//------------------------------//
// Two Balloons 
// Story: Taken for Granite 
// by Cloudy Skies 
//------------------------------//

	It was far, far too hot. First came the brief panic, the unavoidable yet expected confusion of waking up in any place not her own room, but once those two seconds were past, Applejack became keenly aware of how hot the room was. She kept her own bedroom pleasantly cool where possible, but Pinkie slept with her window closed, and the warmth of a well isolated farmhouse made itself known. The downstairs fireplace, two bodies in a small room and the sunlight streaming in through closed windows all contributed to an almost stifling heat even in winter. Applejack had a vague memory of a time when she didn’t oversleep every single day.

“Right. S’called not winter,” Applejack muttered to herself, kicking the blanket away. She didn’t know exactly how she’d ended up so wrapped up in the blanket. Perhaps Pinkie had returned the favor. She had vague memories of waking up multiple times throughout the night with one of Pinkie’s legs draped over her chest, be it a foreleg or a hindleg. Either way, Pinkie was gone now, and Applejack couldn’t help but feel disappointed.

Applejack. The clever one. Inkie’s comment was well underway to being nothing but a funny memory, something she’d look back on in a few years’ time and wonder if she made it up in her mind. Applejack, the smart one, the mare who didn’t even know what she wanted. Suddenly, all her motivation to get out of bed vanished. She lay still, eyes roaming the room to see what she’d missed in the darkness.

Most of the stuff lining the walls and dressers were pictures. Here, the entire gang, all six of them waving at the camera. Some picture of Pinkie and Fluttershy eating pasta. Rainbow Dash with a rainbow-coloured moustache and a monocle. Framed pictures of Inkie and Blinkie. Her parents. Her entire family.

Aside from old but well-kept toys and the occasional candy wrapper, the only other item on display was what lay on the nightstand by the bed. The sixth item of Pinkie Pie’s little gem collection was a rock the size of her hoof, grey in colour with sharp, rough edges. Applejack ground her head deeper into the pillow. While Applejack couldn’t see how this rock was supposed to link up to herself, it was enough to see that Pinkie kept the rock close by.

Perhaps she’d have spent the whole day considering the implications and wallowing in impossibilities if she hadn’t heard the faint buzz. Applejack rolled out of bed, ears perched, straining to make out exactly what the insistent noise was. Opening the room door helped a little, but not as much as she’d have liked. Only when she trotted down the stairs did she realise it was music. The house was deserted, and a trumpet-like, glassy buzz came from the other side of the house. Applejack made her way past the embers of the fireplace in the empty living room, pushing the back door open.

Blinkie Pie sat on a simple garden sofa on the patio that covered the house’s eastern face, eyes closed and nursing a clarinet from which she played a haunting tune. Applejack had never quite heard anything like it, the melody uncomfortably stuck somewhere between melancholy and adventurous. On a chair closer to the door, Clyde sat, waving her outside once he caught her eye.

“Don’t mean to disturb,” Applejack whispered, closing the door behind her.

“She plays whether you like it or not,” Clyde replied, less concerned with volume. Blinkie didn’t react. “You’re not disturbing anyone. Grab a seat.”

And so Applejack did, climbing atop the other free chair. The entire patio and all its furnishings from the sofa bench, the chairs and right down to the small table, they were all simple, wooden and unpainted, but undeniably sturdy. Somepony had carved a repeating pattern in the support beams that held up the roof.

Past the railing, the Pie family’s rock farm stretched on. It looked infinitely larger than Sweet Apple Acres, but then, that was probably because you could see all the surrounding fields without trees to hide them. Far, far away, on the other side of the large fields, Applejack could just barely spot the other Pie family members, mostly thanks to Pinkie’s bright coat. They stood by some construction or other—a well, perhaps?—but it was the only notable feature Applejack could see outside of rocks, rocks and more rocks.

