Applejack doesn't like the big city. Call it time, but she has been there before. Plenty of reunions, court for the few times it's necessary for her to break out her tux. Her own adventures, obviously. She's always had plenty of reasons to go, but never to stay. I can understand that.
Except for one. Which I suppose, nowadays, I can understand too.
The year she ran away from home. She stayed with family, they weren't what she lost, and they couldn't fill the gap; though, it was nice. It filled something to know that she was loved, and on that day she told them she was going back, the day she worried she'd lose them to? She didn't.
She'd talked with them at length about it, that's not what this story is about. To many people for me to manage. This is about the place they took her, that day when she told them she was going home. Some nothing café with tea and crumpets right-smackdab in the middle of busy pony central. Applejack thinks she's got some rhythm to her, a pattern, but she's got that all on the outside too.
Be it a whiff from a pot of coffee brewed by someone, I'm sure you'll guess who, the memory surfaced, and our mare in orange went looking for the origin. Not alone, of course, she gets not only a dashingly handsome companion for the journey, but her own narrator to influence as she choses.
Novel.