"Hafta go ta Appleoosa," grumbled a hungover Applejack. "So Big Mac has ta stay here with Granny so no one can sell in town er take ya ta school today. That alright?"

"Ah'll be fine." replied Apple Bloom, robotically stirring her grits. The filly mentally shrugged at the question. She'd walked into town a thousand times, not usually alone but it wasn't as if it was dangerous or she'd get lost.

Applejack sat down at her bowl but instead of eating, she just stared forlornly into the tabletop until she winced from her headache.

"What time's yer train?"

"Nine… twenty. Should be back late night."

An idea suddenly popped into Apple Bloom's brain. No one was going to escort her to the schoolhouse. She didn't have to go to school at all. She could just spend the day in town taking pictures and then come home after school ends. Cheerilee would just think she was sick or something and Big Mac would think she went to school.

Apple Bloom choked down a conciliatory amount of grits and stuffed her camera in her saddle bag before heading out alone.

In every spare moment, she was thinking about photography now, about looking at things in different perspectives and composing the world around her into photographs. She never wanted to stop taking pictures. With her muse continuously calling to her, things like school and chores had become even more of a drag. She'd photographed everything that intrigued her at the farm and wanted to shoot elsewhere but it was much harder with all of her obligations. Today she'd have hours with no oversight or strings attached. She didn't even have that on the weekends.

Apple Bloom split off from the path and circumvented the school through the woods. She could hear the distant mean spirited cackling of Diamond Tiara as she entered the schoolhouse on the other side of the trees.

Once in town, she began scouring the city, scrutinizing everything for something resonating to her like an overzealous tourist. With new eyes, she took a second look at everything that had become invisible to her and found so much artistic potential that she'd never noticed before.

Not having her tripod with her, she strapped her camera to a railing to help take a long exposure of the fountain in front of town hall. Then she went in close to the water feature and took several pictures with a fast shutter speed, freezing the flying droplets in mid air. After photographing a few of the most obvious sights around town, she began to gravitate toward decay and stark industrial edifices, a defunct train depot and an empty cement drainage ditch full of abandoned junk. She used shopping carts and wagon wheels as both props and subjects and even found a way to take a few timed self portraits of herself in silhouette in a cement culvert.

Everyone in class was taking photos of flowers and their pets. She took a macro image of rusted bolts, chains and open pipes with murky water flowing through them. She took a picture of an infestation of mud dauber nests and a dead millipede surrounded by shimmering shards of broken glass. Weeds growing through a crack in the cement that somehow reminded her of her parents. A completely unremarkable rock that Apple Bloom realized was special because it had existed forever in some form and in such an immense universe with quadrillions of orbs floating in the dark and endless possibilities therein, somehow their two paths had crossed at this very time and place.

She came upon a grungy tackle box that had lost most of its contents besides the fishing weights which sank with it. Were there fish in the drainage ditch when it was full, she wondered. That didn't seem to make sense. The grody tackle box was cool though. When she looked through the viewfinder, instead of seeing the box, she saw herself aiming the camera at the box as viewed from a vantage point some distance behind her. With a start, she pulled the camera from her face and blinked several times before rubbing her eyes. She looked again and found the view to be normal.

"What?" she whispered before casting a wary glance behind herself at the vacant ditch.

In the early afternoon, she wandered through the streets and noticed that ponies were far more interesting subjects when going about their business naturally than they were when they knew a camera was pointed at them. She began taking candid photos of ponies she didn't even know.

Halfway through her third roll of film for the week, Apple Bloom looked up at the clocktower. It was already after school and later than she'd intended to leave. She had to hurry home and do her chores. She'd get a scolding now. She'd have to say that she just dallied in town or something.

She galloped out of town and onto the old dirt road, kicking up clouds in her wake. Her pace slowed as her lungs began to sting but she kept her steps brisk. When she made it halfway across the orchard of Sweet Apple Acres, she stopped dead in her tracks. There on the porch was Big Mac and her teacher. She felt a sickening pang in her gut. Cheerilee must have come to check up on her or something.

Apple Bloom squeezed through the fence lining the road and hid behind a tree. She peeked out, watching the two converse. It looked like she was caught dead to rights but her mind still raced futilely for some magic excuse to get her out of the situation.

She expected Cheerilee to leave any minute now. She'd hide from her and then return home to throw herself on the floor in front of Big Mac. And then when Applejack came home… Just the thought turned her blood to ice. Why didn't she just go to school?

