Getting their cutie mark is a pivotal moment in every pony's life. How pivotal? This mark is the hinge upon which the doors of destiny swing.
Big McIntosh: quiet, calm, reserved, hard working, and strong. A pony of few words dedicated to his family. Everyone in Ponyville knows the huge red stallion and his massive green apple cutie mark on sight. Just don't ask him how he got it.
This is the tale of Big McIntosh's cutie mark and the tragedy that surrounds it as seen from the present.
Completed, sequel currently undergoing severe editing. Edited by: Corwin Freiss
It was all the thought that was on the young filly’s mind.
Run Faster!
Breath, no, that was no longer important, her nostrils were flared wide, mouth agape, her breakneck pace forcing air into her lungs it seemed. Her hoof beats resounded more as the roll of a snare drum through the orchard than the rhythm of a true gallop.
Can’t stop. Must run, FASTER!
Speed, haste, it was its own necessity, the only necessity in the moment now. Within her chest her heart buzzed more so than beat, frantic, frenzied, fearful. Fear, that was it, fear drove her, propelled her, chased her, and if she slowed down even a little, the little filly was beyond absolute in the knowledge that the fear that so permeated her would kill her, for her heart would surely propel itself up her gullet and out of her muzzle as if it were a cannon. So she had to run, if only to keep her body wrapped around her terror drenched fluttering soul.
FASTER! … MUST! …RUUNNNN! … FAAASSSTTERRR!
Apple trees sped by the coursing filly. Ahead the tightness of the orchard thinned as the edge of the farmyard came into view, the double white rail fence rushing up to meet her. Laying herself flat in the air the light olive-blonde filly slipped airborne between the upper and lower rails of the fence, threading through without missing a beat … almost.
The jump did nothing to mess up her timing, the clod of earth two steps beyond, well that did a nice job of rolling awkwardly under hoof, sending the terrified school filly tumbling rump over withers into the side of the pump trough in the middle of the yard.
Recognizing where she was the red haired little pony threw her fore-hooves over the edge of the trough and pulled herself up onto her hind legs. Her brilliant orange-eyed visage stared back at her from the calm cold water. Her cherry red mane appeared windblown and askew, hair bow pulled half loose, stiff white froth caked about her lips. Within though, the effort of her attempt to outrun fear itself left her winded and burning. Without thinking the young filly plunged her head into the cool water.
As her head submerged under the water past her eyes, her fear cocked ears could barely hear the seeming distant voice of her older sister calling out over the thundering of her own pulse ringing in her ears.
“APPLE BLOOM! DON’T!”
As the sound of her name sank into her rattled consciousness, the cool water flooded down her throat into her body snuffing the flames of fear burning in her chest, quenching the burning in her … Lungs?!
Apple Bloom yanked her head free of the trough, a cloud of vapor erupting from her nostrils as she pitched over onto her side, hitting the ground as if she were a sack of wet sand. Coughing, burning, aching, Apple Bloom could feel her consciousness fading as she thrashed helplessly on the ground beside the trough as her elder sister ran up to her.
Dropping to her haunches the blond mare with the light dusty orange coat who answered to the name of Applejack, wrapped her forelegs around her younger sister, pulling the younger pony’s head into her lap.
“Apple Bloom, what in the hay were ya thinkin’?” the concern in the young mare’s voice was prominent, panicked even.
The world swam and began to fade as Apple Bloom continued to cough weakly, water dribbling from her mouth and nostrils. She could feel Applejack’s gentle hoof smoothing back her tousled mane as she lay in the older pony’s lap quivering feebly. The warm embrace of her sister’s hooves was surely the last thing she was going to feel in this world.
Apple Bloom could almost feel the tears on her water soaked cheeks as she nuzzled against her sisters warm belly. Peacefully, Apple Bloom felt strangely calm about leaving this world, knowing her parents were already waiting for her in the Elysian Fields. Parents she could not remember, who had departed this life far too early.
The calmness of the moment was suddenly interrupted by a horrid, painful, twisting sensation. It was as if her innards were being rolled up inside her like a toothpaste tube. Was this the painful crossing over? Was it the torturous ripping of her soul from her body? The …
Apple Bloom suddenly contorted violently in her sister’s lap, eyes wide as a torrent of water, half digested apples and grass leapt from her muzzle and splashed across Applejack’s midsection. Before Apple Bloom could contemplate apologizing, a second, then third gusher burst forth, adding to her sister’s disgusting decoration. Wretched and exhausted, the world finally went dark for the young filly. Well, mostly.
Apple Bloom was vaguely aware of Applejack splashing water on herself to clean the vomit from her belly. Next, Apple Bloom felt herself being gently hoisted onto her sister’s back and carried into the bathroom where she was propped up, snout hanging in the bowl of the commode while Applejack ran the bathtub. A warm bath with her sister later and the next thing Apple Bloom remembered was being tucked into her bed and drifting off to sleep.
How long she had been asleep she couldn’t say for sure, but it was near time for supper when she slowly drifted back to the realm of the conscious. The aromas drifting up from the kitchen spoke praisingly of her older sister’s cooking skills, and Apple Bloom knew it was Applejack in the kitchen, Granny Smith being off visiting relatives out of town for a few days.
The light clip-clop of hooves on wood drew the young filly back into the world of reality.
“You awake there Apple Bloom?” Applejack called softly nudging the bedroom door open slightly with her hoof.
“Uh-huh.” groaned the younger pony as she moved slightly to sit up in bed. Her limbs ached in protest as she did so. They itched too, like she had ants crawling through her leg muscles, and to top it off her innards felt three sizes too small for her body, as if she were somehow eerily hollow inside.
Applejack deftly slipped the short-legged serving tray from where it had been balanced atop her battered brown Stetson, to her hoof, and finally to the bed, laying it across her younger sister’s lap.
“You've been asleep f’r most o’ the afternoon there AB, an’ Ah figured you might be getting’ a might peckish.” The orange mare ruffled her younger sibling’s hair with a hoof as she spoke.
Apple Bloom leaned in close to the bowl on the tray, inhaling the vaporous aroma wafting from it, oatmeal porridge with apples, cinnamon, and brown sugar. The little filly’s gut sank, it wasn’t the heavenly aroma of carrot and sweet potato casserole with mushroom gravy that had drifted up from the kitchen earlier, and could still be caught in the room’s air emanating from her older sister like a culinary perfume.
Apple Bloom lowered her head for another sniff at the bowl before her and her gut did a weak twist at the latest revelation … corn syrup. Of all the indignities she could have awoken to this was low by any standard Apple Bloom held.
“Baby food?” gasped the youngest Apple sibling, her eyes going wide with surprise, her voice pitching into a plaintiff whine of disbelief at her elder sister.
“Eeyup.” Applejack nodded, doing a particularly good imitation of the eldest Apple sibling, her elder brother Big McIntosh.
