Previous Chapters Next
Close
1970 words
21,101 words
31,849 words
41,173 words
51,380 words
61,757 words
71,967 words
81,579 words
91,210 words
101,642 words
111,188 words
121,443 words
131,377 words
141,979 words
151,633 words
161,908 words
171,487 words
181,699 words
192,176 words
201,886 words
211,558 words
222,103 words
231,715 words

3

Big Macintosh had been in the barn before the worst of the rain had hit, and he was silently glad that he had managed to finish ploughing the north field early that evening. That said, it didn’t look as though his work would make much of a difference for tomorrow’s tasks, as the loose earth quickly turned into thick, useless mud. He hated seeing a day’s work simply washed away like that, especially as it would make him start tomorrow's tasks all the later whilst he re-ploughed the field.

“Ah well,” he said to himself, “ain’t no use in gettin’ annoyed ‘bout it. Yah just have to deal with that sorta thing workin’ on a farm.” He remembered then that Apple Bloom had gone out to “crusade” with her friends, and hoped they’d had the good sense to not try anything too crazy out in the rain. Had she even got home yet? He shuddered to think of her out in this downpour, which was showing all the signs of turning into a storm, and a very nasty one at that.

Turning around to finish cleaning and storing his equipment, his ears suddenly pricked up as he heard a voice calling through the rain:

“Mac! Mac! MAC!” He turned round again to see Applejack pounding across the yard towards him.

“Eeyup? Wha−” Before he could even finish speaking the mare had tripped over a length of rope he had laid out over the ground, and he was forced to catch her in his forelegs. Applejack could run a rodeo better than anypony he knew; if she had been tripped by a little bit of rope then something was very wrong with her indeed.

“Applejack?! What’s wrong?”

“Mac, Mac, Mac…” She buried her face in his chest and cried for a minute or two, and he patiently held her up and waited until she had calmed down enough to explain.

“Ah…ah was just lookin’ at some o’them old pictures on the wall,” she managed to say through gasps of tears, “and then Apple Bloom comes in from the rain all soaked like, and Ah wrapped her up in a towel, and it was like she was a little foal all over again…” Applejack finally looked up at Big Macintosh, her eyes red and two channels of tears running down her face.

“And then, as she leaves the room, she turns round and says to me: ‘Applejack, thanks for being my Mom all these years, big sis.’”

“Oh Applejack…” Big Macintosh softly nuzzled her cheek in an attempt to comfort her, but she just shook her head and continued:

“Ah can’t stand it anymore. Ah can’t go on living this…this lie anymore…” She buried her face in his chest again as he thought for a moment.

He knew this whole thing must have been hard for her. Telling lies was not something Applejack liked to do, even when it was deemed to be for the greater good, and she was resultantly awful at it for most of the time. This secret, as he had tried to call it for her benefit, had to be one of the biggest lies it was possible to tell a pony. But difficult though it had been, they had somehow managed to keep it up all these years, even Applejack. Being the Element of Honesty must have taken its toll on her, however, and by now it was probably almost painful to keep pretending. She needed his help and she needed it fast.

An idea came to him, an idea he had, in fact, been thinking about for a little while. He considered his other options. They didn’t exist. So be it.

“Well,” he said after a pause, “maybe it’s time to tell her.” The younger Apple sniffed and looked up again.

“Yah think so? I mean, it’s been so long… what do yah think she’ll say? She’ll hate us for sure…”

“We’re just gonna have to cross that bridge when we get there. An’ if she’s mad at us, we’re just gonna have to give her time to come round.”

“Ah guess… Ah guess you’re right.”

A little later that night, Apple Bloom was sitting on her bed, once more staring idly out of the window at the rain as she thought about the day’s events. So her mind was effectively at a blank, as far as she was concerned. Well, that was not quite true, she admitted. She had made a very important realisation about what her brother and sister had done for her, and what they truly meant to her. She may have been no closer to getting her cutie mark, but for once she didn’t actually mind.

She was brought from her thoughts by the sound of her sister’s voice, calling from downstairs:

“Apple Bloom? Could you come down to the kitchen for a moment, sugar cube?”

“Ok, Ah’m comin’.” Applejack’s voice sounded a little… strained, as if she might have been crying. Apple Bloom started to worry. She couldn’t even remember the last time she had seen or heard Applejack cry, what could have brought this on? Was it her fault? Did she say something earlier which upset her sister? With a sense of growing trepidation she went downstairs and entered the kitchen.

