Applejack spent the next week in a fog.
She felt completely numb -- or miserable: she was no longer sure quite which, as deep despair had become but her natural state. Whenever she tried to probe her own feelings, she touched a darkness within which made her want to fling herself off the same cliff that had claimed her parents. And Applejack still wanted to live -- thugh she wasn't entirely sure why she wanted to live, any more.
Sometimes, someting would set her off, and she would weep: she wasn't even sure of the reason; it was just something she had to do, so she did it. Often, she wuuldn't even be aware that she was crying until her vision blurred, and she felt the tears rolling down her face. Even then, she felt not so much so much sorrow as she did a great emptiness at her core.
Waking up was generally bad. She'd come half-awake from vivid dreams; always about her parents, and always of one or two types. Sometimes, she would dream her parents alive, playing with and comforting her. She'd wake briefly happy -- and then remember that the dream was a lie, and her parents were dead. Other times, she would dream of their deaths -- and wake to the horrible awareness that the dream was naught but the Truth. In either case, she would awake sobbing -- but quietly, as she didn't want her kin to hear her weakness. She told herself that she had to stay strong.
She went through the motions of living. She wiped her tears (she was careful to do this after ne embarrasing encounter in which Big Mac saw them still on her face and wiped them away for her) and set out before dawn, as usual to do her morning chores. She saw no reasn why her sadness should stand in the way of being useful; she certainly didn't want to be mollycoddled by what remained of her family.
Applejack liked doing her chores, anyway, and all the more so now. Doing chores was safe and sane and secure, and she knew she was doing good and helping her whole family. She knew how to do chores, there were no terrible surprises in them, merely a simple set of motions which had to be repeated to get the job done. She didn't have to worry when she did chores. She didn't have to think when she did chores. Not having to think was now about as close as she could still come to happiness. Or at least to relief from the pain.
The only problem was that now she made mistakes in her chores. She rarely had before; so these mistakes bothered her, the more so because it was Big Mac who caught them. These mistakes were never in how she did the chores -- even at twelve, Applejack was an experienced and capable farm-hoof, at any task not requiring great physical strength -- but, rather, in realizing when she should stop doing a particular chore.
She felt really stupid when she did this, because messing up like that could waste supplies or even damage the trees, which latter result would be from her point of view close to blasphemous betrayal of the life forms which were the source of their support, and which had no choice but to trust in the Apples to nurture and defend them.
Normally, Mackie would have scolded her for these errors. Instead, he just looked at her sadly, which was far, far worse.
Big Mac himself didn't seem to be doing all that well. Applejack could see that in those rare moments when the fog cleared temporarily. Big Mac had seen the bridge break, and the start of their parents' fall, but he had been too far back to witness their final horrible plummet into the abyss. He had run down only in time to hold Applejack and weep with her as they sat by the brink of that dreadful gorge.
Since that horrible moment, Applejack had not directly seen her brother cry again, but there were times when he would look away, and his shoulders would shake, and later she could smell salt on his face. Most of all, he was ale, his face drawn with strain and -- while he had never exactly been a chatterbox - he had become incredibly taciturn, rarely saying anything beyond "Eeyup" or "Eenope," and those only in response to direct questions.
It was very obvious that he was in pain, but Applejack could do little to help him -- it was all she could do to keep herself from completely breaking down.
For a couple of days, Applejack kept going to school.
School was sort of a chore, something she had to do, and try to do well, in order to be a good filly. Her father Tangelo had always emphasized the importance of getting a good education tp success in her future adult life. Her mother Melrose had agreed with him on this matter, and it seemed even more important to Applejack not to let her parents down, now that they were ... gone.
Unlike her future friend and leader, Applejack was not and never would be a natural scholar. Jackie did not actually enjoy complicated books, and most of what she would read as an adult would either be light fiction, or directly-related to running apple farms. Applejack was always to have great respect, verging on awe, for true scholars -- into which class she loyally, if inaccurately, placed her father, on the strength of his upper-class Manehattan education and legacy of a trunk-full of old college texts -- but she lacked the mental orientation to love learning herself.
Withal, Applejack was both highly-intelligent and very determined, and while she was not enthusiastic about schol, she could endure it well enough to gain good grades by dint of determined effort. Applejack was not the sort of student of whom teachers dream, but she was a good girl and steady slogger, who could always be depended upon to do her assignments, competently and on time.
