What We Don't Talk About

by Silent Whisper

So I Always Act Like I'm The Best

Everything hurt, and not in the way it had ached before- well, before. It stung, as though every one of my muscles had fallen asleep and were now coming back from numbness. My neck, however, burned with a stretching sort of agony I’d only felt a few times before.

Oddly enough, my chest fur felt wet, and as a painful ringing in my ears crescendoed and faded, I could hear a familiar voice crying softly.

I stayed quiet, despite my jaw muscles clenching and unclenching back to functionality, my tongue feeling far too large and alien inside my mouth before fading back to my senses’ periphery. She once said she’d never wanted me to see her cry, so I tried to wake up as slowly and obviously as possible.

For her sake, of course.

After a few moments, I gave a weak little cough, and then a genuine one forced its way out of my lungs, and the crying immediately stopped. Two hooves helped roll me over to my side as I took in great unladylike wheezing breaths, curling up on myself as full sensation slowly returned to my limbs. Light bloomed behind my eyelids and I waited for the pain of any sensation at all to dull before I forced them open.

“Rares?” A voice whispered, still loud enough it hurt my ears. I twitched my hoof towards my neck, and one of hers gently grasped it for a moment before lifting it up to my neck, pressing it gently against my pulse. “Yer alright, yer safe, it’s all okay.”

“How long was I out?” I tried to ask, and managed a few mangled syllables as my muscles tried to remember how speech worked.

This was far from the first time, and Applejack knew me, knew who I was better than anypony. She was the only one who did. “Only about an hour, darlin’. Deep breaths now. Y’alright if I move you to the bed? Ah tried to towel ya off as best I could after washin’ ya since you, uh, made a mess on the floor a bit when ya fell, but yer probably still pretty chilly even if ya don't feel it yet.”

I scrunched up my muzzle as much as I could to brace myself as my olfactory senses returned, but all I could smell was the faint lingering scent of jasmine, no other trace of any instinctive accidents that may or may not have happened while I was, er, out. “That would be lovely,” I tried to say, which came out as half a pained groan of agreement.

“Alright, Ah’ll be gentle as Ah can, promise.” I felt her nuzzle gently against my side, and then nose herself underneath me, settling me onto her back before slowly, steadily walking towards the bedroom. She was gentle, just as promised.

It still hurt like hell.

I sighed as she flopped me back onto the mattress and laid down beside me, wrapping her hooves around me almost gingerly, as though she were afraid I’d flinch away. Instead I took a deep breath in, slowly let it out, and shakily pet her hoof with my own.

We’d never talked about it. Applejack never mentioned what had happened at all, not the first time and not since, and I’d never told her what I’d heard, or been able to hear. Both between us and in front of everypony else, it was always an accident that I’d barely survived, or a stress reaction that made me pass out before she found me, or a fainting episode, or a bad dream. It had been years since we moved away from Ponyville, but it had never so much as come up as a topic. Not between us, anyways.

I wondered if that thought should have bothered me more than it did. Instead, I wrapped the hooves that had twisted my neck earlier a bit tighter around my torso and tried to fall asleep. I needed her, and she wanted me to be happy more than anything. There was no need to complicate things, not when it was me and her.

Sleep didn’t come, despite my exhaustion, and I didn’t hear Applejack’s breathing slow either. She just held me in her hooves and we watched the dawn-cast shadows creep up the wall through the blinds. It was peaceful. Everything was just as we wanted it to be. It was perfect.

Idly, I let my mind wander from the colors of the sunrise to the idea I’d thought of the previous day, and found I had no problems recalling it at all. Metallic flashes on gossamer, shimmering like scales in a sea of clouds, I mused to myself as Applejack rubbed my side tenderly. Ridiculous, on its own at the very least, I mentally decided, letting my eyes slide shut, but maybe it’ll come in handy someday.

It was okay. I had time to figure it out. All the ideas I'd had earlier felt within mental reach now, my mind clearer than it had been in a very long time.

A knock at the door jolted me from my reverie, and I felt the mattress shift as Applejack rose, groaning tiredly, to answer it, and sleep finally beckoned to me at last. The Boutique could wait for a few hours, I decided as I tugged the corner of a blanket over me, filling the void Applejack left.

The world drifted in and out, and I could just make out snippets of words as my wife talked with what sounded enough like Apple Bloom that it put my mind at ease.

“Ah heard it, ya know.”

“Heard what, AB? Quiet now, Rares is still sleepin’ a bit.”

“Somethin’ from the earth. Somethin’ wrong, sis, and it ain’t the first time Ah’ve heard it.”

"Sounds like a problem fer somepony else. Ah ain't heard nothing. Didja just come to visit to tell me about feelings, or is there something else ya wanted to discuss?"

I wasn’t worried, and buried my head into my pillow, almost, but not quite, drowning out a little sigh from a worried sibling that sounded like an echo of my own.

“You’ve changed, Applejack, ya know that?”

Everypony else was all the same. They just wouldn’t understand us. All we had was each other, in sickness and in health, for rich or for poor.

Til’ death do us part.

And knowing us, not even that could slow us down.

Comments

[the dobermans]

You win the internet for that description.

