Chapter 29
“Malinae Malus” Crab Apples
So, the message of tonight is the same as it was when I first got to the farm.
“We’ll help you, but you have to want our help.”
And truthfully, I want their help. But it isn’t as easy as Applejack is making it out to be. I would really like it if I could just be open and honest with all these ponies around me. But thus far, every time I let slip some little truth about the world I’m from? All I get are looks of horror, shock and disapproval.
Tell them about energy drinks and it becomes a lecture in the health risks of over caffeinated beverages. Tell them about machines that make water safe to drink and you get told that water that was magically brought here by flying horses jumping on rain clouds is far better. Explain the way that science is actually meant to work and get sent to the farm for manual labor.
The pony world is based on the human world. After all, we’re talking about magical talking anthropomorphic equines here. There are going to be some very human traits to the characters. This is after all a show targeted to what boys and girls? Humans. Well, young human girls and their families, that for some reason also struck a strong chord with young teenaged boys and older men. So it’s going to be very much like the human world. But at the same time, it’s different. It’s an idealized version of the human world with less problems; where friends always come to help out, where everything’s healthy. And if you don’t act like the other ponies, like Charlie, you get shunned.
“And guess what H.B.? This is your home for at least the next year,” My brain tells me. Thanks brain, I needed to be reminded of that. I needed to be reminded that there is practically next to nothing that I can really do about my situation. I stare wistfully at the table. “At least the food is as awesome as I imagined it would be.” I let out a long sigh.
“Right,” I comment out loud. “Let’s get to bed, ‘cause sitting here and pondering your lot isn’t as comfortable as laying in a cozy bed and pondering your lot!”
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Getting to, ‘my room,’ I close the door behind me, pushing it till I can hear I can hear an audible clicking that assures me that, yes the door is closed. I am still very uncomfortable with the thought of sleeping in this house. It’s not the thought of Big Mac as much as the fact that Applejack thought that we were about to engage in, ‘hanky-panky.’ That thought alone disturbs me. I’m not sure if it is the idea of...being with a stallion, or the fact that a horse’s...
I feel ill thinking about the more detailed parts of horse anatomy, so I am going to stop now. Yup, going to stop now. I push my head under the warm quilt. I kind of wonder how they actually make it look hand stitched, but fuck, this is a magical world. It doesn’t need explaining. Pulling myself under is a bit of a challenge, but eventually after much struggling and finagling, I get there. My head pops out from under the blanket and rests on the pillow behind me. My front hooves follow suit and I struggle around to get comfortable.
For a moment I am just staring at the ceiling. I think it is actually setting in. I am going to be really -stuck- here, in Equestria, for a year. That is if nothing horrible happens to me. I mean, this is a magical land of talking horses with dragons, gryphons and who-knows-what-else. There are countless ways I could die if I make a wrong turn or do something stupid. Fuck, even if I don’t take care of myself healthwise I could die. I haven’t even thought of what kind of illnesses could kill me!
I rub my hooves together and shake my head. “Stop this. You’re going to drive yourself sick by worrying about what will get you sick and kill yourself over worrying about what will kill you!” I let out another long, frustrated sigh. “There are plenty of other things you can worry about. Like how you acted to Applejack.” Her words echo in my head again. “Our hospitality only extends so far. If yer not wantin’ or willin’ ta take our help, then we’ll have no choice but ta move on. Ya understand?” Hearing that again even as a memory produces a dull ache in my heart. I know what she means, the whole ‘shape up or ship out’ song and dance. Still those words are stinging harsh things. Again I shake my head. I need to stop focusing on this negative stuff. Stop being a ‘oh poor pity me, H.B,’ and start-
That’s when my attention is drawn to something that I am sure that I don’t want to be seeing right now. Passed the foot of my bed and on the other side of the room is a dresser with a mirror.
Reflected back in that mirror is a horribly sad and oh-my-fucking-sweet-god overly cute, tomboy-ish looking pony. I have seen myself in the mirror only a handful of times now. But those times have almost always been exclusively in the bathroom.
The large sad blue-eyed mare staring back at me is a sorry sight. Her mane is a curly wavy mess, her large sparkling eyes look like they are on the verge of weeping. Her hooves are placed almost cutely over the blanket.
“Gah!” I can’t stand to look at that reflection anymore. She’s too fucking cute. It makes me cringe to know that the reflection I’m seeing is actually me. Do I look like -that- all the time? How can the others stand to see something so fucking pathetic? I turn to my side and curl slightly.
