each of the three looked at one another, childhood innocence masking a great drive akin to that of a work-pony seeing the final log to be tugged. With bated breath they each turned a wavering eye to their own flanks, which bore no fruits of their labors.
Applebloom shook her head. ‘What is with me today? Everything is so…’ she paused searching for the right word. “Beautiful”
“What?” Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo both looked at their companion with a look of utter confusion.
Not wanting to make a fool of herself, Applebloom elaborated out loud what she had been thinking. “Isn’t everything beautiful? The way the sun shines so sweetly, the way the clouds drift pleasantly through the sky, like nothing was wrong in the whole of Equestria… I dunno. It just all looks so…right.” She finished with a sigh, soaking in the beauty of a summer day.
Sweetie Belle began to address this abrupt behavior with a nervous giggle, “Uhh, Applebloom, um, well, I don’t know quite how to put this, but, well-” she cut herself of, not quite finding the right way to word her testimonial.
“What she is trying to say is that you need to get out of the sun. It’s frying your brain,” interjected Scootaloo.
Applebloom felt the heat rising rapidly to her cheeks; she began to paw at the ground to forget what her friends had just told her. Looking up, she saw Scootaloo smirking, and when Sweetie Belle let a chuckle loose into the air, the humility became unbearable. “Stop it! That’s not funny!” Yet it was too late, and her outburst seemed only to encourage the onslaught of wordless ridicule. Applebloom’s eyes began to fill with tears, and in frustration, she fled from her two friends, the once-beautiful world seeming to mock her every thought.
She stopped after a while, and, heart racing and breath ragged, she looked around, seeking solace in the quiet beauty of nature. She lay on the ground, looking at the clouds as they lazily drifted by, like flower petals in a small brook during a midsummer day. She smiled and shut her eyes, melting into the world around her, peacefully listening to the birds singing their merry tine, and the bees humming quietly as they work. She sighed and opened her eyes, to find herself staring directly into the face of Twilight, whose look of bewilderment was as plain as her presence.
“Hey there Applebloom, might I ask just what you are doing?”
“Oh, nothing really important, Twilight. I was just thinking about what a nice day it is.”
Twilight giggled at the statement. “Well it certainly is, isn’t it.” She looked around for a moment, as if expecting something to surprise her. Finally, she addressed her query to Applebloom: “Where are the rest of the crusader?”
Applebloom immediately felt the heat rising inside of her. “Well, I was telling them that we should try and help Applejack prune the orchard but Scootaloo said that that was dumb so I said ‘do yall have any better ideas’ and Sweetie Belle said that we could help Rarity do…something…but then I said that if we couldn’t help Applejack prune the trees then we could help Rarity so then Scootaloo jumped in and said that we should help Fluttershy and Sweetie Belle said yes but I said no and then we did it anyways and then mmphhffppmpfth,” with no less than Twilight’s hoof putting an end to the onslaught of language.
“Ok, ok, calm down, Applebloom!” She said breathlessly, looking as though she had just sat through a whirlwind.
Applebloom spit out the hoof, and, with an overwhelming air of humility, gulped down her panic and continued, “I’m sorry Twilight. It’s just- I was lookin’ at the sky, and it looked mighty pretty, but they just sorta made fun of me,” she sighed, searching for the right way to say what was on her mind. “They thought that I was weird.”
Twilight sat down, contemplating the situation. “Are you sure that they thought that you were weird, or is that just what it felt like?”
A blush rose to Applebloom’s cheeks as she began to explain everything that happened. She related the tale of the spring breeze, moody from never being where he wants to be, shoving aside the trees and trampling he grass in his haste. She spoke of the wonder captured in a drop of dew, of the sweet song of the setting sun, of the silent sonnet of the sparkling stars. Yet, as she spoke of these mysteries to her friend, she felt a taint upon the natural beauty of the world. It took her but a moment before she realized just what she felt- It was the curse of her untrained speech! Every sweet syllable in her head came out twisted and putrefied with the stench of inexperience. Then, Twilight confirmed this dreadful thought with a single mortifying syllable, “What?”
Applebloom was caught in a vortex- this beauty that had began to impregnate her mind with wonderful visions was stuck inside of her! The world would never understand her- she was an outcast-an outrage-a-“STOOOOPPP ITTTTTTT!!!!”
Twilight’s command echoed off of the mountains. Applebloom blinked the tears out of her eyes. She looked at Twilight, who was holding Applebloom’s head with her hooves, with the fear in her eyes almost tangible. “I think that you should go get some rest, this much sun can’t be good for you!”
Applebloom nodded absentmindedly, recalling the words of her friends. ‘They all must think that I’m crazy,’ she thought. Then, a daunting notion slunk into her head. ‘What if I am?’
Distraught from the events of the day, Applebloom decided to seek advice from her sister concerning her rapidly crumbling reality. She solemnly strode along the familiar, well-beaten path until finally she reached her home. There she found Applejack returning from the orchard. “Hey sis- could you wait up? I need to ask you about something!”
Applejack turned and smiled to her. “Now, well what would that be?” Upon seeing the state of her unkempt mane and dirty hooves, she followed up, “uh-don’t tell me that you’re looking fer some fashion advice. You know full well that I’m not the best for that.”
Applebloom looked down on her appearance and laughed nervously. “Not quite, big sis. I was wondering if you could tell me some other advice though…” she looked sheepishly up at her elder sibling, and pawed the ground with her front hoof, as if she could dig the question out of the ground like the bulb of a flower that was no longer needed in a garden. She stopped slowly, looking back at her sister, still unsure how to begin.
Applejack, eyes now filled with concern like buckets under a leaky roof filled with murky rain water, the turbidity of the fluid only adding onto the mystery of where the exact location the substance came from, realized the predicament her sister found herself in, and decided to try and bring her help. “Is it your friends?”
“Sorta, I guess. Well, no, not really.”
“Is it some colt?” she said with palpable disdain.
“Ewwwww, no!”
“Is it-”
“It’s me, ok?” angrily stated Applebloom, frustrated by the way the conversation had turned. “I…I…” she struggled violently against the binds that held her world inside. “I can’t talk right!”
Applejack looked quizzically at her little sister. “Whaddya mean, Applebloom?”
Applebloom drew in another large breath, attempting yet again to relate the plague which had decided to occupy her mind. “You see, ever since yesterday, or maybe a bit before that, I’m not really sure, I just started looking at the sky and how…blue…it is and how…bright…the sun is, and how the trees are so…leafy…and the grass is so…green…but…but…I just can’t…” she began to hyperventilate with frustration. “I just can’t say it right!”
Applejack, now wearing the furrowed brow of somepony who was attempting to decipher a complex code, began to reply slowly after a moment of thought. “It sounds like you can talk fine to me. Maybe you might just want to get outta the sun, or something.”
Applebloom had finally had enough of this torture. “CAN’T YOU PONIES THINK OF ANYTHING NEW? AND I DON’T NEED TO GET OUT OF THE SUN! I NEED TO GET AWAY FROM YOU!” She ran crying away from her sister, from Twilight, from her friends, from the world that would and could never understand her.