“But why baby food?” Apple Bloom asked as she tried to muster her puppy dog eyes against her sister.
“’Cause aft’r y'r havin’ gone an’ heaved up y’r last weeks’s worth of eatin’s all o’er mahself down by the trough, y’r gut ain’t gonna be takin’ too kindly to nothing too fancy jus’ yet.”
“Oh.” Was the muted confirming acceptance of her elder sister’s reasoning that escaped Apple Bloom’s mouth as she pondered the bowl’s contents once more before leaning her muzzle into the gray mass. Using her articulate equine lips she pulled some of the warm paste into her mouth.
The little filly let the sweet warm mush linger a bit on her tongue before letting it slide down her gullet leaving a warm trail in its wake. Feeling the gentle warmth spread through the emptiness inside her, Apple Bloom smiled as Applejack scooched herself up onto the bed beside her little sister, a foreleg wrapped lovingly around the smallest Apple.
“Now,” Applejack started, her voice taking a slightly more serious, yet still caring tone as Apple Bloom finished her oatmeal, “ya figure ya can tell me what in Equestria got ya so scared that y’d come boltin’ back ‘cross the farm all frothed an’ blown, an’ go an’ do somethin’ as all fired foalish as to almost drown y’rself in the water trough?”
Apple bloom shrunk from the question, slipping lower into the cushioning comfort of her bed. “Ah, …” she started not knowing what to say or where to start.
Applejack pursed her lips slightly letting her tongue glide across the front of her teeth and fixed her eyes firmly on her younger sibling. “An old family trait” Granny Smith called it. Referring to the expression and tooth licking. Applejack could still hear the elder mare in her mind. “You look jus’ like y’r Pa right there, fixin’ t’ work out some confangled problem ‘r ‘nother.”
The problem right now was getting her youngest sibling to explain what had got her so blown scared that she’d try something as daft as to stick her head in the water trough while desperately sucking for air and nearly drown herself. A sigh of resignation from the little strawberry maned filly next to her, followed by a deep breath, signaled Appljack she was about to get her answer.
Wow, Pinkie mus’ be twitchin’ up a storm iffin this explanation is a two breather, this’n ‘s gonna be a doozy. Thought Applejack, as her younger sister paused to pull in another deep breath before continuing her accelerated explanation.
“IwassittinginthecrusadersclubhousetryingtothinkofawaytogetmycutiemarkwhenIsawBigMcIntoshworking intheorchardandhe’sgotagreatbigcutiemarksoIdecidedtoask’imhowhegothiscutiemarkan’hesaid‘Nnope’an’I asked’imwhynotcauseyou,an’Fluttershy,an’Rarity,an’Twilight,an’PinkiePie,an’RainbowDashalltoldushowyou gotyourcutiemarksan’hestillsaid‘Nnope’so Iaskedhimwhyhewouldn’ttellme’causeI’mfamilyan’allanthen …” the little filly’s voice finally ran out of steam as she finished her tale to her sister.
“Whoa, slow ‘er down there Nelly, I think I got ‘bout half o’ that, but this all got you scared right outta your hide … how?” Applejack asked as her little sister, who turned her head away breaking eye contact, her strawberry locks falling in front of her eyes like Applejack’s close friend Fluttershy.
“He got angry an’yelled at me …” Apple Bloom sullenly admitted, her voice fading out to a barely audible squeek similar to the way Fluttershy’s was known to occasionally.
“Um, who all up an' yelled at ya again?” Applejack eased the question out, not quite sure if she should. Truth be told, she hadn’t quite followed the high speed ramble of her younger sister completely, but had an irked feeling that needed confirming, and oh did she ever hope she was wrong.
Oh she hoped, but for not, as Apple Bloom’s answer exploded into the room’s evening calm.
“BIG MCINTOSH GOT REALLY MAD AND YELLED AT ME ‘CAUSE I ASKED HOW HE GOT HIS CUTIE MARK!”
Her revelation released, Apple Bloom immediately dissolved into torrents of tears, as her older sibling wrapped her forelegs around her little sister and pulling her tight, pillow, blanket, and all, to her chest, holding on as if she never meant to let go again. Applejack tucked her sister’s head below her own chin as she held her there and let the little one cry herself dry.
Dang it all Apple Bloom, why’d ya have to go an’ pester y’r brother ‘bout his cutie mark? Why’d y’ have t’ make him think about … that. Thought Applejack. Inside she felt as though a great weight had been tied round her guts and dropped through her body landing somewhere in the cellar far below.
After all these years it still hurt Applejack inside to think of her parents. It wasn’t painful or debilitating, nothing unmanageable, she’d gotten used to it as time passed. It was still a scar though, to have lost them at such a young age. In some ways she was jealous of her younger sister. Apple Bloom had been only a foal a few months old when their parents had died, so she never knew them really. It didn’t mean that she was without hurt; not having known them may have been in some ways just as hard. To see friends out with their parents knowing you didn’t have any, Applejack knew that feeling all too well.
A gentle nuzzle and the slow even breathing of her younger sister told Applejack that the little filly had finally worn herself out for the second time today. Tucking her sister in and giving the littlest Apple a good night kiss on the forehead, Applejack picked up the serving tray and headed down stairs.
It wasn’t any secret what had happened to her parents. They’d been killed in a mudslide on the edge of the farm closest to the Everfree Forest. Even Apple Bloom knew that, she’d been told not that long ago when she’d been ‘old enough’ to understand. It had been a rather wet spring and the ground was heavy with moisture. Pa had been concerned about root rot in the orchards, and after he and Ma had tucked her in that night, they’d gone out to walk the orchard and check the ground as the rain had let up. It was the last time she saw them.
Applejack involuntarily wiped away a tear with the back of her hoof, as she looked at the casserole on the counter, half cold, but still warm.
Wouldn’t be the first time Big Mac an’ me had a half cold dinner in the orchard after dark. Applejack mused to herself as she carved into the casserole and filled a lunch pail she’d pulled from under the counter. She’d lost count of how many times she’d brought dinner out to her big brother out in the fields or orchards. After their folks had died McIntosh had taken it upon himself to uphold the farm. The deep red colt had foregone the last few months of his formal schooling, taken their grandfather’s harness down off the wall, and had hardly said a word since.
Hmm, pondered Applejack as she slipped a canteen of cold tea and cider into her saddlebag, it ‘ccurs t’ me that Big Mac done got his cutie mark right ‘bout then too …
It was true, the first time she’d seen her brother’s cutie mark had been the day after the funeral. She’d been on her way to the schoolhouse and had seen him out in the field along side the road hitched to the plow and pulling for all he could, though not getting as far as he’d liked. Her brother was still a scrawny colt back then, and had been more given to books and figures than plow-horsing. The other colts had called him ‘Stick ta Toss’ for his long gangly legs and narrow barrel. Sill it had been hard to miss his cutie mark as he struggled against the plow harness.
