//------------------------------// // Ace Of Pentacles: Foundations (Fluttershy x Big Mac) // Story: Draw // by TheVulpineHero1 //------------------------------// Ace of Pentacles: Foundations Keyword: Foundations. This card shows the beginning of prosperity. It provides a firm foundation [boy, this book really is pitching that foundation idea, huh?] on which to build. Security, stability and financial improvements. Possibly a windfall or monetary gain through gambling. Reversed: Green, insecurity and financial worries. Unsound investments and stupid speculation. Sweet Apple Acres was a perfectly nice place, full of golden hay bales and strong trees with their vivid autumnal red-and-green-and-gold patchwork, and it was one of the only places in Ponyville that Fluttershy could truly relax. Of course, it wasn't completely safe, because of all those scary farm tools with their blades and their prongs, and there was still the danger of being hit on the head by a falling apple or upsetting one of the leaf piles only to find a dragon hiding under it or of her shadow spontaneously becoming a sentient being and throttling her from behind, but overall, it was one of the safer places in Ponyville to be. Still, it just wasn't the same without Applejack there. The honest toil the orange pony put in were what made the orchard feel, well, solid; it had been worked on, built from the ground up, constantly and consistently nurtured. On days when she couldn't see Applejack hauling carts of apples up and down the Acres, Fluttershy always felt sad, as though something were missing. Fluttershy squeaked, and huddled a little closer to the floor of the barn. “Don't y'all worry none, Miss Fluttershy. AJ's prob'ly on her way back rights now,” Big Mac told her in a soothing voice, chewing calmly on a piece of straw. Fluttershy squeaked again. She didn't really know Big Macintosh too well, if she told the truth. Possibly because he was, well, big. Big enough to applebuck even the mightiest apple trees without breaking a sweat. Big enough to plough for hours on end at Winter Wrap-Up without a single complaint. Big enough that he didn't worry about the upcoming storm, or that his sister was out in it. “Will she be okay?” Fluttershy asked, before lightning cracked to the ground outside in a furious arc of ultrahot light, a peal of thunder following in its wake one, two, two-and-a-half seconds later, so loud the ground seemed to tremble with the sound. The wind moaned its sympathies. “Eyup. No storm ah've seen yet's been big enough to confound my sis,” Big Mac went on laconically. His red coat stood out in the gloom of the closed barn. “A'though, she does take on a mite more than she can chew sometimes.” Fluttershy briefly considered hiding under one of the stacks of hay lying around. She was aware that hay would not protect her from instantaneous electric death via lightning strike, but every little helps. Big Mac turned to look at her with one lazy eye. “If'n it's right with you, ah'm goin' out fer a spell. I figure you'll be fine so long as y'all leave the door shut after ah go,” he said, in the same even tones. Fluttershy looked at him quite hard then, and tried to decide whether he was crazy, and if so how much. Another lash of lightning flickered to the ground and she decided, right there and then, that he was worth a full 3.5 Pinkies on the crazy scale for wanting to go out in that. “Keep y'self safe now, hear?” Big Mac said as calmly as ever, before opening the barn door to a black world. Rain poured down in a thick curtain, splashing into overflowing puddles on the over saturated farmland. The tang of lightning was in the air, a palpable taste on the tongue. Big Mac took a look to the left, then to the right. Then he shrugged, and trotted into the night. Fluttershy waited, and whilst she waited, she worried. She worried about the barn roof caving in under the weight of the pounding rain, of the ground outside turning to slick, grasping mud like in the Everfree Forest. She worried about Applejack, a lone dot of orange in the vastness of the storm. But, somehow, she couldn't bring herself to worry about Big Mac. The fear that he might be struck by lightning, or crushed by a tree, or swallowed by the mud- all of them just seemed a little ridiculous. “Oh, dear. I must be heartless. If he were a bunny, I'd be out there looking for him,” she told herself, but picturing Big Mackintosh as a bunny was a greater strain than her imagination could handle. The timbers of the roof creaked ominously, sending her scurrying under the hay piles again. It was like an automatic reaction. Like her legs just moved themselves. It scared her, a little, which really didn't help the pure, unadulterated terror she was going through. thump Fluttershy tried to repress a squeak as her heart mimicked the noise, thump-thump-thump-thump-thump, beating away furiously in her chest, as if it'd been caught slacking on the job. There was probably something she should be doing, something that a brave and resourceful pony would've done. thump The squeak burst from her throat, and she started to shake. Stupid storms. Stupid bags of chicken feed, running out on the wrong day. She couldn't bring herself to think the chickens were stupid. boom The barn door burst open, Big Mac's massive silhouette filling the frame. Quietly and without hurry, he trotted in and closed the doors after him. His flanks were streaked with black mud, his coat bunched in thick, hanging ropes like weeping willow branches, dripping water with every step. “Miss?” he asked the barn in a strangely muffled tone. “If'n y'all still here, ah could use your help. Ah founds AJ.” Slowly and carefully, Fluttershy came out of her hiding place. Sure enough, Applejack was draped limply across Big Mac's back, her hat clenched between his teeth. “What happened?” she asked as he set his sister down gently on a hay pile. “Is she okay?” “I was hopin' y'all could tell me that,” he rumbled. “AJ says you're a fine doctor for the critters.” "Howdy there, Fluddershy," Applejack piped up with a spiralling crack in her voice, "Ah dun caught a branch with mah head." Sure enough, a large, purple-spotted bruise was emerging. Fluttershy swallowed back her fear of blood and let her natural instincts take over. "Oh, my...We need to lay her down and get a cold compress on her," Fluttershy whispered. "Thank y'kindly for yer help there, miss-" Big Mac began as he lowered his sister onto one of the large straw piles Fluttershy had been hiding under. "I meant now," Fluttershy said sharply, her matronly side well into swing already. "Please, don't chit-chat when friends are in danger. You should lie down and dry off too. It just wouldn't do to have you catch pneumonia." Big Mac bowed respectfully, and did as she said. He watched with interest as Fluttershy tore a strip of heavy, coarse cloth from the bags of chicken-feed that had gotten her into this mess and then walked out of the door into the storm. She remained there until the strip (and her) were well and truly soaked, before wringing out the strip and applying it to Applejack's forehead. "Ah though y'all were afraid of storms," he rumbled. "Oh, yes. I am. But I'm more afraid of Applejack being hurt. I prioritise," Fluttershy whispered, and shook out her coat. "Aren't you dry yet, Mr. Big Mac?" "Eyup," Big Mac nodded, although it was less that he was dry and more that he seemed to have forgotten he was ever wet. "But it's just Big Mac, if'n it's all the same to you." As another peal of thunder crashed down and restored her fears (with a vengeance), she couldn't help but admire Big Mac. He was the pony all earth ponies were at their heart; the type that could overcome any obstacle and overcome any wound, and then just recover as though nothing had happened. There was something of the land, vast and unbothered by its craters, about him. Eventually, as with all things, the storm broke. Applejack's concussion lasted only long enough for Rainbow Dash to get some embarrassing sound bites from her (which she repeated as she hovered above AJ's head, ad infinitum, until Applejack conveniently forget to warn her of an overhead branch and got some tasty concussion confessions of her own), and Sweet Apple Acres was left relatively unscathed, save for a few ruffled trees. As always, the land went on. But Fluttershy found that, the next time she touched down in the fields with their autumn gowns and their heavy, ripe apples dangling from the trees, it was not just a dot of orange on horizon she sought, but a slow, meandering blur of red. A/N: Hope some disgustingly saccharine Fluttermac makes up for last chapter.