Ok, tea?
Set.
Dairy-free sugar cookies and soy milk?
Check.
Table wear?
Check-a-roo.
Everything was set for her arrival.
Cassidy sighed in relief at the thought of finally being able to relax, knowing everything was set. For the past hour she had been preparing for a very special guest that she'd been looking forward to seeing for the past week. Oh, the things she would be able to learn from her! Cassidy was grinning from ear to ear, slightly bouncing in her seat.
Four swift, clear knocks came from her front door.
'That must be her!' Cassidy internally gasped as she sprinted towards the door way. She paused at the mirror next to the door, making sure she looked presentable. Her honey blond hair was in a neat ponytail, she was wearing a grumpy cat t-shirt, she had on dark skinny jeans, and she was wearing black converse shoes. All in all, she looked like she was ready to have a casual brunch with a friend back home. Or in this case what she hoped would become a friend.
She turned to the door and slowly opened it.
"'Morning Ms. Smith!" Cassidy chirped cheerfully as the light green mare entered her hom. She had her white hair in a slightly messy bun, and she wore an orange... something around her neck. Cassidy still wasn't sure what to make of pony fashion, just yet.
"Howdy, do?" Granny smith asked, a smile on her face. Her smiling made the laugh lines on her face even more noticable, but it gave her more character in Cassidy's opinion. "Y'all just want a nice chat, with me, right Miss Philips?"
"Oh, yes Ms. Smith," Cassidy replied.
"Aw, shucks. You calling me 'Misses' is making me feel older than I already am. Y'all can just call me, 'Granny'."
"Oh," Cassidy said, not thinking that it was going to be this casual between them this soon. But she wan't complaining. "Well, if that's going to be the case, then you can just call me 'Cassidy'!"
"Alrighty then Classy Cassy," Granny said, humor in her voice. Cassidy smiled. It wasn't the worst nickname she'd ever received.
"Anyways, I was hoping to learn more about Ponyville from you," Cassidy said, leading the older mare to the small table she had set up in her living room. Granny's eyes lit up at the sight of the cookies.
"Oh, we have all the time in the world to talk," Granny said, taking a seat at the table. "We don't have that much time till these here cookies get to room temperature." That wasn't what Cassidy had been expecting to hear. She watched the older mare sit down and happily munch on a cookie, closing her eyes to fully enjoy the sensation.
"These here cookies are perfect!" Granny Smith said with delight. Cassidy felt a small blush form on her cheeks. She had wanted to open a bakery when she was back on earth. She had been nearing the amount of money in her savings account she had needed to buy the little shop she'd had her eye on, but then- "What recipe did ya use to make 'em?"
"Huh?" Cassidy replied, her mind had not fully caught up with Granny's words just yet. "Oh! I, well, I use an old recipe my mom had taught me when I was little."
"Well, then," Granny said now grabbing another cookie with her hoof, something Cassidy still didn't know how earth ponies did. "Your mother was a genius!"
Cassidy tried her best to smile, she really did, but Granny could see right through her disguise. Granny's smile slowly turned into a frown as she brought one hoof up to her chin. Granny motioned to the other chair at the table, an invitation for Cassidy to sit down. Cassidy didn't try to resist the old mare's directions. As she sat down Cassidy was struggling to keep the tears in her eyes at bay, not wanting to lose her composer around her guest.
Granny knew heart break when she saw it. This girl who had invited her over had it and she needed someone to listen. She could hear about the founding of Ponyville another day, right now she just needed to get something, maybe even a few somethings, off her chest.
"Honey, I'm just gonna sit here," Granny said as she gestured towards her own seat. "And listen."
Cassidy wanted to tell her, but she barely knew this mare. But here that mare was, willingly offering herself up to be the one to listen to Cassidy's problems. Cassidy looked the mare in her golden eyes. They seemed to glow with a motherly kindness and understanding hat Cassidy had been wanting from the first minute she had been sent to this godforsaken world.
Cassidy tried to make her words come out as clearly as she could, but a sob once or twice broke the flow. "I... I miss my mom. I'm only seventeen, I still need my mom. Heck, I turned seventeen while I was here. I just have to wonder what that was like for my parents. Celebrating their daughter's birthday without her being there.
"I just... I don't even know how I came here. Sure, princess Twilight has done her best trying to figure it out but even her, a highly educated scholar, has no clue how I and my house, which by the way somehow still has plumbing and electricity, came to be in an entirely new world it's just... Can you even picture yourself as a teenager being thrown into a world of sentient beings that aren't your own with no one else turn to?"
Granny looked at the human girl, who had stood up and started pacing in the room in the middle of her rant. She had a look of deep seeded worry on her face. Granny didn't know how to respond to this at first but slowly thought of a story to make her feel better.
"Hows about I tell y'all a story, too?" She said to Cassidy. Cassidy looked at the old mare, bewildered. After that entire spill about her emotions and what she'd been through, she wanted to tell her a story? "It'll make ya feel better~"
Granny left the table and moved to the couch that was a little deeper into the room. Cassidy followed her, still not entirely sure how a story would help her. Granny smiled as she saw the young girl sit down, looking at her with a look that said 'What-the-buck-are-you-doing-old-mare' as well as 'This-could-be-genuinely-interesting'.
"A long time ago a little filly had to go with her family to a big city," Granny Smith started, making large gestures with her hooves. "They went to go and meet the princess and ask for some land. The young filly thought that they would never get anything from the princess, so she didn't worry about having to leave that city. But her dreams were all but crushed when she heard that the princess had accepted her parent's request.
"When they got to the new land, the filly hated it. She hated the creepy forests, she hated the fact that she didn't have anypony other than her family around. She just wanted to go back, but she didn't.
"Soon she began to enjoy the new home, but not without missing the great city. She'd met a nice colt there. She missed him. But, it wasn't to be. She faced the new place with pride and hope, but not forgetting the great city and the places before that city.
"Sure, she was faced with hardships, but she didn't care she soon found magic there, both real and sentimental. She came to love the new place, but she will never forget the places she had been before that. At least, I don't reckon that I will. After all, it's been years since those days and I still remember 'em clear as day."
Cassidy sat there, her jaw slack. That old lady had been through all that? Cassidy could hardly believe it. She could tell from that look on the old woman's face that this was no tale, but rather her own life.
"That...," Cassidy barely got out before she began to laugh. It soon turned into a pure roar of laughter. She laughed harder than she since the day she had come to Ponyville. Granny soon joined in and the pair were just about dying on the floor from laughter. Cassidy actually had fallen out of her seat, but Granny had thankfully stayed on the couch.
"That... Th-that actually did make me feel better," Cassidy breathed out. Granny looked at her with a knowing look.
"Miss Philips," Granny started a gleam in her eye. "Would you let me come over next Wednesday to tell ya the official version of the story that I told Apple Bloom's class?"
"Why I do declare," Cassidy said in most joking southern accent, which Granny Smith had smiled at. "I'd be ever so delighted for that ta happen!"
At that moment, Cassidy decided that granny smith apples were her favorite food of all time.