Pain stabbed through her hooves with each beat they hammered out against the ground, but Applejack walked with a spring in her step anyway. Working the orchard always wreaked havoc on her bucking muscles no matter how many seasons she did it, and the sweltering early-autumn heat hadn’t helped matters any. Even with the sun beating down on her without a cloud to cover it, though, she’d gotten into a steady rhythm early that morning and, for once, managed to keep it through the afternoon. She’d budgeted the whole day towards harvesting the northwest corner of their property while Big Mac worked on the southeast, but thanks to her abnormal pace she had the whole area picked clean with a full hour and change left before sunset. If that wasn’t reason enough to indulge in some good cheer, she couldn’t imagine what was.
It was a long trek back to the house, but the sun still hung full-bodied above the horizon when she passed under the shadow of the Apple Family homestead. Painted red by her own hooves and gleaming silver and gold by the dying sunlight, Sweet Apple Acres had never looked so good as it did to its de facto matriarch just now. The last few years had been a boon to the family’s finances, what with the organic trade agreement with Saddle Arabia and the recent population boom back home in Equestria. Demand was at an all-time high, and now that Apple Bloom was old enough to start taking on responsibilities of her own, they had enough home-grown help to keep business alive and booming.
Applejack lengthened her stride as she trotted up the steps to the house’s back door, grimacing from the effort and the extra complaint her body gave off in response. Landsake, she’d just about worked herself to the bone today. No big surprise there, considering how quickly she’d emptied out all those trees by herself, but she’d be right as rain with a good night’s rest. Granny Smith may have gotten too frail to do much besides take care of the household chores and totter into town each Friday for bingo, but Applejack and Big Mac both still had plenty left in the tank. On top of that, they could trust Apple Bloom to do her share now without either of her elder siblings wasting half a moment to think about it.
Leading with her left shoulder because it wasn’t quite as sore as her right, Applejack ducked into the mudroom and knelt down next to the wall, hanging her dusty hat up on the inside of the door after she kicked it shut behind her. With a little shake of her shoulders, she dislodged her saddlebags from her back so they slid up her spine and over her head, then caught the strap in her forehoof and tossed it the rest of the way up onto its own hook on the wall. Empty spaces for Big Mac’s and Granny Smith’s bags bordered hers on either side, and at the very end of the row hung a slightly smaller pair covered in mud from a hard day’s work.
Applejack’s heart swelled with pride when she saw the dirt caked onto the patchy gray fabric, but at the same time she had to bite back a laugh. Those ratty things were so old that they’d been white as Wrap-Up snow when she first bought them, but even though the strap barely fit her anymore Apple Bloom flat-out refused to give them up. She swore it wasn’t some silly sentimental thing and she just liked the way they felt on her, but there was too much Apple in her blood for her to be any good at lying. Whatever the reason, Applejack just chalked it up to teenage hormones and didn’t pay it much mind. At least it was just childhood heirlooms she was latching onto, and not some touchy-feely town colt with reachy-grabby hooves.
Applejack made her way into the kitchen expecting to find Apple Bloom nearby, but the lights were still off and her seat at the table was empty. Checking the living room didn’t pan out either, but halfway into the dining room Applejack stopped on a dime and smacked her hoof against her forehead. Apple Bloom had made a habit of coming down for a snack around Applejack’s usual quitting time, but as far as she knew that wouldn’t happen for another hour or so. She was probably still up in her room, or maybe even out with one of her friends in town. Her face flushing with heat, Applejack shook her head and cursed her own faulty memory. Maybe she was getting a bit long in the teeth after all.
The thought of asking Granny Smith where she kept her wrinkle cream put a smile back on her face, though, and she trotted back across the house with a chuckle still vibrating in her chest. She climbed the steps slowly, on the off chance that Apple Bloom was home but had fallen asleep after finishing her chores. If her little sister was awake, she’d probably poke her head in and say howdy before settling down for a bath, but if that wasn’t the case she might just stretch that bath out to last the whole spare hour she’d earned herself. Now that she thought about it, she almost hoped Apple Bloom wouldn’t be there. After the day she’d had, an hour-long soak in the tub sounded like the closest thing to heaven Equestria could offer.
Apple Bloom’s room was on the opposite side of the house from the staircase, so when Applejack reached the second floor she could see that her door was ajar but not anything else beyond it. Still tiptoeing just in case, Applejack crept down the hallway and peered around the corner through the crack in the door. Just before she whispered her sister’s name, though, confusion tied her tongue in a knot. Apple Bloom wasn’t in her bed, but somepony else was: a grass-green pegasus with a feathery mane and tail tinged a slightly darker hue, lying on top of her sheets and facing the opposite wall with their head just below her pillow. One of their wings lay pinned underneath them, and the other hung suspended in the air to form a canopy over their head and shoulders. As Applejack watched in silence, a creamy yellow hoof threaded its way out from under the top wing and wrapped around it at the joint, then tightened up and pulled it down with a firm but playful tug.
The pegasus—a stranger—a stallion—rolled over onto his back, and Apple Bloom came with him. Nestled between his hind legs with her chest pressed into his, she flattened his wings against the bedspread and leaned down with her eyes closed, her cheeks flushed, her mouth opening and quivering and descending and connecting. The stallion cradled his hooves in the small of her back and craned his neck up, and their lips met with a sound of a bomb going off, of a hundred thousand Summer Solstice fireworks exploding inside the pulsing, white-hot recesses of Applejack’s skull. Yellow and green swirled in front of her and congealed into blazing red that, almost in the same instant, collapsed into a black void as hollow and cold as Luna’s endless night. She jerked her head back, banging her hoof against the door frame in her haste, and over the steam train screeching through the hallway behind her she heard her little sister gasp.
