Chasing the Sky

by SnowOriole

6- Cherryjack

The next day, Jubilee takes her to Dodge Junction. It's about an hour's journey by Jubilee's desert jeep, which is a small grey vehicle with two front seats and three fairly cramped ones in the back. The boot, stacked full with crates and boxes and random equipment, rattles with every bump in the road they go over, making an awful jangling noise each time.

Applejack sits in the front. Her legs are squeezed on all sides, on her left the gear stick, on her right a bundle of pipes leaning against the jeep door, and more boxes jammed into the compartment below the window shelf. Jubilee's behind the wheel, bopping her head to the weird-sounding music issuing from the radio speakers. It's rather…atypical music taste for a lady her age in the country, but hey—her car, her rules.

"Ya know, Ms Jubilee, I could drive too," Applejack says absently, twirling her hat about in her hands. "There’s no way to get lost on a straight road. You didn't haf’ta specially take me there."

Jubilee's expression stays neutral, but her tone is drier than the Appleloosian air rolling past them when she drawls, "I'm sure you can. But between you and me, I think you should take some time away from driving for a bit, don't you think?"

"...Right."

Jubilee hums, with a light chuckle to herself. "Besides, I wouldn't want you running off to goddess knows where with my jeep!"

"I wouldn’t do that. I got no reason to," Applejack argues, more to herself than to anyone else. Slumping into the seat, she gazes out the side window for the hundredth time, finding there just the same stretching miles of open road and sand that had occupied the landscape for the past hour. Cherry Hill Ranch really is out of the way; there hasn't even been so much as lights most of the journey. It must be easy to get into accidents here, without a living soul who could help her out. Then Applejack starts to wonder how she had even made it to the ranch, while blackout drunk, no less. She really was incredibly lucky to have made it out with nothing more than a day of headaches.

(It makes Applejack think, briefly, about how she could have actually kicked the bucket back there. How long would it have taken for her friends and family to find out, if they ever did? And how would they have felt, especially when she’d left them on a note like that?

And then she tries not to think about it.)

Eventually, the landscape does change. Gas stations and lightposts start popping up by the road, and then short colour-faded buildings crawl into view on both sides of the road.

Jubilee turns the vehicle into a street and parks it on the side of the road. She opens the door, and Applejack too steps out onto the sandy ground. "Well, Applejack, welcome to town."

~~

Dodge Junction is a small town, but it’s lively. The town centre is a four-way junction, each road flanked by the buildings, none of them more than two stories tall. Appleloosian folk stroll about the streets in wide-brimmed hats and shawls that shield their skin from the fierce rays of the sun beating down on them. Some of them nod in greeting at Applejack and Jubilee as they enter the town.

"The train station's over there," Jubilee points.

Cursorily, Applejack glances over to see the building in question: a one-storey, one-platform station with a slanted roof. She shakes her head. Pursing her lips, Jubilee nods and waves her off, heading the other way.

"Where are you gonna go?" Applejack calls out after her.

"To scout more farmhands," Jubilee responds, the back view of her cherry-red locks already retreating into the distance.

“Alright…” Applejack says, herself turning around. “Meet you back here in an hour, I guess.”

Her first stop is the post office. Applejack has her phone with her—it had been in her pocket during the incident—but obviously, there’s no reception out here, so good old snail mail will have to do.

The first letter she writes is to the company the delivery had been meant for. In it, she apologises for the failed delivery and promises compensation as per standard protocol, though she isn’t that sure how she can get the compensation to the company. …That’s a problem for another time.

The second letter is for home.

She’s probably been nothing but a disappointment to her family and everyone lately, so she feels like an explanation is the least she can do. She keeps it short:

Dear Family and Friends:

Not coming back to Ponyville.

It seems a little blunt. She adds another line to make it better:

Will send money soon.

There. She seals the envelope, writes her name, and Ponyville’s mailbox address on it. When she passes it to the guy at the post office, he stares at her for a moment and raises his eyebrow.

"That all? Postal around here ain’t cheap, yaknow. You aren’t writin' any more?"

"I ain’t here to chit chat. Do yer job, and send the letter." Applejack states and slides the pen over. She gets the fee from her new allowance. "I gotta go do mine."

"Uh, well," he says, stamping it and dutifully filing away the letter. "Have a good day, missy!"

Next, she heads for the mechanic’s planning to ask about a price for repairing the van, or, if it comes down to it, prices for the parts so she can repair it herself. But first she slows down by a board outside the mayor’s office displaying a map of Dodge Junction and its surroundings, figuring that it’s probably best to orient herself a little while she’s here.

Dodge Junction appears to be located in the eastern part of Appleloosa. Canterlot is up northwest, while Applejack knows Ponyville lies somewhere south of Canterlot, in between the two. A forest separates Appleloosa and the northern states, which Applejack assumes she’d cut through before crashing into Cherry Hill Ranch which was not far from the forest. That answers her earlier confusion.

So technically, she could drive back through said forest, but now that her van is… temporarily out of commission, the only other way back is, indeed, taking a train that goes around the entire forest—back all the way west across Appleloosa and then north towards Canterlot.

Not that it matters, since she’s not going back without the van. So on she marches toward the mechanic’s.

---

As it turns out, working on a farm is one thing. Working on a farm, answering to someone other than herself, is another.

In a barn, Applejack runs on a treadmill that powers a conveyor belt. Churning on the belt are all the cherries from the harvest, a jiggling mass of reds and yellows that gleam from their uncut stems. All two of Jubilee's cherry sorters stand by the belt, sorting the cherries into various bins. Sweet cherries, sour cherries, the like.

Usually, there are more helpers. Jubilee’s almost constantly going out to town to scout helpers, after all. However, the ones recruited don’t stay for very long (unsurprising: inaccessibility of the ranch, combined with the relatively low pay Jubilee offers, isn’t a huge draw for helpers). The only regulars are a pair of friends: Snips, a chubby kid with ratty ginger hair and a loud mouth, and Snails, who stands taller and skinnier, so slow and slothlike in his movements one might think he would fall asleep at any given moment. They’re also the ones sorting the cherries now.

"Keep at it, Applejack," Jubilee sings from the upper storey while Applejack keeps cycling her legs on the treadmill.

A treadmill. Did she mention she was running on a treadmill?

Applejack grunts. Jubilee merely holds up a mirror and touches up her cherry-pink eyeshadow, no doubt preparing for her next farmhand-scouting session in town.

