Staying for the Night

by All of the Above

4

With one last push, Arkane’s door finally closed. After locking it up as tight as she could, she stumbled around in the black silence. Hyperventilating, Applejack let every breath under lock and key escape their incarceration. She nearly fell to the ground but managed to keep herself standing.

Her breath started catching up to her. She inhaled and slowly let it out like ponies in a race. They galloped around the air, trying to locate the finish line that hid in the darkness.

As Applejack began calming down, she heard a dull snore arise from the black of the bedroom. She almost forgot that the breath belonged to Arkane, who still rested on the bed that she couldn't even see.

He also started speaking. It was silent, but Applejack almost caught a conversation between himself and nopony in particular. Like he was talking in his dreams.

What he was saying didn’t register with Applejack. In fact, she barely heard what he was saying. She was confident that even if she did, he wouldn’t have made any sense.

She continued to stare at Arkane. Without even realizing it, Applejack started to step a little closer to him in bed. Her eyes were starting to get heavy like something was trying to pull them down. Her legs were starting to wobble. This tired feeling would have felt a lot nicer if she was asleep much earlier. But the drowsiness was here to stay, and if it wasn’t properly taken care of, then Applejack was going to have some problems that morning.

Applejack climbed into the side of the bed opposite Arkane. Feeling his unusual warmth rubbing up against her, Applejack felt her eyes. Sleep entered the station much later than it was supposed to, but that hardly mattered. At least she was going to go to where she wanted to be. Asleep.

---

As the world came back into the clean illumination of light, Applejack’s mind, foggy and confused, switched itself back on. A light shone through the mist, illuminating a path to its destination. It chugged along, carefully analyzing the tracks ahead of it, preparing itself for any obstacle. Like the head rush or the shaky tiredness still leftover from the previous night's rest.

Recovering from a blinding change in gravity, Applejack stood, reluctantly willing to face another day like a lone soldier facing a battalion on the other side of the battlefield. The stench of blood was a mist of smell in the soldier’s nostrils, something that he had begrudgingly accepted. It made the soldier feel sick. Like that soldier, Applejack could do nothing about her situation. She almost felt sorry for herself as the morning light sharpened its weapon, glaring her dead in her eyes.

Gradually, memories of the previous night dripped into her head in a slowly, syrupy fashion. The shadows walking on the wall, the creatures wandering the house. The shadow stallion with the burns. The whited out eyes.

It was looking for Arkane; that much was apparent. “What is going on,” was a question that seemed far too obvious to ask. The creature with the burns. What did Arkane do to that thing? Was he fighting it off? What exactly was it?

If Arkane were willing to participate in Applejack’s little questionnaire, then maybe she'd be slightly more prepared for some sleepless nights that were guaranteed to come in the following days.

But to Applejack’s chagrin, Arkane wasn’t next to her. Which, in hindsight, she should have expected. That pony was as unpredictable as life itself.

The room was brighter than it was last night. The room around her looked different than she thought it would. Not so much worse than she expected, but it was in a decent gray area. It was cozy, but in a way that an old pony’s home would look. Ancient to the new-aged beholder, but to the elder, it was a photograph of what their home looked like when they were younger.

She half expected one of those things to be standing outside of her door. To her delight, there were none. The house's natural light cleansed the halls of unwanted visitors. Presumably. It may have been a coincidence that they had left when the sun came out, or maybe it was just how it was. Whatever the reason, they were gone. Applejack couldn’t have asked for a better gift.

That is until Applejack heard the familiar crackling of breakfast.

Arkane was cooking some hay bacon. He was facing away from her, and likely didn’t notice her come in. His hair was matted, no worse than when she last him.

“Glad to see you’re awake,” he said, not bothering to take a look over his shoulder.

“Y’all okay?”

“Well, you were right. I really did need the sleep. I’ve been going nuts.”

“Yeah... Ugh.” Applejack couldn’t even find the words to ask a question. A simple question, one that was more important than anything. And yet it just wasn't there.

“Last night?” Was what came out of her mouth.

“Right,” Arkane said. He grabbed a spatula and laid out a plate. He placed the haybacon on the plate, keeping two pieces for himself.

“You want an explanation, I assume.”

“A little more than want, Stumpy,” Applejack fired.

Arkane turned to face her. His haybacon fell to the ground.

“I’m sorry, what did you just say?”

Applejack raised her eyebrow. “Ah called you Stumpy. Y’all want me to repeat myself?”

He looked downright shocked. It seemed like he was going to break down in tears. “Now that was just hurtful!”

“...sorr—”

“You don’t just do that to ponies you hardly know! I don’t go up to Pegasi without wings and call them walks, now do I?”

“Alright, Ah’m sorry.”

“Why would you call me that, even? It's not like-”

“Okay, okay! Ah’m sorry! Would you just explain to me what happened last night?”

Arkane kept his snarl but took in a deep breath.

“I think it would be best just to show you.”

---

The backyard looked as if somebody was taking care of it. Which wasn’t saying a lot.

