~ Chapter 3: The Orchard Ordeal ~
“Hey, I can see Sweet Apple Acres from here!” Rainbow chimed from above. “Last one there is a rotten apple!” Once again, the pegasus darted off ahead of her companions in the third impromptu race on their journey so far. Only a few minutes following their departure from Whitetail Woods, Rainbow Dash had grown bored of Rarity’s delicately slow pace as she meticulously avoided each and every puddle of mud on the trail. Twilight, of course, was happy to keep pace with the white unicorn and pass the time with a long-winded (and particularly dry) discussion of the forest’s ecology. Much to her dismay, Rainbow’s attempts to hurry the party along through inciting a few friendly races had fallen on deaf ears thus far. Twilight was far too busy rambling on about the stamen configurations on the nearby cup-flower plants, while Rarity was focused on keeping her hooves as clean as possible, despite the dirt road.
After flying ahead a few dozen yards, the pegasus looked back to see that her friends were once again lagging behind, showing no sporting interest in her proposed challenge. Dejected, Rainbow crossed her hooves and hovered in midair while impatiently waiting for her companions to catch up.
“…And so it’s actually advantageous for the Silphium perfoliatum to have a concave leaf shape due to the way it funnels rain water in toward the stem!” Twilight enthusiastically recited from a passage she had memorized in Fantastic Equestrian Flora Culture.
“You don’t say…” Rarity replied distractedly, focusing more of her attention on where she was placing her hooves than on what her friend had been rambling on about for the past three minutes.
“Oh but I do say! In fact, that particular leaf pattern is even more common in –“
“Will you two slowpokes hurry up already?!” Rainbow interjected loudly, finally grabbing Twilight’s attention and snapping her out of the one-sided conversation.
“Oh, sorry Dash!” she said, blushing a bit. “I was just telling Rarity about how the biological structure of this –“
“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure it’s really interesting and all…” Rainbow interrupted again, waving a hoof in the air nonchalantly. “But don’t you think we should get a move on? We’re gonna be late for meeting with AJ!”
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “But Applejack isn’t even expecting us…”
“Um, well… Yeah, but we’ll be late for surprising her with a visit!” the pegasus retorted, thinking quick on her hooves.
The purple unicorn shrugged. “Okay, I guess you’re right –“
“That’s the spirit!” Dash exclaimed victoriously while turning about and flying off toward the nearby orchard.
Twilight picked up her own pace to a brisk canter, trying her best to keep up with her speedy friend. “Come on Rarity, we’re almost there!” she called back to the white unicorn.
“I just had my hooves done at the spa yesterday, dear, and I don’t intend to soil them by running around on this wretched dirt road,” Rarity protested in an utmost dignified tone. “Go ahead and hurry on if you must, but I shall be taking my sweet time getting to that orchard.” Finished with her proclamation, the unicorn returned her attention to daintily stepping along the trail, hardly disturbing even a tuft of dust.
“Well if you insist,” Twilight returned uncertainly. She just didn’t quite understand Rarity’s train of thought sometimes; why try to keep your hooves perfectly clean if they’re going to get dirty eventually anyway? Twilight herself, on the other hoof, had no reservations about kicking up a bit of dust in the spirit of punctuality. Like Rainbow had said, they didn’t want to be late (even if they technically weren’t being expected).
In just a few minutes, she had caught up with Rainbow Dash who was hovering just below the arching arbor which marked the entrance to Sweet Apple Acres. “Not too bad, Twilight, but you’re gonna have to step up your game if you want to beat me!” the pegasus boasted.
Twilight smiled, “Cool your feathers Dash, it wasn’t even a race.”
“Aw you’re just saying that because you know I WON!” she replied, narrowing her gaze.
“Fine, you won,” Twilight sighed as she rolled her eyes at the pegasus’s overly-competitive nature.
“You betcha’ I did!” Dash trumpeted triumphantly, puffing out her chest with pride.
