Chapter XXII
The Apple family farm was certainly large enough to get lost in, and the two Pegasi did just that. Large uncultivated fields ran east towards uncharted forests storing up hay for the winter, while acres upon acres of apple trees circled the rest of the property in a lush crescent. Abandoned animal pens and run down vegetable plots huddled close to the barn. The pens in particular interested Fluttershy, new scents of creatures she had never seen. The furry friends, unfortunately, were long gone, leaving only their faint stink behind. They probably hadn't been there in years. The vegetable gardens didn't have long for the world either, it looked like.
Picking a direction, the brash cyan pony chose the most well-worn trail into the orchard. Fluttershy followed close behind. Neither of them had a clue where they were going. How hard could it be to find brightly colored ponies amid a bland crush of trees?
It took them forty minutes before they could pick out the steady whump whump of apple bucking, and another twenty minutes still to reach them. By the time the fillies broke through into a clearing they were ready for a much-needed break and in serious want of water.
"There y'all are!" Applejack greeted them, trotting up. "I was beginnin' to wonder if y'all were gonna show at all."
"You're surprisingly hard to find." Fluttershy looked around.
"This place is huge!" Rainbow Dash spread her forelegs in a grand gesture.
"Heh. Yeah, I guess so. I keep forgettin' that new comers have a hard time findin' their way around."
"Get many guests, do you?" asked Fluttershy.
"Not hardly." AJ scowled, circling around them. "But look at you two. I ain't never seen nothing like y'all up close 'fore. And there you are, smellin' fresh as a daisy in the rain."
"You don't get any Pegasi down here?" Dash's head followed Applejack as she circled.
"Pff, think again. You two are the first feather dusters I've ever seen down on the ground afore."
"'Feather dusters'?"
"Don't get yer tail in a bunch there, little miss. It's just a name; I didn't mean nothin' by it."
"What's a 'feather duster'?" Fluttershy whispered to her friend.
"'Little miss'?! I'm as old as you are!" Dash's voice cracked as she bounced forward.
"Yeah, right." The country pony rolled her eyes.
"Well I bet you haven't done so much that you're so much more mature than me. Me and Fluttershy have been through a lot lately."
AJ gave her a long stare before turning away. "Listen kid, come back and talk to me when you've got a week's worth of chores and two days to do 'em in. When you've gotta be up with the rooster, but you can't sleep cause you're so sore from the day's work and there's another one right around the corner. And another. And another. When your little sister starts screamin' in the middle of the night for your mamma, and you have to be the one to shush her up..."
AJ's gaze turned skyward, looking into the sun. Her eyes teared up, though from the sunlight or the memories Dash couldn't tell. Trotting off, she headed back for her apple crates and the sleeping bundle beneath the tree. Little Mac was a ways off, just out of ear shot, bucking his own trees. Granny was there too, picking up the fallen apples.
"Then you come find me and we'll have a nice long talk about maturity." Applejack turned, bucking her hind legs into the tree for all she was worth, emphasizing her point.
"Well, we don't have it so easy either." Dash followed, avoiding the falling apples.
"Uh-huh."
"School is hard, and me and Fluttershy get bullied a lot."
"Ya don't say." The orange cowgirl wasn't buying it.
"Flight training is tough. Sometimes in orienteering class I get swept away cause I'm so little, and it feels like I have to map out all of Equestria just to find my way back."
"You're complaining about flying?!" AJ stuck her head above the rows of crates. "Get off mah farm."
"But it's true!"
"Listen kid, there ain't nothing the two of you can tell me that'll convince me y'all are anything' but namby-pamby, rocks-for-brains, feather dustin', fillies."
"My mother died."
There was no comeback for that. Dash stood there, shocked, as Fluttershy let loose the secret it had taken her months to confide in her best friend. Now she was telling perfect strangers? What had gotten into that girl's head?
Dash turned to the creamy yellow Pegasus. Something was different. It was hard to say for certain, but Fluttershy seemed bolder, more confident. Something had changed. Applejack noticed it too.
The eyes. It was those aqua blue eyes. No longer filled with so much sadness and pain, they shimmered clearly, not hidden by bangs or tears, but facing the world head on. Apparently confronting Apollyon had given her some much-needed closure into her own mother's death. So much so that now she could speak freely about it.
That was not to say there was not still pain there. Striding next to Dash, she stared down Applejack, a faint smile on her lips and a knowing pain in her heart. Dash could only hope for half her strength in the future.
"Ah'm sorry." AJ looked away, a mouth full of mumbles.