“You hear somethin’?” Apple Bloom whispered. Her question hung in the air like a hot air balloon, anchored by an invisible rope with the other end tied tight around Applejack’s throat. She heard the covers rustle, and then another voice, thick and raspy and decidedly male.
“I don’t hear anything now… do you wanna stop?”
Apple Bloom let out a short, punchy sigh, and the sheets rustled again. “Do you?” she murmured, slow and sultry in a way that made it clear what answer she was looking for, a way that rumbled in Applejack’s stomach like the last dry heave before everything in it came back up. She stood there and stared at the bedroom door, the floor rolling underneath her like waves beneath a surfboard, doing everything in her power just to avoid being thrown overboard. Her hooves moved—quietly, just like before—without her realizing it, carrying her back down into the kitchen and tossing her into the kitchen counter, her mane braid swinging out from behind her shoulder as she leaned over the sink and braced her hooves against the countertop.
She needed to throw up. She needed to scream. She needed to march right back up those stairs and kick that door open and upend the whole moondamned mattress if that was what it took to get them to stop, but the sharp edge of the counter digging into her stomach was the only thing keeping it from turning inside-out all over the kitchen floor. Every part of her body felt like it was exploding outward, trying to break free of her skin and escape from the blackness collecting at her core. Her mane braid bobbed with each shudder that rolled through her, dancing and writhing and rolling over on top of her with his hooves on her back and his lips just about–
Applejack grit her teeth so hard she saw white, then spit into the sink and shoved away from the counter, heading for the stairs with her eyes twisted into slits. This couldn’t be happening. This would not happen, because this was inexcusable. Who in all of Celestia’s creation did Apple Bloom think she was, sneaking a colt into the house while everypony else was away? Disrespecting their property like it was her name on the bills she did nothing to pay? Lying to her own family—to her own sister? She was as good a mother as that ungrateful little brat could ever remember having, and once she was through with her she’d been lucky not to be in a wheelchair for a month, let alone walking straight, let alone—
—taking the steps three at a time as snow piled up on the windowsills, her overlarge hairbow flopping over her ears as she breathlessly counted the packages spirited under the Hearth’s Warming tree while she slept...
And forgot helping him, Applejack thought as her hoof landed hard on the first step. Celestia forgive her for the slow, painful death she was about to inflict on that stupid, arrogant predator of a colt pawing at her sister like a baboon tearing apart a flawless ripe peach. It was probably his idea to come over here in the first place, to invade her home and corrupt the young mare Applejack had sacrificed everything for, the degenerate freeloader she would’ve done anything to protect—
—the little filly shuddering in her lap, head dug up under her chin, tears drying on her cheeks as she watched her sister fasten a bandage around the freshly cleaned scrape on her knee...
Four more steps fell behind her, then two, then one. It wasn’t fair of Apple Bloom to act like this. Granny Smith was too old for her heart to take this kind of hurt. Big Mac worked too hard to provide for their family for her to ignore what little he asked for in return. Applejack loved her too much to let her throw her life away like this, by running off with some deadbeat—old clubhouse barely holding itself together—because clearly she wasn’t mature enough to handle staying home alone and—delivering a few pies through the Fire Swamps by herself—and quite frankly it didn’t matter what she thought about it, because she was smarter than that and more respectful than that and—all she wanted was to get her cutie mark so she could do something special with her life, so she could grow up and help out the family just like Granny Smith and Big Mac and her big sister who she’d idolized every never-long-enough day of her ignorant, innocent young life.
Applejack’s foreleg touched down on a stair about halfway up, then twitched and buckled at the knee. She caught herself before she slammed into the wall, and then leaned her cheek against it instead, her head throbbing and her eyes prickling with all the memories she couldn’t bottle up in her heart any longer. It couldn’t be Apple Bloom she’d seen up there with that colt. It couldn’t be the filly she’d cleaned up and scolded after countless adventures with her friends. The toddler who learned to walk by tottering through the ruts left by Big Mac’s plow. The tiny baby she used to sprint home from school just to rock down to sleep for her nap.
Still bracing herself against the wall, Applejack turned in place and slid her way back down the stairs, her head almost too heavy to hold upright. Each step sent tremors through her pounding head, shaking loose thoughts that only added to the weight bearing down on her: this wasn’t right, it hadn’t been long enough, it wasn’t fair, she wasn’t ready. Apple Bloom wasn’t ready to grow up. She still forgot her lunchbag on the table every other morning before school. She still bit her tongue sometimes when she talked too fast. She still needed Applejack to…
To do what? Wake her up when her alarm didn’t go off? Sign permission slips for field trips? Anypony could do that for her. A soulless technomagical machine from Twilight’s laboratory could yank the sheets off her bed, move a pen in its cold steel claw, work out the mathematical principles behind the precise way she liked her eggs cooked in the morning.
Applejack pulled a chair out from the table and sank into it, one hoof still gripped around the seat back and the other flat against her aching temple. That was it, then. Apple Bloom was too old for her. Too old to tell her about a colt she was interested in, too old to tell her she might like to invite him over sometime, too old to need her for anything but food, work, and the simplest bare necessities. And Applejack was too old to do anything else. Her grip around the seat back tightened, and the muscles in her leg shuddered from the effort. Hadn’t she been able to manage the harvest much faster last year? Hadn’t there been a time where today’s work wouldn’t have exhausted her, when she could’ve trotted into town afterwards to dance the night away with her own friends? The ones who’d probably had more relationships than she’d had dates? The ones who were probably just about ready to have foals of their own, while she just bucked apples and made breakfast and worked herself another inch closer to death with each passing, far-too-short day?
