Their tails intertwined to create a color scheme not unlike the sky as painted by the setting sun and cirrus clouds; a beautiful mixture of pink and gold that just seemed to work in harmony amongst each other. Such a combination of color fits surprisingly well with the vibrant colors of the gradually turning leaves in the cool autumn air. Pony and nature seemed to play in elegant harmony today. Applejack hadn’t planned this day out, and had only managed to read half of the book she had taken from Twilight’s library before deciding to do this. It was odd how something so unrelated to the book came to her mind, but then she realized it was something she would need to do eventually.
Fluttershy had no idea what Applejack had in mind when she told her there were some important ponies she needed to meet. The cryptic message left her speculating endlessly. Although that was mostly about whom the ponies were, she was even more interested to know which ponies she hadn’t seen in town that Applejack could be so concerned about.
The turn into the cemetery caused her mind to go blank; suddenly nothing she could have possibly thought of would have made any sense. She trusted Applejack completely, so her resolve to follow her marefriend hadn’t wavered in the slightest. It didn’t really matter where they were going, somehow she felt safe as long as she was with Applejack.
Applejack took a deep breath, holding it in for a moment before exhaling once again. She was uncomfortable; she hadn’t shared this secret with any of her friends. She talked about it with her brother or grandmother whenever she felt the need. Today, she was going to share it with somepony outside of the family for the first time in her life. She was absolutely terrified. Suddenly, as if by some previously unrecognized mental link, a wing embraced her trembling form very gently. A wave of calm rushed through her body, bringing her tremors under control and stabilizing her troubled breathing.
“What’s wrong?” asked Fluttershy, but her voice wasn’t filled with concern so much as love and compassion.
“Ah… Ah I just ain’t told nopony this before… tha’s all,” she said, although there was a very distinct edge of uncertainty in her admission.
Fluttershy simply nodded, and decided against pushing it. This, of course, came to her quite naturally.
In only moments they arrived at a headstone, it was large pale marble that showed very few signs of age. It was simple, even the engraving was very basic. Fluttershy supposed the family that paid for this wasn’t particularly well off.
Applejack inhaled deeply, trying to calm herself down again. She was still under Fluttershy’s wing, but there was no avoiding the shaking as she was this close to her parents’ grave.
“Ma… Pa… I’d like ta introduce ya to somepony special…,” she began.
Fluttershy’s eyes widened as she heard that, and suddenly things began falling into place from throughout their lives. She brought back focus by thinking about Applejack here and now, and remained silent as she continued to speak.
“Her name is Fluttershy… and ah love her,” she said, as though she were admitting something incredibly difficult.
“Applejack…,” Fluttershy said softly, barely a whisper with her sweet voice shining through, “I love you too.”
She turned her gaze to the headstone, and smiled warmly as she began to speak again, “Mister and Missus Apple… I’m so pleased to meet you both. Applejack hasn’t told me much about you, but that’s alright. I think I’ll enjoy getting to know about you.”
Applejack’s eyes widened in surprise at Fluttershy’s reaction, it was so unlike anything she had imagined that she could scarcely believe her own ears were telling her the truth. All at once she felt her every muscle relax and her breathing pace more comfortably. Most of all, she felt indescribable relief at finally telling the truth about her parents to one of her friends. No, to her marefriend.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t get a chance to meet you in life. I want you to know that your daughter is one of the most amazing ponies I know. She’s a very hard worker, a really wonderful friend, always honest, and… well… sometimes she’s a bit too hard on herself,” she finished, with a soft giggle.
Applejack sat there, vocal chords in sudden paralysis as her face was overcome by a furious blush. She couldn’t find any words to speak even if she could remember how to use her mouth at that moment. Fluttershy simply nuzzled her gently as she moved closer; closing what little gap there had been between the two of them. Once she got closer, she delicately kissed each freckle on Applejack’s right cheek.
