February 15th, 1001 Domina Solaria, The First Year of the Two Sisters
Applejack grunts as she stirs in bed, the thick comforters on top not quite soaked in sweat but still making her uncomfortably hot. Well, that’s the price to pay for trying to shed her thick winter coat a little early, so it doesn’t interfere too much when she’s planting and working during spring. Her stallion is laying next to her with his back fully exposed to the winter chill. Well, it would be, except for Fluttershy cuddling close on the other side.
His warm breath tickles her just behind the ear, but that hasn’t woken her up from a deep sleep, not in years. His hand is resting on her belly, not moving at all. Still dark outside, based on the lack of sunlight streaming through the windows and hitting her still closed eyelids. Some wind occasionally tickles across her snout, though not enough to get her to scrunch up.
That woke her up this early? One of the fillies leave a window open or something? It wouldn’t be the first time; she normally likes having the house just as cold as outside, much to Doug’s dismay. But when she’s trying to stay warm like this? The fillies probably just need another reminder.
Applejack briefly cracks open one green eye, barely able to make out anything in the room except the pair of purple irises staring inches away from her.
Since they always start Winter Wrap Up late, and work late into the night - sometimes even all the way through the night and into the next day - she needs all the rest she can get! Applejack lightly snorts as she tries to get back to sleep, shifting around slightly and working on getting comfortable again. Her nose scrunches up this time as the wind blows across it again. But her coat is all itchy, and getting Doug to tire her out sounds like the best-
Wait.
Applejack’s involuntary shudder that ripples through her entire body is enough to get her stallion to stir, his hand shifting lower until it rubs up against one of her teats. She inwardly grimaces as she places a hoof against his hand; much as she wants him to get her in the mood, she needs to find out who else is in here! And hopefully without them noticing that-
“Hi.”
The low whisper is enough to get Applejack to flinch, hooves pushing her whole body backwards, pressing into Doug. Her eyes fly open, barely able to make out the purple mane and magenta highlight in the dark.
“Oh, you’re awake!” exclaims Twilight Sparkle gleefully, her hooves doing a happy yet subdued dance on the floor. “I was worried you wouldn’t be awake yet! Are you excited? I’m so excited!” She gets up, not content with beating her hooves against the floor and instead clapping them against each other.
“Consarn it, Twilight,” Applejack growls out; despite normally waking up before dawn, she finds her patience already running thin. Doug continuing to fondle her certainly doesn’t help matters either. Her eyes close again, doing her best to carefully control her breathing and keep the venom out of her voice. “What are ya doing?”
“Wellll,” Twilight drawls out, oblivious to Applejack’s tone, “I was so excited for Winter Wrap Up this year that I had to get up early! I couldn’t sleep! And then I ran through all my checklists - including the one where I wake up Spike and then he goes back to sleep - but morning still hadn’t come! So I came here!”
“Ah huh.” Applejack huffs as Doug pushes firmly into her belly, long strokes clearly signalling his intent. “And did those checklists include me going back to sleep?”
“Hmm.” The rustle of paper suggests that Twilight actually has checklists made for this eventuality. Applejack isn’t sure whether that bothers her more or less than the fact that Twilight apparently doesn’t know what’s on the checklist she made, and has to check. “Nope! It looks like there’s the part where you wake up, an optional box for special somepony time, and then you explain to me all about what happens during Winter Wrap Up! At least for your section!” The swish of papers suggests that Twilight is, in all seriousness, trying to show her what’s written on the checklists. “I wasn’t sure exactly what happens, so I made a few moderately educated guesses, and we can just fill in the blanks from there!”
“Twilight,” Applejack says as diplomatically as possible, especially because Doug took Twilight saying ‘special somepony time’ as an excuse to press further, “did it ever occur to you that we could have talked about this yesterday, or the day before, or pretty much any time except the morning of?”
“Um.” Applejack refrains from hitting herself on the head as Twilight stammers. “...Maybe we can do that next year?”
“You’ll be lucky to be around next year,” Applejack growls out in a low voice, though she finds it hard to stay mad at the mare. Stupid Doug and his tension destroying ways!
“Well, since you’re not doing any-” Twilight stops as she hears the rhythmic motion of the bed, correcting herself, “-much, do you want to start now?”
“Twilight,” Doug says between hard breaths, Applejack thankful for him jutting in, “we’ve been very patient. Please either be quiet or join in.”
“Oh,” Twilight stammers. “I’m s-”
“I’d recommend joining in,” interrupts Fluttershy, a deep inhale as she nuzzles Doug’s neck.
Some time later and Applejack sits alone at the kitchen table, idly swirling her glass of apple cider. They're out of the hard stuff, unfortunately; at least, the stuff that isn't reserved. She stares out the still-dark windows, half grumbling to herself and half going through all the topics that the plant team needs to do during Winter Wrap Up. After all, she is the plant team lead again, and as long as she can keep Caramel from losing anything too important they’ll be fine.