Both her hooves met between her eyes for a moment, then clunked against the table as she heaved out a sigh and glared at the ceiling. This was ridiculous. She was being ridiculous, without a single cotton-picking good reason for it. She was on the short side of twenty-five and didn’t feel a day older, and she’d been on exactly the number of dates she’d felt comfortable with, just as all of her friends had. In fact, the only one of them who even ever brought up foals at all was Rarity when she stayed up too late at one of Pinkie’s parties, and if Applejack fancied carrying on about the subject like this she might as well dye her mane purple and fill her work thermos with herbal tea too. And as for Apple Bloom…
As for Apple Bloom…
A couple years back, she’d given an old tree in the southwest orchard a particularly strong buck and known without looking, almost before she made contact, that the wood was rotten and would splinter under her weight. That instinctive feeling—that tight, hollow pit in her stomach that told her something was about to go horribly wrong and it was far too late to stop it—had kept her from being crushed by the tree as it collapsed towards her that day. Now it just lingered inside her belly, never fading away to signify the danger had passed, only growing stronger every time Apple Bloom’s name crossed her mind.
Even if the dusty old cuckoo clock by the back door chewed up a gear and didn’t work, time would still keep moving on without it. Even if she closed her eyes and stuffed her hooves in her ears and screamed at the two teenagers rubbing all over each other upstairs, it wouldn’t change the fact that Apple Bloom was nearly her height and almost as strong, or that whatever fire that colt upstairs had lit in her heart would only burn hotter the harder Applejack tried to stamp it out.
Going up there now wouldn’t make things any better. She could rant and rave and probably drop that colt dead of a heart attack without even going near him, but Apple Bloom would never forgive her for treating her that way, or even him for that matter. Not to mention, doing anything so drastic as forbidding her from ever seeing that colt again would all but guarantee she’d do the opposite, or even take things further than they’d already gone. After all, she was an Apple to the core just like her sister, and the day either of them took kindly to being told what was best for them would be the day Fluttershy had a very long talk with Discord about certain things he’d sworn never to do again.
That wasn’t to say she was about to just sweep this whole incident under the rug. No matter how doe-eyed she was over that boy in her bedroom, Apple Bloom had still as good as lied to her face by sneaking him into an empty house. She’d told Applejack she’d weed the garden in the morning and help Sweetie Belle out with some homework during the afternoon, and although the mulch beneath the crops outside looked good as new from the kitchen, whatever was going on upstairs sure as hayfire wasn’t a school project. Something had to be done about her behavior, and it had to be done today.
She just didn’t have a clue in the world what the hay it was supposed to be.
For a while, Applejack just sat still in the kitchen, silent and alone. Some ponies spoke of time as a constant, endless river, and she’d found that she rooted herself down someplace and let that river flow around her for a while, the current would rise up and erode some of her cares away. Her shadow stretched out longer across the floor as a few minutes passed, then a quarter of an hour. Stray thoughts—bits of debris floating along on the tide—drifted alongside her, pieces of each snagging in her mane and eventually forming a cogent idea inside her head. Rebellious and short-sighted Apple Bloom may have been, but one thing she wasn’t on top of that was stupid. She’d probably brought her friend over a good half-hour after Applejack left just to be safe, and likewise she’d want to give him at least the same time’s head start when he left. Applejack knew this without thinking because she always knew what Apple Bloom was thinking, because if things had been flipped around she would’ve done the exact same thing.
When the clock struck half past—still thirty minutes away from when she was supposed to have gotten home—Applejack stood up on a hunch, one that the sound of hooves clumping around on the second floor justified a few seconds later. She’d just confront Apple Bloom when she came downstairs. Simple as that. Nothing too aggressive, no raised voice or gritted teeth, just a calm discussion about what had happened today and what wouldn’t happen in the future.
The hooves upstairs went quiet for a moment, and Applejack took the opportunity to step into the basement and uncork one of the bottles the family kept squirreled away there for special occasions. She’d promised herself she’d have a talk with Apple Bloom without being hysterical, and that was just what she planned to do. If a couple glasses of sparkling apple cider couldn’t quell whatever fires came of it, she doubted there was anything in Equestria or above it that could.
The table was set by the time the hoofsteps reached the landing at the top of the stairs. Applejack settled back into her seat with a filled glass in the crook of her hoof, the cider bottle now diminished by a third and set on the table between her own drink and the second one she’d set out across from her. The steps grew slower and began to descend towards her, and she found herself tapping along to their rhythm on the rim of her glass: clink, clip, clunk, clop, tick, tock, tick, tock. The clock by the back door read twenty-five minutes to the hour, and the hooves from upstairs had finally come into sight: scuffed with use but neatly trimmed, smaller than a grown stallion’s but larger than a filly’s. Lime-green. The wrong color.
The pegasus colt glanced out the front window first before surveying the rest of the house, and jerked to a halt the second the kitchen came into view. The two of them locked eyes for a moment, hers darkened by the sun at her back and his about ready to pop out of his skull, and then time kept flowing again and the gears in Applejack’s brain shook the rust off their cogs. It wasn’t Apple Bloom standing over there gaping at her, but maybe it was better this way. In fact, now that she thought about it, maybe this was even for the best.
“You like cider?” she asked the colt, her voice level and a little softer than her posture might’ve indicated. With his jaw propped open and quivering as it was, all he could manage in response was a winded cough, the equine equivalent of radio static.
“U-Uh…”
Applejack sighed, and her lips twitched at the corners. “I ain’t mad at ya,” she said. “Honest. I just wanna talk.” She glanced down at the cider bottle, then inclined her head towards it as she looked back at the colt, hoping the gesture would draw the two closer together. “Real good harvest last season. Probably the best cider year in the last ten.” She caught his eyes again and held them, her unblinking gaze as much a vice grip as any hoof could’ve managed. “I’d sure appreciate somepony to share it with.”