Big Macintosh, Applejack, and Granny Smith were all seated around the table. Applejack’s eyes were red, so she had been crying, but now she looked very serious, and so did the others.

“Why’s everypony look so serious?”

“Sit down, Apple Bloom; we’ve got something important we need to talk to you about.” She followed her sister’s instruction hesitantly.

“Have Ah done somethin’ wrong?”

“No!” Applejack answered rather louder than was necessary, and she took a deep breath before continuing.

“No, you haven’t done anything wrong, sugar. It’s us who’ve done that. Your brother and Ah… Big Macintosh and Ah haven’t told you the truth about your parents, about who your parents are…” Apple Bloom stared at Applejack, her worry forming itself into a tight knot in the pit of her stomach.

“What are you saying?”

And so, between them, the three older Apples told her The Truth. Their words reverberated through Apple Bloom’s skull like heavy hail on a tin roof, each syllable as painful to her as if she was being bucked in the head by a stallion bigger than Macintosh. She started shaking her head slowly from side to side, then she screwed her eyes tight shut and covered her ears, before finally cutting Applejack off mid-sentence as she slammed her hoof down on the table and screamed:

“NO!” Applejack took this rather badly, and she began to blubber slightly as she desperately tried to calm the little filly down.

“Apple Bloom, please! It’s been agony for us not to tell you!” Big Macintosh nodded sadly and made to add something else, but Apple Bloom cut him off, yelling:

“Ah don’t believe it! Ah won't believe it!” before turning tail and running from the kitchen. They heard her mount the stairs at a gallop, and a few seconds later they heard her bedroom door slamming shut.

“Ah knew it…” Applejack couldn’t hold back her tears anymore, and as she hung her head she half-whispered:

“She hates us.” Even Big Macintosh, often seen as the most stoic pony which Ponyville had yet spawned, had to admit that Apple Bloom’s rejection hurt. It hurt a great deal, in fact, and before he knew what was happening his own eyes had begun to water.

Seeing her grandchildren so affected tugged at Granny Smith’s heartstrings, and the old mare leaned forward and gently covered one of their hooves with one of her own.

“Now that’s just stinkin’ thinkin’,” she began, her voice as gentle as her raspy vocal chords would allow.

“Apple Bloom knows, deep down, that you two are the best an’ only ponies who could’ve raised her as well as ye did. The only ponies who love her as much as parents should. The only ponies who will be there for her whenever she needs ’em, an’ no matter what she needs ‘em for.” They both looked at their grandmother, still tearfully, but small smiles of gratitude began to play across their faces.

“Ah tell ye what,” Granny Smith said as she slowly lowered herself from her chair, her bad hip buckling slightly before behaving itself once more, “Ah reckons you two young’uns could probably do with some time alone to talk ‘bout things. Ah’ll go talk to Apple Bloom.” And so she left the two of them, Big Mac holding Applejack’s hoof comfortingly (or it may have been the other way around, Granny Smith couldn’t quite tell) and began climbing the stairs.

Her hind legs were not what they had once been; and although she was kept relatively fit, for a pony of her age, by what farm work she did, it took her a whole two minutes to reach the top of their farmhouse’s tall wooden staircase. Applejack had, on a few occasions now, suggested the installation of a stair lift, but Granny Smith could be just as stubborn as any of her younger relations.

“If ye ain’t gonna use it, yer gonna lose it!” had been her line, and she stuck to it still, although she did need to catch her breath a little at the top.

Apple Bloom’s room was at the north end of the upper landing, furthest from the staircase, and the short walk gave Granny Smith time to think about what to say to the young filly.

“She’s probably upset at me, too,” she thought, “but Ah’m not quite at the centre of this like Applejack an’ Big Macintosh. Ah might be able to get through to her more.” The door now in front of her, Granny Smith tapped lightly with a hoof.

“Apple Bloom, honey? It’s me. Can Ah come in?” She waited for a response, but was greeted with silence. Although this could simply have been her ears playing up, again.

“Apple Bloom? Ah’m comin’ in, alright?” she said, beginning to twist the door knob. Such an action would surely have caused loud protestations if a negative had been given before, but Apple Bloom remained silent, and so Granny Smith opened the door all the way.

It took the elderly mare a moment to figure out what was wrong with the scene in front of her. She blinked a few times, scrabbling to put on her glasses with her front hooves as she looked wildly around the room, but no, there was no mistake. The filly’s bed was empty, her window was open and a makeshift rope of bed sheets tied to the bedpost had been lowered to the ground below.

Apple Bloom was gone.

10,899 views

643