• • •
She felt her heart pounding in her chest as sweat dripped eagerly down on her orange coat. She brushed her purple mane out of her eyes as she peaked around the large headstone she had hidden behind. She had never known about this part of the Apple family, but then Apple Bloom has never spoken about her parents. It suddenly made sense to her why that was.
She settled herself down behind the headstone once more, closing her eyes and directing her face skyward as she caught her breath. She felt like she had just run a marathon, but in truth she had only just jumped with a start as she found a place to hide. She had her own secret to protect, but she had no idea that she wasn’t alone in it. Perhaps then it wouldn’t be so hard to tell her friends?
• • •
Dust was thrown into the air as her hooves rushed down the path. She was exhausted, her lungs were burning and her mouth was dry, but she was not going to give up. She trained like this every year since the first ‘Running of the Leaves’ she participated in. A race she would never forget, against a mare she couldn’t get her mind off of. Now, of course, it was a friendly competition between her and Applejack, but that didn’t mean she was comfortable with losing. So she found herself here, always at the same time of year, training to win the race. She continued her gallop down the path leading towards the Everfree, stopping just at the very edge and turning around to continue her gallop in the opposite direction.
She had another reason for her love of this particular race. It gave her a good excuse to be close to Applejack. It meant more to her than she cared to let on that she get to spend time with Applejack, even if she were spending that time hay bent on winning. She still didn’t know how to say what she wanted to say to her friend, but she knew she would figure that out all the same. Right now, the priority was her training. She was going to beat Applejack this year, she was absolutely determined.
As she continued her gallop down the path, Fluttershy’s cottage came into view. She never did understand how Fluttershy could stand to live so close to the ground, but she gave up questioning it long ago. She noticed Fluttershy strolling along the path leading to her front door, and just as quickly noticed that she wasn’t alone. Rainbow snickered to herself, thinking that Fluttershy was secretly bringing home a date and couldn’t wait for the scandalous reveal. She stopped in her tracks when she saw the familiar golden tale and the trademark Stetson. She suddenly felt her insides twist in an agonizing way as she fought to rationalize what she was seeing. The problem was she noticed that golden tale intertwined with the soft pink tale of her oldest friend.
It was no good; she couldn’t rationalize it into anything that didn’t mean it was too late. She turned and began galloping back towards the Everfree before flaring her wings and taking off into the air. For all the good flying normally did, today it was failing her when she needed it most. The wind pushing through her polychromatic mane didn’t bring the usual thrill. The view of Ponyville from her altitude meant nothing to her right now. She couldn’t see past her own broken heart, and she needed to talk to anypony who would listen.
• • •
A gentle creaking sounded as the door to Fluttershy’s cottage swung open slowly and the two ponies trotted in. Their walk back was spent in silence which Fluttershy did nothing to change. She knew she would talk to Applejack when they returned to her home, and so allowed her marefriend to grieve quietly.
Now, however, it was time to speak. She had questions to ask, and more importantly, Applejack shouldn’t have to go through this alone. She didn’t have to be alone any longer, and Fluttershy only wanted her to know that.
“Why didn’t you ever tell any of us…?” she asked, her timid voice full of a distinct loving firmness that would have surprised Applejack any other time. Right now, it made perfect sense to her.
“I… I didn’t know how. It’s a sad thing, and… well y’all’er my friends, how could I bring ya down with that?”
“Bring us down? Oh Jackie… How can you worry about us so when you have pain like that?” Fluttershy asked, utterly astounded at Applejack’s selfless attitude, yet still somewhat agitated by it.
“I just didn’t wanna hurt y’all.”
Fluttery gently nuzzled Applejack, her voice softening from its previous firmness as she continued.
“I am only hurt that you have been going through this alone for so long… Please… Talk to me?”
“Well…” said Applejack, sighing and sitting on her haunches while collecting her thoughts, “I was real young when I lost ‘em. Bit too young to recall ‘em too good. Big Mac can remember ‘em better, actually.”