She could hear the colt swallow from the other side of the house. He crossed over to her with his teeth clenched behind his cheeks, and his head held stiff and low like a prizefighter expecting to dodge a punch. As he sat down, Applejack realized her mistake a moment too late: she’d set the second glass out at Apple Bloom’s seat, but now it was her boyfriend she was facing instead. Her stomach coiled up tight against her spine, but she said nothing with her lips or the rest of her face. A while passed before either of them looked up, their gazes meeting instead at the perspirating glass of cider sitting untouched in front of her little sister’s chair.
When she finally pulled her head back and considered him, the colt seemed a lot smaller than he’d looked next to Apple Bloom. Though his mane was messy and darkened with sweat near his forehead, his face was clean of any blemishes or wisps of sprouting hair, and his brow and cheekbones bore a neat, rounded look like they’d been sanded down from the sharp, striking edges they’d someday grow into. What she could see of his eyes were soft and blue, the color of a lazy afternoon like the one dimming into twilight outside, and what she could see of his shoulders and forelegs matched the slender, lithe look she knew well from all her years of friendship with Rainbow Dash. He was an athlete, no doubt, but not quite the lover or the fighter she’d been afraid of seeing. He seemed instead too young to have decided yet, too naive to realize the potential within him for both. Of all the things she saw in the colt, only one didn’t come as a surprise: though her forethought left something to be desired, at least Apple Bloom had good taste.
“It ain’t gonna bite ya,” she said, once again nodding towards the colt’s cider. He glanced up just long enough to acknowledge her, then reached out with a foreleg too short for him to grab the glass without leaning forward a bit in his seat. As he stared down into his drink, he sucked in a breath—the first Applejack could remember hearing him take—and fluttered his wings as if bracing himself for takeoff. Instead of flying away, though, he raised the glass to his lips and let his eyes follow it up, leveling a wide-eyed but steady gaze at Applejack as took his first gulp. It wasn’t an act of aggression, and Celestia knew she could’ve countered it with frightening ease if it had been. His was the look of someone who realized he’d been cornered, and had since decided he’d rather face his fate head-on than beg for mercy he didn’t deserve. On top of looks, the colt had guts too. There wasn’t much of a question now why Apple Bloom had taken a shine to him.
“I take it you do like cider?” Applejack asked the colt again once he set his glass down on the table, now half-empty after his first hesitant swallow had been swiftly followed by two larger ones. His cheeks caved in a bit as he scraped the last few dropps off his tongue, then filled out again as he nodded.
“Yes… uh, ma’am,” he replied, adding the salutation a moment late as he remembered the circumstances of their meeting. Although she knew she should appreciate the courtesy, Applejack couldn’t help but chuckle.
“Landsake, don’t tell me I look old enough for you to be callin’ me ma’am,” she said, putting on half a smile just to make sure the colt recognized her tone. “Just Applejack’ll do fine.”
“O-Okay, m… Applejack.” The colt’s throat bobbed as he wetted his lips, and his breath echoed inside his glass as he took another drink. Granny Smith always said good cider was like a good sunrise: crisp, clean, and meant to be savored. As she raised her own glass and tasted the drink’s tart, sugary bite against her tongue, she found herself inclined to agree, and felt a few more cobwebs wash out of her head to boot. She’d had some idea of what she wanted to say ever since she’d pulled the cider out from the basement, but every sip of it now gave her another inkling of what words she might put to the best use.
“And what should I call you?” she asked the colt once she’d built up enough confidence to let go of her glass. The colt had set his glass down as well, but kept both his forehooves wrapped around it, each twitch of his ears sending tiny vibrations through the mouthful of cider that remained inside.
“Chip,” he said, drawing forth more ripples in his glass with a delayed flinch. “I-I mean, my full name’s Chip Shot, but most ponies don’t say the whole thing, so it’s mostly just… either one works.”
“Fair enough.” Applejack braced herself with another shot of cider, taking in a deep breath through her nose as the drink tingled all the way down to her stomach. “Don’t know many pegasi keen on golfin’.”
“You… oh yeah, that.” The colt’s eyes flashed when he laughed, capturing the sunlight like beads of rain sliding down a window. “My dad decided to name me that before I was born. He’s a unicorn and he loves golf, and I guess my mom did too so she was okay with it. But my sisters and I all ended up with these–” He flared his wings out again, glancing over his shoulder to make sure he didn’t knock them into anything. “–so I guess it didn’t work out quite like he hoped.”
“Sisters?”
“Yeah, two older ones.” The colt had settled back into his seat a bit, already speaking with more confidence than he had when Applejack first addressed him. “Sandy’s at college in Fillydelphia studying to be an oceanographer, and Magnolia’s two grades ahead of me in high school but all she wants to do is work at a flower shop.”
Applejack smiled, parting her lips just enough to let a sip of cider through. “Sounds like destiny and your dad didn’t see eye-to-eye.”
“He usually just says that his life is one big cosmic joke, and his handicap and his kids are the punchlines.”
That got a laugh out of both of them and a sympathetic nod from Applejack, though the latter wasn’t due to Chip’s father’s ineptitude at fighting fate. She saw something in the colt that she recognized: a certain straightness to his spine, a calculated pattern to his blinking and breathing. He certainly couldn’t be comfortable with the situation he found himself in, but he bore all the hallmarks of somepony used to ignoring pressure and performing past it. Even with just a few sentences between them, she found that meeting Chip Shot’s eyes didn’t tie quite so big a knot in her stomach anymore. After another sip of cider splashed between her gums, her innards unwound a little more still.
“So to speak, then, how’s your joke go?” she asked next.
