Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Robert Frost
Chapter One: Fallen Apples
Applejack dropped her hat by the well, drew up a bucket of water, and dumped it over her head.
The icy slap of it zinged down her spine and back up, tightening startled skin and pulling a wildcat yowl from her throat. She shook her head doglike and grinned, breathing hard from the cold shock, water dripping through her mane to soothe the baked feeling of midsummer heat on her cheeks and forehead.
She drew another bucket for a drink, plunging her muzzle into the water and sloshing her face about. After sitting a moment to let the sun dry her hide, she pluffed her lips and stood up to stretch.
Time to see what her bones and muscles thought about the rest of the day. Their first point of business, as always, was a hearty round of clicking, snapping complaints as she flexed her back and stretched out her legs. She wasn’t old, by any reckoning — not even half her Granny’s total years — but she had gone past the days when she could keep on bucking half the day without a break or a second thought.
In all her years, she’d grown only a couple inches taller than she’d been on the day of Luna’s return. Some in her family, like Big Macintosh, got up nearly twice as tall as the average earth pony, oftentimes in a growth spurt that came on a lot later in life than it had for him, but Applejack had taken after Granny and the pint-size side of the clan. She’d grown a couple inches in the sideways direction too, all of it in toned muscle of course, except maybe a little extra energy stowed around her undercarriage.
Fine lines, and some not-so-fine creases, had crept in around the edges, but her emerald eyes were bright and sharp as ever. Barely visible in her hay-straw mane were ever broader ribbons of white, and her hide had picked up quite a collection of little scars from all the adventures that followed on being a friend of Twilight Sparkle’s, but all in all, she was much the same mare she’d been back in her heyday. Still had Pa’s hat, even, though it could just possibly be that not all the treatments she applied to preserve it were entirely free of magic.
She wasn’t surprised to find herself thinking about age, and time, and how she had a heyday to look back on. Thoughts like that had become as much a part of the midmorning routine as the stretches and self-inspection.
Nothing worse than the usual little aches and twinges came up this time, anyway. She was good for at least another couple hours bucking.
Some chores she had let the foals and grandfoals take up over time (out of her chores, that is, not counting the full roster of their own they’d darn well better do), but two things she wasn’t about to give up: tending to the pigs and other barnyard tenants — really just an excuse to stand around gossiping for awhile — and bucking apples. And baking, of course, but she didn’t count that as a chore; it was what she did when she wasn’t doing anything.
The day she couldn’t kick trees from breakfast to lunch, well, then she’d be old. Of course, her portion of the Acres to buck had gotten smaller over the years, but so it should. There were more strong, healthy hooves around the farm these days than back when it was just her and Big Mac. Feeling like she ought to be doing a full half of the work on her own was just an old habit of thought, too long ground in to wash away.
Doing it all herself while a bunch of perfectly able, imperfectly willing young’uns sat around and ate all the food wouldn’t be virtuous, just stupid. Age had nothing to do with it, except that she had a head start sprouting more family to boss around.
Hold up now... The decently-skilled bookkeeper in the back of Applejack’s mind had been fretting over something, and now showed her the sum. She wasn’t ‘not even half’ Granny’s final age anymore. Hadn’t been for a long while. Come this next autumn, it’d be well past three-quarters.
That put a cloud over her mood, slowing her hooves on the way to the next orchard section. For once, in the lazy heat, she gave in and let herself wallow in a puddle of mope for a bit.
It wasn’t just that her share of acres to buck had gotten smaller. Her overall share of usefulness had fallen off, too. She could just stop, if she wanted to. The rest of the family would just split up her part of the bucking between them and the harvest would carry on just like always.
Same went for everything else she did, from the farmyard to the boardroom. All of it needed doing, but nowhere was it carved in stone that Applejack had to do it. The fortunes of Sweet Apple Acres weren’t resting on just her and her siblings like they used to.
With an artful bump of the hip, she flipped a small pile of baskets from atop a big pile onto her back, and snorted at her own maudlin foalishness. So... basically, what she was fretting about was that the farm, along with the whole wide spread of Apple business interests, was doing so well that no one pony could possibly oversee every bit and bushel like she had in her youth.
Yeah, hitch up the big wagon to carry all the pity for that party.
Shaking her head and smiling ruefully, she headed first toward Old Limbertwig. Biggest and oldest tree on the Acres, pretty near his hundred and fiftieth birthday, and still he stood strong and tall, hanging in there producing his fair share of fine, crisp apples without complaint. How could she do any less?
