I wrote some terrible pony fiction on a fly. Wouldn't been easier on a table instead? Probably.
It's about fem-anon replacing Zecora's role as the scary witch in the Everfree forest. This is set in RGRE (Reverse Gender Roles Equestria:
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/841406/rgre-primer ). This scene takes place when AJ is just a filly.
I haven't written anything in like months, and I mean nothing. So this is just me trying to get back into it again.
This is probably not that good. Just be forewarned. It may suck, so yeah. You don't have to read it.
Also, I fixed grammar issues by sending it through ChatGPT (to fix just grammar issues) because I was too lazy to fix it myself.
Here it is:
AppleJack had never seen her mother so terrified one moment and angry the next.
“Applejack, take your brother and run back to the farm and tell Grandma Smith what’s going on,” she ordered through gritted teeth.
“But what about Pah?” Big Mac asked.
Pear Butter stomped her hoof.
“I’m going back to try to rescue him! But I can’t do that while worrying about you two.”
Applejack tried to get the words out that were on her mind. She was supposed to be a marely mare. She should say volunteer to help. But she was too afraid to.
She looked up at Big Mac. He looked like he was on the verge of crying. She realized that she was as well.
Then her mother spun around and shouted in their faces.
“Go now!”
That got AJ to jump in the air. It was her mother’s face more than anything. Perhaps her eyes, specifically.
AJ ran away. She hadn’t expected that Big Mac would rely on her. He was a strong, independent stallion. She only looked to see that he was following along because Mother had told her to. However, she was shocked to see him bite hold of her tail.
It seemed both of them were willing to do whatever their mother wished at the moment.
They bolted through the forest in the general direction of where they had come from, following where they thought it should be in their panicked state of mind. They hoped after every tree that they would burst onto the fields around Ponyville or the Sweet Apple Acres orchard.
However, what they arrived at instead was a chasm, a rope bridge, and the ruin of a castle.
They drew to a halt so as not to fall down the chasm. They were stunned out of their panic by wonder.
They wondered what this old castle even was. They had never heard of an old castle being somewhere in the Everfree before. Was it even real? Or was this another part of this cursed forest’s tricks?
Big Mac, the tall beauty that was the eye candy of the fillies in Ponyville, which AJ guarded to his chagrin, pointed at something on the other side of the chasm.
“Look, Sis. Laundry,” he said.
AJ looked. Indeed, there hung clothes, which couldn’t fit any of the prissy unicorns in Canterlot that wore such things, billowing off the branches of a tree.
AJ’s eyes inspected the castle with new eyes, scanning for more strangeness. She found something. Smoke coming out of a whole chimney in a broken tower, it too drifting with the wind.
“Somepony lives here,” she said and nodded towards the smoke. “Nopony lives in the Everfree, right?”
“Ah, don’t think so…” Mac answered.
For a moment, AJ wondered if they perhaps had exited the Everfree, but with a quick look around she still felt the roots and trees were gnarly in a non-natural way. Besides, she could sort of feel when she was in and outside of the forest. She had always been able to. It was weird.
“Perhaps,” AJ began, “this is some sort of Royal Guard outpost. Keeping the monsters of the forest at bay?”
AJ wasn’t sure at first, because she had never heard of that before, but the more she thought about it, the more it made sense. What else could be here? What else would want to live in the middle of the Everfree if not doing a job for the Princess?
Mac seemed to be on the same wavelength, or perhaps he just wanted her to be right. He nodded.
“E-e-e…yup,” he stammered out.
He looked over his shoulder.
“Let’s go,” Big Mac said. “They might know how to get back to Ponyville.”
“Yee,” AJ said.
It made sense, she thought. If anypony knew their way around the forest, it would be somepony that worked here.
AJ then realized something. If this was a Royal Guard outpost, then surely a whole battalion of guard mares were stationed here.
“Maybe they can save Pah… and Mah,” AJ said.
They shared a look. Both their eyes were wide. Suddenly they both felt a need for urgency, which had a twofold motivation. One part was the idea that they could perhaps help or save their parents from the pack of timberwolves. The second part was more self-preserving. Safety was close at hoof. They would get out of this nightmare soon.
They moved as quickly as they could while still being careful over the rope bridge. It seemed that the bridge was old as well, but had been adjusted and mended here and there with new rope and new planks.
In the back of AJ’s mind, it felt safer and smarter to just make a new bridge if the old one was falling apart rather than fall through. However, perhaps the troop stationed here were pegasi and didn’t fear falling through.
As the duo made it to the other side, they ran past the ruin of a courtyard that had newly planted flowers and plants in places. It was strangely only tidied in a corridor or path. Grass and scrap were allowed to take up space everywhere around them, but a path to the front gate was clear.
The two galloped up to the double doors and knocked on them, their hooves hammering on the steel door and rattling the ring.