Four Candles
By Tundara
Winter had reached its height in Ponyville. Just the day before, the last snows had been brought in by teams of pegasi, leaving the hills a sparkling white. Crystal frost clung to the branches of the apple trees around Sweet Apple Acres, and from the homestead’s eves. It was pristine and beauty, and it left Applejack feeling empty inside.
Her steps were quiet that morning, as they had been for the last several days since the funeral. It had been a beautiful day, the blue sky at odds with the void in her heart. In remembrance, or perhaps pity, Celestia had graced all of Equestria in unseasonable warmth that threatened to undo all the hard work of the pegasi and usher in an early spring. She’d dimmed Sol’s power as the funeral procession reached the graveyard, the princesses following behind the remaining members of the main Apple family.
Faust herself lead the prayers and gave a sermon. What the queen had said was lost on Applejack. Something about never losing a pony so long as she was held in the heart? Or had it been a few, gentle words on the spinning of a cartwheel? Whatever the queen had said it’d brought tears to Soarin—though that wasn’t all that hard to do.
He was such a tender, good pony, and wore his heart on his wings. It was one of the many things Applejack loved so much about him. Soarin had cried enough for both of them in the past week, his puffy eyes contrasting the hardness of her own.
She’d not been sad as the casket had been lowered into the frozen earth. She’d not been anything.
An ear twitched, the motion carrying down into the corner of an eye, and for a very brief moment there it was; the guilt and grief. Then it was gone, retreating back into the shadows like a timberwolf where it would prowl around the edges, waiting to snap and strike.
Moving to the window, Applejack retrieved a few matches and lit the four candles on the sill.
The first two were for her parents, lost to a freak storm rolling off the Everfree.
Their deaths still stung the deepest, coming as she was still so young, and had thought her parents so invulnerable. Sometimes, Applejack still woke with a cold sweat prickling her coat, once more the filly she’d been, face pressed to the window and wondering why her parents hadn’t come back from the fields.
She snorted louder and paced a few lengths, the timberwolf edger a little into the light.
Closing her eyes, she thought of her husband upstairs. Of their daughters.
Ambrosia was the first to come downstairs, finding her mother staring at the smoldering stubs of wax.
“Mamma, you ain’t been up all night again, have you?” Ambrosia asked on her way into the kitchen. “What would Granny Smith say if she saw you pining like this?”
“Ain’t pining. Ain’t doing anything.” Applejack called into the kitchen.
Coming out of the kitchen with a plate of apple-toast and steaming coffee, Ambrosia gave her mother an ‘Uh-huh’ look. Setting the food on the little table in front of the couch, she jumped up beside Applejack.
“I miss her too, you know.”
“Course you do.”
“What was she like when you were my age?”
“She was the most amazing mare I have ever known.” Applejack shifted on the couch so she pressed up against Ambrosia. “Strong, kind, with a wit that could buck a tree ‘cross the field, and honest. Granny… She taught me so much about what it meant to really be an Apple. I don’t rightly know what it will be like with her gone.”
“Will I forget her?”
Applejack stiffened at the question, spoken so softly, and didn’t know what to say for several minutes. “I don’t think you will. Not if you live a thousand years. She’ll be with you, always, ‘Rosia. We just got to remember to do as she’d have done; laugh and keep the old ways alive. Like how you two made Zap Apple Jam last year. Things like that.”
“It doesn’t seem like she’s gone.” Ambrosia shivered and glanced towards Granny Smith’s old rocking chair. “I keep expecting her to come down the stairs, joints creaking and muttering about how she should move her room to the bottom floor.”
“Me too.”
“Am I a bad pony because I’m not sad?” Rubbing her fetlocks together, Ambrosia dipped her head and looked away. “I keep thinking that she was in so much pain these past few months, and she weren’t in her proper mind, that maybe it is better she is gone. But that can’t be right.”
“Listen, sugarcube, whatever else it may be, it’s good she ain’t hurtin no more.” Applejack’s voice clenched, and for a second the wolf darted into the light. A long, shaky breath sent it skittering away once more, and she was thankful that her voice didn’t hold a quaver when she said, “Granny is with Grandpa now in Elysium.”