"You know you can and should set up a website for that," Applejack mutters under her breath. She throws her head up and hollers, "Y’all just do this manually? Ain't y’all ever gotten an upgrade to yer systems round here??!"

"Cousin, this is Dodge," Snips says. "We don’t got no big city tech."

"Well, neither does Ponyville, but at least this kinda thang was automated," Applejack shoots back.

"Does this look like Ponyville to you, Apple Jill?"

"It's Jack," Applejack grumbles, though no one hears it.

"We're doing just fine without it!" Snails chimes in, eyes scanning the cherries on the conveyor belt keenly. Deftly, his hands dart out and sweep the cherries into each bin like a frog's tongue catching flies.

"Yeah, easy for you to say. I'm doin' the hard work around here," Applejack rolls her eyes, panting.

"Oh, can it. It's not like you can tell apart the cherry types." Snips holds up a cherry to his ear and wrinkles his pudgy nose. "Hmm… nope." He tosses it into the bin behind him without looking.

"Less squabbling with the boys, and more running, Apple!" Jubilee points her lipstick tube at her from above-deck. "You don't want to be fired on your first week."

"... Yes, ma'am," Applejack grits out.

---

Days pass. It’s a short time, but Applejack’s slowly getting the hang of the work. It is still a farm after all, just with cherries and also at the edge of a desert. But many things are different, as she comes to realise.

Today she stands atop a stepladder, picking cherries from a patch of trees.

The cherry Applejack’s just pulled from its branch is a shiny red. Plump, yet light between her fingers. If she put in just a little more pressure, the delicate skin would burst apart and shower her hands in vibrant juice—as she’d learnt when she was just starting cherry-picking, having taken for granted the firmness of the apples she was so used to harvesting.

In comparison to the dusty, brownish hues of most vegetation in the desert, it’s incredibly…fresh-lookin’. Applejack’s no expert in cherries, but she does have common sense. This scenery in front of her—a blossoming sea of pink trees—belongs in cold, even snow-covered mountains. Even if their ranch is situated closer to the forest, in the scorching, arid dunes of the desert, cherries fit in as much as trees fit in the ocean.

Carefully, she places the fruit on the glistening heap in the basket hooped around her arm. “Honestly? I didn’t know you could grow cherries in the desert,” she voices, no longer able to contain her curiosity.

At the sound, Jubilee turns. She isn’t picking cherries, but she’s transferring the filled baskets that Applejack passes to her from the stepladder into the back of a wagon, stacking them up into orderly piles.

“It’s a rare sight, isn’t it?” the ranch owner murmurs. A wry, but almost fond smile makes its way onto her face. “People always told me that it was going to be impossible, but I did it anyway.”

“Wait,” Applejack raises an eyebrow. “You started this farm on yer lonesome?”

“Why, yes,” Jubilee says. “How did you think I got it?”

Applejack bites her lip. “Well, I thought ya inherited it from yer family.”

“Oh!” Cherry Jubilee chuckles. “Oh. No, honey. The rest of my family’s in Manehattan, and the last thing they would do is run a farm. This may be a surprise to hear, but I actually lived in a very wealthy, an upper-class-kind of household—that is, until I moved out to start this cherry farm.”

“Uh, it’s certainly. Somethin’ I don’t hear of, often.” That explains Jubilee’s accent, dressing and general demeanour, but still, it doesn’t click at all. People move from the farm to the city. Moving from the city out into the middle of nowhere to start a farm? Who in their right mind would do such a thing?

Something in Applejack’s expression must have given away her true thoughts, because Jubilee answers them, face growing wistful. “I know it must sound ridiculous, but I hated that lifestyle badly enough that I wanted to do something completely different, something far-removed from everything else. So I decided to grow cherries in the desert. My parents didn’t approve of it, of course, but they let me do what I want.”

“So as a young lady, with a sum of money on hand, I brought my son and husband to Dodge to start the farm together. Too bad,” Jubilee’s tone grows slightly resentful, “when my son grew up he didn’t want to keep running it, and rathered return to Manehattan to take over my family’s business instead. His father agreed with him.”

"Do you ever regret it?" The question flies out of Applejack before she can stop to consider if it would be offensive. But well- she has to know.

“It does get a little lonely at times,” Jubilee admits.

“Huh,” Applejack says. “But, don’t you still keep in contact with yer family?”

“...” Jubilee pauses for a moment. “The last time I talked to them was when they left.”

“Wait. Seriously?” Applejack says, surprised. "How long has it been?"

"Years?" She chuckles without mirth. “We did get into a fight that day. That was when they left.”

“Oh.”

"Mhm," Jubilee sighs. "I don’t talk much to my parents in Manehattan, either. At this point, so much time has passed that it would be strange to contact them again. So I just didn't."

Applejack frowns. “Hey…I mean, but you said it's been years. Even if y’all are doin’ different things now, they’re still yer family.”

Jubilee regards her for a long moment, then says, “I suppose you inherited your farm from your family, then.”

“Well, it’s not really, my, farm, more of the family’s farm. Passing down yer farm through the generations—it’s how things are done in Ponyville, which is why I assumed so before.” Applejack says.

“But you’re so young,” Jubilee says, “Do all people inherit farms at your age?”

“Ah,” Applejack smiles thinly. “Not all. My parents passed away at a young age, y’see, so I took over operations earlier than most.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry,” Cherry Jubilee says sincerely.

“Yeah, that’s why,” Applejack sighs. “If it were down to me, I would… I mean, I just really think you should cherish your family while they’re around.”

A prolonged moment of quietness. It seems that even Cherry Jubilee doesn't have anything to say to that. Applejack resumes picking the tree in front of her clean. Slipping the hoop from her arm, she bends down to hand her the filled basket. She climbs down the ladder and stands beside Jubilee, who's staring down at the last basket of ripe cherries in her hands.

“To answer your question from before…" she starts. "No, I don’t regret it. It was my dream back then, and it’s still my dream now. It is a beautiful one, isn’t it?”

Applejack looks out over the fluttering branches of the cherry trees. “I think so too.”

---

Applejack is stepping back to get a good gander at her work when she hears a soft gasp behind her. Turning around, she sees Jubilee approaching the flour mill.

“You fixed it!” she marvels, eyes wide in atonishment as she stands before the mill’s wall. Where a van-sized dent had been a few days prior is now a restored solid wall, the patch of drying paint the only evidence it had been there. As for the van itself, it had been towed to near the garage while Applejack worked on it (not in the garage, as it was very much still at risk of exploding and damaging more property, much as she hated to admit it).