“Must be nice to have crops that don’t rot,” Applejack said, trying for some polite conversation. “I get there’s plenty of stuff to do, but at least varmints ain’t likely to eat your rocks. You plant an apple tree, you never know what’s gonna happen. Rot, worms, storms or drought, you bet your flank we get one or two of those each season.”

Clyde chewed on a single straw, rolling it over to the other side of his muzzle. “It’s not that easy. Guess you haven’t met diamond dogs, then?”

Applejack poked the inside of her cheek. She could’ve said that yes, she had, but there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of merit to that.

“That, and soil matters a whole lot to rock farms, too. We get bad harvests. Not growing our own food, there’s that to consider, and since we’re on the edge of town, there’re all manner of threats. Chasing off diamond dogs is the least of our worries, sometimes. Plenty of beasts out there that would love to make off with the more precious of our gemstones.”

“Right,” Applejack said. “Didn’t mean offense or to suggest nothin’, figure it’s hard work too, just—”

“Of course you didn’t,” Clyde said, smiling just the tiniest bit around his straw. “And I didn’t take any. We play by the same rules. You don’t know what’s gonna happen when you set a batch of rocks—or plant an apple tree—but that’s why you work the fields, that’s why you take precautions. You protect your farm. You have as many fields as you can work, not as many fields as you need if all goes well ‘cause you’re some lazy city pony.”

“Got that right,” Applejack said, grinning.

Clyde turned towards her. Sure, they’d met the day before and talked, but this time it wasn’t a mere glance or a look and a nod as they talked. Blinkie’s music continued, building up, dipping low, always changing, teasing and defying any one single description. Never quite sad, never uplifting. Clyde didn’t speak until he broke away and once again trained his eyes on the horizon.

“You know all that, though. You don’t need a lecture from an old man telling you simple stuff like this. The Apple family is a respected name, oldest in Equestria, some say. You’ve never once failed to bring the harvest.”

Applejack took a deep breath. It was one thing to hear Granny Smith say it, or to sing songs at a family meet. It was a very different thing to hear the words from another family. She didn’t nod, didn’t acknowledge it, but still her chest swelled with pride at that. Clyde chuckled and got up as though he knew regardless.

“I’m going to go make breakfast. Don’t let the girls give you trouble.”

“Need a hoof with that?” Applejack asked, but all she received in reply was a shake of his head, leaving Applejack with Blinkie and her clarinet. They sat mostly shielded from the frigid wind that tore across the fields, but every once in awhile a particularly cruel gust swept past them. Blinkie finally lowered her instrument, opened her eyes, and rubbed her own sides. Clearly the cold bothered her, but she didn’t complain.

“Did you ever want to stop farming apples just because it’s tough work?”

Applejack perked her ears on instinct, like she was sure she’d heard it wrong. The question was almost too simple, too straightforward.

“‘Course not,” she replied.

Blinkie polished the tip of her clarinet. For a second, Applejack wondered if she’d go back to playing, back to her undeniably well performed but annoying music. Instead, she put the clarinet down at her side with irreverent care.

“You’re a fool if you look for guarantees, that’s what granddad used to say.” Again, that sharp certainty in her voice. Applejack felt a frown building somewhere deep inside of her.

“He said that if you think you’ll get anything for free, you’re a fool, too. Guarantees are built. They don’t come with the rain or the wind.” Blinkie leaned back. “You build them yourself, you make certainties because you try, and you work at it.”

“Sounds like a real wise feller,” Applejack muttered. Idly, she wondered if they were still talking about farming. If that had ever been the topic at all. In the far distance, a pink, barely pony-shaped speck hopped up and down.

“He was,” Blinkie replied, tapping her hooves against the bench, staring out at nothing and everything, her attention scattered all over the place where her voice was knife’s edge. “He also said that if you don’t think something will work, it won’t. Dad makes it sound like the Apples know that.”

Applejack didn’t know how to answer that, so she didn’t. She wondered if Pinkie noticed her looking at her. If the pink blotch in the distance looked back at her right now.

“Pinkie’s adopted.”

