Rumble had no idea that he could have ever experienced anger with the fierce intensity as he did the next day. He was awoken by the five vilest words he had ever heard until that point in his young life, combined with three other things: the fields of white and orange too bright for his still-exhausted mind to make sense of, the searing blindness of the sanity-obliterating daylight, and the sheer earliness of the hour.
“Rise ‘n shine, li’l guy!”
He would recognize Applejack’s low twang forever and a day from that point on. It was the one voice he would hold an eternal grudge for. None would be spared his unwavering revenge on that mare when he became a grown-up. He would hunt her down and make sure she was woken up early every day for the rest of her natural life. He was younger. She was older. He’d definitely outlast her. He’d be able to stalk her, wake her, obsess over his sleep-depriving revenge, and then he would laugh as she went mad with the lack of sleep. Oh, it would be glorious!
He rolled off the couch and promptly took a pratfall onto his face.
He would recognize the smell of applewood forever and a day from that point on. It was the one smell he would hold an eternal grudge for. No apple tree would be spared his unwavering revenge when he became a grown-up. He would burn them down and make sure their descendants were charred to a crisp for his entire life. He was younger. They were older, but also made of wood. He’d definitely outlast them. He’d be able to find them, light a match, obsess over his flaming-hot revenge, and then he would laugh as they went up in a firestorm of searing-hot revenge with an abundance of heat. Oh, it would be glorious!
He was vaguely aware of a haze of laughter dying away as he stretched his still half-asleep form in the morning sun. He zombie-d his way into the kitchen, becoming a lead weight on the bench as some kind of food or another was placed upon the plain wooden platform in front of him.
Huh. He smelled apples.
He began registering something beyond burning hatred towards wood and Applejack as he started consuming what apple-based slop they put in front of him. Somewhere, he registered what he was eating as a “muffin”. The scent perked him up a little, washing away his hatred like a sweet stream, every bite quickly being accepted as a due apology for her actions earlier. Halfway through his breakfast, Rumble was placated and mostly awake. He finally recognized the liquid next to him as apple juice and chugged down a gulp.
A few minutes of feeding later, his hunger satiated and exhaustion mostly shed, he finally awoke to conversation. He joined in the morning banter joyfully, discussing the future work of the day. Apparently, the elder Apples had yet to finish yesterday’s chores, so it would be Rumble and Apple Bloom again. Neither of the foals minded.
As the adults left for field work shortly after breakfast, Apple Bloom and Rumble lounged in the living room, dreaming up how they were going to take on the day. They spent an hour bouncing ideas around, sketching plans for a half-hour, before they eventually just gave up. Apple Bloom was lying with her belly to the ground, her tail swishing side to side, an annoyed look on her face. Rumble had his back to the seat of the couch, hind legs up and over the head rest, idly studying the sketch he had made of himself as a superhero. Things had been silent for a few minutes now, and both foals were considering the very real prospect of actually asking if they could help out.
“So…” Apple Bloom said.
Rumble said nothing.
She groaned. “This was a bust.”
“I don’t know… it’s nice to be able to think,” Rumble said cheerily.
“I don’t wanna think,” Apple Bloom whined. “I wanna go an’ play!”
Rumble rolled over and hopped off the couch. “So? What do you want to do?”
Apple Bloom thought for a second. She listed off a thousand activities she could be doing, including those that involved farm labour: fishing, swimming, hiking, Ponymon (she was close to collecting all 250 of them…), eating contest, drinking contest, apple-bucking, hoof-wrestling, hoofball… She was not interested in any of them. Her brain deflated, sending thoughts hissing from her ears and hope out burbling lips.
At that moment, a beautiful, wonderful thought came to her. Why had she not seen this before? It was the plainest, simplest solution she could ever think of, and she had wasted a week not thinking of it.
Apple Bloom, if you ain’t a dunce before, you sure are one now.
“Let’s go spelunking!”
Rumble nodded and smiled. He began following her up to her room, but she put a hoof to his chest and pushed him away a little.
“Let me get the stuff,” she said. “I won’t be long.”
“O-kay…”
Rumble, like the obedient gentleman he was, unquestioningly reported back to his station at the couch. He waited there as the pony upstairs began clopping around, muttering and digging into her treasure. He heard her shuffling and touching things, dirtying her hooves with well-placed strokes and circular motions. Some moaning and groaning would have completed the picture forced upon him by his siblings, but the clattering and screaming of a decidedly different nature snapped his young brain out of its unwilling trance.
“Feather bucker!”
The resulting crash that followed the very loud, very offensive, pegasus-racist phrase quickly overrode any incense Rumble felt as he instantly blasted up the stairway and bucked the door open, sending the door flying in a one-hundred-eighty-degree slam into the wall. He looked around frantically.
“What happened? Are you hurt? Can I help? Where is he? Where is she? What’s on top… of…”
Brain finally caught up with Fight Instinct. Apple Bloom stood, half a backpack slung on her back, piles of equipment of many kinds, half-destroyed miscellany of her past crusading, and several other scraps of cloth and paper. A bunch of paints had spilled on top of her and now ran down her body alluringly in strings of rainbow delight. Those pretty eyes, one now hidden behind that cute, very wet polychromatic hair…
Where did that come from? He blushed.
She laughed nervously. “I forgot where I put the equipment.”
Rumble smiled kindly and did the one clean thing his mind told him to do – help her tidy up. Her room! Just her room. Not the tub. No. She was just a friend. He was saving himself for marriage. He would not be like Thunderlane. Nope nope nope nope…
He didn’t realize he was shaking his head until he snapped back to reality and saw the concerned red eyes of Apple Bloom looking back. He cleared his throat, pulled himself away, and continued cleaning wordlessly.
