//------------------------------// // While Distance Pulls Us Apart // Story: And I Will Love You... // by Scootareader //------------------------------// Years. Has it really been years since I first spotted him? Little has changed. I grow increasingly more fervent every time I sleep, hoping against hope that I will see him again. I have the recurring dream where I travel across the desert and find the pony town, then I see the orchard he is in. Yet, try as I might, I can never see him amongst all those trees. He has to exist... I just don’t know where. What if I knew where he existed? Would I be able to find him? To travel to him? Of course not. I am trapped. I’ve no legs to carry me, no muscles to inch myself along the ground with. What could he possibly hope to see in me, anyway? Yet, I know there is something. I have felt it just as surely as I now feel my body of stone. There is a tree out there, and he is calling for me. Fantasy is all I have, isn’t it? It’s where I find myself escaping even now. The world of life all around me is dull and boring, much like I feel I am. Who wouldn’t want to get away from my waking nightmare? Yet, my dreams seem no less torturous at times. Should I not be allowed to see the one whom I want most in my dreams? This dream is no different from all the others before it. I am very familiar with this patch of earth, with the locations of these plants. I see them every single day. I turn around in the desert, but... something is different. I am at the foot of a tree trunk where there has never been a tree. His leaves are a vibrant green, his lovely fruit a most striking red. I am in love. Is this what love feels like? Words whisper through my thoughts, as if he is talking to me. “I will be there soon.” Then, he disappears and I am left floating on a cloud of pure ecstasy. I touched him. I really touched him. My root slowly digs its way through compact and hardened earth, weaving its way around small stones and disturbing the ever-curious tiny bugs which inspect and promptly ignore the newcomer to their homes. I know where I’m going. I just know. I can feel his presence. Many times, I have had the same dream that takes me from Sweet Apple Acres and into the nearby forest. I watched Oakington’s leaves shudder one final time as he succumbed to the tiny fractures which had accumulated inside him after so many years, their imperfect stitching slowly trickling away what small amount of health he had left. I watched my saplinghood crush entwine with Leaflow, who I once considered a friend—and I couldn’t have asked for a better tree to make her happy. I watched Rustle go through three seasons of drought and continued ignorance from the Apple family (due to producing bad apples last season) as he nearly died of thirst, but managed to hold out until the rains finally came and ended his tragic ordeal. Yet, I do not wish to return to Sweet Apple Acres—I wish to go further, to find the one who captivates me and makes me feel things I never once believed I would feel for another. I know I will reach him. I just have to keep... digging. I don’t know when I lost myself to my dreams again, but they have taken me by surprise tonight. I realize nothing initially. My dreams usually take me far from Appleloosa, yet tonight I remain here. The only time in my entire life that I have been able to go where I want and do as I please is being marred by my caging even in the world of imagination. Eventually, I realize that I am dreaming. There is a shape resting against my trunk and no explanation as to how it came to be there, so I know I am imagining its existence. Anything to pull me out of my humdrum world is a wonderful break of monotony. Wait. What is resting against my trunk? I shift my focus downward, and the world stands still. I know it is him, and yet, the world is pulling away from me. I have to say it, before it’s too late. Say what? That I love him? That I need to feel him, to know he is everything I have ever wanted? I can’t. Not yet. I need to tell him myself, when he is truly beside me. I feel a shudder in my real body. I am out of time. I have to say something. I will reassure him. “I will be there soon.” My mind snaps back to reality. I am in a dark orchard, surrounded by trees who care nothing for their fellow tree. I will be with him soon enough. He will forever be worth it.