She gave the tree an affectionate pat before turning to aim her hindlegs toward his trunk, kicking her rear up high to slam her hooves back in a motion as familiar, as free of thought, as blinking. No tonic nor fancy philosophy had ever been so good for raising low spirits as plain honest bucking.
Except this time something went wrong.
She felt it as soon as her hooves hit the bark. Pain, instant and sharp, tore up her right foreleg and forced it to buckle, even as something like a dragon’s fist closed around her chest and squeezed without mercy.
Her rear hooves dropped to the ground quickly enough to keep her from tumbling forward, but they were unsteady as jelly beneath her, and she couldn’t draw a proper breath. Her ribs felt clamped in stays of iron, betrayed by her own muscle power clenching around her. Straining for wind, she caught only a throatful of dust and hot air, and began to cough uncontrollably, each spasm stabbing further pain through her chest and leg.
She spread her uncertain hooves wide for stability and lowered her head, hacking desperately with no time to draw more air. Agonized tears fogged her vision, joined by silent firework stars of nameless colors as the daylight dimmed to sudden dusk in her eyes, and she fell heavily to the ground.
A moment of darkness washed her out. Then, swift as it came, the pain relaxed and she was able to pull a loud sobbing breath, screaming in reverse. With a few clear breaths of sweet air, the grating in her throat eased, and in a few moments she was able to roll up onto her hooves again, though her head still felt wobbly and watery.
She stood still for a long while, head hung low, breathing deep and careful, until she was sure her legs would stay steady under her and she could raise her head without sloshing her brain about.
Looking around, she frowned in puzzlement. Something wasn’t quite right still, but she wasn’t sure what.
The scenery around her was the same as ever, familiar as her own hoof, apple trees and grassy hills rolling along as usual. But there was a weird brightness to everything, like the darkness that had clouded her vision a moment ago had cleared, and then just kept on clearing, until the world was too shiny to believe. Each leaf, each blade of grass, each stone in the dirt stood out crisp-edged and significant. The air itself seemed somehow to be giving off a clear and lovely light.
Could be she was just appreciating the world more, in the moment after a nasty scare. But that didn’t explain all the apples.
The fruit she’d kicked down was still falling, slowly. All around her, apples drifted down like the air was some kind of clear molasses. Hundreds of them tumbled in slow time, far out beyond the overhang of the apple tree, a languid rain from nowhere.
Well. Ain’t that a marvel, she thought, blank with wonder, watching them drop.
She felt mildly surprised at how little surprise she felt. The sight was strange, but there was something familiar about it, like coming across a rare animal in the flesh after knowing of it only from picture books. Had she seen such a thing in a dream? Something like that, maybe, but no; this vision wasn’t something she remembered, it was just... right, somehow. Like it was supposed to happen, however odd it seemed.
There were apples in all colors, russet and scarlet and golden and green, each of them perfect, unbruised and polished to a mirror shine. She could see her own reflection in the gleaming sides of the nearest fruits as they dropped in no hurry around her.
She could see more than her own reflection, even. In the side of one apple, she saw her friends, clustered together as though posing for a picture, though they were giggling and jostling about, not just a still image. She swung her head around, but there wasn’t anypony there. Only their reflection on the side of a slowly falling apple.
She snorted, somewhere between curiosity and doubt. Some kind of prank, maybe? She wouldn’t put it past old Trixie, whose sense of humor remained weird even after she reformed her ways. Let alone Discord, who still bopped by Ponyville on occasion to ‘liven things up’. Applejack couldn’t guess what the punchline might be, though. Cautiously, she started walking forward through the field of tumbling apples.
Other apples had other faces reflected in them — except reflected wasn’t the right word, really, since she didn’t see herself in all of them, and most showed things that simply weren't anywhere nearby to reflect. There was Granny, and Big Mac, and Apple Bloom... the Princesses... Braeburn and Caramel... all sorts of folks from Ponyville and beyond. Pretty much everypony she’d ever known seemed to have their portraits, in living color and motion, though entirely silent, shining on the apples.
A little further on, and most of the faces gave way to images of herself, but not like in a mirror. Little scenes played out from years and years back. She saw herself as a filly, smiling wide as the sky when Ma carefully let her hold baby Apple Bloom, swaddled in a blanket, tiny and cranky.
Just a little older, there was little Applejack looking out a window in Manehattan and seeing a brilliant display of color in the sky, pointing the way back to where her heart really lay. There she was, meeting Rarity for the first time in the schoolyard, both of them shorter than a haybale, not exactly making friends but forming a sort of comfortable, instant rivalry. And there came Rainbow Dash, ridiculously cute from an adult eye with her colorful frizz of a mane, sneaking up with a cloud and soaking both of them just for laughs. Next apple over, a gangly young Pinkie Pie was apologizing rapid-fire for dropping a tall chocolate layer cake on Applejack’s head, and not exactly winning any points for trying to lick off the mess.
