One day Elliot didn’t show up.
It felt spooky. Especially since it was a weekend. Normally you could have set the family clock on Elliot’s weekly arrival. Applejack could almost see the ghostly outline of his absence, right there under the hickory.
Applejack knew she ought to be counting her lucky stars, as she brushed her teeth in bluejay-sprinkled silence. But the feeling couldn’t be shaken—that there was something eerily quiet about the front lawn now. As if a creaky but beloved piece of furniture had been washed away in the last storm, the front path turning to mud as it did sometimes.
She had found out a week or two ago that he wasn’t even coming through the Gates anymore. He’d found a place to stay right in Ponyville. Apparently a twenty-minute train ride was too far away. But anyway, if he wasn’t even coming that distance, something might have happened. Maybe she could go and check on him.
She shook her head, tossing frizzy locks out of her mane-band. Clearly Elliot had been coming around too long if he was getting to her like this. She made up her mind not to worry about him. It normally seemed that only an act of Celestia could keep him away from the farm. But if he’d finally thrown in the dish towel, good for him. And if something had happened to him, it wasn’t her affair. She was going to take the opportunity to get on with her farm.
She hadn’t been applebucking all week. So that was the first thing on the list. Well, she had gotten a bucket or two in here and there when she was trying to hint Elliot away, but that hardly counted. Honestly, she’d been putting it off. The southeast field needed to be harvested proper-like. Wait any longer and fruit would be falling brown off the boughs.
Applebloom was still asleep, so she kept breakfast short in the misty morning. But of course, once she had everything ready, buckets and wagon and all the traces, she found her hooves trying to lollygag down the hill. Getting started was always the hardest part. Once she started she could just keep going.
Applejack found the first ripe matriarch in the line, laid out a couple buckets, and nosed them into place just a little more precisely than she needed to. Then she turned her rump to the tree. Giving a one-third hearted “yee-haw,” she kicked it with her hind legs.
Branches swayed in the breeze.
Applejack rolled her eyes. Alright, then. It always did have to be done the right way. But she couldn’t ever help checking to make sure. She gave a tight little breath.
She backed up closer to the old tree, until her blonde tail was getting full of bark chips. Then she jumped off her hind legs, bunching her weight forward onto her front withers until they nearly wrenched. All of her weight was thrown into a teeth-jarring crack. Both hooves slammed like jackhammers. Bark chips spraying in every direction. Applejack let out a little cry on impact.
With a soft, but satisfying rumble, apples tumbled out of the branches, landing in her buckets with the practiced neatness of a dozen harvests. Applejack gave a little nod of satisfaction. But as she picked up the buckets to haul her first catch back to the wagon, she could feel—already—a soreness at the base of her neck. Already? Thought it hadn’t set in until halfway through the orchard last year. This was going to be a long day.
She was sweating in no time. But that was nothing Applejack kept plowing into tree after tree until the sore feeling went all the way down her leg muscles and all the way up her back. It was harder this year. But she kept going. She had to skip lunch, since by noon her teeth felt half-shook out of their gums and her stomach was too churned to even think about food. Not on this side of a pond dive and a five-hour nap.
It got to the point, near the end, where she could feel her hoof-made horseshoes beginning to bend. That sore stretch was starting to travel below her fetlocks, becoming that sting she’d always been told was the precursor to a cleft hoof. This was the old orchard, after all, and these trees hadn’t been bred with the nice ‘bucking stems’ that broke easily when fruit was ripe. Applejack ignored the hoof pain, too. Who was she to stop and worry about every little ailment?
Big Macintosh would have wanted her to. He was an absolute worrywart. Last season he’d even managed to drag her to a doctor, and he had ordered her to stop applebucking entirely. “A mare’s body wasn’t built to handle that kind of physical stress,” he’d said. But the memory only made Applejack sneer—what did he know? A unicorn like him probably hadn’t picked an apple all his life.
