//------------------------------//
// The One About a Morning Routine 
// Story: The Locals 
// by Leoshi 
//------------------------------//

It was time for breakfast on the Apple Family farm, which usually meant somepony was about to cry.

Apple Bloom, who had just started to wear a bow, was trying her hardest to get under her sister's hooves. Apparently, it was a new game the yearling had invented: see how often she could get her big sister to shout before she got bored. Yesterday's record was set at four times in five minutes. Today had surpassed that, but purely for the reason that hot oil was in use and Applejack was trying to be extra careful.

"Big Mac!" Applejack cried, right on schedule. "Can Ah get a little crowd control in here?"

Big Macintosh stuck his head around the kitchen door, his mane still limp from his bath. He fixed her with a confused stare, unable to see the youngest in their family from his angle.

"A little crowd control, big brother?" Applejack repeated. She gestured to the front of the stove with one gloved hoof.

He nodded, shook a few stubborn water droplets from his head, then stepped inside. He didn't want to walk in with soaking hair again, not after last week when water from his mane had landed in the oil. He scooped up Apple Bloom, which seemed to flip her 'cry' switch, also right on schedule. Applejack smiled with relief as they exited, but thought to herself, Whew, if there's one thing we can count on now, it's an adventure every mornin'.

Now free to move, Applejack tried her best to tune out the cries of the foal as she carefully pulled out freshly fried fritters. Two for her, two for Big Mac, and one for Apple Bloom, which she cut into pieces. With a sprinkle of spices and a single pass with a honey-soaked brush, she decided they were ready. She moved to the counter so she could cover the batter she had used. On her way back, she set each of the plates on a large tray, then added her granny's favorite bowl of grits. A few paper-thin slices of apples atop each dish pulled it all together. Her momma would have been proud.

With practiced ease, Applejack slid the tray onto her back and stepped out of the kitchen. Apple Bloom was back under her hooves within seconds. "Whoa, ahh! Big Mac!! Crowd control, crowd controoOOOOAAH NO!"

Apple Bloom had decided that it would be fun to latch onto her sister's hind leg and be carried the rest of the way. The added weight, not to mention stepping on the foal's tail and slipping on the hairs, caused Applejack to lose her balance. As she went down, her last thoughts on the world were Ah never saw Canterlot.

She hit the floor. Stars danced in front of her eyes. Her ears twitched and swiveled with the sounds of the baby laughing, then the unmistakable crashes and bangs of falling plates...

Wait. Nope. No crashes, no broken plates. Big Mac was standing over her, balancing the tray on a single hoof. He stared at it with an intense focus, careful not to drop it—he had needed to over-extend himself to make the catch, and was now about four seconds away from falling as well.

"Whoa, nelly," Applejack moaned.

"Gyah-hah-hah!" Apple Bloom cheered.

"Er..." Big Mac said.

With the excitement behind them, Big Macintosh had the sense to carefully pull himself back and set the tray down at the family table. Applejack shook her head, shook off her sister, and wobbled to all fours. Little Apple Bloom proceeded to pull herself along the floor using just her forelegs, apparently now bored with the old game and eager for something new. Granny Smith was seated at the head of the table, and through some miracle had dozed through the entire ordeal.

Applejack took a breath and composed herself. "All righty, as interestin' as that could'a been, let's not make it a routine."





Over the following weeks, the family fell into a new routine. Applejack would prepare breakfast for the household, usually fritters with the occasional stack of pancakes for the really busy days. She would learn to step around her baby sister until Big Mac came down and separated them. They set the table, woke up their granny, and enjoyed a proper meal before the day's work truly began.

As the weeks turned into years, the rhythm changed but the routine stayed the same. Apple Bloom would learn to help her sister with breakfast, even going so far as to mix in berries with some pancakes. Big Mac would sometimes need to skip a meal in order to get started on a particularly large length of the orchard; on those days, one of the sisters would take out fresh biscuits to him. Granny Smith would always be napping at the table (she swore it was because she woke up during the night and couldn't go back to sleep until an hour later), so they would always shake her awake before they all ate.

But one day, after Applejack had grown into a mare, she came downstairs to see both of her siblings working together in the kitchen. Well, they were more like...accomplices. Apple Bloom would dart from one counter to the next, mixing ingredients and asking questions. Big Mac, meanwhile, managed the stove and oven, giving one-word replies and pointing out where the filly needed to go. All around them was their field of battle: flour and cornmeal spread over every surface, too-thin batter edging over the top of a mixing bowl, whisks and spatulas and spoons resting everywhere except in the sink, and feathers had gotten involved at some point but were now sticking out from random spots in their manes.

Applejack stood there in the doorway, trying to take it all in. She remained there for a good twenty seconds before her family noticed her. Both Big Mac and Apple Bloom instantly blushed, one more obvious than the other, then broke out into embarrassed smiles. "H-hey...good mornin', sis!" the filly said. "Uh, if ya don't mind...can you help us...find a rag?"

She tried to be mad at them, honest. She really tried, looking at the utter chaos they had created and thinking up one snappy remark after another. Instead, the more she looked, the more she ended up smiling too. And eventually, earlier than usual, she started to cry.

They told her what the plan was supposed to be. Apple Bloom had the idea in the first place. She and Big Mac would get up earlier than everypony else, sneak down to the kitchen, and try to make the same kind of breakfast that Applejack had done for years. The feathers had simply come from their pillows, thank goodness. However, they quickly learned that sneaking through a house before the sun had risen was a painful game, to say nothing of trying to navigate the kitchen itself. It wasn't until they decided that fritters were the right choice that they realized neither of them knew how to make the batter just right. And besides, Apple Bloom explained, they were never allowed near the oil when it was hot, so they never learned how to tell when it was hot.

Of course, it was at that moment that the oil on the stove started to smoke.





Applejack clapped her hooves together, sending puffs of flour into the air. She looked at the family table with a silly grin.

Before her was quite possibly the worst breakfast spread she had ever seen. They had fallen back to pancakes, but there wasn't enough flour, so each batch was either slightly runny or very, very small. (Apple Bloom offered to take the small stack.) To make up for it, they had brought out a bushel of apples and sliced them into everything, resulting in tiny pools of juice on every plate and parts of the tablecloth. There hadn't been any time to squeeze juice to drink, so they opted for water instead. The only pony who hadn't been affected was Granny Smith, still sleeping in her seat, unaware of the perfect bowl of grits awaiting her.

Each of the siblings would be hungry much earlier in the day because of this, and yet none of them cared. It was a morning that they would all remember for a very long time. But even so, as they sat down to eat, Applejack gave them a stern but fair warning:

"All righty, as interestin' as that could'a been, let's not make it a routine."