[Love And What Came After]

The grammar was pretty good, although the flowery writing, for me, was difficult to keep track of. I found myself rereading sections two or three times to ensure I fully understood them.

The plot, however, I'm still confused about, even after reading the whole story twice. Perhaps that's just my fault for failing to understand, or perhaps you should have explained things better so they were a little clearer. Either way, I'm left confused and wondering what it was all about. Was that your intention with this story? Did you intentionally write it to be obscure so the readers would ask questions and be left with a satisfying sensation of mystery and intrigue?

I'm going to upvote your story because I respect the effort you put into it. However, with that being said, I'm going to posit a theory explaining why your story was downvoted so much: perhaps, when those other people finished reading your story, they were also left confused and unsure what to think or how to feel, and they didn't like that sensation.

[Silent Whisper]

11839487
Thank you for reading it! I would be delighted to explain if there's something you're confused about regarding the plot!

[Flashgen]

Really great story, Silent. I love the subtle bits of wrongness before the truth gets revealed, along with the bittersweet tragedy of that truth. While there seems to be love in what Applejack is doing, it's also obvious that it shouldn't be done. It's a dark, twisted act, and it seems, at least to me, that it's not even doing what Applejack would want. It's more like making a doll than bringing Rarity back. And yet, from Rarity's perspective, it's still her in some way. There's a looming since of inevitability to it as well, like there will come a time when it doesn't work or Rarity comes back wholly wrong.

It's definitely left a mark on me. I'm gonna be thinking about it for a bit.

[Novelle Tale]

11839487
It's funny, I've actually been thinking about this a lot lately, and chatting about it with my partner and watching some video essays on the topic. I have been considering finally using the blog feature on this site to muse about it more.

(And I want to be clear that my goal is not to rile up or anger you. I think this is a really interesting topic to consider in storytelling and audience, and your comment was thoughtful and I appreciate that.)

There seems to be this harsh divide in readers/media consumers between those that thrive on implication, and those that want every plot line and story hook explained explicitly and thoroughly, so that there are no lose ends, no questions to be had. I have found that a lot of readers here fall into that latter category.

I certainly fall into the former category, but by and large it seems--through the decisions made not just in fiction, but in mainstream TV & movies as well--that the trend is that audiences want to be explicitly told what is happening, or how to feel, or even how to think about a given character.

Is there anything wrong with it? In general, no. People like what they like, and media companies output what people like according to the majority of their audience. Do I like or agree with the super explicit, no-strings-left-untied approach that has been taking over? No. I think it's bad for storytelling as a whole.

In fact, there are entire genres of media, horror chief among them, that thrive off the gap between what's on the page & what's in the reader's own mind. Horror movies (or games or stories) are scary in large part because of the reader's/viewer's expectations, and their fear of the unknown. This story is horror. It's a delicate horror about mental health, burnout, codependent relationships, and expectation. But it's also about the mysteries of death, and the relationship between earth ponies, the soil, magic, and death itself. In fact, one of the things that struck me the most on my initial read through was how well we, the audience, were set up--from the scene descriptions, to how Rarity treats AJ, to their dynamic of Rarity earning the money and AJ being the stay-at-home wife--to expect Rarity to be the necromancer. Not Applejack. It was such a poignant twist.

Rarity is an unreliable narrator, and that shows here. She's self-focused and self-centered, but we don't see that until we see Applejack's willingness to 'do anything' for her, to use her mystical connection to the earth to bring Rarity back, to remake her right. This story wouldn't be nearly as good if the audience was explicitly told every detail about their relationship and Applejack's powers. It sticks because we are lead to believe it is 'good' or 'healthy', and then we are emphatically shown it is not. There are a lot of hints that something is amiss. Folks who have been in bad or toxic relationships can likely spot them easier, but those who don't have that experience may not. But what is fiction if not an opportunity to learn how something can appear one way but exist as entirely another?

Basically, there's a difference between readers being confused because the story is unclear (because the story is poorly written), and readers being confused because the story is unclear (because every thought and step is not explicitly explained).

The former is on the author, but that's not what happened here. The language isn't really flowery--I'd expected more "the violet unicorn" syndrome and various $5 words if it were; rather, it's... poetic. It's prose. It's thoughtful and purposeful andmirrors Rarity herself. The scene descriptions serve a greater purpose than just describing the surroundings: they tell us things about the story, about Rarity and Applejack, through the tone and implication and expectations of the characters themselves, but also the audience.

This story, as stated above, thrives on expectation and implication and subtext. It's like a lot of good horror in that way. But more than that, it's complex and nuanced the way I expect actual-facts published prose to be. As a reader, I love getting the chance to exercise my critical reading muscles. It find it sad when others don't feel the same way about storytelling.

[artofwar77]

11839663
Comments can't go into Favorites on the Bookshelf, but this one should.

And kudos to the story for being intricate and intriguing enough to warrant it.

[ThePeer]

oh my gosh

Rarity is a zombie pony with many good ideas.

Good story :)

[Twiliight]

When I tell you I absolutely adored this story I mean I LOVE THIS SO MUCH AHHH GENUINELY THIS IS AMAZING AND I WOULD 100% READ AGAIN

[Novelle Tale]

11840089
This made my day. :D Thank you!