Applejack, in the present, laughed despite herself. More than just seeing these scenes, it felt like she was reliving them, sinking into each as she watched, viewing them from an outside perspective with all the knowledge of later years. Walking on and seeing the time roll by, she gradually gave up trying to figure out what was causing the peculiar show and just enjoyed it.
Not all the apple scenes were happy. She had to blink back tears when she realized that the last scene with Ma in it was going to be just that, the last one; and then not even a full season later, there was Pa on the bed he wasn’t ever going to get out of. She saw Apple Bloom at five years old, weak in bed with a serious case of the pox, and saw herself going down on the floor to pray to whatever powers might listen for her sister’s life. Granny Smith’s name got chiseled on a stone and she went to earth, alongside her daughter and son-in-law.
Nightmare Moon reared up out of the shadows, ready to sink the world in endless night, but then Twilight Sparkle was there standing up to her, and showing them all how to defeat her. Piles of apples with laughing faces lied to Applejack about the future and darn near extinguished her honesty, but again Twilight was there, and all her friends, and Discord’s triumphant smirk turned to a grimace of terror right before his body turned to stone. Dragons and gorgons and vengeful stars, evil ponies made of smoke or of snow or of shadow, all hatched their plans and cackled in wicked triumph, but Applejack and her friends were always there to stand and thwart them, and sometimes even convert them to forces for good.
She began to smile again when her beloved Bell Pepper finally gave in to all her hints and knelt down to ask the question that was pretty much settled by then anyway. More tears slid down her cheeks, warm and pleasant ones this time, when she saw herself holding her own little Pippin for the first time, and then came a quick flood of scenes — Pippin learning to buck, spinning around in delight when her blossoming-branch cutie mark appeared, growing up to start her own family on a new plot of land just south of Fillydelphia. Then there were all the other foals, Russet and Cascabel and Spicy Sweet, and then the grandfoals, and even some great-grandfoals by now, her branch of the Apples ever growing along with the family fortunes...
Lost in memory, fogged with tears of mirth and of sorrow in succession, Applejack couldn’t say how long she wandered through the shining apple theater. The memories were getting a lot closer to current, at any rate, when suddenly she almost stumbled over an unexpected filly.
The sprightly young earth pony popped out of the trees and hopped right into Applejack’s path, laughing like a little devil. Applejack scarcely had time to draw back in surprise before the filly greeted her with a wild crow of, “Hooowww-do!”
“Whoa-ho now!” Applejack couldn’t help but grin at the kid’s energy. Behind her, she heard a rainlike chorus of soft thumps which she guessed to be the apples finally completing their fall, but her attention was on the bouncing, giggly filly in front of her. There was something familiar about her... of course, there were a lot of young’uns around the farm these days, but Applejack was pretty sure she would remember one like this, with the fire of mischief in her eyes and a green coat bright as spring leaves. “Uh, do I know you, little missy?”
The filly only laughed again, as though Applejack had told a whopper of a joke.
“Oh, reckon you’ll remember me sooner or later,” said the filly. “I come to show you the way home.”
Applejack snorted and shook her head. “Well, I appreciate the thought, sugarcube, but I ain’t done workin’ yet. An’ I can find my own way... home...?”
She trailed off, looking around in fresh confusion. It dawned on her that she wasn’t too sure where she was. That trip through the apples of memory could have been miles, for all she could recall. The whole weird thing had her generally confused about what time it was, and the curious bright light all around didn’t really seem like any particular time of day.
As mixed up about when as she was, though, there had only ever been one where for her, and she knew Sweet Apple Acres down to the stone and branch. But she didn’t seem to be there anymore.
Past the filly, the hillside rolled gently down into a grassy valley that Applejack had just plain never seen before. All across the broad floor of it were groves and orchards and gardens of all different sorts, clumped in odd irregular patterns, with no roads or houses, nor buildings of any kind in sight. She could see all sorts of ponies, hundreds of them at least, going about their various businesses, some of them tending the plants, some of them apparently just as dedicated to tearing up parts of the foliage, many just walking and talking along between the trees.
As she watched, she saw an earth pony drop his hoe and hightail it away from his grove, galloping madly westward. She followed his trail of dust, which reached the horizon in an uncannily short time, but there was something weird about the west end of the valley. She couldn’t quite make it out. It wasn’t dark, exactly, and it wasn’t foggy, exactly, but when she tried to see the line between white sky above and green valley below... or when she tried to follow the mountains ringing the valley to where they closed in off to the west... it was like trying to see something in her blind spot, or a badly-focused movie.