Big McIntosh didn’t just have a cutie mark, as Applejack saw it, he had A cutie mark, with a capital A. Where most pony’s cutie marks covered probably less than half the flank of the pony they belonged to, Big Mac’s was big, huge in point of fact. It covered nearly her brother’s entire sizable flank, a huge green half apple, face out, in stark contrast to his scarlet coat. As Applejack could recall she’d only seen two cutie marks close to the size of her brother’s, and both of them belonged to royalty.
The stylized sun that adorned Princess Celestia’s flank might have been pretty close in size to the great green apple half that rode broadly on Big Mac’s, though Applejack wasn’t about to ask for measurements. Princess Celestia’s younger sister, Princess Luna, though, her cutie mark was immense. It actually, from what Applejack remembered, covered the whole of the Night Princess’s flank in a depiction of the night sky replete with crescent moon and stars and even extended further up the princess’s back and down her leg slightly.
With a sigh, the plucky orange mare tapped the barn-house door closed with a rear hoof, lunch pail handle held firmly between her teeth, before trotting off to find her elder brother in the deepening dusk. She stopped at a small grove near the entrance to the main orchard, ‘The Family Grove’ as it was called. Bounded by a low white fence that any grown pony could easily step over the grove formed a long gallery bounded by apple trees on both sides and a small mix of others, it served as the last resting place of the late members of the Apple family.
Lowering the lunch pail from her mouth Applejack slipped the Stetson from her head and held it to her chest, bowing her head as she did so.
“Ma, Pa, Granpa Smith, ‘n all,” Applejack whispered into the grove, “I could really use y’r help ‘n’ all right now, but I don’t rightly know what t’ ask f’r in advice.”
As if in answer, a soft breeze rustled her mane slightly a few of her loose blonde bangs trailing off in the direction of the Everfree edge of the orchard, where a distinct and heavy ‘thok’ of hoof hitting something harder than wood echoed up back through the trees.
“I guess y’all means I should jus’ do it then.” Applejack answered softly into the grove. “Thank ya.”
She replaced her hat and picked up the tin pail and trotted off down the orchard path to find her brother. As she made her way deeper through the stands of apple trees that formed the main orchard, she pondered what it was that could have been that had gotten her big brother so angry as to frighten their younger sister as badly as she’d been earlier that afternoon.
Sure, he didn’t like to talk about his cutie mark. He’d even refused his own cute-ceañera. Still, it wasn’t like Big McIntosh to fly off the plow handle or anything. He was known as the most patient, even-tempered, pony in town. Hard working, he never got more than the slightest bit riled at the worst of times, and even then he barely had to raise his voice any more than a little to make his point known.
So, what was it?
Applejack found him seated on his haunches under an elderly walnut tree on the very edge of the orchard nearest to the Everfree Forest. Her great-grandfather Pokey Oats had not been just an apple farmer, but a seed collecting settler pony that had collected and planted all manner of seeds over the years, and the occasional odd clusters of non-apple trees were his legacy to Sweet Apple Acres. Applejack’s heart would have normally swelled with pride at that fact, though not here, not now. The slump-faced ridge that reared out of the edge of the Everfree forest and looked down on her family’s homestead from beyond the last line of trees was a mute reminder of why she’d come out here, why she was about to risk the ire of her normally placid older brother. But most importantly, it was why he was here.
This is where their parent’s … had died.
“Soopuh’s ahhn.” Applejack grinned at her brother. The pail handle still clenched in her teeth made enunciation a little awkward as she gave the lunch pail an inviting rattle.
The big Red stallion turned his head slightly to look at his sister before turning back toward the tumbled earth of the slope face, his eyes fixed on a point atop the ridge.
“How’s Apple Bloom?”
Dang, He don’t miss a thing. Applejack thought at the flatly distant tone of her brother’s question as she plunked her haunch down beside her brother, lunch pail between them. Still, something coiled deep inside her that wanted oh so badly to buck her brother right in the nose for not being more concerned. To yell at him about how their youngest sibling had inadvertently tried to drown herself in a water-trough after he’d scared her so badly. Oh how she wanted to tear a strip right off his red hide up one side and down the other and back again.
“Resting,” the orange mare replied calmly as she pulled a pair of tin plates from her saddlebag along with the canteen, “you scared her mighty bad there, McIntosh.”
“I’m sorry AJ,” the red stallion sighed, picking up a plate of casserole that his sister had spooned up, “Apple Bloom’s gotta learn that nope means nope.”
Applejack watched as her brother stared at the food for a few seconds then put it aside untouched.
“But why does your cutie mark have to be ‘nope’?”
Applejack could have full on bucked herself in the back of her own head right then when she saw her brother quiver like somepony just trod on his grave. Brain had connected to mouth with no delay to consider her words.
The silence that followed was pregnant and deathly. Applejack watched her elder brother just sit there. He took a deep breath in and held it for a few seconds, and eased it back out. And said ... nothing.
“Why McIntosh? I mean there was a lot happened right then. It’s okay if y’all can’t remember when 'r how ya got y’r cutie mark.”
The orange mare watched as McIntosh trembled again, he fought another breath in and out and again. She knew she was on to something; he was fighting something, something only he could feel. What was it?
Obstinacy overrode common sense. Whatever this was, Applejack was tartarus bent on seeing it done with. She was sure as set on getting to the bottom of this, as her brother got up and started trotting about in agitated circles.
“Ah mean, sure you got it after Ma ‘n’ Pa died, so did I, so will Apple Bloom.” Applejack could feel the emotion rising in her voice. She watched as her brother trotted about moving faster head shaking like he was desperately trying to be rid of something hanging on to him.
“It was an accident that Ma ‘n’ Pa died, everypony knows that.”
It was then he stopped. Right next to a large alluvial boulder near the crumbled slope of the rise, Applejack could see the pain coursing through his expression. Then it happened. McIntosh planted, coiled, and bucked … right into the boulder.
“NNOOO!” McIntosh’s scream was chased up and down the edge of the Everfree and orchard by the echo of the impact.
Applejack thought her teeth would crack from the shock as she flinched. Surely her brother was about to bust both his legs and she’d be the cause of it. Her eyes pinched shut as she waited for the agony scream that wouldn’t be far behind. A heavy earthy thud was all that came.
Applejack cautiously opened her eyes to find her brother pawing the ground staring at her. The boulder, which had been nearly as thick as her brother and stood a height almost twice his length laid on its side, snapped at the base.
“You want to know ‘bout mah cutie mark?!” bellowed the scarlet stallion as he thundered up to his sister. Glaring right at her, green eyes aflame with an intensity Applejack could not have imagined being locked within her brother.
“I got mah mark right here!” he roared into his sister’s face, slamming the ground with his front hoof so hard Applejack thought she’d jumped. “I got it right here, watching as Ma an’ Pa DIED!”
