Shinedown T. Mare reminisces on the past with his friend Applejack, thinking back to his old partner, and to Sheriff Applejack's first real case, when he and she and Sunset the dragon discovered the emaciated body of a young filly tossed into the garbage...Shinedown's first murder...Applejack's first big investigation.

Unlike some of the earlier tales I did before I wrote this, this one's considerably more serious. Yeah, I know, there's waaaaaaaay too much tragic backstory in a lot of my characters, but what I want to try and do is show a character arc of them overcoming the sorrow in their past and becoming better people. Constantly angsting about what one's done wrong isn't being well-rounded. It's being whiny.

Having said this...I want to make something clear. Child death is not something I enjoy seeing in fiction. And certainly not without any kind of build-up or foreshadowing, and definitely not if its just shoved into a story solely to invoke an emotional reaction like that piece of SHIT that is "Cry for Justice", James Robinson's comic series. Death of any kind, especially the death of children, had better be taken freakin' seriously.

And yes. Shinedown's friend whom he's ashamed to even think about is exactly whom you think he is.