Zephyr Breeze didn’t know what kind of creature it was, and he no longer knew anypony who would. Those wings, at least, explained how it could have gotten here to the farm in the first place. Those dulled feathers of green and purple must have been vibrant, once. Maybe back when the sunken ribs of its mammalian body were full with flesh, if there had ever been such a time.
All Zephyr knew is how greedily it ate up the nodules of AlfalfAll that he’d poured from the container in his wingtips. That long, pencil-thin beak made short work of picking them off of the surface of the low ceramic bowl, and the creature trilled happily as if in the middle of a feast. And Zephyr could remember that day all of those years ago when his sister took him down to the ground from Cloudsdale to see the birds where they roosted, and how he covered the ground carelessly with the birdseed that had been packed away with such care, and how he would always regret taking that moment for granted.
Zephyr Breeze knew exactly how much AlfalfAll he had poured into the bowl. A mouthful, a mouthful and a half at most. He’d pour out just that much less for himself at dinner tonight, and hardly miss it. Giving up so little, to bring so much joy. He gazed at the unknown creature now nuzzling gratefully at his fetlock, and imagined what they would need to do to restructure their calorie budget. It was worth it, right? It could keep being worth it?
He let himself hold on to that fantasy for just a second longer before looking back up at Big Mac, who looked back at him with a stoic expression on his muzzle, and soft pity in his eyes. Zephyr gave him a nervous grin. Apologetic.
“The system said that water pressure was down at Pump Six. And I know you usually take care of things like that but you were still out in the east field so I went to check, and this little critter had gnawed its way into the line somehow, can you believe it? So I brought it here.”
Sympathetic, but disapproving, was the look that Big Mac gave him, and Zephyr cast his gaze back down at the now-empty bowl. Or the box next to it, standing out from its surroundings with the garish colors of its cartoon bird mascot. They had been next to each other, just like that, in the storage closet where Zephyr had looked for that box.
Zephyr couldn’t bring himself to look back up.
“I just can’t do it, Mac.”
He felt Big Mac’s hoof on his withers, as reassuring and gentle as cold metal and crystal could be.
“It’s okay, Zeph. I’ll take care of it.”
Zephyr Breeze didn’t like looking at the way the calorie-mare’s wings flapped when she hovered. Something about the movement felt wrong in how regular it was, and though Zephyr knew their servos must have been silent, he swore that he could hear a steady whine from them. Or maybe he didn’t like how it made his own wings feel, twitching in their sockets, remembering the years of his life when he would have to take a special trip to even have his hooves touch ground.
It was a relief when the calorie-mare alighted in front of him, this week’s delivery of apples to CV-RichLand stacked high on the pallet behind her in modular plastic crates. She stood as still and poised as if her hooves were barely touching the ground, and her wings rearranged themselves for manipulation, their primary spindles holding out a crystal screen in front of her.
“Inspection looks good. I’m temporarily crediting your account for the contract amount, plus the bonus for the box. That should cover this week’s purchases as well.“
She swiped a primary on the screen, and a smaller pallet disgorged itself from her skyship. Ration boxes of AlfalfAll and HayMax. Fuel for the farmhouse’s generators. Charge crystals for Big Mac’s legs. And sacks of blightcure for the apple trees to keep them alive for another harvest.
“Now.” She gave one of the sacks a pat with a wing for emphasis. “You know there’s only one more week left this season, right? Contract needs to be renewed next time. And I know you’re not the one making the decisions around here.”
“He’ll be here next time. Right now he’s asleep. Exhausted. Stayed up almost all night to get ahead of this week’s quota.”
“Really pushing himself, huh?” The calorie-mare shook her head. “Well, I’ll just tell you this right now so you both can have a good, long think about what it means before next time.”
“I know. I know.” Zephyr sighed ostentatiously. “Blightcure’s going up again, isn’t it?“
“Yeah…” The calorie-mare fixed him with a stern look. “To twenty point five.”
“Twenty point five!?” Zephyr didn’t need to exaggerate for that one. “That’s almost thirty percent! We won’t even be able to afford our own blightcure from what we could make with that. How are we supposed to run our farm?“
“Yes, how are you supposed to run an all-heirloom farm with just one worker? It’s getting harder and harder to produce heirloom blightcure every year. That’s what I want you to have a good, long think about.”
