#i held a steady job in customer service since the summer going into high school on top of babysitting 3-4 days after school every

[randomgumwrapper]

got rejected from my dream school !!!!

[quantumrpg]

NAME: Alaina Eisler AGE: 26 (linearly 58) SPECIES: Werewolf OCCUPATION: pawn shop/underground fighter YEAR OF ARRIVAL: 1971 RESIDENT FOR… four years. FACECLAIM: Carly Chaikan

t i m e  i s  a n  i l l u s i o n,  b u t  n o t  o u r  s t o r i e s…

In the summer of 1926, a group of three hunters made a pact to clean Illinois of werewolves, and over the course of a few weeks, traveled across the state wiping out any pack they could find. Helena Eisler had been the beta of a pack near Chicago, but she had been visiting her sister in Wisconsin to help with a new baby, and returned three weeks late find her home in ruin.

Vengeance consumed her. She tracked down the other survivors, settled mostly into packs along neighboring states, and asked what they knew, then sought out on her own for information. One of the hunters had died during the attacks, but the remaining two were cocky enough to brag that Illinois no longer had werewolves. It took her nearly a year of searching before she was able to wait inside one’s home for the moon to rise, and let the wolf take it’s revenge for her.

The wolf only purpose was to kill and the hunter and his family were torn apart with the savagery of a hungry animal. However when she sniffed out where Alaina was hiding, and her jaws closed around the girl’s shoulder, the bite unlocked something dormant. Helena realized what had happened when they both awoke the next morning. Struck by guilt, she lied and told Alaina that she had broken her chains and attacked her family accidentally, then she took the girl to a pack a few states over with the intent of leaving her there. Without any other family, Helena was the only fixed point in her life and so when she did leave a few months later, Alaina insisted on following.

They came into a new town most often as a recent widow and her teenage daughter. The sympathy helped, and it made an easy explanation for Alaina’s temper. To keep them afloat, Helena resorted largely to confidence scams and straight up theft, especially when there was no work in town. Alaina picked it up by imitation, and Helena had too much difficulty already managing Alaina to make herself a hypocrite on the issue.

Depending on the given day, Alaina swung wildly between despising and idolizing Helena. She was unable to process her grief, and Helena tried to insist she remain in school, but Alaina spent more time under disciplinary action than in class, expelled often for fighting. They moved frequently, avoiding the concerned teacher’s suggestions that Alaina might be better in a reform school, or at least, please, any school but theirs.

It became easier for Alaina to stop attending altogether. She had little desire to learn any of the lessons and at the time no one thought much of a young girl not in school. When they did spend enough time in an area to encounter a pack, Helena made as little contact as possible, though Alaina was never really able to understand why.

Though delayed, the mission of revenge that Helena had undertaken was never abandoned. She knew there was one more hunter, likely frightened into hiding but still out there, somewhere. Like any hunter, the ones who preyed on the supernatural liked to brag, and Helena knew how to listen. Travelling across the country, she stayed alert to any news she could, trying to find hunter hot spots so she could ask around for clues. That no one paid that much attention to a woman often worked in her favor, and she could listen unnoticed to stories. Then after particular heinous ones, Helena sometimes followed the hunter home and tore them to bits.

She realized after a few such encounters that though she didn’t care if this came back to haunt her personally, she could be putting Alaina’s life in danger as well. Though it filled her with dread for the inevitable consequences, Helena bought her a pocket knife and taught Alaina how to defend herself. When she noticed dried blood on the blade later, she grit her teeth and didn’t ask.

In the midst of the depression, money became difficult enough that they were forced to seek shelter with a pack. It was unusually large, notorious it’s open arms and the fickle rule of it’s alpha. To earn his favor, Helena bragged to the pack’s leader that she’d been the one killing hunters across the country over the last few years. The story spread quickly across the pack and when Alaina overheard it, she confronted Helena. Not willing to admit to Alaina that she’d lied to her, the row dissolved quickly into screaming and Helena left that night without a word to anyone else. Taking pity, the pack’s leader Sebastian asked Alaina to stay, and with nowhere else to go, she accepted.

A pack mate gave her work on his farm, tending mostly to the animals or watching over the property when he had to be away. Surrounded by other werewolves, she came to understand her own wolf and learned to make her peace with it, but the only outlet she was able to find for her anger was violence. Within the pack, that wasn’t too difficult. It was one of frequent conflict, and as long as he had absolute power, the pack leader allowed the rest to fall as it may.