Fluttershy listened carefully, absorbing each and every word, however extraneous it might have sounded. To her, every word out of that mare’s mouth was the most important word yet spoken.
She sniffed at the air, attempting to stifle oncoming tears. “I wish I had got to know ‘em better though… Granny Smith made mama sound like a real tough gal… and Pa… like about him workin’ the farm… Granny says Big Mac got his size from ‘im… but I never got to know ‘em. I wanna know where I get mah work ethic from… I wanna remember learnin’ ta buck apples from my pa… I can’t remember her eyes… it hurts Fluttershy… they’re my parents… and they’re strangers ta me!”
Fluttershy took a steadying breath, before wrapping a wing around Applejack again and snuggling up to her.
“How many stories has Granny Smith told you about them?” she asked.
“Lots, don’t reckon I could count ‘em all.”
“How can they be strangers after countless stories from Granny Smith? I know that isn’t the same as growing up with them, and I’m so sorry you didn’t get to… but you still get to know about them, right?”
Applejack sniffled, and then buried her face in Fluttershy’s shoulder, crying into her mane.
“It’s okay… I’ve got you…,” she said in a soft voice, her own eyes a shimmering picture of sorrow. She hurt for her mare, for her sorrow, for what she didn’t get to experience. She quietly thanked Celestia internally for her own parents, promising herself to visit them again soon.
• • •
A telltale buzzing filled the air as she approached the clubhouse at half her usual speed. She still had to admire the quality of Apple Bloom’s hoof work on the place, because she could distinctly remember the words ‘totally lost cause’ passing her own lips. Every time she saw the clubhouse since then, she had to admit how wrong she was about that. She had hoped the thoughts of that day might be enough to distract her from what was really on her mind. She had spent a lot of nights in that very clubhouse, sleeping under the cape that Sweetie Belle made while trying to get comfortable on the hard wooden floor. Other nights, colder ones, demanded better shelter and more protection, and she’d often have to leave the clubhouse behind as she searched.
By Celestia’s grace she survived this long on stolen foods and discarded boxes. All of these thoughts drove her to wondering why she didn’t tell her friends anything. What was the benefit of keeping this to herself? She couldn’t rightly identify any benefit amidst the thoughts of her daily struggles to survive.
As she approached the ramp she dismounted her scooter and set it leaning against one of the stilts adjacent, and hung her helmet on the handle bars. She closed her eyes and prepared herself for whatever was going to happen. She hoped they would understand, and help keep her secret safe from the grown-ups. She feared that they would to want help her more than she liked, and she would find herself with a new family that felt entirely wrong, or worse than that, far from Ponyville.
She found herself focusing entirely too much on the rhythm of her breathing, and had to force herself to take the first step towards the ramp. She could recall only one other time in her young life that she ever felt so scared and so unsure of what lie ahead of her.
She felt her legs buckle, and finally give out under the weight of her thoughts. She fell to the ground, and tears slipped from her violet eyes as she was drawn back into the worst day of her life.
• • •
She awoke with a start as her mother gently shook her and explained that she needed to wake up and go with her to the hospital. She took a deep breath and pushed herself out of bed. She hated to think of her father in the hospital, alone in that cold unfriendly room with a bunch of machines constantly beeping in his ear. She would have liked to stay with him so he wasn’t so alone, but the doctors at the hospital told her it was probably not a good idea.
“Come on, dear, there isn’t much time left,” she said gently, failing to hide the grief in her voice from her daughter, “visiting hours don’t last forever you know.”
She heard it there, the truth behind the false comfort. She hated it, what she could feel from her mother was such unbearable sadness that she felt compelled to cry for her. She gathered herself, trying to keep her tears in control as she moved alongside her mother to the front door of their cloud home. A chariot awaited them outside, ready for the trip to the hospital. It was her mother’s preference to use chariots, she felt so uncomfortable flying ever since her husband’s accident that she scarcely managed it on her own any longer.