“I said I would,” Applejack reminds. It hadn’t been that hard, really—she’d just shaved around the dent in the wall, filled in the neatened hole with drywall and plaster, then waited for it to set. The charred parts had been even easier: those just needed a good scrub-down and a lick of fresh paint. But she can't help the swell of pride that rises inside her anyway, seeing how impressed Jubilee looks.

“Still, I didn’t expect it to be so fast,” Jubilee says. “And you did it all by yourself?”

“Yeah. It’s not that big a deal though,” she adds, squatting down to clean the paintbrush. She jerks her thumb toward the door. “I had a look inside and the inner wall wasn’t affected, so I only really had to fix the outside part here.”

“And this is?...” Jubilee walks towards and picks up a sketchpad lying face-up on the ground, its green-gridded pages flipping in the barest breeze. “Oh, is this that notebook you asked me if you could use?”

“Ah,” Applejack feels a blush rising to her cheeks. Applejack had found that sketchpad while cleaning up the attic and asked Jubilee for permission to use it. It had been blank when she first found it; now she brought it around with her whenever she felt like writing something down. “That’s… I was just sketchin’ out plans for some of the systems I saw around the ranch.”

“What kind of systems?”

“This and that,” Applejack thinks. “Like the processors in this here mill, and I did something about the irrigation too. I saw plenty of outdated tech around the ranch, so I was thinkin’ of ways to improve them. They’re just random ideas—I’m not sure if it’ll all work, obviously, and if we have the tools for them…”

Jubilee flips through the sketchpad. Her fingertips brush over the graphite strokes Applejack had jotted in its pages under the flickering glow of oil lamps, too many ideas buzzing about in her head to fall asleep. Finally, she comments.

“Well, some of this could use some changes for it to work, especially for cherries, but most of it looks really promising.” Gently, she closes the cover and looks back up at her, quiet amazement in her lime-green eyes. “This is really incredible, Applejack, I mean it. But- you know I didn’t ask you to do this, right? You didn’t have to.”

Applejack chuckles, rubbing her head. “Yeah, I know. Y’all did say you didn’t want ‘big city tech’. I…won’t build anything if you didn’t want me to.” She didn’t want to repeat her past mistakes. She wanted to try not to, at least. “I was just writing down my ideas for fun.”

“You seem to really enjoy it,” Jubilee observes.

“Huh. I guess,” Applejack considers. “Y’know, I get what it’s like to want to stick to tradition, but there’s no sense in locking yourself to one method of doing things just because it’s the way it’s always been done, especially if there are better ways out there of doing it.” She pauses, reflecting. “A good friend taught me that.”

“You have wise friends,” Jubilee remarks.

“Yeah…” Applejack takes the sketchpad back from Jubilee. She thumbs its pages, staring down at the enthusiastic scribbles and notes covering them. “Maybe I should listen to them more.”

---

Speak of the devil; it takes one week for them to arrive.

It happens when she's at Dodge with Jubilee. Sunday. There'd been a rodeo going on and Jubilee had taken her, Snips, and Snails to see it. Right now, the rodeo’s ended, but Jubilee’s still in the middle of chatting up one of the candidates and very, very unsubtly trying to recruit her to the ranch. Snips and Snails are batting at each other with their hands, arguing over something dumb.

“I don't know, an hour is kind of far away,” says the woman. Her name is Cucumber Pie, or Cauliflower Fry, or whatever. Applejack wasn’t paying attention.

“If it's too far, you can lodge at the ranch,” Jubilee persists, “just like this girl here! She's all the way from Ponyville. Right, Applejack?” She nudges her in the side.

"Uh, yeah, sure…" Applejack supplies.

"I've no idea where this Ponyville is, but I'll pass. I got family to take care of here," Casserole Rye declines gruffly. “If you up the pay, though…”

Meanwhile, Applejack can feel Snails tugging on her coat. “Hey, tell Snips I burp louder than him.”

“No way!” Snips shakes his fist. “I can burp so loud that the Neighffel Tower falls down!”

“I can burp so loud the whole of Prance comes down!”

Cherry Jubilee clasps her palms together. “...I can’t increase the pay for now, but if you come help, we will absolutely make enough profit to give you a raise.”

“I thought you said you were rich,” Applejack whispers.

“Shh! Anyway, I spent it all on really expensive equipment and their maintenance when I first got here,” Jubilee hisses back. With a brilliant smile, she turns back to the woman. “So, if you’re ever so keen to work on the one and only cherry farm in this part of Appleloosa-”

Applejack’s going to ask just how much Jubilee had spent on “expensive equipment” when a flash of brightly-coloured hair darts in the corner of her eyes. That catches her attention because, well, she hadn’t expected there to be city people all the way out here. Squinting past the rodeo stands, she sees four? No, five girls. They’re hovering around the mayor’s office, big bags slung over their shoulders while talking. They have hair-dos that are dyed indigo, violet, light pink, hot pink, and one brown streaked with colours-

"Oh dagnabbit," she curses under her breath once the realisation dawns upon her.

"What?" one of the boys ask curiously.

"Uh!" Applejack jolts, fumbling for an excuse. In the distance, she sees Twilight Sparkle starting to turn around. She settles for socking her fist straight into her belly. A massive beeeelch rips out of her as she takes several tiptoes back. "Heheh, guess I had one too many, um, jalapenos at lunch, haha- seeyallinajiffy!"

“Land’s sakes,” she hears the boys mutter as she flees for the nearby outhouse. “We have a winner.”

~~

Applejack hides in the outhouse, camping on the toilet bowl for what feels like an eternity. She's fully intending to stay there for an actual eternity, but then a knock issues from the lumber door.

She keeps quiet, hoping they'll give up and find another one.

Then the person knocks again. And again. By the time the knocks turn into a frantic, successive stream hammering into the door, Applejack decides she doesn't want to deprive an innocent stranger of doing actual explosive business. She pulls up her trousers, washes her hands, and opens the door.

"Sorry about that-"

"BUCKING FINALLY!" she gets bellowed in the face the instant the door cracks open. The voice is suspiciously familiar. "Oh. Hi Applejack!"

In the space of one second, Pinkie Pie (visibly red in her puffed cheeks) does three things: waves, hugs Applejack's shoulders, then slams herself in the outhouse. That leaves Rarity, Twilight, Fluttershy and Rainbow, who were following behind her. When their gazes fall upon Applejack, their initially tense expressions dissolve into relieved smiles.

