((Prompt: The light, it blinds.))
Sunday mornings were special, almost sacred to Applejack. Sunday was the one day of the week she allowed herself to sleep in.
The rest of the week, she was always the first pony out of bed, greeting the sunrise with a broad grin and a mug of coffee, ready to start her chores. But Sunday mornings were special, because they came after Saturday nights, and the one thing she could always count on about Saturday nights was that she would need to sleep in on Sunday morning.
A ray of sunlight, painfully bright even through her closed eyelids, did its best to rouse her from her weekly ritual, but Applejack stubbornly refused to be coaxed from her bed. She rolled over and covered her head with her thick wool blanket.
A grin slowly spread across her muzzle as she half-remembered, half-dreamed about the shenanigans she had been up to the night before. Karaoke with Rainbow and Pinkie. Drinks. Loud, off-tune, drunken karaoke with Rainbow and Pinkie. More drinks. Loud, off-tune, drunken karaoke with made-up lyrics and no background music out in the alley behind the karaoke bar because she, Rainbow and Pinkie had been kicked out. That strange pale mare in the alley with makeup...
It got a bit fuzzy after that. Applejack frowned and shrugged, humming a few lines from last night's songs.
Her ear twitched as she heard little hooves thunder up the stairs and barge into her room. Somethin' better be on fire, Applejack thought grumpily as her little sister clambered across the floor.
“I know I ain't s'posed to wake you on Sundays,” Apple Bloom said, “but Big Mac says he needs yer help gettin' the plough unstuck from the mud.”
Applejack cursed under her breath. She'd forgotten to put the plough away when she was done with it yesterday. “All right,” she grumbled, stirring. “Tell Mac I'll be down in a—aaugh!” Applejack hissed as a beam of sunlight hit her face. She hadn't believed she had that bad of a hangover, but it must have really been a mother of one for a little bit of light to feel like a hammer to the nose. She rolled clumsily out of the bed, her legs still tangled in the sheets.
“Sis? You alright?” Apple Bloom asked.
“Yeah,” Applejack said, waving her sister off. “I'm just...” She rolled her jaw. Her mouth felt weird, like there was something there that hadn't been before. “I'm just dandy. Say, do you smell smoke? Did Granny leave the hay fries on too long again?”
Apple Bloom squeaked in fear. “Sis... your hoof!”
“Hm? What about my...” Applejack glanced groggily down at her hoof. The tip of it, resting in a little patch of sun, lit up in flames like a match head. “Hoof!? Son of a buckin' bronco!” She whipped her hoof around in the air, rolling on the ground to extinguish the flames.
“Shoot,” her sister moaned. “If I'da known this was what happens when ya get up on a Sunday, I'da just let ya sleep in!”
“Apple Bloom...” Applejack gasped, pressing her unburned hoof to her neck. “I don't... I don't think I have a pulse!”
“What?” Apple Bloom took a few steps back in fear. “Wh-what do ya mean? Why the hay would ya even be checkin'?”
She had a point, Applejack supposed. But the thought had come to her while rolling in panic on the floor that if she was hungover enough to catch fire—something she'd never heard of, but it had to be a pretty nasty level of hangover—then why wasn't her head pounding?
“Just... just go an' get Nurse Redheart,” she finally said.
Apple Bloom nodded her head, but paused in the doorway. “If this is some kinda trick ta get out of movin' the plough, yer gonna be in big trouble, sis.”
“Jus' git!” Applejack watched her sister leave the room, then curled into the corner, eying the spot of sunlight warily as it slowly moved across the floor.
*
Nurse Redheart propped Applejack's mouth open, examining the sharp fangs nestled between her teeth. A bag of blood hung from an I.V. drip connected to Applejack's foreleg.
“Well, all the symptoms line up,” Redheart said, discarding her tongue-depressor.
Applejack licked her dry lips. “Well? What have I got? Some kind of allergy? Spontaneous pony combustion?”
Nurse Redheart walked over to the window, securing the curtain against any gaps sunlight might get through. “No, Miss Applejack, you are a vampire.”