Applejack stared at Blinkie. It was all she could really do. The blue-grey mare didn’t strike her as the type of pony to enjoy getting a rise out of somepony else. She could scarcely imagine what Blinkie looked like when she smiled, much less her laughing because she’d fooled Applejack. Presently, she reached for her clarinet and put the tip to her muzzle.

“Why’d you tell me that?” Applejack asked.

Blinkie frowned and lowered her instrument again. “Does it matter if she is or isn’t?”

“Of course not, that’s why I’m askin’ why you’d tell me.”

A shrug. Blinkie twirled the clarinet around one hoof, then the other. “You just sounded surprised that we’re a happy family. Family’s what you make of it, too. We all decided she’s family, and now she is.”

Blinkie Pie trained her eyes on the distant ponies now, too, and there was the smile Applejack didn’t think existed. A small, quiet barely-a-smile as Blinkie looked to her sisters and mother in the distance. To Pinkie Pie, Applejack knew.

“She’s different, but I’m different from Inkie, too, and mom and dad aren’t all that alike either. Pinkie’s always been a Pie because we didn’t ask or hope to be good sisters, they didn’t worry they wouldn’t be good parents. We never sat around scared of talking because we were afraid maybe we’d have a fight. We worked on it.”

Applejack snorted. It was a pointless gesture, a foalish thing, but it felt good regardless. She watched the frost-vapour drift away and scatter. Pinkie, Inkie and Sue were still walking the fields, just like Applejack, Apple Bloom and Big Mac might walk around the orchards with Granny Smith to inspect the saplings in spring.

Rock fields and apple orchards, Apples and Pies, parties and and farm duties—there were differences but they didn’t seem nearly as significant before. Pinkie had become part of her family through adapting, through hard work, and that, she could understand.

Suddenly she saw how alike they were—or would have been if Applejack weren’t sat on her patootie shaking her head before she’d even hitched the plough herself. She’d been so busy denying possibilities, she hadn’t even tried. She hadn’t done anything at all, and it was rapidly getting too late. Her heart caught in her throat. Swallowing hurt.

“Right. I’m gonna go—” Applejack began, hoping she’d maybe manage to say ‘thank you’ without her stupid stubborn pride getting in the way.

Blinkie put her clarinet to her muzzle, cutting Applejack off. Her eyes were closed, dedicated in full to her endlessly frustrating tune. It was all Applejack could do to dip her head in thanks and set off across the fields.





Sped along by her little revelation, crossing the fields took less than a minute. Doing things, that was her realm. Action, she understood, and that gave her wings the envy of any pegasus.

The structure the Pies crowded around wasn’t a well, as it turned out. Rather, it wasn’t a well built for water, that much Applejack could tell. Inkie, Pinkie and Sue stood near a shaft that went deep into the ground, the wind playing a hollow whistle on the lip of masonry. The ponies’ chatter slowly petered out as Applejack approached. Inkie and Pinkie smiled and moved a bit to allow for Applejack to join their little circle while Sue busily worked a crank to lower a lantern attached to a rope down the shaft.

“What’s this whole operation about, then?” Applejack asked.

“Oh, we just call it a test shaft. We use it to check up on the soil!” Pinkie said. “Sometimes we get Delver to stick his head down there and see if the farm’s okay or if we maybe have gemstone gophers. Plus, it’s super useful if you ever want to talk to the earthworms. I don’t, but maybe there’s somepony out there who can!”

“Right,” Applejack said, flicking her tail. Truth be told, she didn’t at all care about the shaft right now, and wouldn’t have even if it grew blue apples on demand. She could hardly contain herself, and she was sure she was grinning like a fool, but some niceties had to be observed. “Pinkie? Can we talk?”

“Sure!” Pinkie said. She hopped into the air, turned around, and landed with all four legs so close together, she looked like she’d planted herself in the ground like an odd, colourful tree. Or a pink broccoli sprout.