“Applejack!” Rarity exclaims. “So this is where you’ve been.”

Fluttershy envelops her in a hug. “We were so worried something had happened to you. Oh, we're so glad you’re okay.”

"What happened?" a raspy voice demands.

Applejack looks to Rainbow Dash, but she can’t quite bring herself to meet those rose eyes right now. The memory of those texts she'd sent Rainbow on the night of the incident burn raw in her mind; it takes everything in her to stop herself from bolting on the spot. "How did y'all find me?" she diverts instead.

"Your brother contacted us for help after you went missing. The letter you sent them had a return address on it, so we set out to find you," Twilight explained.

"Yeah, the letter. What's up with that?"

The past week of working on the cherry ranch, talking with Ms Jubilee and messing around with Snips and Snails served as an effective distraction from the events of before. But with the reappearance of her friends, Applejack feels the storm rising up in her again. Within her, defensive walls snap back up, keeping the water from spilling out. She can't let them know what had happened. What’s she gonna say, anyway? ‘Oh, yeah, I got so hung up over my life problems and my fat crush, who is one of you girls by the way, that I got myself piss-drunk and drove myself across states, then crashed my Pa’s van that I’m still not sure I can fix even after I’ve earned the money for parts?’ Yeah, no.

“Just what I wrote,” is what she says. “I found work here, so I’m not going back.”

The girls look between each other in apparent confusion. The tense expressions are back.

“What?...”

“Why?”

“But what about school? Finals?”

“None of that matters,” Applejack snaps. “Listen, I’ll be done in a few months. I can’t leave now.”

“You can tell us if something’s wrong, you know,” Rainbow says, ever infuriatingly.

“And I’m tellin’ ya that nothing’s wrong,” she retorts, already turning away. She starts walking back to where Jubilee and the boys had been. “Yeah, anyway, it was great talking to you guys, but I have to get back to work. Y’all can just head on home.”

“Excuse me, AJ,” Rainbow darts in front of her, cutting her off. She throws her arms apart, as if to block her path. “We didn’t go searching all over the country just to go home without you!”

“Well, I didn’t ask you to come looking for me,” Applejack shoves her aside, a little harder than she’d intended to. Briefly, she sees the flash of hurt in Rainbow’s eyes as she brushes past her. Applejack pretends to not have noticed, but she has to clench her fists to stop them from shaking.

She keeps on walking. She makes it back to where Jubilee is in the last desperate throes of begging Cashew Lime to grow cherries.

“Please, we really could use more helpers right now,” Jubilee’s saying.

“I ain’t interested, ma’am, let it go.”

“Hey there! Did you say you needed more helpers?” a cheerful voice interrupts.

Turning around, horror settling into her bones, Applejack finds Twilight Sparkle and the rest of the girls who had followed her here, broad grins on their faces.

“No. Nononono,” Applejack whispers, albeit uselessly, as Jubilee’s previously despair-clouded face brightens.

---

On the trip back, Applejack still sits in the front, with Jubilee still the one driving. But this time, the back seats hold her friends. The three seater is not large enough for four girls, but they manage to squeeze in anyway, and Applejack has to pretend Rainbow being practically half in Fluttershy's lap doesn't bother her. At all.

The whole trip, her friends pepper her with questions. What happened? What’s wrong? What happened?Luckily, Applejack manages to tactically avoid answering any of them by prompting Cherry Jubilee to talk about cherries. Soon the jeep is filled with just the awful music on the radio and Jubilee’s warbling dissertation on every possible way to bake a cherry. When they reach the ranch, Applejack slips into the attic and shuts herself in while Jubilee is briefing the other girls on their duties. No one bothers her for the rest of the day.

The next morning, Applejack walks into a breakfast table that drowns in stony silence the second she enters. Everyone, save Snips and Snails (who'd slept over last night), looks varying shades of uncomfortable.

“Good morning,” she says.

“Morning,” the girls mumble into their plates, five pairs of eyes fixed on her.

“Howdy doodle doo!” crows Snips, entirely unaffected by the situation. Snails steals a square of cheese from his plate while he isn’t looking. Striding past the unusually quiet girls, Applejack plops down in her own place between Cherry Jubilee and Pinkie Pie, reaching for the basket of bread. She wonders if she should be the first one to interrupt this quiet, since obviously this has something to do with her, or if she should delight in the fact that her friends have finally decided to give up on pestering her with questions and go back to Canterlot.

She doesn’t have to. Another voice breaks the silence.

“So,” Rainbow says conversationally, pouring juice into her glass. The jug sets down heavily on the table. “What’s this I hear about an accident.”

Applejack goes rigid.

“Have some tact, Rainbow Dash,” Rarity scolds. She turns to Applejack, concern written in her face. “What she means to say is, we heard you were in an accident.”

Applejack’s head snaps in the direction of Jubilee, who’s currently dividing a piece of toast. She tries not to growl, “You told them?”

Jubilee returns the gaze steadily. “There was no reason not to.”

“Are you alright?” Fluttershy pipes up.

“I said I was fine. See,” Applejack drops the butter roll in her grasp to her plate. The crumbs splinter on impact. She gestures to herself. “Alive and in one piece.”

"We don't mean just physically," Twilight says. "And why would you hide something like that from us?"

"I don't know what she told y'all," Applejack spits irritably, "but there ain't no problem with my noggin' neither, and mah business is my own."

"Ah, yeah," Rainbow folds her arms, "'cause the last time you said you had everything under control, you ended up in eastern Appleloosa with your van in a wall, so forgive us for worrying a little."

The table plunges into silence. Somehow this one is even worse than the first. Rarity has her entire head buried in her elbows. Even Snips and Snails aren’t chittering anymore, picking at their food solemnly. Muttering something about needing more coffee, Jubilee gets up and wanders into the kitchen.

With difficulty, Applejack swallows the bite of bread in her mouth. "And what are y'all even trying to do here? Don't y’all have school today?" she manages.

"The teachers allowed us to take leave," Twilight answers.

"Besides, you have school too!" Pinkie points out.

"That's different, Pinkie. I don't need school," Applejack says patiently. “I never needed school. Like, elementary school, sure, basic education is important an’ stuff. But not high school. I don’t even know why I went. I’m just going to work on the farm after I’m done. So what’s it matter if I work on a different farm for a bit?”

