All Work
The first rays of sunshine cut through the patchwork of orange and purple clouds, and the dawn chorus broke out in earnest across the hills and canopies of Sweet Apple Acres. Apples twinkled like gems under the rising light.
From the open doorway of the barn, Applejack stood and stared out, glowering as though it offended her, but already she could feel its reassuring chill working against the inferno in her chest. A familiar chafing of rope pressed down on her sides and back, and she knew when she started walking that the wooden trundling of the wheelie bucket would accompany her.
“Up an’ at ‘em, Sport!” said the ancient voice of Granny Smith behind her. Applejack nodded in as respectful a manner as she could manage. “Now there’s a farmer an’ a half! You sure yer don’t wanna take five, or somethin’? Ah mean, you only jus’ got back.”
“Big Mac’s up already, ain’t he?” Applejack didn’t look around.
“Well yeah, but he ain’t even finished breakfas’ yet.” At this point, Applejack felt Granny’s flabby forelimb flop over her own withers. “So how’s about that Pinkie Pie, eh? Sprightly li’l thing, ain’t she? Hoo doggies, but she’s got the gift of the gab! Makes me feel about a hundred years younger just talkin’ to her!”
Against the gales of elderly guffaws, Applejack stiffened and hummed in agreement.
“Funny how she jus’ turned up, though. To Ponyville, Ah mean. Ah was talkin’ to them Cakes yesterday, an’ she said there’d been a letter from her ma an’ her pa, but they din’t get nothin’ through the mail. An’ the letter Pinkie had with ‘er – well, the writin’ were a bit funny, if yer ask me. Untidy, like.”
Applejack, if possible, stiffened even harder and hummed in a deeper tone.
“Ah well, whit does yer ol’ Granny know, that’s what Ah say. Diff’rent strokes fer diff’rent folks, an’ all that jazz.” Finally, the slab was removed from Applejack’s withers. “Yer sure yer won’t have a bite to eat?”
“No thanks, Granny.” Applejack kicked the brakes off the front wheel and strode towards the nearest trees. “Busy. Got work to do.”
“Er, OK… Say, Sport!” Granny shouted after her. “How’d yer sleepin’ over go? D’yer trade secrets? That’s what we used to do when Ah was yer age. Ol’ Apple Rose was the wors’ one fer Truth or Dare; why, this one time, we was all out campin’ in the fields…”
Eventually, the trunks swallowed up Granny’s words. A pang of guilt nudged Applejack’s elbow, and she softened her brow. After all, it wasn’t Granny’s fault. She resolved to go back and explain herself once her shift was done.
The ghost of the Wanderin’ Sheriff loomed up before her, but she braced her limbs and strode right through it. There’d be no playing. This job called for responsibility, not silly foal games.
As she trundled along, she cocked an ear and listened to the cheeps and squeaks and trills of the songbirds over her head. Deep inside her, she liked to think she could understand what the birds of the dawn were singing, but the rest of her shouted this down. That was just a foalish fancy. Every pony knew birds didn’t talk.
Leaves were rustling overhead where the faint breeze tickled at the treetops. The Spirit of the Sands was cheerful this morn – NO! No games, no fancies, no messin’ about, no nothin’! An’ definitely no Spirits of no Sands, neither.
After a few minutes, she passed through the gap in the white picket fence, and the relentless green overhead gave way to blazing dots of yellow where the crepuscular rays caught on the golden delicious fruits. Other wheelie buckets were standing in a row, their emptiness gaping at her as though shocked she hadn’t got started yet. With almost mathematical precision, she aligned the wheelie bucket with the bases of the trees to the right of the dirt path, and pulled here and shoved there and slid hoof over this and under that until the harness was lying on the soil.
She snapped into a kick, and her rear hooves were as hard and as stiff as rocks. Her rear knees clicked under the sheer force. Ripples crossed what Granny smirkingly called her “puppy fat”, and her ponytail flapped with the urgency of a banner facing a tornado. Thundering apples filled the bucket. Heavy though her brow was, a grin broke through below her nostrils.