“In private, ‘less you mind.” Applejack flashed a smile at Inkie, who returned it and took a sudden yet keen interest in her mother’s work. Pinkie tilted her head. Applejack jerked her head towards the farmhouse, very much hoping Pinkie would take a hint.

“Ooh. You mean private-private?” Pinkie asked, her lips forming a neat circle whilst she nodded in understanding. “Right! Sure!” She tapped the ground with a hoof. “Whatcha wanna talk about?”

Applejack didn’t groan, roll her eyes, or give any sign of annoyance. She didn’t say she’d tell later, nor did she say that it was important even though it was. There’d been two lies for every truth from her mouth lately, and omissions were kin to those things. Right now was a time for action.

“About you and me, sugar,” Applejack chuckled. “The kind of private that means you and me only. Please?”

That got Pinkie moving. That, or maybe it was Inkie planting her head on Pinkie’s butt and giving her a great big shove. It was hard to tell which was the deciding factor, but when Applejack started towards the farmhouse in a trot, Pinkie did follow her across the frozen soil.

“You mean, we need to talk,” Pinkie said.

“Yup! S’what I said.” The more she thought on it, the more confident she became; she knew exactly what Pinkie would have said if she’d let her finish during their talk on the road to the farm, and the rock on her bed stand was no coincidence.

“Nuh-uh. Totally different,” Pinkie said. “If you did it right, I would’ve gotten a shiver down my back.”

“There’s a Pinkie sense for talks?” Applejack raised a brow.

“Nah. I think everypony gets that when you say it right, really.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Applejack chuckled. She slowed down until she came to a stop in the middle of the frozen fields, and Pinkie did the same, watching her with obvious curiosity. It was cold as ever, but Applejack had fire in her veins and felt none of it.

“You look like you have something to say,” Pinkie observed, tilting her head. Applejack felt a twinge of nervousness at that, but it was cobwebs before the train. She was an Apple family mare, and this, she could handle.

“Matter of fact, I do got something to say,” she said, straightening up. Still she couldn’t shake that oddly pervasive grin, so much did she look forward to telling Pinkie.

“Might be I was wrong before. Wrong about us. I kept seeing problems, kept looking for—for I don’t know what. For promises nopony can give, I suppose. For guarantees.” Pinkie’s head tilted further, and by all rights she should’ve fallen over by now.

Applejack rolled her jaw, thought as she spoke. She hadn’t planned the words at all, and now she wondered if she should have. “Maybe I was looking for shortcuts ‘cause I was afraid of change. I’m a simple mare, I like to think. I already told you I’m happier with you around than without, and I just got spooked, but I guess I forgot nopony ever reaped a harvest without sowing.”

And now she couldn’t think of anything but that. Her heart leapt. “I guess what I’m saying is that I’m more’n ready to try.”

Pinkie had said very little for all too long, silent and immovable. Applejack cleared her throat. Perhaps she hadn’t been half as clear as she’d thought.

“Sugarcube? I worried because nopony can say it’ll work, but I’m fine, now. I already told you how I feel.” Applejack smiled. “This ain’t some flight of fancy, but I need to know that it ain’t for you, either. I play for keeps.”

The wind was the first to answer, a whistle that became a howl, and Pinkie’s easy smile surrendered to a deep frown. This time, the weather found its mark, and Applejack rubbed one leg against the other for warmth.

“Uh, Pinkie? This’d be where you say somethin’.”

Pinkie stuck her tongue out of the side of her mouth. “I think you’re being very, very silly, and a tiny bit mean.”

Just like that, Applejack’s blood turned to ice instead. She tried to keep her breathing steady, but she found she couldn’t stop swallowing. Had she gotten it all wrong? Rejection, she could handle. At least that’s what she told herself. She’d just thought she understood—that there was some significance to the rock on the bedstand. To all Pinkie had said, or tried to say.

“Right.” Applejack forced the words out. “I don’t see exactly how I’m being silly.”

“That’s what’s silly! That you don’t see!” Pinkie said, throwing her hooves up in the air.

