Sweet Apple Acres: For Sale by Owner

by Velvet_Divan

A Little More Salt in the Sea

Chapter Four

It felt like deja vu all over again as I set out for the west orchard early the next morning. I skipped breakfast entirely, telling myself I didn't have time for it with the errands I had to run in town later. I didn't miss the grim look Mac shot me when I followed him downstairs, but peeled off for the front door instead of the kitchen. As I slipped out and shut the door, it cut off the tuneless diddy Granny hummed while getting breakfast started.

It was another cold morning, and every breath steamed as I swung my axe, its blade sinking into dry and long-dead wood. I felled three, five, then ten trees and chopped them into chunks that would be easier to transport. It was tough work, the strain of it driving out all thought of the cold until I paused, letting the breeze roll over my lathered coat.

Winona had followed me into the orchard today, but spent most of her time chasing leaves and bunnies, imaginary or not. I found myself wondering if I'd remembered to check her food the night before, and realized I hadn't the faintest idea.

The next time she dashed into sight, I gave her head a few strokes. "If Ah messed up and forgot to tend you pup, yer getting table-scraps t'night, Ah promise."

The sun was sailing steadily closer to a point overhead, and I wandered through the orchard to get an idea how much work still lay ahead of me. I passed wild untended trees, but they were largely healthy. As cautious optimism began to bloom, I entered a patch where the earth had buckled. A small rise here meant rain tended to sluice off this particular portion of the orchard, and this copse of trees had not done well at all. Some were still alive, but barely-so, and were definitely not producing any fruit. There were at least twenty trees here alone that would need clearing out, and many would be more work than the purely dead wood I had been chopping.

I glanced around to get my bearings, marking the spot in my mind, then settled the axe on my back and trotted back to the farmhouse. I could hear Mac bucking apples, and the sound struck me with a mingled jolt of guilt and pleasure. He was still doing my share of the work as well as his, never complaining, never slacking off an inch. Yet it was a familiar sound. Some routines were still going on, uninterrupted even in the face of the worst threat the farm had ever seen.

Rushing inside, I left the axe and my rope by the door and pounded upstairs to grab a quick shower. While I waited for the water to heat up, I hung up my hat and, with two deft bites, pulled the ribbons from my mane and tail. I gazed at my reflection in the mirror for a moment. My coat was still orange as a tangerine, mane like cornsilk. It was strange how little the outside had changed when from within, almost nothing felt right anymore.

"You let everyone down, yerself included. Ma and Pa didn't work every day you knew 'em so you could run this place into the ground." The words just sank into the reflected-me. I knew there was truth in them, but it couldn't stir a reaction in me. I forced my face into a scowl. "So yer gonna do all you can to salvage this, get the best deal you possibly can, and make darn sure yer family's provided for!"

And my first step towards that goal was looking presentable, so I leaped into the now-hot shower. Splinters and leaf fragments washed out of my mane and coat, swirling around the drain. I shut my eyes and just existed in the hot water for a long moment, letting it beat against sore muscles, driving out the cold I'd soaked up outside.

When I started to feel a mite raisin-ish, I lathered up and scrubbed myself well and proper with my favorite sandalwood soap. A bit of shampoo to finish, a quick turn-around to rinse, and I climbed back out.

Off went the water, on went the towels, and I ran a comb through my mane to tame it enough for retying. My tail got the same treatment, and I gave myself another once-over in the mirror. Damp, but certainly passable. For a second, with my coat still a bit wet and plastered closer to the skin, I thought I looked a bit gaunt. Another quick pass with the towel fixed that.

Snatching my hat off the hook on the door, I hurried down the hall to my room and snagged a vest from my dresser to spruce myself up that little bit more. Thumping back down the stairs and out of the house, I broke into a gallop towards town, then remembered I was supposed to arrive looking half-way presentable. I slowed to a canter, a chill breeze sifting through my wet hair.

I had only a vague idea who to consult about selling the farm, but I knew who would know more. I trotted my way down main street, then made a right turn onto a side street near Davenport's shop. I nudged open the heavy wooden door of a small but expensive looking establishment. The bell on the door soon summoned a distinguished looking unicorn stallion from a back office into the worn but comfortable waiting room.

Horse Majeure had helped out the Apples with all their legal problems since he'd started practicing law in Ponyville. I managed a strained smile for him. "Horse,"

"Mister Majeure, please. Horse was my father!" Horse grinned, and I rolled my eyes. He pulled the same corny line just about every time I walked in here.

"Well mister fancy lawyer stallion, Ah need some advice. Who in town would Ah see about...sellin' some land?"

Horse shot me a look over his spectacles.

"...About sellin' Sweet Apple Acres." I couldn't completely avoid cringing.

"Gracious, Applejack! Did you have a bad year? That's no reason to panic! The bank here can be very generous with the terms of—"

"Horse, it's over. Ah'm obviously not the best businessmare in these parts, but Ah can do arithmetic, and numbers don't lie. If Ah act like a stubborn mule and hang onto the farm, things're only gonna get worse, not better." My tone brooked no argument, and Horse backed into his office, waving me in.

"I'm so sorry to hear this, Applejack. I know how hard it's been for you all since your parents passed, and you've done admirably filling their horseshoes. You four are the face of the farm now, and with all you've done for the townsfolk, I doubt you even know how well-loved you Apples are." Horse shut his office door behind us, then let his hoof rest on my shoulder a moment. "Why, Sweet Apple Acres is synonymous with Ponyville in the minds of many of us, I'm sure."

His words hit me in the heart like nails. I could only nod, dumb, and lowered myself into the overstuffed chair across the desk from him. If anypony in town had a lengthier business relationship with our family than Horse, I didn't know them. I found myself watching him for the signs of disappointment I expected. The disappointment I deserved.

"Now, first of all you'll need to get the land and facilities appraised. You need to know how much to ask for, after all. Will you be seeking representation in the market, or selling it yourself?"

"What do you recommend? Ah figured we'd just sell it ourselves."

"Mm, it often depends on the local market but in this case I should think you can do it yourself as long as you have all the forms in order and are on good terms with town hall."

I winced, remembering my last brush with Red Tape. "If Ah was to decide to hire an agent after all, who's available here in town?"

"No one I'd recommend, honestly." Horse leaned back in his chair, forehooves steepled beneath his chin. "But an agent from Canterlot would certainly be willing to make the journey to deal with a parcel as large as yours. The Coltwell Banker agency is honest, fair." He pulled a sheet of paper from a desk drawer and scribbled an address down for me. "Now, let's go over the paperwork you'll need to get together."

---

It felt like hours, but was really closer to thirty minutes before I emerged from Horse Majeure's office, the scale of what was ahead of me fully realized. Horse was experienced with appraisals, but would call in a favor and get the town zoning commissioner to accompany him on his tour of the farm tomorrow. I glanced at the list pinched in my hoof, and realized the only thing I could do at this point was return to town hall and begin picking up forms.

"Well, nothin' for it. Just put one hoof in front of—" The hoof never hit the ground. Instead, I ended up tumbling to the dirt, propelled by a cyan blur.

"Applejack! I've been looking everywhere for you! Twilight got a letter from the princess, and she needs us at the treehouse, like, pronto!"

"Funny, we all drop what we're doin' when she needs somethin'," I muttered, climbing to my hooves and replacing my fallen hat.

"Huh?" Dash tilted her head, bird-like. It was almost funny sometimes when pegasi acted like your garden variety songbirds or pigeons.

"Nothin'. Let's get a move on." I galloped off to the library, the list stuffed in my saddlebags, my own life put on hold again.

Rainbow Dash actually landed cleanly when we reached the treehouse, and entered with me through the front door rather than making her own entrance for once. The rest of the girls were all there, and Twilight's nervous pacing stopped as we made our way inside.

"Ahh, okay! So. I received a message from Princess Celestia this morning!" Twilight tapped her hooves together, grinning. "It was so wonderful to hear from her. It'd been weeks since her last letter, and—ahem. Anyways. She has a new mission for us. It seems the long-lost civilization of the sea ponies has become slightly less lost!"

The five of us exchanged blank looks. "Sea ponies?" Fluttershy ventured at last.

"Yes! It's been thought they were wiped out over 1500 years ago by a catastrophic sea-quake, but Celestia received a message via a secret sea pony communication route that hasn't been used for ages!" Twilight's enthusiasm slipped a little. "Well, actually it was a message in a bottle. But it was an enchanted bottle!"

The five of us stared at Twilight, until a wide-eyed Pinkie finally broke the silence. "OOOooooh!"

Twilight waved a hoof, fanning away the majority's lack of enthusiasm. "Anyways. The message was a distress call. There's a sea pony settlement a few hundred miles off the coast of Manehattan, and they're under attack by some enormous sea creature! They've asked for help, and since they mentioned their strongest magic users were unable to deter it, Celestia has decided to send in the Elements of Harmony."

Rainbow thrust a hoof in the air. "Uh, Twilight, I'm sure we all want to help, but what are we supposed to do for a bunch of ponies at the bottom of the sea? Pinkie and I are great swimmers, but that's not exactly going to cut it." Dash flailed her forelegs and wings about, pantomiming swimming from a horrendous beast snapping at her tail. Fluttershy flinched away from the display, taking refuge in her mane.

"Not to worry, I've been doing research!" Twilight crowed, gesturing to a stack of books to her right.

"You mean we've been doing research," Spike said under his breath, waddling up to drop another book on the pile.

"Well, yes. And I—we—found a spell that will not only let us breathe underwater, but make us much more maneuverable there as well! We'll basically be sea ponies for the duration of the mission."