Well, still heavily dependent on the weather team doing their job correctly, and to a lesser extent the animal team, but when isn’t that the case? Hopefully Rainbow Dash learned a lot from running the show last year. And they reinstated her as weather team lead. Apparently that decision is still up in the air, just like it is every year. Those pegasi could be flightier than a hummingbird! But it’s not like Rainbow can control Derpy’s every movement. It’s the same way with the plant team; just about every job needs to be done well, and they need every body they can get their hooves on.
She looks up from her half-full glass of juice as Twilight limps out of the bedroom. “So,” the unicorn leads, trying to ignore her twitching leg and pulling out quill and parchment, “can I get your name and job responsibilities for Winter Wrap Up?”
Applejack raises an eyebrow. “Ah’m the plant team leader, in charge of making sure that all the members of the plant team get their jobs and get ‘em done right.” She raises an eyebrow as Twilight leaves a space blank at the start of the line.
“And your name?”
“...Apple Jewel.” Applejack watches as Twilight writes half the name, then stops.
“Come on, Applejack. Try to be serious, okay?”
“You…” Applejack sputters. “You just asked me for my name! How am Ah supposed to take that seriously?”
“I’m just trying to be thorough.” Applejack grumbles to herself as Twilight continues, “And I wanted to make sure I got everypony’s titles written correctly. That it’s just ‘Applejack’ and not ‘Plant Team Lead Applejack’ or ‘Green Leader’.”
“Tan Five, standing by!” Fluttershy announces as she walks into the kitchen, her hips swaying back and forth. “Oh! Maybe the animal team can be Gold instead?”
“Gold, Green, and Blue? Ah feel like we’re missing something.” Applejack grins as Doug comes into the kitchen and starts breakfast cooking. “Ah’m sure Rainbow would get a kick outta being called Blue Leader.”
“It’s settled, then,” Twilight says, scratching out Applejack and writing ‘Green Leader’. She taps the quill against the parchment. “So, what does Green Leader do during Winter Wrap Up?”
“Well, it ain’t just about today. Some stuff you have to get done the year before.” Applejack motions to the stairs leading to the storage rooms on the ground floor of the Carrot House. “You gotta have all the seeds and whatnot that you’ll be planting. Ah try to make sure everypony has enough seeds for what they’re planting, and that gets done in the fall. Not everypony has the space to store the seeds they’ll be planting next year. So we do a bit of that, though that’s mostly for Carrot Top.”
Twilight’s quill scratches against the parchment. “Okay. Anything else?”
“Well, the first thing we do is we gotta clear all the snow off the fields. Then-”
“Wait,” Twilight interrupts, holding up a hoof. She looks up from her notes to Applejack. “You clear all the snow off the fields?”
“No,” Applejack says patiently before taking a long quaff of her cider, finishing it off and wishing she had more. “Members of the plant team do.”
“Okay,” Twilight says, pulling out a second piece of parchment. She labels it ‘Plant Team Member Responsibilities’ and writes ‘Clear snow from fields’, annotating a small ‘first’ next to it. “Got it. Now, what do you do, as opposed to what does everypony do?”
“Huh.” Applejack pauses for a few seconds, looking between the two lists. She never really thought about that distinction. “Ah assign ponies to different areas. Ah also need to collect what areas need what work, and estimate how many pony hours it’ll take to get the job done. Sometimes that number gets provided to me.” Applejack shrugs.
Twilight carefully records each item on the Green Leader list, then adds ‘provide Green Leader with job details’ to the Member list.
Applejack gawks, remarking, “You are being really thorough about this.”
“Oh.” Twilight looks between the two lists. She sighs, her shoulders slumping.
“Ah didn’t mean it as a negative!” Applejack waves as Hedge gets up, the filly gathering a bit of chicken feed and heading outside. “Ah admire your methodicalness! You’re making sure that you don’t miss anything. Doug does the same thing, too; it’s just a little…” Applejack waves her hoof in the air.
“Laborious.” Doug ruffles Applejack’s mane as he puts a plate of just two pancakes in front of each of them. He continues at Twilight’s slightly offended look, motioning to the papers, “You can’t count on an approach like this working with somepony like Rainbow Dash. She’s going to get bored and resentful if you try to ask her all these intricate, nuanced questions, or expect detailed answers.”
“Hmm.” Twilight pulls out a third piece of paper, now adding notes about different pony’s personality types for best asking questions.
“Okay, Ah gotta draw the line somewhere.” Applejack rolls her eyes, deciding to plow through and let Twilight sort it out. “Let’s see. So, we clear the snow from the fields and roads, both outside and inside town. Weather team gets the snow on the houses. We plant the new seeds, for quick crops that don’t need a lot of tilling. You know, flowers, grass, vegetables and such. We need to tell all the plants that we stopped growing at Fall Wrap Up to start growing again. And my job in all that is to tell which ponies when to go where.”
Another round of pancakes hits the table, this time with the last of the dried fruit. Twilight absentmindedly chews as Doug merrily remarks, “Aren’t logistics fun?”
Twilight grins as she writes. “They are! You could even say that the fun has been… increased by Muler’s constant!”
Doug nods. “Naturally.”
Twilight rolls her eyes. “Your jokes are so derivative.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”