Girls repulse you. All those tea parties and cooties and pink bows and stuff. A smart ten year old colt like yourself wants nothing to do with them! You're perfectly happy playing with your model train set. But when the Cutie Mark Crusaders chase you down to discover the secrets of gaining a Cutie Mark, you find there's more to those fillies than you think. Especially their ringleader, Apple Bloom.

Vectors by Kuren247 and the DeviantArt VectorClub.

Apple Bloom had always dreamed of the day. She just never dreamed that it would be a nightmare.

A thousand years is quite the generation gap, so Princess Luna decides she has to get with the times. However, this isn't quite as easy as she thinks it will be...

Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns is the center of magical research in Equestria. Since Apple Bloom developed a love of potion making and an interest in the theory behind magic, she recognizes what an honor it would be to study there. But that would also mean being the only non-unicorn student to ever attend, leaving her friends and family, and moving to a strange city... and that's if she can pass an entrance exam designed to select the most magically gifted unicorns.

Spike has never wanted more than to be Twilight's number one assistant. But when Twilight points out that there's a pony right in front of him who needs an experienced assistant even more than she does, it means considering a life where he's making the most of his talents... but one without Twilight by his side.

For both of them, facing hard decisions are just part of growing up.

Second place winner for the April Writeoff Association prompt "Great Expectations."

When Apple Bloom goes missing, Applejack desperately searches for her missing sister. She finds Apple Bloom trapped inside a well. But what she pulls out may not be her sister at all.

Artwork provided by Glen Gorewood

Youtube reading: "The Well" by Sparrow9642

2nd Reading: The Well by Mystery Pony Fiction

Strange nightmares are plaguing the ponies of Equestria.

Somepony must help ponies to face their deepest fears, but unless Princess Luna is able to discover who—or what—is responsible, the nightmares may never end.

Scootaloo is ready to prove that she can be as fearless as her big sister, Rainbow Dash, even if it means never having a peaceful night's sleep again.

The name's Applejack. Canterlot, the capital of our kingdom was beset by a plague of changelings durin' a weddin'. Had it not been for Cadence and Shining sendin' them packin', we might all be changelings by now. Not long after, Princess Celestia ordered a stallion from every house to enlist for the counterattack against them. He served his kingdom, as did countless other colts, and he came back without a scratch on him. Or, so Ah thought...

I woke up in the hospital. I don’t recall how I got here. I don’t recognize the mare who says she’s family. I don’t even remember my own name.

So what kind of pony will I become?

Apple is a funny word, one that Winona doesn't quite understand.

Her family uses it to refer to food, to trees, to themselves and to each other. It's all very inconsistent.

But whether she understands it or not, she'll always be there for the pony she knows as Little Apple.

Just because you can't, doesn't mean you shouldn't.