Sun’s setting, and I follow it west with my eyes to the White Mountain, to Canterlot. She’ll be coming by tonight, spending the weekend. That fluttery little warmth in my chest started up, just like it always does. And that pesky little twinge in my hip that started last winter speaks up again as I pull the old cart back to the new apple cellar, the one Apple Bloom finished … three years ago? That sounds about right. We’re always working on the farm, which is its own blessing and curse. And after they’re all loaded off in their barrels, I hurry on over to the kitchen to throw something together for dinner, just the two of us. With all the fancy food they’re giving her at the castle, she’s always hankering for some good old home-cooked goodness. Can’t say I blame her, after the first time I tried my hoof at Griffon cuisine. It’s best for me to stick to what I know, and if she wants it that way herself, all the better.
Two batches of fritters and a salad later, I shake and snap my creaking neck, trying to work out the crick that’s been driving me crazy since I woke up this morning. A gentle knocking at the doorframe lets me know she’s here. I whirl around quick as a flash and smile as she meets my eyes.
“Hey, you,” she murmurs, stepping inside the kitchen with her usual, careless grace. “How’ve you been?”
“I missed you,” I answer, trotting forward to nuzzle her. There’s whiskey in her saddlebags... It’s a bit of a tradition between us by now, and the smell always reminds me of that first drunken mistake we made all those years ago, followed by months of awkward attempts at friendship. When we finally ‘fessed up to each other and realized we both wanted more, we never looked back.It’s great between us, so long as we keep up the honesty, so long as we talk. Come hell or high water, we’ll make it through. I know it in my bones.
“How’s your hip?” she asks, and that now-familiar flash of guilt hits her face.
“Not much better, not much worse.” I shrug and give her a little nudge towards the dinner table. She droops her neck and her hooves drag over the worn floorboards. “It’s alright, sugarcube,” I chide gently. “It comes with the territory.” Doesn’t it, really, though? Years of applebucking’ll do it to a mare. I get the food I made and set it out , and that awful, awkward tension sits there with us. It’s always there, this strangeness between us. It’s pretty simple, really, in the end. I’m getting older. I’m getting older, but she hasn’t aged a day since the Elements saw fit to change her.
I guess that’s not fair to say. She’s grown, as a pony, as a magician, as a partner and a friend. But she looks just as young as she did then, and often as unsure and delicate. I don’t much mind, honestly. I am who I am, and she is who she is, she just happens to be an immortal princess of Equestria these days. But we can’t always help who we become, and a little thing like that can’t stop me from loving her.
We make small talk through dinner, filling the air around us with idle chatter, catching up on the weeks we spent apart. This is always how it goes on the first night, and we both hold onto the tradition of it like a liferaft, to smooth out the strangeness between us and get back into calm waters. There’s a movement to outlaw any blood magic in Canterlot, which would make the doctors’ jobs that much harder. The farm did well this year, and we’re looking to get Apple Bloom a real workshop barring any disasters. Small words, small moments, all comfortable and warm and soft around the edges.
She helps wash up, and we hike out to the gentle rise in the South Orchard, look at the moon as it rises gibbous above us.
She turns and looks at me under the enchanting moonlight, her eyes shining with a serene joy, and she pulls me into a gentle, lingering kiss. “Applejack? have I told you that you’re beautiful?” she whispers, wrapping her strong, beautiful wing around me.
“Many times, Twi,” I murmur back, leaning against her. “Many times.”
It’s always about the words, between us. The words we say, and the words we don’t. Neither of us says “I love you”, for instance. It’s the truth, sitting right between us as we press up to each other beneath the stars.