Nothing compared to a well-aimed kick. Already, as she wheeled the bucket over to the next tree, she was feeling the inferno die back to a more temperate bonfire. Every strain of her muscles washed over her, taking the muddy thoughts with it. Every rattle of her bones smothered the smoke festering over her personal sky. Each time she stopped to notice how her back leg had a blister left over from yesterday’s work, she may well have been drinking from some simple fount, cleansing her insides. And when she remembered Big Mac’s advice and Granny’s praises and cheers, the waves of purification beat against the pile that kept her bonfire burning bright.
She was feeling better already. Applejack turned around to get another wheelie bucket, and in an instant her grin evaporated and the bonfire flared up.
It was Pinkie, standing at the picket fence.
“Hey,” said Pinkie, not quite looking at her.
Applejack’s teeth pressed hard into each other before she grunted, “Mornin’.”
Striding towards and through the gap in the whitewashed wooden struts, Applejack noticed with grim satisfaction the way Pinkie stumbled backwards to get out of her way. While she busied herself with the harness, she kept an ear cocked for the first word. Her own mouth was a thin line. Whatever Pinkie wanted, she was going to have to make the first move.
“Uh…” said the tiny voice. Applejack was already at the gap with her new bucket when the voice added, “Can I help you out?”
“Ah’m fine,” she said carelessly. “Thank you for askin’.”
“Please?” insisted the voice. “I know my way around a farm – I had plenty of practice, believe me – and my hooves have been handling rocks since I was old enough to waddle.”
The trundling stopped. Applejack chewed over the words and glanced back; Pinkie was taking a step forwards, but then she paused with one hoof in mid-air.
“It’s an honest day’s work,” she said, and a shameful part of her nodded with approval when Pinkie flinched at the word. “Lots of sweat, lots of heat, lots of achin’ an’ swellin’ if you get it wrong. You think you’re up for it?”
Silent nodding was all she got. Pinkie, with her front hoof raised and her wide eyes straining not to blink, looked like she was about to bolt. Behind her chest, the bonfire’s wooden pile collapsed slightly.
“Well…” Applejack hummed as though in deep thought. Then she snapped back into attention and trundled on. “Don’t say Ah din’t warn you, an’ that’s all Ah’m gonna say.”
Aligning herself for the next kick, she pretended not to hear the second set of wheels squeaking and rocking slightly over the bumps and gouges of the soil and grass. Her ponytail flapped against the turbulence as Pinkie passed her by.
The two of them carried on for some time, bucking tree after tree, Pinkie with grunts and squeaks and – if Applejack was honest – not a lot of success. Whereas Applejack got almost every apple in one swift kick, Pinkie only ever managed half of the boughs at best, and once or twice she had to be told not to throw her weight wildly. Already, the falls and misses and stumbles had left her poofy mane and sweaty face splattered with clumps of dirt.
Soon, however, the pegasi pushed the clouds aside, and the sun was beating down fully on the pair. Applejack stopped to watch when Pinkie screamed and threw herself at the trunk of a particularly thick, column-like tree. This time, all but four apples hailed down and dented the ground.
“Not bad,” said Applejack, nodding. “Your aim’s gettin’ better.”
“It’s… easier… with rocks,” said Pinkie, who had stopped to catch her breath.
Applejack’s eyebrow stood up on her forehead. She’d copied the technique in a mirror after Granny Smith had done it to her one too many times, but then that cookie jar had been too much to resist.
Pinkie sighed and flopped onto the ground, panting and trying to beat clumps out of her frazzled hair. “I didn’t not like it on the farm. Of course I liked it! I had Maud and Limestone and Marble and Ma and Pa, and every pony liked my parties, they really did! I didn’t like leaving them. It burned me up! Honest, it did!”