But now, Applejack found it almost impossible to pay attention to what her teacher was saying. She could hear the words perfectly well, it was just that they seemed meaningless, irrelevant to any of her concerns. Try hard as she might, she simply could not bring herself to care about the lessons. What did classical literature or mathematical equations matter in a world in which her parents had been so suddenly taken from her? She felt guilty for thinking this -- she knew it was weak and self-indulgent -- but the thought had been conceived, and its reality was undeniable truth, whether or not she was wrong or right in thinking so. She would not make trouble -- respect both for legitimate authority and for the needs of other Ponies in general was deeply engaged in her soul -- but neither could she bring herself to pretend to care enough to participate.
So she sat, numbly and quietly, while the words of her teacher, Play Write, buzzed over her head, meaning no more to Applejack than the buzzing of the bees outside the window of the one-room schoolhouse in which she sat. Sometimes, she tried to take notes, but she later found them to be mere jubmles of words and phrases Play Write had uttered, completely out of context and bearing little resemblance to an effective outline of any useful lesson.
Applejack was now, however, very good at rote copying. Given that sort of assignment -- and her teacher's problem was now getting Jackie's attention long enough to actually give her the assignment -- Applejack could copy it perfectly, withut error or pause, as if she were some sort of pantograph, rather than a twelve-year-old filly with a thousand-hoof stare.
Play Write understood how to teach school at a rural schoolhouse. She had, after all, been doing so for the last three decades of her life, ever since Smelly Rich, the son of Stinking Rich and father of Filthy Rich, had hired her fresh out of college, thirty-two years ago in 1458 when she had been but twenty-two years old and out of funds. She was fifty-four now, and had spent three-fifths of her whole life teaching in Ponyville, tempted to stay by the generous funds the Riches provided to ensure that their children enjoyed a first-class education in a rustic little town. It was safe to say that, to the extent of her potential. she had well and truly mastered her profession.
Play Write knew her curriculum, and how to bond with a class of often poorly-motivated rural students, and get them to care sufficiently about her good opinion that they would accept her leadership. She was no great educator, but she was a highly-competent teacher. She felt responsible for her students, and paid attention to their conditions. And she knew full well that something was very wrong with Applejack.
She knew, of course, of the deaths of Melrose Apple and Tangelo Orange. There was no way she could avoid hearing the essential facts of the story, in a town as small as Ponyville, especially given that both Applejack and Rarity were her students. It was extremely obvious to her that Applejack was in shock at the sudden death of her parents. Being a fundamentally-decent and caring mare, above and beyond her role as a teacher, she wanted to help the heart-stricken young orphan.
So she did the responsible thing. On the second day of observing Applejack's clear trauma, she spent a message to Mrs. Green Apple Smith, Applejack's Granny Smith, asking to meet with her regarding the condition of her grand-daughter.
It was not without some trepidation that Play Write dispatched this request. For Play Write and Greenie Smith Apple did not get along very well.
Play Write had been born to a declining family of the Fillydelphia gentry -- the set that now called themselves the "Mane Line" because they had built their country houses along the railroad northwest from the city. But Play Write's family had lost their fortune to a series of bad investments before they had been able to build a country home, and Play Write herself had grown up unable to support herself in the style of which she had expected.
She had failed to make a wealthy match, and in consequence had found herself with little respectable choice, given her own education and talents, save to become a schoolteacher. She had been lucky to get an offer in that regard as generous as that made by the Riches. But -- despite her often-painful knowledge of just how far she herself, a Play of the Fillydelphia Plays, had fallen by becoming a mere rural schoolteacher -- she still considered herself the social superior of the population of Ponyville, even of the Riches, her benefactors.
Play Write was not obnoxiously-arrogant in her expression of this belief. Among other things, she could never have succeeded as a small-town schoolteacher while openly-despising the town whose children she taught. Beyond that, her very concept of proper conduct required social modesty; to engage in a gaudy display of one's claimed superior status was, by her lights, terribly declasse.
Instead, the quiet air of class she exuded had an uplifting effect on the young and burgeoning town of Ponyville, and on the two generations of schoolchildren who came under her tutelage. It gained her the respect of the adult townsponies as well, and hence Play Write's words were well-heeded by the leaders of Ponyville Society -- such as it was, back then. Most of them sensed her social superiority, and courted her approval.
