//------------------------------// // March 26: And Pleasure Dearly I Have Bought // Story: 7DSJ: The Apple Tree // by Shinzakura //------------------------------// There was a knock on the door, and Sweetcream Scoops blinked her eyes to ward away the stinging of being awakened. “What the hell?” “It’s a farm, Scoops. People get up early,” Applejack, already out of bed, reminded her. She then called out to the person outside, “We’re awake! Just give us a few to get dressed!” Scoops looked at her phone. “It’s five in the morning, AJ. Who the hell gets up at five in the morning?” “We do, while we’re here,” Applejack pointed out, slipping out of her sleepwear. “Look on the bright side: by the time breakfast is on, you’ll have worked up an appetite.” Scoops continued to lay in bed. “Someone kill me now,” she groaned. “You agreed to this, Scoops.” “Only because I thought I was going to spend long romantic walks with your brother and kiss him under a canopy of stars. I was lied to! I want my lawyer!” “You can have your lawyer…after we get back to Canterlot.” “Fuck.” Hours later, Braeburn walked through the halls of Heavener High School. He wasn’t really sure who he could trust anymore. Sure, he had plenty of friends, and even more through his relationship with Jade. But now he had to wonder how many of the guys were really his friends and who was just trying to score points before they tried to peel off Summerfree’s pants. It bothered him that he even had to look at people that way. “Yo, Braebae!” He groaned; only one person in the school called him that: Skateaway, Jade’s best friend. Like Jade, Skateaway was a transplant from somewhere else; LA, if Braeburn recalled. Her penchant for practically rollerskating everywhere she went pretty much underlined that fact. Still, she and Jade were as thick as thieves and Braeburn trusted her completely. Now if she would only stop the constant flirtstorm, he mused. “Hey, Skate, what’s up?” “Got something for you,” she said with a wink. “Your choice: it can either be this little slip of paper, or my hot, young, nubile body.” He of course knew she was joking; Skateaway often pushed her luck, but it never went beyond that. “What’s on the paper?” “Some bad news I found out this weekend about Summer. C’mon, you don’t want that – you want my sweet, smokin’ bod, right? Besides, I don’t mind being the girl on the side, really.” He sighed. “Skate, Ah really don’t have time fer this shit. Some crap happened over th’ weekend an’ Summer pissed off Bluegrass an’ her band o’ girl mafia, so now Ah really gotta watch her back.” Skateaway dropped the act instantly. “Yeah, I heard. Anyway, here you go.” She handed him the paper. “According to a friend of mine, she found out that Oaktree ain’t been the only one spending time with your little sis. She’s making the rounds, Braebae. And that’s not all I found out.” “Do Ah really wanna know?” “Only if you want your sister six feet under in a few months,” Skateaway cautioned. “Fine.” “Someone apparently saw her out on the 526 with Fastrunner.” At that, Braeburn looked as though he was about to explode. “The 526” was a code for 526 Road, a dirt trail in an unpopulated part of the county that was the unofficial makeout spot for many a teen. Worse, from what he’d heard now and then, it was also a place where teens tended to get drunk and get high. If Summerfree was associating with that type of crowd, it was a minor miracle that she wasn’t addicted or pregnant yet. Plus, Fastrunner lived up to his name; he was the kind of guy who would dump a girl the minute after finding his way into her pants. And that was the kind of guy that Braeburn was all too happy to introduce to his fists. “You’re not going to beat him up, are you?” “The thought sorta crossed mah mind, admittedly.” “Then don’t,” Jade said as she appeared practically out of nowhere, snaking an arm around his. “Your sister’s already grounded; if you end up that way too, then all I’ll have for company is the fembot here.” “Hey, I resemble that remark!” Skateaway snarked. Jade ignored her friend. “Let me look into it, okay, hon? Besides, I know exactly how to get under Fastrunner’s skin, so if he tries something, I’ll have him eating out of my hand in no time flat.” “Ya sure?” She gave him the kind of smile that made him go weak in the knees. “Oh, honey, I’m very sure. I’ve had a few run-ins with Fastrunner, and he knows not to mess with me any longer.” The school intercom immediately crackled to life. “Braeburn Apple, please report to the administration office. Repeat, Braeburn Apple, please report to the admin office. Thank you.” “Oh, sunnova….” He groaned. “It’s too