Apple Bloom wistfully scattered feed for a gaggle of clucking chickens while her siblings fought inside the house over what to do with her. Coming home with a fuming Big Mac to her emotional powder keg of a sister somehow felt less awful than when she'd had to faceup for playing hooky but it was still plenty awful.

Applejack lamented both her use of violence and her unfortunate choice of attacking the daughter of Sweet Apple Acres' number one benefactor, Filthy Rich. She also threatened her with boarding school but Apple Bloom suspected they didn't have the money to pull that off and that it was mostly a bluff.

Miss Cheerilee brought up the possibility of sending the filly to therapy to help with her behavioral issues. Big Mac hinted at Diamond probably having it coming despite it not being a helpful avenue of discussion. Everyone wanted to know what set Apple Bloom off. She couldn't explain it, even to herself, so she just shrugged and said nothing. This, of course, only agitated the situation further.

Diamond Tiara had done worse things to her and her friends in the past without ever provoking physical retaliation from any of them. That wasn't to say that the fantasy hadn't played out in her head a time or two but she'd never even been close to losing it the way she had today. It was almost like the guardrails in her brain we're missing

Her brother and sister were at wit's end and seemed convinced that Apple Bloom was going to end up in prison if they didn't quell her increasingly amoral behavior.

Instead of immediately going inside the hen house, Apple Bloom stared up at the sky, getting distracted by the floaters in her eyes, a habit she'd had since she discovered them. She was grounded now; that much was certain. She wondered if she'd be able to go to Rumble's cute-ceañera whenever it was or if she'd be invited to it at all. The prospect of missing it made her feel bad but it was getting more difficult to see how her actions factored into her own predicaments. Everything was starting to just look like a conspiracy against her. That and the growing cloudiness of her mental acuity were frustrating her to no end. The only thing that made sense anymore was photography. It was the only stable ground she could stand on and she was separated from it all too often now.

Apple Bloom brought eggs into the kitchen. She left them for Applejack on the counter. Then she went to the living room to go look at the camera in the display case but she stopped in the doorway when she saw the back of Granny's head. The old mare sat still in her rocker. Just as she was about to abort the mission and turn tail, she heard her speak.

"Ap- Ab- Abble… That you, Abble Bloom?" she asked in a shaky voice. "Yer face lookin' better. Mah eyes must be gettin' better."

Apple Bloom frowned in confusion. "Y-yeah, it's me." She waited for further discourse but Granny just sat silently, a small tremor occasionally shaking her head or hooves.

Granny hadn't turned or made eye contact with Apple Bloom, so she was unsure if she was actually trying to speak to her or if she was just babbling, lost in her own world. Regardless, it made Apple Bloom uncomfortable, so she turned back into the entryway.

Applejack came in from down the stairs. "Ya finish the chickens?" she asked without an ounce of spirit left in her voice.

"Uh-huh," mumbled Apple Bloom.

"Bring yer books ta the table. We're gonna study. Ah don't have time but we're gonna do it." She brushed past Apple Bloom and turned into the living room while the filly headed for the stairs. "Alright, Granny, I'm gonna bring ya outside ta be with Big Mac. That alright?"

Granny didn't respond but Applejack was able to coax her into her wheelchair without too much trouble.

"Ah- Ah'm listenin' ta Abple Bloom," she muttered.

Apple Bloom paused on the steps at hearing her name and turned back to the doorway to listen. Again she was unsure if the old mare was really talking about her or was just confused.

"Oh, ya are?" asked Applejack in a politely placative tone. It wasn't the first time Granny had made an offbeat comment and it wouldn't be the last. "Alright," Applejack agreed. "Say goodbye fer now. You'll see her later."

To this, Granny said nothing.

At the kitchen table, Apple Bloom asked if she could study with the camera in her lap. Applejack agreed, seeing it as a weird but innocuous accommodation as long as it didn't distract her. Though Apple Bloom was as compliant and on task as she could be, she struggled to keep a thought in her brain and quickly forgot things. It wasn't that the content was beyond her reach. It was like she needed to relearn how to think. Or there was just a spanner in her gears that she couldn't get out.

Applejack gave an aggravated sigh. "You'd better not be doin' this on purpose."

"Ah'm not," whined Apple Bloom. "Ah can't think right."

"It didn't useda be this hard. What's different now?"

"Ah dunno," she shrugged.

"Ah didn't put much stock in it when Miss Cheerilee said we should get ya tested fer learnin' disabilities but maybe we should, 'cuz this is not normal."

Apple Bloom groaned. She just wanted to go back in the darkroom and have everyone stop hastling her.

---

Despite Apple Bloom being suspended from school, Applejack made sure her day started at the same time and that she did chores all throughout what would have been her school day. She complied mostly, because she knew that if she did, she'd gain access to the camera once again. That was one thing she could understand.

