Dust

by Future Regret

Ashes

She tensed up at the presence behind her.

“AJ...” The voice softly rasped. Its worry and fear blanketed its clear desire to inch closer. To drape a wing on her back. She was thankful that she could feel the wind blowing unconstricted between the dead space that separated them.

“Dash.” The words were so gravely that they sounded like they were coming from a pony already six feet underground. For all the feeling in her, she may have well been. The atmosphere between the two of them compressed as the pegasus took a step forward.

“Don’t,” she growled. “Why the hell are you here? Ah got your damn box. Ah’m fine.” Rainbow Dash winced as the abrasive tone sliced at something deep inside her, but she held the stoic expression of a condemned pony stepping up to the gallows to pay for their wrongs. Any chance for a happy reunion was already hanging, decomposing, and had been for quite some time.

“Because we were wrong. I was wrong. I should’ve bucked down that damn door years ago. You were sick. Are sick. And I let you down.”

Her gaze did not flinch as it bore into one of a thousand tiny cracks in the door. “So you came here to make it all better by crying to me, TO ME, of all ponies. Well, thank you very much. Ah guess that makes it all better, don’t it? Better for you, anyway.”

“AJ… Applejack.” The sound was hoarse and wavering, struggling to pass through the wind that howled between them. “I’m sorry. I know I messed up. We just thought it would be best if we gave you space like you asked us.”

“Ah never asked you to leave, did Ah?” She grumbled. “Though Ah think Ah’d've been better off if Ah did. If Ah’d’ve just spelled it out to you to never come back in the first place - but there, now Ah said it.”

“I don’t care if you want anything to do with me, with us, whatever, we just want you to be happy again. So does your family.” Rainbow Dash gulped, then hesitated, then her weak voice sunk down into a whisper. “She would’ve wanted it too.”

She jerked her head up and spun her body around, sending gravel skittering in every direction. Rainbow Dash had only started reeling back from the sudden movement. Her eyes, dull as rock, locked with Rainbow Dash’s wide and shimmering. The pegasus’ wings were raising to flap away out of defensive instinct, but all she could do was scream and cover her face with her forelimbs as she was barreled into at full force.

They were airborne for a second before crashing back into the hard earth and skidding. Rainbow Dash wheezed as the impact stole the wind from out her lungs and tore the skin off of her back. Her eyes lost focus as she squirmed and struggled for breath, pinned underneath the seething pony.

“You! Only you would have the arrogance to try to speak for her, while at the same time trying to suggest that Ah live without her as if she never existed. This IS me living without her - see? Do Ah look happy to you?” The words spewed from her muzzle like acid. “Do Ah look like Ah’m ever going to be happy again?”

She sneered and raised herself off of the pegasus, who immediately rolled away, still gasping, turning her bloody back to her. Droplets were rising out of a hundred different tiny cuts, growing heavy, and falling to the ground like tears. “And you know what the funny part is? That you would even say she wants anything. Do these dead trees want anything? Does this dead sky?” She turned away from Rainbow Dash. “No, because they ain’t alive. And neither is she. None of us are. We look like we are. We act like we are, but the charade can only go on so long. Willful ignorance only makes taking off the masks more painful in the end.”

She stepped back to the door, and picked the match up off the ground. She struck it, and tossed it on a gasoline soaked window sill. Flames rapidly circled the house, like demons linking arms in a circle, eagerly licking the bone dry wood black and moving on to the next portion. “It’s high time Ah take my mask off now.” She opened the burning door and stepped inside, closing it behind her.

The cottage was empty, save for the rapidly increasing orange aura saturated with heat and was flooding through the windows. She walked around, brushing up against the walls, almost sentimentally, feeling the heat just beyond them. The fire was always so beautiful from the outside, it was hard to imagine how gorgeous the dancing spires of flame would be from within. She entered the main room, and when she turned around, she saw a silhouette in the door, outlined by a few glowing embers clinging to her coat and mane. The crackling and splitting of wood increased all around them, hissing, creaking in a deathly percussion.

“I’m not leaving without you, not again,” she said as she staggered into the cottage.

“You still think you can save me? That you can make it all go away?”

“NO! It’ll never be like it didn’t happen, but it will get better if you try to heal.”

“You want me to just close my eyes and pretend like Ah don't know nothin’? Like it hasn’t been made abundantly clear to me how all this is going to end?” She shouted over the cacophony of burning.