Her lip trembled slightly. Applejack’s internal bonfire dimmed down to a steady campfire, and part of her sat and watched the dance of the light and the flame.
“Ah don’t get you, Pinkie,” she said.
A weak grin braved the greyness of Pinkie’s face. “That’s you and every pony I’ve ever met.”
“It sounded like you were happier than a pig in a muck mine. You know you shouldn’t have jus’ left. So… why d’you leave?”
They moved on to their next trees. Applejack’s kick got every last apple this time, but Pinkie’s missed completely and she thumped hard on her stomach.
“I don’t know!” she wailed from the ground. “I was rock farming, rock farming, rock farming all my life, and then that rainbow went BOOM, SWOOSH, PWWWOW, and then every pony had a party, and they liked it, they really liked it! But then I wanted one again the next day, and Ma and Pa said we couldn’t do another one so soon, and they said that the next day and the next day and the next day and THE NEXT DAY…”
“Whoa there, Motormouth,” Applejack said at once; Pinkie’s face was turning blue. “Take a deep breath. You keep on at this rate, an’ you’ll talk yourself inside-out.”
Patiently, she waited by the tree for Pinkie to heave as though her lungs depended on it. Inside her own chest, though, the campfire was starting to diminish, approaching a cup of flames at the peak of the black wood pile. Familiar dull feelings threatened to rain over her.
Take your time, Applejack, she thought. That’s what Aunt and Uncle Orange would’ve said.
“I just wanted something different,” said Pinkie at last. “Something other than farming, farming, farming. I thought I was gonna DIE! And then I heard Ma talking about the Cakes one day, how I was like them when they were younger, and I was like NO WAY, and then I was like WAAAY, and then I figured out where they lived, and I made up the letter and walked the whole way!”
“Yeah,” said Applejack. She was staring through the leaves at the glare of the sun.
To her surprise, there was a tentative squeak of joy beside her, and when she looked round, Pinkie was on her hooves, trying a smile.
“You know,” said Applejack, this time softening her tone, “they’re gonna find out soon?”
Pinkie’s lower lip wobbled. Barely had Applejack looked away when the explosion hit her ears. Wet drops flecked her cheek and the side of her jaw. Gritting her teeth, she stood her ground and waited until the sobbing had spent its power and had gone down to a whimpering sniffle.
“I don’t wanna GO!” Pinkie was wailing. “I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it here! All the ponies are so nice, and I get to make real pies instead of rock pies, and I can have a party whenever I want, and there are sooooo many ponies; I wanna know all their names and what they like to eat and what’s their favourite games, and I haven’t even seen the whole town yet, we were gonna go explorin’ with Cheerilee and Rarity and all the other ponies in the school, and I DON’T WANNA GOOOO-HO-HOOO!”
At last, the campfire dwindled to a few embers. Overhead, the rustle of the Spirit of the Sands picked up again. Applejack turned around and gave a tree a swift kick, but once the apples began thumping on the wood, she strode over to Pinkie Pie, who was blowing on a handkerchief. Then it occurred to Applejack that she hadn’t been carrying a handkerchief.
Shaking her head, she said with softness straining on each syllable, “You do know you still ran away from your farm, doncha Pinkie? That’s not somethin’ you can jus’ sweep under a rug.”
It took some time for Pinkie to stop sniffling into her hanky, and she didn’t look up. “You ran away from Sweet Apple Acres. Granny told me.”
“Hey! Ah never run away! Ah told every pony before Ah went –” But she bit back the retort and smoothed down her furrowed brow, and the flames died back. “Look, you din’t have to run away, now didya? Don’t you think your ma and pa would’ve let you try it?”
Fearful blue eyes stared at her, trembling behind a film of water. “I didn’t wanna make ‘em sad,” mumbled Pinkie into her hanky. “They love rocks. My sisters love rocks. What if I said I wanted to leave?”