She could see a few other dust-trails approaching that place she couldn’t quite see. Now that she knew what to look for, there seemed to be a lot of ponies heading in that direction, one or two at a time.
Unnerved, she turned back toward the filly, who was rolling on the ground now, tickled at what Applejack had said. Finally she caught her breath and rolled to her hooves, giving Applejack a sass-filled grin. “Oh honey, your work’s all done now! Come on, it’s time to get goin’.”
Applejack was getting more befuddled by the minute. She’d been in the middle of doing something, hadn’t she? Something to do with apples? What time was it, anyway? One thing she could remember clearly was how to be stubborn, though, and as the filly grabbed her hoof and started tugging, Applejack set the other three legs and refused to budge.
“Now hang on just a darn minute. I can’t go runnin’ off in the middle of the harvest. The apples, they need me...” Applejack faltered. Apples? Was she talking about fruit, or ponies? The word seemed to mean both to her. Was that strange?
“The harvest’ll carry on, just like always. It ain’t your worry no more.”
And just like that, it wasn’t a worry. Applejack felt her concern dissolve, like traces of fear from a dream on waking, and then she couldn’t remember what it was she’d even been worried about. A heartbeat later and she forgot ever being bothered at all.
“Ever’thin’s all right now, ain’t it?” asked the filly, smiling like sunshine, and Applejack laughed just at the joy on her face.
“I reckon it is.” She nodded. “I reckon it’s all just about right.”
“Great, now come on!” The green pony grabbed Applejack’s forehoof and tugged her along the slope of the hill, pointing in great excitement toward the galloping figures heading west. “It’s time to follow them!”
“Why? What’s over there?”
“Nnnope! No cheatin’, you gotta see for yourself!” The filly chuckled, shaking her head and making the thick pigtails tied in her pale-green mane whip back and forth. She started trotting down the hillside, peeking back over her shoulder to give Applejack a mischievous grin.
“Race ya!” she announced, then launched into a full-speed gallop with no further warning, trailing wild delighted giggles in her wake.
Applejack took one more brief, uncertain glance back at what she was leaving behind. Then she turned, laughing, and forgot all about it; and she shot after the apple-green filly, racing toward the horizon, fast as her hooves could fly.
Applejack had been the first pony she'd met in Ponyville, all those many years ago; at least, the first she met properly, to talk to.
Applejack had welcomed her to — had, all but literally, roped her into — a family gathering, right here at Sweet Apple Acres. Outside of her own family, in which category she counted Spike, Applejack had been her first real friend.
There was a certain dark and terrible poetry in that. Twilight Sparkle was in no mood to appreciate it.
"Now these are the words of Rusty Anchor, in the meadow beside the Crystal River, beyond the walls of the First City: We mourn today, but not for my love. Her work is at an end, and her cares are cast aside..."
Religion in Equestria was different from most other cultures Twilight had studied. For other creatures, the primordial roots of organized worship lay in ancient tribal tales, efforts to understand the workings of the world and seek answers to such questions as what made the thunder roar, or what brought forth the harvest.
For ponies, questions like that could be answered, “My aunt Fleetfoot, actually”. They could propitiate the weather by bringing over some fresh-baked cookies. Some cultures outright revered the equine race as verifiable, active powers of nature, though Equestrians considered it horribly inappropriate to take advantage of such attitudes.
But even for ponies, some questions ran too deep for mundane, pragmatic answers; some things called for entreaty to powers greater than Celestia and bigger than the weather service. Various philosophies competed for belief about the big questions, of course, but they all circled around a shared pool of tradition and a general understanding that some occasions demanded more than lemonade and a casual round of applause. A birth, a wedding, a death; somepony had to stand up and say the proper words.
"It is for ourselves we mourn, who are left behind to carry on in toil. In joy that she has passed beyond all suffering, our tears are for the empty space at our table..."
Holy Roller was good at the job. Twilight remembered a spindly, uncertain youth many years back, cautiously taking the place left vacant by old Pathfinder's retirement. She recalled how tentative he'd been in offering advice to his elders, and how that hesitance had worn away as he came to understand their need for somepony to answer with conviction things no pony could really know for sure.
Today he stood straight and firm; his storm-grey eyes sharp and brilliant, his voice the solid steel of a stallion who believed, without reservation, that every word in the Book of the Green Hills was good and necessary, even though he could debate all day about which parts were fact.
"As the leaves of Summer turn and fall, as the Moon sinks low before the Sun, and the Sun gives way before the Moon: so are the days of a pony given to change..."
