Darkness. The only thing visible was emptiness. Applejack took a sharp breath, her hooves flailing as she tried to grip something; anything. She peered around the void, desperate for something to appear before her. 'Did the mirror screw up?' she thought. She called out, hoping it would attract attention, but her voice failed to even elicit a rasp.

Then, she became aware of a sound. Her ears twitched as the low, consistent rumble slowly getting louder, seemingly coming towards her. AJ swung around in every direction. 'Where's it coming from!?' As it grew closer, she began to sweat. Drawing in her back legs, she prepared to have to give something a whoopin'.

Suddenly, the newcomer made itself known. In front of Applejack, two piercing lights blinded her. She adjusted herself and stared it down as it barreled towards her. She opened her mouth in a silent yell as the odd beast roared over her.

In desperation she lashed out. Though her muscles did not do what she had thought, she found herself sitting up in some grass. Her breathing was heavy and she was sweating profusely. A light breeze breathed across her skin, sending shivers up her spine as she wrapped her arms around herself. She looked down, human clothing soothing her mind as she realized that she was where she was supposed to be.

"Now where is where ah'm supposed to be?" she asked herself. She propped herself up, attempting to gather her bearings on two legs. Thankfully, her legs kept their amazing strength and the balance came to her almost naturally. She noticed a mirror laying on the ground behind her. She stood over it cautiously, careful not to fall on it or break it. 'Ah' don't look too different, actually,' she thought. Her hair was just as bleached yellow as always and her eyes still shone green in the reflected moonlight. She could barely make out the freckles dotted across the bridge of her nose. A plaid button-up adorned her abdomen, its sleeves rolled up which likely explained the goosebumps covering her forearms. Bell-bottomed denim covered her legs loosely while shin-high boots were on her feet.

Another breeze fluttered through the air, chilling Applejack even more. She pulled down the sleeves on her shirt and held her arms tightly to herself. She looked around, spotting nothing besides expansive farmland seemingly getting ready for the growing season. "A little chilly for growing already ain't it?" Looking just past where the mirror portal had spat her out, she noticed a dirt path going both ways from where she was. She approached it, looking both ways. One way was completely dark while the other way granted at least a little solace in the form of a single porchlight a few hundred feet down the path.

Applejack sighed as she step foot on the gravel path to cross it. She paused for a second upon doing so. Listening closely, she could make out a faint rumble coming from her left. She looked down the path, noticing lights slowly growing closer and the rumbling getting louder. Fear coursed through her as she remembered her experience before waking up beside the mirror. She quickly flipped around and returned to the mirror. Picking it up, she stood it up before quickly ducking behind it, letting it rest on her back as it faced the road.

The rumbling grew in volume, growing ever closer until there was a whoosh of air and the grass gave way to the wind. The growling of the unknown beast then faded, progressing on its way. Peeking out from behind the mirror, she noticed dim red lights on its back end as it fled into the distance. She breathed a sigh of relief and stood up, letting the mirror fall back into the grass. Applejack bit back a nervous groan as she step foot on the path again. She looked both ways, not hearing anything coming, before bolting across the path. When she reached the grass on the other side, she started towards the house she noticed down the way.

'Part of me feels like ah'm not cut out for all this,' she thought, 'But ah'm already here, so ah' guess there's no backin' out now.'

The moor was completely silent to her pleasure. She looked along the horizons, noticing the sun beginning to peek out to one way. 'So there's east. That means ah'm goin' south,' she figured. She looked to the west; its dark visage giving away nothing of the night prior as clouds above promised rain to whatever region they went towards. 'Hopefully not this way.' A chill crossed her again and she picked up her pace to reach the farmhouse.

The porchlight was a dim orange against the pale yellow of the home and the brown of the porch. AJ inspected the property as she neared. The gravel path she had been following had at some point turned to cement or something akin to it, which was quite odd to her. A gravel path led from the cement and surrounded the house, trailing beyond the back of the house to several silos and a couple barns. She noticed an orchard of various fruits off behind the silos.

