The drying line was mostly level with the ground, but lifted up at one end so that it curved gently to the underside of the branch it was tied around. It was here that Applejack started to struggle, straining her neck and haunches to reach the cord, pegs and laundry in tow. Every step it lifted just a little bit further from her reach, so that each small victory made for the same challenge again, but harder.
From a ways back Rainbow Dash watched her friend’s struggle. Shadows were dripping off the trees, and by the light of the afternoon turning to evening Applejack’s orange took on more of a syrupy golden hue. The mare stretched, fidgeting on her hooves as she tried to eke another inch of her back legs.
Her tail swished side to side and, put in mind of an agitated cat, Rainbow Dash smirked. With a groan and a muffled cry of success, the earth pony clicked the peg in place, suspending something frillier and more lacy than most to the open breeze. Applejack huffed and dropped her head back down, working out the kinks from her neck and back as she did so.
“You could help with this, ya know,” she said, turning to face the pegasus, rolling the tension out of her shoulders.
Dash shrugged and found her smirk had grown a little firmer. “I already did, didn’t I?” she said, gesturing the expanse of cloth and assorted lacy frilly thing-free ground and trees about themselves. Applejack only looked at her flatly, puffing out a breath that knocked some errant strands of mane away from her face.
“Fine,” Rainbow Dash grumbled, rolling her eyes. She lifted herself into the air slow and lazy, like a bumblebee. She wasn’t so much flying as sagging in an invisible harness. She drifted over, then down, down until her front hooves slid along the ridges of her shoulders and the base of her neck before interlocking at the crest of her chest, just behind those muscular, toned forelegs of hers. With ever so slightly more enthusiastic strokes the mare was lifted to her back hooves, then up into the air entirely.
Applejack looked up, squinting hard at her pegasus friend. “Ain’t exactly what I had in mind,” she huffed, her legs dangling in the breeze.
“Eh,” was all Rainbow gave by way of response. She moved so unlike herself, slow and controlled, and Applejack gave Dash a stern, questioning look. (Or at least her blue, fuzzy chin, for Dash was something between lifting and straddling her, and their relative positions to one another were not ones that favoured eye contact). Applejack did this for quite the long moment before realizing that she was, in fact, of a height to secure the last few articles of clothing to the line. Dash for her part seemed entirely unfussed and unfettered.
Dropping the non-issue, but not the pegs, Applejack clasped them in pairs to the line. “There,” she said with simple relief, “that’s everything. You can set me down now, Dash.”
Rainbow Dash did just that, her legs suddenly opening out from under Applejack. Just as quickly the earth pony braced herself and caught the landing easily, feeling pretty darn satisfied with herself. The pegasus floated back down to ground, touching down silently next to her.
Rainbow Dash scratched at her neck. “What’s with this whole bet thing anyway?” Her hoof wandered further north, picking idly at a nostril. Something of minor interest therein discovered was examined briefly, then flicked aside.
“It just seemed like a good idea, was all.”
Rather than wander back towards the farmhouse, Dash took the lead and curled away, leading out to the stands of trees. With nothing else in need of doing and no reason to turn away, Applejack followed. “It just seems odd, you know? You’re not exactly the spontaneous type.”
Applejack trotted the few steps to catch back up. “I’m plenty spontaneous!”
“Ha! Hardly.”
This made Applejack frown, but only with consternation. Her hooves seemed to move faster than her head, and once settled into their easy pace chewed through their path easier than her head ploughed through its own. “Well, you can’t argue that it wasn’t a good idea, ‘cause it is.”
Dash flicked her mane aside so as to glance back at the receding farmhouse. Somewhere in there, Big Mac was taking his bit of time to recuperate from the day. A day that wasn’t over yet. At the other corner of her eye there lay a fallow field, ploughed with unfailingly deep and straight furrows, row upon row of them, pooling up with evening’s shadows like drainage ditches.
“Yeah,” she said. “I suppose, yeah.” Dash looked ahead now, and paused in her stride. Her brow furrowed in thought, so that Applejack stopped also to watch and wonder what occupied her friend’s thoughts.
“Hey,” Dash began, as if hesitant to speak her mind without being absolutely certain in it first.
“What is it?” It wasn’t like the pegasus to be skittish about anything.
Now Dash turned to face her, the light of the lowering sun setting the corners of her eyes to molten glassiness. “If you don’t freak out, I’ll show you something.”
Applejack only gave her a flat stare. “Dash, I’m getting after you all the time for this, that or the other. What’s got you so mousy on this one?”
Blue wings hung lax, then fanned some air over the unkempt coat. “It’s not me you’ll freak out at though.” She rolled her eyes and jittered in place, sighing as the next words slid into inevitability. “And I sort of, kind of promised Big Mac I’d keep you in check for the rest of the day.”
Applejack whinnied with surprise. It was always a cute thing to see from her, especially as so few things surprised the steadfast farmer. “You did what now?”
The pegasus’ wings propped themselves up stiffly, casting shadows longer than either mare. “Well I am rooting for him, aren’t I?” Whatever tension there was found itself soothed in Applejack’s easy smile and those wings, shifting and fidgeting, came back down again.