I glanced at my friends to gauge their reactions. Fluttershy looked ecstatic, while Rarity looked ill. Dash looked about how I felt, cautiously optimistic. Pinkie Pie had pulled out her party cannon and was staring at it. I edged away from Pinkie.

"Twilight, do you have any water-proofing spells? We're gonna want to throw a party after we show mister monster it isn't nice to wipe out the lingering remnants of ancient empires, and I don't want anypony to get a piece of soggy cake, or not be able to use party favors, or get any balloon animals, or—"

Twilight rubbed the bridge of her muzzle, listening to Pinkie's list with an air of long-suffering before finally cutting her off. "I'll see what I can do."

Rarity tore her gaze from her hindquarters long enough to raise a point. "How are we to reach the site from Manehattan? Surely we're not going to swim hundreds of miles! We'd be exhausted by the time we reached the sea ponies!" Rarity's eyes drifted back towards her own hindlegs, and I realized she was probably visualizing herself with a fishtail.

"The royal yacht and its crew are at our disposal. It isn't used much, but it's fast, and I'm sure I can make it even faster. Who knows how long these sea ponies have left?" Twilight dropped her head, biting her lip. Most of us followed suit and sobered up.

I drew a proper expression of concern over my face, but I really just wanted to get back to babying the orchard. Guilt struck, and I scolded myself for having so little empathy that I'd rather get back to my chores than save lives. Never mind one family having to sell their farm, losing their way of life; a whole mess of ponies might be about to perish!

I pushed myself, strained for some sort of sympathetic reaction, but got nothing. I didn't even know the species existed until a few minutes ago. When I could barely stir myself to help my little sister, what hope did I have of getting riled up over strangers? I physically recoiled from the bitterness of the thought, and the twitch stirred the rest from their thoughts.

"Well, everyone go pack your bags and meet me at the train station. They've scheduled an express train for us." Twilight waved goodbye and we broke up, trotting out through the door Spike held open for us.

"Doing any better AJ?" he asked me as I passed.

"Sure, sugarcube. Ah'm right as rain, thanks for askin'." It must have been a believable performance; his answering smile was broad.

"Great. See ya later!"

Outside I watched pink, yellow, white, and cyan shapes go their separate ways to pick up their things. I broke into a canter, then a gallop, for I had the furthest to go.

Back at the farmhouse, Mac was pulling a cart piled with bushels of apples towards the barn. I made a detour, and he stopped for me.

"Celestia's called out the Elements. Ah'm gonna be gone for a few days. Ah talked to Horse, and he's gonna come 'round with a friend of his to appraise the farm and land, but there's some paperwork to rustle up too at town hall."

Mac just nodded, expression unruffled and stalwart as ever. I heaved a sigh, passing over the list of forms we would need to square away. "Ah'm so sorry to heap somethin' else on your plate, Mac."

He shook his head, tucking the page beneath his harness. "Out of your hooves, AJ. Now get a move on. Don't stress Twilight out."

"T-take care of Apple Bloom, alright? Try to..." I couldn't string together the words I wanted, and growled, stomping a hoof.

Mac just nodded again. "I'll try. Go."

I curled a foreleg around his neck back behind his yoke, pressing close for just a second or two. He snorted, the playful blast of breath knocking my hat half-off.

"Heh, you clod-kicker." Nudging the Stetson back into place, I wheeled and galloped to the house.

After a flurry of packing, I grabbed an apple for the road, raced past a napping Granny Smith and out the door.

Winona's barking followed me down the road, and a thought sent frost creeping up my spine. It wasn't so hard to imagine one of these quests ending with a seat or, Celestia forbid, seats on the return train empty.

"Ah'll come back to you, girl. Ah'll come back to all of you. Ah've left too big a mess for y'all to clean up by yourselves."

The platform at the train station was crowded, mostly thanks to Rarity's luggage.

"We've never let you take this much junk before, Rarity! Why would we start now?!" Rainbow Dash's voice broke as she whipped a hoof in an arc at the mountain of bags, sacks, hat boxes, trolleys piled with more bags, and an honest-to-goodness wardrobe on wheels.

"Because we're going on a seeeea voyage, Rainbow Dash!" Rarity spoke as if this was the most obvious fact in the world. "One packs in an en-tirely different fashion when one is going to sea."

Twilight eyed the mountain. "How did you even pack that much, that quickly...? Never mind. It's too much. Pare it down to the bare essentials; no more than you can carry yourself, Rarity."

Rarity's gasp of shock and outrage, clearly the windup to an argument for keeping more of her frippery and trappings, actually prompted Fluttershy to speak up.

"Um, Rarity? The train is waiting on us, and the sooner we leave, the fewer sea ponies might die, so..."

Everypony was taken aback, but Rarity rocked like she'd been struck in the face. After a second, she gave the waiting group a firm nod. "You're absolutely right, Fluttershy. I'll just take...these two." She pulled two packs from the pile, but before she boarded the train, she called over her shoulder. "Spike? Be a darling and return the rest of these to the boutique? Thanks so much. See you in a few days!"

Rainbow Dash groaned, grounded herself, and followed Rarity on board. We all trailed after and made ourselves comfortable for the long journey ahead.

---

Most of the journey ran together for me. I slept on the train, and we barely saw any of Manehattan, riding a couple of wagons the locals called 'taxis' to the city port. The yacht was very pretty, though I'm no judge of boats. Rarity fell in love with its sweeping lines and its white and gold color scheme. Its sail was even colored to look like Celestia's odd mane, which impressed Pinkie and Rainbow Dash. I just tried to fade into the background during our time aboard, and largely succeeded.

Twilight worked to keep our sails full, propelling us toward the endangered sea ponies at the best speed the graceful craft could handle. There were three other ponies aboard as crew, aside from the captain, and they made sure the sails were adjusted and everypony aboard stayed safe.

The first day everyone was so enthralled with the novelty of it all, it was easy for me to go unnoticed, and I could spend a minimum amount of energy maintaining my false front. At mealtimes it was harder, but by taking over the cooking duty from the crew, more often than not I could claim I ate while I cooked, and lounge nearby while the rest chatted over their meal. Truthfully I continued to eat little, and a slight bout of seasickness did nothing to encourage me to change that. Earth ponies weren't made for sea voyages, that seemed plain.

Pinkie Pie of course was an anomaly, and stuffed herself at every opportunity. "Nothing needs salt! The air salts it for you! The sea is the best!" she squealed, a bit of pureed squash on her nose like vegetable sunscreen. We all sat together at dinner in a cozy semi-circle of seats around a table on deck. There had been a gorgeous sunset (I had been told) a few minutes before, while I was cooking below.

Rainbow Dash had other thoughts about the ocean. "It's boring out here. I haven't seen a single sea monster that didn't turn out to be Pinkie. This boat is soooooo slow!" She froze, and shot the captain a sheepish grin as he bustled by. Once he had gone below, she picked up right where she had left off. "And, ugh, the salty air makes my feathers feel weird. Not to mention how it makes them taste."

Fluttershy smiled, and gestured out over the side of the yacht. "It may be dull from up here on the surface Rainbow, but just think of the amazing creatures we'll see once we're down below the surface. I don't think I've read more than a book or two about marine life, so almost everything will be a surprise to me."

"Noooo! Oh, I'm such a dummy. I should have packed a camera!" Twilight wailed. "I could've used the same waterproofing spell on it I found for Pinkie's cannon, and it would've been fine!" She slumped forward until her nose bumped the table.

"There was a camera in one of the bags I had to leave behind," Rarity sighed, tugging at the curl of her mane and turning a critical eye on it.

Fluttershy turned to me, where I leaned against the railing a few feet from the dining ponies. "Applejack? What do you think of the sea?"

"Ah think Ah'll be glad to set my hooves on solid ground again. Ah'm a mite nervous not knowin' exactly what's beneath me, y'know what Ah mean?"

"Well, we know there's a giant sea monster beneath us somewhere," Pinkie said, pointing at the deck. "Now you know one thing under us! Does that help?"

Five hooves met five faces simultaneously.

"Not...especially Pinkie. But thanks fer tryin'."

Twilight told us we wouldn't reach the site of the sea pony settlement until tomorrow evening, so we decided to get some rest, sleeping in shifts with one of us awake to keep an eye on things. Twilight's spell was fortunately self-sustaining, so she could sleep and do other things without worrying about it.

I lay in my bunk and tried to sleep, but nausea and the pain in my stomach had teamed up to make me more miserable than I already felt. I didn't ask anypony for help for either problem; most of them were asleep, and besides, I deserved to suffer a little for how badly I'd fouled things up. Maybe when I got back I'd go see the doc, but we had more important things than a tummy-ache to worry about.

I remembered something Pa used to tell me when I told him I couldn't sleep. He used to say 'lie on the edge and you'll soon drop off.' I grimaced there in the dark. Haunted by bad dad-humor and stomach problems.

I wondered what he would have thought of his freckled firecracker of a daughter, running around Equestria stomping out demigods and tyrants, and cringed when I imagined him walking up to the farm's gates and seeing the sign Mac had probably painted by now. What good was I if I could save the world with a fancy necklace, but I couldn't keep one farm running well enough to feed my family? Hot tears soaked my pillow, but a hoof stuffed in my mouth stopped the sobs from leaking out. I must have nodded off eventually, but it felt like I'd gotten about two minutes sleep when Dash nudged me awake.

"Hey, AJ. Your turn. Y'okay? You look awful."

"J-just...seasick. Be fine," I mumbled, slithering out of my bunk. Dash patted me with an outstretched wing, and made her way to her own bunk, yawning.