“No, she ain’t.” Ambrosia shook off Applejack, tears prickling her brown eyes. “I don’t know how I know that, but it’s true. She ain’t in Elysium. She… She… She’s just gone! Dead and gone and it doesn’t matter.”
Applejack stiffened, and this time it wasn’t sorrow that pounced, but a hard, burning nugget of anger.
“Stop that. I ain’t raised you to say things like that. Granny Smith is on her way to Elysium, and if you have any doubt of that… then…”
“But I do doubt, mamma, and it makes me sick. My insides twist up and I feel bad that I don’t feel bad, or that my heart is saying Granny is just gone. I wake up and everything feels the same, but different. I miss her, but it’s not for her, it’s for me. I don’t even know what I am saying, or feeling!”
Jumping from the couch, Ambrosia began to pace, her cherry red tail snapping at each turn and hooves vibrating with suppressed emotion. Applejack both marvelled and pitied her daughter on how similar they were to each other. She let Ambrosia work things out alone for several minutes, knowing that is what would have been best for her, if their roles were reversed.
The clock on the mantle sticking the hour prompted her to action at last, and she got up to stand beside Ambrosia.
“It’s okay sugarcube, to be confused and upset. This ain’t the kind of thing that a pony understands or processes all at once.”
“But you are fine. I’ve not seen you cry once since Granny died.”
Applejack knew that Ambrosia didn’t mean to cause hurt or pain, but the words still stung bitterly.
“I’m sorry, mamma. That ain’t fair of me.”
“Ain’t a lie though.” Applejack looked beyond the candles out on the snowy fields, not really seeing them or anything else. “But it ain’t ‘cause I don’t care, rather… I said goodbye to her a while ago without really knowing it, I suppose. Back when she started to go down hill, I knew, and so did she. Each time I brought her medicine to her I said it again, until it just sort of… stuck. I’ll miss her, ‘Rosia, but I’ve been missing her for some time now. I…”
The warding glow vanished, the imaginary wolf pounced, and Applejack cried. She pressed her eyes tight so she couldn’t see the surprise on Ambrosia’s face, and let the tears fall. Not just the tears of the past week, but those kept back and buried for months.
Older wounds threatened to reopen in the flood, and she had to clench her teeth tight and press her head harder against Ambrosia to keep the pain manageable. Through watery eyes she dipped her gaze to the four stubs.
For a while they stood like that, neither speaking, until the tears ran their course and the floorboards overhead creaked as the rest of the household began to wake.
Wiping her eyes with a fetlock, Applejack said, “Come on, we best get on. You go help your father with your sisters while I get a proper breakfast started.”
“Okay, mamma.” Ambrosia didn’t move right away though. She just looked at the candles, started to say something, and instead clamped her mouth shut. Taking a few steps towards the stairs, she glanced back, and said, “Thank you, for listening,” before hurrying away.
Wow, that was great. It's always painful seeing someone you love starting to fall apart and know that their is nothing you can do about it but prepare.
Also, some cool spoilers to the future of Myths, at least Granny saw so many amazing things in her last days.
Hope you had a great holiday season with your Grandmother.
When you have a relative who's very old or is terminally ill, you do say goodbye in stages, even if you don't realize it. AJ is speaking the truth there.
Condolences to you, for what it's worth.
Is Ambrosia the alicorn AJ was pregnant with? I didn't see any mention of it in the story (and I get that's not the focus here), but I'm curious.
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Thanks, I'm actually doing fairly well. Writing this story helped a lot, and it wasn't a huge shock to hear, though the details of it were.
She is. At this point Ambrosia (named for the apple and the food of the gods, naturally) is fostered as an earth pony and unaware of her alicorn heritage. AJ and Soarin's younger daughters were going to be named Jonagold and Dawn, and be an earth pony and pegasus respectively, but it didn't make the story.
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Yeah. I'm doing fairly well, really. I miss her sometimes, but it's not the shock like with my grandfather.