She was the only one who could do it. Big Macintosh had to spend the season plowing the fields, weeding, hauling fertilizer and topsoil, pulling in barley…this season he’d have to get water in from the river, too. This job would get done fastest if it was assigned to Applejack. She was better at it than anypony for miles.
She made good progress that day, although she came in at dusk famished enough to eat a monkey. Even with her breath snorting like a bellows, she was ready to eat. Granny Smith and Apple Bloom had spent all day in the house working on bread and apple fritters, so there was a piping hot spread awaiting her.
For whatever reason, this put Applejack’s fragile mood into a foul state. It used to be, this time of year, that it wouldn’t matter if her stomach was upturned. She’d have to pretend not to be hungry so that there’d be enough for Applebloom to chow down. It was almost a tradition between harvests. But she’d known how to deal with that. To come and see all this food laid out—she almost didn’t know what to do with it. As if it was more frightening than hunger. And of course, the fact that she kept telling herself she had nothing to complain about only made her frownier than before.
Applebloom was the only one present to sit at table with her. She piled food onto a plate for her sister, eyeing Applejack nervously as the older mare swiveled a mashed oat platter back and forth.
“How’d it go, sis?” she hazarded.
Applejack snorted once and got up, pushing the steaming plate away in favor of the front door.
She didn’t even have to ask where Granny Smith was. Granny had gone to the market again. Alone. The trail to town was empty and cold as far as the eye could see. So the crazy old mare must still have been in Ponyville. Applejack tried to tell her she was too old for this, but she didn’t listen to a word anypony said! And now she was late getting home and probably couldn’t she where put her own hooves.
Applejack spent about half an hour pacing in front of the house, and then another half around the front gate to Sweet Apple Acres. Having soft ground to walk over barehoof helped to cool her down little bit.
She didn’t catch sight of Granny. But by the time it was dark, she’d come to realize how she’d just treated Applebloom. She was cranky after the first day of applebucking, like always, but there was no reason to make her little sister suffer for it. She had a mind to march in there and apologize, and then fully enjoy the meal Applebloom had held the good grace to set out for her.
But first she had to go fetch Granny in. Every night this happened, visions of her grandmother lying in a ditch with a snapped leg terrorized Applejack until she couldn’t have shut her eyes. She took a running start and vaulted the gate so that she wouldn’t have to leave it open while she went looking.
As luck would have it, she hadn’t got five steps from home when Granny’s familiar silhouette ambled over the rise.
There were colts and fillies farther back the hill, too; lithe little shadows leaping around the dark, following her along the trail. “Hey, old mare!” they were shouting on repeat. “Hey, grandma! Can’t you move any faster than that? Get off the road!”
Applejack reared, neighing at the top of her voice. “Y’all git! Get away from here! This ain’t your land!”
“Oh! It’s Applejack!” somepony whinnied. Then there was scurrying, and then nothing.
Applejack galloped to Granny Smith. The old pony was practically trembling under the weight of the parcels she carried. It looked like she’d bought a hammer and tools for Applebloom, as well as half a dozen bags of carrots from Carrot Top’s stand. She shouldn’t have tried to carry so much. It was fine that Applebloom was learning to build things, but there was nothing wrong with the family tools out in the shed. Applebloom didn’t need her own. It was a waste of money.
But at that point Applejack was more upset with her own foalish self than anypony else in the family. So without a word, she galloped up and slipped her head under the strings of the carrot sacks. She would carry those in so Granny could have the satisfaction of presenting gifts to her granddaughter.
That was the plan, anyway. Applejack saw that Granny’s steps were slow, even for her, the shape of her eyes melted and sad long before they neared the house.
Applejack shuffled along at Granny’s speed, pressing her side to the bony flanks of her elder. “Granny?” she muttered quietly.
Granny shook her head without a word, packhorsing her way up to the house. But Applejack wasn’t the type to give in so very easily, and Granny Smith was too old to keep any secrets. She could smell it all over her.
“Granny?” she said again, this time her teeth gritted. “You didn’t pay them hooligans any mind, did you?”
Her grandmother opened her mouth, but shut it again with a soft, “Oh,” as if deciding not to bother.
