//------------------------------//
// Chapter 3: Aubade 
// Story: Leaf Songs 
// by Wellspring 
//------------------------------//

I dreamt moments ago, but I cannot remember what it was. 

Only that I stood at the center of a pale universe. I was not alone, and it was not Applejack who stands there beside me. It was the same phantasmic silhouette who smiles endearingly yet whose face is invisible to my eyes. 

He gives a few taps to my shoulder.

When I wake up, it is to an afternoon of drizzles and bluebirds. The sunshine has yet again to break through the clouds, and the drowsy morn has kept its mist on the air. Yet, still those fowls manage to nest beneath the overhang of my boutique to chirp me awake. I pick myself up from the desk and, in doing so, the half-length blunt-edge pencil topples over the edge and rolls on the floor. I do not mind it. It has done its purpose and would have no need to be touched again. 

As I rub the sleep from my eyes, I find myself still clutching on to the pink wax-sealed envelope. I squint my eyes and refocus on the italicized script on the letter's bottom-right corner:

To Applejack

How long did it take me yesterday–if one day is all it took–to finally sign these last two words? My memories of yesterday consists of nothing but jumping my teary gaze to and fro Leaf Song's memoirs and my own blank page that waited to be filled. Yet no matter how long or how hard I pressed the jagged tip of that pencil against the paper, I cannot scribble a single word.

How could you have done it? I ask, tracing a hoof over the embedded cover of his book. A poem each day?

But I felt it–dear Celestia, I remember feeling it–that flurry of emotions that come and go like heartbeats with every flash of memory of Applejack and I. From the moment when we first met and when we first fought, to the days and adventures spent with her, I see it all projected and replayed on the blank before me. And I remember thinking that, if I sit here long enough, pencil in hoof, those feelings and those images may inspire in me the same skill and gift for rhetoric to convey what had once been uncommunicable. 

But, in the end, albeit armed with Leaf Song's repertoire as my atlas, I myself can only manage so much; and what I finish may not suffice to convey the message I wish to thrust through the deepest part of her.

Is this all my feelings amount to? I think. Even after a night committed to pinning the wordless in ink on paper–and to weave them in artful song–it is both sad and humiliating that I have only produced so much. Whereas Leaf Song could have summed an entire archive, mine weighs no more than this single sheet.

Will this be enough to reach her? I am forced to think, eyeing the envelope.

I rise to my hooves and march through the flower field of crumpled stationery and into the washroom. I splash cold water onto my face and proceed to freshen up with soap and perfumery. When I look up to the reflection before me, I half-expected to see the disheveled eye-bagged mare I saw several days ago. But I am proud to see that she has gone; in her place, I see the fire in the eyes of a mare who has burnt out everything else within her but the conviction to pursue the love of her life.

And in this same mirror, I see a surreal vision of a colt reflected. He nods his head, smiling, and turns around to leave.

Thank you, Leaf Song, I tell him. Now, leave the rest to me.

I place both the envelope and the book in a satchel. Wrapping a scarf around my neck, I make my way to Sweet Apple Acres


* * *


I hear the raindrop play music against the roof of my parasol. The drizzle has yet to let up, bringing about the earthly smell of fresh dirt and dewdrops. The grass is wet and soft beneath me, folding gently with each of my hoofstep. The mist curtains the airy mountains beyond the orchard that this bowing greensward stretches throughout the infinite expanse of fog. Only the object of my destination, a red farmhouse, remains saturated is this dreary morning.

Big Macintosh sits by the porch on the rocking chair, eyes up to the rain.

There is no greeting between us. Somehow I have expected him to be here; and it is as though he has been waiting for me.

"Are you ready?" he asks, not even turning to me.

"Yes," I answer.

"You'll get hurt."

"I will."

"You'll hurt her."

"Nothing my dearest cannot withstand."

"But make no mistake, she still won't return your feelings."

"If you really believe that, you wouldn't have helped me in the first place."