Alaina abandoned the lessons of control and temperance that Helena had tried to instil, and embraced her nature. Mostly by result of refusal to submit, she learned how to fight. She was vicious enough to win many, but as often she slunk away humbled and furious. Occasionally a loss would nearly cost her life. As the years crept by Sebastian began to pay attention to the angry young wolf, and knowing she could be a threat or an ally, took the effort to winning her over. She had received praise so rarely in her life, his favor was like a high, and almost instantly addictive. He maintained his rule mostly through force, and any disobedience was met with strict repercussions.

Under their leader’s directive, the pack’s numbers swelled. The chaos of the war made it much easier to remain unnoticed, biting new or taking in werewolves in search of belonging. A decade passed, then two, before Alaina even really noticed. For the first time, Alaina truly felt like she had a place in the world. Helena never visited again, but Alaina was able to keep tabs mostly by the rumors. Since they’d separated, the other wolf had had done a decent job of making executing hunters her vocation. It made her something of a celebrity within the supernatural community, but mostly the stories just left a cold pit of fear in Alaina’s stomach for when she would stop hearing them.

She learned more about who Helena was while the woman was gone than she ever had knowing her. It was easy to uncover the massacre that had taken place in Illinois, and piece together the timeline with her own family’s death, but admitting the truth to herself took Alaina years. With time however, she eventually even came to forgive Helena for what she had done, and she never stopped using her name.

Bored and hungry for power, Sebastian decided eventually to try and expand his reach beyond just the pack. He quickly attracted unwanted attention from a coven of witches, who eliminated the threat he posed. Though she hadn’t known of the plans that got Sebastian killed, she knew she had been too involved in the rest to be left to be. She packed her few belongings in a bag and fled on her bike, taking any back road she could find. A lone truck passed and when his high beams cleared her vision, the streets of New York greeted her.

Though the loss of forty years was jarring, Alaina knew she could have done worse than New York City, and quickly realized when she couldn’t leave, there was nothing to do but make the best of it.  Alaina met Tess quickly, but when it became clear she ran her pack very differently than Sebastian had, she held back much of the truth about her past and how she had ended up in the city. Alaina knew by some magic she had been given the perfect chance to start new, and didn’t intend to spoil it.

However, Alaina didn’t have many skills that made her employable by modern standards and no education. She bounced between a seemingly never ending sequence of customer service jobs, fired for snapping at either her boss or a particularly miserable customer. Alaina was too proud to ever admit she needed help, but fighting for cash seemed like the perfect solution to the anger she needed to express and her money problems. She played well to the crowd, and the organizers loved when she won with the bets stacked against her. It wasn’t enough to live on, but often it was most of her rent.

After being fired again from a fast food place, the owner pulled her aside and mentioned that he also owned a series of pawn shops. He needed someone unthreatening enough that people would come in to sell things, but who could also throw out anyone who made trouble. She was wary but he was  a manageable boss, as long as she didn’t steal, and he encouraged her to bad attitude towards the people that came in to try and scam them. That she’d been around long enough to recognize when something was actually antique just made her job easier. With a somewhat steady source of income, Alaina managed to get a small apartment and almost always makes her rent on time. After four years she’s only begun to feel she has a grip on the city, and is still frequently overwhelmed by a time forty years her future.

t e l l  m e,  a r e  w e  a  p r o d u c t  o f  w h o  w e  u s e d  t o  b e?

Alaina has often been defined by her anger. She mostly tries to do the right thing, and live by a moral code, but she’s never had many role models for what it means to be a good person. Her temper also often gets in the way, leading to petty arguments or words she isn’t able to take back. However once the veil of red has lifted from Alaina’s vision, she doesn’t keep grudges.

She’s always been persistent and more stubborn than is usually in her best interest, and is brave and self-confident, a combination that often leads to trouble. She never backs down from a challenge, and Alaina is also deeply competitive, often turning fun into something more serious.

Alaina has never been good at letting others close, but she craves companionship more than she’d like to admit, and having no one she feels she can confide to or rely on in the city terrifies her. However her callous attitude keeps anyone from getting close enough to hurt her, and she never really learned how to let those walls down.

[iwritehorsethings]

Applecore - MLP One Shot

Cross-post from FimFiction. If you enjoy, please consider following and giving a thumbs up!

Summary: Applejack thinks about the void she fills within her family.