Weeds were growing in everywhere. There were some that were starting to grow as tall as the trees themselves. Applejack felt a twinge in her hind legs. Perhaps her inner farmer was setting up some serious red flags. But, there was no point in trying to save it. It was far past the point of damnation. Any help would have been considered desecration to a corpse.

She was so lost, she didn’t even hear Arkane warn her about some hole that she was about to-

Applejack had a near heart attack as she realized that the floorboard that she thought was blow her wasn't there. Luckily, she made her hoof land on the next level, saving herself from a nasty fall onto not so sturdy wooden steps.

Exhaling, Applejack walked down the rest of the steps with a hint of caution woven into her steps. Arkane was laughing to himself quietly as Applejack prepared herself to kick him where it matters most.

"I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh," he said over painfully obvious lies like he was a young school pony with his hoof stuck in the cookie jar.

Applejack let out an angry sigh and breathed in the leftover calm that Arkane had left alone.

“My apologies. I can’t help but laugh at a little slapstick.”

“Ah’ll slap you with a stick.”

Arkane puffed in air through his cheeks and blew it out, eliminating the smile from his face. “Ugh, okay. I’m calm, now. Wait, did you say—”

“What didja wanna show me?”

“You have to stop making me laugh first. I can barely control myself.”

Applejack couldn’t sigh hard enough.

“Alright, now I brought you here to show you something. What was it?”

Applejack nearly answered, but Arkane began tapping his skull with his hoof. “It was that... Right! Come, behind this fence.”

Arkane pointed to the wooden fence. Like everything that Applejack saw in that place, it was about as presentable as a foal with a bloody nose and dirt sneering his cheeks. Several cracks across every piece of wood, every one of which was embarrassed to call itself a fence. She was quick to notice one board missing.

“Look through the gap.”

She did as he asked.

At first, it was just more emptiness. A blank sky with an empty horizon, nothing exciting to observe.

“If you focus your eyes on one particular spot, you’ll see it.”

Again, like an obedient filly, she did as she was told. It was hard because there was nothing really to notice. But once she just stared at the empty horizon, something moved across her field of vision.

It was large, whatever it was. Steadily moving, completely out in the open, but very hard to catch with the naked eye. The more Applejack stared, the more she saw. Whatever it was, it seemed to be about the same size as herself. Maybe taller.

The shape started moving its body. It looked unnatural like it was somewhere it shouldn’t be. Applejack's eyes rejected it. She felt like she was trying to put two magnets together.

And for a moment, Applejack felt something unfamiliar. The only way she knew how to describe it was a nostalgic sense of sadness that did not feel at home in her mind. She tried to ignore it, but it somehow kept popping back in and out of her head, like it was a pest sneaking into her room even though she had taken it out and placed it back on its turf.

But there was something else about it that felt... Like home. In a way that most ponies couldn’t even think or describe, Applejack felt as if she knew the blur personally. A connection shaped itself in her mind, finally becoming something she understood.

The more that she thought about it, the more it made sense. It was a feeling of companionship. Then it morphed into something else. Friendship. Then pride. Respect. Loss. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance.

The grieving process. It was something that Applejack finally understood. Emotion overtook Applejack's body as the puzzle only had a few more pieces to go until the larger picture revealed itself. Applejack’s hooves started to shake.

“You see it, don’t you?”

“Ma? Pa?”

Applejack saw the two blurs merge. Applejack could feel their distant gaze. The warm prescience of a loved one's gaze gave Applejack the one thing she had missed most about her life before. Parenthood. Of all the essential ingredients that Applejack had lacked in her life, the most important part was finally dropped off on the counter. But, that ingredient was poorer into her unfinished broth of happiness. Added to the mix, yes, but added to a dessert food that she couldn’t eat, but instead, used to remind her that she can’t break her diet.

Just as quickly as they appeared, the apparitions evanesced from Applejack’s vision. She stared in disbelief, as more and more individual blurs began cropping up.

Arkane attempted to pull her away from the fence, but her grip was as tight as iron.

“Ah have to see them!” Applejack pleaded.

“You can’t go out there. Let’s go back inside.” Arkane pulled and pulled, but the more he tried, the more she stood her ground.

“Those are my folks! I have to—”

With a strength that Applejack didn’t even realize he had, Arkane pulled around her around. Looking her straight in the eye, he said plainly, “They’re a trick.”

“A trick?”

“This place...” Arkane gestured around him. “It knows you. It knows every single detail about you, better than you, or anypony else. It knows who you care most about.”

Looking to the horizon, he shuttered. “Especially the dead ones.”

Applejack let her tears stain her face, something she had never let happen.

“It uses them against you to lure you out. What’s better bait than ponies who’ve died?”

The blur that Applejack called her parents were still there. It seemed to be pointing at her, waving and quietly hollering for her. She couldn’t tell if they were tempting her or beckoning for her.

“Let’s go inside. Please.”

Applejack said nothing. Complying, she stood herself up. She knew it was wrong, but she looked back. The blur was still there. Staring directly into her.

Following Arkane back up the stairs, she fought back more tears.

Comments

[saloony78]

YESSS!! MOAR!