"Huh," said Applejack.
"I know." Twilight found it hard to meet Applejack's gaze. She and Rainbow had left the castle and flown straight to Sweet Apple Acres, the shaking treetops out in the east orchard telling them where their friend was working. "I'm still not sure I believe it, but—"
Rainbow snorted, the sunlight through the leaves dappling her coat. "It was completely and totally obvious."
Twilight couldn't stop a scowl. "What we saw was enough to base a hypothesis on, I'll admit. But before we can draw any conclusions, we need to—"
Another snort. "Big words, Twilight." Rainbow tapped her own chest. "I saw everything I needed to see: Big Mac and Rarity have a secret thing for each other, and that's all there is to it!"
"The evidence is entirely circumstantial!"
"You're entirely circumstantial!"
"What? That doesn't make any sense!"
"You don't make any—!"
"A-hem." Applejack didn't clear her throat: she actually said the word, and Twilight couldn't keep her ears from folding at the rumble behind it. "How 'bout we all just settle on down and pretend we're civilized, huh?"
Taking a breath, Twilight forced herself to relax into the grass, then blew the breath back out. "You're right. I'm sorry, Rainbow."
"Yeah, yeah." Rainbow shrugged and turned to Applejack. "But I'm serious, AJ! Mac and Rarity talked at the cart today for, like, twenty minutes!"
"More like five minutes," Twilight couldn't keep from interjecting.
"Ten minutes!"
"Eight at the outside."
"You saying you had a stopwatch?"
"I'm saying there's no need to exaggerate the—"
"A-hem," Applejack said again.
Twilight covered her face with her hooves. "I'm sorry, Applejack! This whole thing is just—" And before she knew what was happening, everything whirring around inside her came cascading out:
"Because I'm the Princess of Friendship, right? So why do I have such a hard time figuring out love? The two concepts ought to be related: I mean, the Princess of Love helped raise me and is now my sister-in-law! But my research so far has been nothing but inconclusive! I've been trying to expand my sample of loving couples to study—Mr. and Mrs. Cake, my parents, Cranky and Matilda—but including Cadance and Shining really seems to throw off my calculations, and whenever I try to talk to Cadance about love, she pretty much ends up telling me I've got to find it for myself!
"Worse than that, as far as I can tell, love only ends up in the 'happily ever after' resting state at the end of cheesy paperbacks and foals' tales! So why should I go looking to get involved in an experience that's probably going to leave me metaphorically bleeding from a thousand cuts? It's not like there aren't plenty of monsters out there willing to take multiple, literal bites out of me! And as much as everypony says that love's worth the chance, how can I know? How can I possibly know?"
In the silence that followed, Twilight found herself wishing her wings were shovels: digging a hole right here and staying in it for the rest of her life seemed like such an attractive idea all of a sudden.
"Okay, now, listen, sugar cube." Applejack spoke quietly and gently enough to make Twilight peer out from between her hooves. And while Rainbow was staring like Twilight had grown a second horn, Applejack had that same open smile on her muzzle that always made Twilight feel better about whatever disaster they were crashing through. "Maybe I ain't any expert on romance, but I've always looked at love like it's an apple tree."
Rainbow groaned. "Of course you have."
A flicker of annoyance tightened Applejack's face, but she went on just as gently. "Neither of 'em takes kindly to being rushed, y'see. You can't force a tree to start bearing fruit, and you can't force love to come into your life on your schedule. Just be ready for it when it's ready for you, and you'll end up with a terrific harvest."
"And besides," Rainbow said, rustling her wings, "having to dump a guy—or even getting dumped yourself—it's like you said earlier, Twi: not the end of the world. It can be bad, sure." Her voice wavered. "Sometimes real bad. But you just pick yourself up and start over. And sure, maybe you take a year or five off from the dating scene to get your head back together and maybe you put in for a transfer to another weather post and move to a different part of Equestria..." She trailed off, then she shook her head quickly and stomped a hoof in the grass. "But that's not what we're talking about! We're talking about Rarity and Big Mac! Not, y'know, anything else!"
Staring at Rainbow now, Twilight felt questions start buzzing at the back of her tongue. But she swallowed them—best to deal with one weird situation at a time, she'd found—and looked from Rainbow to Applejack. "So do you think it's possible for Big McIntosh to be attracted to Rarity?"
Applejack rubbed her chin. "More'n possible. 'Cause, sure, us Apples live a little rough out here, but we got an eye for beauty." Her gaze seemed to lose focus. "A hard day of apple-bucking, and a body might just wanna come home to a little sweetness and tenderness, I reckon, a little kindness and—" She blinked, her eyes widening and snapping back to meet Twilight's. "And Rarity can be all them things, right? To Mac's way of thinking, I mean. Since he ain't as familiar as the rest of us with what a gol-durn nightmare she is mosta the time."
Rainbow’s cough might actually have been a laugh, but Twilight couldn't decide before Rainbow reached over and poked her in the shoulder. "And that, Twi, is what dating's all about. You get a glimmer that's maybe gold, but you've gotta dig around some, brush the dirt off and see what's really there before you can know for sure." She turned to face Applejack. "But was that what we saw in the market, y'think? Mac asking Rares out on a date? Or would he be more likely to do the whole flowers and candy and poems thing first?"
A twinkle lit Applejack's eye. "Maybe she was asking him."
