Apples: Immortal Tree

by Julia

Chapter 2. The Night of Apples

Megan was a nice girl. She and Twilight and Applejack spent the rest of their days after adventuring just sitting idly to talk and watch the newer generations grow old as they played under the stars. The nights were natural, and the days were always warm. Megan did not have the strength to live as long as Applejack or Twilight could, as she lacked the magical qualities they had, but she made sure her death left them not with tears, but with hope, that though life ended, friendships live on forever.

Applejack did not understand, because if she did, she would possibly be an alicorn, but after thousands of generations of being an earthpony, she came to appreciate the plainness that came with it. It was refreshing. But soon, she began to feel herself grow old, and she approached Twilight to tell her that they have to find a way to live forever. Applejack first was rejected, and she spent a year searching for a way until coming back to Twilight with a solution.

"Applejack! Don't you know what you're getting yourself into?" Twilight questioned her, looking as Applejack drunk the blue serum she had concocted for them to drink. "If you do this, then what Megan said will be taken in vain! The tampering with life and destiny can be dire, and the generations ahead will be forever bonded, we will repeat the same things over and over and over again! We know this!"

"I don't care what the Elders say," Applejack replied, wiping her mouth and coughing violently, losing her balance and falling down on her stomach. "The Elders don't know the pain... if Megan can't live on, then I will!" Shifting in and out of consciousness, Applejack smiled as her eyes began to close.

The other ponies circled around Applejack, and one checked for her pulse, finding nothing. Her body lost its color, turning her into an albino pony of some sorts. Twilight began crying, and she nudged Applejack with her nose. "Applejack? C'mon... don't play around like this... Please! Don't do this! Don't you know what you're doing to us? We're so worried about you, we were while you were traveling! And you come back, just to die a stupid death like this? You... you... you IDIOT!"

The other ponies watched in horror as Twilight bawled over her friend's dead body, slamming her hooves on her and crying out again and again her name. The pony Applejack had died for the first time, and Twilight knew she could not let her death be in vain.

They carried Applejack to the ocean, finding an empty clam shell and a multitude of beautiful pearls, which were seapony eggs and not clam eggs, and setting the dead Applejack on the shell with the pearls surrounding her. The eggs looked like they were about to hatch, and they had to do so in the ocean. Twilight pushed the deathbed out to sea, and watched it float off as the also mourning seaponies carried it along, avoiding the colliding waves of the harsh sea.

Soon, going on the same quest, Twilight and six thousand other ponies sought out for immortality. Many died on the quest, and only a small fraction managed to survive to find out the solution. A plant called Blue Star, grown north in the land of the Universalis Unicorns and Celestial Pegasi. A land only for the best of the best, the richest in all the world, pampered from birth and embroidered with flowers and gold upon their deaths, untouched by outside civilization. They were considered gods due to their power and immortality, and as said before, were considered too worthy of glory to be even seen by ponies of lower status. The Elders were from there, but lived in secrecy from the highnesses and lived to benefit the lower class of the world.

Their methods of immortality was not limited to Blue Star alone, but a mix of other plants as well, but the merchant who told the survivors of the secret told them only that Blue Star was the key. So the survivors who were on the outside of the walls mashed up the flowers and mixed it with the thick sweet nectar which flowed through the plant's veins.

They drank it in front of the merchant, who laughed in a sick satisfaction. Some of the ponies were induced with a mania which made them crave flesh, and a skirmish started between them. Twilight fought the urge, and survived the maniacal event, hiding in the forest behind the city as her friends killed one another one by one. The last one standing was killed by the merchant, who dragged the body on the inside of the hut in which he lived, closing the door and blowing out all of the lights.

Twilight turned away, too hardened to mourn over the loss of life anymore. Two years since Applejack died, and a year since the adventure of carnage to this land began. She solemnly dragged herself to the field of Blue Stars west to the walls of the city, and lay down on the sweet smelling flowers as the night fell. Looking on up to the belt of Venus, reminiscing about the times she had with her now dead friends, Applejack, and Megan.

Megan was truly a Venus, and Applejack died as Venus was born. But Twilight was going to die in a bed of flowers... she felt so out of place now. The trio could not die like one another, but surely Twilight knew from Megan's stories of the mythologies that Venus was closely associated with flowers, so maybe it was not so bad.

"Just wait for me, girls... my sun has already set on me..."

And soon the belt of Venus disappeared with the sun from the horizon, and the moon brought with it a smooth, cool wind to soothe the intense heat and burning that Twilight was put through torture to endure in her final moments. She smiled, despite the rest of her friends dying along the way and just earlier eating one another like a Thanksgiving dinner. She was contempt with that, and maybe she should give thanks for fate giving her a more soothing death than being ripped apart for food. She knew since she would die anyways, it shouldn't bother her, and it did not. She went out how she expected, and dragged everypony else down with her. Out of love? Probably, she felt so. But it was all over now. The end was inevitably close, and had struck her like a midnight bell. The Twilight had gone in to the night.