“Granny and Big Mac were cryin’ their eyes out when Ah left. That don’t mean Ah was wrong to go.”
“And you came back,” Pinkie said, picking at the scab in the argument.
“Ah made a mistake, OK!?”
“See!” Pinkie threw down her hanky with a burst of triumph. “You hated the city! So you just left! That’s what I did! With the farm! Not the city!”
“Quit goin’ on about it! They ain’t one bit similar!”
And then they blinked, and realized they were up in each other’s faces. Hastily, they drew back and suddenly became interested in studying the upcoming apple trees.
“Ah ain’t doin’ a good job o' comfortin’ you, am Ah?” said Applejack.
“Nopity nope nope nope,” said Pinkie with a shake of her head. “You were dreadful!”
As if a dam had burst, the waves of laughter broke out. It all seemed so stupid to them. What were they, little foals? Applejack’s guffaws rumbled on while Pinkie had to lean against her for support. In the end, they wiped their eyes and let the little snickers dribble down to nothing.
“You sure are a funny little pony, Pinkie,” said Applejack with a smirk. “Seriously, though, you know you gotta talk to the Cakes about this, right?”
Small though it was, the snort of disbelief was unmistakeable.
“Don’t worry,” she added. “Ah can come with you if you're nervous.”
“I’m not nervous,” said Pinkie at once. “I can tell them. I’m a big pony, not a little filly, silly.”
“An’ Ah’ll say Ah wanna see you come back, ‘cause you gotta go back an’ do it properly with your family, too.”
Pinkie gasped. “You mean that?”
At this point, Applejack reached across – fumbling a bit, because she was refusing to make eye contact – and placed a hoof on what felt like Pinkie’s withers. “O’ course. Ah made a promise, din’t Ah? An’ friends keep their promises.”
“No! I mean about going all the way back to the farm. That’s crazy. Won’t they be mad?”
“Well… yeah… but if they’re like Granny and Big Mac, then they’ll be really happy to see you firs’.”
“And… you’re not mad at me… are you?”
Finally, Applejack made eye contact, and the ember in her chest was finally extinguished. “Granny says every pony makes mistakes. She says that to me a lot.”
To her shock, Applejack was seized in a hug that pinned her forelimbs to her chest and almost squeezed her ribs against each other. Under the burning warmth of Pinkie Pie, she squirmed a little, and then gave up and just accepted the inevitable. It wasn’t as if it was that bad.
When Pinkie let go, she bounced on the spot and squeaked, “Thank you, thank you, thank you! Well, come on then! We’ve got a town to save, and I’m truckin’ for some buckin’!”
“Now yer talkin’,” said Applejack with a smirk, “Mean Dean.”
“Raht b’hine yer, Shair-iff!” Pinkie gave her a winning wink.
“An’ Pinkie.”
“Yup, yup?”
“Don’t do the accent.”
“Okey dokey!”
Their bucks hit harder and hit faster. Soon, the buckets were full, and the pair of them picked up the ropes and dragged their hordes to the fence, ready for the next set. As they stopped to catch their collective breath, Applejack screwed up her mouth trying to rewrite the stories Granny had told her about the Wanderin’ Sheriff.
“By the way,” she said, “Granny was talkin’ about you this mornin’.”
“Oh yeah!” Pinkie grinned at her. “I went to talk to her the day before yesterday. Isn’t she a gem? She said you were out working in the orchard.”
When she eventually registered these words, Applejack blinked and shook her head. “Wait a sec. You were askin’ after me?”
“Every pony kept talking about you in town.” Pinkie nodded with enthusiasm, shaking off a lot of dirt. “Oh don’t worry. It was all good stuff, how you were a hard worker and always helped ponies and stuff. And I just had to get the insider’s insights! I mean, you’re a farmer! We’re both farmers! And I thought you’d like someone like me to talk to, and then I saw you working all alone in the orchard –”
“You mean…” Applejack’s brain struggled with the concept. “You mean you planned to meet me that way? Like, in advance?”