Applejack decided to hand her off to Applebloom anyway. It would help brighten her up a little bit. She herself spent a minute grinding her teeth, and trying to remember the cutie marks of shadows.
There were bright spots in the day, though. Celestia always gave her something to be thankful for. A visit from a friend, for instance. Granny went ahead, and as Applejack was strolling to the farmhouse she caught glimpse of an unusually large pair of wings, flying low and ponderous over her farm. Twilight was out in her namesake sky; she met Applejack on the porch as they both pulled in.
Applejack grinned. Be darned if she was going to let her own silly stress get in the way of a visit from Twilight. It wasn’t all the time you saw such a bookish pony on the farm. Her friend deserved a warm greeting. “Howdy, Twi,” she called out, coming up the porch with one strong bound.
So they talked about the weather, and they talked about their friends. They even talked a little about politics, since Twilight had become involved by necessity, like it or not. But it was a wonderful thing. It helped Applejack to forget about certain things, and before long she was digging laugh lines into her face again. Twilight was chattier than a honeybee in springtime. Unusual, for the purple pony, but Applejack sure didn’t mind.
And this dusk of girlish conversation and warm nuzzles lasted until Twilight, as if in afterthought, pulled out a little brown drawstring bag. “By the way, Applejack, I thought I might drop by with this. You can just keep it—”
AJ took one look at the bag and growled. Instead of nipping the object from Twilight’s mouth, she backed away. All her ill humor was back in one fell go. “You can keep that! I don’t need your charity.”
Twilight’s wings flapped. She was like a foal, in that way, that she hadn’t really learned to control them. Applejack, who had learned a lot from Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash, could read her dismay and her other emotions like any one-year old fledgling.
“You—don’t have to be like that!” Twilight said indignantly. “I was just offering.” With a hurt expression, she replaced the bag, and then—then Applejack caught her glancing through the farmhouse windows from the corner of her eye. Applebloom was inside finishing a cold dinner with Granny.
Blood tingled in Applejack’s face. “We are just fine!” she snapped.
“I know!” Twilight stammered quickly. Her wings flared again.
“Did Rarity put you up to this?”
“No! I mean—it doesn’t matter.” Twilight scuffed the porch. “We all know you’re—fine. You just don’t have to do this all by yourself! The girls and I are here for you.”
Applejack continued to glare. For a minute. Then she let up and drooped.
“Yeah.” Studying the marks their horseshoes made on the porch, she shuffled towards a balcony to lean against. “I guess.”
“After all, it would be ridiculous for an Element of Harmony bearer to go hungry.”
“Oh, so that’s what this is about!” Applejack shot back up with a sneer. “Can’t let the image down, can we? Now that we’re so gosh-darned famous!”
“AJ!”
A moment of quiet permeated the porch, time enough for hot words to cool, sink with the air, and seep in. Applejack’s breathing turned shallow. After breaking free from the feeling of being frozen stiff, she dropped her head against the rail and moaned. Honesty. Bah. What good did it do anypony to say whatever came into her mind?
She couldn’t even look at Twilight, afraid of how much hurt she might find there. Should she try to apologize? Could she? She eventually managed to glance up at her friend with an abashed face, looking in vain for some way to heal over her outburst.
Twilight was close to tears. But when Applejack met her eyes, she didn’t yell. She came close. Twilight wrapped her legs around the earth pony, and Applejack made no move to stop her.
“You…” Twilight swallowed. “You know it’s because we care about you.”
“I know. I know. I’m sorry,” Applejack squeaked. She crushed her own eyes shut. There was another nuzzle, and a kiss. Twilight hugged Applejack’s withers and held her there, patting her back.
Eyes still shut, Applejack opened her muzzle to apologize again, but then thought better of it. “I’m a shameful sight,” she said into Twilight’s neck. “We’ve had this same Celestia-forsaken talk too many times.”