Apple Bloom, for her part, had no idea what was going on in the colt’s mind. She silently observed him getting back to work, digging hard into a particularly large pile near her. The oddest thing was he was avoiding eye contact, something he hadn’t done until now. She decided not to press the issue as they continued cleaning, though her mind slipped into a dark place of worry and lament: Did I do somethin’ wrong? A few minutes later, that question was pushed to the back of her mind as they finally found what Apple Bloom had been looking for.
“My spelunkin’ gear!”
Rumble eyed the brown belt with a mix of fascination and disappointment. What he saw hooked up to the brown belt was nothing more than a helmet, a flashlight, two helmet lights, and a round loop of faux leather for holding a water bottle. He was expecting chisels, hoof spikes, maybe a pick or two. It was a little less than he thought.
“Somethin’ the matter?” Apple Bloom asked as Rumble fumbled with a belt.
He shook his head. “I just thought there would be more stuff.”
Apple Bloom laughed. “That’s exactly what I thought when I borrowed A Beginner’s Bible to Caves and Climbing: What You Need to Know about Spelunking from the library when Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, and I prepared to get our cutie marks in cave-diving. We ain’t used ‘em since.” She stopped herself and thought for a bit. Maybe that wasn’t entirely true. “Okay, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo ain’t been usin’ theirs. Big Mac an’ I go spelunkin’ together every now an’ again. Applejack don’t much like the smell o’ them caves.”
Rumble managed to successfully belt himself. “So, whose belt am I wearing?”
“I don’t remember,” Apple Bloom conceded. “It’s been about a year.”
A minute or so later, both foals were suited up and ready to take on a cave. The only problem was that they didn’t have a destination in mind when they started planning their little escapade. So, they went and laid out their war room in the kitchen, maps, a couple scrap pieces of paper, and a few pencils littered across the table. They first considered a cave northwest of Ponyville, but that required them trudging through the Everfree, then pulling a U-turn at Zecora’s when they realized they were following the wrong path.
Apple Bloom glanced over at her companion. “Um, Rumble, are you sure we need to enter the Everfree if all we’re doing is making a U-turn?”
Rumble looked at the map again. He groaned and rubbed his forehead. “I was never good at mazes…”
After correctly plotting their course, they realized it would be a couple days’ journey. Apple Bloom also recalled that this particular cave required a partner with at least her expertise. It was a particularly challenging and narrow cave, and someone prone to claustrophobia would not want to take it on.
They chose two other caves, both which Apple Bloom had been to before. The first cave was just a dome in rock, not worth even bringing anything for spelunking. The second was more of a walk than a climb: a flat cave, meandering through the mountain with very little challenge at all.
Neither Rumble nor Apple Bloom wanted to start him off that easy.
A few other caves passed their scrutiny without being selected. Some were straight vertical drops. Others had weak floors. One nearly killed both Mac and Bloom due to a weak roof support structure. A few…
“…are just too dark,” Apple Bloom groaned. “We’ll never find the perfect cave at this rate!”
Rumble glanced over at one particular cave. It was wide out in the open, less than half an hour from the farm house, and marked with three crudely-sketched filly frowns. He tapped it with a hoof. “Why don’t you take me to this one?”
Apple Bloom looked at the cave Rumble’s hoof now indicated. She blushed. “Oh yeah. That one. I forgot about that one. The one where we went crusadin’. Yeah. That’s easy ‘n challenging. Right.”
Rumble chuckled.
“Shut up, you,” Apple Bloom commanded before joining her comrade. “Now, we need t’let my family know where we’ll be, an’ for how long. Don’t want ‘em worryin’ none.”
“We should pack a lunch as well,” Rumble said. “I’m sure we don’t want to go hungry.”
“Good idea,” Apple Bloom said, giving a quick smile. “Paper’s over there. I’ll see what I can grab from the kitchen.”
Rumble nodded and went off to get the paper. Apple Bloom watched the colt take a couple steps before turning to her own task. She had puzzled over his sudden burst up the stairs into her room, and had to admit that having a colt at her beck and call to defend her from stuff just made her feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
But what made him do that?
This was the same question Rumble asked himself as he prepared the note. He had noted a different feeling well up within himself at that point of her troubles, as if it was his place… no, his obligation to see that she was safe. As he prepared ink and a pen and began addressing the letter, he noted one of his ears was pinned to Apple Bloom’s direction. Though he couldn’t see his ear, he glared up at it anyway.
Stupid ear. Focus!
At the exact same time he tried prying his ear from its muscle-locked position, Apple Bloom, sharing his thought, batted at her own appendage, annoyed it wasn’t cooperating. She wanted it to face forward and be counted, like her eyes, but it would not respond. Whatever had possessed it to be out of her control was a gray colt with shimmering down, a pair of warm blankets any time she needed a warm hug…
What the hay, brain?! Where’d you go now?
Both foals groaned quietly to themselves, barely masking the sound made by the other pony from their own ears. Trying to put their thoughts out of their minds, they completed their tasks with swiftness that would make Rainbow Dash envious and left the farm house in a hurry.
The sack full of apple fritters and the letter left behind clearly told of their rush:
Dear Bacontosh and Appleack,
Apple Bloom and I are going spelunking with each other. She’s got a beautiful cave that she’s going to show me. I’m going to teach her all about stalactites and stalagmites. We will be back before midnight.
Rumble.