Sweet Apple Acres.
August 17. The following Tuesday. “Spike At Your Service”…sort of.
Applejack was surveying the orchard when she saw Spike walking her way, less than an hour after she sent him home to Twilight Sparkle. His eyes were on the ground instead of at her.
“What happened?” she asked. “I thought you were going back to Twilight’s to recover.”
“Well, I’m here now,” Spike said, wiping away some angry tears. “I’d like to help around the farm.”
Applejack looked Spike over—he had a couple haphazardly-applied bandages taped over his knees. “Well, I don’t know,” she said. “Wouldn’t you rather rest?”
Spike looked up at her with a burning glare, and Applejack had to take a step back from the intensity of the anger he was feeling at that moment. Anger that was not directed at her. He then closed his eyes and tried to control his breathing. “I…I just…” He opened his eyes again, looking pleadingly at her. “I need to be busy right now,” he told her. “I spent way too much time thinking on the way here.”
Applejack said nothing for a moment.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Spike said firmly. “Not…not right now,” he said, his voice softening.
“Alright,” Applejack said, walking towards the farmhouse. As they reached the farm area she pointed. “Apple Bloom’s over yonder giving little Piggington a bath. I was going to lend her a hoof, but maybe you could lend a claw instead.”
Spike nodded, grinning in grim satisfaction. “On the double!” he said, running over to join her.
Applejack turned around to walk back into the orchard.
“Applejack said I could help you!” Spike called out to Apple Bloom. He looked over at “little” Piggington, who loomed taller and taller as he approached. The pig, sitting, was easily twice as tall as either Apple Bloom on four hooves or Spike on two feet. She was sitting in a mud puddle and had mud encrusted all over her. The only thing that was entirely mud-free was the little blue bow that was tied around a tuft of hair springing from the top of her head.
Apple Bloom looked over at Spike and put down the scrub brush that she was holding in her teeth. “Great!” she exclaimed. “I could use all the help I can get!”
The pig looked the diminutive Spike up and down and snorted a laugh so powerful that it dumped Apple Bloom into the nearby bucket of soapy water. She emerged with a long soap foam beard.
This was going to be a tough job…exactly what Spike was looking for. His grumpy smile turned genuine. “Hello, Piggington!” he said brightly as he helped Apple Bloom to clean up. “Wait until Applejack sees how you shine!”
~ ~ ~
A half hour later.
Piggington looked her spotless self over and squealed in happiness. Even the mud puddle under her had been cleaned up.
“See, I told you that you would be happier clean than dirty!” Apple Bloom crowed around the dirty towel she held in her teeth.
Spike, seeing Applejack approaching, used the scrub brush in his claw to gesture at Piggington. “Ta-da!” he exclaimed.
The pig oinked by way of a greeting.
Applejack walked around Piggington, inspecting her closely. Apple Bloom and Spike stood close together, looking nervously between each other. Each of them worried that they may have missed a spot.
“Good job, you two,” Applejack finally said, earning a sigh of relief from the pair of pig-polishers.
“Applejack, is it okay if I get going?” Apple Bloom asked, stepping forward. “I don’t want to be late for my Crusaders meeting. We’re getting fitted for water skis!”
Spike looked nervously between the two Apple sisters. “I could help with that!” he blurted out. He wiggled his claws. “Rarity says that claws are really useful for handling a tape measure.”
Apple Bloom looked him up and down for a moment, a frown growing on her face. “I don’t know…” she said. “Scootaloo said she had a system, and I think it might hurt her feelings to mess with that.”
It wasn’t the real reason, and everybody knew it.
“Oh,” Spike said, his face falling. “That’s…that’s OK. I can do chores for Applejack. Right, Applejack?”
Apple Bloom saw the disappointment radiating from Spike, and instantly regretted her excuse. But in the end, she decided to stick with it.
“That’s right,” Applejack said plainly, saving the situation. To Apple Bloom she said, "Water ski fitting, eh? You definitely don’t want to be late for that.”
Apple Bloom knew at that moment that there would be a talk about this later that night. But for now… “Water skiing cutie mark, here I come!” she cried out, galloping for Ponyville with all her might. Applejack and Spike watched her go.
“Did I do something to make her mad?” Spike asked Applejack.