early in the morning fer this shit!” Jade nodded. “Let’s just hope it’s not about Summer.” “Ah don’t believe that fer a minute,” he said sadly. “Yeah. Me neither.” Working on one of the cleared fields, they were busy planting saplings that Stayman had bought the day before their arrival. Normally they would plant seeds, but this late in the game, saplings would need to go up, which meant an extra expense the family didn’t need, namely ordering said saplings from a greenhouse out by Oklahoma City; some of the closer places didn’t have the cultivars the family used, especially the Fuji, Pink Princess and Golden Pippin varieties. But the biggest insult had to be purchasing a few trees of varieties that the Apple Clan themselves had made and sent out into the world: Applesmith (and the related Granny Smith.) Braeburn. Stayman. Summerfree. All of those had been created on this or other Apple family farms across the country and now they were stuck with the indignity of basically buying their own trees. As she wiped the sweat off her forehead and stuck the shovel in the dirt near where she’d planted the latest tree, she looked at how the others were doing. Everyone present save for her mother was working in the field; even Granny, who at her age probably could’ve spent time helping Cornflower prepare lunch, was thrilled, shoveling dirt away and giving her sons heart attacks by dragging saplings on her own into each drop. Macintosh, who remembered time on the farm, also seemed to be enjoying himself, considering the whole thing just to be something a little different from his normal pursuits. And of course, her father was right at home, planting the saplings with an ease that made Applejack mildly jealous. It was an irony: she’d been born in Heavener hospital and had lived here on this farm until the day her family had filled the U-Haul and went California-bound. And now, years later, she was discovering that though she’d once been a farmgirl – though thankfully she had never been old enough to succumb to the “farmer’s daughter” stereotype – now she had no business being on one. She’d already set her path in life: martial artist, maybe move down south to Hollywood and become a stuntwoman, or open her own dojang, teaching children the taekwondo that she’d been taught by her sahbumnim and having a normal life. Or at least as much as anyone who’d been exposed to magic on numerous occasions, had a disguised unicorn as one of her best friends and dealt with the daily insanity that was Canterlot could ever be called normal. Looking around the farmland, she thought it was beautiful, absolutely gorgeous. And I don’t think I could live my life here at all. She wiped off her hands and went over to grab her water bottle, picking it up and taking a deep pull from it. “Oh, God that hits the spot.” “Glad to see you’re not completely wiped,” Sweetcream Scoops said as she approached. The girl was completely soaked in sweat, covered in dirt and looked as though she was just about to pass out. Applejack handed her the bottle. “You okay?” Scoops downed the rest. “I’m a sweatball, AJ. How do you think I feel?” “Well, Ah can tell you’re not wearing a bra,” Applejack noted at Scoops’ t-shirt, which was both white and sheer. Scoops blushed slightly before recovering. “I’d like an entirely different Apple staring at my chest, if you don’t mind.” “Ah’ll bet. In any case, you might want to go change before Mac sees you.” A sneaky look came over her face. “Really?” “And the rest of mah family, too.” “Oh. Okay, be right back then.” Applejack couldn’t help but chuckle as Scoops walked away. Applejack had heard Octavia and Twilight talk fondly about their cousin’s/brother’s fiancée, Cadance, and how she’d been an older sister for them in their lives, at least until Sunset appeared. While Scoops was only a couple of years older than her, she and Mac had been together for so long, Applejack would readily admit she felt the same way about the sherbet-haired girl. “Hey, sis, ya seen Scoops?” Macintosh approached her, looking around for his girlfriend. “Yeah, she felt kinda sweaty, so she needed to change before she had a wardrobe malfunction.” The look on Macintosh’s face was interested. “Think she’ll need some help?” he said, semi-jokingly. “Want me to start spreading that rumor about how you’re dating Ms. Cheerilee again?” Macintosh facepalmed. “Please don’t,” he pled. “She was supremely pissed and thought Ah started it.” “Don’t worry, Ah won’t. But seriously, bro, you got some plans to woo your gal later in the week?” “Lookin’ into it, surely. Ah want her to know Ah appreciate her an’ all fer comin’ with us.” He