Despite his expression, I am inclined to believe that, beneath that mask, he is smiling. He turns to me, and nods.

"Thank you, Big Macintosh."

"She ain't in the house." He leans back on his chair and sets his eyes to the East Field. "She's there... You'll know it when you see it."

I head straight to the direction where Big Macintosh is facing. 

I march straight to it and through the canopy of trees lining across the path. Straightforward, the road is lost, but still I venture deeper into the woods. Somewhere behind me, Sweet Apple Acres had gone and the undergrowth of maleberries and rose shrubs open the rest of the trail. Here, the road is paved of flowers, tree bark and toadstools—few, at first, but collects to a bushel the nearer it follows the sound of a river. The floras seemed to be entranced by it, as though its stream is the mountain's song and all those who came, came not to drink but to listen.

I plow through the line of apple trees and into the clearing where I see her.

Applejack is on a turf of verdant grass, her back turned to me, eyeing up and beyond the raging river just a meter from where she sits. Her hat is placed hanging beside a wood branch and her mane is let loose without its ribbons. She is leaning back, forehooves behind her, as she tilts her head further up to the clouds as though to welcome the drizzle to her sleeping face.

With my magic, I levitate my parasol over her. She opens her eyes, surprised to be shielded from the rain in my stead. 

I welcome the drizzle onto my coat.

"Dearest," I mutter.

"Y'know," she says, "ah'm no genius. Ah never get why the pegasi have to make it drizzle on some days and storm it up at another. Guess because life's like that too, huh."

"Apple—"

"This is where they found him,"–she stretches a hoof towards the rapids–"and on yer right is where they buried the body. See that huge apple tree? His gravestone's just there."

She did not have to tell me. At one look, a flower bed of roses and hydrangeas collect to a small stone. I lean closer. There are two letters engraved on the slab.

LS

"Hey, Rares," Applejack mutters.

"Yes?"

"Have you given up on me yet?"

"Did you think I'd go here after you to give up."

"Didn't think so," she laughs, and slowly the laughter dies down. Applejack stands up and finally turns to me. Upon her emerald eyes, her tear-soaked irises still linger. "Ah said ah ain't no genius, but ah ain't stupid either. Ah know mah brother gave you Leaf Song's poetry book."

"He did."

"Do you have it with you?"

"Yes."

"Ah want it back."

I reach into my satchel and take out both the envelope and the book. With my magic, I float both to her open and eager hooves. She takes the book first, flipping through the pages, before holding up the letter.

"What is this?" she asks. That the envelope is crisp proves to her that it is recent.

"It's from me."

"From you?" Her eyes strays from it and on to mine.

I clear my throat. "I wrote it. I spent the last two nights writing it."

"What's in it?"

"Leaf Song's words... and mine."

I close my eyes and open them again to face the endless gray drizzle. I take in a deep breath.

"I know this is the only way I can ever reach you, dearest. I learn that whatever I speak out my lips is already muted to your ears; and no matter how much I feel you, my hooves will be rendered hollow. This is underhanded and unfair to you, I know. But this is the only way I can touch you now."

Applejack remains silent. He stares at the letter in his hoof. "You... you didn't have to do that, y'know. You didn't have to write no poem. I already know how much you love me."

"That's not what my letter is meant to say."

"So this is how ya'd imagine it? You write a poem, and it's almost like Leaf Song's, but it touches me, and it makes me realize that ah was wrong to be getting hung over with the past. Then ah break down in tears and ah love ya, and the rain let's up and we go back to the house hoof in hoof."

"Are you making a mockery of my–"

"Ah ain't," she says, shaking her head. "Ah ain't. To be honest... that's what ah really want to happen. Ah’m hopin’ it does."

Applejack scratches the back of her mane. She smiles at me and places the unopened letter inside the cave of her Stetson. 