“That’s-” Pinkie says, but she falters. No one else speaks up, either. Clearly none of them know what it’s like. Applejack doesn’t expect them to know what it’s like. They’ve always been living in such a different world from her, such different lives. How can they possibly have anything to say that aren’t just shallow platitudes?

Applejack finds that she isn’t hungry anymore, not that she was that hungry to begin with. She finishes the rest of her bread roll, which tastes like cardboard by now, and stands up, the drag of the chair loud and echoing across the tiled floor.

"If y'all are plannin' to keep following and badgering me till I go back to Canterlot, don't bother. Until my Pa's van is fixed, I've made up my mind to stay here, so nothing any of you say or do is gonna change it," she says, before she leaves the room altogether. "End of conversation."

~~

A day not long after, Applejack does not go to breakfast.

She’s speeding down the open road toward Dodge Junction on the desert bike she’d found in Cherry Jubilee’s garage. The dawn has barely broken, the stars still visible in the lightening sky. Operating a two-wheel vehicle proves to be more challenging than the four-wheelers she usually handles, but she didn’t want to take Jubilee’s jeep with her this time.

She isn’t going to be able to return it, after all.

“Sorry, Ms Jubilee,” she mutters as she presses the bike on through the dry winds whipping past her, even though it's impossible that the recipient of the apology would ever hear it. There was no choice. Applejack couldn't tell her beforehand of her plan—she couldn't trust the older woman to keep mum about her accident, so she sure as hell can't trust her to hide this secret from her friends. Anyway, Jubilee goes to town often, so if she's lucky she'll find the bike before it gets stolen.

The reason for Applejack’s plan is simple. She can’t go home, but she also couldn’t have stayed at Cherry Hill Ranch. Her friends had been willing to throw down everything to find her, and even started volunteering, unpaid not to say the least, on the ranch just so they could drag answers from her. They probably would refuse to budge from the ranch until they got Applejack to go back to Ponyville and Canterlot High. And while Applejack’s fully committed to staying on the ranch, that wouldn’t do—how could she make them miss all their commitments back home? Twilight, missing classes? Rainbow, missing flight school?

It’s unthinkable. Applejack won’t allow it. So Applejack really only has one choice: to make them give up. She has to go somewhere else entirely, and this time, leave no address for them to go off of. She has enough cash on her to bide her time in another state. Maybe she can even crash at Aunt and Uncle Orange's. Then later, she'll come back to the ranch to continue her work with Ms Jubilee and the van. Solid plan.

With a squeeze of the brakes, Applejack pulls the desert bike into the spot where Jubilee always parked the jeep at Dodge Junction. She barely gives the bike time to skid to a stop before cutting the engine short and hopping off the seat, bag of hastily-packed belongings latched in hand. As she races on foot toward the train station that Jubilee had pointed to her on the first day, she shoves her other hand in her jacket pocket, making sure her ticket’s still tucked away there. Yep—everything is in place.

Almost everything. Though she’d left early enough to not worry about missing her train, any extra time spent dawdling around increases the risk of her being seen. Yes, she’d left the jeep at the ranch out of courtesy, but it’s also a means of transport by which Jubilee and her friends can use to catch up to her and apprehend her before she leaves. The chances of that happening now aren’t high, though. It would take them a whole hour to get here, while Applejack’s train departs in twenty minutes. If her friends aren’t here now, they’ll never be here in time.

She lets the ticket inspector check the ticket—tries not to tap her foot in impatience as he does so—then whizzes through the fare gates onto the platform. The train station is, of course, tiny compared to the subways of Canterlot. No escalators, none of that stuff, just a short building with the bare minimum: an entrance, a fare gate, and a single platform overlooking the railway tracks.

A large clock hangs on the brick wall, solid black arms pointing out the time on the chalk-white clockface. There’s still a while till the train arrives, so Applejack wanders toward a board tacked with maps of the train routes and surrounding areas, having half a mind to plan out the next half of her journey as thoroughly as she can.

She’s been perusing the board for some time when suddenly, a thunderous rooooooar fills the air, making her jump. It sounds vaguely like a giant engine, but nothing like that of a train’s. Commuters on the train platform look about for the source of the commotion, the chatter growing louder; Applejack does too, but much as she cranes her neck to see behind her at the station’s exits or at the desert beyond the train tracks, she can’t catch sight of whatever it was. After a while, nothing happens, so people stop looking and go back to their initial business.

Weird. Applejack remembers when Cherry Jubilee said there were other farms near Dodge Junction, so maybe it was some kind of harvester? It still seemed too loud for a harvester, though. Maybe a motorbike squad? Heart hammering in her chest, Applejack decides to look for a bench to sit so she can properly plan out the next part of her escapade. But then—

“Applejack!”

In the cacophony of the crowd, the voice is hardly audible, but to Applejack it might as well have been a gunshot. Freezing up, she barely manages to turn in the direction of the voice, unwilling to confirm its identity. But then, against all odds, she’s here—and sprinting full-speed towards Applejack.

“Applejack!” Rainbow Dash calls again. She’s still a distance away, lost in the thick of the crowd, but Applejack can still hear her loud and clear. “Where are you going?”

“Why-” Applejack grits out stiffly. “How are you here?”

“Uh-uh, you can’t answer a question with a question,” Rainbow might’ve been rolling her eyes, but Applejack couldn’t be certain from the distance. Before long, the girl’s reached the fare gates. But a ticket inspector steps in her way, holding a hand up and murmuring something to her.

Applejack watches as Rainbow deflates, and she reluctantly turns to join the queue in front of the train conductor booth. Applejack lets out a sigh of relief. She’s safe. Rainbow can’t make it past the fare gates without a platform ticket, and the queue in front of the booth is long. A glance up at the clock confirms that the train will be here any minute now. It doesn’t matter how Rainbow got here so quickly; she won’t be able to stop Applejack from boarding the train.

Rainbow keeps speaking to her, though. Or rather, yelling at her over the din of the crowd.

“So, wanna tell me what the hell is going on?”

“Don’t. Yell about this in public!” Applejack shouts back, glancing nervously at the the annoyed stares being shot their way.

“Yeah well, you can’t tell me what to do! ” Rainbow screams even louder, even flailing her hands wildly about. More commuters’ heads turn in their direction.

“Oh my goddesses,” Applejack slaps a hand over her face, irritation swelling up in her. Gnashing her teeth, she stalks toward the fare gates and positions herself on the other side of the fare gates, out of the way of the commuters passing through.

She leans against a pillar, glaring. “Okay, fine. Now say whatever you want to say.”