I climbed the steps up from the lower deck and took my place beside the wheel. It was lashed in place, and the compass showed we were sailing east straight and true, so everything checked out. The crewpony on duty nodded my way, but offered no conversation.

It was a cold night, clouds cloaking the moon. I felt sandwiched between two layers of impenetrable darkness. What I'd told Fluttershy was the truth; I didn't like the mercurial, mystery-filled sea. At least things coming at me from the sky I'd have a chance of spotting.

The moon's absence touched off a memory and I found myself wondering about Luna. It had been over a year since we'd seen her in Ponyville, and when I thought about it, I hadn't seen more than a glimpse of her at the palace either. It was odd, given how we'd ended things the Nightmare Night before last. I wondered how she had coped with the loneliness during those long years of banishment. It was a wonder she was sane at all, really.

I grabbed a rough, heavy blanket from the seat nearby and draped myself with it, warding off the chill. Just what I needed really, more time virtually alone with myself. I stared ahead at the water our vessel was plowing through and, skipping ahead of the knot of awfulness we would have to endure, I tried to picture what the Apple family's future would be like.

We might still be living on the farm, working for someone other than ourselves for the first time. There would be no more hayrides or sisterhooves socials without their say-so. Maybe the animals would go. Maybe the entire orchard would be cleared and replaced with corn fields. It wouldn't be up to me any longer. The thought of such wholesale transformation, undoing years of careful work, was like cold steel slicing into my heart.

I thought of the alternative; we might have to leave the property completely. We'd find ourselves a home in Ponyville-proper. Mac could easily find construction work. I could get work on one of the other town farms, or even bake for the Cakes if there was enough money there. Granny could rest up, and Apple Bloom could finish school without worrying about chores anymore.

While it didn't sound so awful, an echo of that chaotic day Twilight got her wings rose up in me. Something wrong with the picture I painted in my head, nebulous but persistent, nagged at me. I realized I'd felt it once before, though it had been mixed up with a lot of other doubts and awkwardness. Way back when I stayed with Auntie and Uncle Orange, I had felt...out of place. The closer I got to Sweet Apple Acres on my return trip, the surer I grew I was doing the right thing for me.

What would I do if I had to live the rest of my life feeling that way? And if Mac, Apple Bloom and Granny felt the same... I groaned, low in my throat. We were rooted in that farm as deeply as any of the trees there. Uprooting us might be the death of us, or at least, the death of the ponies I knew and loved.

I checked the time on the clock built into the compass case, and snorted. I'd had a devastating revelation and it had only been fifteen minutes.

I risked leaving the wheel and navigator long enough to make us some tea, and returned to find nothing had changed. I settled in for a long shift, hunkering down as the wind picked up, blowing across the deck and carrying some salty spray with it.

By the time we arrived at the site, it was nearly midnight again, almost the third day of our sea voyage. Our lanterns were no match for the vast night, forcing Twilight to use a magical flare to confirm a landmark: a large exposed coral reef, developing into an island. Most of us seemed well rested and raring to go, so I did my best to appear the same, lining up before Twilight. She opened up the familiar chest beside her and levitated out our elements, sending each one shooting out to fasten around our necks. Hers of course settled atop her head, doing a lot to promote that 'princess Twilight Sparkle' image. I was still getting used to that.

"Okay, I haven't had time to do more than read up on these spells and there's no time for a bench test. Pinkie! Into the water."

Pinkie jumped overboard without any hesitation, but then, it wasn't her first trip over the rail on the journey. "Whee!"

Twilight leaned over the rail, powered up her horn, and shot the water-treading mare with a ray of violet light. With a sound like a balloon animal being twisted into shape, Pinkie's form blurred... The next thing we saw was Pinkie breaching from the water, sailing in an arc fifteen feet long before diving back into the green, near-opaque depths. She surfaced again beside the boat and squealed with delight.

"Woooo-hooooooo! I have a tail you guys! There are so many new jokes I can make now, you have no idea."

"She doesn't realize she's always had one?" Dash muttered, then pointed at Pinkie. "What's with her mane? It looks different."

Twilight squinted at Pinkie, who squinted back. Her mane had changed from a fluffy pink mass into thick, blunt lengths with a rubbery appearance. They almost looked like lots and lots of tiny pony legs, but without joints.

"Are they tentacles? I saw an octopus once at an aquarium in Canterlot who... Anyways, she seems fine. Let's do you next, Rarity."

Rarity hesitated a long minute, then took a running leap off the yacht. Twilight zapped her in midair, so when she surfaced, she cleared her eyes of water and watched Twilight, one elegant brow arched. "Well?"

"Well what? I already changed you." The alicorn grinned, and Dash actually offered her a hoofbump.

Rarity reclined onto her back and lifted her lower body free of the water, gasping. Fish scales of white and iridescent blue blended seamlessly from the fur of her barrel down into the tail, shimmering like jewels beneath the yacht's lanterns. Like Pinkie, her hindlegs were gone, melded with her tail into one powerful appendage.

"Me next!" Rainbow yelled, dropping into the water in a cannonball. Twilight cast the spell again, but something was decidedly different this time. Rainbow's wings changed into additional fins, long and sweeping. She slipped beneath the surface, and burst back through it seconds later, rocketing twenty feet in the air before falling back into the drink.

"Ohmygosh-ohmygosh-ohmygosh, I've never been able to swim or maneuver like this underwater before! I'll be able to swim circles around any sea monster stupid enough to mess with us!" Dash pounded the water with a hoof, splashing all three waiting pseudo-sea ponies.

"Applejack?" Twilight gestured overboard, and I took the hint. I climbed up on the railing, balanced a moment, then felt a tug at my mane.

"Sorry, I didn't think you'd want your hat ruined." Twilight levitated my Stetson down below deck, then nodded.
I balanced a second longer, then launched off. I felt myself change on the way down, zapped in midair like Rarity was, then hit the cold water. That certainly woke me up! When I surfaced, Rarity cooed and Pinkie giggled.

"AJ, your freckles turned into little white starfish!" Pinkie poked at them, grinning. I felt my cheeks, and confirmed it. It wasn't just the shape of them; they were literally little starfish clinging to my cheeks.

Twilight levitated herself and Fluttershy over the water at the same time, and cast the spell on the pegasus, then herself, before dropping them both in to join us. Before they fell I could see that Fluttershy's wings had become long graceful fins like Rainbow's, but so had her mane, sure to transform her into a gorgeous sight underwater. Twilight's scales actually glowed, and that came in very handy as we grouped up, and sank together beneath the water.

I felt like I could see for miles beneath the waves, and had no idea why. It was usually pretty hard to see long distances once I was immersed, and this wasn't the clearest water I'd ever seen. Twilight tapped my shoulder and pointed. On the sea floor, thousands of feet beneath us, was a tiny source of light.

"Let's go!" Twilight's voice sounded, well, bubbly, but we could understand her. We swam towards the light source, and Dash showed off her greater speed, racing ahead of us in no time. After a few minutes, she swooped back towards us, looking puzzled.

"The light disappeared!"

"What do you mean? It's right there." Twilight waved a hoof down at the glimmer in the depths.

"Yeah, it came back when I swam back up to tell you guys." Dash scowled. "Something fishy's going on."

Pinkie snort-giggled, and I wished I'd had my hat to hide behind. Sometimes it was like saving the world with a bunch of school-age foals.

Twilight tapped her chin with one hoof for a moment, then shrugged. "Well, we'll have to hope we'll figure it out when we get closer. Just aim with all the accuracy we can, so when it goes out we're still swimming in the right direction."

Rainbow proved right as a few minute's swimming later, the light vanished. We pressed on, and Twilight fired another magical flare, letting it fall into the depths beneath us. When it hit, we could see we'd gotten closer to the sea floor, but we were still a long ways from reaching it. Suddenly, the light popped up again. In the dim illumination from the flare, it was just possible to see the light shone from inside a crevice in the sea floor.

Fluttershy stirred up the water with an excited flick of her tail. "Ohhh! That must be where their village is, hidden and protected! Maybe that's how they've stayed out of sight all these years."

Twilight struck one hoof with another. "And it's why the light seemed to disappear! We could see it from a higher vantage, but when we started getting closer and the angle changed, it became obscured, perhaps by some stone outcropping we can't see yet."

"Or maybe they just turned it off because they're afraid of that thing?" Pinkie asked, pointing to something directly below us.
We all looked down, and saw something impossible. A snake—no, underwater they were called eeks, or eels, weren't they—was rushing along the sea floor towards the distant crevice. I blinked, sure I had the scale or perspective wrong, but...

"Oh Celestia. That thing is so, so big," Twilight whispered. The flare resting on the sand far below, though it revealed a huge area, couldn't show us the entire creature at once.

We watched the gargantuan shape glide beneath us, our jaws hanging open and eyes wide, until Rainbow Dash spoke up.

"Um, isn't it headed for that light?"

"Oh no! Yes, we need to...I-I don't know yet, but we can't do whatever it is from up here!" Twilight shot down after the eel with a strong flick of her tail, and we followed, Rainbow soon taking the lead again. I noticed Dash didn't draw out of sight this time.

The closer we drew to the crevice, the more light there was, until we saw the eel try to nose its way into the too-small crack in the seafloor. It was far too massive to fit more than its nose inside, and frustrated, it arched up a loop of its length to try again from directly above. We could hear stone grind beneath its body, and clouds of disturbed silt began to drift through the water.

Rainbow Dash scowled, pausing long enough to thrust a hoof toward the monster and shout back at us. "It's attacking the village! It's trying to eat them!" She rocketed ahead, fins whipping through the water.

