Appledashery Vol. Two

by Just Essay

Weekenders

That afternoon.

Applejack stood in Twilight Sparkle's shower, scrubbing herself down.

After lathering and washing her mane, she shut the warm water off with a satisfied sigh.

She grabbed a towel with her hoof, dried herself off, then wrapped a second towel around her mane.

There was a knock on the door. It sounded like Spike.

"Just a minute!" Applejack lingered before the mirror with a tired blink. She turned around—spotting her hat lying on the counter. A blue feather rested neatly in it. Moisture clung to its fibrous bits like morning dew.

Applejack tongued the inside of her muzzle. Her eyes flickered to the waistbasket, the toilet, the gargling drain of the tub...

Spike pounded on the door again, more insistent this time.

Wincing, Applejack snatched the hat up without a second thought. She pressed it tightly to her chest, obscuring the feather. Clearing her throat, she unlocked the bathroom door, trotted out on three limbs, and went to the opposite end of the apartment.

---

That evening.

Applejack sat at a restaurant table with the rest of the girls. Twilight Sparkle and Rarity were chatting up a storm. Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy giggled often.

The farm mare sat on the sidelines of the conversation, smiling politely. She swirled a glass of ice water in her hoof. Her eyes occasionally followed the frigid contents. Her ears twitched on either side of her hat. Her head...

Her scalp tickled... constantly. Applejack couldn't feel the feather that was under her hat through her mane... and yet she constantly thought that she did. She knew it was there. The reality of the fact failed to leave her. Being out there... being with those ponies made her think a bonfire was lit atop her crown.

Hesitantly...

Weakly...

...Applejack lifted her green eyes and glanced across the table.

Rainbow Dash sat between Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy. Her eyelids were heavy, and—judging from the occasional wince from her scalp—it was more than evident that a hangover refused to leave the poor pegasus alone. She too had a glass of ice water, something lost to the other mares hanging out. Once or twice, Rainbow even came close to nodding off. But then Fluttershy would giggle or Pinkie Pie would slap her shoulder and say something loud. Rainbow's eyes would fly open wide, and she'd put on a devilish smirk with practiced grace.

Applejack wasn't entirely worried about the mare whom she had to "rescue" the night previous.

What she was worried about—however—was the confounded fluctations in her chest every time she so much as stared at the winged scamp for longer than three seconds. Eventually, the weight of the moment dragged her eyes down to the restaurant's floor. As the merry evening toiled away in the background, Applejack worked on one thing and one thing alone.

Slowing her heartrate down.

She took gulp after gulp of cold water, contributing to the effort. No avail.

Her scalp tickled.

Applejack fought to keep from screaming.

---

Nighttime.

The mares gathered around the table in Twilight Sparkle's living room. Spike had found a box full of old photographs, and the girls were busy cooing and giggling at all of the captured memories from Twilight's foalhood.

Rainbow Dash retired early for the night. Applejack struggled painfully through three "Book Camp" albums in order to excuse herself as late as possible. It was proving insurmountable; the toil of the previous night caught up to her on lead horseshoes. Eventually, Rarity insisted she go to catch some shuteye. And when Rarity was dismissing somepony...

Applejack trembled as she reached her tired hoof for the doorknob to Twilight's bedroom. She bit her lip and strove to keep her knees from knocking. The mare had outrun hydras, fended off swarms of vampire fruit bats, and even taken manticores to the woodshed.

Now, all of a sudden, it took more courage than she thought possible just to enter the same room as a certain friend of hers...

If she lingered too much, her friends would suspect something was amiss.

So...

Taking a deep breath and closing her eyes...

...Applejack entered the bedroom.

It was darker than dark. Her tired eyes could scarcely make out the glow-in-the-dark stickers clinging to the ceiling. At first, Applejack was afraid she might step on a certain petite pegasus. But then...

She heard her. For some reason, Rainbow Dash's voice stood out like a siren amidst the hush of the room. A squeaky, voice-cracking, tender little siren. The sound rubbed around Applejack's ears like a fuzzy kitten, and somehow she just knew the mare was lying within her snug sleeping bag in a fetal position. As Applejack's eyes adjusted to the shadows, she realized she was completely right.

A glint of starlight caught itself on Rainbow's mane. It looked so raggedy and frayed to the naked eye, but Applejack knew otherwise. Applejack knew things that other ponies didn't. The softness... the innocence... the warmth of that mane... that body... that vessel of sacred breaths clinging to her... depending on her... and desiring—

Before Applejack knew it, a full five minutes had passed, and she was standing above Rainbow Dash like some creepy wolf in chicken coop. She felt nauseous... especially when she realized how closely her hooves lingered to where Rainbow's mane was. The farm mare slowly... decidedly backed away.

She practically fell into her sleeping bag. She threw a length of fabric over her body and aimed her back to Rainbow until she was staring dead-straight into a blank bedroom wall. Like a polite farm filly, Applejack instinctually took her hat off and plopped it on the floor beside her. She nearly cussed out loud—

—for the feather flopped back into view, catching a fateful string of starlight. It glinted with the same softness she had spotted across the room.

Clenching her teeth, Applejack angrily snatched the fibrous little thing from the hollow of the hat. She held it between two strong hooves, ready to mangle it into putrid threads that would get lost in the upholstery forever...

But she couldn't. She couldn't do anything but lie there... petrified... cradling the fragile color in her grubby farm hooves.

And from the other side of the room, the tender breaths kept rolling... squeaking... yearning.

Applejack didn't realize she was stroking the feather, but there she was. The thickness of the sleeping back failed to hide how naked she felt. And cold. And helpless.

It used to be that the only thing that brought tears to Applejack's eyes was thinking back on memories of her folks. But this...

She sniffled. A sore spot formed in her throat. Applejack did the only thing she knew that could solve a case of frightful shivers. She hugged something to her chest. But there was the paradox. She was never the one shivering before.

The night took its sweet, agonizing time before it dragged Applejack into slumber, and she didn't like the dreams she found there any better.

Comments

[Booster Spice]

Lie to yourself, Honesty, Lie to yourself and become the failiure of the Empire.

[DrEggnog]

Applejack is getting creepy.

[zaponator]

derpicdn.net/img/2015/12/18/1047022/large.png

[Sir Mediocre]

8446794
Silence is golden fuzzy.

Truth is a commodity. Lies are expensive. Waste not, for with every deception, the knife plunges farther.

[Phoenix Kitten]

When you finally find what you're looking for, but don't know how to approach it.

[Lamplighter]

8447178
I doubt she's even hit the "This is what I've always wanted" phase yet. She's still in the "What is this feeling, and why dose it make me cry" phase. She hasn't identified what this emotion is. If she refuses to name it, if she won't put words to her feelings, she can stop them from being real. If it's not named, not given a life of it's own, it can't hurt her.

If it's not real, then she's not lying to herself about it.

[Leftover of Saikano]

Don't you just hate it when that happens?

[DrEggnog]

8446943
That is the shit. I love this fandom.