Zephyr’s ears pinned back. “Are you just going to do that to us? Really, Rainbows?”
The calorie-mare was unmoved. She stepped forward, her wings flared into a steel arc, her tone icy. “Are you seriously playing that with me? You know I always hated that name, right?”
Zephyr shrank back into a cower, covering himself with his wings out of instinct, peeking through a gap in his feathers.
“Sorry! Sorry! I’m sorry!”
The calorie-mare’s glare hardened for a bit as she looked from wing to eyes to wing with a withering eye, before she seemed to swallow her anger with effort.
“Just… make sure that he’s awake for next time, okay? And make sure he knows. Even at twenty point five…”
“Yeah, I’ll tell him. That’s still better than what we’d get at 2F or GladCorp. “
The calorie-mare nodded, and set her pallet to automatically load itself into her skyship. As it rolled forward, she quickly grabbed the GriffTech Animal Protein Preserve Box and threw it on top, looking ridiculous in its small size compared to the size of the crates below it.
“I know it doesn’t look like much, but the protein in this could keep a griffon alive for another half-day. That’s not nothing at all.”
And that was the last thing the calorie-mare said to him on that day as she followed her cargo into her skyship. And as it took off into the haze of the daytime sky, belching greasy black fumes of carbon as it went, Zephyr wondered how many griffons Big Mac’s legs had fed on the day he had them replaced.
The steam rippled up from the HayMax pouches, which is how Zephyr knew they were done. He turned off the heat, and with his wings, molded the steam that hung in the air into the shape of a heart before gently nudging it to float over to the kitchen table where Big Mac was sitting.
Big Mac gave him a smile.
“You always know how to make little things like this feel special, Zeph.”
“It’s the least I could do.”
With a ladle and scissors, he fished out the three pouches from the near-boiling water and poured out the slurry in them into the two awaiting bowls. Two for Big Mac, one for himself. He brought the bowls to the table.
“At least it’s not actually cooking. I was just awful at that growing up.”
“You’d’ve learned.”
Taking his spoon in the magnetic grip of his hoof, Big Mac began to dig in, and Zephyr could still smell the lingering odor of the blightcure from his morning in the east field, but didn’t say a thing. He just gripped his own spoon with a wingtip and filled his mouth with the bland but always-palatable taste of HayMax.
“It’s awful, y’know. Twenty point five. I can’t believe it.” Big Mac shook his head. “I don’t know how they think they can do this to us. It ain’t right. Ain’t right at all.”
Zephyr just looked down at his bowl, thinking about what the calorie-mare said. The part that he hadn’t relayed to Big Mac. He drew a shape in the surface of his HayMax, idly wondering, when something came to him.
“Hey, I have an idea! Something that’d let us get more than a few more bits from this place. Enough to keep us in blightcure no matter how many times CV-RichLand raises its prices.”
“Oh yeah? What is it?”
“There really aren’t many farms like Sweet Apple Acres anymore, right? All-heirloom ones of this size? We even have some pre-Everfallow apple trees left! Rich ponies would pay to see that kind of thing, right?“
Big Mac let out a chuckle.
“Yeah, what a sight that’d be, huh? A skyship takin’ some high-flyin’ executives all the way down from Cloudsdale just to see a farm like there used to be in the old days.”
“Yeah! We could give them the whole experience, you know? A day in the life of a still-working farm!”
“And while they’re here, we’d have to smile and act nice, wouldn’t we? Act like they’re just part of the family, and not like they’re just going to go straight back up to Canterlot right after to go back to their jobs figuring out just how many bits to raise blightcure by next year.”
Zephyr’s excitement died in the air between them. His ears drooped down.
“It wasn’t very well thought-through, was it?”
“Nope,” Big Mac said. “But it’s creative. That counts for somethin’.”
And before Zephyr knew it, Big Mac put down his spoon, his bowl empty.
“Gotta get goin’ right about now.”
Zephyr frowned. “So soon?”
“Have to get the last three rows of trees bucked. Else it’s just gonna pile onto tomorrow. And I wanna be rested for when the calorie-mare’s here again.”
“How about I go out there with you? Maybe pull the wagon? That might make it quicker.”
Big Mac tapped one of his forelimbs with the other's hoof.