Applejack could feel the tears, sad, terrified, painful, begin to slide silently down her cheeks as her brother laid bare a horrifying secret he’d borne alone all these years.
“And it weren’t no accident.” His voice slowed to a magma hot simmer.
The orange mare bit through the words as she cantered angrily through the dark stands of apple trees that formed the main orchard of Sweet Apple Acres. Normally a late trot through the orchard would have been soothing to the young blonde maned mare. Instead the trees seemed to echo with the ghosts of the past, a past that had suddenly become more twisted and uncertain.
“Luna geld you, McIntosh.”
Applejack spit the words with an unladylike venom. She shook her head violently; tears of pain and sorrow flew from her eyes, glinting like diamonds in the air of the moonlit grove, before vanishing into the darkness of the shadows beneath the trees. The language she used would have surely gotten her lectured on the subjects of profanity and decorum by either of her unicorn friends, Rarity or Twilight Sparkle. If she’d been younger and been overheard using such language, her mouth would quickly be getting better acquainted with a bar of soap if Granny Smith had anything to say on the matter.
None of the three, however, were around at that moment anyway so it made no consequence as the hot twister of sorrow and rage thrashed wildly about within the soul of the orange mare.
No, Applejack mentally corrected her last uttered curse I’ll geld him mah-self f’r what he did to Apple Bloom! The princesses c’n buck what’s left to Tartarus, the moon, ‘r wherever. An’ jus’ because our li’l sister asked ya too hard ‘bout y’r cutie mark.
Applejack's emotional tempest was still in full rage when she finally crossed out of the orchard into the farmyard and made her way to the barn house. Luna’s moon shone full in the night sky bathing the farmyard in a cool silver light as Applejack trotted past the pump and water-trough in the yard. The green-eyed mare averted her gaze from the calm mirror like refection of the water where Apple Bloom had, accidentally, nearly drowned herself in a blind panic earlier that day. Having seen that the little filly was resting quietly in her room, Applejack had gone out to find out the cause of their baby sister’s near fatal panic from her elder brother, Big McIntosh.
What she’d found out from her brother had cut her to her emotional core. What he’d told her had been as shocking a revelation as she could have never suspected from the quiet, hard toiling colt. Her brother had received his cutie mark witnessing the deaths of their parents. Deaths that Applejack had always been told had been in a tragic accident, a landslide. She had felt the huge scarlet stallion’s pain and grief there as he confessed his torturous secret on the edge of the farm, standing at the very spot of the tragedy.
What perturbed Applejack, however, was that Big Mac’s story of what had transpired was slightly different from the version she knew. Instead of an accidental landslide caused by waterlogged soil and an unstable hillside having claimed the lives of their parents as she had always been told, what her brother had confessed to witnessing was something that had never happened in Ponyville. Big McIntosh had claimed to witness their parent’s deaths at the hooves of another pony, a pony that Mac had only referred to as ‘the Albino’.
That’s where she’d called him on it. In all honesty he might as well have said that the Headless Horse, or the Olden Pony, or some other campfire story boogie-mare had done it. In that one moment Mac’s tormented secret had looked like such a massive pile of manure it wasn’t believable.
That he had witnessed the deaths of their parents, okay, that was possible, and surely a traumatic and haunting event. That fact he claimed that it had not been an accident, but murder, was a concept that was all but unconscionable to her. The very concept of a pony killing another in a small tight-knit community like Ponyville was ridiculous. The fact that he had tried to convince her even after she’d pointed out the incredulousity of it all had made things harder.
“Applejack.” She remembered him saying, “y’r all the Element of Honesty, right.”
She had to agree, it was the honest truth. What he had asked next though, had caught her flat hoofed.
“An’ who all taught y’ ‘bout honesty?”
The ghosts of the place they stood upon had stirred and chilled her as she spoke the honest answer, “Ma ’n’ Pa.”
“An’ do ya think they didn’t teach me the same thing, AJ?”
Her brother’s quiet accusation had stung worse than any physical blow could have, setting her onto her rump. It was at that moment though; she had realized how much she’d forgotten about her brother, her ‘big’ brother, her quiet, reliable, hardworking, and caring, ‘older’ brother. For all of her best inner qualities that her parent’s had lovingly cultivated and dutifully nurtured in her. They’d have done the same for him. As they most surely would have done for Apple Bloom if they were still alive. Applejack had realized, yes, they’d lost their parents at the same time, but Ma and Pa had raised Big McIntosh even longer than they’d raised her.
“Yes.” The meager response had squeaked from her throat, pure in its honesty, as her innards had felt like a twisting mass of serpents coiling tighter, crushing her from inside herself.
As the serpents writhed, Big McIntosh had gently taken her face in his front hooves and pulled the bridge of her muzzle to his so she was looking him squarely eye to eye. His voice had been as calm and even as it had ever been as he had spoken to her.
“Then look me in the eye, AJ, and tell me that I’m lying.”
She had looked. She had looked into those big, green, emerald windows to his soul. Eyes that matched hers so perfectly that looking into them was like looking into her own, and seeing what she needed to see, and being afraid.
Applejack had seen what she needed to see, and it scared her, for what she’d seen could not be true. A lie couldn’t be the truth, and the truth couldn’t be a lie, but she had seen it there, in her brother’s eyes through her eyes, his soul through her soul. The honest answer she had to give, she couldn’t, it was a lie, but couldn’t be.
And then the serpents had struck.
The coiling, twisting, writhing mass of serpents of fear and doubt within her had finally lashed out, their venom spreading throughout her. A terrifying, fiery cold nauseating rush had poured through her every vein. He had been holding her head between his front hooves, but he hadn’t been holding hers.
She’d followed through on the right to left cross, turning as she did, his grip on her evaporating. She had turned, and bucked him to the ground, then ran, blindly, in horrified, wide-eyed, grief stricken anger into the dark groves of apple trees. Leaving him sprawling on the earth where their parents had died. Leaving him lying where he’d received his cutie mark as he watched their parents die. Watched their parents die at the hooves of a killer. At the hooves of ‘the Albino.’
She couldn’t give him the answer.
Reaching the top of the stairs, Applejack looked in on her little sister and gave a sigh of contentment. The little olive-blonde filly was sleeping soundly, cocooned in her bedding, strawberry locks askew all over the pillow. Entering her own room, Applejack hung her hat on the wall peg beside her rope and pulled the red hair-ties from her mane and tail before circling to the other side of her bed.
Opening the small cupboard in the bottom of her nightstand, she moved a few personal items aside and drew out a glass bottle with a wooden shot-glass upside-down atop the neck. The blonde maned mare looked at the label as she held the bottle in front of her.
‘Sweet Apple Acres Finest’ the label proclaimed, followed by the word that was also her own name: Applejack.