Applejack shook her head sadly. “Spike, I don’t rightly know your age in cabellus [biological pony] terms, since you’re a dragon and dragons age differently from cabelli. But cabelli as old as Apple Bloom and you are…the colts and fillies don’t get along well. That’s why she lied and ran away just now, because you’re not a filly. Not because you’re not a pony, and not because of anything specific to you.”
Spike sighed. “I hoped to maybe become a Cutie Mark Crusader someday,” he said.
Applejack patted his shoulder. “I’ll do whatever I can to help you get a mark someday, Spike. Same as I did with Ferdinand.”
“Thanks, Applejack. How’s he doing, by the way?”
“I got him enrolled at the Canterlot branch of the Dales School of Economics,” Applejack said proudly. “He starts classes next month.”
“Thank you so much for that,” Spike said. “But…that’s for the future.” And saying that made him think of his future, and how hopeless it appeared to be. “But for today, what other kind of chores do you have for me? I’m still eager to work.”
Applejack sensed Spike’s desperation and sighed. “Let’s sort some apples.”
~ ~ ~
Apple sorting was the most mind-numbing job on the farm. One pony—usually Granny Smith, but in this case Applejack—would descend into the narrow apple cellar and start going through the apples, one at a time, looking for blemishes. The other pony—usually the one being punished for something—would have to carry those apples one at a time up into one of two barrels located up on the surface, based on the first pony’s judgement. When a barrel was filled, another would be moved into its place. When all of the apples had been processed, the bad apples would go into the feed pile for the animals, while the many barrels of good apples would be carefully carried back down into the cellar to be emptied.
Having two hands as opposed to one mouth, Spike was twice as efficient as most “second ponies”. But the process still took almost four hours. Despite obvious signs of exhaustion, Spike kept working until the last good barrel was emptied before he collapsed to the ground. He began snoring within seconds.
With a maternal grin, Applejack picked Spike up, placed him on her back, and carried him up to sleep on Apple Bloom’s bed.
Only when this was done did she march her way over to the Golden Oaks library.
~ ~ ~
The sign stapled to the front door read “CLOSED FOR PRINCESS BUSINESS”. Applejack, finding that the door wasn’t locked, opened it and walked in.
She found Twilight Sparkle on the second floor, intently reading a book as big as her and taking copious notes. There were tall piles of books on both sides of her.
“Twilight,” Applejack said firmly.
“Mm-hmm?” Twilight said, her eyes still on the books.
“Did you see Spike earlier?” Applejack asked.
“Mm-hmm,” said Twilight.
“Did he tell you about the timber wolves? How he would have died if I hadn’t saved him?”
“Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm,” Twilight said in response to the two questions. Her eyes never moved from the books.
Applejack frowned. “I buried him in the back yard among the petunias,” she said sarcastically.
“Sounds good,” Twilight said absently.
Applejack weighed her options. She could deal with Twilight, but that was a problem she had tried to fix multiple times, and always she found herself up against the same roadblocks, whether the excuse was “Siren Twilight” or “I can’t disappoint Princess Celestia, Applejack! It’s PRINCESS CELESTIA!”
So she decided to leave Twilight be for now and work the problem from the other end.
~ ~ ~
Spike slept until dinner time, being awakened by the delicious smells from the kitchen. He sat on the edge of his bed in the gathering gloom and thought.
He knew he was going to be asked about why he was here, as opposed to being back at the Golden Oaks recovering from his experience in the Everfree.
They’re my other family, he told himself, and they should know what’s going on. But I won’t be mad at Twilight. Because she can’t help what she is.
~ ~ ~
“Hello, Spike!” Granny Smith welcomed him as he entered the kitchen. “We set a place for you for dinner.”
“Thanks, Granny,” Spike said in a subdued tone, climbing up on the guest chair. He was the last to sit.
Granny led the group in thanking Harmony for their food and set to eat.
The Apples spent the meal trying to avoid looking at Spike, as they could all see the melancholy radiating off of him.
~ ~ ~
After dinner, Big Mac and Apple Bloom went upstairs to their rooms. Granny Smith settled into her rocking chair and was soon in a state somewhere between wakefulness and slumber. That left Applejack and Spike. Applejack settled into one seating cushion, and Spike sat in another.