The lamp that I am now facing is still on. I reach forward to the pull string almost attempting to grasp at it. But then I remember that I have hooves. “No, I am not going to angst over that. That reflection you saw in the mirror isn’t you, H.B. It might be what you look like right now, but that isn’t the real you. Be creative. Improvise.” “I bet...” Reaching forward again, I decide to go with a different idea. I slip the pull string to the lamp through the hole in my hoof. The little chain goes through with ease. I quickly rotate my hoof counter-clockwise. I am rewarded with a click of the lamp and the room being blanketed in darkness. The chain slips out as I pull my hoof back. It’s a small victory of sorts, but I’ll take it.
“Good Night, H.B.,” I tell myself out loud before closing my eyes.
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“Hey! H.B., time ta wake up!” Comes Applejack’s voice. I breath hard through my nose and my eyes snap open. A cold sweat chills my forehead and the morning light stings them. I come back from what felt like a dreamless sleep. No, seriously, I don’t remember falling asleep last night. Kinda like what happened after, ‘Creativi-Tea Day.’
A muttered moan comes from my lips. I don’t feel like I slept at all. My heavy eyelids close back up. “Just ten more minutes, Applejack?”
I hear a sigh from the other side of the room. “Alright, ah’ll come back in ten. Breakfast will be ready by then. If yer not gonna git up then, then yer gonna miss it. Understand?”
I yawn tiredly. “Yes, Applejack...” I hear Applejack walking down the stairs. And that’s about the moment my body decides that it needs to be awake. This is kind of easy to deduce seeing that my bladder is saying, “Hi! Remember me?” Oh goodie, the troubles of the early morning. “Fine. Whatever. Getting up.”
Pulling myself out of the bed, I look over to the other side of the room. The mare in the mirror is doing the same. Her mane and tail are an outright mess and she doesn’t look that rested. I walk passed her and glare at the reflection of a moment. This close I can see the tangled mess living atop my head. A mess that I am sure that Applejack will insist on brushing out before we go anywhere. I roll my eyes and walk out into the hallway.
I try to make my walking as quiet as possible. I am sure that Big Mac is still sleeping, and I don’t want to wake him. Tiptoeing past his door only confirms this. However I am met with an odd, if not cute surprise. The massive red pony is curled up in his bed with a small grey Smartie Pants doll.
A tiny voice in the back of my head, ‘awws’ at this little picture. It is kinda cute. “Stop that! You have more pressing matters to attend to! Plus, in lieu of yesterdays’ events, you don’t need to wake him up and him getting all uncomfortable about his little doll!” I shake myself from the scene set before me and then head downstairs, backwards of course.
Down at the bottom, Applejack is there to greet me. “Oh hey! Ah was just about ta come up and get ya. Breakfast is ready.”
“Oh, uhm...cool. Just wondering. Where is your bathroom? I asked Big Mac yesterday but seeing that we were on the hill, he had me go behind the bushes,” I explain, frowning.
“Eyup, just somethin’ we pony folk do,” Applejack replies, pouring water into a bowl of oatmeal.
“Yeah, so, where’s your bathroom?” I ask with a pained expression. Just then a small stray thought passes through my head. “You do have an indoor bathroom right?”
Applejack frowns. “‘Course we got an indoor bathroom! What kind of question is that?”
“It’s just a question,” I reply.
Applejack sighs. “Right then, bathroom is down the hall there yonder and two doors down.”
“Thanks!” I exclaim, rushing my way to said bathroom.
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Applejack watched H.B. make a dash for the bathroom. Considering how she was walking, she must have been in dire of need of such. She sniffed the air. A slight musk clung to it. “Dern it, she must have not showered yesterday.” Applejack grabbed for the dehydrated apples, cinnamon and brown sugar to add to the oatmeal she was cooking on the stove. “Then again, she didn’t know where the bathroom was. Ah swore ah thought ah told her. And she slept in our bed! Ah mean now we’re gonna have ta-” Applejack took a deep breath. “Calm yourself, A.J. Seriously, we’d say that we’d have a clean slate today, and that’s what we’re gonna have ourselves. Still, ah would like it if she showered before we left...”
“So, oatmeal?” Heartbreak asked, as she returned.
“Uhm, yeah. Ya don’t have a problem with oatmeal do ya?” Applejack asked.
“Nope. Smells really good,” Heartbreak replied, sitting down at the table.
Applejack set a bowl on the table. “Glad ta hear, mind yer tongue though, it’s still plenty hot!” For a moment, Heartbreak looked pleased to see what was placed before her. However, this was broken by a twitch that worked its way across her face. Sighing, she bowed her head towards the bowl and blew on the oatmeal before taking her first bite. Applejack blinked in confusion. “Something wrong, sugar cube?”
“Nothing important, A.J.” She replied, once again blowing on her oatmeal and taking a few bites. “Though, do you have any milk to cool this down?”
Applejack rolled her eyes. “She was doing that same thing last night at dinner.” She thought as she took the milk from the fridge and poured on the oatmeal. “Anything else ah can get ya, while ah’m up?”
“My life and dignity?” Heartbreak commented through bites of her breakfast.