"Ah've had a lot of time to think since yer last visit, Rare," she says, her eyes deadpan on the ground, unable to look at me. Her whole body starts to shake with each word she says, "Yer... yer right. Ah love ya too... And that ain't no surprise to neither of us. You didn't have to write me no nothin'. Just you being here reaches to me enough. Leaf Song's gone and buried now... so ah guess ah it's to cut ties with the past... and all that comes with it..."

Applejack turns away from me and to the raging river. And then, Applejack, still shaking, still in the verge of tears, and without warning–wait hour warning at all!–flings her hoof forward, tossing Leaf Song's red booklet.

"No!" I shout.

But I am already in the air, having jumped by the edge of the riverbed reaching for the book with my hooves. I have only managed to keep it aloft by the raging water, before my body submerges into the depths.

The rapids opens its gaping maw and swallow me in its belly.

"Rarity!" I hear Applejack shout somewhere.

With my magic, I keep the book high above above the raging river. But my concentration leaves me helpless to control my own limbs. My body is tossed back and forth the current, drinking in air and water with each breath I take. I cannot so much scream without being muffled in turn. My vision jumps between the rain and the river.

The book, I can only think, at least let me save it!

All my energy, all my will to survive, is invested on protecting that sacred token which has collected my dearest's heart. I have lost all consideration for my own safety even as the rapid pulls me to its rocky bed with hands of twigs and fists of stones scratching and slamming my body.

But Leaf Song, my mind screams, Applejack's Leaf Song!!!

My lungs knock from within my chest, begging for air. I am dragged deeper and deeper until the drizzling morning is but a faint spot. With one last burst of energy, I expend all my magic to throw Leaf Song's book far and beyond the reach of the treacherous waters. 

As the light vanishes from my eyes, a surge of hope blasts through from the surface.

A pair of hooves scoops my chest and heaves me up to the last remnant of twinkling light until...

Air fills my lungs as my vision comes back.

"...ity... Rarity! Hold on!!!" Applejack screams.

I lost the energy to move my legs and can only grab on to her shoulder. The tide carries us farther and farther. She pedals to the edge, battling the torrent, pushing through with all the strength she has to keep the both of us aloft.

At last she reaches the edge and manages to grab hold of a branch. But the river opens its maw and topples over us. My hooves give way, weakened beyond exhaustion, and I am carried by the succeeding waves. My dearest does not even pause to breathe, diving back into the water. She grabs hold of me again, this time grabbing hold of my waist, and bats her remaining hooves against the flood.

"...a-ain't gonna... lose you too," I hear her mutter.

With a scream, she pedals to the end and manages to grab on to the edge. With each splashing, blowing tantrum of the river, Applejack's energy wanes. When the ripple descends, I see her eyes red and coughing out a mouthful of water. She is struggling to breathe, and I can feel–and hear–the war drum beat in her chest. The current makes one last attempt to separate us, but her sheer fortitude allows her to withstand the force. She raises me over the grass and pulls herself up back to safety.

She crawls on all fours and up to me. "Rarity!" she squeaks out. "Rarity, can you hear me!?" She grabs me by my shoulders and shakes me up.

The dizziness stops and I manage a nod, and, a second later, some words of assurance. "Dearest..."

The smile on Applejack's face reaches from ear to ear, muddled only by the makeshift tears–or tears, truly–from the drizzle. She takes me in her hooves and wraps me in a close embrace. "Ya scared me," she mutters, "ya scared me half to death!"

Her embrace tightens that it starts to hurt me. But never, for the life of me, would I ask her to let go.

"What were ya thinkin' ya... ya crazy... ya crazy idiot," she chuckles, holding me back just so she can look into my eyes. "W-Why'd ya have to jump to a flood! A flood! Didn't ya see how fast the water was goin'!? Ya have some sorta death wish!?"

"I-I-It's you who are the crazy idiot!" I managed to shout back, and cough out water. "Why would you throw Leaf Song's book away!"

"Do we have to talk about this now? We just got out of a–"

"Yes, now! Celestia forbid that you do not explain yourself this instant."