In response, the perpetrator folds her arms triumphantly. “Answer my question.” She gestures at the platform. “Where are you going?”

“Home,” Applejack fibs. “Since y’all wanted me to so badly.”

“Ri-i-i-ght,” Rainbow drags out, eyebrows flat. “And why would you do that without bringing us along? Or telling anyone?”

Applejack says nothing.

Rainbow sighs and pushes her bangs back. She’s swaying, kind of, shifting her weight from one foot to another, looking like for several seconds that she’s trying to say something, deciding against it, then trying to say it again. Then, what she finally says is, “Look, people tell me that- and I know I’m, not great. With the whole words and emotions, ‘tact’ thing-”

“Get on with it.”

“...Yeah. I’ll get to the point,” Rainbow shuffles forward in the line. She looks at Applejack in the eye. Dully, Applejack notes that her eyes are not rose, but blue—she must not have had the time to put her contacts in while getting up to chase her down.

“I’m sick and tired of you dodging around.” Steel-blue eyes flash. “Dodging our questions, or dodging us. It’s obvious that there’s something wrong, but for some reason or another you’re just not talking to anyone about it! Heck, before your letter arrived, it was your brother who came down to Canterlot to ask the school where you were, then Principal Celestia asked us, because he had no clue where you were.”

“I had no clue where I was,” Applejack bites out, “And fat load of good telling people about my problems does. It’s not like it’s gonna make the problems disappear.”

“But we could’ve helped! Like with the Fall Formal, when we all offered to help your club, you were said it was fine, even though clearly you weren’t. We just didn’t say more because we wanted to respect you.”

“Respect?” Applejack barks out a bitter laugh. “Don’t fool yerself—wasn’t it just too hard to talk to someone like me?”

"No..." She can see Rainbow tonguing the inside of her cheek. “Well, AJ, you… just don’t make it easy. The thing is that sometimes you say you can handle it and yeah, you pull it off perfectly. But other times, you’re actually not okay, but I just can’t tell because you don’t show it until it’s too late. And it’s just… hard to figure out whether you want someone there or you just want to be left alone.”

Huh. Applejack doesn’t really know either. Both? Neither?

Then, out of nowhere, Rainbow says, “I’m sorry.”

“Wha-?”

“If that’s what it takes then I’ll say it. I’m sorry,” she repeats, her gaze fixed firmly to the floor. “Because it’s about me, isn’t it? That argument we had the day before. I shouldn’t have blown up at you like that.”

“Not everything’s about you, Rainbow Dash,” Applejack retorts, then grimaces at her word choice. “No, it’s- I mean, it’s not just about you. You didn’t do nothin’, so that’s plain ridiculous. If anything, it’s mostly me. I should be the one apologising. I’ll own my mistakes; you don’t have to do it for me.”

“I’m not doing it for you,” Rainbow sighs. She hoists her chin back up. “You know, even if you were always stubborn, you used to be a whole lot more honest, at least. Now, you are... you just became so, closed-off, this year.”

“What would you know about that? You weren’t even there for most of it.”

“Hey, I fucking tried,” Rainbow’s face twists, scowling. “This again? You were the one who wouldn’t pick up my calls!”

“Only after I stopped calling you in the morning.”

“And you only started texting me first after I stopped texting you first! And I already told you a gajillion times that that was because I was busy with, I dunno, literally training to be a world-class pilot while being in high school!”

A beat.

Applejack pinches the bridge of her nose and breathes in deeply. Counts to ten. Lets it out. “...Goddess. This is so stupid. We sound like a jealous couple bickerin’ or something.” The words are out of her mouth before she can stop them. “Uh. Wait-”

But then-

"Pfffft-"

Rainbow isn’t looking at her with the confusion or fear or disgust she’d imagined—she’s chuckling too, raspy giggles poorly hidden in the palm of her quivering hand. She looks up, amusement dancing in her eyes. “You’re right. We really just had to get that out of our systems, didn’t we.”

“Yeah,” Applejack agrees. Then, gathering herself, “I’m sorry too. Getting mad at you for reasons clearly out of your control is dumb, and I did say I was gonna own my mistakes.” Rainbow’s eyes glimmer with hopefulness. “...Still not changing my mind about leaving, by the way.”

Rainbow droops. As she inches along with the moving queue, she looks exactly like a kicked puppy. It’s almost enough to make Applejack want to give up, but not quite enough.

Next, she speaks quietly. “At the ranch, you said you didn’t know why you even went to CHS. That’s a lie too,” she raises her head. “You told me yourself the reason when we first met. Or did you forget?”

Applejack cocks her head. “How doyou remember? That was so long ago.”

“Because that time was important to me, alright,” Rainbow heaves. Her frame seems to shudder slightly; her fist opens, scrawny fingers stretching out, and squeezing back closed. “Back then, even when I had the whole school under my thumb, people liked me for my achievements, or my jokes and pranks, but no one liked me for me. I was really a jackass, after all. I didn’t have any real friends, except I guess Fluttershy, who I knew from kindergarten.

But you? You really saw me, and you weren’t afraid to tell me off when I deserved it. You cared about me for real. And as for you, people care about you too, Applejack. Your Granny, your brother and sister, the girls, me. You had even had so many other friends at school worried, like Bulk Biceps, Wizkid, your other club members, asking after you when you disappeared with almost no trace. Yet here you are about to run away again.”

She sucks in a breath. “Applejack, you were never alone. Not now, not ever. So maybe not everything’s about just you—but also everyone else who cares.”

“Great,” Applejack says thickly. She clenches her jaw. “Weren’t you also just sayin’ that I should do what I want with my life? What if what I wanna do with my life is stay on that ranch until I fix my Pa’s van?”

Rainbow arches her eyebrow. “Then I’d be seriously unconvinced.”

“Who are you to tell me what to think, huh?” Applejack backs away from the gates.

“Your friend!” Rainbow shouts, the fire back in her. “Before anything else!”

Applejack stops.

“And, listen. I know that van was important to you. But your Pa wouldn’t want you to bust your ass repairing a blown van,” Rainbow implores. “Your parents would want you to be happy. Van or not. Farm or not. Applejack, you can do whatever you want—what you really want to. Other people's choices are their own and so are yours, you don't owe it to anyone, I’m serious. If in the end, you still decide you want to leave, then I- I won’t-” her voice catches. "Won't st-"

Clang-clang!

