It was raining over Sweet Apple Acres. Stray gusts of wind blew sheets of rain through the orchards. Puddles were forming all around the farmstead soaking well used paths and turning them to muddy traps. Beneath the fertile soil roots drank deep of the still-falling rainwater. The simple farmhouse stood tall in the midst of the downpour. Even a wild rain was no match for the strong foundation and thick walls.
The farmhouse was filled with the comfortable rush of rain falling and the merry crackling of pine logs in the fireplace. Warm and sweet smells billowed out from the kitchen on a fading cloud of steam and filled the whole house.
Big Mac’s eyes wandered around the house. His sisters were hunched over a latest homework assignment trying to puzzle through it with the occasional good natured chuckle and Granny Smith made her presence known by the faint clanking of cookware and tuneless humming from the kitchen. He stretched lazily from his place on the sofa before putting his book away and standing up. Midsummer rain always put the work behind but the days off, spent with the comforting sights and smells of home and family were always something to be treasured.
Big Mac ran a hoof through Applejack’s loose main grinning back at her as she scowled up at him. He nodded to the front door and she acknowledged his unspoken words with her own nod. On the porch the gentle rush of rain crescendoed to silent steady roar that rose and fell with each breath of wind. Big Mac closed his eyes and stepped out from the protection of the roof.
The rain was cool as it fell on him. If it weren’t for the rain the day would have been blistering hot and muggy, but the rainwater soaking his coat gave the air a refreshing chill. Big Mac turned his head up to the featureless grey sky and let a few drops fall into his mouth. He closed his eyes and let his hooves carry him down the path for a time. The soft sound of raindrops striking leaves and grass and gravel, the thick and earthy smell of rain. Big Mac let these things fill his mind until they chased away all the little niggling thoughts leaving his mind clear.
He ambled on, enjoying the quiet pleasure of walking in the rain. His cousin, Braeburn, considered rain to be the very best of all weather, and Mac very quietly agreed with him. Granny would complain about aching joints, and Applejack would complain about a lost day of work, but in the desert and to Mac rain had an almost divine grace.
Rain gave life to the coarse grasses and wildflowers around Appleoosa. It turned the lifeless wastes into an oasis of life for days after even the barest sprinkle. Roots and rain held down the thin topsoil and kept it from being stirred up in the gusting wind. Mac ran his tongue along his teeth, remembering the feeling of his mouth being filled with gritty dirt. Every hard edge of Appleoosa seemed to soften after the rain came to the desert.
Weather couldn’t be made in the arid desert around Appleoosa and so it had to be hauled all the way from Cloudsdale. An expensive process that would bankrupt the frontier town if it were not for subsidies from the crown. Rain didn’t just help the crops, didn’t just settle the ever-present dust, it let an isolated little settlement in the desert know that ponies from canterlot and beyond were rooting for them.
But this rain that soaked Mac wasn’t from cloudsdale. It was a wild storm from the Everfree. There was something inexplicably more to a wild storm. Even one as calm as this without thunder or lightning- Mac shuddered at the thought, wild lightning didn’t know any restraint at all. It could split a tree from top to bottom or do worse to a pony.
The zap apples held the same preference for wild rain. Somehow in their roots and bark they knew and they always seemed a mite less cantankerous after even the harshest wild storm. Must remind them of home, Mac mused.
Mac paused where the worn gravel track met the road back to Ponyville. He let his eyes wander back the way he had come. The farmhouse seemed happy and bright even beneath the grey rainy sky. The trees and other crops were healthy and productive. Nopony would be tightening their belt this winter.
Mac allowed himself a quite bit of pride at that. This was his family, his farm, his household. It was his job to see that they were cared for and after so much hard work he was seeing success.
Mac was so lost in his proud musings that he didn’t hear her approaching until a wet mop of purple curly mane found its place beneath his chin. His forlag reached out and drew her body closer to his. Mac could feel her fur every bit as rain slicked as his. Slowly they parted until there was enough of a gap to bring their lips together. The kiss was chaste and warm and had weeks worth of affection poured into it.
Somepony with an eye for color and a big book full of names for all of them could spend paragraphs going on and on about how she looked. She was Sugar Belle and to Mac she was simply beautiful. They kissed again. It was soft and gentle and lingering.
Once they had finally parted she gave a nod to the farmhouse. Mac caught her gaze and tilted his head off to the side. There was something he wanted to show her first.
The walk through the orchard held a meandering silence. The two ponies would come to a stop from time to time and exchange affectionate nuzzles before they would turn and carry on walking.
Mac’s foreleg found it’s way around Sugar Belle and drew her even closer to his side. Her eyes looked up to his with a bright curiosity. Mac Smiled in return. They were almost there.
Mac pushed back a final low hanging branches and ushered his marefriend into a small clearing. At the center stood two trees so desperately entwined around each other that they were one. Sugar Belle gasped in recognition of something she had only seen in letters as Mac gingerly approached the trees.
Mac ran a hoof over the two trunks, feeling the complimenting differences between apple and pear tree as they wound around each other. Even the rain seemed to respect the silence in the clearing as softened to a light drizzle.
“I can’t give you this,” Mac finally said. “Ma, she was everything Pa lived for. She died giving us Applebloom and it wasn’t a week before he died of grieving. It didn’t matter that he was leaving the farm in a tough spot, didn’t matter that he was leaving the whole town without one of it’s biggest producers, didn’t matter that he was leaving Granny to lose a daughter and a son in less than a month, and it didn’t matter that he was leaving us to be orphans! She was the only reason he got up in the morning, she everything to him and without her life wasn’t worth him living it.”
Mac blinked, realizing that his hoof was pulled back to strike his parents’ tree. “I can’t give you that,” he whispered as he lowered his hoof.
Sugar Belle didn’t ask questions, she didn’t pretend to understand, she just held Mac and offered all the comfort she could. She listened to his body trembling with unspent emotion. She listened to his breath hitch with silent sobs. She listened to the way he clung to her like a lifeline. She listened to the way he cried into her shoulder. When he finally began to speak again she still listened.
“Scientism,” he said abruptly. “It ain’t much of a philosophy. Somepony decided they had too much time with their nose in a book and talking about ideas and so they went after the problem with the only tool they knew. If it can’t be measured and recorded, if it ain’t real and you can’t know it’s real it doesn’t mean anything.
“I’ve been shown fake love more times than I care. Spells, potions, changelings, even Discord’s had his go in here,” he said gesturing to his head. “I can’t trust how I feel. You make my heart beat like a drum and I can’t know if that’s just leftovers from one thing or another; I can’t know that it’s real.
“This farm, these trees, this whole place, this is real. All the books I’ve read to Applebloom while she was falling asleep, they were real. All the trees I’ve bucked side-by-side with Applejack, they were real. Every meal and piece of advice Granny’s given me, they’re real. Every load of apples I pulled across the country just to see you, they were real. Every order for more even when you already had too much they were real.
“I can’t give you a feeling, I can just give you what’s real,” Mac said, reaching beneath his collar and pulling out a little black velvet lined box. “I can’t live and breathe and die for you like something out of a story, but this ring, it’s real. And near as I can tell the life we’d have is too.”
She latched herself around his neck, her trembling arms holding him too tightly to be anything but real. The laughed out sob and hot joyful tears showed too much emotion to be fake.
The kiss- from that day on Mac swore that kiss was where real life began.