smiled. “Scoops is one hell of a gal an’ Ah don’t ever want her t’ forget that.” “Ah don’t think you’ll ever let her,” Applejack said with sincerity. “Doctor?” a voice called. “Come take a look at this!” From where she leaned over the table, Studious looked up from the last runestone she’d studied. She’d been here studying the things for a few decades now, having started here originally as just another faceless assistant for the lead archeologist and working her way up to where this was now her show. She’d come from Chicago and never went back, finding a fascination in the strange runes, the surrounding countryside and one very gentle biker who she ran into at the Heavener Diner on a regular basis. Studious sighed. This was her home now, her world. She’d settled down, married that biker and raised two children, a gentle boy and a somewhat unruly girl. And she couldn’t picture her life any other way. A girl came out of the river, water flowing off her wetsuit. She was carrying a huge stone plaque. “Doctor, check this out!” Studious hustled over; while there were massive amounts of runestones in the area, including the famed Heavener Runestone behind her, finding a plaque was a first. “What’d you find, Petunia?” Petunia Paleo, an archeology student from Notre Dame University, grinned like she’d won the jackpot. The eagerness and enthusiasm that Petunia showed for the job readily reminded Studious of how she was when she first started here, and it wouldn’t surprise her that when the day came that Studious hung up her labcoat and retired that her replacement would be Petunia. “You won’t believe this, Doc! I was diving, looking for more runestones – not that they seem to be hard to find at all – and then came across this thing. It was hell digging out of the muck, and I almost ran my tank out, but worth it!” Studious looked over the inscription-covered stone tablet. From the way it was carved, it was almost as if it were some sort of sign, a landmark pointing at something, rather than an object equating to scrolls, which Vikings had. It had a feeling of permanence to it, which probably meant that at one time it sat on the shore and eventually fell into the river. “Let’s have our resident language expert look at it, shall we?” Studious suggested. “Hey, Ord, want to take a look at this?” “Sure thing, Doc.” Ordbog was a linguist originally from the University of Copenhagen, who found the Viking artifacts in the middle of America completely amazing and joined the team. Given that he married a local girl and had started teaching classes over at nearby Rich Mountain Community College, he was another who was probably never going back again, which was a good thing, too: knowing about seven languages, Ordbog lived up to what his name translated to in English – dictionary. The man looked over the stone. “Hrm…this is odd.” “What’s that?” Petunia asked. “The stone is not only in Futhark, but there’s another one as well. I’m going to take a wild guess and say it’s Caddoan.” Seeing the confused look on Petunia’s face, Ordborg added, “The Caddo nation was the majority Native American group around here, and some of the Caddo experimented with writing systems, if I recall correctly. I’ll have to talk to a colleague over at the college about it; he’s far more versed in it than I am.” “Can you read the Futhark though?” Studious asked, before her phone began to ring. “Great, it’s home. Sorry, I gotta take this.” “No problem; I’m going to be at this for a while anyway,” Ordbog replied. Studious walked a bit of a way from her team, waving hi to the other members before she finally stopped around the Heavener Runestone. “Heya.” “Hon, we got problems again.” Her husband, and from his tone, she wasn’t going to like what she was about to hear. “School called; Summer ditched her classes. Brae also called and he says that he saw her off at her classes, but hasn’t since. He has an idea of where she is, an’ he an’ Jade’re gonna ask around their classmates.” “Fuck. Okay, keep me updated, love. I swear, Summer’s going to be grounded for multiple lifetimes at this rate.” Despite the situation, he laughed. “Is that all? Gettin’ soft on the kids, sugarcube.” “Maybe. I’ll be home as soon as I can.” At lunchtime, Jade walked to the far side of the school, over by the football fields. She knew that a certain group of teenagers hung out there; they had been the first group that she tried to befriend when she arrived and found out that wasn’t her best decision. Thankfully Braeburn, Skateaway and so many others had come into her life and she dealt with this group no longer. Still, their words stung. “Hello, Fast,” she said to one