In a sleepy suburb one hour away from Manehattan, First Straw gets off the bus home, driven by a griffon whose claws could still handle steering wheels. After several minutes of trotting, she makes it to her house.
Inside, she finds her husband, Horizon Grate, with an untied necktie hung around his withers, having just arrived home from a meeting with Equestrian businessponies and some agreed-on projects to help out Earth. The stallion now shoves veggie burritos into a microwave.
“How’s your first day back at Out on Bale?” asks Horizon in a hoarse voice.
Straw puts the saddle bags down on the sofa. “Hectic. The haypacking industry exploded because almost everyone we know’s turned into hay-eating animals. Our foreign investors aren’t too hot about it, but the demographics don’t lie: everyone’s going crazy for our hay.”
Horizon nods while setting up the dining table. “Guess that would happen.” Then, he looks at her: busy taking off her own tie, an Earth pony without pegasus wings or unicorn levitation to shortcut things. “So what’s the plan?”
A comb goes over her mane, looking at herself from afar through the bathroom mirror. “We’ve all but left agriculture as we know it. Bale won’t just be a farmers’ brand anymore since we decided to be more direct: we pack hay from small to economy sizes, and we deliver it to the groceries where the average pony can buy our hay. The farmer part of it is already a boon since we can get discounts on hay from our leverage and our deals with them. We’ll just have to wait and see how the consumer end of things goes.”
His ears perk up in delight. “So you’re like a bread factory now, huh?”
“No doubt about it.” She throws the comb away in her saddle bag and settles down at the table. “It’s a radical change, and there’s some pushback especially from the non-herbivores on the board… but, hey, if hay’s part of our diet, might as well hop on the opportunity as best we can.”
“True.” The microwave dings and Horizon goes there to get the burritos.
Having brought the saddle bags to her chair, she puts them on the table. “Say, how’s it going on your end?”
“It’s going alright, I think,” he says, holding the hot burritos on a plate balancing on his back. “I’d have to say, Equestrian business can be backwards sometimes. Some of the big cheeses don’t even know concepts like vertical integration—“
While Horizon sets the plate on the table, Straw brings out a couple chock-full bags of hay on the table, emanating a sweet fragrance which makes Horizon close his eyes and sigh in delight.
Then, he shakes his head back into his senses. “Oh, no… don’t tell me that that will be our dinner too.”
She opened it and out pours hay on her plate. Fresh, not too dry, and with leaves to boot just like good hay ought to have.
“Hay subsidy!” she declares with a beaming smile. “Gotta love that about them, no? As we say, ‘With us, you can never run out of bale!’”
She bends down to have a bite of hay, chewing on it cutely.
The stallion cannot help himself but eat hay with her too. The burritos can be their dessert.