"Rainbow, come back! You can't do anything alone!" Twilight tried to capture Dash in her magic but she'd sped out of effective reach already.

We swam with all our might and watched as Rainbow drew closer and closer to the eel without ever seeming to reach it. Over and over we had to adjust our impression of its size upwards, until Dash finally reached the green monster. We watched the cyan spot smack the impossibly huge sea creature with her tail, batter it with her hooves, but the monster took nearly a minute to even bother responding to the onslaught. There was no question Rainbow had failed to do any damage; if she'd had hindlegs and stood on them, she'd just barely be the height of the eel's eye!

We still hadn't crossed half the distance Dash had when the eel snapped at the tiny pest 'tickling' its cheek. Rainbow darted away, hesitated, then swam back towards us. Every undulation of her tail and fins broadcast her frustration.

"It's just too huge! I could barely get it to notice me, much less knock it out!" Rainbow grumbled, trying to ruffle her wings and instead waggling her dorsal fin.

"We need to draw it away from that crevice. If we...kill it, or even knock it out using the Elements, we don't want it collapsing right over the village." Rarity shuddered. "Those poor sea ponies. They must be terrified!"

"One big distraction coming up," Twilight growled, horn glowing to life. A brilliant purple light lanced from the tip, cutting through the dark water to sting the eel's cheek.

It recoiled with whip-like speed, tossing its head back and forth. Its great yellow eye rolled around, but found nothing to attack. After just seconds, it resumed its nuzzling and bashing assault on the crevice.

A few seconds later we were all bowled over by the water disturbed by the eel's violent movements. Twilight righted herself, charged her horn until we all had to shut our eyes against its glow, and fired another bolt of pure magic at the beast.

This time she truly got the monster's attention. It must have seen the source of the flash, and plowed through the water towards us, jaws slightly parted in a terrifying grimace. Its ribbon-like body wobbled through the water, each undulation propelling it towards us.

"Formation!" Twilight yelled, voice a touch higher than usual. She floated up and ahead of our little group, while the rest of us formed a semi-circle behind her.

I could already feel my element warming up, and a glance to my left showed the others' jeweled necklaces shining with gathering power. An expanding field of white light spread out from my friends and me, so bright it washed out everything else and lit the seafloor for a mile in every direction.

Twilight cried out as the eel, blinded by the intense light, approached nonetheless in a thrashing rush. "Something's wrong!"
My amulet grew cold around my neck. I tried to tuck my chin down to peer at it, and that's when the clasp failed. The Element of Honesty fell off. I grabbed for it, forelegs making desperate windmilling motions, but I was still mostly blinded by the light show and it slipped from my hooves to head straight for the seafloor, still hundreds of feet below. A quick glance showed the others weren't having this problem; I'd been singled out. And then the eel was upon us.

Blinded, it missed us by a few dozen yards, but its passage was like getting caught in a tornado. We were whipped about, smashed into one another, then hurled into the body of the eel again and again before we sank below the plane of its travel. Battered and stunned, we floated down, following my element to the seafloor.

All I could think was that I had doomed my friends, before the blackness swallowing up more and more of my vision overtook me.

It was Fluttershy who shook me awake, though with her gentle touch, it's a wonder I ever even felt it. I opened my mouth only to have a hoof promptly stuffed in it, while Fluttershy used her free hoof to point directly overhead.

We were right beneath the eel, its lengthy body flowing by as it made pass after pass searching for us. Five of us cowered in the lee of an upright spike of stone almost the size of Sugarcube Corner. Twilight was examining the Elements frantically, and as my sluggish mind finished soaking in the present situation, Rainbow Dash swam unsteadily back into the midst of the group with my Element, fetched from wherever it had fallen earlier.

Twilight took the choker with the apple-shaped gem and scrutinized it, daring to light her horn to better see what she was doing. "Gem, intact. Casing, whole. Resonance, familiar and within observed ranges," she muttered to herself, tone spiraling steadily from concerned to panicked. "It's the real Element, and it seems fine, so what the hay is wrong?"

The need to confess welled up inside, filling me. I felt like a pot about to boil over. All the lies I'd told, the things I'd hidden, the masks I'd pulled over my true face all burned within me, driving my mouth to open and come clean at last. There was no better time, seeing as how continuing the lie could get us all killed, and of course no worse time, what with us fighting for our lives and all. Honesty, dusty and disused though she might be, won in the end.

Steeling myself for resentment and worse, I nudged Fluttershy's hoof away. "Y'won't find anything wrong with it Twi. Ah'm the problem." I swam over to join the rest, every flick of my tail hesitant, Fluttershy following in my wake.

"Huh? What makes you say that, AJ?" Twilight's eyes narrowed. "You're...not a changeling, are you?" Her voice went wry and flat. "I don't think I could take that just now."

Dash snarled, spreading her forehooves and preparing a tackle.

Pinkie Pie dove between the hotheaded pegasus and myself. "She's not a changeling!" Pinkie's eyes glinted, reflecting the light from Twilight's horn and luminous scales, eerie in the ocean depths. "Tell them, AJ!"

"Ah'm not a changeling...but Ah have been lyin' to y'all." I found myself grateful this was happening at the bottom of the ocean. A few more drops of salt water would go unnoticed here. "Ah...haven't been myself for quite a while now. Been...sad. A-all the time." I began to feel ridiculous, and wondered if I even had the words to make them understand.

I could see the confusion on their faces, and stumbled on. "Ah hid it, and did a dandy job of it Ah guess, 'cuz none of you called me out on it. Ah didn't want you to know. Ah didn't want you to try to help, 'cuz...you couldn't. Nopony can." Visible or not, it was impossible to hide the crying now. My shoulders shook, and Fluttershy settled over my back like a cloak, hugging me tight.

The look on Pinkie's face was more than I could stand, and my eyes barely skipped over her. She looked dumbstruck, eyes wide and staring, but her mouth was twisted into a rictus of horror. I could have told her there would never again be another party on this planet and I doubt the reaction would've been as bad.

Twilight Sparkle stared at me, twisting my Element in her hooves. "W-why on earth wouldn't you think we can help? We're your best friends! You've helped cheer all of us up when we're sad, Applejack!" She sounded completely mystified.

"Yeah! You were just being a big dummy, AJ. S'cool, now we know, and we'll get you grinnin' again in ten seconds flat. After we beat this stupid eel." Rainbow turned her eyes back on the monster, fins spreading, already planning her next move.

I could feel my chances fading of getting the scope of this problem across to them. I couldn't let things rest there though. I pushed myself to speak up again, though all that came out was a whisper. "You don't get it. You can't get it unless you've felt this way." I struggled for a little more volume. "Nothin' from the outside reaches me." I glanced at Pinkie, who had at least managed to close her mouth. "Not the wildest party." I shook my head at Rainbow. "Not winnin' the biggest race. Ah don't care about winnin' anything anymore.

My shoulders began to shake again. An ache spread through my chest. "The last thing Ah cared about was m-m-mah family! Takin' care of them no matter how lousy Ah felt," I lost all control, my voice scaling up to a despairing wail that filled the water around us with bubbles, "but Ah bucked that up too!"

I don't know if by some incredible stroke of bad luck those bubbles happened to draw the eel's attention or it had already found us, but the next thing I knew, Rarity was shrieking, and looming up out of the darkness was a face out of nightmare.

Twilight reacted instinctively, firing off a magical bolt straight at the eel's left eye. It was enough to turn it away from our hiding place, though the water disturbed by its wake sent us tumbling once again.

"I-I could understand it!" Fluttershy squeaked, while we struggled to right ourselves and get our bearings.

"Really? What did it say?" Pinkie pressed her, while trying to untangle three of her mane-tentacles.

"Well, 'ow,' but I definitely heard it. It's just an animal, girls! I don't think the Elements would have helped anyways..." Fluttershy pawed at her choker.

"Well, do you think you can speak to the creature, dear Fluttershy?" Rarity arched a brow, gesturing at the great greenish-brown body sliding off into the darkness again. "No rush, darling."

"Um, I don't think it will be able to hear me unless it's still and everything is quiet. And...I'd probably have to be as close as Rainbow was earlier, when she tried to beat it up." The last few words were difficult to make out, as Fluttershy's pitch scaled up into a squeak.

I was barely listening at this point. My misery was nearly complete. All it would take was my friends getting hurt or killed to finish me off. I raised my head, struggling against the crushing weight of sadness, fighting that poisonous thought.

Lifting my head only let me see five discouraged, bruised friends though, no one quite willing to look my way at the moment...except the one I least wanted to endure sympathy from. Pinkie was watching me with an odd look, very un-party-pony-like, with none of the hugely exaggerated expressions she was known for. Pinkie swam up beside me, and guided my head down to rest against her neck.

"Leave it to them. We'll sort this out later. That's a Pinkie promise." She held me while the others conferred.

With a flash of green the eel snapped down into our midst, scattering us, yelps of shock and screams sending up more bubbles. Though the terror and confusion one fact resolved for me: the eel had singled out Rarity, turning to follow her desperate, thrashing strokes through the water.

Rarity squealed when she glanced over her shoulder to see that enormous yellow eye fixed on her. She shoved a telekinetic blast down at the sand, raising a billowing cloud of silt between herself and the eel.

Losing sight of its target goaded the monster into following the white unicorn, swimming right through that masking cloud.
Watching, torn between fear for Rarity and helplessness in the face of such a monster, acrid thoughts seeped up. Look what you've gotten your friends into. That monster's going to eat them one by one, and you'll be the last to go since you're too useless to fight. You'll just float there, watching them die, feeling nothing.

