Applejack at the Edge of the World

by MagicS

Fire Vent

Four long days on a slow moving boat had Applejack physically rested but mentally drained. Despite her desire to kick back and not let herself worry about the time it was taking for her to make it to her next destination, there simply wasn’t enough for a single mare like herself to really do on the steamboat. For a mare that worked with her hooves and liked always having work or chores to do it left her more anxious than anything. The plus side was that the comfortable bed, nice food, and good weather up the river did wonders for her hooves and body that were always working.

Though the steamboat didn’t have an onboard spa or anything it still left her feeling refreshed that way. It was the kind of thing she needed after all the walking she had done in the days leading up to boarding it. The other passengers and crew were good company too—the first ponies Applejack had spent more than just a few minutes with on her trip.

The Silk family was a pleasure, though they left just a little more than halfway through Applejack’s trip and then she had to start eating dinner alone. Which was a bit awkward for her and not just because she still didn’t feel like she fit in in such a fancy dining room. She would usually wake up early and walk around the top deck in the morning, occasionally chatting with other early risers or just watching the river go by.

If the lounge had something like dancing instead of just gambling maybe she could’ve enjoyed it. But the fancy band in there didn’t seem like they were the types to play her kind of music and get something good going.

She did get off the boat each time it stopped at other ports. Not to really do anything since she didn’t want to spend money that could be useful later, but just to stretch her legs and take her mind off the slow trip. Those moments proved to be the best for her and she got to talk to a lot of locals about what their homes were like and what the Undiscovered West was like out here. And she only almost missed getting back on the boat before it left once.

Now if she had her friends with her or her family she’d be able to do loads more on this trip. Thinking of the fun they could’ve had, with Rarity enjoying the fine dining and fancy clothes of the wealthier passengers, Pinkie Pie making friends with everypony, Rainbow Dash wanting to race around the deck to kill time, Fluttershy looking at all the wildlife on the river, and Twilight incessantly asking questions of the crew and passengers about the Undiscovered West. Applejack sure missed them all a lot. Hadn’t even been long since she had seen them, but when for years now you’ve seen your friends nearly every day of your life it makes that loneliness just a bit more apparent.

At least she had finally arrived at Lumberstock.

---

“Thanks for the trip!” Applejack said as she waved back at the couple of crewmembers who were helping ponies disembark at Lumberstock. She got to the end of the ramp and hopped off with gusto, wearing her hat and saddlebag proudly while looking ahead with a determined grin.

And thanks to the helpful ponies that ran the steamboat, Applejack knew exactly where she had to go from here. There was a big road at the western edge of Lumberstock that had branching paths going, north, south, and of course—west. She had to follow the western road and Fire Vent was one of the locales on the way. And if Saffron Silk was right it should only be a day of walking before she got there. She could get to her next destination by sundown!

“Sorry, Lumberstock, can’t really stay and look around,” Applejack said as she already got to walking through the town.

Thanks to her boredom and curiosity on the way here, she had asked a few different ponies what Lumberstock was like and came away with a pretty picture. Now that she was here and looking around she realized the town itself was quite pretty. It was nestled in and around a redwood forest that sat right beside the river the steamboat traveled up, most of the buildings were log cabins, even some that were built multiple stories high. It was a pretty interesting way to build, and not quite something Applejack could recall seeing much of in Equestria. The grass around the forest was an incredibly deep green, showing how healthy and well taken care of the nature was here.

She had also learned that the primary interest ponies coming here had was in the wood carvings. Lumberstock was well known for decorative and collectible wood carvings of all shapes and sizes. Applejack could even see totem poles set up all around town, and it seemed like every log cabin had some kind of carving set up outside it or some smaller ones in the windows. Some buildings had wide open storefronts where hundreds of carvings sprawled out in front of like at some kind of yard sale or flea market.

Would’ve made good souvenirs.

The carvings were mostly of animals but there was a large variety of other things too. She was “window” shopping just a little bit on her way out. And as she passed by one of the stores selling wood carvings that happened to grab the attention of another pony.

“Miss, excuse me Miss!” A young stallion holding a carved wooden bear said as he came up to her.

Applejack looked over and raised an eyebrow at him. “You talking to me?”

“Yes!” He eagerly nodded and smiled. “You came off the boat that just arrived here, I can tell by the way you look around. If you came off at Lumberstock you must be interested in some of our premium wood carvings, right?”

Applejack smiled apologetically at him, she herself having been in his position before and sympathizing with any well-meaning salespony. “I’m sorry but I’m just walking through on my way somewhere else. I’ve got business a little farther west. Even if I wanted a wood carving I don’t have anywhere to put it right now either.”

His face fell and he sighed. “I see… I was hoping you were out here looking to buy and going back to the boat. A shame.”