Applejack clutched her head with a hoof. Another sharp gust of wind crossed the fields, raking her coat. She took a demonstrative step towards the farmhouse “I ain’t following, but can we have this argument after we get inside?”

“Actually, can we not do the arguing at all? I don’t like arguing.” Pinkie’s ears splayed, her bottom lip thrust forward in a pout, but she took the lead nevertheless. Applejack took a deep breath and followed.

Pinkie Pie said nothing while they passed Blinkie by. She was still playing the same tune, and hadn’t moved an inch. Neither of them spoke when they moved through living room, past Clyde who rooted around the hearth. Two sets of hooves went up the stairs and down to the end of the corridor to Pinkie’s room, the air between them pregnant with words.

The bedroom was still far hotter than it had a right to be, and Applejack could swear she was building a headache the second she stepped inside. She moved up to the window by the bed and rose up to lean against the windowsill, but once there, she couldn’t muster the energy to open it. She was left staring out the window at nothing, at rock-bearing fields and frozen forests beyond.

“Guess I got it all wrong,” Applejack said. “Figured maybe—well.” Her breath fogged the glass. The words sounded stupid. Simple and stupid. “Thought maybe you felt something of the same.”

“Well, yeah.”

A hop and a creak behind her. Pinkie was on her bed now, smiling like it was the most obvious thing ever. For all that she was surprised and twice again as confused, her world turned upside-down two times in as many minutes, Applejack said nothing. Every time she tried to speak, she jammed another hoof in her muzzle.

“I always thought you were really great. All of you girls are, but—I don’t know. We’re both farmponies! Or, well, I was, I guess.” Pinkie shrugged, shifting where she sat like a cat unhappy with its bedding.

“It’s not like I’ve been part of the ‘I want to give Applejack a hug and then maybe smooch her a bit’ club for months and years and decades. I still don’t know it like I really know some other things, like how I know how to make a batch of chocolate caramel confectionary crunches even with a blindfold on.” Pinkie barely smiled at her own little aside, like even she didn’t find it very funny. “But after all the time we spent together? Um, well.” She fastened her gaze on the lump of rock on the bedstand.

“Just these past weeks, huh,” Applejack muttered. She wasn’t the only one to have felt it, and that was nice at least. Pinkie nodded and sat.

“Yeah. I kinda liked having you around. Being around. I mean, I always have, but it felt so nice to have somepony always there for me so I didn’t have to bottle some things up until it goes terribly wrong and Madame LeFleur starts talking again, you know how that all goes—”

Applejack nodded though she didn’t.

“—but it felt good to have somepony—somepony who listened. Really listened. And then—” Pinkie fidgeted with the blanket, her smile waning. “—you said you liked me. I was really happy to hear that, but I didn’t even have time to say anything, because you also said ‘no way, goodbye,’ too, and then I felt a little bit less like cheering, and maybe a bit like I wanted to cry. But I didn’t.”

Applejack left the windowsill, walking halfway over to the bed. She couldn’t make herself cross the full distance. Her hooves were leaden. “I just wish you’d told me sooner,” Applejack said.

It was just a stray thought. A wish for anything to be different, for something in the past weeks to have gone differently that she could pretend she believed she’d be blameless. It had been the exact wrong thing to say.

Pinkie still sat in the middle of the bed looking at Applejack with big round eyes. Before, there’d been only a twinge of sadness in her voice, but now a touch of accusation made itself known. Anger. Hurt. “You said no. Would you have listened? Would you want me to pretend I didn't believe or respect you?”

“Guess not, but—”

“But now you’re just taking it back?” Pinkie asked, her voice rising still. “You’ve been all me, me, me. ‘I’m the problem,’ ‘I’m the one who can’t do the smoochies,’ and now you’re just pretending you never said it? Taking it back? You decided we can go out?”

Pinkie let her hooves drop to the bed. In her battle with the blanket, she’d somehow managed to wrap it around her head like a shawl. She looked ridiculous with her mane pinned flat to her head. “You just come trotting up to me like everything’s okay because you changed your mind, but you never asked me what I think. You never let me talk. It was all about you.”