I recoiled from my inner voice and fought back with another. Don't just sit there treading water, you useless lump! Who cares if you're a sad sack? Your friends are going to die if you don't help out, here! If you were ever worth anything at all, you'll flick your little fin and make yourself useful!

I knew which voice to listen to tonight. I thrashed my tail through the water, driving myself at a point ahead of the eel, hoping I could catch up to it in time to land a blow it would notice. Before I drew close enough to the monster for its body to block out the sight, I could see Rainbow swimming a similar course from the eel's other side.

My aim was true, but it felt like I was moving slower than a pig in mud! I could see I wasn't going to make it in time; my blow would land behind the eel's eye. That's when its head thrashed towards me, bringing its eye right into my extended hooves.
The blow launched me back away from the eel, spinning head over tail, but it had certainly lost its fascination with Rarity. Once I recovered from my spin, I spotted Rainbow floating over the eel, shaking out her forehooves.

A spot of color drew my eyes to the eel's snout, where Pinkie had taken up position. "Hey! Mister monster! I know what you're thinking, punk. You're thinking 'did she eat five waffles before bed or six?' Now to tell you the truth I forgot myself in all this excitement. But being this is a 280 caliber custom short-colt, the most powerful party cannon in the world and will beat your batter six ways to Sunday, you've gotta ask yourself a question: 'Do I eel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?"

Very faintly, I thought I could hear Twilight groan in pain.

For whatever reason the eel held still for Pinkie's ridiculous monologue, but the second she quit talking, it opened its massive jaws to snap over the annoying, brightly-colored morsel. Pinkie fired her cannon and a massive load of inflated balloons, confetti, and ribbons filled the eel's jaws. The party-load did such a good job expanding to fill the monster's mouth in fact, that it struggled a moment against the pressure of all those helium balloons to even bite down. When it finally managed it, the resulting mass of bubbles created a curtain so vast, I saw we all had time to get to cover behind chunks of rock on the seafloor.

A bit of luminous pink and purple rose from behind a rock beneath the thrashing eel, who was still clearing shreds of rubber and colored paper from its maw. I realized the source of light was Twilight breaking from cover. The light grew as she charged her horn. Twilight fired a beam, but this time the eel was not her target. She zapped Rainbow, floating nearby.

Rainbow Dash grew, or appeared to grow in size, shock becoming clear on her face as it expanded with the rest of her. As soon as she grasped what was going on, she settled into a fighting stance, bobbing in the water before the eel. "Aww yeah, try to ignore me now!"

I tried waving my legs to get her attention, panic fluttering in my chest. Rainbow was still only about the size of the eel's head!
Twilight's words, amplified like Luna's 'royal' voice, boomed through the water. "Rainbow! Don't fight it, just lure it away! Get it further from the sea ponies! Then make it to back to me. I'll take it from there."

Rainbow scowled, set her jaw, then took a swing at the eel anyways. Her hoof sailed straight through the confused monster's cheek. "Oh. Um, yeah. Operation Rainbow bait is go!" The illusion-enhanced pegasus took off at as fast a clip as she could into open water, muscles in her magnified tail flexing, fins streaming behind her. The eel thrashed its lengthy body after her within seconds.

Twilight waved us up, and pointed after the pair. "C'mon, let's move this fight away from the trench!"

Pinkie, Rarity, Fluttershy and I all emerged from our scattered refuges and followed the glowing beacon of Twilight, while my heart pounded in my chest. I couldn't keep up with Rainbow, couldn't stop her from doing anything boneheaded and getting eaten by the blasted water-worm!

It grew harder to make out what was happening as Dash and the eel drew further from us, but even with Rainbow's speed, I knew it wouldn't take something the eel's size long to catch up. I saw it convulse, lunging maybe, and in a sudden flash Twilight teleported Rainbow back into our midst.

"T-that thing has waaaaay too many teeth," Rainbow stuttered, flopping over to float supine. The size-illusion flickered around her, then collapsed, leaving Rainbow looking smaller than ever.

Meanwhile Twilight was forcing power into her horn again, layering flickering auras around that natural antenna, shading from a pale lilac into a violently unstable and eye-searing plum.

"Twilight, what...?" Rarity reached out a hoof towards our friend, and I noticed in the harsh light from the accumulated magic the stricken look on Twilight's face.

The first volley of magical darts struck the eel near the tail, and where they impacted, they flash-boiled the water, creating expanding spheres of silvery steam and bubbles. The eel's body cracked like a whip, bringing its head around in an instant and displacing so much water it sent a shock wave out along the ocean floor.

Twilight threw up a sloppy shield to keep us from being bowled over once again, and hit the eel with a second volley, and a third, and a fourth, turning her magic into pure violence against the overgrown sea creature. Again and again it tried to dart in close enough to put an end to the puny source of its pain, but each time it tried the volley grew denser and more painful, scorching its muddy green hide.

Twilight winced backward every time it lunged in, forcing her to intensify the attack, hurting the eel further. I could hear Fluttershy whimpering, holding a length of her own fin across her eyes to shield herself from the violence.

At last the monster retreated, winding sluggishly away into the distance, its massive body pockmarked with blackened spots and pink burns.

Twilight turned to Fluttershy and gave her one quick, decisive nod. The timid pony squeaked, returned the nod, then swam up to follow Twilight in pursuit of the escaping monster.

Dash frowned, then nodded after them. "You've got things here? I'm gonna tag along in case something goes wrong." Without waiting for an answer, she shot off through the water after Twilight and Fluttershy, leaving me alone with Pinkie and Rarity.

For a long moment we just hung there in the silt-clouded water, tails moving only enough to keep us suspended, gills working hard after the strenuous swimming we'd just done. Then the stress, the close calls, the real impact of it blew past the adrenaline and hit me in the gut. My stomach burned, and I crumpled in on myself, drawing the other two to my side in an instant. Once it was plain I hadn't been hurt in the fight, we tried to pick up where we had left off, after my confession.

"I want you to know Applejack, that if there's anything I can do, just name it." Rarity gave me a few awkward pats on the shoulder. "Celestia knows I was a wreck for a while after the gala, thanks to that boor Blueblood. You all helped me get over that."

I wanted to explain I wasn't sad over one thing that happened at a party. This wasn't something I was down about for days or weeks, then bounced back from. It had been months since I'd felt the sun on my face and enjoyed it, months since I actively sought anypony's company. I could barely remember what it felt like to go an hour without worrying, or remembering what a screw-up I was.

I wanted to explain, but I was so soul-crushingly weary, and odds were good nopony would understand anyways. My stomach decided that was the perfect moment to twist inside me again, harder, and I doubled over. Pinkie tried her best to support me and stay out of my way at the same time.

All I could do was curl in on myself, my body instinctively trying to protect the body from pain, but this pain came from within, and all the balling-up in the world wasn't going to stop the burning in my core.

"Here AJ, have some fresh water." Pinkie dug a canteen out of her saddlebags, all of which had been waterproofed by Twilight, and pressed it to my lips. Drinking underwater was odd, but I managed a few swallows, and it did help a bit.

"Thanks Pinkie." I uncurled somewhat, and hoofed back the canteen. "Have you seen anything, Rarity?"
Rarity started; she'd been staring at me, but she whipped around and gazed out through the water where the others had gone after the eel. "No, nothing yet."

We were in for a long wait. It took over an hour for Rainbow Dash to swim back to us, alone, exhausted. Pinkie pressed her canteen on her too, then shook her like a rag-doll, demanding news.

"What's happening out there? Have they been eaten? Did they eat the eel? Is Twilight fatter than Celestia on half-price cake day, now?"

Rainbow pushed Pinkie away, grumbling. "Wha—? No! They're fine, and so is the eel. Stupid eel. Fluttershy managed to talk with it, but Twilight had to magically amplify that lame, quiet voice of hers like, times a billion."

"So what'd they find out?" I asked. "Ah guess it's not an evil critter."

"So," Rainbow rolled her eyes, "apparently it's just your garden variety eel! It swam through a fresh shipwreck last week, and it must've been carrying some magic cargo, because it made the eel...well, huge!"

"But why did it attack the sea ponies? Did they attack it first, believing it to be a monster?" Rarity gestured towards the distant crevice, where a very dim light was visible. "Not that I'd blame them a bit."

"It wasn't attacking them! It wasn't paying any attention to them at all. Its nest is in that canyon, and it was trying to return to its eggs. It just didn't fit anymore! It was really confused. Then we picked on it." Dash hung her head a little. "Twilight feels even worse now than she did earlier about burning it like she did. She apologized through Fluttershy, but, y'know."

We digested this a moment while Rainbow Dash rested. Before we could think of anything else to ask, I caught movement out in the depths, and realized the eel was back. A tiny pink speck atop the eel's head seemed to be Twilight, and as the eel drew close enough for us to see every crack and chip in the fangs peeking through his parted lips, she drifted down to us from her perch. Fluttershy waved at us, remaining up top.

"Achilles here is going to continue to the canyon and settle peacefully beside it for now. Fluttershy will go with him, and we'll trail along to go reassure the sea ponies." Twilight swam closer and rested a hoof on my shoulder. "Are you up to the swim AJ?"

I didn't feel like it, but I nodded, and we set off after the eel. I made it, though it was a far longer swim than I'd expected. By the time we arrived, Achilles was stretched out on the ocean floor beside the canyon, waiting patiently.

No one swam up from the crevice to meet us. It was almost impossible to see anything in this portion of the seabed with all the disturbed sand and silt suspended in the water. Twilight fed more power into her horn, but even with that light, visibility was twenty feet at best.