I pull myself from her and stand up. Around us is another clearing, closer to the Everfree than the apple orchard. If we are lost, it is the least of my concerns.

"Not 'til ya tell why ya jumped to try and save it before yer own skin."

"Why should I tell you!?" I say, raising my voice. "Isn't it obvious? Isn't it blatantly, blindly, obvious! Leaf Song's book, his poetry, is the last remnant of his words and reminder of your love for each other. It has in it your dearest moments, your most intimate connection, it has in it the best years and love of your life!"

"It ain't worth you gettin' killed over!"

"It is!" I say, my eyes locking onto hers. "It is..."

Her hooves over me eases.

"I've read it. I've read everything... and I turn green in envy as those words seem to whisper in my ears the promise of a romance which I did not know existed. I listened to the melody of his voice; each line of each poem has nothing but you: you were the roses, you were the suns, the moon, the winds and the mountains. There is never enough ways to compare you to what the world has to offer, and precisely because he saw nothing but you in the world. He saw so apparently in you the beauty in the world which I once struggled to create and am only now seeing; and he weaved those in words we thought we can only hear only in music and read only in tales of chivalry. They're not superifical, dearest. Not bromidic or... or empurpled... Not baseless or ungrounded... and most definitely not hopeless. That book, Leaf Song's legacy, is a testament to that. And Celestia forgive me that if the only or last monument to a love so pure amidst this gray drizzling world is to be swept away!"

"B-But Leaf Song... he's gone now. He...We failed... Our romance didn't amount to nothing..."

I remain steady. I look at her in the eyes. I slap her face.

Once the ground stops shaking beneath her hooves, she regains her composure enough to ease the swelling in her cheeks.

"Take that back..." I hiss.

She does not even stare at me, her eyes downcast. "So yer saying all this is worth all that?"

"If... If I could just have a fraction from you of what you two had for each other..."

"Even if it's worth this much hurt...?"

"And a thousand times over."

"Y-You... ya don't know that. Ya haven't the idea..."

"I don't, and all the more reason." I clear my throat. "If I am to be hurt, then it is only because I've decided open myself to you."

"Ah'm tellin' ya... it won't be worth it."

"It will be. That I'd be loved so much... it will be."

I march toward Applejack and hold on to her.

"Dearest," I mutter, "I ask you to forgive me for hitting you earlier. But I cannot be forgiven for what I am am about to put you through... but please bear with me. Close your eyes."

"What?"

"Please."

Still holding a firm grip on her hoof, I whisper to her ear:

"I want you to imagine something dearest, with all the honesty you can muster. Fifty years from now and all this... all of it... is but a distant memory. You are in Sweet Apple Acres, rocking your chair over the newly painted porch and overlooking the endless garden of fruits which you have given your life to. It is a sunny day, unlike this one, but the breeze is cool against your mane. Playing in the fields are your grandsons and granddaughters. They have yet to earn their cutie mark–but you know they are well on their path to grow to be wonderful fillies and colts. And finally, beside you, is a pony whom you have shared this moment and this life with–and... and that pony is smiling at you, as though that smile is to give a hundred thanks for giving the joy of a thousand lifetimes. And you see yourself in that pony's eyes and you find that there is no sadness in you, and there is no more pain in the world, and that there is no regrets and there never should be and this–this!–is what makes life worth loving.

"Now, dearest, I want you to tell me–and do not spare me the pain–I want you to tell me... who do you see?"

Applejack opens her eyes, horrified, and briskly turns away. "I... I can't answer that."

"You can, and you must."

"N-No... I... don't want to say it."

"But you know, don't you."

She shuts her eyes close.

"Who is it? Who do you love more? Me or Leaf Song?"

She bites her lip and shakes her head.

"Me or Leaf Song!?"

She crumbles on the dirt and presses her hooves against her ears. She is trembling. I approach her and wrap my hooves around her shoulders.

"It's alright, dearest," I whisper. "Don't worry about me... I already know what you're struggling not to say."

Applejack looks up to me. I nod, holding back tears.