Applejack blinked, opened her mouth to protest, but the words clumped up. An odd sense of deja vu was all she got, thrown back to when she’d spilled Pinkie’s secret exactly because she’d made everything out to be about herself instead. She sat and clutched her own tail.

“Yeah,” she said. It beat “sorry.” She didn’t know if she could handle saying that word again, despite—no. Exactly because it was called for. It hurt because she meant it. Most of all, she wanted everything said and out in the open so she didn’t feel compelled to dredge that word up like a painful cough every time they talked. “I got stuck somewhere inside this big, empty head of mine, I guess,” she said. “All I could think was that I couldn’t lose you as a friend. Now that I found my courage, I never stopped to think.”

Applejack moved a little closer, finally seating herself by the edge of the bed. Only Pinkie’s eyes and snout were visible over the rim. When a hoof quested forth from under the blanket’s cover, Applejack reached out to touch it. “I never meant to hurt you, Pinkie. You gotta believe me.”

“Of course you didn’t. You’re just silly sometimes,” Pinkie smiled. It was a faint thing, but Applejack clung to it like sunrise after everlasting night. “If you thought you would lose me, that hurts me, that’s what I think. That’s what I’d say if you asked me. If we talked, and I guess we’re talking now.” Pinkie’s muzzle pushed forward a little further. 

“You didn’t think I’d be serious. You made it sound like you thought I was stupid, and not funny let’s-mix-cream-with-liquorice stupid, but like I’d smooch you and then run away and hide, twirling my evil, evil moustache because I’d just tried to ruin one of my favourite friendships—”

“That’s not—” Applejack tried, but Pinkie cut her off.

“—even when we both know we’re great friends and that we’ll be friends no matter what happens. If you’re so afraid of that happening that you hide instead of wanting to talk to me, then it isn’t about you!”

Pinkie threw the blanket away like royalty doffing a cloak, leaping off the bed to sit at Applejack’s side, and before Applejack could even react, she received a sharp jab in her chest.

“That’s really, really silly, and really mean of you, because that’s you saying me, me, me when you actually don’t trust me at all. You don’t trust me to stay if you ask me out and it all goes wrong. That hurts. You said all these nice things about me, that you understand me, that you like me, that you think I’m not all that silly—and then you forgot them, like you didn’t mean them in the first place! Hurt!” Pinkie said, pouting and rubbing her own chest just above her heart.

Applejack sighed and sank in on herself. “Well, if’n I can trust that you still wanna be friends with me, that’s probably more than I deserve at this point.”

Pinkie jabbed her again.

“Ouch! What’d you do that for?” Applejack asked.

“You’re still not listening!” Pinkie said. She rose to stand, her bottom lip thrust out. “You’re usually really good at that, at listening and being super-awesome, but sometimes you’re denser than an all-bran muffin. I told you!”

“Told me what?” Applejack asked, rubbing her sore chest.

“Oh. Wait. I guess that was weeks ago, actually,” Pinkie said, tapping her own muzzle. “So maybe you actually don’t remember. But still, I’m sure you didn’t listen. I told you I’m not a soap bubble!”

Applejack blinked. Pinkie took that as an invitation to go on.

“Nopony can know what will happen. Not even my Pinkie sense can read the future—well, unless the future is all about falling flower pots, I guess. Soap bubbles pop when you poke them, you know?”

“I can safely say I know that much.” Applejack said, raising a brow.

“And balloons don’t!”

Applejack nodded very carefully, paying close attention to the impromptu physics lesson. Pinkie, for her part, smiled, reaching out to hold one of Applejack’s hooves in her own.

“You don’t know if I’m a bubble or a balloon until you check. You’re so afraid I’ll pop when you poke me, you don’t even try, even when I tell you I’m not going to disappear. Bubbles go pop, and balloons, they just go squish! I like the blue ones best, but I guess you can only really play with them for a few days before they kind of shrivel up and deflate and ew—wait,” Pinkie shook her head violently. “That wasn’t what I was trying to say.”

