Grey
Macintosh looked out over the East field with disgust. He hated rocks. Hated them like nothing else. If he never saw another one, he’d be a happy pony.
No, not even then. He couldn’t be happy. Not after what happened, somewhere out in this empty, barren field. He had only been wandering it for twenty minutes or so, but already he felt like he had been here for years. Even for him, it was a lonely, boring place.
How she’d come out here every day, year after year, he’d never understand. Mac could hear the retort in his head: “Does the orchard ever really change?”
The first time he’d heard that, he’d been almost indignant. The tenth time, he’d just laughed and kissed her instead. He’d never realized until now how much he had taken those moments for granted. Like his apple trees, he’d thought she, they would always be there. Solid. Unshakeable.
Like a ro—
No, not like that. She was better than them. Than him. She deserved better. Now more than ever.
The last few hours ran through his mind in slow motion. The gathering of friends and family in the Pie family’s living room, the baskets of flowers and cards, the simple wooden box he had helped carry to its final home. It’d have been an even smaller affair than it was, were it not for his sister and her friends.
They’d all gathered, dressed in every shade of grey and black. He didn’t have the heart to tell Missus Rarity how much it hurt him to see everypony dressed like that. She meant well, he knew. Unlike this damned pebble he’d just scuffed a hoof on. Damn that thing to Tartarus.
He hoped there were no rocks anywhere in Elysium.
He crested a hill and stopped. The East field stretched on into the distance and every inch of it seemed exactly the same. No color, no activity. Just grey. Endless grey.
If not for the rocks, grey would have still been his favorite color. Mac thought for a moment. No. Grey was still his favorite color. If nothing else, he hoped it ticked off the rocks.
He shook his head and grunted. Why was he so focused on the rocks? If he was honest, he should have hated the Pies instead. After all, it hadn’t been the rocks that had kept her toiling in the field day in and day out in the same dusty, dirty conditions.
No. Not all of the Pies were to blame. Just that wretched stallion.
Pinkie, Maud, even Limestone, they’d all seen the signs. Like him, they had pestered, cajoled, even argued. He bristled at the memory of the shouting match in the middle of town, after he’d used a scheduled apple delivery to spirit her away to the hospital.
It was the only time he’d ever struck a pony intentionally. But Igneous deserved it. His stubbornness, his block-headed beliefs, they did more harm than all the blasted rocks combined. Even with the charts staring him in his face he’d refused to trust medicine, refused to let the doctors do their jobs—
Refused to even consider that he could ever be wrong.
He’d finally relented though… when Cloudy Quartz had found her gasping for breath in the East field, streaks of red staining her rainbow of greys.
The doctors did what they could, but Mac knew it was futile. He knew they were too late to save her. Three months, they told her, but Mac knew it would be less. He could see it in her face, in the pained expression that never really went away, even when the coughing had stopped.
He’d stayed with her as much as possible, only taking rests in a nearby guestroom after the nurses had threatened to sedate him. They didn’t talk much, but that suited them both just fine. Maybe that’s why he fell for her in the first place. Or, maybe it was her beautiful violet eyes, two flashes of color against a sea of grey.
Violet was Mac’s second favorite color, he decided.
Her sisters came to help when they could, as did his own sister and her friends. He hadn’t minded sharing the small room with them. Anything to make her smile. Or laugh, when she wasn’t coughing her lungs up. When she’d cried, he’d cried too. And when the pain was too much, he’d cried in her place.
But he stayed until the end.
He could still see the grief on her sisters’ faces as the final minutes ticked away, but he would never ever forget the vacant, hollow look in Igneous’s eyes. Only as his daughter drew her final weak, ragged breaths did he fully realize what he had done. Mac could see the guilt and regret burning themselves into his features like a brand. Had he not been seated around the edge of her bed, joining hooves with the Pie sisters and Cloudy to cradle what was left of her once vibrant body, he might have struck Igneous again.
No, he would have struck him again. At least a doctor wouldn’t be far away for him.
Mac turned toward the far end of the hill’s crest with plodding steps, and chucked the first rock he saw as far as he could. He could never look at them in the same way again, but Mac took solace in the knowledge that neither would Igneous. He would grieve alone, his wife and daughters having all but excised him from their existence over the ordeal.
They blamed him for her death, as if he had killed her himself. In a way he had, and Mac felt no pity for Igneous. None. Had he listened to reason, the Pies wouldn’t have lost a daughter and a sister. Had Igneous done what so many had begged of him, Mac wouldn’t have lost the only love he’d ever known.
But none of that would have, could have occurred without the rocks. Those wretched, disgusting rocks. Mac hated them more than Igneous, more than anything. They had made her sick. They had stolen her from him, from everypony. She had cared for them day in and day out, and they had repaid her by taking her life. If he could crush every rock in Equestria, he would without hesitation.
Mac reached the far end of the crest, where a lone tree stood, its branches knobbed and worn, its bark dull and ashen. He walked around the side of the tree, to the one rock he hated most in the world.
In loving memory of Marble Pie
Beloved Sister and Daughter
Now she is one with the earth
May She Rest in Peace.
A rustling sound caught his attention, and Mac looked up. Near the end of one winding branch hung two leaves.
Two small, violet leaves.
Two singular flashes of color against a sea of grey.
For the first time in a long while, Mac smiled, if only for a moment.
Big Mac hated rocks.
All of them but one.