In the wake of the funeral of Applejack's parents, Pinkie Pie resorts to some drastic measures to try and snap her fellow earth pony back to her senses.
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Tropes found in this story include:
- Bilingual Bonus: Shiva shares its name and meaning with the original Hebrew, along with the concept of having friends do all work for the family of the deceased during the mourning period. The only job of those left behind is to rest quietly and listen to the final echoes, and for earth ponies, each only leaves the tent when they can no longer hear the last of the lost. Pegasi and unicorns who were friends are welcome to attend — but have no idea what's going on beneath the surface.
- Blessed with Suck: All of Pinkie's "awesome" wacky powers? They come at the cost of her being completely incapable of any form of earth pony magic. This means that when the Cakes (who in this continuity, are formally her adoptive parents) die? She'll spend the entire period of shiva listening to — nothing. Applejack's aware that Pinkie is effectively deaf-mute (something which, locally at this point on the timeline, only the Cakes and Applejack may know), but never considered the full implications: having this bit of loss laid out in front of her is part of what pulls her back.
- Catapult Nightmare: Applejack's been to enough sleepovers at Sugarcube Corner to see the Cakes trying to comfort Pinkie after she wakes up screaming from her nightmares: there hasn't been enough time for the trauma of the rock farm to truly fade.
- Didn't Think This Through: At the moment Applejack sees red, she uses her own magic on the riverbed, trying to build a road out of the water so she can go after Pinkie. What she never thought about is that the movement of the water is directly influenced by what lies beneath it, and her attempt to rearrange everything creates waterspouts powerful enough to flip the raft.
- Due to the Dead: The shiva period itself, where earth ponies formally bid farewell to their departed relatives. Thanks to their feel, they can actually pick up lingering emotional resonance from the final workings (with earth ponies, tool use) of the deceased — for a few days. It's mentioned that earth pony signatures last longer than those of the typical pegasus or unicorn: to wit, about a week. And as the Cornucopia Effect is generally continuous unless the earth pony makes an effort to shut down their own contribution, there's just about always a final signature to read. So during shiva, earth ponies will gather under an outdoor tent, as close to the soil as possible, and just — listen, until the final echoes fade into the chorus of the racial orchestra. But from the outside, to unicorns and pegasi, it just looks like several days of quiet mourning, as friends do the work necessarily to keep household and businesses running, with the magical aspect buried beneath the earth...
- Hollywood Drowning: Averted twice: Applejack gets no more than a few seconds inverted under the water after the raft flips — and it's implied that her parents died in the water: all we truly know is that they had gone on a trip, but during Applejack's outburst, this emerges during the flow:"whatever special thing Ah had was lost in the water, drowned, jus' like them, jus' like them"
- The Hopeless Replacement: Discussed. Whatever happened to Applejack's parents produced a settlement, and part of that settlement has temporary workers on the Acres, helping to keep the farm running — something she's furious about, because she's convinced herself that they're screwing it up. (In reality, she just doesn't want anypony who isn't family on her parents' soil, especially as that might make it harder to pick up on their signatures.) She's been trying to drop out of school because the settlement terms mean the assistants leave when she either graduates or abandons her education: leave her classes forever and she not only gets rid of the intruders, but she can stay on the Acres for the rest of her life and just listen...
- Interrupted Suicide: Implied and self-performed. After the raft flips, Applejack realizes how quiet it is in the water, and that when the silence ends, she would truly hear her parents — then taps the underside of the raft with her hooves, triggering the enchantment which puts her head back above the surface. Ultimately, some part of her chose to live.
- Laughing Mad: Inverted: Applejack's laughing after flipping the raft upright is the first tiny step in returning to sanity.
- The Reveal: "They're dead! They're dead, Applejack, they've been dead for moons! You've been talking to yourself!"
- River of Insanity: Inverted: Pinkie's intention in sending Applejack on the raft ride is to shock her back to her senses through any means necessary. Of course, with Pinkie, the first approach to this goal is to try and make sure Applejack just has fun for the first time in moons, but that's not how things ultimately work out...
- Sanity Slippage: Applejack has no special ability to pick up on her parents' echoes long after everypony else lost them: she's just been talking to herself as a way of keeping them around. She doesn't realize there's something wrong until she furiously consults the inner falsehood of her father after the river ride to ask what should be done with Pinkie and is told to hurt her friend — something her real Daddy never would have said. It's enough to make her question just who she's truly talking to — and the next query she makes finds the false echoes gone.
- What the Hell Is That Accent?: Pinkie retains traces of a rock farmer's speech patterns and is desperately trying to wipe them out.
- Whole Episode Flashback: The story takes place when both Pinkie and Applejack are just starting to have their voices change. It's mentioned that Big Mac has canceled his college plans to stay on the farm, Apple Bloom appears to be just old enough to talk, and Granny Smith will be moving back in to do her part. Pinkie doesn't appear to have been in Ponyville that long and is still trying to adjust to settled zone life: she's in remedial catch-up classes, has a lot of trouble making friends, and has been taken advantage of multiple times because of her obvious desperation to connect with anypony. It's revealed that Applejack approached Pinkie and offered herself as a friend just because she was sick of seeing how the other pony was being treated, and apparently kicked several of the worst offenders before doing so.