Rating: Everyone

Genre: Drama, General

Written before “The Perfect Pear”.

Art by Kallarmo.

Beneath a lone apple tree on a tall hill, Applejack was finding herself concerned with the inevitable advance of time, a dimension she had always received without falter, but that particular summer evening had her preoccupied by the steady march of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years...

Her brow furrowed over her green gaze as the setting sun painted long shadows over the land that four generations of her family had toiled with love and sweat. She could feel her pride, strong and healthy like a big barreled tree in her chest. Sweet Apple Acres was their home. It had been since Granny Smith and her kin had come to this valley and helped establish Ponyville.

So then where were Applejack's parents?

It was a question that the farm mare typically avoided wrestling with. Fretting over the endless wanderlust of her parents, Honeycrisp and Jonagold, wouldn't keep her family fed or the farm running. Granny Smith was too old for most of the chores, and Big Macintosh didn't understand more than half of the unique challenges a young filly like Applebloom struggled with. It was up to Applejack to lead her family in these regards. There was nopony else.

The responsibility didn't scare her. It settled over Applejack's strong withers like a familiar blanket, warm and soft, despite its weight. However, trickling down her heart as thick and as viscous as sap was a sense of loss. These seconds, minutes, and hours were irretrievable once they slipped through the sieve of existence into the hungry sea of yesterday. That was time her parents could never recover. All those moments, all those memories, all those experiences...gone. They had missed so many of Applejack's accomplishments, both in running their farm and in her service to the Equestrian kingdom with her friends. They had missed Applebloom singing on stage with her friends and Coloratura. At this rate, they stood to miss the day when Big Mac married, and worse yet, Granny Smith's final days.

The last Applejack had spoken to her parents face to face had been when she was a teenager, barely out of school. Applebloom was still a foal too young to begin her education proper. It was an early foggy morning, and the whippoorwills were still chirping sleepily in the orchards. Honeycrisp's bright red coat was hidden under an emerald cloak as she carried a basket of sundries to their covered wagon. Her muzzle, which was lightly frosted in a soft lime shade, was split wide in a grin when she told Applejack with a wink of her green eye, "We're off to unlock all the secrets of apples." When her daughter helped her load the basket onto the carriage, she added sagely, "After all, there's more to farmin' than sticking seeds into the ground!"

"Darn tootin'," Jonagold pitched in with an energetic whinny as he cantered over to his wife and daughter, the brim of his stetson hat tilted up high. Behind him trailed Granny Smith, and Big Macintosh, the latter carrying a young Applebloom. "There ain't no nobler a pursuit than the refinement of one's profession. Right, AJ?"

Applejack smiled, her chest puffing at her father's attention. "Yes, Pa! Nothin' nobler."

Jonagold laughed and ruffled her mane. "That's my girl!' He turned to the rest of the family. "Mama, ah know you'd rather we stick closer to the homestead and quit our roamin', but trust that your one and only son is carryin' on those supernal values you so determinedly hammered into his thick skull. Hoof shakin' and continuous discourse with prospective customers in this competitive mart o' commerce is the best way to ensure the longevity of our clan, so--"

"Jona, will you stop your highfalutin ramblin' and jes' get on that there wagon before I whop you a good'un?" Granny Smith snapped. "Heavens, you talk as if we ain't out here freezin' our flanks in this chill!"

Jonagold threw his blonde head back for a hearty laugh. "Oh! Mama, I do so love you. I'll count the days till you can whop me again," he chortled as he gave her a hug. He turned next to Big Mac, his head raising high with a smirk. "And you, son. Protect the mares. Don't shy from the hard jobs--you know these gals are strong, but you're the strongest. Got that?"

Big Mac mirrored the smirk on his father's soft orange face. "Eyup!" he said.

The older stallion patted a hoof on his son's shoulder. "Atta boy." Next he moved to kiss Applebloom on the head. "See ya soon, little filly. Pa loves you. Don't grow up too fast, y'hear?"

He turned around and regarded Applejack, his blue eyes meeting her green. Behind him, Honeycrisp said goodbye to her mother-in-law and other children. With a gentle smile, the stallion took off his stetson hat, and placed it upon his daughter's head. "And you, sugarcube. I trust you to help your brother keep the trees healthy and the bits flowin'. Ain't nobody got a greener touch than you, Applejack."

She beamed. "I promise to take care of the farm and the family, Pa. It's all in good hooves!"

He kissed her brow and stepped back to allow Honeycrisp to hug her daughter. "I know it is."