There were always windfall apples to gather. There were always dead trees to dismantle and stack. Apple Bloom stopped her wobbly cart next to another carcass of a lost apple tree, Winona sniffing around behind her. She didn't know how Big Mac spent the better part of the day selling in town and then came home to lay waste to all these trees. She busied herself loading up another cartfull of wood until she noticed Winona sitting on her haunches, tail wagging. Though she was facing away from the filly, she could see the dog was begging with her paws outstretched. Apple Bloom looked past her but saw nothing. It made no sense. She only did that for ponies. Not only were there no ponies over there, there was nothing but trees.

Winona dropped to all fours, then barked excitedly in a playbow. Apple Bloom watched her, bewildered as she ran in circles the same way she did when they played fetch.

"Winona," she called, but the dog kept playing. Apple Bloom dropped a split log in her wagon with a loud thud. "Winona," she shouted.

The dog stopped abruptly to look back at her, panting quizzically.

"What are ya doin?"

Winona laid down on the ground and yawned as Apple Bloom finished loading the wood.

When her wouldbe school day was over, Applejack opened the display case and allowed Apple Bloom to use the camera for one hour as long as she complied with her grounding, by staying on the Apples' property. Although she'd exhausted much of the novel photographic opportunities of the farm, she still found pleasure in wandering around till she finished off her in-progress film roll.

---

Apple Bloom reluctantly walked into the schoolhouse the morning after her two day suspension ended. The change in the class climate was immediately noticeable. Fillies and colts all seemed distant, regarding her the same way that Rumble had been. Even Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle's greetings consisted of muted smiles and subdued waves. Diamond Tiara glanced at her once and looked away, shrinking down in her chair, probably wishing to become invisible. She had bruises on her face and a pair of butterfly bandages on her forehead from a deep cut.

Something about seeing the lasting aftermath of her assault struck a disquieting chord inside her. I really did that, she thought. When she'd attacked Diamond, it felt detached and unreal, like a dream. Over the past two days, she honestly hadn't given it much thought, almost like it was just some story she overheard where she didn't know anyone involved. But there it was, real scars, inside and out. Diamond's pampered complexion forever altered because she couldn't keep her big mouth shut.

At recess, the Cutie Mark Crusaders met on the merry-go-round. The three of them sat facing the center as they spun slowly.

"Since you've been gone, Diamond Tiara's been… better?" admitted Sweetie with a frown.

"Yeah, she's traumatized so bad, she won't even look at us," laughed Scootaloo. "It's great."

Sweetie Belle shot her a flare."Scootaloo," she said in admonishment.

Scootaloo rolled her eyes and sighed. "What? Are you gonna tell me you don't like it better this way?"

Sweetie creased her forehead. "Well… I just…"

Scootaloo jumped back in before she could finish her thought. "The suspension sucks but I wouldn't feel too bad about what you did."

"Ugh," Sweetie scoffed in disgust. She got up and jumped off of the Merry-go-round with a huff and wandered away.

"Sweetie Belle?" called Scootaloo. "C'mon." She sighed and jumped off, leaving Apple Bloom spinning by herself, lost in her own thoughts.

After school, Apple Bloom had just enough time to develop a couple of rolls of film before leaving. She couldn't just while the whole afternoon away until she needed to leave for chores or homework. She had a much shorter leash now and had to stay accountable for the sake of rebuilding trust with her family.

Apple Bloom carefully pulled the slick sepia curls from their reels and chopped them up with a film cutter on the light table. Although she had to leave immediately, she couldn't resist looking at the negatives first. She could make up the lost time with a brisk trot home, she reasoned.

She put the cut strips in protective sleeves and began scanning the magnifier over them. She recognized the closeup of the pattern on a cow hide and the texture of a wall of stacked wood. The spider nest in the barn. She paused on an unfamiliar frame for a closer look. No, she remembered this one. It was the one she took of a dirty alley with dumpsters, empty bottles and a couple of abandoned chairs against a brick wall but something was different.

There, next to the first dumpster, was an earth pony that looked to be her age. She couldn't recognize them, especially since they were out of focus. The strange thing was that nothing else in the photo was blurry. It must have been motion blur, she decided. Even though the face was distorted, Apple Bloom could tell that the foal's head was turned to the side and they were looking straight at the camera and smiling. It was uncanny. How did she not remember this very obvious pony getting in the shot?

She screwed up her face but continued looking through the sequence. Everything was looking good until she got to her most recent photos and came across another unexpected pony.

She squinted down at another foal smiling back at her. "It's me?" she murmured in confusion. She racked her brain for an explanation. This was supposed to be a landscape photo of a swamp on the edge of the Everfree Forest but apparently she'd turned it into a self portrait. The most mind boggling thing though was that her pose and the composition of the image looked arbitrary, subpar even. She was standing static and straight on and too close to the edge of the frame. It was almost like she'd taken an accidental snapshot of herself… while smiling at the camera. Why and how would she go to the trouble of setting up a photo of herself and have it look like this?

She scratched her head. "Wait. Ah didn't even have the tripod with me… or did Ah?"

Suddenly it occurred to her that her cheerful smile looked very similar to the one in the other weird photo. She went back to the previous image and scrutinized the figure further. Attop the head was a blurry shape that could have reasonably been her mane bow. "Are these both me? That can't be right at all." She strained her brain, demanding answers but the more she struggled, the more the fog rolled in.

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