//------------------------------//
// Work and Jealousy 
// Story: A Bittersweet Apple 
// by MegaTJ 
//------------------------------//


Work and Jealousy


Applejack sat idly in the kitchen while she waited for Granny Smith to finish upstairs. Her hoof still wasn't in any condition to work on, so she was subjected to housework. She sighed in frustrated boredom. For the past three days she couldn't do ANY fieldwork whatsoever. Instead, Thorny had picked up her slack as well as doing his own work. She couldn't help but find amazement in the way he worked. He pulled his own weight and then some. She watched him work in the fields with Big Macintosh a few times. At first she thought he wouldn't be able to handle it, but a few hundred cleared trees later was proof of the exact opposite. He was perfectly capable of taking anything the job threw at him.

She would never, ever admit it, not even to herself, but Applejack found herself jealous of the colt. She wanted to badly work in the orchard again. The burning sensation in the back of her mind ate at her, causing an itch to worker harder than him. She imagined herself bucking twice as many trees as him the second she could walk on her hoof again. She was so lost in her thoughts that Applebloom walked in unnoticed.

"Sis?"

The bigger pony returned to reality. "Oh, howdy Applebloom, when'd you get here?"

"Just now. You ain't see me come in?"

Applejack shook her head.

"Thinkin' 'bout Thorny again?" Applebloom teased.

"N-no!"

Applebloom nodded with a smirk. "Suuure." She left the house giggling. Outside, she saw Thorny pulling the apple wagon across the backyard. Cheekily, Applebloom held the door open long enough for Applejack to get a good look. Applebloom heard her sister growl.

Once the filly was out of the house, and the door was closed, Applejack sighed. The clock in the kitchen said it was a quarter after eight. "Guess Ah better get started on the chores."

"Not on that hoof you ain't." Granny Smith said, walking in the kitchen.

"Granny Smith", Applejack complained, "Mah hoof is fine. Ah can work."

"Ah'm sure you can, Sugar", Granny Smith replied, "Ah know yer itchin' to get back outside, but let Thorny handle it 'til you can."

"But he's been handlin' it since Ah got hurt!"

"Tell you what", the older mare said, "If you can be patient fer jus' a couple more days, ya can take Thorny's place an' he can help me in the house."

Her deal still didn't cheer Applejack up.

"Ah'll even make'im wear the flower apron."

Applejack laughed. "Now, Granny Smith, don'tcha think that'd be a little mean?"

Granny Smith sat across the table from Applejack. "Ah did the same thing t'Big Macintosh when he was Applebloom's age."

"You didn'!"

"Pictures don' lie dearie."

Applejack laughed. "Why'd ya do that, Granny Smith?"

She sighed. "It was durin' the time you left t'live with yer aunt an' uncle. He was so upset Ah had t'do somethin' to take his mind off it."

"Even if it meant embarrassin' the tar outta him?"

"It sure kep'im occupied 'til you got back", Granny Smith chuckled.

The door opened, giving an interruption to the interesting conversation the mares were having. The pony coming in was Thorny. He was dripping sweat from the heat outside. "Phew!"

"Are y'all finished with the south fields already?" Granny Smith asked.

"No ma'am", Thorny replied, "Big Mac an' me are just thirsty. Came in t'get us drinks."

"There's apple juice", Applejack stated, "Might wanna take the whole pitcher."

"Yeah, it's scorchin' out there already! If it wasn't for cider season, Ah'd work on the chicken coop some more, but we need those apples for the winter." Thorny sighed. "How's the hoof, Applejack?"

"It's fine, Thorny", she said somewhat with a growl, missing the part about the coop.

"Hope it's better soon", he said, "Can't wait t'work with ya again." With that, he left with the pitcher and two cups of apple juice Granny Smith fetched for him.

"He's a nice colt", Granny smith said.

Applejack failed to respond.

"You don' think so?"

More silence. Applejack looked away from Granny Smith's face.

"Ya ain't mad at'im for somethin' are ya?"

Applejack sighed.

The older pony had a feeling she was onto something. "It's because he's out workin' ain't it?"

Applejack half-nodded. "Ah jus' don' want'im t'think that—"

"'Cuz yer a girl ya can't do what he can?"

"Exactly."

"Ah don' think he's that type o'colt." Granny Smith gave her granddaughter a gentle pat on the back for reassurance. "Ah think he's a bit like Big Macintosh."

