The old earth pony gazed out of her bedroom window at the farm's apple orchard. She could see a large red stallion and a pale yellow young mare hurrying from the barn to the orchard with empty baskets which they loaded up with apples and brought back to the barn. The old pony would have been out there helping them, but the cold weather had been making her joints hurt worse than usual.
She sighed as she continued watching her grandchildren work. Even after all this time it didn't look right to see just the two of them working out there without their middle sibling. She would have felt better if the farm had still been under Applejack's care. While Apple Bloom and Big Macintosh were both hard workers, neither of them had quite the drive Applejack used to have when it came to running the farm...
She shook her head. It was no use thinking like that; no use wishing for what could have been. The dull ache in her back legs had been growing steadily worse and now it was begging her to go lie down. She turned from the window and moved slowly toward her bed. She was almost there when one of her front hooves bumped something that fell to the floor with a clunk and a rustle. Looking down, she felt an ache in her heart that for once wasn't a physical one.
The something she had bumped was a corked and sealed bottle of cider. Tied to its neck was a bunch of rosebuds made out of dried apple peelings. A casual observer might have thought it a pretty gift but the sight of it only made Granny Smith shudder. Not wanting to see it any longer, she picked it up in her mouth and made her way to the closet. Nudging the door open, she was greeted with the sight of even more cider bottles. The little bunches of dried apple rosebuds had shriveled, crumpled, and fallen off most of them, but other than that they were identical to the one she now held. She set the new bottle down among the others and just stood there for several seconds, looking at them. One of those bottles had been delivered anonymously to the farm every year, ever since...
For the first time in a long while she found herself counting the bottles. There were ten of them.
Ten bottles.
Ten years.
Ten years since Applejack had vanished from her family's life without a trace.