The room smelled of fire and smoke and tin and acid. It was hot, but felt cold. Two bloody, torn figures lay on the floor, faces half in shadow and half lit by the orange fire in the fireplace.

There was blood on the floor, and blood on the walls. Mother’s belly heaved up and down. Father was holding something purple and pushing it back into his stomach, groaning in pain.

“Mom!” Applejack cried. “Mom, don’t worry, I’ll get Granny!”

“Help me, Mommy,” Mother said, her voice weak.

Applejack flinched. She had never heard Mother say anything so foal-like.

“I’m getting her, I promise.” She turned to leave, but Mother’s cry was desperate.

“Mom, don’t leave me, please!”

Applejack turned and looked at her, then at the fire. Slowly she turned around and gazed up, up at the black, terrible shadow on the wall looming over her.

She followed the shadow down to where it met her hoofs.

“No!” She stumbled backwards and slipped on the blood. Stumbling, hazy, she pulled herself around and stared in horror at her dying parents. “No!”

“Mommy—”

“No, no, no! No!”

“Please, I, I’m dying!” Mother gasped and shuddered; her too-big belly went up and down. Applejack’s eyes were drawn to it.

Without knowing how, she knew there was a drawer by the bed, and in the drawer there was a book, and beside the book was a very sharp knife.

She took it out, trembling.

Mother sobbed when she turned around, holding the knife. “Mommy, no, please, I’m your daughter!” Fresh tears leaked from her eyes. “Please, please, no!”

Applejack stood above her. Raised the knife. Then she failed, gravity failed, vision failed; a dizzy blur filled the suddenly fading room. She toppled sideways, her guts heaving through her throat, and then she caught herself, bending only as far as an apple tree would, and held the knife and failed again; she tried a third time and with a rush of vertigo and a sense of weight against the knife a hot spurt of blood peeling away a viscous goopy film Mother screaming Father screaming Applejack screaming and then a baby screaming.

Applejack pulled Apple Bloom free of her mother and cradled the crying babe. There were rags stiff from drying by the fire; she swaddled Apple Bloom in them, but she was still crying.

Milk. But how to get it?

Mother was no good anymore. Herself—no, her mind turned away from that. What had Granny done?

Blood on the floor. Blood on the walls.

Applejack tore off a strip from the rags and and gathered what was freshly leaking from Mother’s cuts. Cradling Apple Bloom in one leg, she clamped her teeth on the soaked rag, wringing it out. Drops of dull red liquid fell into Apple Bloom’s open mouth. When the rag was dry, she gathered blood anew and did it again.

“You’re a witch,” Mother shuddered. “An evil, evil witch.”

Applejack ignored her. She was feeding Apple Bloom.

For a moment everything was silent except for pained breaths and the crackle of orange fire. Then:

“M-mommy, please,” Mother whimpered. “Save me.”

Applejack looked at her.

“I know,” Mother gasped, “I was a bad daughter. I didn’t,” she shut her eyes for a moment in pain, “always listen. But p-please, don’t punish me like this, I don’t deserve this, please, Mommy, please, I don’t want to die.”

Applejack gripped the bloody knife.

Father’s eyes were glassy. His belly wasn’t going up and down. Something purple was sliding out of it again, and he wasn’t pushing it back in.

Applejack looked at her father. There was no life in his eyes.

Mother sobbed when she saw it, then winced in pain. Her breath came shorter with each second.

“You could have saved him,” she said. “You chose not to.”

Applejack lifted the knife.

“You could have saved me,” Mother said.

The tip pierced the skin, and she groaned in pain, but kept going.

Something wailed. It was hungry and afraid and entirely a foal.

“Pinkie Pie?”

The knife clattered on the ground. Applejack stood, bleeding from her belly, and looked around in bewilderment. Her eyes stopped on the source of the noise.

It was only Apple Bloom. But the sound brought back memories, a birthday party when four dear friendships had come together like the roots of an apple tree and grown into a trunk and high leafy branches that bore fruit sweeter than she had ever tasted.

Maybe there'd be a time when she gave up. When she couldn't do no more to tend the orchard and gather the harvest.

It wasn’t a matter of what. It was a matter of how much.

And the answer, right now, was more than this.

Applejack’s breathing steadied. She knelt by the foal, lifted her and clutched her tight.

“Shh, shh. I’m going to take care of you.”

A terrible voice spoke.

“Applejack, come here!”

Applejack looked in time to see her mother fade.

Toxins built up inside.

She exhaled, and they were gone.

“No,” she said, holding Apple Bloom. “That ain’t the way things went. None of it. And I ain’t giving up Apple Bloom, not Pinkie Pie, not no pony just to see it go differently. Cause it didn’t. Ain’t nothing gonna change that.”

She kissed Apple Bloom bloodily, and then she was kneeling in the snow, her face wet with tears and snow, and her friends standing in front of her.

“Wow, she did it without help,” said Pinkie Pie, leaning on Rainbow Dash.

“Applejack!” Rarity couldn’t throw herself forward in the high snow, but she made the effort anyway. Before she reached her, Applejack pushed herself to her hoofs and looked up. Rarity flinched and stepped back from the shadow on her face.

“Cost you, huh?” said Pinkie Pie, who was covered in red bruises.

“Not really,” Applejack murmured.

“You’re bleeding!” Rarity cried.

Applejack looked down. Blood was spilling from an open wound on her belly.

“Hold still while I wrap it,” Fluttershy commanded. “I’ll send you an invoice.”

“What happened?” Rarity asked. Futtershy told Rainbow Dash to apply pressure with a strip of gauze while she wrapped bandages around it.

“Reckon the forest tried to pay me to quit,” Applejack answered. Her flank was burning like the feeling of sitting next to the fire after a long day out in the snow. It hummed through her body and filled her with warmth. She heard the song, and wondered if it had words to go with it.

“How come my cutie mark isn’t glowing?” Rainbow Dash complained.

“The forest is afraid of us,” Pinkie Pie said. “It probably knows we can’t lose if we’re together.”

“We ain’t,” Applejack said. “We’re missing Twilight.”

“I can’t find her.”

They all looked at Rainbow Dash.

“Can you fly with those broken wings?” Applejack asked.

“Faster than any of you,” Rainbow Dash answered automatically. Then she realized what they meant.

“We need to find her,” Applejack said. “Fast.”

Rainbow Dash groaned. “You all owe me so much! Fluttershy, do I have permission?”

“For a price,” Fluttershy said.

“I’m paying a steep one!”

And with that, the injured Pegasus took flight on splintered wings toward the place they had last been together before the vines had taken them: in front of the statue at the daughter bank….