We swam down into the canyon, vague shapes looming out of the cloudy water. Some were shelves and spears of stone or horns of coral, but a few were enormous shells secured to the canyon walls, plainly homes, what with the paint and decorations stuck to them. Many of the shells we passed were destroyed, crushed or holed by fallen rocks.

Rainbow Dash knocked on a few intact shells with no results. It wasn't until we reached the bottom of the canyon that we began to see more intact homes, many sheltered beneath an apron of stone which jutted out from the canyon wall. Atop this apron, gardens of kelp had thrived, but they were mostly buried in rubble now.

I noticed Twilight barely paying attention as Rainbow whipped around at her usual top speed, knocking on more of the odd shell-homes, trying to encourage the sea ponies to emerge. Twi chewed her lip, rubbing one foreleg with the other.

Fluttershy must have picked up on it too. "What is it, Twilight? What's wrong?"

"It's...I've never used my magic so violently before. Stun spells, sure...concussive force, yes. I've never tried to hurt something like this before though. I honestly feel a little sick about it. And poor Achilles. He didn't deserve that. He didn't deserve any of what's happened to him." She shook her head, the fine hairs of her mane drifting about her in a cloud. "I couldn't think fast enough to come up with a better solution. I wasn't prepared. I guess I came to rely too much on the Elements. So stupid!"

We all moved to reassure Twilight with words and touch, even as a new source of guilt merrily took root in my brain. I just might've given Twilight a new complex. Congrats, AJ.

We barely got out a word or two for Twilight before sea ponies began to appear out of the clouded water, startling us into silence. They were a wildly varied bunch, with brilliant colors, camouflage designs, and features similar to my starfish freckles and Pinkie's hair. Some had coral-like horns, and not always just one. Others had seaweed woven into or growing in their manes.

One, an emerald-green stallion with a fiery red mane made of tentacles, thinner than Pinkie's, drifted to the front of the gathering crowd. "Welcome, brave ones! You vanquished the monster, I take it?"

Twilight drifted forward to meet him and performed a curtsey-like bob. "...In a way." She couldn't quite keep her polite smile from twisting. "I'm Twilight Sparkle, and these are my friends, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash—" Twilight introduced us all in turn. "In fact, mister...?"

"I'm Steam Seeker, mayor of this village."

"Mayor, the 'monster' was just a normally-harmless eel in a bad situation." When Twilight explained the circumstances there was an explosion of debate over what to do with Achilles.

"He can't stay! Even if he's peaceful he'd eat this entire portion of the ocean bare in weeks!"

"We couldn't ask for a better protector for the village though, could we? He could eat giant squid for breakfast, or even rock-whales!"

Steam Seeker silenced the rest of the sea ponies with a sweep of his foreleg. "Enough. We have wounded to tend to. Is there a healer amongst you, by chance?"

Twilight nodded, and waved Fluttershy forward. "We all know a little first-aid, but Fluttershy is our expert. Please, show us to your wounded."

Having dressed plenty of scratches and even re-set a couple dislocations, I felt a small spark of hope I could help these strange folks out. It would go a long ways towards alleviating the guilt I felt over feeling so unstirred over their plight, earlier.
When we reached the town hall, located in the chambers of a massive nautilus shell, I soon realized my skills would be next to useless. There was nothing like a bandage down here, or gauze, or tape. The dressings I saw were held in place with either seaweed or globs of some kind of jelly. There were lots of wounded sea ponies, some resting on hammocks, others swimming with exhausted flexes of (often-tattered) fins, doing what they could to tend one another.

Steam Seeker gestured to the crowd, most of whom barely seemed to register the strange ponies in their midst. "Many were injured by falling rocks, and others hurt themselves in their panic to escape the monster. A few were in their homes when rocks crushed them. Those we could find, we brought here." He grimaced, bushy brows knitted together.

Fluttershy swam over to a sea pony who seemed to be in charge and talked triage, while Twilight began taking stock of the supplies we'd brought down with us.

A minute later, Fluttershy was tugging me towards an elderly mare with a crushed tail. "Um, Applejack, if you feel up to it? See what you can do to clean up the dressings on her? She's out of immediate danger, but she's in risk of going into shock. Talk to her."

Talking was about the last thing I wanted to do, but I gave it a try as I carefully unwound seaweed from around her tail. "Well, looks like it's been kind of a lousy few days for everypony, huh? Ah'm glad it's over now though, y'all can get back to a peaceful life."

I saw her mouth work, her eyes not quite seeing me. She was saying something, but I couldn't make it out. Beneath the dressings, I could see where a great weight had struck the mare. It had scraped her faded sunset-orange scales off there, the skin beneath purple and black with bruising. Blood clouded up through the water without the seaweed and sponge-pad there to absorb it. I found fresh seaweed and a new sponge had been placed beside me, and I worked to re-dress her, concentrating on shaping the dressing to stay snug despite her movements.

"What was that ma'am? Ah didn't catch that." Her silently-moving mouth was disturbing, so I kept my eyes on my work.

"Can't...ever go back to my life. My son. My granddaughter. They're..."

My gills clamped shut, and I slowly raised my eyes to meet hers. "Oh Luna's flank, no... Ah'm so sorry." If only we'd gotten here earlier.

"Applejack! Could you give me a hoof? I need to set this bone, but he keeps," Twilight grunted, "thrashing!"

I glanced Twilight's way, but reached out to squeeze the mare's hoof. "Y-you'll make it. Remember 'em happy, that's how they'd want it, right?"

Before she could respond, I dropped her limp hoof and fled towards Twilight and her patient, grateful for merely physical work. Guilt and pain were already tearing me apart from the inside. I couldn't bear such naked agony, such despair lapping over me from outside as well, even if retreating from the poor mare slapped another dollop of guilt and self-loathing on the pile. I barely recognized myself anymore.

It was hours before we'd done what we could, which felt like precious little. The sea ponies in charge of the wounded thanked us, and spelled for a short while, resumed their work as we swam back out into the village. Still curtained in suspended silt, the village looked eerie, like the setting for a ghost story. A few sea ponies were restoring lights around the village, hanging strange pods filled with a green glow from graceful arcs of some white material.

As the illumination spread, the scene began to look more like a town during a snowstorm, light picking out individual particles swirling in the silt, and I started to relax a tiny bit. Even at the bottom of the sea, life wasn't so different for ponies. Then the eerie factor jumped up the scale when I realized the 'lamp posts' were enormous, bleached ribs.

I felt my part in this adventure, failed as it was, had all but ended. I asked some sea ponies drifting by for a room, and after a short whispered conference, I found myself led into a home with a hammock. I hardly noticed the home was a giant clam shell and the hammock was woven kelp, I was that spent. I crashed, letting sleep block out the world and save me from my worries for a few hours.

I woke with that disconnected, out-of-the-loop feeling you get when you're the first to doze off at a party. I swam out of my little guest house and found Pinkie outside, playing some game involving blowing bubbles with the younger sea ponies. More of the silt had settled, so the village seemed brighter, less sinister.

Pinkie gave up her game the moment she saw me, and swam over to deliver a hug. "Applejack! Feeling any better? We're heading back to the surface in a bit. Sunshine's waiting for us up there!"

"What'd Ah miss?" I glanced around, but didn't see any of our other friends.

"Well, earlier they checked out that shipwreck that changed Achilles, and found out it was carrying a cargo of magical potions. A bunch had broken open, and Twilight figures some had mixed together to create an eel-swelling effect!" Pinkie gasped. "Do you think if I took a cake over there, it would become enormous? I could have a cake palace!"

I managed a shrug, and settled into a kelp sling set up outside the little house. It's what seemed to pass for a chair in sea-pony-land.

Pinkie frowned, and flopped on her back at my hooves, or rather, tailfin, rolling her eyes up to meet my downcast ones. "You're going to get better, you know? I did."

"What're you talkin' about, Pinkie? That time you went coo-coo because ya thought we were all avoidin' you and your parties?"

"Kinda. That was regression, for me, aaaaand a dash of crazy." She reached up to pat my tail, pink against shimmery orange and gold scales. After a minute, long enough that I began to worry about the bubbly mare, she finally broke her silence. "I wasn't always the pretty perky pink party pony you know and love today. You do still love me, right?" She stuck out her lower lip and made it tremble.

"'Course Ah do. Ah wouldn't have come on this trip if Ah didn't." As I spoke an insidious voice in my head wondered if that was true. Wasn't the real reason just to keep up appearances?

"Sorry. Just checking, 'cuz...I'm not as on the ball at reading ponies as usual lately. Anyways." She let out a sigh, a column of bubbles drifting past my nose and tickling it. "Back on the rock farm, I was a very sad little filly. It was a rough life, and not one I'd wish on anypony." Her voice grew soft while sifting through those old memories, losing a lot of the speed and energy I'd thought were inseparable from Pinkie.

"It didn't help that I felt I could really use some hugs sometimes...well okay, a lot of the time, but Mama and Papa Pie were pretty stiff ponies. Veeeeery spare with affection, praise, wood to heat the house with, you know." Pinkie shivered. "It was a cold house, in more ways than one. My sisters, well, I guess they were tougher than me. They just soldiered on, did their work, ate their oatmeal," Pinkie wrinkled her nose, "did their chores and went to bed."

I slowly shook my head. It was amazing that somepony like Pinkie had come out of such a drab, sterile-sounding place. "Sounds awful, Pinkie. Ah...Ah can hardly imagine what life would be like, if home wasn't a refuge."

"It was all I knew, though. I didn't go to school in town. Mama Pie taught us fillies at home." She paused again, and I reached down to rub her shoulder, the thick tentacles of her mane brushing my hoof. She leaned her head against my leg, and took a deep breath. "The longer I lived in that colorless world, the more I began to wonder...if I wanted to endure it at all." Pinkie's voice hitched on those last two words.