"It's alright." I manage a smile. "Say his name."

"...af Song," the words seep out of her. Then, she repeats, "Leaf Song..."

I did not lie. I knew what I was going to hear.

But, still, I am not spared the blow. I bite my lips in acceptance of this confession. The tightness in my chest wrings out the tears, and I thank the drizzle that it hides them from her. I nod my head, so slowly that is imperceptible. 

"I...  Ah'm sorry, Rarity."

"No." I shake my head. "Don't ever apologize for your feelings, dearest. I accept that you might not ever feel for me as you did for him; but, still, my love does not dwindle in the slightest."


* * *


She carries my cumbersome weight on to her back, her sprained knee buckling. With each shambling hoofstep, I can hear the splash of the puddles underneath us. And with that same aching limb, she brushes past the thicket of thorns and rosebushes on our way. She soldiers on. Around us, the drizzle has just let up save for the few droplets dripping from the tips of branches and leaves. With what's left of my flickering, dwindling magic, I conjure a protective canopy over the poetry booklet to protect it from those treacherous crystal beads.

"Dearest," I say to her, "I assure you that I can walk now."

"It's alright," she says. "Ah still want to carry ya."

"I am not as hurt as you might think."

"Probably," he chuckles. "But ah don't want mah princess gettin' mud on her hooves."

"Don't joke about such a thing when you are hurt as you are."

"This?" she raises her hoof up. "Ain't nothin' but a coat wound. Besides... we're already there."

She breaks through the tangled web of branches and out the forest. In any of the romantic medium where this story may be told, I imagine that the rain will be gone no sooner when we exit the woods, and sunshines and rainbows will take its place. But, contrary to that, the sky closes shut and pours out what's left of its rain. 

"Oh, for the love of..." I mutter.

"Ain't no use gettin' riled up over that now," she laughs. "We're wetter than newborn ducks as it is."

By the time we reach the porch, the drizzle has build up to a downpour; as soon as the door closes behind us, the downpour has stirred itself into a howling storm. The interior of the house is full of poltergeists: walls squeaking, pans rattling, and gusts knocking against window panes. I drop down to my hooves and place Applejack's Stetson and Leaf Song's booklet on a nearby stool. 

"Big Mac!" Applejack shouts, "Ya here, big bro?"

Only her echo replies.

"Guess not," he mutters, smiling at me.

At first, I do not guess the nature of that smile, having levitated a clean towel from the laundry to dry ourselves with. But as soon as that towel wraps around me, Applejack pulls on it, dragging me to her. She grabs me by my hips and raises me up. I wonder how resilient she truly is to be able to carry me this way–still with that sprained knee–up a flight of stairs and into her room.

She sets me down and locks the door, and before she can turn around I am already against her, pushing the entirety of my weight against her body and showering her lips and cheeks with as much kiss as I can give.

I hear her laughter, and I can only repeat after it in the interruptible hiccups of in-between my buss. Here were are, in her room, just having passed through our toughest ordeal, still wet from the rain, giggling. 

She carries me again and throws me on top of the bed.

"Ahh," I moan, "the sheets will get wet."

Applejack laughs, planting her kiss against my ear and neck, biting against the skin. She moves down and starts to trace her lips from my navel up, nipping at the mounds of my body that she can hold.

But her kisses slows down and presses deeper and deeper unto me, and rise up to meet me face to face. She leans back, for a moment, to drink in the depths of my eyes, before she presses her lips against my own. She holds me tighter and tighter as her hooves wrap around my hips to push me up.

I feel the distinct and familiar warmth of her flesh even amidst the rain-soaked coat, and even here I can feel her heart beat to the rhythm of mine.

She leans back again and stares at me. "Rarity?"

"Yes, my dearest?"

"D'ya remember the morning after we first made love together?"

I start to blush, but manage to conceal it with a laugh. "You were frantic," I say, "You looked like you saw a ghost."