"Hey, now." Rainbow's eyebrows went up. "That's totally possible."
Twilight tried to stop her ears from going back. After all, every study she'd read concluded that it was just as acceptable for a mare to approach a stallion romantically as it was for a stallion to approach a mare, but the romance novels she'd been examining over the past few years seemed to imply that it was incumbent upon the stallion to make the first move. Why that should be, she'd never understood: mares took the lead in so many aspect of Equestrian life that it didn't make sense to say that in this one area, they shouldn't—
"And what?" Applejack asked, startling Twilight out of her thoughts. Had she missed a turn in the conversation? But, no: Applejack was still looking at Rainbow. "You want me to jump Mac soon as he gets back from market, hog-tie him, and find out if'n he's hitting on Rarity?"
"No!" Rainbow glared for a moment, then shrugged. "I mean, yes, but maybe without the hog-tying."
That made Twilight's mane rustle a little. "Look, Rainbow." She reached out and touched her friend's hoof. "I know you want to help Rarity, and I want to help her, too. But this is starting to feel like we're getting into 'none of our business' territory."
"All right, all right!" Rainbow gave a big enough flap that she rose an inch or two into the air before drifting back onto the grass. "We'll ask Rarity instead of Mac! Will that make you happier?"
Applejack nodded. "Reckon it'll be easier. Getting more'n a trickle of words outta Mac's like milking a pig: you can do it, but neither you nor the pig's gonna enjoy it much."
"Fine!" More flapping brought Rainbow into a hover. "Let's just head over to Fluttershy's, then!"
"Fluttershy?" Applejack's eyes widened. "What'cha wanna get her involved for?"
"Well, duh." Rainbow slid forward and tapped Applejack's forehead. "Nopony knows Rarity as well as she does, so we'll need her along if we wanna get the truth."
Twilight stood, but Applejack got to her hooves more slowly. "I dunno, RD. Thursday afternoons, Fluttershy's kinda busy working with the raccoons 'long the west edge of Whitetail Woods." She squinted at the sun. "Might be we'll catch her afore she leaves, though: them critters don't usually get to stirring till pretty late in the day."
"Okay!" Rainbow clapped her front hoofs together. "When I get there, I'll tell her to wait! But you guys get a move on, and we'll start getting to the bottom of all this!" She swooped away in the direction of Fluttershy's cottage.
"Rainbow!" Twilight called, but by then, even her multi-colored contrail was starting to dissipate in the crisp, blue autumn sky.
"Yep." Applejack pushed her hat back. "That gal don't often get an idea in her head, but when she does, nothing short of a landslide'll shake it loose."
"I suppose." With a sigh, Twilight started between the apple trees, Applejack falling into step beside her. "This whole romance thing sure came out of nowhere, though. Except it sounded like she was saying—" She turned to Applejack. "You've known her longer than I have, AJ. Do you know why she left Cloudsdale and came to Ponyville?"
Applejack shrugged. "She tol' me once that, what with the wild storms that come outta the Everfree, Ponyville's the toughest assignment for weather ponies in all of Equestria. Soon as she heard that, she said, she marched right into Weather Central and asked 'em to send her here." She turned a grin toward Twilight. "She said this assignment was the best birthday present she ever got."
Twilight couldn't help grinning back. "That sounds like Rainbow. I mean, it sounds more like her than that she moved here because of a love affair that went bad."
The grin on Applejack's snout wobbled, and she looked away. "Can't say as how I know a thing about that."
The fine hairs along the back of Twilight's neck rustled, and she shook herself. For something that was supposed to be so wonderful, love sure did seem to make ponies uncomfortable when it came up in conversation. "Still," she went on, trying to find a positive spin to put on the topic, "I liked what you said about not rushing romance. I mean, with everything else that's been happening lately, love is pretty much the last thing I want to be worrying about."
"Eggzactly." Applejack's grin strengthened. "What's the ol' tortoise and the hare story say? 'Slow and steady wins the race'?" She gave one of her low chuckles. "Y'know, we oughtta test that out some time with Tank and Angel. 'Cept I reckon we'd wind up with a mite more biting and kicking than the original had."
That got Twilight giggling and made her think of something Applejack had said earlier. "So what's Fluttershy doing every Thursday with these raccoons? I haven't heard her mention anything about it."
"Oh. Yeah." Applejack's cheeks pinked, and she looked away again. "Reckon that's mostly my fault. See, I was kinda complaining to her 'bout— Y'know how raccoons got them little claw-hand things? Kinda like Spike? Well, they's been using 'em to grab the fruit outta my apple trees afore I get a chance to buck it down. And she said—" The smile that spread over Applejack's face this time was another of her slow, gentle ones. "She said she'd ask them raccoons to pick berries from the wild bushes out Whitetail way so we could make jam to sell at the Acres, and we'd give 'em the apples as payment for services rendered."
Twilight blinked. "That's ingenious!"
"Ain't it, though?" A skip entered Applejack's step. "And ain't that just like Fluttershy? Coming up with a fix like that where we all win?"
They emerged from the rows of apple trees then into the wide swath of lumpy grass that grew between the orchards and the first gnarled trees of the Everfree Forest. Twilight turned in the direction of Fluttershy's cottage and had to pick up her pace to keep abreast of Applejack. "C'mon," her friend said. "Reckon we oughtta get this nonsense over with afore we foul up Fluttershy's schedule any more'n we already are."