I nodded, before her words actually sank in. I stared at her, my ears standing stiff in alarm. It didn't make sense. Of all the ponies in existence, I could never link that to this mare. "Pinkie! Not—"

She nodded. "Yep. It seemed like it would be a," Pinkie dropped her voice to a stage whisper, "prison break." She shrugged, lips settling into a smile her eyes didn't echo. "Anything would have been better than those gray days."

I leaned down and wrapped my legs around her, squeezing her tightly. She let me, her eyes sliding shut, resting her head back against my chest. After soaking up some comfort, she swallowed and continued. "I would try to escape sometimes with my imagination, but Ma or Pa or my sisters would bop me for 'daydreaming' whether I was supposed to be working or not."

I cringed, fearing what the response to my next question might be. "Did you try to...?"

"Nope! I never actually tried. I started thinking about it though.” Her voice died to a whisper. The words barely vibrated the water between us enough to make it to my ears. “A lot.”

It hurt, a physical pain behind my ribs, to imagine Pinkie in straits like that.

She let her eyes slide open, blue gaze capturing my green one. “It's a trap your mind sets for itself, AJ. You can't see any way out. Even if I could have dreamed up a better life, there's no way I could think of a path to get me there. If someone had shown me a path like that, I would have quit before even starting it, absolutely positively sure it would fail.”

Pinkie tipped her head back again to smile up at me, a real eyes-and-mouth smile. “But before I could finally get up the nerve to de-Pinkify Equestria, I saw Dashie's rainboom, and it changed everything."

"That party you threw for your family?" I remembered imagining how grand a shindig that must've been, ponies cutting loose after years of nothing but work and keeping their bodies fit for more work.

"It really helped bring us closer. Laughing and smiling weren't forbidden anymore, and with my new cutie-mark, even my rock-headedly stubborn family could see my place wasn't on the farm." Life seemed to flow back into Pinkie's speech as she seemed to reach the turning point in her story.

"They sent me to study with Granny Pie for a year, who taught me all I know about baking along with tons of other stuff, and undid some of the damage living on the farm had done. She hugged me.” Pinkie squeezed my encircling legs tight. “She let me dream my dreams, and flower into the bouncing ball of joyful Pinkieness you know today! She let me be me."

She shook her head. "It didn't happen overnight, though the usual way I tell the story, it sounds like it did." Her tone dipped a bit again. A colder current of water swirled past, making us both shiver. "My foalhood...it left me kinda broken. I want to be, have to be everyone's friend now, because I had none back then. I could barely even call my family acquaintances! I'm crazy for good things to eat because I got nothing like that growing up. But—"

"And a party saved you, so no wonder you're always throwin' 'em, using 'em to try and fix any problem imaginable. When we all turned you down for that party..." I shuddered. "No wonder you took it so dang hard."

"Yeah, that was a closer call than any of you knew." It was hard to miss the rueful note Pinkie's voice picked up. "But I was trying to say, that's not the only reason I want to—have to—be everyone's friend. Sure I love to see you smile," she grinned up at me, but somehow even underwater I could see her eyes growing misty, "but I also never ever ever want anyone to feel passed over or left behind." She pointed at me, then back at herself. "Not everyone is as lucky as we are, with at least five totally fun-tastic friends to rely on, party with, or just spend time around."

"Ah know, Pinkie. You do a better job bein' everypony's friend than any single pony ever has, Ah reckon."

"It's still not enough though." Pinkie shook her head, then renewed her hug around my left leg, resting her cheek against it. "I'm not crawling at the bottom of the triple-sad trench anymore. I'm not even trotting at the very edge of it. But the right word from the wrong pony can push me right back into it." She squeezed me tighter. "I hate how simple it is. The right thing comes along and it calls back my doubts and fears. They bound back as eagerly as Winona does when you whistle her over!" She rolled her eyes. "I haven't figured out how to stop it from happening. I can see it coming, but all I can do is rebuild after the storm."

"I'm just lucky I have great friends who won't ever let me fall too far into the darkness again." She squeezed me tighter still. "I know you're down there now, AJ. Will you let us help?"

I was so exhausted, I could hardly imagine pressing on without help. "Ah—"

"Whatever the problem Applejack, we'll figure out something." Twilight and the rest swam up, returning from their business elsewhere.

I glanced down again at Pinkie, who hadn't taken her eyes off me. I nodded to her, a two-pony pact of sorts formed.

"If it's all the same to y'all, Ah'd rather talk about it back on the boat. Ah'm a mite sick of sounding like Ah'm garglin' every word."

"I hear that! And these fins are kinda cool, but nowhere near as awesome as my wings." Rainbow Dash performed a slow loop-de-loop. “It's impossible to get up any real speed down here!”

Fluttershy had a number of colorful fish swimming orbits around her, and looked like she wanted to protest, but of course, swallowed it and simply nodded.

Twilight rubbed her temples. "I sent a message to Celestia about Achilles and the shipwreck. She'll be sending medical personnel and a research team out here to determine how to reverse the potions' effects. She'll accompany the team herself, so she can meet with the sea ponies and properly reestablish relations between our, um, lands. Realms?" Twilight glanced around the little village, and shrugged. "Meanwhile, some of the sea ponies are helping heal the burns I gave poor Achilles. Burn treatments are about the only medical supplies they aren't short on!"

"Sounds like we've about done all we can here, then. Shall we?" I slipped out of my sling, and began swimming for the surface. The others followed, though of course Rainbow overtook me and began to literally swim circles around the rest of us. We had just cleared the lip of the village chasm when my stomach attacked again. It felt like something was burning its way out of me, and I faltered, starting to sink, dead weight.

"I'm going to teleport straight to the boat with her. I'll drop a flare over the side so the rest of you can find us easier, okay?" Twilight's confident voice filled my ears but I registered only a few words. I felt her forelegs wrap around me before the world wrenched around us.

We crashed to the deck of the yacht and flopped there, gasping for breath. Twilight lit her horn and restored us to our full pony forms, just in time for me to vomit onto the deck. Red stained the expensive wood planks, and Twilight cried out.
"Applejack!"

I blinked down at the blood, and wiped more from my lips, hoof shaking. "W-well, that's new." I almost wished I could pass out, because chucking up blood was one more thing I couldn't cope with.

Twilight shot her promised flare off the side of the yacht, then helped me to a padded bench. She snapped orders at the crew ponies who approached, shock and concern on their faces.

"Bring some water, a pillow, some soft cloths, and a bucket!" She stroked my soaked mane out of my face. "Hang on, Applejack. I need to go fetch something." Twilight dashed off to rummage below-deck. I could hear her panicked voice drifting up the stairwell. "Come on, come on! Didn't I bring it this time?" When she reemerged from below, her eyes were wet and her ears were drooping. "I'm sorry AJ, I almost always pack my copy of Equestrian Field Medicine, but somehow didn't this time."

I sipped the water I'd been brought, and waved a hoof at Twilight. "Doubt you'd be able to do anything about it anyhow, Twi. Mah stomach's been tearin' me up for weeks...no, months Ah guess."

Twilight hoofed her face. "Applejack! It's one thing to be hardheaded about some things, but your health? Why? Why would you just suffer in silence?" Her voice rose, frustration coloring it and pumping the volume higher.

Because I felt like I deserved the pain. Because I didn't feel like I deserved to feel better. The words, the honest truth, were right there but saying it was so hard. It sounded so pathetic, so stupid, so sick in the head. I swallowed, and forced out the words. Lying hadn't gotten me anywhere good. "Ah didn't want to get better. Didn't...feel Ah deserved to."

Twilight's rump crashed to the deck, and the look she gave me was horrible. There was shock there, like I expected, but fear too. I could only guess it was fear for me, not of me. I could guess what was running through her mind. Applejack was ill, in the mental sense.

"Oh Applejack... No..." Her mouth twisted into a scowl. "Why didn't you ever—"

My eyes slid away from hers. I couldn't let her see the hot rush of resentment welling up in me, and tears squeezed out by more damnable self-pity. It felt like there were at least two Applejacks inhabiting one body, and I hated one of them.

Twilight being the brilliant mare she was, caught on pretty quick. Her eyes widened further, and filmed with tears. "That day at the library, when the river spirit—oh Celestia, AJ. I'm such an idiot."

Splashes to the port side drew Twilight away long enough to transform the others back and levitate them aboard. She set the yacht sailing back to Manehattan immediately before joining the rest around me.

"Do you feel well enough to tell us more about what's going on now, dear?" Rarity asked, after tucking a blanket around me.

"You've waited long enough for an explanation. M'afraid if Ah wait, Ah won't have the guts to spill the beans." Given enough time I could think of an excuse for my behavior, something that meant not baring my soul and problems to my best friends, burdening them with my baggage.

My friends nodded, and they waited for me to start. I levered myself up a bit more, and Fluttershy rushed to wedge more pillows beneath me.

"Ah guess it started with the farm. It hasn't been all that successful for quite a while. Ah try now and then to do somethin' to raise extra bits, like sellin' at the Great Galloping Gala, or competing at rodeos in other towns, but everythin' Ah tried fell flat.”

Rarity interrupted, waving a snowy-white hoof. “Applejack...when you say it hasn't been 'all that' successful, could you elaborate? I believe I speak for all of us when I say we never got the impression things were so desperate on the farm.”