Setting the carved wood shot glass aside Applejack pulled the cork from the bottle with her teeth dropping it beside her on her bed. She regarded the lacquered oak shot-glass sitting on her bedside table again, then turned her attention to the heavy golden elixir in the bottle she held, then back to the cup before retuning again to the bottle and wrapping her lips around its mouth and pointing the base to the rafters.
Applejack took a heavy pull of the sweet, but potent liquor before restoppering the bottle and returning it to its hiding place in the base of the nightstand and dropping unceremoniously into bed.
Granny Smith didn’t hold much for young mares drinking before their wedding day. It prevented, as her grandmother put it ‘young stallions of unsavory intent from taking undue advantage of unsuspecting young mares.’ Still the occasional ‘medicinal use’ was permitted, and right now a need for a good night’s sleep after what she’d been through today qualified in Applejack’s reasoning.
As her namesake liquor dulled the roiling thunder of the emotional storm that still swirled in her psyche, she felt its warmth spread through her body, warming the sheets that held her as she let her eyes fall shut, until morning would inevitably beckon her back to wakefulness…
* * * * *
“Applejack?”
The beckoning call of morning, Applejack found, apparently had the same high voice as her sister.
“Hrmf?” Applejack grunted unable to form words through the haze of sleep.
“Applejack.” Apple Bloom called again, and Applejack forced one eye open.
Daylight streamed through the window of her room as she opened both eyes and cast about the room for Apple Bloom. Yet she found no sign of the filly.
The golden light of Celestia’s day took on an orangey tint prompting the dusty-orange mare to glance out the window of her room.
Fire!
The orchards were on fire! Adrenaline swept through the now fully awake young mare as she realized it was not just the orchards that were aflame, but that all of Equestria was burning around her!
“Applejack!”
Outside! Her sister’s voice was coming from outside!
Applejack bolted from the room like a mare possessed, her Stetson snatched from its peg as she passed the door.
“Big Mac! Granny Smith!” she called out, bursting into their respective as she did so. She found their rooms vacant, their beds neatly made, belongings in place, but the occupants not present. She then dashed for the stairs.
Reaching the yard she skidded to a halt at what she beheld, no fire was to be seen. Before her loomed the edge of the Everfree Forest, the ridge where her parents had died, imposing and grim. Below the tattered face of the slope, a cordon of tall stakes stood, each surmounted by the severed head of one of her family. The outer most bore Big McIntosh on the left and Granny Smith the right. The other four middle stakes carried Ma, Pa, Aunt Flicka, and Granpa Smith, left to right.
Yet in the center of this atrocity lay Apple Bloom, pinned to the ground by the left front hoof of the most massive monstrosity of a stallion Applejack had ever seen. He was taller than even Princess Celestia, his eyes red-hot coals, with scarlet auras trailing from them reminiscent of the specter of King Sombra. Its horn, like that of the shadowy unicorn king, wasn’t strait, but curved upward from its forehead. Though unlike the deposed dark king of the Crystal Empire, this horn was notched and slightly crooked, like that of the Changeling Queen's. Beneath its scruffy white birch bark mane and hide, the whole of the monstrosity seemed to be a patchwork of turf, stone, branches, and leaves, something like a timber wolf, but a pony not a wolf.
“Applejack.”
The weak call of Apple Bloom’s voice drew Applejack attention back to where her sister lay pinned by the monster’s stony hoof, just as the great creature shifted his weight forward, crushing the little filly beneath it. Applejack could neither scream nor move as she watched Apple Bloom’s body burst open. White flesh and golden juice were trod into the dirt under the hoof of the giant as it advanced on her.
“Applejack,” a new grim voice now called her name from somewhere, causing her to glance behind her at the farm buildings, “all of this, is Mine!”
Looking back to the stallion-beast Applejack could see its jaw now hanging loose, open to reveal long gleaming white fangs, longer and fiercer than any creature Applejack could think to name. From between those glinting white stakes blood now poured like cider from between the staves of a fractured cask. Blood, which splashed on the ground before it splattering its hooves and turning them red.
Applejack backed away, tripping as she did, sliding on her rump as best she could as the great beast lowered its head, aiming its chipped and curving horn at her. As it did, the deep, hollow, disembodied, voice from its unmoving gaping jaw coldly spoke.
“And so are you.”
She heard the scrape of hoof on earth and the snap of twigs as the beast charged her … she screamed!
* * * * *
Apple Bloom tumbled backwards across the floor, the back of her head meeting the wall of her sister’s bedroom with a pronounced whack, as her older sister jumped bolt upright in bed. The older pony’s eyes were wide with terror, her breath ripping in and out of her in an adrenaline fueled rush.
“Ow.” winced the youngest Apple as she rubbed the soon to be swelling goose egg on the back of her head with a hoof.
“Are you okay Applejack?”
The daze of the nightmare dissipating, awareness of her surroundings returning, the drumming of her pulse still quickened, though less so, Applejack looked to where her sister gathered herself from the floor.
“Apple Bloom!” the older pony cried with no small portion of relief as she snatched the smaller from the floor into her bed, hugging her tight.
“Applejack, are you okay?” the words were practically squeezed out of Apple Bloom as the bedraggled filly was frantically hugged and nuzzled by her equally sleep disheveled sibling.
The orange mare reared her head back slightly in confusion at the younger pony’s query.
“An’ why wouldn’t I be?” came the slightly befuddled response that Applejack tried to make sound authoritative and adult. Then changing the subject in defense. “An’ what ‘r’ you doin’ up so early on a weekend?”
Apple Bloom shot a look up at her sister that spoke volumes. The right corner of the filly’s mouth pitching downward into a half-frown of frustration that said ‘What? Just because I’m a school filly, don’t mean I’ve got meadow muffins in my hayloft.’
“I’ve been sleeping since th’s’afternoon, of course I woke up early.”
The half vacant look of confusion was still on her sister’s face as Apple Bloom continued, “ ‘n’ when Ah got up I heard noises what sounded like mumblin’ ‘n’ cryin’ coming from y’r room so I came in … Was ya havin' a bad dream Applejack?”
“Yuh-huh, I was, Sugarcube.” Applejack nodded slightly as she spoke. “I was havin’ a right bad dream. Thanks f’r carin’.”
Applejack pulled her sister into another warm hug of hooves, hair, and bed sheets, and Apple Bloom hugged back. After a few moments Applejack opened one eye and cast glance out the bedroom window, no fire, no daylight, not even the first sparkling velvet glow of twilight danced on the edge of the sky, only Luna’s night reigned in peaceful bliss as the two sisters snuggled down in the elder one’s bed.
“Where’s Big McIntosh?”
The filly’s question shattered the stillness like a brick through a plate glass window.
“Hmmnh?” murred Applejack, having just settled back into her bed in a comfortable spoon position with her little sister while waiting for the eventual sunrise.
“Where’s big brother?” the concern from the youngest Apple becoming tangible as she spoke, “I looked in his room an’ it don’t look like he’s even been t’ bed.”