Internally, Twilight slapped herself on the forehead, though long years of practice at formal ceremonies prevented anything from showing on the surface. She realized all too well that the meandering of her thoughts, idling on topics like world religion and the career of Holy Roller, was nothing but an effort to avoid thinking about the actual, present moment.
She drew a deep, centering breath and raised her chin from where it had dipped low in thought, corralling her restless mind back to the here and now.
"From the unknown into the known, and again into the unknown we travel, swift our passage and brief our stay. It is only the light we kindle on the way that remains..."
Behind her thin black veil, Twilight's eyes roamed the gathering.
Kept at a distance by a temporary fence was a vast swath of ponies, at least half of Ponyville and a substantial scattering from all across Equestria. Closest to the fence were a cluster of Canterlot nobles and gentry; Twilight allowed herself a small roll of her eyes as she realized that they were divided about equally between those with a genuine, personal interest in Applejack's life, and those merely making a show of their allegiances. Of course even something like this would kick up a squall of politics around the Court; a vanguard of traditionalists had called for the observance to be held in Canterlot, with all pomp and circumstance due to a titled Hero of Equestria, but they lost out — on the firm word of Celestia herself — to those who understood how ludicrous would be the notion of laying Applejack to rest anywhere but at Sweet Apple Acres.
Only another hundred or so were allowed within the formal perimeter, most of them Apple relatives. Behind the stand at which Holy Roller stood to speak, Twilight shared a wooden dais with the other Princesses and an array of other titles and offices of the sort that could not lightly be left out of such an occasion. To be fair, several of them were deeply sincere in their mourning. Even Blueblood, who had always gotten along with Applejack as harmoniously as potassium with water, was in a state of solemn low spirits entirely unlike his usual polished performance of public emotion.
Most of the assembled were no more than background in Twilight's thoughts, however, as she looked toward the four mares standing closest to her, just below the edge of the stage. No formal arrangement had been needed to put them so close to the center of the event; they had been shuffled there without comment or complaint from either the Apple family or the organizing secretaries.
Nearest to Twilight's hooves was Rainbow Dash, clad in a dark, subdued formal variant of her uniform. Formally, the Captain of the Wonderbolts had a place on the dais as well, but she had discreetly excused herself early on to stand beside Fluttershy instead. She had her flight goggles lowered over her eyes, a gesture as futile as any other attempt by the guileless pegasus to hide her feelings; she was a standing bundle of quivers and fidgets and rustling wings, every line of her flight-trimmed body shouting the need to explode into the sky and streak away to anywhere else in the world.
Fluttershy, by contrast, was still and listless, leaning slightly against Dash's side and seeming, from the outside, almost asleep on her hooves. She had drawn the curtains of her bangs almost entirely closed, and hidden herself further behind a heavy veil. Only the irregular shudder of her sides in hitching breaths gave hint to her state in the private place to which she'd withdrawn.
On Fluttershy's other side, Pinkie Pie stood stiffly upright, making a solid protective wall of herself despite being a good deal shorter than the pegasus she was shielding. An eerie calm hung about Pinkie, gaze straight forward and blank, no trace of any feeling at all in the composure of her features. She wasn't as tuned out as she seemed, though; catching Twilight looking at her, she flexed her lips in the shadow of a reassuring smile before turning to stare again into empty air.
Beyond Pinkie stood Rarity, who was unable not to look stylish and eye-catching despite making the effort with a shapeless, drab black dress. Even sniffling and puffy-eyed she remained elegant, a kerchief swathed in her blue magic glow hovering in steady patrol beneath her eyes to keep her makeup in perfect trim.
They had never fallen out. There was no bad blood, no unsettled business between them — nothing serious, at any rate; only the different paths of their lives making it hard for the six (the five!) of them to spend time together. But long were the years since last they had all been together, and almost as long since Twilight had seen any of them individually; all that silent time felt like a barrier solid as any vicious feud. Surely each of them had changed, each had stories that would need to be traded and memories shared before they could all comfortably speak the same language again.
Or maybe not. Perhaps, later in the evening, they would relax instantly into a comfortable old rapport and it would be as though they’d parted only yesterday. But there wasn't time for that, not now. There had barely been time after stepping off the train to change into formal clothes, let alone visit with anypony, before this endless, dreadful ceremony began.
"So do we now bear our sister to the embrace of the Earth that she loved, there to rest without care, and we mourn the loss of her company, until we all shall meet in the meadow, and never again say goodbye."