“Me too,” said Applejack, “but don’t go telling him that.” She coughed to clear her throat and. “That bonnet still gets planted firmly on his head if he mucks this up, though. Gotta take the licks you get.”
Dash grumbled as she set off walking once more. “Well, yeah.” A moment passed, then she repeated the word ‘licks’, slower, more thoughtfully, as if tasting the sound of it.
The mares walked without words for a time.
“So what’s this thing you and Mac were keeping from me?”
Dash drew a breath through her teeth, one that whistled. “Well...” she began.
Applejack pressed her orange hoof to a blue shoulder. “Yeah?”
“How about I just show you?” Before she could answer, Applejack was lifted up once more in those blue hooves, up and over the treetops. The green of leaves and the rails of shadows cast from the trees made a checkered blanket of the landscape, with the exception of one black spot over yonder.
“I don’t quite remember that having been there before,” Applejack growled. Dash went ‘mhmm,’ both in agreement and respect. It was quite the sizeable hole, after all. A mare like her could appreciate the explosion necessary to make it.
“It was probably Scootaloo’s idea,” she said, but meant it entirely by way of compliment. As they glided back down, the pegasus gauged the depth and breadth of it. A day’s work could get it filled up nicely without too much trouble.
“The fillies are all fine, are they?” Applejack sighed out as her hooves touched earth and Rainbow Dash slid off her.
“What? Oh yeah, no, they’re great,” she said quickly before putting her proverbial Weather Management hat back on. “Big Mac wants to make a pond of it,” she added.
Applejack wandered over to the edge, kicking a broken stone into the pit. “I suppose that’s something. I’d have loved a swimming hole at their age. Still would, even. These long, hot summer evenings...”
Again, Dash went ‘mhmm,’ because this was Applejack thinking and monologuing all on her own, with Dash just providing the appropriate nudges to keep her steaming along.
“Actually, now that I think about it, Fluttershy could be bringing those extra frogs she’s always trying to rehome here. I’d be happier knowing she’s not sneaking off into the Forest as much, like you know she will if there’s an animal involved. Where she finds all those frogs I may never know.”
As she spoke she jumped, sliding and scrabbling down soil and broken rock. The bottom was quite dark, with just enough light to see where to put your hoof to stand.
“Good and deep. Ain’t going to just dry up with a couple days sunshine. And it’s right near their clubhouse, too.”
“Sooo...” said Dash doing something between falling and flying, with a backflip no less, to land next to her friend, “you happy with that plan then?”
Applejack took a deep breath and sighed it away. “Yeah. Suppose I am. Still going to get the hides of those three fillies for messing about with something this dangerous, but if we can make something good come of it, there’s that. You sure you can pull it off?”
“Ha, easily. Job like this? Mostly it’ll just be keeping the clouds centered above it. And giving them a right good kicking every once in awhile, to keep ‘em pouring steady. I can get a couple of the newbies out to do the actual work, while I ‘supervise’ the whole thing.” You could hear the inverted commas sliding neatly into place.
The strong hooves of Applejack tore deep into the sides of the pit, hoof by hoof she scaled the wall and pulled herself upwards. “And by ‘supervise’ you mean nap in my trees and check on them every once in awhile?”
Dash shrugged, and lifted off lazily. “Pretty much. Should be able to get it done tomorrow, if you like.”
Applejack crested the edge, then dusted the worst of the dirt off. She wasn’t even breathing harder, as if she in fact hadn’t just climbed out of a great big hole in the earth. “Nah. I’d say leave it off ‘til the next day. This ain’t going anywhere. Besides, I got a feeling that come whatever, tomorrow's gonna be interesting.”
“You mean Big Mac?”
“Yeah.” The earth pony sneezed, then grumbled about it. “Hey, Dash,” she said, “you don’t think it’s weird to make him dress up in mares clothing, do ya?”
Dash turned a most curious eyebrow back on her friend. “What? Nah, it’s not weird at all,” she said, but Applejack wasn’t looking convinced. “It’s not any different than when Rarity makes us do it, right? Exactly.”
And, because Rainbow Dash said it in such easy confidence, it took Applejack a couple of passes before the obvious flaw in that logic became apparent. “But Dash,” she said, “we actually are mares. He ain’t. He’s about as far from being one as you could get.”
Dash only shrugged. “Eh, that’s hardly the issue. Don’t worry about it.” She lead on again, this time back towards the farmhouse, leaving Applejack to ponder the ambivalence.
“Hey look,” said Applejack after some minutes had passed and they had stepped into more spacious fields, “there he goes.” Indeed, there he went. Silhouetted against the setting sun, Big Mac marched stoically along the road back into town. “Where do you suppose he’s off to now?”
Dash turned a gaze of utmost seriousness upon the farmer. “He’s going to face his destiny, of course.”
There they stood, these two mares, staring one another in the eye. Simultaneously they broke into hearty laughter.
“Want to spend the night here?” Applejack asked through the chuckles, “make a sleepover of it?”
“Yeah. You got nice couches.”