AJ knew the old line that she used to tell her little sister about their brother having to get up early to wake up the roosters, so the roosters could wake up the rest of Ponyville wasn’t going to hold oats this time.
“We had a fight.”
“A fight?” the interest peaked in the younger pony’s voice as she lay with her back against her sister’s barrel. “Was’t ‘bout what happened with me?”
“Eeyup.”
Applejack flinched, groaning mentally at herself for having gone and sounded like her brother at just that moment.
“Why, Applejack?”
“Because sometimes big ponies do things they ain’t proud of.” The older pony paused. No, she certainly wasn’t proud of what she’d done, but, … dang that McIntosh “An’ … I’ll apologize t’ Big Mac in the morning.”
Big McIntosh lay on his side as he watched as his younger sister’s blonde tail vanished into the rows of trees. His head still swam slightly from the sucker punch of a right hoof his sister had blind-sided him with. With a sigh he lay his head back down on the cool ground on the edge of the orchard.
Celestia? Why does AJ have t’ be such a high-strung jenny-ass at times? The big red colt wondered before answering his own question, as he often did. Because she’s so much like Ma, Celestia keep her, that’s why.
It was true, so very true, as the big red work pony rocked onto his back slightly before rolling up onto his haunches. A bolt of pain shot through his left shoulder as his front hoof found the ground, causing Big McIntosh to quickly pull up the offending leg as he sat himself further back on his haunches.
She certainly bucks like Ma. Big Mac mused as he tenderly rubbed his wounded shoulder with the opposite front hoof. He’d already started to roll away from the blow as AJ had landed it. Still, the little pony packed a wallop, as the double-horseshoe shaped welt that was beginning to swell underneath his coat proudly boasted to.
Taking a deep cleansing breath McIntosh let the last of his fury fade into the still surroundings. Inside he felt empty, as he often did, as he took a slow look around, finding the dinner pail and plates where AJ and he had left them. The carrots and sweet potatoes smelled good in the brown onion and mushroom gravy. Even cold.
Mac quickly turned his attentions to the food on the tin plates before unceremoniously sticking his muzzle into the bucket itself to retrieve whatever remained. He could certifiably say this about Applejack; the older of his two younger sisters could definitely cook. It was quite the feather in her hat that none other than Princess Celestia herself had requested that Applejack cater the last royal wedding in Canterlot for Celestia’s own niece, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza.
Uuughhh! The thought of his Applejack and business, it made his mind ache. Dear Celestia, giver of light and warmth, he loved his sister, but the mare at times didn’t have the common sense granted a shovel when it came to business. Bits, it seemed, flowed through that girl’s hooves like water in a sieve.
He could remember the first time Apple Bloom had gone to help AJ run the stall in the market. It had been a total loss. Three bushels of apples given away for the misdeed of a overly enthusiastic raw filly. Mac groaned at the math. Weight, times count, divided by rate per bit, less what was sold prior to the debacle, was a net loss of 284 bits! Fancy math nothing, it was simple math, not long term commodities futures. Granny Smith had just about had a coronary when Applejack had explained what had happened.
Regrettably, it had fallen to him to carry out Granny’s passed sentence of a right whoopin’ with a hickory switch. The old Apple family matriarch was getting a little long in the tooth, and short in the giddy up, to be swinging the switch with enough emphasis to make her point.
AJ had been stoic about the whole thing when they’d reached the barn, and he had tried to explain the business end of things. Somehow it had been like Twilight explaining magic to a mule. AJ had finally just draped herself over a bale in frustration and bit her own tail insisting on just getting the whole thing over with, thick headed girl.
What had hurt more was that Apple Bloom had insisted that she accept ‘her share of the blame.’ Since as she saw it, it wasn’t right for Applejack to take all the blame for something she hadn’t started. Sweet girl, hard headed, stubborn, sweet girl. AJ and himself had, of course, tried to talk Apple Bloom out of it. But stubborn like her sister, the little filly had none of it. It hurt to have to lay hickory to Apple Bloom in the end, if only just a couple of whacks. AJ got proportionally more for her part in the folly.
McIntosh had to hand it to his sister for charm though. AJ was a right good and friendly salesmare when it came to market day, far better than he could fare. Socially she seemed pretty well grounded too. Interesting group of friends she had for sure. He thought it was just dandy that Celestia had invited all six of them to Canterlot for he Grand Galloping Gala the first year Twilight had been in Ponyville.
Dang idjit! Mac cursed mentally to himself. His sister gets invited to the Grand Galloping Gala. A swanky, fully catered, society function, and what does she do? She packs up a carnival concession cart and proceeds to waste her evening and merchandise on trying to compete with the Canterlot Royal Kitchens! Oh, and she was charging concession rates, where as the Gala’s buffet was Free for pony’s sake! Nuts! Go. Socialize. Make business contacts with members of the equestrian business community. Don’t try and out hospitality the hosts to honk your own horn. That’s just plain rude!
Licking his muzzle as he pulled it from the dinner pail he had to hand it to his sister she could cook. Business, nope, but cook, rope, jump, herd, haul, organize, she could do it. Often what AJ was good at set Mac’s mind to wondering why she hadn’t become a professional rodeo pony?
He had been thoroughly impressed with her showing at the Equestrian National Rodeo, even if she wasn’t. Heck, she had gone into hiding and taken a job at a cherry orchard, over not being able to keep her promise of using her rodeo winnings to help fix up town hall. Still to have place top four in every event, even if she placed no higher than second. By his figuring she had to have just missed the overall title, he was sure of that.
Ma would have been so proud of her. Mac ruminated. Their mother had been a professional rodeo pony before she broke her leg during a rodeo in Ponyville. She’d met their father while recuperating from the injury. She’d been staying in the spare room at Sweet Apple Acres, since Ponyville Hospital had been overwhelmed by a severe outbreak of feather flu and was running short on beds. Smitten, she’d left the rodeo circuit and stayed with Pa on the farm.
A spasm on pain in his left shoulder reminded the big pony that his sister could buck too. Amazing for filly who had been such a prissy thing, wanting to play princess and such. She always wanted to hear about Ma’s fillyhood in Manehatten, and about high society life. But that was before … Mac sighed at the memory, Ma and Pa had died.
Placing the plates in the lunch pail, Mac replaced the lid, and turned back to look at the Everfree Forest. The tattered face of the ridge seemed to sneer down at those in the orchard below it. A jagged, shattered sneer of broken teeth of rock and tree trunk. A sick twisted sneer of some vulgar nightmare that was making fun of his pain.
* * * * *
“I finally got the princesses off to sleep.” The light sandy-orange mare said as she trotted down the stairs and into the family room. She was a well built if slightly light pony as befitting a former rodeo competitor. Her accent carried a bit of southern rural equestrian in it, but its owner’s Manehatten roots were betrayed by the well-spoken nature of the voice. “They just had to hear ‘The Little Tree’ one more time.”
