//------------------------------// // Questions from a Featherbrain -- A Rewrite // Story: Questions from a Featherbrain // by MistyShadowz //------------------------------// It had been a few days since AJ came out as ace to Dash and she’d received nothing but acceptance. No prodding around about sex and if she was somehow related to plants. But there was also a very noticeable lack of further questions.  Normally she wouldn’t have been bothered about this fact, but knowing Rainbow as well as she did, she knew Rainbow wasn’t the type to not be curious about something like this. At least one question about where AJ fell on the spectrum, but no. Nothing. At least, that was how it was until this morning. During a breakfast Rainbow was invited to by the Apples as an honorary Apple, Rainbow had blurted out the last question Applejack expected. "Are you aro?" The mare was staring expectantly at her partner.  Applejack nearly spat out the juice in her mouth; instead it went down the wrong pipe and she started coughing. She thumped her hoof against her chest trying to calm herself down, even Rainbow started helping as best she could.  "Sorry, sorry! Was that rude?!" Rainbow asked in a mild panic once AJ had calmed herself down. Applejack shot a look at Dash, unamused and, quite frankly, disappointed. "To answer yer question Dash, no. No, I’m not aro. Can’t speak for everypony, but from what I’ve heard, they don’t like to be in romantic relationships, right? We’re in one, I’m happy with ya as my partner, I just don’t think that… the fun in the bed time is needed to have a fulfilling relationship. Get it?"  Rainbow nodded unsurely, "Yeah…? Don’t those two things kinda… go hoof in hoof… or is that not how that works?" Her wings fluttered close to her, in what Applejack now knew to be a nervous habit for the mare. "No, they ain’t the same thing." Applejack picked up Rainbow's plate and her own before heading to the sink. "Wanting to pleasure yourself is real different from wanting to be with somepony and do romantic stuff with 'em. I love goin' dates with ya, I love saying I love ya— in non-sexual settings— I love sleeping next to ya, and I love bein’ your marefriend. That’s very different from me liking sex.” “Sex is like… cake… someponies, or most ponies, love cake but someponies just don’t. I’d rather have pie than cake, anyway though." She kept the dishes to dry. "Get it?"  Rainbow grinned like a three-year-old as she nodded vigorously. "So… sex is cake and all the sappy stuff is pie? Like that?"  AJ stared at her for a second and snorted. “Yeah. No wonder you hate all the sappy stuff, ay?” Dash rolled her eyes and laughed too. The next half hour was spent doing some farm stuff. Bucking down the apples from the trees, collecting them in baskets then taking said baskets inside. Rinse and repeat this cycle about a dozen upon dozens of times and there you have Applejack's entire morning to lunch. Rather tedious, but at least she had a little cyan featherbrain helping her this time.  Rainbow was a pretty fast learner, at least in these hooves-on type of areas. She picked up the apple-bucking method quickly, nowhere near to the mastery Applejack had of it, but that was to be expected.  As all things usually went when the pair were put together with little to no supervision, they ended up competing for who could get the most apples bucked before lunch.  With Applejack well in the lead due to— well, having done this since she could walk— Dahs found her own tactics to win; try to win. Namely to distract AJ with the dumbest questions that popped up in her mind. At least AJ liked to believe Dash only asked to be distracting and not out of genuine curiosity. “So, you’re still not hetero, right?” Applejack shot her head up at the Pegasus. “What,” she asked, flat and dry, hoping to convey the stupidity that was Dash right now. "Like, you said that pie is different from cake, so if you don’t wanna bone anypony, then you have to be into ponies non-sexually, right? Otherwise… you wouldn’t be with me, right?" Even to her, that logic seemed very nonsensical, but it made enough sense for Rainbow to ask the question. "Well… don’t hetero mean you’re into the opposite sex, alone?" Rainbow nodded in response. AJ heaved a sigh as Rainbow bucked down the tree that was exactly right to Applejack, "Then how the hay does make any sense,” she asked flatly. Rainbow took a second to process, and when she did you could easily tell. Her cheeks turned a shade of light pink and she ducked her head ever so, "Oh…” About ten minutes passed by with no more random questions from Rainbow. Ten minutes of absolute silence. Something that would normally drive the pegasus insane with boredom. Today, however, seemed to be a day of dumb questions and a lot of reconsidering and thinking on her part. But it wasn’t over. The questions, that is.  "So what are you?" Rainbow asked a little before they hit the two hours and fifteen minutes mark. Applejack cocked an eyebrow, "A pony. Proud earth pony to be precise." She bucked yet another tree down. "More like really annoying,” she grumbled under her breath, "I mean, like what are you… like bi, or pan, or just gay, just with your ace-iness mixed in." "Oh! See now, Rainbow, that’s a pretty good question to ask. Not a dumb one." Applejack smirked, "And the answer; I’m bi— technically speaking I ain’t bisexual; I’m biromantic, which ls like the same as bisexual just without the sex part." Rainbow nodded slowly. “Um, okay.” Applejack rolled her eyes. “Now, ya better hurry. There’s less than an hour for ya to catch up!” Rainbow scowled. "How do you know I’m not already in the lead?! There's no counter!" Rainbow pouted, huffing. "No, there is one. That’s up 'ere." Applejack tapped a hoof on her head. Rainbow rolled her eyes, and bucked down another tree, before quickly getting to the next, and so on. After having knocked out apples from six separate trees, she stopped and turned to her partner, who at that same time managed to get down double what Dash managed. "So–” Applejack mentally braced herself. “Rarity told me that some aces don’t really think they’re part of the whole queer community. Like some people don’t wanna be and others think aces don’t belong and all that... What’s your take on it…?” Applejack found herself stumped. She had never really thought too deeply on the matter; thought it was obvious and didn’t need further considerations.  She sat in her thoughts, considering what to say before piping up a minute or so later. “I mean– I definitely think we’re queer enough, ya know? Never knew ponies thought otherwise. I don’t see why they would but it’s not like it bothers me too much, ya know? We’ve got our own shit to deal with, so I think we belong— I don’t see anything inherently wrong with thinkin’ otherwise though.” “What about non-aces saying you don’t belong in the community?” AJ snorted. “They’re dickheads.” Dash laughed along, bucking down a few trees as she did so.  "Also! Ten more minutes, RD, hurry it up." Applejack sat down on the floor, under an already buck apple tree. She leaned back and laid her back conformably on its stable frame. "I'm even gonna play hare for ya."  "Ha, ha."  Rainbow quickly bucked down a few more trees before her mind thought up another little thing to ask. A little thing she didn’t want to have to ask, but she needed to know at that point. "So… I know you wouldn’t want me asking this… but…" "Repulsed. Absolutely repulsed. I like jokin' about it, 'cause, well, it’s a joke to me, but no. I never really wan" it for myself."  Rainbow blinked. She let out a short, "huh" before it clicked in her head. "Oh wait, no! I wasn’t asking that!" She flailed her hooves in front of her and shot up into the air. "I kinda figured you weren’t a fan, considering what you said the other day." Applejack sat up and stared Rainbow dead in the eyes for about the seventh time that morning or something like that. Rainbow was a featherbrain. A very, very confusing featherbrain. Granted, that was one thing Applejack absolutely loved about Dash. "Then?" "I meant, like, are you part plant? I asked Twi about the whole ace thing 'cause i didn't really know anything and I wanted to-- nevermind! Point is; all Twi knew was that asexual was something to do with plants-- so~" AJ could do nothing but sigh. She sure had a thing for idiots, huh? “Dash, do I look like a plant to ya?” Dash shrugged. “You seem to like them a lot. Remember that time you read a bedtime story to a tree?” AJ found herself stumped yet again. She– she had forgotten about Bloomberg. She cleared her throat, willing the pink in her cheeks to vanish. “That was– that’s different. I am, in no way, related to plants, thank ya very much.” Dash rolled her eyes and laughed. “Different time, different place, right?” “Right. Point still stands. I ain’t no fucking plant.” “Yeah, got that.” Dash said no more as she continued to try and catch up. She had a long, long way to go before she managed to do so, and Applejack let her fuel her own delusion.  Ten-ish minutes past and Dash still wasn’t all that close to surpassing AJ’s grand total of one-sixty trees before lunch– a personal record. “Hurry it up, slowpoke, only got five minutes to spare. Y’all still got forty– fifty trees left before ya catch up!”  Dash picked up the pace, going from three trees per minute to five-ish. Which was roughly twenty-five after five minutes. "And that's time!" Applejack announced as she strode over to Rainbow with a little smug look on her face. "Nice game partner." She held out a hoof that was expecting a little bump from a cyan hoof. "Alright, one more question."  Applejack cocked an eyebrow. She figured Rainbow was done with the questions, or simply lost interest in asking them right now.  "Ace or asexual?" She grinned randomly.  AJ raised an eyebrow "What- well, that ain’t soemthin' I’ve got before– ace– I guess, I dunno."  Rainbow lifted off the ground effortlessly. She swung her hooves in the air in what Applejack could only assume to bw her attempt at writing something in it. “Acejack or Jackace?”  Applejack blinked, staring nearly owlishy at her marefriend. After a moment, she simply rolled her eyes, not at all fighting the fond smile that crept up. Dash was a featherbrain, no questions asked. But at least she was a lovable featherbrain.  The farm pony shrugged. “I like AJ better, honestly.” The pegasus scoffed, apparently displeased with her partner’s answer. “Well, me too, but that has no– like– no POP to it, ya know?” “Pop,” Applejack echoed.  “It’s boring! So pick one or I’ll do it.” Applejack laughed. “Jackace sounds like you’re calling me a jackass, so that fits you better.” Dash clapped her hooves together. “I was hoping you’d say that! Also--" the pegasus grinned widely, "--race you back to barn, Jackace!” And she zoomed off, leaving Applejack hollering after her. “Oh, you get back here!”