Twilight let out a faint snort of self-recrimination. Her mind, with no respect for the occasion, had again found a line of thought to distract her from the immediate. She raised her chin once more and wrestled her attention back to the immediate present, to the immediate surroundings: to the here and now, where and when her friend was being laid to earth, carried away by heart failure at a frightfully early age.
A young Apple mare with a fiddle had been brought onto the dais to play a slow rendition of "The Sweet Grass Valley" in minor key, drawing an astonishing depth of mournful voice from an instrument so long used to merrier tunes, as the casket came forth.
It was a simple box of light pine board, made to hold together long enough to be interred and then to break down and return to earth along with its inhabitant. Bearing the forward corners were Big Macintosh and Bell Pepper. Both of them strong and sturdy, each able easily to bear Applejack's weight by himself on any good day, but they walked hunched and slow-hoofed beneath the shared burden, and wore the same dull lightless look in identically deep-shadowed eyes.
At the rear corners were Pippin and Russet, the eldest children of Applejack and Bell. Born years apart, the two had nevertheless grown up as close as twins, and both had taken after the same side of the family as Macintosh, tall and broad. Russet looked a lot like his uncle, in fact, save for the bright green shade of his mane, while Pippin was the very image of her mother, just somewhat darker orange and built at twice the scale. Both proceeded with their shoulders square, heads high, and features stoically composed, but Twilight could see the frequent glances they exchanged over the top of the pine box, as though holding a steady comforting grip on each other by gaze alone.
Twilight drew and released another deep breath. The immediate present, the immediate surroundings. They were going to lower Applejack into a blind, gawping greedy hole gouged into the soil of Sweet Apple Acres. They were doing it now, with the wooden box lowered from the shoulders of the pallbearers. What was left of green-eyed, strong-legged Applejack was in that box. That was real.
Standing with the other Princesses beside her, all her friends and family close by, in the presence of a substantial part of a nation that loved and respected her, Twilight Sparkle had never felt more alone. Company offered no protection from that horrible box nor the merciless hole in the earth.
It wasn't long before her eyes began again roaming, in search of something else to think about.
For an instant, not long enough to blink, she locked gazes with Rarity, whose waterlogged eyes gave a quick flash of desperate apology. Twilight could see what was about to happen, but before she could do more than flex her brows in sympathy, Rarity had pivoted around and taken off — pushing her way heedlessly through the first few rows of the crowd before those behind got the message and parted before her, she was soon trotting, then galloping, across the grass toward the south end of the orchard and the verge of the Whitetail Wood beyond.
Holy Roller paused only slightly between words, casting a glance toward Celestia. The Princess’s lips tightened, fresh sorrow clouding the sunrise rose of her eyes as they followed Rarity’s motion away, but she remained composed, giving only the slightest dip of her muzzle to bid him proceed.
The preacher resumed his recitation in confidence, stilling the soft murmurs of concern that had broken out among the assembly. Twilight, painfully aware of the crowd’s attention, convened a wordless conference of exchanged looks with her friends.
Fluttershy could only take one a quick peek back before dropping her chin and hiding again behind her bangs; Rainbow Dash bit her lip and couldn't fully meet Twilight's eyes at all. Pinkie Pie gave her a single brisk nod, and turned to hurry away after Rarity.
A slight raise of Holy Roller’s voice and a few swift stabs of his steely eyes silenced the new whispers rising in the wake of Pinkie’s departure. Twilight, following Celestia’s example as always, kept her chin up and her expression as placid as she could manage.
Rarity ran. She stumbled through the trees, tear-blind, heedless of brush and bramble. She didn't know if she was going forward or running in circles. It didn't matter. She just had to keep moving. She burst through into a small clearing, and there she broke.
Her legs stopped carrying her forward, then stopped holding her up. She was faintly aware of the impact as she hit the grass. It didn't matter. Maybe she was far enough away that nopony would be able to hear her, maybe not. That didn't matter either. It was coming out now, obviously, whether she was politely out of earshot or not.
Rarity screamed. It was rough and raw and nothing at all ladylike, ripping forth from her throat as though drawn by wire and fish-hooks, a noise too big and jagged for one unicorn to contain. More cries followed, wave on wave; she had no power to stop them, could only barely manage to catch her breath as they passed through her. Clouds of birds burst startled from the trees above her and fled.
Suddenly she was raised from the ground and held tight, pressed against something soft, warm and pink.
Still wailing, Rarity tried to struggle away, but Pinkie would not let her go, responding to her squirming only by hugging tighter, until the unicorn relented and threw her forelegs around Pinkie’s body. Her ragged screams dissolved in bubbling sobs and she wept, unreserved and bereft of dignity, onto Pinkie’s shoulder. Pinkie gently removed Rarity’s hat and set it aside so she could stroke the unicorn’s mane.