“Right idea, wrong sport.” Chip shifted in his seat a bit, and for the first time Applejack caught a good glimpse of the mark on his flank, a black-and-white-checkered soccer ball. “I guess I don’t have to tell you which one.”
Applejack’s smirk hadn’t quite faded by the time she’d spoken up, and the colt’s reply kept it sticking around for a moment longer. “That you don’t. Can’t say I’m too familiar with the game m’self, though, ‘sides the bare basics.”
“Believe me, I know the feeling. I only started playing it a few years ago. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, but back then I was mostly just happy to finally get my mark.”
Applejack nodded, then tipped her glass up and emptied it in one swig. Another piece of the puzzle sitting in front of her had just fallen into place. “Late bloomer, huh?” she asked, taking hold of the cider bottle and pouring herself another round as she spoke. Before he replied, Chip downed the rest of his own cider and grasped his glass between his hooves again, waiting until Applejack beckoned for it before sliding it across the table for her to refill.
“I thought I’d never get it. I mean, my dad used to tell me blank flanks had tougher skin than anypony and that’s what kept the mark from pushing its way out, but I didn’t feel tough. I just felt…”
Chip Shot clammed up without warning, as if the head of steam he’d been chugging along on had simply evaporated before it even reached full speed. Applejack could see a blush blossom in his cheeks as he looked down at his cider, and what had once been a fledgling urge to test the young colt’s mettle suddenly became overpowering.
“Like Apple Bloom did?” she asked.
Determination and guilt went to war inside her heart, and somewhere in the chaos between them lay the look on Chip’s face, wide-eyed and tight-lipped like he’d swallowed a whole lemon and gotten it stuck halfway down his throat. “Ma’am, I…” he began before his teeth clicked together in an otherwise silent cringe. “Applejack, I-I’m really sorry about today. I know I shouldn’t have come into your house without telling you and I-I promise I… whatever you saw, it wasn’t… I mean, it… uh…”
“I already know what I saw, sugarcube,” Applejack said, cutting Chip off before he dug himself any deeper into a hole—or more likely, shattered the glass he had clamped between his trembling, rigid forelegs. “And I already said I ain’t mad. Just take a breath and calm down.”
Chip bobbed his head up and down as if he understood, but Applejack had to wait almost a full ten seconds before he peeled his lips apart and sucked in a heavy, shuddering gasp of air. One hoof left his glass and snapped to the back of his head, rubbing back and forth along the fringe of his mane as he emptied his lungs and nodded again.
“See, that’s better already. Now we can just talk.” There were probably too many teeth in the grin Applejack flashed Chip’s way, but she didn’t think her meaning was lost behind them. “Celestia knows, the last thing either’a us wants to see is the other losin’ their head.”
Chip put on a smile by the simplest definition of the word, but the mechanical gesture lasted only a moment and never altered the tinge of white visible where his lips were pressed together. “Wha… what did you wanna talk about?” he eventually managed to ask, but when Applejack opened her mouth to answer him, not a single word came out. Her throat was too dry, her head suddenly too stuffed full of cotton swabs and newfallen snow.
She wetted her tongue with some cider, filtering it through her teeth so the taste would linger a bit longer, and tried to ignore the pounding of her heart long enough to plot out her next move. Another sip of cider came and went down her throat before she gave up on the attempt, and it took a third one to finally make her realize that at a time like this or any other, the only thing she could ever bring herself to say in the end was the honest truth, and nothing but.
“It shouldn’t have surprised me like that,” she told the colt. This time, it was him staring at her with rapt attention, and her unable to meet his gaze in return. “Y’know, I reckon that’s what got to me more’n anything else. First thing I thought of doin’ when I saw you with her was pickin’ you up and pitchin’ you right through the glass of her window, but it wasn’t you I was mad at. Wasn’t Apple Bloom either, really, or at least not the mare you know. I suppose the easiest way to say it’s that it was me all along. First me wantin’ to protect her, then me wantin’ to keep her outta any danger I could think of, and now me pretendin’ I’m blind enough not to see what’s happenin’ to her. Me pretendin’ she’s still a little filly playin’ make-believe out in the orchard, still sworn before Celestia to find her cutie mark or go to heaven tryin’...”
Chip’s brow furrowed when Applejack trailed off, but he didn’t try to break the ensuing silence himself. He couldn’t have understood the emotions she’d been trying to describe—and in fairness, she shouldn’t have carried on as if he would—but he seemed to sense anyway that now wasn’t the time to ask questions. As a reward for his patience, she took a drink of cider and explained herself in simpler terms.
“It was a lie,” she said. “That’s all there is to it. Rivers keep on runnin’ and time keeps on tickin’ whether we like it or not, and goin’ through life as if nothing ever changes ain’t no better than jumpin’ into the water and swearin’ you didn’t get wet. Now that bein’ that, I can’t pardon the both of y’all on your end’a things either. Apple Bloom just as much lied to me today as I did, and by the nature’a the matter I reckon you qualify as an accomplice. But y’all know how it goes about glass houses and throwin’ stones, and so do I. So it ain’t right for me to ask the truth of y’all if I won’t even give it to myself.”
Applejack had made sure to choose a virgin bottle of cider given the audience she’d intended to cater to, but despite that she felt more than a little light-headed by the time she reached the climax of her speech. “And that’s why I wanted to talk to you,” she finished, shoring her forehead up with her hoof so she could rub at the ache all this talking had worn into her. “I don’t wanna yell, and I don’t wanna fight. I just want the truth. I just want to know what I missed while I was walkin’ around with my eyes closed.”
Now the light had returned to Chip’s eyes, and with it came some of the fire he’d shown when he first sampled from the Apple Family’s cider stores. “What should I talk about, then?”