“Beg yer pardon?” Applejack asked. “Was that a joke? It’s so hard to tell with her! Dern it! Yer acting like Twilight, Applejack! Looking at every little thing! Ya need to be better about this, don’t let her push yer buttons, show her that ya care enough for her ta open up!”
“Nothing, Applejack,” Heartbreak replied bitterly.
Applejack opened her mouth and then closed it. “Alright, ah’m not gonna pry. If it was somethin’ important, ya’d tell me!”
“Eyup,” Heartbreak replied, looking at the now empty bowl. “Mmm, this was good oatmeal.”
“Cause that’s what normal ponies do! Stick together and help each other with their problems by bein’ honest with one another so that they can help overcome them problems!” Applejack beamed. That was something that sounded so slick that she swore that she thought Twilight or maybe even Rainbow Dash would say it.
Heartbreak’s face twitched slightly. “Eeeyup, that’s what, ‘normal ponies,’ would do...”
Applejack’s face drooped. Heartbreak was cutting her off. “Look sugar cube, ya remember what ah said last night?”
Heartbreak rolled her eyes. “Yes. And nothing is wrong, Applejack.”
“Ah don’t quite believe that there,” She tried to appear as sympathetic as possible. “H.B., it’s almost as clear as day that yer worrin’ and fretting over somethin’.”
“It’s nothing that is important, A.J. Just my own insecurities, worries and minor gripes with my current situation.” She looked up at Applejack. “Aren’t we s’posta pick up your cousin from the train station pretty soon?”
Applejack sighed a bit. “Yeah, Ah gotta get a few things before we leave. One of them being a brush for that birds’ nest of a thing ya are calling a mane,” Heartbreak rolled her eyes. “Hey, ah’m not going to give ya a makeover, but ah’d like ya ta be at least presentable.” She got up from the table and headed out from the kitchen. “And H.B., this might be some of that ‘simple wisdom and understanding of things,’ but it seems to me that in order to learn anything about Honesty? Ya gotta start with yourself.”
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I grumble as we walk to the train station. And I know exactly why too. Applejack is right. I’m not being very honest with myself. Sure I had a few breakthroughs last night, but it is all too easy to fall into old habits.
One of those of course being denial. Denial was something I picked up as a kid as a coping mechanism to help gloss over the fact that my childhood did indeed have some genuinely messed-up moments. To cover up the fact that I spent more time in my own personal fantasy world making up stories to polish the whole, ‘I don’t have too many friends and I don’t know why,’ and of course, to hide any emotional responses that anyone, including my mother, could use against me.
While denial is an easy habit to fall into, a harder habit to explain is my stubbornness. Well, I am not sure if it is a habit as much as it is a personality quirk. It was something I got from my mother. Both she and I were very set in our beliefs when we felt that we were, ‘right,’ about something. Hence the crux of many of our conflicts.
She was on the red side of things, while I was more on the blue. She felt that religion was important, I felt that it was unimportant. She was pro-life, I was more on the side of, ‘I don’t have a uterus so I shouldn’t go around telling women what they can do with it, plus there are circumstances that we might not have taken into account.’ I don’t know...there were a lot of things we disagreed on.
Looking up at the sky, I see that the weather is reflecting my mood. Cloudy and slightly grim. For the most part, Applejack has been really quiet. And really, I’m A-O-K with that.
“Huh, looks like it might storm today. The pegasus got to make sure that May’s rain supply is plenty enough for June,” Applejack says out of nowhere. So much for the quiet.
“I guess,” I reply, sounding rather disinterested. Right now I am more focused on a few other things. One of them being walking. A month here and I still don’t have this thing down. Damn it! There I go being all emo again! Stop it! No Sympathy Sue! No Sympathy Sue! Think of something that will get your mind off things. Something! Anything! “So...what was your cousin’s name again?” Yes! That’ll work. Focus on others and not myself.
“Ah thought ah told ya...His name’s Crab Apple, Ah would tell ya more, but ah’m guessing that ya know everythin’ about him already as well,” Applejack states, rolling her eyes.
“Actually no,” Applejack looks at me in confusion.
“Say what?” She asks. “Yer telling me that ya could raddle off the names of nearly everypony in the apple family, but ya never heard of Crab Apple?”
I so just want to blurt out that there wasn’t a ‘Crab Apple’ on the show, but I can’t do that. It was hard enough to explain the basics of multi-verse theory to Applejack. Explaining that they are nothing except T.V. characters would melt their brains. I need to think of something quick. “The Apple Family is huge. I am sure there are going to be a lot of Apples that I won’t remember off the top of my head. So seeing that I don’t know anything about your cousin, why not tell me a few things?”
