Odysseed

by AuroraDawn

Chapter 1

It was one of Applejack’s favourite dreams, and she whispered a silent thank you into the aether while she pranced about her acreage, beaming all the way. As much as she took pride in her work, and knew how good a hard day’s labour would feel, it was always nice in a realm of no consequence to be granted a world where all her chores were done when she awoke.

Lines of apple trees stretched into the beyond, each one full of nothing but leaves, standing tall over buckets overflowing with the family’s fruit. The buckets were sliding themselves along the ground soundlessly into the barn, where Applejack knew they were being bundled up and sorted and all the soft and rotten ones would vanish out of existence.

To the east of her were all the animal pens, and the hogs and chickens were all comfortable in their enclosures, all fed and fat and happy. Applejack could hear the distant clucking of contented chickens, peppered with the occasional oinking from the pleased pigs. There were no disturbances, no jobs left, just time to appreciate the world around her. In this dream, she could take the day off and go visit friends, take a steam at the metaphysical spa, go for a refreshing swim, or any of a million things that farm work made difficult.

She turned away from the orchard and pranced along the fence back towards her house, aiming for the tall hill on the west side of the farm. The rows of new-looking fence planks and patched wire brought a smile to her face. Everything seemed to be accounted for in this little fantasy; everywhere she looked was exactly as she wanted it to be.

The tall hill would—in real life—have presented a steep enough climb to require more careful steps. This was Applejack’s dream however, and she was perfectly enjoying her trot, thank-you-very-much, and as such the dirt-worn path gladly offered no resistance nor trouble to her while she bounded up it.

Just as she had hoped, when she reached the top and flopped onto her side beside the lone tree, the sun had almost set. It had been midday a couple minutes ago, of course, but this dream was yet again one step ahead of her. Without her consciously thinking it, the time had swapped imperceptibly to the turning corner of evening, and precisely as Applejack had settled down and rested her back against the sturdy trunk behind her the last vestiges of sunlight flashed themselves away on the horizon, and night fully fell.

As if summoned by a switch a trillion freckles of stars appeared above, each one comfortably nested in the inky soup of interstellar space. Clusters of stars danced and twinkled, calling for Applejack’s attention, begging her to focus on their constellation. She chuckled lightly, craning her head about while drinking it all in. Never once did this night sky change—not in her lifetime, anyways—yet always she saw something new. Tonight she had been distracted by a purple and green wash that spread across the sky in an arc, some distant nebulae that at this scale had seemed nothing more than a wayward brushstroke against the empyrean canvas.

It was not so simple, of course. Several years ago Applejack could have assumed it was nothing more than a flat smear on the atmosphere, and it wouldn’t have phased her to know she was incorrect about it. But now, with the lessons she had picked up from Luna, she knew that whole stars were being built in that impasto mass. Stars which would help build planets, which could each themselves have their own pony-like creatures busying themselves upon them. A smile touched Applejack’s lips. What if right now, some alien was leaning against something solid and natural, staring down at her?

Did they have apple trees?

A chuckle escaped her, and she turned her attention back to the horizon. A light was breaching around the edge of the world, not one harsh like the sun but gentle, mysterious even. It shone its rays, somehow casting shadows in a still-midnight world, and when at last the source of this light rose up so too did a feeling of warmth in Applejack’s chest.

The moon was full tonight, because of course it was, this was her dream and she wanted to see it, but all the same she found herself muttering softly in gratitude to the fantasy. It was huge, too, far larger than it would ever be in real life, and it almost pulsed in its soft radiance.

Applejack closed her eyes, breathed in deep, and sighed heartily. This was what nights were for; relaxation, comfort, beauty. The day was reserved for work and toil, and while she respected it equally, she would admit in a heartbeat that taking things easier was more comfortable than labouring hard, any day.

She felt a drop of water on her muzzle, and scrunched her face. Rain? In her dream? It had never happened before, and there hadn’t been any imagined clouds soaring to her that she had seen. Another sensation of wet touched her, and she grunted and opened her emerald eyes to find that she was no longer on the hill. She wasn’t even on Sweet Apple Acres anymore, either, though where she actually was she hadn’t a clue.

Panic washed over her while she realized that she was floating high above water—endless, choppy water, water which smashed into itself in aggressive waves and wobbled aimlessly, water which stretched into every direction for what could have been an eternity. After a brief moment of reassurance that she was still dreaming, the earth pony frowned in consternation.

What happened to her dream? It was still night here, but the moon was its regular size, and a waxing crescent—as it was in real life, she realized. The stars were still there too, but they had been dimmed by the lunar presence, and none of the familiar constellations were where Applejack expected to find them, or even there at all. She tried to move around, to call forth something more comfortable, but all her practiced lucid dreaming seemed to be for nothing. She was stuck high in the air over a featureless ocean, cold, damp, and frustrated.

No. Not featureless.

Before her the ocean had started to shake in a more recognizable pattern. Waves rocked back and forth, but overall there was a simple circular motion to them all, and after a minute a harmony had seemed to take over and direct the mass of water to spin.

Applejack watched wordlessly as the sea ceased churning and started spinning and sinking. It was draining down into some unknown area, be it Tartarus or something more physical, and the vortex quickly grew and spread wider and wider. For a brief moment Applejack considered feeling terrified, but realized by virtue of the fact she was still clearly being suspended and could not hear this churning disaster before her that she was dreaming, and so she continued to observe instead.

After some time, and with how time passes in dreams it could have been a minute or an hour, the swirling void had almost reached the edges of Applejack’s vision. And then, the world shook. She didn’t know how she could tell, being levitated so high, disconnected from this strange dream yet tethered to it all the same. There were no landmarks for her to even see shake, but all the same she knew that an enormous quake, one larger than she had ever felt in her life, was wrenching the earth violently.

The feeling started to disorientate her, and a light queasiness stirred in her stomach from the sensation. Luckily a landmark quickly appeared from the void, vibrating greatly along with the apparent tremors, and the swirling within her subsided. What had lifted up from the sea seemed to be rather like a temple; evocative of the great buildings up in Cloudsdale, though with pillars of stone and mortar rather than cloud and rainbow. It kept rising, growing ever higher, almost reaching out to Applejack, and with it came a whole island beneath. The massive chunk of land was almost perfectly circular, some flattened cone that bore whatever mystical building this was, covered in grass and sand and trees as if it hadn’t just come from beneath an entire ocean.

When all things settled, when the vortex had calmed and the quaking had subsided, the island had brought itself up to Applejack’s height and deposited her before the ancient and now clearly giant temple. Her hooves met ground—much to her exasperated appreciation—and when they did, a powerful voice rang between her ears. It was not a voice like any creature she had ever heard. It was hollow, almost artificial, somehow both deep and echoing while flighty and soft. It was as the buzzing of bees, the waves crashing upon a shore, the deep hum of a train passing somewhere far in the distance, all of these things all at once and yet none of them ever.

It said simply one thing.

And find safe passage to the Source.

And then she woke up.

Comments

[Nailah]

I really enjoy the narration here, the little details of each segment, really help pull the reader in.
I do love me an adventure and it almost feels like Luna is calling to AJ, to go on this journey. However, I could be wrong.
Pacing for the first chapter also feels grounded in what it is setting out to do, by establishing AJ as the main character, and that this is gonna be a long ride, and I'm here for it.