If I'd had more energy I would have gritted my teeth. They were going to make me admit it. “...The farm's never done great, since Ah've been in charge. Seems like the day Ah took over from Granny, it's just been a slide downhill so slow, Ah could watch every inch, every bit less we made each year. It wasn't so bad at first. Y'expect to slip when you're learnin' the ropes.” I bit my lip. “But when y'never come close t-to doin' as well as your parents did, and the gap grows every year, hard not to figure out what's goin' on.”

Rarity flushed and ducked her head. I wondered if she was more embarrassed that she'd put me on the spot, or for me and my lousy handling of the family business.

“Granny kept mah spirits up. Gave me every excuse, a whole haystack of straws to grasp at for why profits kept dippin'. That kept mah concern as healthy wariness for a while, but Ah could only fool mahself, or let mahself be fooled for so long. It turned to worryin'. Ah was up late most nights wrackin' mah brain, trying to figure out ways to save bits and earn more." I shook my head.

"Instead bad news kept coming down the pike, and the tiny improvements Ah made were just washed away. Now," I choked out, tears brimming over, "we're havin' to put Sweet Apple Acres up for sale, 'cuz Ah couldn't manage it!"

I spoke right over the collective gasp from my friends. "And Ah just about got y'all killed down there thanks to mah lies! How w-worthless can a pony get?"

"AJ, stop it!" Dash snapped, voice cutting through the blubbering I'd started. "What's with this crappy already-lost attitude? I have no clue why you didn't just ask for our help before, but you've got it now, and we aren't going to let Sweet Apple Acres go!" Rainbow stretched her forelegs towards me, wings flared to balance her, magenta eyes wide. She struggled to get words out past her scowl. “Why the hay didn't you come to us sooner? I mean, I know you're proud and all, but sisters AJ!”

Dash dropped one leg to drive it into the decking with a report that made a few of the girls jump. “How do you think that makes us feel?” Her voice twisted into a squeal, breaking. “How'm I supposed to be a real, loyal friend to you when I don't even know something's wrong?”

Fluttershy stroked Rainbow, trying to bring her down from the peak she'd worked herself up to. She couldn't quite look my way while she spoke. “I know it can be really, really hard sometimes to bring your problems to your friends. You don't want to, um, burden them with anything when they already have so much to deal with.” She managed to turn enough to fix one eye on me. “But, um, it sounds more like you didn't think we could help? We've been through so much together, Applejack. I thought our bonds were as tight as they could be.” She hunched her wings. "B-but that's just me."

Fluttershy left Rainbow, landing by my bench with a gentle breeze from downy wings. One of those wings extended across my back, blanketing me. “What was it that convinced you your friends would be powerless in this fight?”

“That's...a right good way of puttin' it, 'Shy. You are powerless. Y'can't kick what Ah'm feeling. Y'can't reason with it, or pet it and turn it friendly. Y'can't even blast it with a magical friendship rainbow and turn me back to...heh, normal.” I shook my head. “This ain't your usual case of the blues, and Ah don't even know how to tell you how it's different."

"As for askin' for help with the farm?” I squeezed my eyes shut. “Pride. Ah guess that's what it was. The worse things got the more embarrassin' it would have been to let you know. Ah kept hopin' Ah could turn things around with a good year, 'cuz one good year would've meant repairs and new plantings... It would've meant more bits the next year, no matter what.” I dropped my nose into the crook of a foreleg and mumbled, “Amazin' how long Ah fooled mahself.”

Rainbow Dash stomped the deck again, baring her teeth. "What did I just tell you about that lousy attitude? The Applejack I knew was a winner, but you sound like you've already lost, even though you just got yourself a dream team to help you out!" She snorted, ears flat, a faint tremor running through her legs. "And another thing! I wouldn't let anypony talk that way about you, so what makes you think I'm gonna let you talk that way about yourself?" Dash let her mouth settle again into a scowl, wings flared, her coat even standing on end along her back.

I rose from the bench, took two shaky steps towards Rainbow Dash, and leaned in until our noses nearly touched. "Apple Bloom cried herself to sleep before Ah left, thinking she'd sent our family to the poorhouse, thanks to me. Mac works himself to the bone every day to help make up for mah shortcomings. Granny Smith hobbles around like a timberwolf with termites 'cuz there's no free money to buy her that hip she needs. Ma and Pa trusted me to do them proud, and instead there's a for-sale sign by the gate!" I stepped forward, crowding Rainbow back, while beating a hoof against my chest. "Stupid. Stubborn. Lying! Selfish!"

I'd backed an increasingly nervous-looking Rainbow almost to the rail before Pinkie stopped me, holding me back with a hug around my chest. "Stop, AJ. Just stop."

I gently shrugged Pinkie off, and stumbled back to the bench, shaking my head. "Ah thank y'all in advance for anything you can do to help with the farm. Ah honestly don't know if anything will help me at this point, though."

My five closest friends crowded in around me, all laying a hoof or a nose on my worn out body.

"Oh Applejack... You've always been the, m-mom of our group. So mature, so sensible, and level-headed. You were so patient with me, when we climbed the mountain to face that huge d-dragon. Ponies say I'm the kindest, but if you weren't so honest too, you'd have my element for sure." Fluttershy mumbled half of her little speech into my barrel, but I puzzled it out and leaked a few more tears.

"We started off at odds with each other darling, but we've come a long ways since then. You helped me so much when I was going through that rough patch with Sweetie Belle. You're the absolute best big sister anypony could ask for, no matter what you think just now." Rarity stroked a hoof along my back, her voice thick with dammed emotion.

Twilight rested her chin between my ears. "You were the first pony I properly talked to in Ponyville, and you went on to save my life that night. You've fought monsters, toppled tyrants, befriended royalty, and somehow you've still fooled yourself into thinking you're worthless? I think even Discord would be impressed," she sighed. "I wish it was as easy as a touch of magic to restore you this time, but no matter what it takes, we'll do it."

"Yeah. I...I guess it's worse than I thought, y'know? You're awesome though, AJ. You keep me motivated, you know that? None of you may know this, but I can be a little lazy sometimes." Dash rolled her eyes at the various snorts that erupted over that. "Then I see AJ, working so hard every day, and then still putting her all into competition too without a break. She's the best athlete I know."

When Dash didn't follow up with 'besides me,' I choked out a sob. How much had it cost her to say something like that, whether she truly meant it or not?

Pinkie just held me, hogging most of the space around me, forelegs tight around my barrel. It felt good, I had to admit. I was genuinely being held and comforted, after I'd laid bare all my failures and deception. I'd held nothing back, and my friends hadn't abandoned me.

"Get some rest, AJ. We'll get you home, we'll save the farm, and we'll get you well."

Twilight's confidence gave me a spark of hope. Maybe we wouldn't have to sell after all, and with Sweet Apple Acres back in the black, I would be able to focus on healing.

Comments

[Mad Maudlin]

I still think she should send Celestia a bill for all the hero work. Honest pay for an honest day's work.

[Velvet_Divan]

4334079 She's likely gotten relief from the crown in the wake of certain disasters like Discord (that chocolate milk couldn't have been great for the fields) but if AJ couldn't bring herself to ask for help from her closest friends how likely is it she'd ask the princesses for help to dig herself out of a hole she dug herself? As for a general stipend for the Elements, I think the show has indicated their compensation has come more in the way of royal favors like invitations to exclusive events and the celebrity that comes from close association with royalty rather than straight-up monetary gifts.

[Mad Maudlin]

4334476

True enough. Celestia would be a cheapskate, , and Applejack does have a 'thing' for digging her own grave.

I'm interested in how this story will develop. The primary focus on Applejack's feelings will hopefully lead to some explosive catharsis. Probably involving Blueblood and an axe(He's gotta be the one involved in the tax hike!).

Does the Element of Honesty, member of the Apple and Orange families, have enough pull to start up a farmer's union? Because it's always hilarious to see the upper crust confronted by one.

[Tsuguri]

Dang. On top of having depression, AJ has gone and given herself an ulcer with all of her worrying. Those things suck!

Nice job with this so far. Now I'm just wondering if they are going to be able to fix all of it, and worrying what else you could throw at her. Like Pinkie said, one you've been there it doesn't take much to send you back into the depths.

[golden-redhead]

Reading it I just want to give Applejack a big and warm hug and tell her that everything is going to be alright, even if it doesn't look like that right now...

I'm really concerned about her. It would seem that now, when her friends finally know the truth, her situation will change, but I have a strange impression it won't be so easy. It's hard to cure the depression succesfully and it takes a lot of time and help from others. It's hard to be there for someone who often doesn't even remember how it feels to be happy. And it's hard to watch someone so strong in such vulnerable state.

Also, I wanted to congratulate you It's not easy to write believable story about depression.

[Velvet_Divan]

4348002 Thank you and Golden-Redhead for your comments! I'm glad you're touched by AJ's plight and so interested in what's to come. Depression is a topic close to my heart, and I feel that I poured a significant portion of myself into this story. I hope through it, readers struggling with that suffocating disorder can come to understand it better, and those with depressed loved ones will learn how to better help them.

I appreciate any efforts you lovely readers make to get more eyes on this story.

[Anyne]

been for you all since your parents passed,

Why is that in every Appljack fic There's zero proof for them being dead

[Red Cedar]

Aside from a very powerful piece on depression and what it does to a person, the best part had to be seeing Pinkie Pie paraphrase Harry Callahan. Nicely done!

[John Tannius]

And she breaks.

Loved the Pinkie backstory. Ever since 'Party of One' I've always felt that much of Pinkie's Pinkieness is a front shielding an emotionally damaged pony. Considering her parents are basically the pony Amish she really would have never fit in.

By this point Applejack should be a duchess with her farm and several more acres under her domain. Celestia comes off as a penny pinching troll when you add a layer of realism to the cartoon.