“How ‘bout you start with why it’s you I’m sharin’ my cider with, and not any other colt or filly in town?”
Chip nodded, indicating without words that he considered that a fair place to work from. “I guess the first time I really met Apple Bloom was the first week of school. My family moved to Ponyville last year, but I never had any classes with her until Biology this year. I don’t even think we really noticed each other until Mr. Allele paired us together for our animal classification project. Apple Bloom was… I tried to help, I swear, but I kept getting all the families and orders mixed up, and eventually she just growled at me and said she’d do the research if I just glued it all to the poster once she fixed everything I screwed up.”
At the last second, Applejack caught the snort rising up in her throat and smoothed it out into a gruff chuckle. “That’s Apple Bloom, all right,” she said.
“Wish you’d told me that before I stayed up all night wondering whether I was supposed to color the stupid thing too,” Chip said with a shake of his head, though the grin on his face somewhat cheapened the gesture’s impact. “So anyway, we turned it in the next day, and she didn’t say a word to me so I assumed, y’know, that was that. I don’t even remember what grade we got on the project, but I remember she grabbed me in the hallway after class and, just the first thing out of her mouth, asked me if I liked milkshakes.”
He paused for a moment, long enough to shake his head a second time with the corner of his lip threaded between his teeth. “And then she just started… rambling about how she felt bad about yelling at me and wanted to make it up somehow, and she figured everypony likes milkshakes and she was going to Sugarcube Corner with her friends after school anyway so maybe I could come with them, but she didn’t know for sure if I liked milkshakes because she’d never asked me before and maybe I was allergic or something, and just on and on from there before I could even answer her. And then we ended up getting detentions because we were late to class, so we had to stay after school and miss the whole thing anyway.”
“Sounds like her too,” Applejack admitted, but with less volume than she’d intended. Her ribs were poking into her lungs, constricting the air inside them and shrinking more with each breath she exhaled. “So y’all have been… together since then? ‘Bout two months ago?”
“Well, not… exactly together, I guess.” Chip stopped for a moment to collect his thoughts, and the ones he decided to share dropped straight from Applejack’s ears into her belly, gradually filling in the hollow pit that had been growing there ever since he’d taken over the conversation. “I mean, that was the first time she really talked to me, and when we finally got to Sugarcube Corner the day after, that was the first time we hung out outside of school. Most of the time after that we just… we just liked being together. She was fun to be around and her friends seem to like me okay, and I didn’t know many other ponies outside the soccer team so that was a cool part of it too, but more than that it’s…”
Chip leaned towards Applejack with a forehoof lifted in gesture, the effort of tracking his train of thought yanking him right up out of his seat. “You know how sometimes you just don’t know what to say around certain ponies? Like, even if you’re really good friends with them, there’s times when it feels like your brain just turns off for no reason and you can’t think of anything to talk about? It’s never like that with me and her. I can just say whatever I’m thinking about, and I never have to wonder whether it’s weird or dumb because she says the same kind of stuff right back to me.”
Applejack didn’t speak, because she knew by now she didn’t need to. Chip only checked once to see whether she was still listening, and then kept right on going as if she wasn’t there at all, as if they were both watching the same movie projected onto the table and he was just the narrator following along in the background. “It’s not even like things are all that different now. I heard a lot of guys on the team were inviting girls to the dance last weekend, and then I figured, why not ask her if she wanted to go with me? I wasn’t even thinking about it like a date at first. I mean, she’s really just the best friend I have who happens to be a girl, but… but then she said she only wanted to go if I wanted to go. And that was when I realized that I wouldn’t want to go if she wasn’t there. So we agreed we’d hang around at the dance together for awhile and then just see if we could grab a snack in town or something if it got boring. Her friends were already inside by the time I got to the dance, but she was waiting out front for me and I just… there was something about her that I couldn’t even…”
“Her mane.”
Whether Chip looked shocked or confused at her interruption Applejack couldn’t be sure, but even with her eyes closed she could feel in the weight of the silence it spawned that she was right. Instead of blackness behind her eyelids there was color, liquid memory pooling in the empty space in front of her and rippling with each shudder of her heart somewhere below.
“It was her mane, wasn’t it?” she whispered again.
She’d found her in the upstairs bathroom that night just before sunset, rooting around in the cabinet for a hairbrush and cussing up a storm in the process. Apple Bloom hadn’t hushed up about the fall dance for a full week beforehand, but predictably had waited until the very last minute to start thinking about how to get ready for it. After grabbing her own oft-neglected brush and waiting for Apple Bloom to calm down a bit, she’d sat her little sister down on the edge of the tub and woven her tangled mess of a mane into a tight, neat braid, relying on her memories of Rarity’s expertise in order to get the intricate patterns just right. When the job was done, she’d tied her braid off with a sky-blue ribbon to match the dress she’d chosen to wear.
She usually wore pink. As long as she could remember, Apple Bloom’s hair ribbon had been pink.
“That was you, wasn’t it?” Applejack heard Chip say.
“It was,” she answered, opening her eyes so the present could work its way back into them. In a way, Apple Bloom had lied to her that night too. She’d said she didn’t want to look like some kind of cud-chewing hick at the school year’s first dance, but she’d never mentioned why. She’s probably just worried about being teased again, Applejack had told herself. You look pretty as a picture, she’d called out as her sister left the house.
“So she… she never told you about me? Even then?”
Applejack blinked. Chip didn’t sound angry, but his question bore an edge to it that made her cautious about how she answered it. “I reckon she just didn’t know what to say,” she said, eyeing Chip’s reflection in the window rather than the colt himself. “Probably figured I’d raise all manner of Hades if I heard you’d so much as looked at her. Don’t pay too much of a mind to it.”