It’s then, when the sounding of a large brass bell signals the arrival of the train at long last. Applejack watches Rainbow’s face fall as the train rumbles its way onto the tracks. Yet, the relief that she’d expected to wash over her didn’t come. She should be running to the doors before they can open, to be the first in line, but instead, she finds herself lingering by the pillar, watching as people file into a queue in front of the doors.

The doors slide open. The platform begins to empty out as commuters board the train. Applejack is still by the fare gates.

“...Please, AJ,” Rainbow begs. “Think through this.”

Applejack turns her back on Rainbow, so she doesn’t have to see that pleading gaze. She takes a resolute step toward the train. Two steps. Three. Four. She was already long set on her decision; nothing anyone said should have changed that. Not the words that echo in her head. Not the truths she has been avoiding this whole time. Applejack knows Rainbow would stop at nothing for her, and that's why she must leave, right?

You were never alone.

Not everything's about just you.

What do you really want?

But for as much as Applejack knows Rainbow Dash, she doesn’t know herself nearly as well.

That’s why—a step away from the train doors—she hesitates. Her eyes see where she needs to go, but her feet are wavering.

The doors begin to shut. Applejack’s still not moving.

And then she's being pulled away.

WHAM!

Dazed, Applejack finds herself on the ground. The fall doesn’t hurt as much as it should—a pair of arms are encircled around her mid-riff, cushioning the impact of going back-first into the wooden platform.

At some point, Rainbow must have passed through the fare gates. She must have obtained a ticket without Applejack noticing. And lying down in the middle of the train platform, even if it’s mostly empty now, is definitely causing a scene. But that’s not what Applejack’s mind is focusing on right now.

Tears, are streaming down Rainbow Dash’s face in a way that Applejack has only seen once— back when Rainbow thought her pet tortoise was dead. Tank had only been hibernating, but either Rainbow had not known tortoises hibernated, or the fact had slipped her mind in her panic. Noticing her prolonged absence from school, the five of them had searched for and found the silly girl cooped up in her room, bawling her eyes out as she blubbered to them what had happened.

Even after Rainbow learnt that her tortoise, though unmoving, was still alive, she hadn’t managed well without Tank. She wasn’t sleeping or eating much, seemed disinterested in most activities, and was prone to suddenly running off with no explanation, coming back with her eyes puffy. No one really knew how to deal with Rainbow Dash at that time. In fact, it was Twilight who urged Applejack to approach Rainbow about it first. That confused Applejack, who knew she was never good at handling emotions, and she proved herself right: in the end, Fluttershy was the one had to take over from her pathetic attempts at comforting words.

Even now, Applejack isn’t sure what to say as she watches Rainbow cry. Emotions, people, whatever, they were all always too complicated. So, silently, she does what she did back then: moves her hand to Rainbow’s back and pats it. Smooths down the sweat-soaked shirt clinging to her frame, as gently as she can.

“I’d miss you, y-you know,” Rainbow hiccups wetly as she continues clutching at her collar, head curled into her chest, “if you left.”

Applejack kind of feels like laughing when she hears that.

But she’s tired, too. So she lets Rainbow sob into her, while she closes her eyes and lets her head fall back onto the ground behind her with a sigh.

This time, though, she lets a tear roll down her cheek, too.

---

A loud honking draws her attention to a desert jeep rolling up into the street of Dodge Junction.

“Applejaaaaaack!” The window of the jeep rolls down, revealing a truly ferocious-looking Pinkie Pie, eyes alight with fury. It actually makes Applejack gulp in fear. “Quick, Dashie! Nab her!”

“It’s okay, Pinkie,” Rainbow assures her as she walks alongside Applejack, towing her along by the hand. “She’s not running away anymore.”

“She’d better not be,” Jubilee says darkly from within the jeep. “Just because I said you couldn’t run off with my jeep, doesn’t mean you can steal my bike, honey.”

Applejack shudders. “Ms Jubilee, you have my word. Yer desert bike is safe and sound at the carpark-”

“Not a word more, girl,” Jubilee eyes her. But she’s smiling, nevertheless. Applejack realises, a little, the real reason why she had left the jeep behind. Maybe deep down, a little part of her had wanted someone to stop her from leaving.

Now, Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie descend upon her in a smothering hug. Applejack’s arms stick out awkwardly from the middle of the human cloud, and she stutters as Pinkie smooshes her cheek against hers and rubs vigorously. Help, she mouths a silent cry in Rainbow’s direction, who’s standing to a side and doing absolutely nothing to rescue Applejack from her plight, mirth tracing her lips. When the hype dies down, another thought pops into Applejack’s mind.

“Wait a minute,” Applejack says. Slowly, she turns to Rainbow. Looks at the jeep. Looks at Rainbow again. “If you didn’t take the jeep here, then how did you get here?”

Rainbow’s mysterious smile only grows wider. Grabbing ahold of her hand again, she leads Applejack around the corner of a building.

“You—” Applejack sputters, jaw hanging agape as she takes in the sight. Bright yellow metal, two flat, parallel wings around the main body, glinting under the morning sun. “You flew?!?”

No wonder Rainbow had been so fast. There’s an entire cropduster parked in front of her.

It’s Rainbow Dash’s turn to grin at her, her eyes sparkling under the sunlight. “Well, have you ever wondered what it’s like to fly?”

---

“Are you sure this is safe,” Applejack asks for the fiftieth time—a perfectly reasonable number of times—as she clambers into the seat behind Rainbow Dash, who’s already strapped in and fiddling with the blinking control panel.

“Let’s hope we live long enough to find out,” Rainbow replies, sliding the walls of the cockpit shut around them. Applejack looks at her. Rainbow rolls her eyes and sighs, “Yes, it’s safe, I have a license to carry up to three passengers, and it’s valid for this type of aircraft, blablablah. Buckle up.”

Rainbow then makes Applejack put on a helmet, puts one on herself, and pulls a pair of shades over her eyes. She continues checking a bunch of stuff, and Applejack lets her while she shifts about in her seat in uncontained excitement, taking in the sights around the cockpit. Round meters with various numerical readings on the control panel, a lit-up display with what looks to be a GPS navigator, as well as the joystick.

“You never been on a plane before?” Rainbow says, amused.

“Nope. Never,” Applejack says. “Well, how many people can say they’ve been in the cockpit of one, anyway? This is, like, the inside of a car, but way more complicated.”

“Definitely more complicated,” Rainbow agrees as she flips some switches. “...Although I don’t know how to drive a car, so don’t take my word for it.”

“So you can’t drive a car yet, but you can drive a plane?”