“I appreciate the offer and all but I really do gotta be getting to Fire Vent as soon as possible,” Applejack tipped her hat to him. “So I’ll be going now.”

“Fire Vent? Why would you want to go there?” The stallion asked.

The way he said that gave Applejack pause. She stopped midstep and glanced back at him. “What do you mean by that? Aint it some normal town? I heard it was a popular place for tourists and vacationers.”

“Yeah. Was. That place has fallen on hard times lately. They’ve really felt the squeeze from what Al-Karamaretel has been doing, if you know about that situation.”

Applejack frowned. “Yeah, heard a little about that.”

“Well Fire Vent’s tourism has dried up thanks to that. In fact, pretty much everywhere west of here isn’t doing good. Even places like Lumberstock are only still barely managing thanks to being right on the river. But everywhere west of Saddleport and Hacksaw aside from some of the bigger cities and kingdoms that don’t have a port on the river to help them out with trade and commerce are falling apart. It’s a real shame, and nobody knows why Al-Karamaretel is doing any of it in the first place. I always figured they had more to gain from letting ponies through,” he shrugged.

“Aint nobody tried going there and getting them to change… or even trying to force things back open?” Applejack asked.

He shook his head. “Most towns are independent and don’t really like involving themselves with each other or working together. You must be from pretty far off to not know that. About the only kingdom with the size to do anything would be Diminuendo to the north, but they’re far enough away and don’t rely on the trade and whatever else comes from Al-Karamaretel so it’s not like they’d bother.”

“Dang… things just aint right out here,” Applejack said as she pawed the ground.

And thinking back to Discord—maybe she was going to have to do something about it.

Although being Applejack, she wouldn’t have needed him to tell her that. She would’ve done the right thing anyways.

“Oh well,” she shrugged and started to walk away again. “I’ve still got business out west and Fire Vent is my next stop on the way there. Thanks for telling me all this.”

“Sure, and good luck with whatever it is you’re doing,” he said to her and waved goodbye.

Nice pony, Applejack thought. But the conversation she had with him had really soured her mood. She didn’t think things would be that bad out here, and it disappointed her to know that nopony really seemed to care enough to do anything or help out just because it wasn’t affecting them enough. This definitely wasn’t Equestria, that was for sure. It stung a bit because individually so far everypony she’d met had been pretty dang nice, but they couldn’t get together to try and fix an obvious problem? Well, even in Equestria most ponies needed to be spurred into action or have somepony like Twilight to get behind.

Looked like Applejack was gonna have some work to do.

Approaching the western edge of town, she saw where it opened up into a big four-way intersection. A large signpost was planted right in the middle of it, with separate boards pointing each direction.

Applejack stood before it and looked up. The northern board read:

DIMINUENDO
CITY OF OPPORTUNITY

Names that didn’t really mean much to her. Glancing at the southern board was a little different:

SOMEWHERE ELSE

“What’s with ponies and weird signs?” Applejack rolled her eyes in annoyance before finally looking at the western board:

FIRE VENT

“Much better,” Applejack smiled and started to walk down the western road.

It started to slope down and the redwood forest thinned out almost completely, the landscape turning into more of a jungle again without the massive trees all around to block out the outside world. Here at the top of the hill she could now look out and see farther into the Undiscovered West than she ever had before. For quite a ways there was just a jungle with the road she was traveling down cutting a near straight line through it. But far enough where she had to squint a little she could see mountains rising up to the west. That had to be Fire Vent. She couldn’t tell which of those mountains was the volcano, but from everything else she had learned so far that still had to be where the town of Fire Vent was situated.

Not a short walk, but not the longest she had been on either. Thanks to getting off the boat real early she bet she could get there before supper time. She had made sure to grab breakfast before leaving too, one last complimentary meal thanks to the bag of bits Twilight had lent her, so she wasn’t hurting for any food or water. The walk would be a lot easier thanks to that.

Applejack took a deep breath, tipped her hat back, and started walking to Fire Vent, totally leaving Lumberstock and the river behind.

---

It was hotter in this jungle than the rest of the Undiscovered West had been so far. The sun beat down on her relentlessly and there was no shade unless she wanted to travel off the beaten path. There was just a humidity in the air that made it all worse too, she wondered if the heat had something to do with the closer distance to the volcano. Applejack couldn’t say she was an expert in weather or climate stuff. But though it was worse it wasn’t bad enough to really drag her down. She’d bucked apples off of hundreds of trees on hotter days than this.

A little sweat on her brow felt downright natural.

Hours of walking and she felt like she had gotten about halfway to those looming mountains in the distance. There were low clouds around their peaks, and beyond them Applejack could now see another much larger mountain range even further west. It seemed to stretch from north to south almost as far as she could see, completely separating the horizon from what was beyond it.

