//------------------------------//
// Chapter 4 
// Story: Why the Sun Does Shine 
// by Avabrony 
//------------------------------//

CHAPTER 4
“But my hoof itches!” Applebloom was adamant that the cast was hurting more than it helped, and was pulling all the stops in order to get out of wearing it.
“That doesn’t matter; the doctor says you have some healing up to do, and I am not about to let you get into any more trouble.” Applejack was even more adamant about the wellbeing of her physically and emotionally harmed sister. “Just, take it easy. Please. I don’t want to see you hurt like that again.” Applejack’s eyes were deep pools of sorrow, and Applebloom could tell that as upset as she was, her older sister had almost lost her absolute best friend.
“Can I at least go outside?” Applebloom inquired, not wanting to stretch the will of her anxious sibling any farther than it already was, but still wanting to feel that same unique oneness she had felt, seemingly so long ago. 
After a moment of internal deliberation, the elder gave into the younger’s proposition, and Applebloom happily hobbled out of the house. “Just don’t go too far, ok?” Came the worried voice from the front door.
“Ok!” Was the response, but the words came on a twisted misgiving. ‘It’s not like I’ll go to Canterlot…’
Applebloom looked around her as she hobbled into the woods. Everything had been decimated; the Brotherhood was long dead, the Symphony had finished its final coda. She blinked a tear away, forcing herself to look at the destruction. Here was a tree, once covered in moss, vines, and leaves, a safe haven for travelling animals, but now it was nothing but charcoal and soot. There was a patch that once held a trickling brook surrounded by cattails, singing with the croaking of frogs. It too, was dead, the watery path cutting a wet streak through the grey ash all that was left of the once serene scene. After coming across many such images, Applebloom finally reached the place she had some to see. The sun was beating down fiercely, no longer hindered by the green extensions on the branches of the Wood; the silence pounded on her eardrums like a funeral drum, beating away in solemnity for the lost souls. She brushed away the layer of soot on the ground, and dug at the hard earth, once teeming with life. A single drop fell and wet the dead ground, an homage to the bliss that had been taken from her all too quickly.
As another drop fell, she began to speak, not to anypony, but to this lusterless patch of scorched dirt. “I…I don’t know where to begin. I know I wasn’t here much, but I really appreciate what you did do for me. It was nice coming here those times, and taking it all in-If I could go back, in time that is, I would have come here much earlier.” A shudder ran through her body. “I once thought that there would be nopony who could understand me, but…but you-you were waiting here for me when I needed you.” She began to cry again. “I’m sitting here, talking to dirt-DIRT-because it is the only thing in the world that understands me!” Her tears were staining the ground now. “My whole life, I was trying to do what everypony wanted, and right when I saw how nice this place was, it got taken away!” She fell to the ground, soot and dirt staining her coat. “This was all I had left-now I have nothing! I’m not even worth dirt! The only thing I could do was run-run from Applejack, from my friends from here, and this is where I am- in the dirt in a burned clearing with a sprain and no cutie mark. I DON’T EVEN HAVE MY CUTIE MARK!” 
“So?” A voice drifted over from the sooty clearing, the rays of sun reflecting off the haze of dust tossed up from Applebloom’s laments obscuring any sort of image that the blank flank would have been able to see. “Yeah, so?” A second voice joined the first, this one closer than the original one. From the haze emerged two figures, who both sat down on their flanks and comforted the distraught Applejack. “We thought we might find you here-it wasn’t too hard to find you with all the screaming going on.” 
Applejack looked up at Sweetie Belle, whose face was streaked with tears, and Scootaloo, whose face was not free from them either. “Why are you here?”
“We-we wanted to say sorry-“
“Yeah, we felt bad for showing you our cutie marks, we shouldn’t have.”
“Mmm-hmm. And we really, just wanted to apologize for not listening to you-“
“We actually got our cutie marks helping Applejack!”
The last sentence stunned Applebloom to the core. “You-you helped her? With what?”
Sweetie belle laughed. “Pruning the trees. Like you said. It worked, see?” She stood to show off her cutie mark, but the grime from the fire had covered it up. The silly action, combined with the unexpected showing of her friends and the kind words they brought with them finally drove Applebloom over the edge-into a hysterical fit of laughter. Soon, the other Crusaders joined her, and time shook her invisible head and let the three giggle uninterrupted, and so they laughed well into the day. 
Applebloom looked up at the sky, vision blurry with tears of joy and pain, and saw the sun shining sweetly, the clouds drifting pleasantly by as if there wasn’t a problem in the whole of Equestria, and suddenly, it hit her. She jumped up with a hasty command to follow and hobbled quickly off toward the direction of the farm. Her friends, surprised by the outburst, obliged without a word, and followed her all the way to the Cutie Mark Crusaders clubhouse. They entered, and Sweetie Belle let out a screech of surprise.