guy in the middle of the group. He sat there, hunched over a sandwich and Pepsi, smoking a cigarette and reading from a hardcore porno mag. There were a bunch of others like him sitting around as well. “Well, lookie here, boys,” Fastrunner said. “Looks like the nigg—” “Finish that word and I will break you,” Jade warned. “Oh, you’re gonna break me!” one of Fastrunner’s friends said in mock-fearful tones. Jade felt a brief well of shame; she’d briefly found Chainlink Fence attractive, but now she knew his cute looks hid a racist-as-hell exterior. “Aww, don’t be that way, Jade!” Fastrunner commented. “Way Ah see it, you givin’ your little black tunnel t’ desperate white guys. An’ since it’s lunchtime, an’ Ah need me some tail, maybe yer good for something.” “Yes, I am,” she said. “I’m good for finding out where Summer is. And since you troglodyte assholes can’t do anything more than keep your hands on a girl with problems, I thought I’d start swimming through the scum to talk to the worst. It can only get better.” “Look, Ah don’t give a shit why you’re here, but Ah don’t got no time for no sisters o’ no monkey-fuckers, got that? Or maybe she’s a nigger-lover too.” “Maybe we all can get some sweet black poontang,” Chainlink said, standing up. “Way Ah see it, there’s five o’ us here an’ just one o’ you. An’ we all play football. What d’ you do, steal hubcaps like th’ rest o’ yer kind does?” “My kind,” Jade mused. “Oh, you have no idea what ‘my kind’ really is, moron.” “Time t’ find out then,” a third boy said. “Guys, get her. Maybe if yer good to us, bitch, we’ll pay ya what yer due.” “I don’t think so,” Jade said, lifting her hand up. A mauve glow surrounded it as she said, “So let’s get you all erect – just not in the way you want!” Five boys started floating in the air, the looks on their faces ranging from shock to outright fear. “Goddamn nigger witch!” Fastrunner screamed. She raised them just high enough to reach the top of the trees that served as one of the boundaries of the school; any higher and someone would see them from the road. “Let’s get something straight, boys: Braeburn is more of a man than any of you will ever be, and I love him. And you don’t want to ever fuck with me again. If I ever hear one more racist, sexist or any ‘-ist’ comment out of your mouths, I will put you on a fast trip to the middle of Africa, understood? Now tell me what I need to know: where the fuck is Summer?” The five looked at each other helplessly, then at Jade with blank looks. Finally, the smallest member of the group, Rusty Nail spoke. Jade always felt sorry for him: she got the feeling he hung out with them because he felt he had no alternatives. “We saw her jump the fence over here and get into a car. No idea who, but he looked like a college student.” “Thanks, Rusty.” She lowered him and said, “You really need to reexamine your social circle – it’s going to get you in trouble one day.” She then looked at the rest of them. “You guys will sit there in the air until, oh, say two in the morning. And you’d better hope nobody comes this way.” “And if they do?” Fastrunner asked. “What comes up must come down – and in your case, hard. That high up, you could break a bone or two.” She turned and walked away, waving. “Bye, boys! I’d say it was fun…but it wasn’t.” She conjured an apple and a bottle of water to eat while she walked back towards the school; she wasn’t going to miss lunch due to those morons. Finally, with ten minutes left before lunch ended, she rejoined her boyfriend and best friend. “Got the info I needed, hon,” she said to Braeburn and Skateaway. “They said that Summer left by jumping the fence and she got into a car with what looked like someone from college. My guess is the 526.” “Good job, Jade!” Skateaway replied. Braeburn’s response, however, was different: “Shit. An’ we can’t leave until school’s over.” He kissed her. “Still, thanks, darlin’. Couldn’t’ve been easy.” “Oh, I know how to deal with Fastrunner and his ilk. They were like putty in my hands.” “Pass the fuckin’ doob,” Summerfree said. “Calm your panties, ‘kay?” the boy, a college student named Buckshot, said. “You’ll get yours – an’ Ah’ll get mine.” At the moment, she was in the 526, where she’d been for the past few hours, playing strip poker with a boy she barely knew but from his undressed state, she knew she was going to have some fun. Everything was going according to plan. One way or another, she was going to get the fuck out of this backwards shithole, and maybe – just maybe – this new wrinkle would work. After all, she came up with it on the fly, after she’d talked with her aunt last night, but Aunt Cornflower