“Don’t make sense to burn calories to make more calories, you know that.”
Big Mac stood up from the table.
“Could you get ‘em?”
Putting his own spoon down, Zephyr did as he asked, gently pulling out the charging crystals from the ports in Big Mac’s prosthetic legs and laying them on the table.
“I’ll be back in the evenin’. Love ya, Zeph.”
“Love you too,” Zephyr said as he watched Big Mac trot out the door. He then sat back down at the table, alone.
Zephyr knew that he couldn’t ever really understand Big Mac’s perspective. Their difference in age mattered. Big Mac had grown up in a normal world until he was in his teens. Zephyr had been barely out of flying kindergarten when the Princess died.
No one knew exactly what had happened. Only that her School for Gifted Unicorns had turned into a smoking crater on the day of its entrance exams. More important was all the chaos and carnage that followed. And who knows which of them that it was that caused a magical blight to cause earthpony magic to weaken and the crop yields that so easily fed a continent to drastically fall. There were bleak times ahead then, and only set to get bleaker. So it made sense for all the smart and important ponies that were in charge to try what they did.
Drastic measures, after all, had succeeded in taming all those other crises in this brave new Celestia-less world. Powerful artifacts combined with untested spells had gotten the sun and moon moving again and re-imprisoned Discord. What was one more, to imbue the soil of all of Equestria with the fecundity of earthpony magic?
It did not go as expected. Earthpony magic, as it turned out, was the only defense that the land had against the spell that robbed it of the ability to grow anything ever again. And it was an imperfect one. Ponies would still have to fight the blight to eke out what they could from the lands that had been under cultivation at the time of the Everfallow. But that was all they would ever have, ever again.
Zephyr Breeze didn’t have a plan. He never did, did he? He’d sworn to himself that he’d have that conversation with Big Mac, and that this time it was sure to go somewhere, but the days just slipped past each other and Big Mac fumed more and more and before he knew it, they were standing outside the farmhouse watching that skyship painted in CV-RichLand livery streak down in its approach, then land.
“Twenty point five!” Big Mac roared the very second that the skyship’s door opened, earning only an unimpressed look from the calorie-mare.
“Good morning to you, too, Big Mac. Glad that Zephyr did manage to tell you about that. Did you have a chance to think about it?”
“Think about what? Of payin’ your extortionate prices?” Big Mac spat. “Cause I ain’t doin’ it!”
“Extortionate? You know that you won’t get a better deal—”
“Yeah, I know! A lower price than 2F or GladCorp! Heard it.”
He stuck out a mechanical hoof at the stacked-up plastic crates next to them.
“You see that? I put my blood, sweat, and tears into that crop. My own flesh! An’ at the very least I should get enough for it to get the next harvest through. That’s only fair for what I provide!”
“Provide?” The calorie-mare glared. “You think we want your apples? What pony would have so little shame to eat one of those things! You know what we do with them? They go straight into your HayMax!”
Zephyr raised his eyebrows at that, looking at Big Mac for a reaction. But that didn’t seem to faze him at all.
“Look, you know what we want from you. You’re sitting on some of the best land, whatever that even means anymore, in all of Equestria, and you’re using it for this!“ The calorie-mare stuck a mechanical wing at the pallet of apples, and suddenly Zephyr could see how small it was compared to the cargo bay of the skyship she flew. “More calories! You could even keep a few trees, keep yourself in heirloom blightcure for them, too.”
“Yeah, an’ maybe I should just tear down the home I grew up in to use that land, too? An’ move up to one of those towers you have in Cloudsdale like Carrot Top did? Well I ain’t doin’ it. I ain’t tearin’ down a single one of my family’s apple trees to replace them with AlfalfAll. To have your contraptions plow and plant and water and harvest it all? That ain’t farmin’!”
“No, it’s not. It’s more efficient than farming. That’s the point! And as for Cloudsdale, well.” She gestured with a wing, not towards anything on the farm, but out beyond the outskirts of it, at the endless, barren, dry, cracked earth that was once a forest all around them.
“The view’s a lot better above the smog layer. You don’t see anypony coming down here to sightsee.”
Big Mac shook his head, scraping the ground with a hoof.
