The Last Apple Family Reunion

by crash826

In a Forest of Metal

In her dreams, she saw the trees.

Each one was like a titan, a skyscraper; from each branch hung violently colored fruit - a vibrant red here, a shining green there. And one monster of a tree might have been enough, but there were ten, a hundred, a thousand - an orchard to top all orchards! And she, walking with her pappy as he bucked apples down into baskets, was the personal friend to every last one of them. She named them, as a token of affection to each for feeding her family, and she forgot most of the names almost immediately. But as she aged, she never really let go of the habit.

Even now, she knew the individual names of more than one hundred and seventy-five of their trees, and could recognize them on sight. That was a pretty appreciable fraction by most standards, and it had all started on that day, when she had extended a hoof and said "This here is... Spruce."

Pappy had smiled and adjusted his old Stetson, then bucked the apples out of Spruce as if he hadn't heard her. When he'd moved on to the next tree, though, he had said:

"What's this tree's name, sugar cube?"

"Woody Allen!" She had had a strange imagination as a filly. Woody gave up his branch-loads into Pappy's bucket immediately.

They spent the rest of that day naming trees and harvesting, and Applejack had eventually been forced to take notes to remember - but afterwards, as she followed her pappy in the harvest season every day, every year, she had remembered every tree in every aspect, the names imprinted on her mind. They had been given personalities, too. Pappy wouldn't buck a tree until she told him its name, while she followed him on his harvests as a little girl.

When he had died, all she could think was that the trees would miss him.

---

Applejack woke to absolutely no sound at all. She was sprawled, heavily, against a great iron pike in the ground, which branched into tiny, pointed poles above her head. Blearily, she tried to remember how she had gotten here - why the ground was so hard, why the chalky-white path was so luminescent compared to the dead rock, why the sky was so dark and starless…

It all came rushing back in moments. Applejack turned to the pain again, and saw - on her flank - the same dead-black apple among its two rosy twins. She looked it over for a moment, then turned to the base of the tree and was unceremoniously sick. Having let that out, she considered her next move. She didn't want to talk about her cutie mark. The best next move would be to find out what she could

"Shadow?"

At her feet, her shadow became, subtly, more than a shadow - an individual specter in its own right. "What's the problem?"

"D'y'all know anything about the Pit that Ah don't?"

"Well…" The shadow (it had called itself Pom, hadn't it?) ruffled itself without actually moving, as if considering. "Firstly, Ah know what y'all might'a known from songs but forgot - there're four rivers in the Underworld. Or at least they're called rivers - they ain't entirely rivers no more. The first one's the way from the outer recesses of the Underworld, where most of the shades stay, through to the Pit. S'called Acheron. Y'all crossed it earlier."

"And there was -" Applejack started, but Pom finished: "- a price, since y'all didn't take two coins on yer eyes."

Neither of them said anything about the black apple.

"Between each river's a different part'a the Pit. Y'all're in the Forest right now."

"And mah parents?"

Pom was silent at that. Applejack waited, but no reply came. So, with an increasing sense of resignation, she stood on unsteady legs and walked on, through the trees of wood so petrified as to be iron. The chalk was still scribbled along every inch of the earth, and she kept to it religiously, keeping her steps as quiet as possible to avoid intrusion by whatever unsavory creatures called the forest home.

After a few minutes, she sensed Pom returning and decided to venture a question. "So… Pom. S'that… short fer anything?"

"Pomegranate."

"Ah - like an ersatz apple, Ah guess."

"Y'all could say that."

"Ah could."

Pom said nothing. After a while, Applejack decided to fill the quiet herself. "S'not as dark as you'd think down here, is it? Ah expected it to be --"

"Are y'all proud'a what you did?"

She misstepped and nearly tripped, surprised. "Pardon?"

"Ah'm askin': are you proud of what you did to get down here?" The shadow blurred accusatorially, again expressing without moving an emotion - here, that of some kind of resentment.

"Well, of course Ah ain't! But Ah did what Ah had to. Anypony'd do the same. It's stickin' with family."

"But y'all didn't think it through at all, did ya? You just jumped on Cerberus and hog-tied 'im and bucked those guards with no eye fer the consequences. Y'all know what that means."

"Yeah… Ah know." The punishment for assault on a royal guard was severe, and it was brutal for attacking a magical creature under the care of the Princesses.

The punishment for entering the Underworld was worse.

"You know that when y'all go back up, you'll be legally, fer all intents and purposes, de --"

"Y'all don't have to remind me, Miss Pomegranate." A stray thought crossed her mind -- with the mark it left, n' the little empty feelin' Ah can feel in the ground, maybe being legally… you know, won't be a problem -- and she quickly erased it before she could dwell any more on the black apple.

"Ah ain't sure that Apple Bloom would approve."

"Apple Bloom didn't know 'em. Bless her heart, but she didn't know them. Ah did."

"If it makes you happy."

They walked in silence for a while, the path of salt silent under Applejack's feet and Pomegranate gliding with her. The latticed trees swayed around them, noiselessly, once or twice, but nothing came of it and so she ignored it.

"Pom?"

"Yes?"

"How far to the next river?"

"Ah'm not rightly sure. But Ah don't believe it's too far."

"Ah think I'll be taking a rest." With that, Applejack stopped and slumped against one of the metal trees, laying down and preparing for rest. Pom vanished from her shadow, presumably to take whatever sort of sleep a shadow could take. She investigated the inside of her hat for her food stores, but found nothing but a loaf of bread - she hadn't been able to pack much, for the sake of her agility. She'd been hoping for a food source, but that had been wishful thinking in the extreme - there wasn't much to eat in the Underworld, after all.

"Maybe we should be turnin' back."

"Pom, Ah'm ignoring that."

"Suit yerself. Ah know - and y'all know - there's nothing to eat in Tartarus."

Pom vanished again. Applejack miserably surveyed her bread and took a tiny bite that did nothing for her fierce, bottomless stomach, then slumped against the tree again to sleep on an empty stomach.

And she felt the little pulse of quiet and lead and silence through her hooves, on the soil of the undiscovered countries. She stood, and decided to test a little theory.

She positioned herself and focused - let death flow through her bones, out into her mind and through the land as life did on the surface. She felt the negative force of every iron spine, like the rich potential in every tree in her orchard. And, eyes closed, she bucked the petrified tree.

There was a faint rattle in the sarcophagus-metal branches, and an apple the color of a sunset fell into her hat. When she bit it, it tasted like ashes, but it was a godsend for her appetite.

The taste of death in her mouth, Applejack slept and dreamed of orchards. (And in her sleep, she ignored the faint star, black as a coal mine, staring down at her acres like a sun in the middle of dying.)

Comments

[Shamus_Aran]

Ain't no one makes decisions bad as Applejack.

Ain't no one.

[RemnantDrive]

2142674

Never go full AJ.

[crash826]

2142674
It's a carefully cultivated talent.

[Aatxe360]

2142674

......That AJ.