Spike saw that an agricultural goods catalog sat on the low table between them, but Applejack made no move to read it, or do anything else. “So, what do you usually do after dinner?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t really feel like doing anything,” said Applejack. “Leisure time for us Apples is pretty rare, and sometimes I just like to sit and relax.”
“Oh,” said Spike. “I, uh…I usually read.” He picked up the catalog.
“Feel free to spend the night, Spike,” Applejack said, causing Spike to lower his reading material. “There’s a guest room in the barn that I set up. I had a feeling you might want to use it. You can stay for as long as you’d like…just so long as you do your fair share of work.”
“That sounds good,” Spike said, with butterflies in his stomach. It felt like something permanent, like he might transition from living with Twilight and visiting the Apples to the reverse. When Applejack said nothing more, he picked up the catalog once again. He tried to look through the seed listings, but his eyes couldn’t focus.
Finally, he put down the catalog and steeled himself. “Applejack, I need your help.”
Applejack, despite knowing this moment was building since Spike’s arrival, retained a neutral voice. “With what?” she asked.
Spike sighed deeply. “With Twilight,” he said at last. “I feel like I’m slipping away from her with every friendship report she sends. I thought at first that the whole ‘siren’ thing would be it, but it’s not.”
“Were things ever better?” Applejack asked.
“They were!” Spike said, standing up. “After I was first hatched, I was raised by Princess Celestia until I was old enough to think and act for myself. Then I was given over to Twilight, who was still just a filly. We were really close then. She needed me to help her study, and she had to work hard to keep me out of trouble. Half of the time, I had no idea what I was doing. And the other half of the time Twilight had to interact with other ponies, so she had no idea what she was doing. And that’s what kept us together.
“Eventually, though, she got too good at what she was doing. She knew how to keep other ponies at hooves’ reach, and everything else she got from a book. I wasn’t in a book, so…I stopped being important to her. After that she kept me around because she was supposed to, not because she actually cared. Twilight…well, she has trouble caring about anything that isn’t in a book.”
“So why don’t you write her a book?”
Applejack and Spike turned their heads, to see Apple Bloom peeking between the balusters of the staircase. “I’m serious,” she said, descending the rest of the way to stand before them. “If Twilight Sparkle cares more about books than someone who isn’t one of her best friends, why don’t you write her a book explaining yourself, and have her read that?”
“Huh,” said Spike. “You know, that might actually work!”
“Great!” Apple Bloom exclaimed, jumping up in the air and clicking her rear hooves together in mid-air.
“One problem, though,” Spike added in realization. “I don’t know how to write a book.”
“Writing a book is like giving a speech,” Applejack said. “Only you write it down instead of saying it out loud. And I’ve got a lot of experience giving speeches.” She looked over her shoulder at a closed door. “Wait right here,” she told them. She walked through the door, then closed it behind her.
Spike looked curiously at Apple Bloom. “What’s in there? I don’t think I’ve ever seen into that room.”
“That’s the, uh…meeting room,” Apple Bloom said. “Where the Apple Clan gets together a lot to make their plans. She’s just…uh, cleaning it up!”
Apple Bloom thought of all of the chalkboards and dry erase boards in that room. All of the changeling-specific bullet points that had been inscribed upon those boards, the latest ones during their brainstorming sessions with Mrs. Peel. Some of those bullet points were older than she was. They weren’t going to clean up easy. She walked over to the cushion next to Spike’s and sat down. “This might take a while,” she said.
With a shrug, Spike sat down.
~ ~ ~
In the end it did take five minutes of solid cleaning before Applejack emerged from the meeting room. And instead of inviting Spike inside she pulled out a white board and closed the door behind her.
“SPIKE’S BOOK TO TWILIGHT” she wrote at the top of the board and underlined it. Resting the dry erase marker atop a hoof she looked over at Spike. “Now then, how do you want to do this? Do you maybe want to tell the story of your life, or just explain who you are?”
“Well…” Spike began. “There was a book that Princess Celestia had Dusty Pages make special for us, called The Book of Dragons. It had everything that ponies knew about dragons written in it, with extra-large margins for us to write in based on me trying out stuff in the book. We used that book up in less than a year—ponies don’t really know a lot about dragons, once you remove all the slander and hearsay.