She couldn't have known how long she would be held to that promise. For all Applejack knew, it could extend into infinity the way her parents seemed to find more reasons to stay on the road, traveling ever further in their pursuit of new business and farming knowledge. So much time had gone by. The last letter she had received had been a year ago. In just that amount of time, Applebloom had earned her cutie mark. What other things would her parents miss out on? What if Granny Smith passed on? What if Big Mac had foals of his own? Applejack had no way of reaching her parents to send the news. No way of finding them, either.

The question of whether they truly loved their family above all else was an unwelcome thought, but AJ found herself unable to resist it as she glared at the setting sun, its dying light making her green eyes smolder.

"Applejack?" Granny Smith's voice called out to the mare from further down the hill.

Applejack turned, her eyes fluttering as she took in her granny making the arduous trip to join her granddaughter under the apple tree. The farm mare jumped to her hooves and trotted to her elder, her brow creasing with concern. "Granny, what do you think you're doing trottin' all the way out here with them creaky hips o' yours? I thought you were helping Applebloom with supper!"

"I was," Granny shot back with an affronted glare as she shook of AJ's attempt at walking her up the slope. "But then I saw you sittin' up here all on your lonesome and figgered somethin' must be wrong! Now I know I figgered right."

Applejack's ears pinned flat against her head. "Ah'm fine, Granny."

A graceless snort. "The hay you are."

Now the younger mare glowered. "Ah just wanted to think on my own for a while. Tain't nothing to raise the alarm about!"

Granny sighed, the lines of her aged eyes softening as she sat on the grass. "I saw the look on yer face when the mail was brought in. Today makes it a year, don't it?"

Applejack looked away without saying anything.

Granny Smith placed a hoof on her granddaughter's back. "Applejack, if there's one thing I learnt about your father early on, it was that he was a rollin' stone. It's how he met yer mother. It's how our family's apples have become a staple of Equestria."

"So that makes it okay that he and Ma miss so much?" Applejack retorted heatedly. "I'm grateful for the work they do, but is it really necessary for my parents to leave us behind for so long? I thought Apples were s'posed to plant roots, not blow in the wind!"

The elderly mare's lips puckered. "Ah wonder," she said slowly. "What really has ya so riled up, granddaughter. You mad a'cuz you feel your folks haven't been here, or a'cuz you're afraid you ain't enough to fill their horseshoes?"

Applejack scowled. "You know I don't shy from work, and I'd do anythin' for our family!"

"I know that. But yer just one mare, Applejack. Big Macintosh is gettin' to that age where he's gonna be settlin' down soon. He'd still be here to help on the farm, but that leaves ya to raise Applebloom on your own once I pass on. We both know that's a'gonna be soon."

Her granddaughter winced. "Aw, Granny, don't talk about that..."

"Hush. You know it's true." Granny rubbed AJ's back, a warm smile spreading across her muzzle. "But you oughta know somethin'. In the years since your Pa left, I have seen you learn and grow so much with your friends that ah'm sure the day he finally gets his hide back here, he'll be so gobsmacked you'll have to poke him with a pitchfork!" Despite herself, Applejack chuckled at the image. Granny Smith's eyes brightened and she squeezed the younger mare in a tight one-legged hug. "You done a wonderful job with Applebloom so far. She's gonna grow up to be a fine mare, you'll see. And this farm? Shoot, it runs smoother than a greased pig over ice! Don't doubt yerself, Applejack. Yer more than enough for this family. Why, yer the core o' the apple!"

Applejack's eyes misted. She smiled with a stiffened lip and hugged Granny Smith around the barrel. "Thanks, Granny. Ah love ya more than ah can put into words!"

"Thank goodness!" Granny chuckled over her shoulder. "If there's one thing ah count my lucky stars for ever'day, it's that ya didn't pick up your Pa's gift o' gab!"

The farm mare pulled back and winked. "Now I wouldn't go alleging my apparent lack of verbosity, Granny Smith! After all, how you think ah manage to sell our precious product in that competitive mart of commerce so well?"

Granny Smith pulled Applejack's stetson hat over her eyes. "Hush, you! I can still whop ya good, just like your Pa!" She gingerly stood to all hooves. "Now we better git back to the house a'fore your sister burns it down..."

Smiling happily, Applejack walked back home with her granny, her mind no longer preoccupied with the inevitable advance of time. Not its seconds, hours, or its years...