As they stepped into the chariot, the Pegasus stallion in front greeted them with a cold professional tone. He wasn’t invested in them at all; she had no way of conveying the pain she and her mother were in, or the sorrowful situation that awaited them at the hospital. She would have liked to scream it into his ear, to make him understand, to keep him from acting distant at a time they couldn’t handle such attitudes.
She did none of those things, unable to open her mouth for any of it. She found herself numbed to paralysis with everything that had happened in the weeks prior. The thought of that storm, the fall, and the message all came into painful clarity at the same time. She was glad to know that he had survived, but the doctor could never give her mother a straight answer as to when he might wake up. She felt that must be the worst part of it, the total uncertainty. She knew that she would have given anything for an answer.
The chariot lurched forward as the Pegasus stallion stepped forward and flared out his wings. Soon they were moving through the air at a brisk pace. Scootaloo always liked the feeling of moving through the air and the amazing view of the land far below as it moved slowly with the pace of the chariot. She closed her eyes and tried to forget about their destination.
Without warning, there was a sudden harsh movement from the chariot. She felt herself topple over in the chariot, and a hoof reach down to correct her shortly thereafter. Suddenly, another fierce gust of wind forced the chariot to tilt awkwardly on its side. Scootaloo felt herself becoming dizzy from the unsettling motion and closed her eyes. As she did, the wind kicked up again and forced the chariot into a tight spiral.
Scootaloo’s mother had lost her grip and felt herself moving away from the chariot in its spin. She felt a sudden sharp pain in her wing as the chariot collided with her side with unpleasant force, the same impact pushed her out of the chariot completely and sent her hurtling towards the earth far below. Scootaloo felt her vision dimming as nausea began to set in, so she didn’t notice when she felt like she was floating through the air rather than sitting in a chariot.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
She found herself irritated at the beeping noise before she opened her eyes. It was slow and difficult work to bring them into focus. She carried her gaze across the darkened room, taking in the various lights and sounds as she registered the room she was in. She had barely registered her own position in the room before she saw her father lying on his bed. She was curled up on a couch on the side of the room, near a window. She had no idea how she had gotten there, and scanned the room to see if she could spot her mother. She found no sign of her mother at all, and decided she must have gone to retrieve some food or use the restroom.
She tried in vain to stifle a yawn and decided to move from the couch she was on to her father’s side on the bed. She trotted across the floor, jumped onto the bed as carefully as she could manage, then snuggled up against him and closed her eyes.
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.
A long piercing beep shattered her sleep hours later, and as she opened her eyes she saw nurses and doctors rushing around the bed. She was ushered out of the room by one of the nurses before she had a chance to ask any questions or fully assess the gravity of the situation she had woken into.
After what felt like a thousand numb hours in the hallway, a nurse trotted out and looked down at her with a mixture of pity and sympathy that Scootaloo couldn’t read as anything but negative and somehow condescending. It disgusted her.
“Dear, do you have any family you can stay with?” she asked gently
The question rang in her ears for seconds, but it grew to such intensity in such short time that she felt like the walls were screaming at her in mockery of her situation. She was young, but not stupid, she knew what that question meant and she hated that nurse in that instant for trying to hide the truth behind a question like that.
She felt herself moving before she knew what was happening, coming into focus after she passed through the hospital doors and darted down the street. She had to get home; she had to find it before she left. She couldn’t stay there any longer, she couldn’t let them take her away.
• • •
“Scoot?” said a familiar southern voice as a hoof gently rested on her shoulder, “Are ya alright?”
Scootaloo looked up at Apple Bloom, and sniffled, and picked herself up off the ground.
“No,” she answered, “and we need to talk.”
Together they entered the clubhouse where Sweetie Belle was waiting, and through a lot of tears and a lot of patience, she managed to tell them about the day she lost both of her parents.