“My family grew apples here on this farm ever since Princess Celestia gave this land to us. That’s what I’m gonna keep on doin’, ‘til I can pass it down to my children to do the same thing. “
“Your children…” The calorie-mare’s eyes went wide in shock, and shot Zephyr a look as if asking him to confirm what Big Mac said. Zephyr nodded solemnly.
“Celestia. Y’know, I’m honestly glad you’re both coltborn, else you’d probably have been stupid enough to try to make one like animals do. ”
Zephyr shook his head.
“No. If you can’t even budge on the price of blightcure, it’s not like you’d have any extra ration allotments to give us. We’d have saved to buy more lottery tickets. Up to the maximum, even.”
“Yeah? They call it a lottery for a reason. There’s some egghead up in Canterlot who weighs the deaths from an extra mouth to feed against the deaths of despair from losing just a little that much more hope for a child one day.” She shook her head, and looked at Big Mac. “But hope springs eternal, doesn’t it? Do you really think that is how it’s going to go? That you could keep holding on like this?”
Big Mac glared at her, silent until he wasn’t.
“What choice do I have? It’s all that I have left of them. I can’t give them up for you.”
The calorie-mare took in a long breath, then exhaled.
“It’s not for me. Do you know what my posting was before this one? Manehattan.”
Zephyr’s eyebrows rose. The calorie-mare continued.
“A million ponies on an island the size of a postage stamp, with only a scattering of community gardens for unblighted land. Can you imagine what I’ve seen? What I’ve had to do? The thing I said earlier didn’t come out of nowhere.“
The calorie-mare gestured at the trees around them.
“If this was all AlfalfAll instead, the calorie differential would be enough to feed two hundred ponies. And I know. A bit of history, yours and Equestria’s would go with it. But that’s two hundred more lives we can support.”
“To live like this. Cooped up in boxes, with nothing to look up to in the sky but that smog.”
“Well, it’s what we’ve got.”
Zephyr could tell Big Mac was trembling, though his legs kept him still. And Zephyr knew what he was going to say, even if it took him everything he had to say it.
An idea came to Zephyr.
“What was it that you said about that egghead up in Canterlot?”
Zephyr could hear Big Mac’s heartbeat, and that was all he needed to ignore how much he missed the warmth of the legs of flesh and bone that would have once held him. His belly and chest were still warm, still alive.
“So one of my ideas worked out after all, huh?” Zephyr said, not opening his eyes.
One heartbeat thumped in the silence. Then another. Then another.
“Eeyup.”
Then another. Then another.
“Are you sure about this, Zeph?”
“I’m never sure about anything. So it feels like I always am.”
Then another. Then another.
Then another. Then another.
“Why do you stay?”
“You know why.”
Whatever calories it took to create the traditional potion must have gone into the calculation of its use, but that didn’t mean it came with the traditional flavorings. There must be some small farms keeping heirloom strawberries alive somewhere. But honey? The closest that probably existed to that now were the decoded coils of the bees that once made it, stored in a data drum in Canterlot somewhere.
So it was a very bitter drink to swallow, but sweetened by the bite of a crisp apple afterward. The very last apples that would ever grow on this land. Preserve boxes meant that he would have one to look forward to along with the potion for each one of the hundred or so days that remained until he was due.
And as the juice from the apple dripped down his chin, he looked out the window at the work of the 2F Calorie Trawler Mark 3000 as it dug gouges into the poisoned earth of Sweet Apple Acres, swallowing up apple tree and root and branch and buried corpse and critter alike into its maw. It was a sight to behold, its wide-set treads leaving a winding trail of flattened dirt behind it as it continued its work of methodically scraping up everything it could.
Zephyr knew that it wasn’t the end of the story. After this would come the CV-RichLand equipment to turn the freshly-scraped earth into a bright field of blight-resistant AlfalfAll that would quickly spread to cover every inch of soil that those blessed apple trees had once grown in.
But for now, he could imagine these tamed apple trees as having met the same fate as the wild cousins that once surrounded them, as he looked beyond the farm’s borders out into what had once been the Everfree. There, years ago, predecessors of the 2F Calorie Trawler Mark 3000 had once done their work, making the most use they could of a forest ecosystem that was already dead or dying.
Zephyr wondered if, on that day, there was an unexpected calorie surplus on some carefully calculated spreadsheet somewhere. The equivalent of four pony limbs, a torso, a head, and two wings.