“A’right.” Came the firm, yet cheery, baritone reply of the light oak brown pony standing by the kitchen table. Apple Ridge was not the largest stallion by a given margin, but still a goodly sized individual. A lifetime spent working the orchards and fields of Sweet Apple Acres had kept him in solid form. “Rain’s stopped, an’ I’m gonna go check the orchards f’r root rot ‘fore turnin’ in. Y’ wan’ t’ come ‘long?”
“I sure do, hon.” The mare replied before looking about.
Spying what she was looking for, she trotted into the family room to where a writing desk sat wedged into one corner. A scrawny red colt with an unruly mop of orange purporting itself to be a mane sat below a bright coal oil lamp, attention fixed on a tome spread before him.
“Would you like to come with us Mackie?”
The slightly built scarlet colt who had been watching the whole exchange out the corner of his eye, now swiveled his head up to look at his mother. “No ma’am. 'Uncle' Fil' was kind enough to lend me this here book, and I’d like much to finish it before the weekend.”
Mackie watched as his mother reached over and half closed the book so she could see the cover and title: An Economy in Bits: a guide to advanced equestrian economics by Win, Place, and Show. Published by the Canterlot Commerce Secretariat. The mare’s brow furrowed like a tilled field under a yellow-green mane she kept in a tight bun secured with a big red bow. It was as if she was asking why her son didn’t have a cutie mark in finance or something. Her husband’s best friend, Filthy Rich was the only other pony she knew who would have bothered to read a book like that. Him, and her father J.C. Orange, Manehatten stockbroker.
“Oh c’mon boy.” The colt’s father cajoled from where he stood waiting by the door, “Fil’ ain’t gonna mind if y’ don’t finish that book right this week. It took him pret’ near two months t’ chaw through that thing. Now scoot y’r caboose! Bits ‘round here starts at the roots an’ I mean t’ go check on them right pronto. Granny Smith is up a stairs knittin’ and c’n look after y’r sisters if there’s anything’s needin’.”
Mackie sighed and looked at his mother with the big green eyes that in combination with his red coat had gotten him named McIntosh. He’d inherited the eyes from his mother, as well as the puppy dog look he now used with them.
“Oh for Celestia’s sake Ridge, let the boy be. He’s happy with his book and it’s almost time for him to go to bed anyway.” Mackie smiled at his mother’s acquiescence. True, another half an hour and he’d put himself to bed, but that would be eight to ten pages farther along in his reading.
“Alright Bloom. Leave him be. I wanna check the drainage out toward granddad’s walnut grove before we loose all light.” Orange Bloom leaned in and kissed her eldest on the forehead before trotting over to join her husband to check the property as he plucked a beaten brown Stetson from its peg near the door, plopping it onto his head.
“Aw fingle fangle,” Apple Ridge cussed lightly as the soggy Stetson dripped all over his rust-red mane as he reluctantly hung the beaten old chapeau back on its peg, “I’ll wind up getting wetter wearin’ this than not.”
“Oh Ridge.” Giggled his wife as she rubbed necks with him by the door.
As the two ponies exited the barn-house Mackie took a last look at his parents, their cutie marks evident as they walked out the door. A proud apple tree stood out on his father’s flank, an orange blossom looped in a lariat for his mother.
Alone now with his book, Mackie returned to reading, beginning the next chapter: Agromomics: the roots of the economy. The crimson colt blinked for a second or two at the title of the chapter.
‘Bits ‘round here starts at the roots.’ That’s what his father had just said. Sitting there at the desk, he turned the problem over in his head, practical knowledge. Yes, that was it! Practical knowledge is what his father had offered him. The young colt could have facehoofed, how could he have missed it. Carefully closing the book, Mackie slid the tome to the back of the desk and closed the roll top before trotting quickly out the door to find his parents.
Practical knowledge. By Celestia he was going to pay more attention to what his father said from now on. It was a moment of epiphany for him and he could hardly wait to tell his parents about it as he trotted down the path into the orchard.
* * * * *
McIntosh picked up the tin pail by its handle and slowly walked into the darkened orchard. The path he chose wasn’t one to lead him back towards his home and his sisters. AJ, most likely, was wont to be mighty tissed at him still, and that wouldn’t do well.
Fluttershy, on the other hoof, once she got over her initial startling of having unexpected visitor in the late evening, would be able to see to his shoulder and let him crash on her couch for the night. It was odd, he mused, the number of nights he had spent on the pink maned, butter-yellow pegasus’s couch was probably the source of several rumors ‘round town. He had told Cheerilee about it after the ‘Hearts and Hooves Day Incident’ and she agreed, having a medically able pony that close was a benefit considering his occupation, and his two sisters.
As he walked away, his sore shoulder gave a throb of pain with each step he took, though not as much as his heart. Part of him would always remain in the place he was now leaving, just like his parents’ ghosts. He could still hear the echoes of the hoof-falls of a little colt through the trees.
* * * * *
“Ma? Pa?”
The little red colt had hesitated slightly when he’d heard voices further up in the orchard. He thought he heard his father arguing with some pony but he couldn’t be certain. Who else would be out here with his parents? It didn’t sound like anypony he knew.
He could almost see the edge of the orchard up ahead. He knew he was near the edge because that’s where the trees changed from apple to walnut, great-granddad’s walnut grove.
Then he heard something that made him stop cold. It sounded like a sharp wet thump. The kind of thump like when Pa had him practice bucking against a big bag of wet sand. Then he heard Pa yell Ma’s name, and then Ma screaming.
The little colt swallowed hard one front hoof stepping back. Something wrong was going on here. Every fiber of his being told him that, told him to go away as he took another step back. Then he heard Ma scream again. This time it was Pa’s name she was screaming.
RUN! The thought flashed through the narrow colt’s mind, and he did. Only it was not the direction he wanted to. Instead he ran towards the noise, yelling as he came. Yelling out for his parents.
As reached the edge of the tree line where the orchard gave way to a short clearing between great granddad’s walnut grove and the Everfree Forest he could see Ma lying on her side near the base of a rise that grew up from the edge of the forest like a sharp sloped hill, it’s face of green wrinkled and saggy from all the rain. Pa was on the top of the rise fighting with another pony.
From where he stood, the little red colt could see his father was fighting with a white pony, an all white earth pony with a long unkempt and mane and tail. The only other bit color the little red colt could distinguish were the white pony’s eyes, those were bright pink with a touch of red, maybe. There were no other colors he could make out. The other pony didn’t even seem to have a cutie mark … his flank was blank! The white pony was an albino! He remembered it from a book in the town library.