“No, it’s not that,” Chip said. The tension was gone from his voice, but he held an odd look on her as he spoke now that more favored confusion than anything else. “It’s just kind of weird, I guess, because she talks about you a lot whenever we’re together. Not even bad stuff, just… normal stuff. Like how you still pack her lunch for her because she’s always busy with chores in the morning. And how you guys go camp out in your orchard sometimes just to see the stars better.”
The cider in her glass shuddered as her hoof tapped against it, but Applejack made no motion to pick it up. She found herself rooted in place by a deep, familiar ache, one that prickled all over her body but strongest in her throat and the center of her chest. “If it makes any difference, today’s the first time we’ve ever… y’know, done anything,” Chip went on, wiping his hooves against his chest before hiding them beneath the table. “I mean, it kind of happened that night at the dance, but it was only for a second and we weren’t really alone the whole night, and Apple Bloom said that wasn’t long enough to count. I don’t think she meant to lie to you. I think she… we really just didn’t know what to do. We didn’t even know if we really liked each other or if it was just that one weird night, so we just wanted to try it all again and make sure before we told you or my dad anything that you guys might… y’know, um… worry about.”
The young colt had asked her earlier what she really wanted him to say. Now, with her belly full of cider and her mind empty of anything else to ask about, she was finally ready to hear it.
“So do you like her?” she asked him.
Chip’s jaw fell open, and out of it poured a jumbled mess of everything she’d been hoping he wouldn’t say. “W-Well, yeah! I mean, like I said, she’s really easy to talk to and really fun to be with, and she’s really smart too and funny and nice to everypony, and…”
“You know what I meant.”
Her tone was low and solemn as the grave, and when Chip went quiet in its wake her budding faith in the young colt began to bloom again. She didn’t want to hear him talk. She didn’t want to hear him prattle on, breathless and saccharine, about all the wonderful, special things she’d known about Apple Bloom since the day she was born. She wanted him to answer her with his silence, with something he couldn’t fake or pull over her eyes.
And he did. His hoof crept up to cover his mouth, but all four of them together wouldn’t have been big enough to hide what lay behind it. The sunset shone from his cheeks, warm and bright pink, and though he’d cast his eyes down towards his lap she could see them sparking with energy anyway, tugging his ears down and the corners of his lips up through sheer magnetic force. At the sight, Applejack sighed with relief, and Chip followed suit soon after for a very different reason.
“Yeah,” he whispered without looking up. “I do. A lot.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t.” He looked up before his smiled faded, and lifted both his ears and shoulders in a goofy shrug. “I have no idea what I’m doing or what I’m supposed to feel like. I just know I’ve never felt like this about anypony else before, and I don’t want that feeling to ever go away. It’s like… it’s like getting my mark all over again, only it happens every day, every time I see her. It’s like there’s a part of me I can’t get to unless I’m with her, that’s full of all the things I couldn’t talk about with anypony else. Stuff like my mark and what it means and… and my mom. Nopony else would understand about my mom, but she does.”
With her most pressing concern alleviated, there was enough room in Applejack’s chest for her heart to swell up and grow sore again. Chip was too proud and too far from being a foal to let any emotion taint his voice, but just like before his body spilled all the secrets that his lips kept locked away.
“How old were you?” she asked him.
“Real little,” he said, meeting her gaze with dry eyes and sagging cheeks. “Just like Apple Bloom. I barely remember her, so it’s not like I’m sad all the time or anything. I just don’t like it when ponies ask a lot of questions about her. It makes me feel like I should feel bad. Like I should’ve known her better. And she gets that, so we just don’t talk about it at all. And I… I think that’s what I like about her the most. She knows when to talk, and sometimes when not to. And I didn’t realize how important that could be before I met her.”
Now that, out of everything else spoken between the two of them that night, finally caught Applejack off-guard. Her little sister was liable to spontaneously combust if she kept her mouth shut longer than five minutes at a time. That was the Apple Bloom she knew. Or thought she knew, as the evening had proven. Maybe her little sister had grown up even more than she’d thought. And maybe the colt sitting in front of her deserved some credit for that.
“Y’know, I thought you were her mom at first.”
Then again, his chronic hoof-in-mouth disease still left some room for improvement. “Oh… oh no, n-not like that,” he added a moment later, cowed into making a stammering clarification by just a twitch of Applejack’s brow. “Not really. Just… the way she talks about you. She talks about you like I do about my dad.”
On the outside Applejack just gave a bemused shake of her head, but deep down she found herself enjoying the company of the loose-lipped little pegasus a bit more than she’d expected to. His mouth may have had a step too many on his brain sometimes, but out of all the character flaws her sister’s first coltfriend could’ve had, at least Chip Shot got an endearing one. In any case, he was earnest and eager to stay on her good side, not to mention he’d fallen head-over-hooves for Apple Bloom in that clumsy, electrifying way known only to teenagers and fools lucky enough to never grow older than them. How long that would last or whether it would at all, the stars only knew, but for now it was honest and it was mutual, and that was all she could think to ask for.
“I know what ya meant,” Applejack said with a wink, “an’ I appreciate it. But then that begs the question: if I were her mother, what would you say to me right now?”
He answered quickly, with barely enough breath left to form the words. “I’d say that I really like your daughter more than anypony else I’ve ever met, and I should’ve told her and you both that a long time ago,” Chip replied. “And if it’s not much to ask, I’d really, really like to be able to keep hanging out with her.”
“As friends?” she asked.
“Well, yeah… and then maybe something a little more special than that.” Chip rubbed his hoof against his neck, doing his best to keep from blushing and almost—but not quite—succeeding. “If she wants to. When you’re home too. I-If that’s okay.”