She wondered if the Citadel of Al-Karamaretel was in those mountains or some part of the west even further away. She still didn’t exactly have a good grasp of how big the Undiscovered West was or how big the part on the other side of the canyon by itself was. Although she had a guess that the ponies of Fire Vent would be able to tell her. They probably had a lot of first hoof information on that kind of thing. It might be a bit of a sore subject though, she was kind of still hoping things weren’t as bad there as that wood carver had made it seem.

On the way she did come across a few more things other than just the jungle encroaching on the road. She passed a small family farm that looked like it grew all sorts of tropical fruit thanks to the jungle climate. Applejack had to really fight back the urge to go and say hello to them and see how their fruit tasted. Who knew how much time she would lose if she actually walked into their farm…

Besides that there were the occasional small roads that branched off from the main one she was on, leading either into the south or north side of the jungle.

They had no signs but whenever Applejack looked down them she could see small houses and buildings popping up a little ways in. Just hermits and ponies who liked their privacy if she had to guess. Some of them looked completely abandoned and had fallen into disrepair, but she had seen worse looking shacks ponies still lived in in the wilder parts of Equestria. Either way she didn’t see any of the ponies who may have called these homes “home”. It was a pretty solitary trip for Applejack on the way to Fire Vent.

“Dang, felt good being around so many ponies the last few days, hope that with everything going on Fire Vent hasn’t become a ghost town or nothing,” she began thinking aloud.

Peace and quiet was good after a hard day’s work, otherwise Applejack preferred the noise and company of friendly ponies.

Over her head she watched the sun move through the sky the closer she got to Fire Vent. Counting the hours in her head just by seeing how far the sun had moved. She had been right earlier—probably getting there an hour before the sun went down.

Applejack frowned. “So I’m gonna have to stay the night… boy, I wasn’t even thinking about that. But even if the town’s fallen on hard times they have to have an inn or someplace for travelers to stay if they used to be a vacation spot.” She thought about the oats she still had in her saddlebag. “Might want to get some more food or a water bottle too depending on what the trip to Al-Karamaretel is like from there...”

She wasn’t looking forward to spending the night in Fire Vent but maybe it would be a good thing. She could potentially part with the rest of her bits if they had good stuff to give her for the rest of her trip. Wouldn’t be bad to give her money to ponies more in need than she was.

Those bits were supposed to be for when she absolutely needed them though. Just like the oats. She knew she’d have to use at least one or two if she was going to stay the night but for the rest she should probably be a little more close-hoofed with them. Generosity was a good thing but with the friendship mission to accomplish and who knows what other sort of problems to solve out here, she might want to save what she could. Get a look at the bigger picture first.

Especially since going by her experience with the steamboat, her bits were probably much more valuable than the typical money found out here. She might even be considered “rich”. Especially to ponies living in towns going through hard times like Fire Vent.

A little longer and the sun started to disappear, casting an orange glow across the landscape. Thanks to the mountains it was going down faster so that even if technically it wasn’t evening it didn’t exactly look any brighter outside. Applejack decided to pick up the pace a little bit, keeping her eyes now on the closer mountains. One of which was a dormant volcano.

Applejack remembered her last encounter with a volcano…

She shook her head, there was nothing remotely similar about the two situations.

It looked like the road actually took her just slightly south of the mountains too instead of directly into them, so Fire Vent was probably built in their shadow. At least part of it. Might just be the entrance to town coming off the road and the hot springs and whatever else it was famous for was all up closer to the volcano.

When Applejack had been walking for about ten more minutes she saw that the road also split off into two. One path going straight ahead and the other sharply going up north. At first she was a little worried about potentially taking the wrong path until she saw a large sign on the side of the road going west. It was a little dark out and the sign was partially covered in vines so she didn’t notice it at first but the closer she got she realized how big it actually was—more of a billboard than anything.

Though it told her she was going the right way it still didn’t exactly make her feel any better.

Applejack’s face warped into a grimace as she read the billboard:

EL OME O FIR VE T!

“Oh yeah… this place has definitely seem some better days I reckon,” Applejack shook her head, the missing wooden letters fallen about haphazardly in the grass below the billboard. She shrugged and started her walk into town. “Oh well, things aren’t going to get any better with me just standing around.”

Comments

[RoboRed]

Applejack’s face warped into a grimace as she read the billboard:

EL OME O FIR VE T!

“Oh yeah… this place has definitely seem some better days I reckon,” Applejack shook her head

Took the words right out of my brain.

[redmar]

Hopefully Applejack will be able to hlep Fire Vent. The ponies living there might even be able to give more information about what's going in Al-Karamaretel.