The problem was that Green Apple Smith was not among her admirers. Greenie had been born to the Apples a century ago when they had still been Pilgrim-Ponies, wanderers searching for a new home. They had found that home here, on the last lake made by the Avalon before it plunged into the Muddy through that same gorge into which her daughter and son-in-law had recently fallen. They had founded Sweet Apple Acres, and around them had grown Ponyville, originally as a huddle of houses around the Acres' river landing. They predated the town, they predated the Riches, and they knew it.
The Apples were fiercely proud, with a pride that saw Play Write's own upper middle class manners as mere pretensions. They were anachronisms, leftovers from the Equestria that had been before the age of steam and industry, misfits in the new world of urban sophistication. They were anachronisms even in their own home town, which had grown from a mere river landing to the home of fashionable families such as the Riches and the Silvers. They were mere country bumpkins.
Yet they were proud, and here in Ponyville they were respected, and Play Write knew that the town's respect for the Apples ran deeper than their respect for the Riches, and certainly deeper than anything she could earn as a newcomer -- and newcomer she was, even after three decades of living here, because her roots were planted back in Fillydelphia. Play Write paid tribute to their social standing, much as the necessity bothered her, because if she hadn't, Ponyville would never have respected her. Even the Riches respected the Apples.
It was easier than it might have been because most of the Apples were fairly nice Ponies, and they treated her with respect in return.
Greenie Smith, on the other hoof ...
... Well, she wasn't openly rude to Play Write. Greenie generally avoided being rude, save to those she specifically disliked, or members of groups she specifically disliked, and those were mostly farmers of and traders in other fruits, whose trade associations she not unjustly suspected of working to try to increase the popularity of other fruits at the expense of her own apples. And even there she had made exceptions, most notably for her son-in-law Tangelo Orange. But then, rudeness wasn't the problem.
Rudeness, Play Write could have dealt with, and dealt with in such a manner as to show that she was the better Pony. Rudeness, Play Write could have met with class, and grace, rising above it and making Greenie look like a mannerless hick by comparison.
Which, Play Write knew, Greenie Smith Apple well grasped, which is why the old Apple mare never used such tactics against her.
Instead -- and it bothered Play Write to even comtemplate this -- what Greenie did was treat her as if she were a rather naive and spoiled rich child of the city, who lacked the common sense of a wise old farm mare, such as Greenie herself. This worked with all the prejudices of the native Ponyville Ponies, and in such a way that it was all Play Write could do simply to keep her own temper.
But she knew she must try this time.
For the sake of little Applejack.
They met at the Ice Cream Shop, a good neutral location for them both. Play Write came in first, then had to wait a good fifteen minutes for Greenie to show. Play Write wondered, while she was waiting, how Greenie had such a good natural sense of negotiating tactics, given that she was after all nothing but an old farm mare. Play Write had wanted Greenie to meet her at the schoolhouse: her own natural place, and one where the surroundings would have impressed upon Greenie the social importance of the schoolteacher. Instead, Greenie had sent back a note stating "Ice Cream Shop. Be there 4 o'clock sharp," and nothing more.
And then, Greenie was late. Obiously on purpose, thought Play Write with annoyance, and for the same reason I might have done it. And because I called for the meeting, I was either summoning her or supplicating her. And if she tells me where to meet, and when to be there -- and then she's late -- that's as much as telling me that she's in charge, the rustic boor.
But when Greenie showed up Play Write gave her a big smile, as gracious as any she would have given to another Pony on the Mane Line when she had been a young maiden instead of an old maid, and said "Mrs. Apple! I am so glad that you could be here."
"Hello, Miss Play," said Greenie. "Ah'm sorry for the lateness in the hour. Things're a mite out o'kilter at the Acres, what with ..."
And Play Write saw the look of anguish in those orange eyes, and realized to her own horror the nature of her own mistaken assumption.
"I am sorry, Mrs. Apple," said Play Write. "I had no idea that ..." She had no good idea how to finish the statement.
Greenie focused her gaze on Play Write. "A mother shouldn't have to bury her own daughter," the old farm mare, who for the first time in Play Write memory, was finally starting to look her true age of almost a century, simply said. "Nor her son-in-law alongside."
Until that moment, Play Write had not really considered in detail how Greenie must have been feeling. Greenie had borne four daughters and some sons, to be true, but Melanie Rose had been her firstborn and her favorite; and she had by all reports gotten on well with Tangelo Orange also. It had not been only Applejack who had been bereaved. Greenie and Blackie and Big Mac must also have been devastated.