Applejack punched the mare’s shoulder. “My bed’s plenty big enough for the both of us.”
“Sounds good to me. Race you to the door!” And they were off, running and shoving and laughing.
From a ways away, Big Mac stopped, turned his head. He really wanted to say ‘Eeyup,’ it’d have been just so perfect a sentiment, he felt, and the word itched at the inside of his skull. All the same, he smiled wordlessly and turned back to the road before him.
A day was done, bedding down into evening, but a night still lay before him. With the setting sun at his back, he walked towards the Twilight, to face whatever might come of it.
You sort of forgot the words there dude.
2755512
Try now. Why are Publish and Edit so close together?
They seem so certain that he'll utter the condemned words.
I hope he succeeds. I truly do.
~Skeeter The Lurker
AppleDash ship tease out the wazoo!
Seriously...
2499214
That comic never ceases to kick me in the Feels.
OH GAD! Just saw your OC. Never mind, I'll still read your fics. They look pretty dang good, actually.
2755716
You mean mine, my avatar? I swear that's a leg. Wouldn't be the first person to startle like that though.
As far as interludes go, this was a pretty decent one. I like that you focused on the two main provocateurs of the main plot - helps tie it together thematically even while 'nothing important' is going on in a given scene. This feels like about the right place for an interlude to be, too. If you'd pulled it many chapters earlier it would've been purely irritating, but by now it just serves to slightly unwind from the tension of barreling towards the climax.
I am grinding my teeth to nubs waiting to see how the thing with Twilight plays out, though!
2755793 Okay, you got me curious. What's the backstory? And thanks for making me feel good about my multicolored mane, by the way (although technically, since it's dyed, it's not really a problem...)
I really like the atmosphere of this chapter. It is quintessentially an interlude, emitting intense "interlude" radiation from every sentence of every paragraph. Rarely do I have the pleasure of reading nothing special happening in such an entertaining way. Great characterization, too.
I have to keep reminding myself this isn't meant to be an appledash shipfic XD
Please... please tell me AJ's bed is at least a mile wide with the pillows at opposite ends
2756963 My sister sleeps in her best friend's bed when she stays the night at her house and vice versa, and they're straighter than a titanium pole. My point being that your mind shouldn't go straight to the gutter when hearing that...which, being a guy, is admittedly a hard thing to do.
2757203 Yeah, I know, haha. Heck, I'm a girl who's usually pretty mature about things like that. But that was phrased too perfectly for that to not be the first thing that came to my mind
2757257
...Agreed....
That last line play on words...
I sees it.
2757336 The fact that they are paired together so freakishly often doesn't help either.
2757203
Pffft!
2758031 So does me.
Ummm, what are you up to Big Mac.
Or did I forget about something from previous chapters.
Alright, I'm only just back from the animal rescue, and I'm off again to college work tommorow. So my writing capacity time thing is under pressure (this possibly makes me write better, for whatever reason)
2755822 I definetly had some trouble starting this chapter, because I knew I wanted to ease off the pressure, but there was nothing much happening with Big Mac himself. I'm glad you find my feeling and choice of going with an interlude to be a good one.
2755995 Well, not exactly an OC, more a ponysona. That's just how I've had myself depicted, but there's no character or story there, because it's just a representation of me, if that makes sense?
Though if I were to make a backstory for my avatar, it'd probably be something involving the chaos magic of Discord, and not being 100% cured, hence the residual shape changes in the back legs.
2756188 Fantastic to see that the Interlude is interluding well, it just felt like the right choice
2756721
2756963 Well, we've canonically had Aj and Rarity share a bed. Any Implications seen are at the readers' discretion entirely.
2772432 I loved that as well and I wrote it. I think that makes me a terrible person, or at least a shameless writer.
2772609 I know, I was just kidding around
2772609 Got it! Well I can dig that, I guess. What I call my OC is basically a ponysona too, I guess. I mean, I actually wear that hat.
That was a very enjoyable interlude. It's like everybody else is saying, as a standard chapter, or were its timing not as good, this would have been boring. But as it is, it was actually very pleasant! The overall lack of direction or purpose was quite relaxing – perfect for an interlude
I noticed one small error here:
–She drifted over, then down, down until her front hooves slid along the the ridges of her shoulders and the base of her neck before interlocking at the crest of her chest, just behind those muscular, toned forelegs of hers.
Double “the” spotted.
2776568
I do love spotting a poorly concealed pair of double the's myself
Consider it fixed
That was a nice interlude, and I have really been enjoying this story. I'm glad I finally got around to reading it.
Haha, I knew I wasn't the ONLY one that uses 'tis.
Anyways this story is really cool.
3342733
I use ''tis'.
Geesh get a room rainbow and Aj. Oh yeah, aj has a room. With a bed. That's big enough for the two of them.
Turn on the lighthouse so the ship doesn't pass by in the fog.
Stupid Nyquil and stupid flu.....making me all nerrrrrr.
I knew you were leading up to them sharing a bed. Not complaining one iota, either.
This sentence definitely seems to be missing something. I can see there's an at needed between the gesturing and the the but I can't quite parse the remaining section.