To her surprise, both Cheerilee and Big Mac left the porch and walked across the turnaround but not in the direction of the road. She kept watching as Big Mac led her teacher into the barn and shut the door behind them.

Apple Bloom scratched her head. "What?" she breathed. "Why would they…" The gears turned slowly in her mind. They wanted to be alone like Scootaloo and Rumble do? No. That didn't make sense. They're not like that. Her curiosity was going to kill her if she didn't find out.

Apple Bloom trotted quietly across the orchard grass and crept up to the side of the barn. There she paused to eavesdrop. She expected to hear talking but instead she could hear the sound of muffled grunting and moaning. Mystified, she stood up on her hind legs to peer through a large knot hole. There, sprawled face up on a haystack, was her teacher, Miss Cheerilee. Big Mac laid atop her, thrusting his hips rhythmically.

Apple Bloom's eyes grew huge. They were… copulating. She was sure of it. She'd never seen such a thing before but what else could it be? It all looked so raw and instinctual. It was as if nothing else existed in that moment. They'd completely lost themselves in each other. Scootaloo and Rumble didn't do this… she didn't think.

Cheerilee wrapped her forelegs around her brother's back. Her mouth was open, blissfully sighing as he pushed into her. That expression. It was the same one from her favorite photo, the mare on the park bench. It was a special face ponies didn't show around just anyone. Overcome by a visceral rush, Apple Bloom raised her camera, eclipsing the knot hole with her lens. She framed her teacher's carnal ecstasy and captured it for her collection.

---

"Ya played hooky after we trusted you ta do the right thing," snarled Big Mac, stamping his hoof on the floor and sending tremors through his baby sister's legs.

Apple Bloom cowered before him, keeping her eyes on the floor, not only out of fear but also because it was just hard to look at him the same now. All she could think about when she saw his face was him entangled with her teacher and those images burned into the film in her camera and her own eyes. Her perception of them was irreparably shattered. Was that something they'd secretly been doing together for a while or did it just suddenly happen today out of the blue?

It didn't take them long to finish up in the barn and when her teacher left, Apple Bloom returned to the house, apparently before Big Mac had gotten around to freshening up. She could smell Miss Cheerilee on him, both her shampoo and her… scent. His scent too for that matter. It was an overpowering cocktail of lust. Her mind felt like it was going haywire. Their coupling raised so many questions in her mind about not only the significance of the act in general but what it meant between them in particular. She knew it was something she wasn't supposed to see, therefore it was probably something she shouldn't ask him about.

Despite the whiplash of the two opposing events butted up right against each other, Big Mac's intense anger kept him on point.

"Miss Cheerilee says yer close ta failin' math an' science and she's worried that the extra workload from yer photography class is distractin' you. What were ya doin' with yer little day off anyway?"

"Well, I was just takin' pictures in town," quivered Apple Bloom.

"Don't ya think things are hard enough around here without ya makin' more trouble fer us?" he thundered. "Ya complain about everythin'. Ya lie ta weasel yer way outta work. Ya don't think about anyone but yer self anymore. Ya burn through every bit a good faith given to ya. When Applejack gets back, we're gonna have a serious talk about yer new class and yer consequences." Big Mac held out his hoof expectantly. "Gimme yer camera."

Apple Bloom gasped in horror and shook her head. "Wait, no," she cried. "Ya can't! Takin' pictures is the only thing Ah like doin' anymore!"

"We'll talk about it later, Apple Bloom. "Ah need ya ta focus on yer responsibilities right now."

Apple Bloom removed the camera from her saddle bag and reluctantly passed it to him.

"Now go get yer chores done," he grumbled.

His command was a welcome dismissal from the scolding but she was without the camera now and tears were beginning to well in her eyes.

"Ah just want everythin' ta go back how it was," she whimpered.

Apple Bloom burst out the door but didn't make it too far before she was sprawled out hysterical in the dirt, sobbing her eyes out. Everything inside her was distorted and confusing. At that moment she could see clear as day how she had sabotaged herself and how the scheme was high risk, low reward and in the big picture just wasn't worth it, but at the time, everything just seemed so deceptively reasonable in her head.

All too frequently she didn't seem able to discern what was appropriate or good until after the consequences were rendered. She couldn't remember ever having this problem before. Well, admittedly she'd made some worse than usual decisions since the farm's decline but usually she could reason her decisions out afterwards and see why she'd made them in that moment, out of frustration with everything, desire for control or attention. Now it was as though many of her ideas weren't even her own at all and when they were, the impulses they spawned were much bolder than normal and becoming harder to say no to.

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