There were so many things she could have said, and so few it was worth bothering to repeat. How would this night end? Would tell again the story of how Ma and Pa pulled themselves up by their own stirrups? How they’d left behind a legacy that loomed like a black pit she could never fill? Or would she talk again about the stories she’d been raised on? On one hoof, tales of Apple ancestors taming the Everfree, where even the weather was wild. On the other hoof, the Earthsong compact, where the heads of her lineage had stood with the other great earth pony clans, and even Princess Luna, and raw magic gushing like an umbilical cord between the soil and the rejoicing sky. Would she talk about how much it hurt to even think about living on alms—so much she wanted to buck her own legs to splinters just to end the pain? She knew where those coins in Granny’s bag came from, and whence all those new school supplies on Applebloom’s back. It wasn’t from selling plain, ordinary apples.
“You know…”
Twilight slid off her friend’s neck after a long silent comfort. “There are a lot of business opportunities on that new planet I’ve been telling you about. You should really come on a trip with me. Your pies would sell faster than Rainbow Dash can fly.”
Applejack chewed her lip. “Maybe. After we get all the apples in…finish with the jam…we’ll be making pies again, of course. But we always manage to sell out in Ponyville. What kind of pony would take away pies from her hometown to sell ’em to strangers?”
Twilight shook her head. “If…you don’t want to sell pies, you could do something else! They have events there—like the Farmer’s Convention, but for humans who are interested in Equestria. You could come and talk—and they’d pay you just for that! It’s called an appearance fee.”
“Really? I’ve never earned bits just by gabbin’ before. What would I talk about?”
“Oh, anything!” Twilight paced up and down the boards. “They’ve been asking to see you, Applejack. You and Fluttershy are the only ones who haven’t made a visit yet—they’d pay good money just to meet you! A businessmare like you couldn’t possibly pass it up. Look how well Rarity’s doing!”
“Sure she is.” Applejack frowned into her chest for a long time. “But where I come from, meetin’ a body wasn’t something you exchanged money for.”
Laying down on the porch, she looked miserably at her princess. “What am I doing, thinking so much about money, anyway? It’s making me sick.” She glared up at Twilight. “What’s with you? You been hanging around those humans for so long you’ve started to think like them?”
“No! No, it’s not like that. Just…”
Twilight obviously knew Applejack well enough to see her slipping. Her words flowed quicker and started tripping over each other. “It would be so easy, you could talk about fixing a wheelbarrow and they would love it, AJ…”
“Ah won’t do it.”
Twilight exhaled. Applejack hadn’t ruined her reputation so much that ponies didn’t know there was no sense going on when she said ‘no’.
Eventually, Twilight stepped down from the porch, taking off softly into skies of black. She was so considerate for a critter with wings—Rainbow Dash would have vaulted right over the porch rail, and bent it to boot.
Anyway, she would catch a chill if she stayed out too long, watching that purple speck twinkle away towards Canterlot. She had to get a night’s rest. This tension would all start to melt once she got the apple harvest in. Twilight and Rarity would stop worrying, too. All the more reason to push herself and get the job done.
She gulped down the remnants of dinner, putting some in the refrigerator and folding up the note Applebloom had left about how she loved her sister and hoped she didn’t mind that the food wasn’t quite warm anymore. The dishes went in the cupboard after a rinse, and the note went into the writing desk, into a jewelry box filled with paper slips.
Once everything was clean for the night, she found her way back to her old, rusty room. Back where the cradle of her foalhood still rusted in the corner. The same window she’d looked out almost every night of her life. It framed the new night’s stars.
She lay on her back in bed, stomach idly rumbling now and then. Her head was still spinning too much with thoughts of the things she wanted to get done tomorrow—how she wanted tomorrow to be better than today. She still hadn’t apologized to Applebloom. That was the first thing on her list. Painting the fence, bathing the pigs, and another round of applebucking after that. This time—this time—she wouldn’t let it get to her.
This went on until deep past midnight. Applejack could hear gentle snoring filter through the boards of the old home. Granny, Bloom, and even Big Mac all had distinctive snores. Her eyes were still wide open.
Then, like a secret sin, she slithered out of bed.