'Thank Celestia, farmers.' Applejack approached the house at a casual pace. She knew it would be odd to arrive to someone's front door at five or six in the morning, but she wanted to spend as little time as possible outside in this cold.

Climbing the steps of the front porch, she took a deep breath, nodding to the cat sitting on a rocking chair next to the front door. It meowed at her with wide eyes before clambering down and skittering through its own door at the bottom of the entrance. AJ gulped, 'I hope that's not a bad omen or any of that mumbo jumbo.' She rose a fist to the door, hoping these folk were much like her own when it came to getting up early.

Before she could knock however, the door was opened by an elderly man. He paused in his stride when he noticed Applejack, who took a step back. Applejack stared at him, trying to take everything in that she was in fact in a world of humans. Not only that, but she was one of the first here in over nine hundred years. Or was it eighty-something? She didn't pay the fullest of attention to the math portion of Twilight's lecture.

Applejack cleared her throat and removed her hat, covering her chest with it as she spoke. "U-uh, Good mornin', sir," she started.

The man's eyes widened substantially as he stumbled into the doorway for a moment. His gaze ran up and down her figure several times as he studied her. Finally, after several moments, AJ saw his mustache quiver and a whisper escaped his lips, but she couldn't quite make it out.

"Come again?" she asked. He reached a shaky hand out to her cheek, the dry but smooth skin touching her only for a moment before he turned back into his house and elicited a yell.

"Marianne! Grab Annabelle and come here, quick!" His voice was full of joy and confusion. AJ took a glance past into his home, though he quickly turned and wrapped an arm around her. "Please, sweetheart, come in, come in."

AJ did not fight his offer, though she was greatly confused between whether to consider this as hospitality or some human custom that Sunset or Twilight didn't mention. He guided her to a dining room where he pulled out a chair for her. She obliged and sat down. "Would you like some breakfast, dear? My wife was planning on blueberry pancakes this morning."

She thought back to the grand breakfast earlier that morning on Equus. Despite having probably eaten a day's worth of food in that one meal, Applejack felt surprisingly empty. 'Maybe the portal didn't bother keeping my food.' "Sure, ah' could go for that," AJ said, "But I would like to maybe talk about what's going on while we wait?"

The elderly man slowed to a stop and gave her a glance. His gaze had softened as he looked closer at her than he had before. He opened his mouth to speak, but footsteps and a croaking voice interrupted him.

"What's got you freaking out so early, Alfie?" Applejack and the man, Alfie she guessed, turned to the voice. A short, skinny woman of greater age looked between the two at the table. Behind her, a young girl yawned and blinked rapidly as she tried to gather her bearings. 'Must have just woken up.'

"Alfie, who is this?" the lady asked. Alfie was still staring at Applejack, his face visibly drooping the longer he did. AJ glanced to the woman, her face mixed between understanding and sorrow. The little girl peeked out and caught eyes with Applejack.

A spark lit in the girl's eyes, quickly flooded over by emotion. AJ caught every moment of the change, sensing a deep sense of pain and unnecessary maturity in the child. Of course, the question that ran through her mind was 'why is that?'

"M-mom?" the girl spoke. Alfie's breath caught in his throat, and the old woman had stiffened. Applejack tensed, looking to the woman. 'She's too old to have a child that young. Who's this girl talking to?' she thought. The woman cast a glance to AJ before leaning down to the child and whispering into her ear. AJ watched the girl's eyes water even more as tears began to form. Small murmurs escaped her lips as she sobbed.

Finally, the girl's temper burst. "No!" she shouted, breaking away from the woman. "You can't tell me that's not her! There's no way it's not!" The girl quickly rushed over to Applejack, wrapping her arms tightly around her stomach. She happily sobbed as Applejack, recovering from the outburst, cautiously pat the girl's back. "I knew you'd never leave us. Not like him…"

Venom was carried on those last words. Applejack looked between the elderly pair on either side of her, their faces warped with pain. She looked down to the girl and squeezed her shoulders lightly.

'Ah' don't know what's happened to these folks...but ah'm sure gonna find out.'