"How's he like Big Mac?"

"He works hard an' he likes workin' with you", she replied.

Applejack took the last part of Granny Smith's statement as meaning something more than she was just a capable mare, completely unaware that it was a failed attempt to get her over her slight dislike of the colt.

The conversation was brought to an end there. The sun's intensity outside was becoming greater, and they had wasted enough time talking the morning away. Fall was right around the corner and with the apple season quickly coming to a close, they had to use the apples they were pulling in for cider. When Applejack agreed to let Thorny help her sell apples during her days in the week, she forgot that it was time to close up the cart for the summer and focus on collecting as many apples as they could for the winter months. It robbed him of the chance to get to know her better since they were now separated, but he didn't show any signs that he was upset about it. That was good news to Applejack; he wasn't a crybaby.

"Now, where are them spigots?" Granny Smith rhetorically asked as she rummaged through the lower cabinets.

Applejack stood on her rear legs and checked the cabinets above the counter. "Ah got'em right up here, Granny Smith."

As the two set out to get the cider barrels cleaned, the stallions outside struggled to collect the apples to fill those barrels. Thorny bucked a tree, but nearly fell over in exhaustion. The apples fell but didn't make it to his buckets. He sighed in frustration. "Cartarnet!"

He looked over his shoulder to see Big Macintosh making even less progress. He kicked a tree, but no apples fell at all. He tried again and managed to get one apple. He saw Thorny watched him and shook his head.

"It'd be a whole lot easier if it weren' so dang humid", Thorny breathed. The heat made it hard to breathe, but he continued to muscle through it. There was no way he was going give the Apples any less than they were paying for.

"Eeyup", the red colt agreed.

Even though the orchard was covered in shade from the trees, it didn't help them cool off. The days were just leaving August, and the heat was beating down on them with all of its remaining might. Thorny was probably taking the worst of it. As he told Big Macintosh and Applebloom, Trotledge was a lot cooler during the summer, so he wasn't at all used to the heat. It was because of this that Big Macintosh took it upon himself to keep a watchful eye on the younger stallion. He knew Thorny to be the type of pony to work himself to death for a variety of reasons.

"Say, Big Mac", Thorny called.

The red colt looked up to see Thorny unhooking from his bucket harness. He didn't say anything, but Thorny knew he was still asking what it was he wanted.

"Y'all reckon we got enough apples for now?"

Scanning around, Big Macintosh found that they had collectively filled twenty buckets from the south orchard. With the apples they got from the trees around the house, he and Thorny had thirty altogether. He nodded. "Eeyup."

"Let's head back up", Thorny suggested, pulling the bandana from around his neck and settling it on his back, "Heat's killin' me."

Big Macintosh nodded in agreement. "There's stuff t'do in the barn. It's cooler in there so we can work through the rest of the day."

"Sounds good t'me."

Thorny led the way back up to the barn. He hated to leave the fields, but there was no way that not even he could work in the heat. Barn work was the next best thing he guessed. It also gave him a chance to get closer to Applejack, even though she was going to be in the farmhouse and not the barn with him. He wanted the chance to sit down with her or something along those lines so he could find out many of the things that plagued his mind with questions. Like if there's a colt she's got'er eye on…

The inside of the barn was a little stuffy, but significantly cooler. Thorny filled his lungs with the cool air. "Woowee! That's better!" He heard Big Macintosh sigh behind him. When Thorny looked around, he saw that much of the old barn was in need of a lot of repair. The stairs to the hayloft were split in many different places and sported a ton of hoof destroying rusty nails. Some of the ceiling boards had rotted out and littered the floor, letting sunlight filter in from above. In all, the whole place was a wreck. Thorny frowned. It looked like a twister hit. Along with the damage, it was super cluttered. Nothing was where it belonged, and most of it was just haphazardly thrown into giant piles. Why would anypony let it get so bad? At that point he knew the chicken coop had to wait.

Big Mac started to speak, but Thorny interrupted him. "Big Macintosh", he stated, "Ah hope that you an' me are fixin' up the barn. If you ain't, then Ah am. An' Ah'll do it by myself if Ah have to."

"Well, we were jus' gonna clean up a bit, but if y'all wanna go an' do all that…" Big Mac's voice trailed off. He wasn't sure why the new farmhoof wanted to do so much work for the rundown barn, but he knew he and Applejack had put it off long enough.