had been seriously worried about her and had told her what was more than likely a very cleaned up version of why she was in a wheelchair. Nothing against her aunt, but she didn’t really give a rat’s ass about that; her aunt’s infirmity, however, had given her a new idea: maybe if she fucked just about everything that existed in the county while her relatives were here, maybe her parents would force her to live with her aunt and uncle. Then she could live in Canterlot! A real city, with real people! She could practically see herself going to school with Applejack, Macintosh and Scoops. Then she could live her life the way she wanted and not as some backwater hick with no future whatsoever. “So, where’s Thistle?” Summerfree asked as Buckshot passed her the joint. “Gettin’ us more beer,” he replied. “You that eager t’ do a girl?” “Ah’m eager t’ have fun,” she said, mentally gagging. Granted, she wasn’t a homophobe, but having a threeway with Buckshot and another girl disgusted her, especially the other girl part. Still, if it meant getting out of this backwater, she’d go have sex with every girl in the county. There was a roar in the distance. “Didja hear that?” Fuckit, I’m bored. She leaned closer to him, making sure her flesh was pressed against him. “Only thing Ah hear is the sound o’ you enterin’ me, got that?” “Oh, I like th’ sound of that,” he said, bringing his lips to hers. The woods exploded and a black bear, roaring at the top of its lungs, charged into the clearing, battering its way through the trees. It tore the tent they were going to be using to shreds, then eyed the sleeping bag and the two naked people on it. “Fuck! Outta here!” Buckshot yelped. “Wait, Ah can get us out of this!” she yelled at him. “Fuck that!” He ran off into the distance, and a split-second later she could hear a splash beyond the treeline as Buckshot dove into nearby Haw Creek and started swimming for his life. Leaving her with nothing but an angry bear and her birthday suit. The bear lunged at her and she dived out of the way, trying not to panic. She immediately went for her backpack, pulling all sorts of stuff out of it, from her textbooks to the condoms she’d had plans to use today and whose user was now swimming down the stream, having abandoned her. Guess a run in the sack’s out of the question, then. She barely managed to dodge the blow of the bear one more time, and a nearby black walnut tree exploded into splinters from the bear’s strike. If I don’t get this done, I’m done for! Summerfree gasped, reaching the bottom of her bag and the roughly triangular rock within. She held the runestone towards the bear, and shouted, “Could use some help here!” The bear lunged. Summerfree’s eyes started to glow a bright green. A wolf’s howl split the air, and less than a breath later, a massive, invisible object slammed into the bear, sending it flying into the trees. The trees split a second later as the object chased after its opponent. Relatively sure she was safe and that her “date” wasn’t coming back anytime soon, Summerfree got dressed and repacked her backpack. Afterwards, she rifled through Buckshot’s pants, finding his wallet and relieving him of any cash; she was going to have to make her way to the nearest home and catch a taxi; she’d also have to come up with a convincing enough lie why. Just in case, she took the rest of his weed. Once that was done, she grabbed a second stone out of her pouch, closing her fist around it. Her eyes glowed red and in her free hand, a small sphere of fire appeared. She cast fireballs at the sleeping bag, tent and Buckshot’s clothing, deciding it served him right for abandoning her like that. Thistle would show up sooner or later, and if Buckshot came back, it would be his problem to deal with the embarrassment. As it was, she decided no more potential three-ways anymore. She was going to have to draw the line somewhere; may as well do it now – no need to build herself an embarrassing reputation that would follow her to Canterlot. A few seconds later, she could feel something coming back and looked to the shattered woods. “It’s okay, just you and me,” she told the nothingness. There was a rainbow flicker and a second later, a massive wolf the size of a school bus appeared. He looked at her and started wagging his tail, panting and yipping cheerfully. “Yes, you saved me, you rascal—” The wolf went over and started licking her with his huge tongue, bathing her in slobber. “Stop that!” she giggled, then sat down on the ground, the wolf parking next to her. She reached over as high as she could and patted his side. “Good boy,” she said, meaning it. “Good boy.”