“Looks like a balloon, probably smells like a balloon, and says she’s a balloon,” Pinkie said, lowering her voice a tad. Gently, she led Applejack’s hoof down to touch Pinkie’s flank, resting it there. “Totally is a balloon. Ooh, I just realised, that’s super clever because my cutie mark is balloons. Wow!” Pinkie grinned, supremely pleased for one single moment. Applejack rolled her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Pinkie said, again checking her voice, speaking slower, more quiet, and it was clear it took effort. “I’m really really sorry you were hurt before, and if having lost somepony makes you a little scared, well, that’s fine, because I’m also really scared. It’s like what you said about the forest fire and everything.” Pinkie reached out and grabbed a hold of one of Applejack’s forelegs again, nuzzling her hoof. “And it’s like what I said, too. There’s something happy about everything that’s also kinda sad.”

Applejack sighed. “Yeah. If you hadn’t come by that night, I guess we wouldn’t be here now, not like this.” Applejack closed her eyes for a moment, a long and indulgent blink. She focused on Pinkie’s touch, willing everything else to drop away for a moment.

“Exactly!” Pinkie said, letting her hoof drop. “But even if I’m scared, that usually doesn’t stop me from trying, and it totally shouldn’t stop big and strong and really sweet Applejack-y farmponies, either. If you just stopped looking down, and looked up instead, looked at me, maybe you’d see that. If you were close to me when you looked up, you’d see me!” Pinkie flashed a grin. “You made it sound like you thought we were okay because you had things figured out, but you don’t ask yourself for permission to use somepony’s kitchen. You should ask me to use my—uh, wait. I mean, ask me out. You know what I mean!”

“I reckon I do,” Applejack said, her ears well and truly pinned back. She knew Pinkie was looking at her, big and shiny blue eyes trained on hers, but Applejack couldn’t look away from Pinkie’s hooves. She wanted nothing more than to grab a hold of them, but that was part of the problem. She’d been so happy with the realisation that she was ready to reach out, to think that Pinkie wanted this as well, she hadn’t paused to think that Pinkie had a say in it. That it was a question, and perhaps most of all, that telling Pinkie she wanted to hear none of this talk until now, until Applejack herself was ready—what a terrible thing that had been.

“Thought for a moment,” she said in a coarse whisper. “Thought that if it was what we both wanted, it didn’t much matter, but I guess it was disrespectful to think you were just waitin’ for me to say go.”

She looked up then, back at Pinkie, and while there was neither anger nor judgment, Pinkie didn’t disagree either. Pinkie tapped her forehooves on the floor, waiting with a patient smile, a beautiful smile that encouraged Applejack to try on a smile of her own. The tentative, itchy buzz of hope felt so infinitely much better than the dread of five minutes ago.

“Pinkie? I don’t feel so high and mighty now. Feels like I mucked stuff up good and proper, and I don’t know if it’s gonna be enough just sayin’ the word, but I’m gonna say it anyway. I’m sorry.” Again that word, but with it, release. Applejack cleared her throat. Her voice still shook, and she didn’t care. “I was wrong not to take you seriously, even for a minute, and I meant every darn thing I said at the winter picnic. When we were baking. In the barn. I meant it all. I just lost sight of it.”

Pinkie leaned forward to touch snouts with Applejack, her smile widening a bit. “That’s okay. It did hurt, but you didn’t ‘muck it up.’ You still haven’t tried. Poked. Asked. And now you know that I accept your apology, that I really like being around you, and that I think I’d like to be around you more, especially if you can talk to me instead of hiding and being quiet and telling me to be quiet too. So, yeah!”