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Thanks.
I tried to keep the spoilers to a minimum. There were some things--hints, spoilers, and story hooks--I thought to incorporate, but didn't as this story just wasn't the place for such things.
I'm sorry to hear about your grandmother, Tundara.
I have a question about this story: is this the first time you've written Applejack in this 'verse? I can't recall seeing her before, tbh.
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She had a bigger role in the original version of Myths. There are two bits with her that I've thought about reworking into Anthology stories. One where she discusses the pregnancy, and what she's going to do, with Derpy Hooves, and the other being a dinner party where Iridia and Fluttershy show up. I've only held off because there is a possibility of them being incorporated still into the main story. Once I get the first few chapters of Book 2 plotted and I know which way its going, I'll know what to do with the sections.
Otherwise, AJ has had a brief appearance at the end of 'Apple and the Fox' outside the main story.
That was very sweet and very touching. Sorry for your loss, as well. Thanks for sharing your gift and your pain with us. Sometimes it helps to know you're not alone, and even as strangers we'll help as much as we can.
I just got around go reading this story, and I don't know if this is because of me never seeing the main story before the rewrite (I think that I understand that it was much further along), but I'm a bit overwhelmed and bamboozled by all the massive status-quo shifts of the future stories, and the spoilers for the main story inherent.
Alicorn Rarity? A bajillion new alicorns, including ones born to Applejack and Rainbow? Rarity and Celestia married? Zeus and several others apparently living in Equestria? I'm kind of having trouble wrapping my mind around it all.
I'm kind of saddened at how many new, native alicorns are popping up or settling in Ioka (given that I feel it detracts from how momentous Twilight's Awakening was to the disc, and my personal dislike for an abundance of alicorns in Equestria; the main story having a whole bunch of other ones didn't annoy me as much, since almost all of them were in/from a whole other realm (or something), and seemed to me to mostly be going to just be sources of conflict/plot development and/or backstory, instead of permanent or semi-permanent residents). Oh well.
On another note, is this story purposefully avoiding having Twilight in it? Her complete absence thus far (other than a quick mention by Celestia regarding an event we've already seen in the main story) feels strange, almost as if it's hiding what she's up to in the time post-Myths and Birthrights.
Finally, I was curious: are you planning on showing more of the events between Twilight's birth and the start of Myths and Birthrights, in this or one of the other stories, such as Twilight being born and spirited away to Equestria (in Iridia's, Celestia's/Cadances, and Velvet's perspectives), or Cadances's reaction to Twilight & co. cleansing Nightmare Moon and her reuniting with Luna?
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I have an old, abandoned Anthology story that had every alicorn on Ioka go to the beach for a day out. It has Posiedon and Amphitrite show up with their foals... It was far too silly and written as a comedy vignette, and was shelved as it didn't 'fit'. I think the story had somewhere in the catagory of three hundred or more alicorns.
In general the stuff with the Muses is showing the 'Happily Ever After' that follows 'Myths' and the still-in-planning 'Rariad'. Twilight is purposefully avoided, as you guessed, and it does present problems with the stories that take place after Myths.
A story about Twilight being whisked to Equestria could be interesting. As for Cadence and Luna's reuinion, Honey Mead is writing the events of Nightmare Moon's return from the perspective of Canterlot. At the moment, the stories I have on the burner for the Anthology is just AJ and Soarin's wedding. But the nature of it would require revelations on Twilight (Not mentioning her would be impossible), so the story has been set aside until the distant future.
There is another story, one of Luna during her fostering, that is going through a substantial re-write. It most likely will get a stand-alone treatment, however. Partly for visibility purposes, but also because it'll be fairly hefty with 30k words. It's also firmly rooted in the Mature tag with graphic descriptions of death, gore, and sexual themes. Or it was. Such things could be toned down in the next draft. But my main concern is getting the next few chapters of Myths out.
7002278 Well from the standpoint/viewpoint of linear creatures it gets muddled. I do get what you are saying. looking forward to reading more.
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'Where the Sea Meets the Storm'. It was posted a few months after my comment.