“After the nurse asked me… if… if I had any family to stay with… well I ran… I found my way back home, where I found Mom’s gift to me… she was going to move us down to the earth after Dad got better… and she wanted me to have a way to get around that stilled exercised my wings…,” she said sadly, “so I took it and just… ran…”
She felt a pair of forelegs wrap around her and hold her tight as her tears broke free of their orb prisons once again. She had no way of knowing what was to happen from there, but in that moment she felt safer than she had in a very long time.
“So, why didn’t you tell us before…?” asked Sweetie Belle.
Scootaloo couldn’t answer right away, and Apple Bloom just held her tight as she soaked her mane in fresh tears. Altogether, ten more minutes went by before Scootaloo was able to speak again.
“I… I was afraid…,” she began, “that if I told you, that you might tell the grown-ups, and I would be taken somewhere away from Ponyville,” she pushed through sob, “away from my best friends.”
Sweetie Belle blinked back tears as she rushed towards her two friends and joined their hug.
“No, we don’t want you to leave Ponyville either!”
“Ah’m sure mah sis can’ think’a somethin’,” offered Apple Bloom
“NO!” cried Scootaloo, taken aback at her own volume, “I mean… No, please.”
“Why not?” asked Sweetie Belle
“I don’t know what the grown-ups will do, okay? I don’t trust them.”
“But mah sis-“
“Please Apple Bloom; I don’t want to tell them, okay?” Scootaloo interrupted, “I mean, not yet, at least.”
“Well, Awright,” replied Apple Bloom
• • •
The cool air of the autumn evening made no effort to penetrate the library whilst the crackling fire protected it. The entire scene was quiet, with two ponies sat comfortably near the fire and engaged in their own books and in idle conversation of no particular significance to either. It was a lovely evening, and it was very much helping Rarity to relax after a night of tending to the Cutie Mark Crusaders and dealing with her own swirling thoughts.
The peace of the library was shattered by the chiming of the bells at the door and the eruption of cyan and rainbow colors that seemed to highlight the fluster in her speech as they whipped around.
“Twilight!”
She had already looked up from her book and focused on Rainbow Dash before she had even addressed her by name. She appeared to be mildly irritated, but was mixing that with concern and care to the best of her ability.
“Yes, Rainbow?” she replied
“How long have AJ and Fluttershy been going out!?” she cried. It almost sounded accusatory, but Twilight reasoned that she could not possibly be blamed for it and decided against holding Rainbow Dash to that initial conclusion.
“I’m sorry?”
Rainbow Dash took a deep breath and landed on the floor of the library with a resounding clack.
“Twi, How long have AJ and Fluttershy been together?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, offering a guess, “a few weeks?”
Rainbow Dash sat on her haunches while she processed the guesswork.
“I’ve been too late for…,” her voice trailed off.
“Rainbow, are you alright?” Twilight asked
“No… Yes…,” she didn’t seem sure how she wanted to respond, “…no”
“What’s wrong?” she asked
“I’m too late… I didn’t tell her how I feel…”
“What?”
Rainbow brought herself back to her hooves and trotted over to Twilight, throwing her forelegs around her friend’s neck and burying her face into her friend’s mane. “I didn’t tell Applejack how I feel… I waited too long… and I let her get away…,” she muffled through her tears and Twilight’s mane.
Rarity’s breathing had seized up at the very first mention of Rainbow not having told somepony something about feelings, and was just now reassembling her composure. It felt very odd to hear this, and what it did to her was beyond explanation. She had felt her stomach twist into a knot and her lungs collapse in on themselves, daring her to try and breathe ever again. She felt her eyes burn, but no tears would come. All at once, she felt her limbs return to feeling and decided to use them to the best of her ability while she still felt able. She moved quickly to the door of the library, which still stood open after Rainbow burst in. It was not difficult for her to sneak out with that being the case, not having to worry about the chimes as she rushed out the door and through town.
“I’m sorry Rainbow… I didn’t know she was so important to you.”