“Everypony knows how it’s going to end, Applejack, since they were foals. The part we don’t know is how we’re gonna enjoy life with what we’ve got, how we’re gonna make the lives of those around us better.” She coughed, but pressed through the smoke. “You weren’t the only one who lost a home, and you’re not the only one to have somepony die in your life. You made her happy. She loved you. Maybe if you shared what you had with her with somepony else you wouldn't feel that life is so meaningless.”

“Ah got nothin’ left to give. Nothin’. So just go.” Just the words leaving her mouth made her feel so heavy.

Rainbow Dash kept moving forward, despite the smoke blinding them both. Still, barely visible through the filthy air and falling ash, she saw a beam above Rainbow Dash splint, groan, and shift. The oblivious pegasus kept moving forward. Applejack’s eyes widened as some ancient feeling awoke within her, driving her forward. Rainbow Dash looked up to see a black beam speckled with embers plummet towards her, only to then see it tumble away as the earth pony dove rammed her out of the way.

The beam crashed into the ground, its fall softened by the farm pony’s muscular back. The wood was cooking her flesh, but all Applejack could do was bleed out a breathless moan.

“APPLEJACK!” The pegasus scrambled over to help her, trying to push off the weight, but the cinder singed her the second she touched it. She pulled her hooves away out of instinct, then, with a bracing inhale, pressed her whole body into the searing beam. It remained anchored, motionless. Applejack’s crushed respiration barely carried anything other than smoke into her lungs. The deafening burning, combined with the sounds of Rainbow Dash’s struggle, made her labored speaking almost inaudible.

“...you were right. Ah’m sorry.”

“AJ, stop, please don’t give up. Help me push if you can!”

“It ain't budging, sugarcube,” she said, her voice crackling like the fire. Tears dripped down her sooty muzzle, leaving cool streaks on the side of her face. “You’re right, the end ain’t all there is. Please don’t make me tally up one more mistake in what does matter.”

“I AM NOT LEAVING YOU!” She knelt down, looking Applejack in the eyes, shimmering and reflecting the dancing flames. “Not again.”

Tears were flowing down Rainbow Dash’s cheeks too, and her breathing grew even more ragged. Larger and larger flakes of ash fell around them, some clinging to the moistness beneath her eyes. The whole cottage sounded like it was groaning, leaning in and cracking its joints, about to retire back into the earth after decades of hard labor.

“GO, JUST GO!” Applejack’s composer collapsed into sobs. She shuddered as she felt strength leaving her for the last time. “Please go, please, just.. get help...”

Rainbow Dash looked at her, with a cloudy and desperate expression and her muzzle silently moving. A certain tension left her body as the last bit of hope drained out and the helpless reality of things took its place. Then, sound crawling its way out of her throat, she managed to whisper. “O-okay, AJ, I’ll be right back. Just hang in there.”

Their eyes met, mirroring each other infinitely, capturing the moment forever. It was ruby and emerald, accented by the unstoppable encroaching orange haze of the blaze. The pegasus reached down and brushed Applejack’s forelimb, then flashed away, leaving only a rainbow wake shooting into the sky in her green reflection.

Her body struggled to get the smoke out of its already depressed lungs. The weight of the beam continued to cauterize the wounds it had brought into being. She exhaled what little air she had left and her eyelids began to sink. Her body began to detach itself from her mind, first from the tips of her limbs, but then with numbness advancing throughout the rest of her anatomy. Soon, all she could feel was the impression of warm red-yellow firelight through her eyelids, inviting and peaceful. It was light and dark by the flickering of the flames, and in those changing shades she saw what had mattered, one last time.

Author's Note:

There we are. The End. Thanks for reading. Any feedback is good feedback. Take care everybody.

Comments

[RDT]

You'd think that Applejack knows how to handle grief by now... Or that's what Rainbow Dash thought.

Great story. Just thought that the final confrontation could have been a little longer. Applejack's attitude shift takes up a single paragraph.

[RDT]

[Future Regret]

10212382
Thanks amigo.

I definitely agree with you whole heartedly on your critique. I wrestled with that a bit, but truth be told after half a decade I was running out of steam on this idea lol. But for sure something I’ll work on if I try to do a longer fic again. Thanks for the feedback!

[shaithis1]

OK, so, I still don't understand what happened with the rest of the town and why it was abandoned, and why everything seems dead.

[Future Regret]

10235405
Good question lol.
In the description of the story it says something about the towns veins - that’s referring to the depletion of aquifers. I didn’t go into more detail because ooo mystery and also because I couldn’t even tell you now the science behind the dust bowl and desertification (and I definitely couldn’t have told you when I was 16 when I started writing this fic. But yeah it’s lack luster fic. But still, I always get a kick out of when people read it - so thank you. I just wonder how tf people stumble on it in the current age.