Applejack drained her cider glass for the second time and considered the colt’s proposition. She did her best to keep a straight face, and almost—but not quite—succeeded. “Aw, horseapples, it ain’t like sayin’ no would do a doggone thing to stop ya,” she finally said, “but for what it’s worth, you got my blessin’. All I ask is that you treat her the same way I would, and don’t do anything to her that I wouldn’t.” As the implication of what she’s said began to dawn on him, Applejack went ahead and confirmed it with a hint of a devilish smirk. “And just for the record: yes, I do mean it like that.”
Chip gulped twice, first in response to Applejack’s remark and then a moment later to polish off the last of his own cider. “Yeah, of… of course,” he said, fighting past a coughing fit spurred by his misguided guess at exactly how much cider was left in his glass. “No problem.”
“No problem,” Applejack repeated. “Good to hear.”
“Yep,” Chip hoarsely agreed. The pair sat in silence for a while, alternately glancing at each other and then down the hallway at the landing at the bottom of the stairs. “So…”
“Buttons.” It took the colt a few seconds to understand, and by then Applejack’s eyes were twinkling with barely contained laughter. “Just a joke, sugarcube. Any case, ‘bout time for you to start gettin’ home, I reckon. Doesn’t look Celestia’s fixin’ on stayin’ up much longer.”
Chip followed Applejack’s gaze out the kitchen window, where all that remained of the evening was a blinding orange sliver resting atop the horizon. He caught on to what she meant a lot faster this time. “Oh, wow, what time is it? I’m supposed to be home by sundown…”
“It’s only a stone’s throw to town from here,” Applejack assured him as he jumped out of his chair and hit the ground trotting. “You’ll be fine if ya hustle. And if ya tell your dad the whole truth about why you were late.”
Halfway to the front door, Chip swiveled around and faced her again. His face was blank and calm, but that just made it easier for her to tell what he was thinking. “Yeah, I figured that’d be a good idea,” he said quietly. “And I… he might like to meet you guys sometime too. I mean, he’d probably just come over anyway and barge in the front door like he did at Maggie’s boyfriend’s house, but I guess it’d probably be better if I warned you about it first, so… you think I should bring him over sometime? He’s kind of weird sometimes, but he likes meeting new ponies, and I bet you’d like him.”
“I bet I would,” Applejack said. “You talk to him about it first, and then I’ll see if we can’t fit a couple more chairs ‘round the dinner table here one night. Deal?”
“Deal.” The colt had started inching backwards again as he relayed his idea, and by the time he agreed to her terms about it he was close enough to reach for the knob. Before he did, though, he craned his neck to the side and looked up the stairs, flashing a smile up at something—or rather, as Applejack had to imagine, somepony—hidden at the top, certainly well within range to overhear everything they’d just talked about.
“I’ll tell her ya said goodnight,” she called out to him. At the sound of her voice, he pulled his starry eyes back down to Earth, and gave her a sheepish nod of thanks before pulling the front door open. Night had fallen over Ponyville, and brought with it a slight chill that swept in from outside and ruffled through the matted-down mane hairs her hat usually covered up. Chip didn’t brace himself fast enough to hide a shiver, and for a moment the urge to bundle him up in as many layers as she had to spare enveloped Applejack’s head and heart.
Just as quickly, though, the thought was gone, banished from her mind to drift away on the breeze along with all the other worries and cares she’d sloughed off in the last hour. She was still a guardian through and through, but not only could she keep those instincts under control, maybe now she could even learn to let go of them completely when the right time came. And maybe, just maybe, she could listen a little closer to Rarity the next time the clock struck midnight at Pinkie’s place. After all, she’d apparently done all right raising Apple Bloom, and right now she felt very much inclined to take her coltfriend at his word for it.
“Hey, Chip?”
She was sure she’d missed her chance to catch him before he left, but after a few seconds his hooves came clumping back onto the porch and his head poked back around the edge of the door. “I think this is a good thing,” she told him. “For all three of us.”
Leaned against the door frame, with the rising moon at his back and a smile growing on his face, Chip Shot looked timeless. She could see him as he’d been and as he would be, as the little foal he’d grown up from and the strong stallion he’d soon become. If she closed her eyes she could see Apple Bloom too, grown and beautiful, young and unafraid. Times would change and rivers would run, but ponies didn’t have to and families never would. Someday Apple Bloom would grow up and go off and make a wonderful life for herself, but then, now, and always, she was her little sister and her closest friend. And that, she knew now, was something the two of them would never stop needing each other for.
“I think it’s good too,” Chip said. “But I… kinda have to go. See you later?”
Applejack winked again, then waved him away. “Sure thing, alligator.”
The door swung shut and the house grew still, and in the deepening darkness Applejack wondered what Apple Bloom was thinking up at the top of the stairs. She must’ve been eavesdropping—the longer she considered it, the more obvious that reality became—but she’d never come down to interrupt or made any noise to reveal herself. That was reason enough for optimism, and she held fast to it as she fiddled with the lamp hanging over the table and gave herself some light to wait by.
Sooner or later, and most likely sooner, Apple Bloom would run out of patience and come downstairs herself, and then they could have their own talk as Applejack had intended to so long ago that evening. For now, she just considered herself lucky. Lucky everything had gone so well, lucky she’d been so wrong about the colt whose very existence had once filled her with dread, lucky that everything was different now and yet nothing had really changed.
And as for Chip Shot, he was just lucky Big Macintosh hadn’t gotten home first. Busy as she was snorting over the thought of that conversation, Applejack almost missed the sound of hoofsteps on the stairs, descending towards the kitchen at a tentative, dawdling pace. She sat back and let time flow through her, and the wait suddenly didn’t seem long at all. The day was over, but the night was still young.
And as far as she felt or cared, she was too.