“So, what did Ponyville put you through?” Flim produced a mug of cider with the same delicacy he did the question. The mare before him had the looks of someone who had survived something much more intense than Ponyville, even if Ponyville was known to him as a place where hope goes to fade away. All in all, she had the appearance of one of their unsellable barrels of cider he and Flam had ditched a ways back.
“Where would the... where would I begin...” Trixie pondered, and she decided to start with the cider. After a sip, her eyes widened and her appearance looked a little more awake as she struggled to find the right words. “This cider...” she began, “you made this?”
“That I did, that I did... well, that we did, my brother and me … and the cider squee-zy,” he clarified in a sing-song rhythym which came at the cost of pronunciation.
“We came to Ponyville trying to make a name for it—for us, that is. Big goals, big plans, big dreams.”
“Big problems,” she interupted with empathy.
“You, too, huh? It started off well enough, maybe even according to plan, but one thing lead to another, and those ponies...” he trailed off, helping himself to a draught of cider as if to nurse the emotional scars.
“Me, too, indeed!” She allowed herself to vent, “I have never in my travels found a more meddlesome, short-sighted, unimaginative, overbearing, close-knit, and caring group of mares.”
Flim chuckled on the tail end of a long sip, “If I was reading that instead of hearing it, I might think you started complimenting them.”
There was a pregnant silence between them. They each nursed their ciders a little to fill the gaps before Trixie spoke again in a quiet voice that almost covered the nervous smallness lurking beneath it.
“Don't get me wrong. Ponydom owes all it has to harmony, and all that, but... I'm not against it, I mean, but I'm not the most pious pony out there, either. The way Ponyville seemed to come together, in spite of anything, least of all me and whatever living I was ekeing out...”
There was room enough in her mug of cider for a tear or two, which – if Flim had noticed it at all – he did not draw attention to.
“It's not fair,” he said, not sure what to say at all. “It's as if all that harmony business somehow just... left. Or at least, that there wasn't enough of it in Ponyville to go around. My brother and I, we haven't talked much about it yet, but I know he agrees with me; some of it might have been our fault, but we...”
She smiled a little. Misery loved company. “Just don't know what went wrong?”
“Oh, I can tell you exactly what went wrong,” he grimaced, “We got excited. In over our heads. Maybe even a little dishonest, greedy... evil? No, never, but... I said things I regret. Not as much as I regret how we were put out to pasture for it, though. Run out of town, practically by a mob.”
“At least you still have your cider train?”
“Cider-train!” Flim laughed an honest laugh; he had never thought of it as a cider “train” of all things, even if his brother did like to call it a form of locomotion.
“We may have kept our machine, yes, but we left without the one thing we'd wanted in the first place. All this trouble, all for zap apples, and we haven't got even one.”
“Zap apples? Oh … like the jam? Ah, right! That's made in Ponyville, isn't it?”
“Ponyville and nowhere else! It's an amazing product made from equally amazing produce. The zap apples, you see, only grow on a handful of days, on a handful of trees, in Ponyville and nowhere else.”
“They're not just... magically treated apples?”
“We tried that. No... it doesn't work out. Zap apples grow on these ghastly-looking black trees, jagged things that you wouldn't expect to bear anything at all.”
“Black trees? Shaped like briars, sort of?”
“Yes..... that's a good way to say it.... did you go to that apple farm while you were in Ponyville?”
“No, I never got to go far from the center of town, really, except for when I ran.... when I left. I wound up lost.”
“Lost? In Ponyville?”
“In Everfree Forest.”
“Th-The...” Flim stuttered, then set down his drink, then just stared. That explained why she looked so disheveled. It's a wonder she had her wits about her at all. For all her apparent weakness, there was no doubting a certain strength to her if she was telling the truth.
She nods, “I wouldn't recommend it. But somewhere there I did find a bunch of trees like that. I thought they were dead,” she shrugged.
Flim thought about many things very quickly. This was new information, wasn't solid information, but was a lot more solid than spending time in some dusty no-apple town losing bits faster than they could earn them.
“Say, Trixie,” his eyes all but glowed, “I have an idea. Would you be willing to go back to Ponyville with my brother and me, just to check to see if you recognize those trees? If there was a way to get zap apples without Ponyville...”
“Go BACK there?!” She blinked, then thought it over. One of the things she thought about was the taste of zap apple jam – a rare and rarified treat, to be sure – and the taste of the cider she had just enjoyed. If zap apple cider could be made, and if it was made by these brothers, it would really be something. Moreover, she had noticed Flim's gift of gab. In her own head, her own gears were turning. If she could go into the Everfree forest with ponies who could witness her exploits, who could talk about them, who could prove them, even if they weren't necessarily entirely without artistic license, then she would have the only thing that she originally lied about having: a reputiation.
“Even if we did, and even if those trees were the same, even if we went to the Everfree forest looking for them, even if we did find them... that's a dangerous thing you're talking about!”
Flim read the look in Trixie's eyes as best he could and considered her someone who just needed a little nudge.
“Dangerous... but it could be the start of something unimaginably lucrative. I don't have much trouble thinking of things I'd do with the success, how about you? What do you say?”
There was some reservation, but the fears of loneliness, of failure, and of falling into obscurity were all less than the fear of going back to Everfree Forest. Ponyville, now, that would be a real test, but they were only going to look at some farm. How much could that involve? They could practically do it on the way to Everfree, and with the contraption she was looking at, it might not even take half a day.
“I say you have a deal.”
Flim smiled and offered up his mug, and Trixie toasted with her own.
“I'll fill my brother in on this tomorrow morning. Then it'll be full speed ahead. Are you staying at that rickety old inn they have in town?”
“I hadn't gotten that far yet...”
“You can stick around here if you want. We could start earlier that way, at least.”
Trixie accepted as humbly as she could. She was awash with lots of different emotions, ideas, and hopes, and wasn't sure if she could even get much sleep. She was scared of danger, sure, but anxious for a chance at fame and fortune. Ponyville was the last place she ever wanted to be seen again, but now, there was a reason to go there, and she might even be able to laugh at them all in the end if everything worked out.
She couldn't be certain if it was in her dreams or for real, but she resented them for laughing at her. It wasn't hatred or anything like that, but it was enough of a feeling to have weighed her down all the way here. That same weight now provided fuel for the spark of ambition that flickered within her.
Flim was equally rejuvenated. Here was a chance to reach out and clutch a dream which had only just seemed to slip through their hooves. If this worked – and how could it not, with three unicorns? – they would be back to their ideal scenarios in no time. He wanted to prove to all of Equestria just what cider was about, and by extension, what he and his brother were all about.
Both of them went back to sleep dreaming, as they once did, of all the wonderful things lying in store for them.