The look on her face is priceless. There is a bit of disbelief, a dash of, ‘are you pulling my leg?’ and just a pinch of something that I can’t quite identify. “Well, alright. Crab Apple is from the lower part of Equestria on the south-eastern shores in a beach town called Hoofthorne. They grow a lot of oranges down that way,” She explains.
Aaaand here come the horse/pony puns. “‘Hoof’thorne, seriously? What sort of name is that? It’s so obscure...” I shake my head. Most likely it isn’t important. Though it has been a while since I’ve had any oranges. Last time I had one was back on the train. Thinking about this distracts me momentarily and I almost trip. “Ffffetlocks...”
Applejack looks at me. “What happened?”
“Nothing, I almost tripped,” I reply, correcting my walking pattern. “‘Cause ya know, hooves. So tell me more about him.”
Applejack rolls her eyes a bit. “Crab Apple is a bit...well ah guess the word to describe him is: Strange. While most of us Apples deal in some kinda orchard work, he’s more of an egghead.”
I blink and watch how Applejack is walking to get my walking back in order. “You say that like it’s a bad thing, A.J. What? Aren’t there any brilliant minds in your family?”
Applejack frowns at me. I really hope I haven’t struck a nerve here. “Hey! We might be country folk, but that don’t mean that-”
“I didn’t mean anything by it Applejack. I am sure that he is bright but there is something about him that is off putting and strangely eccentric.” Great. It’s a visit from the cousin that nobody likes to talk about. What am I going to get? The one that dresses in leather and has piercings? Do they even have ponies like that here?
“Uh, yeah pretty much. His parents think that he lacks discipline and send him here for a few days every year. Sometimes in the spring, but mostly in the summer. But ah got ta tell ya, he is on the weird side.” Applejack states.
When she says that, I can’t help but think of the strangeness of the people back home. The different quirks, abnormal behaviors, likes and down right disturbing customs. Seriously, I might miss being human, but we are a species with some serious mental issues. We did come up with things like the Rocky Horror Picture Show, Carebears, Pound Puppies, He-Man, the Rules of the Internet and of course, ‘Reality T.V.’...
“Yeah, sure, seriously A.J., how bad could he be?” My left hoof almost shoots up right to my mouth when I ask the question. What the hell?! Great, that question is the thing that is going to clinch this being a weird, awkward meeting. Not to mention that something is going to go horribly wrong.
Applejack looks at me strangely. “Ah know ah keep askin’ this, but is somethin’ the matter, H.B.?”
“Just having trouble walking again,” I reply, as we finally get to the Ponyville train station. I back up to the bench and sit down.
Applejack looks up at the large clock tower. “We’re makin’ good time, he’s due to arrive within the next five minutes!” She looks at me and rolls her eyes. “Ya’re still sitting funny, ya know that right?”
“It’s how I am comfortable sitting,” I reply. Well, comfortable for now. My tail is kinda being a pain in-where else-but the butt.
Applejack takes a deep breath. “Now, remember what ah told ya about ma family? Be on yer best behavior.”
“I know, Applejack.” she shoots me a look. “I mean, ‘Yes, ma’am. Applejack, ma’am.’” That might have sounded a little sarcastic. A follow up might be in order. “I will be on my best behavior.”
“Ah don’t mean ta drill this on ya at the last minute, it’s just that Crab Apple is at a young impressionable age.” Applejack looked at me. “And ah don’t mean that in any wrong way what-so-ever.”
“Didn’t think that you did,” I reply, grumbling.
“It’s just that the last thing ah need is a letter from his parents after he gets back home,” She states, looking at a small light in the distance. The train tracks start squealing as the train gets closer and closer. Growing up near a train track, it’s easy for me to know how far away that train is based on the stress sounds that the tracks are making.
“I get what you’re saying, Applejack. I’ll be good. Or at least I’ll try,” I reply, rolling my eyes. The screeching of wheels and the hiss of steam hit the air as the train comes to a rolling stop. I push myself up off the bench.
A good number of ponies start stepping off of the train. Most of them don’t really stand out. You’re generic pile of skittles pouring out of the bag ponies. A whole lot of colours.
Just then, a young colt steps off of the train and I feel my eye twitch. What has just stepped off the train has confirmed that, yes, I am in a universe based on cartoons. And I am pretty sure that my earlier remark was this particular universe’s way of saying, “Fuck You, H.B.!” For what has stepped out off the train appears to be a ponified version of Dib. Yeah, Dib from Invader Zim. Complete with a hook spiked mane and glasses. The only thing missing is the clothes. The reddish and green colt looks around and spies us.
“No fucking way is that-” And per troupe, Applejack kills my little hope about this not being her cousin by waving at him.
“Howdy Cousin!” She calls out, cheerfully smiling. The colt smiles and starts walking towards us.
“Well, that’s just fucking peachy. I didn’t want today to be boring anyway,” I think to myself, putting on a faux smile.