“YYYYYYYYYYep! I thought you’d like someone to play with. And I was dying to meet you! Why?” Suddenly, Pinkie drew back. “I wasn’t bothering you while you were working, was I?”
Applejack turned her head and peered out across the towering trunks, across the green clouds of the orchard, and across the apples twinkling like stars under the midday sun. Under her glaze of sweat, her mind was pumping furiously.
“Nah,” she said in the end. “Ah’d say you called it right.”
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- Little-Miss-Minty · 1.3k words · 24 1 · 884 views
- Miller Minus · 32k words · 21 3 · 663 views
Stats
Page generated in 0.1 seconds
Total duration
699 users online
618,573 hits today, 2,073,628 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Very cute and well-written, with great characterisation and a convincing storyline. Great work all-in-all.
Excellent; I think this is your best story yet. You really got the young/playful innocent feeling just right.
7537897
7537906
7538042
Such great, encouraging feedback! Thank you all very much for your positive comments. You've made my day.
media.giphy.com/media/6vm8u786n3MBO/giphy.gif
Oh, that was fantastic! You really got Pinkie spot on, and AJ reacted to everything so well... Good job. Very good job.
7852545
38.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvn7pyCASI1r212eho1_500.png
7852590
Thank you very much for the nice comment!
In particular, I'm glad you complimented my portrayal of Pinkie Pie, 'cause she was a tough one for me. I wanted to capture her cheerfully innocent whirlwind personality (especially when she's at the party) and fashion some unhappy and morally uncertain conflict out of it (the secret revealed in the last chapter). Apart from its comparison with AJ's leaving the farm, having Pinkie run away from home to better express herself seemed a good compromise, as I could easily imagine her doing it less out of selfishness and more out of a childlike failure to fully think through the consequences.
Thanks again!
My God, this sounds adorable. Will read.
7853382
Thanks! I hope you enjoy it!
This story reaches dangerous levels of under-appreciation...
7858516
It's very kind of you to say so. I'm glad you liked it.
This is a slice of life story in its purest form.
I could picture the characters voices in my head as if this was an episode.
Great Job! This story great!
7865141
This sort of comment is music to my ears. High praise indeed! Thank you very much for the compliment.
This is great. You set up a wonderfully homey slice-of-life scenario, which makes the seriousness of Pinkie’s secret all the more surprising. I especially like the bit where AJ calls on her Manehattan manners when she apologizes--I don’t recall seeing that in any other fics, but it makes perfect sense here.
I feel like the bit about the "Spirit of the Sands" flew right over my head. Is that a reference to some other story?
My only criticism is that your writing for AJ's accent leaned harder on eye dialect than I prefer. I know the right way to do it is debatable, but I think rendering "What do you mean" as "What d’yer mean" is a bridge too far.
7916448
The Spirit of the Sands isn't a reference to anything, or at least it's not one I made consciously. It was another figment of Applejack's imagination, suggestive of a much broader mythology she's thought up for herself than "I'm a sheriff and I beat up bad guys". Considering her "wild west" leanings and the magical nature of Equestria, it seemed an appropriate little detail to add in.
As for the accent, I can only say mea culpa. The pre-reader pretty much said the same thing. Especially in a fic that features accent-swapping, I wanted to make the slang country mode distinct from the prim-and-proper Manehattan mode, and erred on the side of exaggeration (that said, "d'yer" seems OK to me, as I can easily match how it should sound to how it's spelled). Still, I'll have another look here and tone a few of those down; I did edit them once, but a few others must've slipped through my last round!
I was right, this was adorable. Thanks for writing. :)
8010932
And thank you for the comment.
Always a delight to see people enjoy my efforts.
10394879
Thanks for the comments.
(Even if I don't usually expect any for my older fics anymore... 
I honestly just forget about them over time.)