"It's okay." Fluttershy smiled. "You may not like flying, but we can't do that very well anyways. Well, I can't. Rainbow Dash is amazing, but she hurt her wing saving my life."
"'Not like...' Are you crazy? 'Not like flying.' Who wouldn't like flying?! I dream about it all the time."
"Why?" Rainbow Dash had never met an Earth Pony that shared her dream of flying. Actually, she'd never met an Earth pony before.
"You kiddin' me? To get away from here! To get off this farm and never look back."
"Oh, but don't you like it here?" Fluttershy asked. "You get to live here on this beautiful farm."
"This ain't living." AJ turned her head, gazing sorrowfully across the orchard, with Little Mac and Granny Smith still working away. "This is surviving."
"Huh?"
"Let me show you somethin'. Come're."
The three fillies gathered beneath the closest apple tree. AJ had apparently set up base there, stacking the apple crates neatly before filling them with apples picked from the ground. Resting next to the closest crate lay a bundle of blankets. AJ reached out quietly, pulling back the outer most layer. Little Applebloom moaned softly, rolling over and continuing her nap.
"She's supposed to be helppin' me, but she works till she just falls over. I can't wake her. She's dreamin', and I would never take that away."
"She's so cute." Fluttershy squeed quietly.
"Yeah. She likes it out here. The scent of the warm sun on the apples in the trees reminds her of-- It's the only thing that makes her happy." AJ sighed. "And I can't stand to look at her."
"Why not?"
"Cause all I see is her future, stuck on this farm doin' the same thing every day. Her life ahead, the same as mine. We're both prisoners here, but she don't see that yet. And that makes me mad."
"Is she... tied up?" Dash noted the rope tied around Applebloom's waist, the coils connected to the tree.
"Yeah." AJ sighed. "She'll stick with Granny on her own but she runs away from me when I'm not lookin'. So I tie her up so she don't get away again. That's how we found y'all last night; she ran to Granny's old homestead. Lucky for y'all, huh?"
"Yeah, lucky us." Dash winced at the memory of soggy feathers and the still-fresh preening session.
They spent the remainder of the afternoon with Applejack, crating the apples she bucked from the trees. Dash tried to have a go but failed spectacularly. Fluttershy couldn't even get both rear hooves off the ground at the same time. So mostly it was AJ doing the hard work. Though Dash sure considered gathering fallen apples to be work.
Long about mid day Applebloom started screaming, yanking at the tether and hollering for Granny. She got into another shouting match with AJ before Granny had to wander all the way across the field and tell them both to knock it off. Figuring midday was as good a time as any for a break, Granny called Little Mac over and they all sat down for some lunch.
Pulling dishes from her saddle bags, Granny laid out a nice picnic on a red and white checkered cloth. She'd prepared a nice selection of mollichop sandwiches, dried sugar beet pulp, and hot apple cider. Applejack and Applebloom bickered back and forth between bites, and Little Mac just sat silently, eating his food without comment. Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash lay on the grass together off to the side, discussing the strange food presented before them. Granny Smith just smiled politely at them with her eyes shut. She may have been asleep. Finally with few other options the two winged ponies dug in with the rest of them.
It wasn't half bad. Neither of them had had any of it before, and Dash found herself almost enjoying it. The mollichop was a bit chewy, and the cider tasted watered down, but other than that she had no complaints for once. She and Fluttershy both managed to surprise every pony by eating as much as Little Mac. He wasn't sure what to make of that, almost being out-eaten by a sky blue filly a third his size. He wouldn't even look at Fluttershy.
After lunch the Apple family stacked the full Apple crates together and moved the empty ones closer to the trees. There weren't many apples ripe yet, most still too early to pick. The ones that did come off though they gathered up and would sell later. Applejack explained that historically Sweet Apple Acres was the larger apple grower and distributor in the entire southern half of Equestria, cultivating more than sixty-nine verities of apples in an average planting season. They used to single handedly ensure that over a tenth of the population would have fresh apples at any time in any season. By the time they were done moving crates Dash knew more about apples then she'd ever wished to know. If she knew so much about danged apples, why was she so keen on leaving?
Wandering back to the tree, she lay down for a nap. Fluttershy was playing with the still-tethered Applebloom, ensuring her distraction and keeping the foal from screaming while her family continued to work. Dash thought no way would she be able to snooze out here in the open; not on this hard ground, with Fluttershy playing and the steady whump whump in the background. But soon enough, Dash was proved wrong as she gently drifted off for an afternoon at Sweet Apple Acres.