Half-formed words, choked and incoherent, tried to make their way out through the sobbing, and Pinkie murmured soft sounds of comfort in reply.
"Shh-shh-shh, no no... there's my girl, it's okay, it's okay..."
Rarity stiffened and fell silent all at once. Suddenly she pulled back, sapphire eyes spearing Pinkie with a freezing, vicious glare.
“... okay?” she said, her voice thin and weak but dangerously sharp, brittle ice crackling on a chilly lake. “How is it 'okay'?”
Pinkie blinked and shook her head in confusion, jaw bobbing in search of an answer to the unexpected flare of anger in the question, but Rarity quickly snapped further, “No no no, do tell me, what precisely is okay here?
"Because it seems to me," she continued, rising to her hooves to take quick pointless steps in one direction and then the other, "it seems to me, that a dear friend has taken her, her stupid stubborn pride and ridden it to — ridden it just too far, it seems to me like somepony has only just gone and d-d-died because she just couldn't stand to be helped — she couldn't even be persuaded to see a doctor for anything that wasn't bleeding or broken — let alone allow any of our FRIENDS to use their MAGIC POWERS to keep up her health because OF COURSE that would just be too UNNATURAL —"
"Rarity, now that's just — that's not because of her, it's just the way things work, earth ponies don't —"
"No of COURSE you don't! Of course not! You'd all just rather, just rather let us watch you grow weak and wrinkly, you'd rather just go down into the dust because of some kind of, of traditional contempt for magic, like letting us unicorns help you would be — cheating, or something, like it was the same as using powered machines for farming, like it's all some kind of big stupid badge of honor, to force your friends to watch you die!
"And, and, that's not even enough, no no, it's just not enough to turn your back on everything we might do to help you! You can't just snub us! No, you have to go and become part of our lives! Knowing that you're going to leave early! How dare you? Why can't you just go off and stay AWAY from us, if magic is so REVOLTING?"
She pulled in a shrieking breath, rough as saw teeth, before exploding again in a red-faced outraged bray, “How dare you — how DARE you ever let us LOVE YOU?”
“RARITY!”
Pinkie’s voice whipped out at shocking volume, a slap of a sound, and rose to a stern oratorical thunder as she continued. “You don’t get to be mad at ME over how I’m going to DIE such a very long time before YOU!”
Rarity reared back as though hit with ice water, and stared, speechless. Her hindlegs shook and folded beneath her, dropping her to a seat on the grass. All at once she was seeing Pinkie again, cleared of the perversely comforting fog of her own rage, and her reckless words came shooting back to strike her like furious hooves to the gut.
Pinkie wasn't smiling, but she didn't look angry either. There was nothing in her brilliant blue eyes for Rarity but loving sympathy, even though love, in the moment, had to be harsh. Rarity looked back at her in something like terror, cheeks gleaming moonlike with the skin beneath her pearly coat gone cold and white in shock.
“Pinkie, I, I... I’m so sorry, that was, those were such horrible things to say, I don’t really mean —”
Her lips were shut, swiftly but gently, with the press of a pink hoof.
“I know.”
Rarity’s face crinkled as the shushing hoof moved away, and she let out a helpless, liquid sob. Her chest hitched and a sticky, strained noise came from her throat, followed by a harsh round of coughing. Pinkie drew Rarity again into her embrace, producing a white and blue striped dishtowel and holding it to the unicorn’s nose.
“Go on... you’re just gonna make yourself sick trying to hold it back after all that crying. You’re not too dignified to blow some snot in front of Pinkie.”
Rarity couldn’t help but give a gasping laugh at that, and she drew a deep breath to blow her nose. Pinkie let her take the towel to finish up, shifting around so Rarity had room to use her forelegs while still wrapped in the hug. Rarity sniffled for a little while longer, gradually calming, letting her head rest against Pinkie’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry I said it’s okay.” Pinkie said quietly. “I mean, I know you know what I meant, but that wasn’t the right way to say it, just then.”
“Oh, Pinkie, please don’t apologize. It is okay.” Rarity’s voice was rough and timid.
Pinkie’s ears and head drooped. “I guess, in a lot of ways, it really isn’t. I loved her too.”
Rarity nodded, shifting her cheek against Pinkie’s hide, and squeezed her eyes shut. “I just don’t understand.” she whispered. “Why? Why wouldn’t she — why don’t you... why do you just leave us like that?”
Pinkie’s lips tightened and she shook her head, raising a hoof to stroke Rarity’s mane again. After frowning in thought for a moment, she said, “Well... if you could live an extra fourth as long by sawing off your horn, would you do it?”