"I was upset... at myself, mostly, for breaking my only rule. But you didn't seem to mind. You were laughin' while ah paced myself back and forth across the room."

"Because you were so funny at that time. You looked like you wanted to regret what we spent hours and hours doing the night before, but the pink flush of color on your cheeks shows that you didn't." I lean forward and plant a quick kiss on that cheek.

"Was me blushin' that funny?" she asks, scratching the back of her mane.

"It is when you try to hide how embarrassed you were."

"Well, to be honest, Ah wasn't blushin' cuz ah was embarassed."

"Really, now? Why were you, then?"

"Ah was thinkin'."

"Of what?"

"Of something."

"What something? Do you plan on telling me, or you just keeping me in suspense?"

"What? N-No... No... I just don't know how to put it."

This time I do not answer, and only lie in wait for her to catch the words.

"Well, ya see..." she mutters. "Back then, ah was blushin' cuz each time ah turned to look at you, and see you there lyin' on mah bed, one hoof danglin' over the edge, draped by dove-white sheets, starin' at me, gigglin' and blushin' yourself like a school filly, ah thought' to mahself how lucky could ah be to have spent the night with somepony so... so wonderful. And... and ah thought that if ah ever find it in me to forgive mahself enough to have one thing–just one more thing–in this world again... then maybe... maybe... ah'd want to spend the rest of mah life with this beautiful mare."

I am stunned, for a moment, and have left my mouth hanging open like that of a dumb pony's. Is this a proposal? I cannot help but think. And what sound my mind makes is drowned out by the wild drumming of my heart jumping with a jovial Yes! Yes! and Yes! 

But decency, propriety, and courtesy, restrains me enough to prevent me from giving an answer so direct and so coarse. I breathe in, and breathe out. I clear my throat.

"Do you know when I decided to spend the rest of my life with you?" I ask.

"When?"

"Just now."

Applejack smiles and traces her hoof on my cheeks and down to my chin. She leans forward and kisses me again.

And in this barely lighted room where the rain tips and taps across the glass pane windows, she presses her body ever so softly on mine and our two shadows become one.


* * *


I wake up in bed, with my dearest gone and a poetry book having taken her place on my beside. I do not yet feel the need to rise, and settle to let my body lie still and bathe on the sun. With my magic, I open the book and flip along the pages. One of which is bookmarked with my opened letter to my dearest.

Ah, she's already read it... I think to myself, smiling.

I put the letter aside momentarily, hold open he book, and read through one of Leaf Song's last poems:

The leaves talked in the twilight, dear;   
Hearken the tale they told:   
How in some far-off place and year,   
Before the world grew old,

I was a dreaming forest tree,
You were a wild, sweet bird
Who sheltered at the heart of me
Because the north wind stirred;

How, when the chiding gale was still,   
When peace fell soft on fear,
You stayed one golden hour to fill
My dream with singing, dear.

To-night the self-same songs are sung   
The first green forest heard;
My heart and the gray world grow young—
To shelter you, my bird.

And as the last word escapes my silent lips, the gust of sweet morning fills the room. I sit up, and look out the window. At last, the morn has come. Outside, the clouds part, a timid sun peeks from its corners, and the color of the landscape is brought back anew. The ocean of green is as far as the eye can see, still-wet from the morning dew that each blade wink with a sparkle, and the horizon to the infinite is lined red with bountiful apple trees.

And there, in the far distance, I see my lover as a small speck of lovable orange across this vastness. She is dragging a full apple cart back to the barn when she stops midway. 

And I think to myself how, from now on, I will always wake like this.

And as though she senses my looking at her, she looks up to this window where on its case I rest both elbows. She smiles at me, drops the load off her back right then and there, and charges across the field to the house.

And I am frantic to fix my mane to its wavy curls and slap the grogginess from my face. I grip on the letter, reading to words one more time, as I hear her rush up the stairs.



Thank you for falling in love with us.
–Leaf Song and Rarity



The door opens.

"Good morning, hun."

"Good morning, dearest."




THE END