“I want to write The Book of Dragons Volume 2. And just like that book was made up of stories mixed with explanations, that’s what I want to do for Twilight. I just…I’m not sure how to organize it. I can’t just start with my hatching, because I don’t remember that—the Princess and Twilight told the story to me. And some things are more important than others—I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to do to get ponies to trust me, but that’s a long story with a lot of dead ends. I don’t want to write something that’s depressing. I want to stick to the important parts, to tell Twilight the things that she never knew or that she didn’t know how important they were to me.”
Applejack entered a lot of notes on the whiteboard, about the mix of story and explanation, or how it doesn’t have to include everything that happened, and that the book should focus on what Twilight didn’t know to be important. “Those stories and explanations, they were all written by ponies, right?” she asked.
“That’s right.”
“Then how about this: It’s a hundred years from now, and some pony decides to write a book about you, just like other ponies have written about other dragons they have met. And you’re going to write the part of the book that ends today.” She smirked and added, “because I don’t know how to predict the future.”
“Um, okay,” Spike said hesitantly.
“Oh!” Apple Bloom exclaimed. “I get it! Don’t write the book as you, because you’ve got too much in your head to know what to keep and what to leave out! Imagine this pony instead and write down what he would think needed to be kept. The stuff that other pony writers got wrong about dragons.”
“The stuff that’s unique to you, and no other dragon,” said Applejack.
“Oh, I see,” said Spike.
Applejack positioned herself next to the board and held out the marker. “Climb on up! Try to make a list of the really important stuff. We’ll figure out an order later.”
Spike hesitated for a moment, then climbed up to stand atop Applejack’s strong back. With marker in claw, he took in a breath before beginning his list.
They got a good organization in place that night, but nothing actually written.
The next day, Spike and Applejack went over to the library. It was still closed.
Inside, they saw that Twilight had gotten through five books.
“You didn’t sleep, did you?” Spike asked Twilight’s back.
“Nuh-huh,” Twilight said, still reading.
Spike shook his head and went downstairs to make a sandwich. “Princess Luna didn’t provide a deadline,” he said as he worked. “But Twilight always assumes that these projects are ASAP. She’ll probably finish her notes late tonight, then crash into her bed and sleep for twelve hours or so. We might be able to get through to her after that if we time it right, but after that she’ll start on the actual assignment and then we’ll lose her for another day.”
“This was Princess Luna’s assignment?” Applejack asked as she followed Spike back up the stairs to the second floor.
“Mm-hmm,” Twilight said, answering the question for Spike.
“Yeah, this is Princess Luna’s first assignment, and I at least think it’s a little mean.” He pointed at the unrolled scroll at the end of the table, past the pile of read books:
“Imagine that some catastrophe has made the other princesses unavailable for at least a decade. You were forced to cast Star Swirl’s spell and become a princess, and with your new powers you have succeeded in saving Equestria. Now that peace is restored and you have sole control of the land, what do you do in the first year to cement your power and prevent any uprisings? You may reference any or none of the classic works of political philosophy included with this assignment. Your resulting essay must be at least 50,000 words in length, and you must cite your sources.”
“If she ends up in the hospital, I’m sending Luna the bill,” Spike joked.
“Spike, the state pays for all essential health care,” Applejack said.
“It didn’t in her time,” Spike replied. “I’m banking on her not knowing that it changed.”
~ ~ ~
On their way out of the front door, Applejack stopped and looked back for a moment. “You know,” she said to Spike, “my place is nowhere as good as this place for writing.”
Spike stopped and looked around. “So, you want me to stay here?” He looked a little desperate.
“No. I think you should make my place better. You’ve got an in with Princess Celestia. Why don’t you ask her for help?”
Spike nodded. “Good idea.” He walked over to a pile of blank scrolls. He produced a feather pen and ink bottle from who knows where, wrote a quick note, then rolled the scroll up and blew his fire breath upon it, causing it to turn into green smoke that flew out a window and up the mountain towards Canterlot.
Less than an hour later a couple of royal chariots descended on the Apple farmhouse. In a few moments the chariots were back in the sky, having released their passengers: the unicorn stenographers Logo Gram and Gramma Logue and the pegasus typist Clickety Clack, with their equipment and paper.
Before too long Spike’s book began to take shape.