“...Yeah.” Rainbow scrunches her nose. It’s so cute. Applejack has gone for far too long without getting to see Rainbow scrunch her nose like that. “When you put in that way, that actually feels really weird.”

Applejack laughs. “Well, that’s what you have me around for.”

“Oh, yeah. You so owe me a ride after this,” Rainbow says. She pauses. “After you get a new van, that is.”

“I dunno," Applejack cups her chin in thought, feeling a smirk stretch across her lips. "I was thinkin' of getting a Ferrari instead."

"No way," Rainbow whips her head around, eyes wide. Then they narrow. "...You're not serious."

Applejack guffaws, wiping at her eyes. "Ya should’ave seen the look on yer face. Anyway, when you become a Wonderbolt and rake in those big bucks, nothing’s stoppin’ ya from buying one for yerself."

"Meh," Rainbow sticks out her tongue. "I'd choose a pick-up van over a Ferrari any day, so long as it's yours."

Goodness gracious. Applejack tries not to just fall on one knee and propose right there, screw it. Instead, she tilts her burning cheeks away, staring out through the window at the sand and the road adjacent, along which Jubilee’s jeep has long departed with the other girls. In here, it’s only Applejack and Rainbow Dash.

Suddenly the entire cockpit starts rumbling. Applejack jolts up as Rainbow drives the plane along a dirt road, now acting as their makeshift runway. The propeller in the front is spinning into a blur, now; Rainbow thrusts the cropduster ahead with growing speed, and Applejack finds herself tensing the muscles in her body as the sounds of the whirring engine and propellers grow louder and louder around them.

The nose of the plane is the first to tip upwards. Next, the back wheels lift off the sand—Applejack can feel the moment they do, and her stomach lurches as they climb into the air at an incline. Gasping, she holds her breath in her throat as she glimpses the ground drop away under them, the buildings of Dodge Junction shrinking as they ascend further. Eventually, when Dodge Junction has become all but a cluster of dots below them, the plane begins to level out, and Rainbow sits back with a sigh, a hand resting on the controls.

“This is-” Applejack has to raise her voice to be heard over the constant thrumming of the plane’s motors. The sky, cloudless and blindingly blue, stretches out all around them. “Why, set a rooster aflame and call it a hot wing—this is so cool!”

Through the noise, she still hears Rainbow’s snort. “What the hell is any of that supposed to mean?”

“Shut up,” Applejack says, red-faced, though she’s snickering too. “I mean, land’s sakes. This is plum amazin’.”

“Right?” Rainbow grins. “I’ve always wanted to show you. But I hope you’re feeling fine. I’m not gonna do any stunts in this thing, but we're going to keep rocking around for quite a bit. Paper bag's in the compartment on your left, if you need it.”

Applejack's eyes sweep about and sure enough, find a brown paper bag stashed in the side. In her excitement she had forgotten about her usual motion sickness—which was the reason why she could never enjoy being on ships. But even now, fortunately, the sickness doesn't come.

“Nah, I’m good for now.” Applejack smirks. “Look at you, all responsible-like now.”

“Please, I can be a little responsible sometimes,” Rainbow blows a raspberry. “I just wanna look out for others too, alright.”

Smiling, Applejack nods. Then she sits up, “Now, real question. Where in tarnation did you get this cropduster from?”

“Oh, it was in Cherry Jubilee’s garage,” Rainbow says.

“Huh? I didn’t see no cropduster in the garage while I was gettin’ the bike.”

“She never uses it, apparently,” Rainbow says. “Just maintains it. Ms Jubilee was seething about losing her bike and then mentioned that her only other vehicles were the jeep and 'a cropduster that no one could fly'. Well, of course, she hadn't counted on there being a pilot in our search party.”

“I bet that’s what she spent her fortune on,” Applejack realises. “Cropdusters ain’t cheap. I’ve never seen one for myself in all my years of farmin’.”

“Lucky for you, then,” Rainbow quips. “Or me? Or-”

“-Us,” Applejack amends.

The plane continues to move across the sky. Applejack can feel every roll and dip below her, the plane so small that every slightest movement shifted her with it. It's like being in a tiny bubble, suspended above the world, untethered by any weight, with only a thin wall separating her and thousands of feet of air.

It should be scary. Yet, Applejack feels no fear. She trusts the girl behind that joystick with her life.

“Could you do stunts in a cropduster?” she braves to ask.

Rainbow shrugs. “It’s a plane, so technically, yeah. Do you want me to?”

“As long as you don’t, well, crash us to our untimely demise.”

“Hey, I didn’t get qualified to mess around in planes just to not mess around in them,” she laughs. “Let’s start easy. Here we goooooooo!”

The plane begins to tilt upwards again, like it did when they took off. But this time it just keeps tilting up, and up, and up until they’re basically shooting vertically towards the sky. Applejack’s heart is up in her throat, and she can feel her blood rushing in her ears as the sky slants around them at angles she never imagined possible, no clouds to mark where they are, only the forces of gravity turning her insides about.

Meanwhile, in front of her, Rainbow’s grin is reflected in the glinting windshield, sunbeams skittering upon the face in the glass. Her hair sweeps upward as the plane goes into what Applejack judges to be entirely upside-down, tangling with her bangs, and the coloured streaks are racing in and out through her chestnut hair like thick slivers of trout in a river.

“Yeaaahahahahaa!” her cackles bounce off the walls of the windless cockpit they’re encased within. Before long, the plane is upright again, having completed its loop. Raising a hand to lift her sunglasses to her forehead, Rainbow turns her head back. “How was it? How’d you feel?”

Applejack catches her breath. “Like my face was about to drop clean off.”

“Think you can handle another round?”

She doesn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

The girl laughs. Applejack’s rapid pulse doesn’t settle. Her shining eyes are sharp, cerulean as the cloudless sky they flew in. Rainbow really is beautiful in any way. It’s then when Applejack realises she still loves and will probably continue to love Rainbow Dash, no matter how different her future may turn out to be.

“You staring at me?”

“Eyes on the road, lass,” Applejack says, feeling her face grow hot as she notices Rainbow smirking at her. Then she stops herself when she hears Rainbow giggle. “Erm… eyes on the sky?”

The steady whirring of the propellers about them is a calming, grounding sound. Up alone above the world, just the two of them… Applejack feels strangely free. In this quiet, Rainbow stirs.

“For the record, I’m glad you’re back,” she says.

“Yeah,” Applejack murmurs, soft. “I am too.”