Suddenly, Applejack’s mouth was dry, and she was keenly aware of her own heartbeat. Again that pleasant itch in her chest, the smile that went from tail to snout. It was time for doing something instead of waiting, instead of thinking—

Pinkie rose to stand with a single hop. “What I was trying to say was that you haven’t asked me if I wanted to go eat something, or go to the movies with you, or maybe go rollerskating—you know, a date but with food or something fun, because I love food. And fun. And the idea of spending more time with you, too! Lucky me! But if you want me to ask you instead of asking you to ask me—”

Applejack laughed and shook her head. Something about seeing Pinkie be so incredibly, ridiculously Pinkie again helped calm her nerves more surely than any spa treatment or whatever else other ponies did to simmer down.

“No. No, let me,” she said, grinning. “Listen, I ain’t good with fancy words. Heck, probably ain’t good with anything ‘bout this whole romantical business if the past weeks’re anything to go by.” Applejack shook her head and held up a hoof to silence Pinkie when it looked like she was about to speak up, and for once, it actually worked. It was a day for miracles, alright.

“I’ve woken up confused every day, frustrated, sometimes plum scared, and there ain’t nothing I quite dislike so much as not knowing what’s goin’ on. But it’s been amazing, too. Every time I got to see you. I wouldn’t be without these past weeks even with the hurtin’, I’ll say that much, and, well.” Applejack breathed through her nose. “I’d like more of that. If you’re likely to give me any more Pinkie than what I’ve got, I don’t ever want to have to give it back, and I hope you ain’t gonna give up on me because I can be a big idiot sometimes.”

Pinkie Pie didn’t say anything. She smiled brightly and shook her head resolutely.

“So.” Applejack made a show of standing up, dusting herself up and shaking her mane free. “Maybe you’d want to grab something to eat? Have lunch and talk about something other’n how strange this all’s been? I’d love to get back to the part where we’re hanging out together.”

Pinkie wrapped her forelegs around Applejack’s neck and squeezed until Applejack could do no more than make a strangled noise, toppling over on her side.

“Yep! I mean, yes! I guess—I mean, as in, I think ‘yes’ sounds a lot better probably. Than ‘yep.’ Not as in ‘I guess I’ll go on a date with you,’ because that sounds all wrong—”

“Pinkie. Breathing.”

“Oh! Sorry,” Pinkie giggled and relented somewhat, still hugging Applejack where the two lay on the wooden floorboards of her room. Applejack took a deep breath of air.

“Alright. Okay. Good.”

“Nuh-uh, not good. Super!” Pinkie giggled-snorted and nuzzled the top of Applejack’s head.

“Super it is,” Applejack said, chuckling weakly. She lay still staring up at the ceiling, Pinkie halfway draped over her. She ran a hoof along Pinkie’s side, enjoying the simple act of being. The world was pleasant, soft and pink, and for a few moments, the silence held. Just the two of them. She didn’t even worry too much when she noticed Pinkie’s face was creased in a frown, tongue sticking out of her mouth, though she did wonder.

“You mean when we get back to Ponyville, right?” Pinkie asked.

Applejack shrugged, letting her hoof rest on Pinkie’s back. “Wasn’t even thinking that far, but I guess? Sooner the better.”

“It’s just that there aren’t a whole lot of cafés or skating rinks or anything around here.”

“Right.”

“And I’m pretty sure Inkie, Blinkie, and probably my dad are listening at the door.”

There was a muffled thud from the other side of Pinkie’s door, shortly followed by the scrabble of multiple sets of hooves. Applejack laughed.

“Tell you what. Much as it’s been great visiting your farm and all, I need to get back home before my family starts wondering where the heck I went off to. Didn’t take them long to send a rescue party last time, if’n you’ll remember.” Applejack made to get up, but Pinkie snuck a little further atop Applejack, resting her head on her chest. Applejack didn’t bother protesting too much. She could spare another few minutes. Or hours.

“Don’t cut your visit short on my account, but you just head on up to Sweet Apple Acres when you get back yourself and I have an idea,” Applejack said.

“I like ideas,” Pinkie said. “What kind of idea is it? Is it a plan kind of idea?”

“That’d be tellin’,” Applejack said, grinning.