//------------------------------// // You Know How I Feel // Story: Timed Ramblings // by Midnight herald //------------------------------// It was amazing to think about, really - how hard Ms. Cheerilee must have worked to make the most boring assignment possible. Sweetie sighed and started yet another tedious word problem involving rainclouds and a burning building. Seriously? Rainbow Dash would shove the clouds over and put it out anyways, so why did they have to do stupid wind-speed calculations? “I’m not even a pegasus,” she grumbled as she sketched out the problem. “Well, Rarity, the last hailstorm did a number on your roof alright. I’ll be here all day from the looks of it.” Sweetie’s ears perked up. Applejack was here! she threw down her pencil and trotted towards the front door. “Alright, just let me know if you need to borrow tools and we’ll settle when you’re done, darling.” Sweetie made it to the mudroom. Applejack and Rarity stood in the doorway, and the very edge of Applejack’s huge red toolbox peeked out from between her legs. “Settle? Sug’, I promised this for free, and that’s a done deal.” “But I couldn’t bear to keep you from your farm work without compensation,” Rarity blustered, taking a step back. Applejack chuckled warmly and slapped Rarity across the shoulders with a dusty hug, conveniently ignoring Rarity’s wince as her coat got smudged. “Ain’t no thing, Rares. S’what I do for my friends.” Rarity shrugged Applejack’s hoof away and turned around, right into Sweetie’s personal space. “Sweetie Belle, shouldn’t you be doing your homework?” she groused, raising her perfectly trimmed eyebrow. “Umm... can I do it outside, sis? It’s a beautiful day and I kinda want to see Applejack work,” Sweetie pleaded, putting on Winning Smile #3. Rarity scowled and nudged her further inside. “Please, sis? I’ll do it, I promise.” Rarity picked her up in a field of magic and began trotting inside. “Raarity!” Sweetie whined, kicking her legs and pouting. It was undignified, yes, but it usually worked, even when Rarity was in a Mood. “Rares, I don’t mind if she’s out here,” Applejack said from the doorway. “She’ll probably waste her time wishin’ she were outside anyways, at this point.” Rarity thought for a moment. “Very well,” Rarity sighed, setting Sweetie down. “But if you bother her, it’s back inside for good, alright?” Sweetie wrapped Rarity in a tight hug. “Thanks, sis. You’re the best!” then she raced through the Boutique, grabbed her books and worksheets, and pelted for the door with them in tow. She settled herself in the grass, about five feet from where Applejack had put the ladder. “If I drop anything, you’ll lift it back up to me, right?” Sweetie looked up at Applejack, grinning. “Right away, Applejack,” she chirped, saluting. Sweetie was pretty sure she knew how Pinkie felt right now. She was grinning and she couldn’t stop, even though it felt like her cheeks were about to split. This was why Applejack was so cool. She remembered things, and you could always tell if she thought they were important. Applejack had been the first to know when she finally started using magic. And she’d said it was because she was near the market and Applejack was right there and she was excited, and that was true, but there was more to it than that. Rarity was in “the zone” and wouldn’t understand a word she said, Rainbow Dash was busy with her training, and Neither Twilight nor Fluttershy would understand why it was a big deal to her. Pinkie Pie would be excited, but she was excited about everything, so it didn’t really feel that important. But Applejack had grinned and congratulated her, and then gave her an apple tart for free and let her help with the cart for the rest of the day. For a while they worked in a relative silence, the groan of old nails coming loose and the scratch of Sweetie’s pencil the only soundtrack to the spring afternoon. As Sweetie finished her math and moved onto history, she finally swallowed and tried conversation. “Apple Bloom said you and the Apple Family built a whole barn in an afternoon,” she said, looking up at the roof. “Suppose we did,” Applejack grunted through a mouthful of hammer. “And you’re working the farm almost every day, right?” “Eeyup. Lotsa trees to take care of, and we’ve been helping the Carrots with their crop, since Carrot Top got Pony Pox.” Applejack reached for some more nails, calm and collected. “You’ve got to be the hardest worker in Ponyville,” Sweetie breathed, writing a paragraph on the Gryphon Wars. It wasn’t that hard, really. She’d learned all this stuff back when she was homeschooled. TIME LIMIT------- Applejack turned around, an eyebrow raised, and a bright smile on her face. “Really now? How d’you figure that?” “I mean, you do everything. Like stampedes and farming and dam repair and stuff. And you help everypony around town who needs it, too. And you’re the nicest pony at market, and you’re always up really early in the day, and you’re always so confident and friendly and stuff.” “What about your sister? She’s always working on the latest fashions, and that ain’t easy,” Applejack countered, pounding a nail into a shingle with two powerful thwacks. “She’s just sewing stuff together, though. The stuff you do helps a lot of people,” Sweetie argued “There’s a lot more to her job than that, Sweets,” Applejack sighed. “Trust me, I know that.” “I do!” Sweetie blurted out, before hiding her furious blush behind a textbook. “You what now, sugarcube?” “I T-t-trust you, Applejack,” Sweetie stammered. She lapsed back into silence and blazed through her biology assignment, snapping the lead twice in her hasted to get done and out of here. She was so weird, and Applejack knew it, and they’d never talk to each other again... Sweetie packed up her books with a burst of frantic magic and turned around to go back inside, so her weirdness wouldn’t get all over Applejack’s stuff. “Hey Sweets, you mind coming up here for a spin?” Applejack called. Sweetie looked up, and saw Applejack’s warmest smile, like a whole new sun in the sky. “I could use an extra set of hooves.” Sweetie grinned and dropped her books inside the mudroom before grabbing another hammer and some more nails from the old red toolbox and climbing the ladder as quick as she could. “Where do I start?” she asked, trying not to burst into song right then and there.