“Well come on champ, let’s try to find Applejack. She’s bound to be somewhere out in the orchards.” The two ponies made their way past the looming red barn on the property and into the endless rows of apple trees. The canopy of leaves provided comfortable shade from the late afternoon sun. Small sunbeams managed to poke through the cover here and there, lighting up the orchard ground below. A gentle breeze whispered through the leaves, wafting fresh, natural aromas across the ponies’ noses.
Rainbow Dash had been gracefully weaving in between the tree trunks and inspecting the trees from the lower branches. “Say, it looks like some of these trees have a lot less fruit on them than the others. You don’t think Applejack has started bucking apples early this year, do you?”
“I doubt it,” Twilight replied. “Applejack seems to have this whole place pretty well organized. I don’t think she would start harvesting early for no good reason. That would totally defeat the purpose of planning everything out!” The unicorn shuttered a little at the thought of such an egregious deviation from principles of organization.
The two ponies continued to trot along the lines of trees, only slowly becoming aware of an unsettling silence which seemed to hang in the air like a fog. Twilight’s ears perked up at the faint noise of leaves shuffling overhead, compelling her to stop in her tracks. “Dash, did you hear that?” she asked in a hushed tone.
Rainbow Dash peeked over her shoulder. “Hear what?”
The unicorn squinted her eyes against the sunlight dropping from the canopy. “It sounds like the leaves are moving up there…”
“Um, Twilight? That’s just the wind. It does tend to blow the leaves around, ya know?”
“No, no,” she protested, “it’s almost like something is…” Her voice trailed off as she stared intently at the thick blanket of leaves which hung above them. She scanned them with a watchful eye, just waiting for the slightest sign of movement to validate her suspicions. “I know I heard something…”
Dash flew a little closer, a bit concerned for her friend. “Twilight, are you feeling oka—“ THONK! “Ow! What the hay?!”
Twilight watched as a bright red apple tumbled out from the canopy, striking the rainbow-maned pegasus squarely on the head on its way down to earth. The unicorn stepped back quickly, startled by the freefalling fruit. Almost immediately following it, another bright red orb darted toward the ground. It took little more than a second glance, however, for Twilight to recognize that the latter was abundantly different from the first. The little ball was scarcely the size of a small apple and sported two pairs of frantically flapping wings. Its disproportionately large eyes glinted briefly as it passed through a sunbeam on its clumsy downward descent. No sooner had it reached the ground, the tiny creature scurried toward the fallen fruit. In an almost unnatural movement, it unhinged its jaw, opened its gaping mouth, and swallowed the apple whole. With a contented buzzing, the little red orb floated lazily back up toward the canopy of leaves. Twilight stood aghast, her own mouth agape.
“Twilight?” her winged companion started as she watched the creature disappear from sight, “I think I just figured out why all those apples were missing…”
“COME BACK HERE YOU VARMIN!” The thick Southern accent boomed across the orchard, accompanied by the thundering sound of hooves. From in between the matrix of tree trunks, an orange blur raced past them, in clear pursuit of some unseen culprit.
The pegasus and unicorn looked to each other and spoke in unison, “Applejack!”
The pair of ponies wasted no time in bursting through the line of trees and taking off after their sprinting companion. Twilight pressed herself to coax every last ounce of speed from her hooves, but quickly fell behind in the wake of the pegasus flying just above her.
Rainbow Dash soared forward, speedily closing the gap between her and the Earth pony. Within seconds, she was hovering just above her friend’s left flank. “Hey Applejack! You look like you could use some—“
“WHOH!” The orange Earth pony quickly snapped her head sideways to see the source of this unexpected salutation. In her brief moment of distraction, one of her hooves managed to snag on a protruding tree root jutting out from the ground. In a violent tumble, Applejack’s body collapsed to the ground and rolled directly into the unforgiving trunk of a nearby tree. The resulting collision caused a few loose apples to drop from the branches above while the leaves shuddered with the impact. The orange pony winced and clutched her side as she tried to recover from the crash.