The little colt knew his Pa was a strong pony, one of the strongest in all Ponyville. But this other pony was as big as Pa, and faster it seemed. Every time Pa reared and lunged the other pony would wheel away and come back at Pa from the side, lunging at Pa’s foreleg and Pa would have to half hop to keep his footing. Again and again the two pony stallions repeated the lunge-wheel-lunge-hop dance as the evening air turned cold and the wind picked up off the Everfree Forest.
As the colt slowly made his way to where his mother lay moaning on her side occasionally lifting her head to look up at the top of the rise before flopping back with a yelp of pain, it happened.
The white stallion changed his target. Instead of lunging for Pa’s front leg that Pa kept easily hopping over the advance, the white pony lunged for Pa’s rear leg this time. Pa though, had already begun to lift his weight from his front hooves and the move for his rear leg sent him off balance. Mackie watched as his father fell heavily on his opposite side against a large protruding rock near the lip of the rise.
As the little red colt watched, transfixed, as his father fell heavily on the crest of the rise, he saw the sodden turf face wrinkle more. It was as if the ground was getting crosser with the horseplay going on atop it. Some small saplings that clung to the slope there were now starting to tilt from their roots. But the discontent of the ridge seemed distant to the little colt, for as his father went down the white pony rose.
Rearing to his full height, the white pony slammed his front hooves down onto Pa’s barrel. The sound of the impact impressed itself into the colt’s mind. It was a sickening wet popping crunching noise like balloons bursting in an old cider barrel as it broke. A pink cloud shot from Pa’s muzzle, and McIntosh’s gut seized up at the sight as the white pony reared screaming, and hammered down on Pa again.
“RIDGE!”
His mother’s frantic crazed scream cut through all thought as the blank flanked stallion jacked into Pa for a third time. How much had Ma seen he didn’t know, but the rise had had enough. As the white pony’s third slamming blow cashed into Pa’s body, the front face of the rise buckled and slid.
It was as if the ground itself had been hurt and started to cry. A huge dirty tear seemed to start from below the rock Pa lay against and rolled toward the base near the orchard, and then another, and another. Soon the whole front of the rise gave way in a cascade of tearing turf and tumbling stone. Pa’s body slipped from where it had lay on the large rock and joined the detritus tumbling down the slope and the rock soon followed tumbling down after Pa. The albino pony stumbled back as the earth gave way into the mudslide, toppling from view beyond the crest of the ridge, into the Everfree Forest.
If the tumult of the cascading rise made any noise at all McIntosh couldn’t hear it. All he could hear was the grieving wail of his mother as her emotional world collapsed on her. When the earth stopped moving Pa was nowhere to be seen.
McIntosh approached his mother carefully. Where she had been laying near the base of the rise had been on the edge of the collapse. His mother’s legs were buried from halfway down the flank but her barrel, head, and forelegs were uncovered and he could hear her sobbing as he came closer.
“Momma?” his voice cracked with heavy emotion as he called to his mother. “Momma, are you alright?”
“Mackie?” the orange mare’s voice hovered somewhere between panic and uncertainty. “Mackie is that you?”
“Yes.”
“Run Mackie, don’t let him get you.” His mother blurted.
“I think he ran off when the hill fell, I don’t see him no more.” Mac tried to reassure his remaining parent. It was as much for himself as anything, he hadn’t seen ‘the Albino’ since the mudslide had ended at the least.
“Mackie, you’ve got to go.” His mother implored him with an unusual calm growing in her voice.
“But Momma, I can’t leave you here. I have to help you.”
In his head he was busily trying to decide if he should try to dig her out, or if he should even try to move her at all. His mother told different though.
“Yes you can Mackie.” His mother told him, as she looked at him with her gentle emerald eyes. “You have to leave me now. I’ll be all right. You have to be a big pony now and go get help, okay? Can you be ‘big’ McIntosh?”
“Yes Momma, I can.”
A soft light shone in the clearing, a pale greenish white glow, centered somewhere behind him. He had seen the glimmer in his mother’s eyes as she finished speaking.
“Look Mackie,” his mother’s voice buoyed up, but had becoming unnervingly quieter over the last few moments. He had no way of knowing that the kick she had taken from ‘the Albino’ had shattered a kidney and she was bleeding profusely inside because of it, “you've gotten your cutie mar……”
“Momma?” ‘Big’ McIntosh turned away from where he had been looking at the big green apple, cross cut to show the seeds, that now decorated his once blank red flanks, back to his mother who had become oddly still, having not finishing her sentence, her eyes now closed.
“Momma?!” he was getting panicked now. Where was he supposed to go for help?
High in the sky lightning flashed as a fresh set of storm clouds slid in from over the Everfree Forest, casting an unearthly knowing light in the small clearing as cold reality dropped on the little red colt with the rain. His parents were dead. He had just watched his parents die and gotten his cutie mark for it. The howl of grief stricken realization was lost in the booming roll of the thunder, like his teardrops in the rain as he crumpled to the ground next to his mother.
Night had fallen across Equestria. Luna’s silver moon shone down from its throne in the black sapphire sky as a myriad of stars added their glimmering brilliance to the tapestry. Below the vast orchards of Sweet Apple Acres spread out across the hills outside Ponyville, silently guarding their secrets of generations of living and past as a lone scarlet stallion passed among them. His head hung low, weighted with a heart heavy with the memories of grief and loss, as he walked from the spot on which his life had been forever changed. A spot where he had received a mark on his body he did not understand and scar on his soul that he could never remove.
As the last sounds of hoof steps vanished among the trees the silver shine of Luna’s beloved moon caught hold of something emerging from between the trees of the Everfree Forest atop the ridge above the old walnut grove at the edge of the apple orchard. Patches of purest white gleamed where the moonshine cut through the foliage into the darkness.
Striding forth from the shadows into the clear area atop the rise like a conquering lord, an earth pony stallion emerged from the Everfree. The slight breeze in the air stroked and played with the long white hairs of his uncropped mane and tail. From his ivory hooves and snowy fetlocks to the keen ears that adroitly scanned the night air for sound of movement, the stallion was spectacular, and white as fresh fallen snow. Everything was white but his eyes, his eyes were pink, unnaturally so, and his pupils hot red. For there was no color to them really, no color anywhere upon him at all. Like a living snow sculpture he pulled the cool night air in through flared nostrils. He was an albino; it was his curse at birth, a fluke of the blood.
It was blood that had cursed him and it was blood brought him back here again. Free of the fetters that had once kept him from his legacy. The mules that had raised him, the Diamond Dogs that had bought him, had worked him so hard in the pits and mines. They were all buried in his past now, as well as in the ground. It had been strength and skill by which he escaped, and folly that he had been recaptured just at the moment of his greatest victory.
The albino stallion pulled in another lung full of air and something prickled on the inside of his nose. It was the scent of a mare, a fine young mare, ready, and in season to bear the heirs to his lineage. He rose up on his hind legs pawing the air and whickering with delight. He was free, free to claim what was his. It had been by blood and by conquest this all was his.