Rarity drew a sharp breath, turning her eyes up toward Pinkie’s without moving her head. Shocking as the image was, she thought she could already see Pinkie’s point. “I — no, no of course not!”
“But if some magic wish said you could live longer by losing, say, your tail, or a hoof, that’d be something you’d have to think about a lot more, right?”
Rarity did pause to think about that, and concluded with a nod. “That is different. My horn isn't just a body part, it’s... part of something more important.”
“Mm-hmm. It’s like that. Us earth ponies haven’t got wings or a horn to connect us to the magic. Just our whole body. That’s what we get from the earth, and in time we have to give it back.”
“But why so soon? It’s so cruel...”
“It's not.” Pinkie sighed. “Look, Rarity, I’m getting old. I’m not all creaky and wrinkly just yet, but... I can’t hop everywhere like I used to. When I wake up in the morning, it feels like I slammed into a rock instead of lying on a mattress. There’s things I can’t even smile about anymore, and now even apples are always gonna make me feel a little sad. Sooner or later... well, I'm really gonna be ready for a rest.”
Rarity raised her head, turning a pleading look toward Pinkie. “But, but magic can help with that too! It can keep you young and healthy for a long time...”
Pinkie shook her head firmly. “No. Magic wouldn't help us like that. It might keep us from aging, or dying, but it wouldn't help us to live any longer.”
Rarity raised an eyebrow, managing a watery but real smile. “Oh now, that sounded like a quote.”
Pinkie giggled. “I think it is. Yeah, okay, it sounds kind of cheesy, put like that, but —”
“— but it’s still true, in a practical sense.” came another voice from amid the trees. Pinkie smirked, unsurprised, while Rarity jumped and turned a startled look round. Twilight Sparkle stepped cautiously toward them, head dipped low in silent apology for interrupting. “It's not just a cultural taboo. Some earth ponies have taken rejuvenation treatments or other magical assistance, and every source agrees that it’s not a good idea. They stay alive, but something inside them... just doesn't.”
Pinkie turned a sunshine smile up to the new arrival. “Hiya Twilight!”
Twilight’s lips curved a little. “Hi, Pinkie.” She turned her grave violet eyes toward Rarity. “I’m sorry to intrude, I was just... you know, worried.”
“It’s fine,” Rarity said, managing an even voice with just a hint of sniffle in it. “I’m happy to see you.”
Twilight sat down close beside the two and hesitantly put her hoof on Rarity’s shoulder. “Are you alright?”
“Well, no.” Rarity said around a puff of breathy laughter. “Pinkie’s gone and spoiled my nice indulgent self-pity fit.”
Pinkie snorted, and Twilight chuckled a little too, shaking her head. Pinkie reached over to touch Twilight’s hoof. “How’re you holding up?”
Twilight stopped to consider, as she typically needed to when it came to assessing her own emotions. Eventually she said, “Honestly... I just feel kind of numb. It still doesn't seem real.”
Pinkie nodded, patting her hoof. “Okay. When it does get real, you’ll come straight to Pinkie, right?”
“I wouldn't dare dream otherwise.” Twilight said with a warm smile.
“Darn skippy!”
All three fell silent, listening to the birdsong and the whisper of breezes playing in the leaves. Faintly the voice of the fiddle, thin on the wind, began a new song.
“You know,” Pinkie said abruptly, “the funeral right now, that’s just the public thing. Three days from now, at the full harvest moon, we’re having a... well, we’re doing the earth pony thing. I think you should come and see.”
“Really?” asked Twilight. “Would that be okay?”
“Oh, sure. Yeah, it’s a private thing, but everypony knows A — knows that she’d want you to be there.”
She turned her head only a bit, not actually looking around, and added loudly, “Same goes for you two.”
Twilight and Rarity looked up in surprise as Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy glided down from a short distance above. Nopony asked how Pinkie had known they were there. In fact she hadn't. She just knew they would be.
Rainbow Dash flashed a cocky grin at Pinkie and opened her mouth, drawing breath to crack a quip, but then stopped, shaking her head and frowning at herself. Instead she said softly, “Hi guys.”
Fluttershy, silent, sank to the ground alongside Rarity and Pinkie, and wrapped her wings around both of them. Dash settled down on Pinkie’s other side and lifted her wing to pull Twilight into the hug as well. After a moment, Twilight spread her own wing, the one that wasn't under Dash's, and laid it over Fluttershy's back, completing the circle.
They stayed together like that for a long time, five ponies huddled for warmth around the memory of a sixth, with distant strains of music from the funeral drifting toward them through the trees.