Rainbow Dash cringed. “…help,” she muttered hesitantly to finish her previous sentence. “My bad, AJ…”
Applejack pulled herself up off the ground, still a little disoriented. “Rainbow?” she asked incredulously. “What in tarnation are you doin’ here?!”
“Applejack, are you alright?” Twilight cried as she finally caught up with her companions, “I saw everything, but I wasn’t able to cast a spell to stop you quick enough!”
“Twilight? You too?” AJ added in a daze. “Where’d you two even come from?”
“We came looking for you when we saw that you weren’t at Whitetail Woods,” the unicorn responded quickly.
“Wait a sec, what were ya’ll doin’ in Whitetail Woods in the first place?”
“Oh you totally missed it AJ!” Rainbow Dash interjected in an excited tone. “There was this HUGE—“
“Dash!” Twilight interrupted. “Don’t you think we have a more important issue to address right now?”
The pegasus stared vacantly back, drawing a complete blank.
“The parasprites…” Twilight reluctantly reminded her.
“Oh right!” Dash perked up. “Those!”
“So ya’ll saw ‘em too, huh?” Applejack chimed in.
“We spotted one of them eating your apples just before you ran by,” Twilight answered. “What in Equestria are parasprites doing in your orchard anyway? Don’t they usually stay in the Everfree Forest?”
“Well shoot if Ah know!” the orange pony replied agitatedly. “Ah was doin’ my normal mornin’ rounds when Ah caught one of them varmin eatin’ away at the apple trees! Ah’ve been chasin’ ‘em around all mornin’! There must be at least a dozen of ‘em flyin’ around in here!”
“Just a dozen?” Rainbow Dash boasted. “That’ll be a piece of cake!”
“Don’t get too ahead of yourself, Dash,” the unicorn warned forebodingly. “You remember what happened when Fluttershy brought just one of them back to Ponyville…”
Applejack looked to the treetops nervously. “That’s exactly what Ah’m worried about. If this gets too far out of hoof, we could lose the entire apple crop to these critters by the end of the day!”
“Don’t worry, Applejack. Dash and I will help you get this under control! We’ve done it once, and we can do it again!” Twilight touted confidently while stomping a hoof down.
The orange pony raised an eyebrow. “Ah don’t suppose ya’ll know where Pinkie Pie and her tuba are, do ya?”
Twilight’s confidence visibly faltered for a moment. “Well… no,” she finally admitted.
“So how exactly do ya’ll plan on wranglin’ these parasprites up?”
“Well, we just need to find some instruments!” Twilight blurted, clearly grasping at straws. “Where do you keep all the musical equipment around here AJ?”
Again, Applejack returned a perplexed look. “Um, this is an orchard, sugar cube… not an orchestra.”
The unicorn hung her head in disappointment. “Right…”
“Well hold on a minute,” Dash cut in. “You’ve got to have some kind of instrument in this place, right?”
Applejack raised a hoof to her chin in a thoughtful expression. “Well now that ya mention it…”
“You’ve got something?!” Twilight chimed excitedly.
It seemed like the orange pony was straining to remember. “Ah think my cousin, Apple Fritter, left her fiddle here last time she visited for the family reunion. We’ve been holdin’ on to it for her until she can come back to Ponyville again.”
“That’s perfect!” the unicorn exclaimed with a twinkle in her eyes. “Where is it?!”
“Well Ah reckon the last time Ah saw it was in the tool shed next to the house,” Applejack mused.
Twilight took a few steps forward. “Okay girls, I think I’ve got a plan! AJ, you go get a couple of empty apple bushels and mason jars. Lots of them! Dash, you scout the area from the sky and see if you can spot how many of these things we’re dealing with.”
“And what will you be doing?” the pegasus demanded skeptically.
Twilight smirked mischievously. “I’m going to find us a fiddle…”