//------------------------------// // Food on the Table // Story: The Little Curiosities // by Comma Typer //------------------------------// A party is happening at the Apple family garage-and-barn. Unlike the raving hoedowns over at a night club, this one is a simple get-together organized by Applejack to celebrate this year’s bountiful harvest. As several ponies dance to vinyl-player country music, Applejack sits at a table with a couple friends, all munching on dishes that show the apple as an ingredient of all trades: apple pie, apple fritter, apple cake, apple turnovers, and apple Brown Betty (the delicacy, not her aunt). Two seats are empty: Rarity and Fluttershy are at the dance floor, the former teaching the latter how to dance formally for the stallion of her dreams, even if that stallion is mostly of Rarity’s deluded invention. “I’m amazed you threw the party this time!” yells Pinkie after chugging down another slice of apple cake. “I thought you’re going to have Thanksgiving!” “We still are.” Applejack downs a bottle of apple soda, her trusty hat angled sideways. “The harvest haul is just that good. We’ve got enough apples to feed this party, get Thanksgiving for the whole Apple clan, and supply three more holidays through the winter… and we’d still have leftovers! I’m surprised we got so many!” Sunset winks at her. “That’s magic, baby! Earth pony magic, specifically.” Applejack chuckles. “Yeah, I reckon that’s gonna kick in. Still, I didn’t know it would be that effective.” Then, she looks around the room—lots of familiar faces dancing around or eating; a not-so-short line of customers waiting for their apple cider fix courtesy of a chatty Apple Bloom. “S’well as how everyone’s now buying apples like it’s the next big thing. Like, I know it’s great food, bein’ an Apple an’ all, but still….” “I guess that’s the pay-off for being magic ponies,” Rainbow quips before finishing a half-full bottle of soda. “Gotta say, I’ve never been much of an apple-eater until I got ponified. Fruits taste a lot sweeter with these pony taste buds.” She sticks her tongue out to prove her point. “But I guess you know that, Applejack.” The apple pony couldn’t stifle a chuckle before copying Rainbow and downing some more soda. “Then there’s hay too. Apple Bloom told me that when the whole magic leak was goin’ on, she caught Big Mac eatin’ hay. Now we’re all eatin’ it up and we don’t even think about it. It just is, an’ we cook it up in all different ways.” She turns to Sunset. “How big is hay back there anyway?” “Oh, it’s so big, we don’t think about it too!” Sunset clears her throat. “Our prehistorical ancestors grazed on it, just like how the horses here used to do I. When we got agriculture going, we started discovering ways on how to make hay better, how to cook it….” “So, it isn’t that much different from the hunter-gatherer humans of old?” asks Twilight. “Yeah… but cross out the hunter part. And the gatherer part too. Why gather berries and fruits from the bush when there’s food wherever you go?” “And I can’t wait for the day when they make sweetened grass fields!” Pinkie declares like a bomb exploding with words. “Just imagine my house, and the front yard is green grass… but it’s tea-flavored with sprinkles!” “Now here’s a mare with ideas!” shouts Sunset. Everyone at the table laughs, drinking more soda and munching on more apple foods. After that, Applejack pensively checks Sunset out as the native-born unicorn takes one more sip of soda. “So, uh, Sunset, I can’t deny that you’re happy to get home cooking back, what with the hay and all.” Sunset pauses a little before speaking. “Uh, yeah.” She fidgets with her curly mane. “Truth be told, I’m glad to be eating the pony way again, much as I got used to how humans do.” “Ooh!” Twilight levitates a notepad and a ball pen for note-taking. “Now that brings up a good question: How did you handle your new digestive system when you came over here?” Sunset lets a second of awkwardness at her evil past pass by. “Not too well, not at first. I thought I wouldn’t go hungry because there was grass everywhere, but I realized eating grass here was a social sin. Let’s just say I got caught picking grass at someone’s front yard and somehow avoided arrest…. “Because that happened, I had to observe. Realized humans didn’t eat grass but still ate the usual pony foods: fruits, vegetables, bread and baked goods, even junk food like potato chips… but then someone called me Bacon Hair out of the blue.” Her friends inspected her mane. “Yeah, I can see why,” Twilight observes. “Now that you mention it, it does look like a strip of bacon. Hey! What if—“ “You will not use me as bait in your griffon experiments.” “I was merely suggesting!” Sunset shrugs and rolls her eyes. “Anyway, I was curious because I thought that was an insult. Nopony calls a stranger such meaty words with a good heart, so that got me thinking: If these humans were okay with calling me Bacon Hair, that means they’re okay with literally eating bacon. That’s when I encountered the local deli.” Sunset shudders at the memory. “I should’ve had nightmares. Maybe to you, it was all just normal, but to me—a pony in an alien world—to see dead meat just hanging there like it’s nobody’s business and to see these humans ordering them, making sandwiches and other foods out of dead animals… though, back then, I didn’t know pigs and cows weren’t sapient, so I just braced it and ordered some bacon and eggs anyway.” Twilight lets out a giggle. “’Cause you were evil and you just didn’t care?” “I was curious!… but also evil. Like, ‘Celestia won’t let me explore eating meat? Whatever!’ Plus, thanks to my human nose, bacon smelled good all of a sudden.” Applejack’s brows shoot up. “Yeah, I’m surprised you didn’t go vegan even after the whole Fall Formal thing.” “Eh, I’ve grown used to it. Plus, I really love bacon ever since I got my first taste. Too bad that’s gone now.” “But pigs aren’t sapient, not even in your world.” “Yeah, but you know what I mean. Can’t exactly eat bacon these days because you’ve got your new digestive systems out in full force, and—“ “Oakley, stop!” Their heads turn to Cookie and Cinnamon galloping to Oakley who is first in line at the apple cider line, much to Apple Bloom’s surprise and much more so as his breath reeks of alcohol. “I just want… one… hck!… more….” “Alright, that’s it!” yells the bartending Apple Bloom. “That’s enough for you!” With an apology to the others in line, Apple Bloom and the others carry an intoxicated horse out of the barn. Applejack keeps her mouth shut at the scene for a few seconds. Then, “Welp. Looks like I’ll give a stern talkin’ to when this night’s over.”