"Y'all can bet your tail Ah do", Thorny said. He set out by himself to find tools and wood. The barn back home had gone through lots of repairs, and Thorny knew how to get every single job done. His coworker started to look in the other side of the barn, wondering just what Applebloom and her friends did with all of the carpentry tools.

Anypony watching the two would have been amazed. Both went completely silent after Thorny found the belts, hammers, and nails. They worked on the opposite ends and slowly repaired their ways toward the middle. To Thorny, working on the barn was a privilege, so he worked a lot harder than any other pony would. The colts worked endlessly, with the hours that rolled by feeling like seconds to the laboring ponies.

When they met in the middle, they focused on helping the other getting to the hayloft by repairing the steps together. Once at the top, Thorny lassoed a few of the rafter hooks and created a sturdy harness for him to slip into while Big Macintosh lifted him up to fix the room. While he hammered, Thorny figured that there was another plus side to fixing up the barn. Applejack's appreciation would skyrocket once she saw that he took it upon himself to get her older brother to help him get the red building fixed up.

He hammered another nail into the fresh new board Big Mac lifted up with a second lasso. "One more, Big Macintosh", Thorny called from behind his clenched teeth. In a few seconds, Thorny had spat out a nail and drove it through the soft wood. He put four nails in it to hold it down and the fifth one just to get rid of the last one. Big Macintosh saw that he had finished nailing the final plank in and lowered the colt down to the floor.

They both stood in the barn entrance to admire their work. The inside was still a mess, but they could clean it later. The sun outside had traveled so far in the sky that it was well passed noon. "Now there's no way we worked that long!"

"Time flies when you're havin' fun", Big Macintosh replied.

"It sure was fun, wasn' it?" Thorny chuckled. He gave the taller pony a friendly punch in the shoulder.

"Eeyup", the assaulted pony replied, barely feeling Thorny's gesture.

"Now we jus' gotta clean it!"

"Clean what?"

Thorny excitedly spun around to see Applejack standing behind them. She was carrying a platter of lunch for the two. "Well, ain't you jus' in time!?"

Now confused, the mare lifted an eyebrow. "In time for what?"

"We fixed up the barn!" Thorny announced into her face.

She backed away from the crazy colt. "Y'all fixed up the barn?" she asked in disbelief. "The whole barn, not just part?"

Thorny nodded happily. "Yup! It really wasn' much to fix. Most of it just needed new boards an' y'all already had all that." He stepped aside. "You wanna take a look?"

Applejack almost said yes, but the word got stuck in her throat. She was happy that Thorny did something so nice, but was also envious that he got to do such a fun task without her. When she looked at her sibling, she got the burning look of a teasing smile, which made her face light up redder than the barn they had just repaired. She took it as an insult, and came up with a comeback. "Only if y'all cleaned it too."

"Clean!?" Thorny laughed. "You'll have better luck gettin' me t'never eat again!"

"So y'all will fix a whole barn up, but not clean one huh?" Applejack snickered.

Thorny nodded.

"Even though cleanin's easier?"

"Says you!" Thorny snickered. "Ah can't clean t'save mah life! Apple Sprout an' June Berry even clean mah room!"

Applejack smiled. That was great news. Thorny admitted to his faults and wasn't good at something she was!

"Hey, are them sandwiches fer us?"

"Yeah, but Ah don't know what kind", Applejack replied, "Granny Smith made'em."

"Sure smell good!"

"Eeyup."

"Ah guess you boys did earn a good lunch", Applejack said with her eyes on Big Macintosh. "Ah don' have t'eat it all myself now."

They snatched up the sandwiches and scarfed them down like wolves. While they mutilated their lunch, Applejack slipped away to see just what they did in the barn. She instantly saw all of the improvements made. The wholes and busted boards under the hayloft were no longer missing. The ladder to the hayloft no longer looked like a deathtrap. They even fixed the roof using ropes they had yet to take down from the hooks they used during celebrations to hang lights. Still in doubt, she gave the nearest board a hard knock. It was solid as a rock.

Applejack nodded in appreciation. It was a good job, and one that wasn't even asked of him. She knew because she and Big Macintosh were supposed to do it together on the upcoming weekend. She smiled at how kind Thorny was. The thought of Thorny sent a slight shiver through her body. It was brief, yet confusing at how it was easily room temperature in the barn.