It took her a minute to reach the floor. She slithered by the inch, keeping the covers from rustling as if she was afraid of catching herself in the act. Once out, she got down on her belly. And with the same care, she withdrew a laptop from underneath the bed.
It had been a gift from Elliot. And a more expensive one than he let on, too, if Twilight’s appraisal was anything to go by. Apparently not every computer could draw its power from the sun. That was alright, though; she’d already given him a good tongue-lashing at the time for his audacity. He’d been pretty persistent that it was just a friendly present, so eventually she’d just taken the darn thing and stashed it here. He’d showed her how to use it. She couldn’t make any sense of the keyboard, but she did manage to partly get the hang of the ‘trackball mouse’.
Applejack drew on those lessons to their fullest now, sticking out her tongue to concentrate as she rolled the tiny cursor across the screen. It took care not to crush the mouse under her hoof. She clicked with slow, deliberate tenacity. In time she managed to center on the icons near the edge of the screen. There were pictures of manila folders there, filled with pictures of ponies.
Not that it was worth the bother. She ought to go to bed. She really ought to go to bed. But—
She found herself, almost against her will, navigating to the ‘Episodes’ folder. That took another five minutes. But at least there was no need for tortuous back-button navigation. She knew exactly where she was going.
The videos were a cartoon. A kind of moving comic for children—for foals. There was a bright red farm in that cartoon, with a barn so sparkling it looked like it got painted fresh every day. There were ruby red apples that never had worms, and fields that were never muddy. All the trees gave up their fruit without a fuss. Sunrise sprayed over glorious hills. There was an apple-green pony, so old that she should have barely been able to walk, dancing around during big musical numbers.
There was even this one episode where the Apple family had a pie cart capped by a giant pie on a spring! It made her laugh so much. Then she covered her laugh in panic, stuffing a leg in her mouth lest she be heard.
She only went so far. Applejack wouldn’t have dreamt of watching a new episode without Fluttershy. They always did it together, bedded down with hot cinnamon tea on rainy afternoons. Applejack could force herself to stop working then, and there wasn’t much for Fluttershy to do either unless one of her birdhouses sprung a leak. Fluttershy seemed to enjoy such afternoons. Even more than Applejack did. Although Applejack suspected the pegasus of liking her just a little bit, it wasn’t merely because of all the cuddling on a bay window sofa.
The yellow marshmallow in the cartoon was often scared, but everything always worked out somehow. Fluttershy always whispered that she understood why so many humans watched the cartoon. She thought the same thing drew them here. There was so much violence on Earth, after all, that all humans must at some point feel the way these two mares did on rainy afternoons.
Applejack would reply that she was wrong. She was being ridiculous. It was ridiculous for grownups of any species to behave this way. Fluttershy would then blow in her ear and ask why they were sitting here watching the show, and Applejack would set things to rights by explaining that it was because their families were broken and they were too weak to know any better.
After that Fluttershy would usually try to fall asleep on her side. Sometimes Applejack would wake her up, and sometimes she would allow her to doze off with her head on AJ’s barrel.
The latest episode they’d seen was “Maud Pie”. Once Applejack caught up to that, she went no further. Nor did she sleep. Instead she gingerly clicked to another well-trodden folder labeled “Songs”. Elliot had explained how the little metal plates inside the laptop could make all the sounds in the world, but Applejack still had a hard time believing that it wasn’t some peculiar brand of magic. Most of the music was very strange. But there were a couple tracks that she must have been wearing out inside the machine.
She hit the start button.
===Song: "Emerald Eyes" by 4everfreebrony===
As the song began, she gently pushed the laptop back under the bed, lying down on the floor so that she could hear it with the volume soft. Eyes fluttering shut, she imagined that she was in that place. Where nopony had to get hurt. The colors grew, more and more vibrant, and fuzzed her insides with a warmth that dislodged old, crusty pieces of spinster mare. It was with a candy-sweet smile on her face, imagining a dreamland, that she finally floated into sorely needed sleep.
And you know what? It was a pretty nice dream.