"I'm sorry ..." Play Write said again helplessly.
"'Tain't yore fault," said Greenie, "none of it. Just is, and nothing anypony can do about it, that's all." She blinked back something, which may have been a speck of dust in her eye, then said "So, Miss Play. Fer what did you want to talk to me about Applejack? She been bad in school?"
"What? --" asked Play Write, momentarily confused. "No! Oh no! She's not causing any trouble, not in particular ..."
"Then what do you want to talk to me about?" Greenie asked.
"Well ... she's being good ... it's just that --" Play Write took in a deep breath, regained her composure. "It's just that she doesn't seem to be really there in my class any more. I mean she is physically present, of course, and she does her very best to do her assignments but ... I think she's very badly depressed. Well past the point where she can be expected to participate. It's not her fault ... I think she's emotionally shocked by what's happened to her I don't think she can concentrate on school right now."
"Well, yes," replied Greenie, leaning in and speaking slowly, as if to a not very bright foal. "Her parents just died. She's sad. What would you expect?" She leaned back and frowned. "Ah just didn't know it was this bad ... Ah hoped that she would be happier in school, like ... well, never you mind."
"It's not just sad," Play Write said, desperate both to explain what she meant and to regain control of the conversation. "I think she's medically depressed. She needs expert help ... she could get it at the new hospital, I could speak to the doctors, arrange for treatment ..." As soon as the word was out of her mouth, Play Write realized the mistake she'd made, but it was too late to take it back.
"She don't need treatment in no hospital," said Greenie flatly. "She ain't sick. She's sad. She just needs to grieve, and heal. Takes time, that's all." She sighed bleakly. "Takes time for all of us."
"But professional --"
"Jackie don't need no professional help," reiterated Greenie. "She needs to be among her own, and work, and go on with life. Ah'm not going to put her at the mercy of strangers."
"It's not like --"
"Really?" asked Greenie. "How much time have you spent in the funny farm?"
Play Write gaped in indignation. "None, of course, but --"
"And you didn't like me insinuating that you had," Greenie pointed out. "You think it's one thing if some poor dumb farm filly needs help from the educated doctors, but quite another thing if yore own well-born self was to be in such a situation. Ah don't want to turn Jackie into somepony who needs to lean on other ponies, especially strangers. Besides," she said, "Ah've heard that some nasty shenanigans sometimes go on in those places -- Ah trust mahself and mah family to take care of Jackie better'n that."
"I was thinking of a perfectly respectable --"
"Then jest yew go on perfectly respectin' it," Greenie said, her accent thickening. "Ah'll take Jackie out of school for a while, let her rest up on the farm with some light chores for a while. See how she feels in a week or two. If she ain't getting any better by then, Ah might consider sendin' her to one'a yore professionals."
"Prompt treatment --"
"Ain't needful," Greenie pointed out.
Play Write winced at the mangled grammar. "I think --"
"Yew've told me what yew think, and Ah've told yew what Ah think," Greenie said. "Ah've said how it's gonna be. That's closed."
Play Write had no choice but to accept Greenie's decision. While Applejack was obviously troubled, she was not actually delusional, nor was their any evidence that she was a threat to herself or anypony else. It would be difficult to get a judge to commit the filly in such a case, and nigh-impossible to do so against the wishes of her guardian and grandmother by blood, who was also one of the most influential mares in the region.
So it was that Granny Smith pulled Applejack from school, and she did indeed assign her light chores -- both to keep the depressed filly occupied, and because there is almost always some work worth doing on a farm. At the same time, the other Apples -- including various of Applejack's uncles, aunts and cousins who had shown up to help out Greenie and Blackie in their time of need -- kept an eye on Applejack, making sure that she slept, fed and cleaned herself regularly. And of course they conversed with her in friendly fashion, even when the traumatized filly barely acknowledged their presence.
It was by no coincidence that this program -- light physical and mental exercise coupled with supervision and verbal therapy -- was essentially the same thing that the "professionals" whose help Play Write had urged on Greenie would have done for Applejack at one of the better mental hospitals of the day. What was more, though they did not talk of it much, the other Apples were quite aware of the risk Applejack was at of suicide, and somepony kept an eye on her at all times. As has been intimated, the Apples were no stranger to sanity-shattering tragedies, nor the equine wreckage such left in their wake.
So it was that Applejack gradually healed.