What Things Are
He said it again that evening over supper. “Huh.”
Applejack lifted her muzzle from her plate. “Feeling talkative, are we?”
“Twilight’s an alicorn.”
“That she is,” Applejack agreed. "Pass the taters."
“And a princess.”
“That too.”
“But she’s still Twilight,” Big Mac said.
“Course she is.”
Big Mac frowned, turning these facts over in his mind, looking for some angle at which they’d fit together.
“Maybe she was always a princess, and didn’t know it,” he said.
“I guess that stands to reason,” Applejack said. “Being as things are what they are. You can’t plant pinecones and get apples.”
He said nothing else, so she dipped into the steamed thistles and carrots again. The farmhouse was unusually quiet. Apple Bloom had wolfed down her food and rushed off to meet her friends to prepare an ominous-sounding “special surprise” for the new princess.
“Sis,” Big Mac asked, “what am I?”
Applejack raised an eyebrow. “Pretty sure you’re a pony.”
“Everypony’s a pony.”
“Well, I reckon you’re also an apple farmer.”
“Is that what I am?” Big Mac stared past her, out the window, off toward where the summer orchard was.
“Do you plant apple trees?”
“Yup,” he said, with the slow rising “yup” that meant “Where is this leading?”
“Do you take care of them trees as they grow?”
“Yup,” he said, with the quick rising “yup” that meant “Go on.”
“And do you gather in the apples, and stack the baskets in the barn, and take some off to market, some to the cider press, and pack some into barrels to ship to Canterlot?"
“Ayup,” he said, with the quiet falling “yup” that meant “I see where you’re going, and you might be right, but I don’t have to like it.”
"And have ya got one half of a bright green apple plastered across each side of your big red behind?”
He looked back down his flank. "Yup," he said, with the flat harsh "yup" that meant "That's a fact and no denying it."
“Well, then, I guess you’re an apple farmer.”
“I guess.” He kept staring off into the distance. “But what if there were no apples?”
“Don’t talk nonsense. As long as there’s Apples there’ll be apples, and as long as there’s apples there’ll be Apples.”
“That’s true,” he said.
“And you’re my big brother,” she added.
“That’s good,” he said.
“Sometimes I wonder what’s rattling around in that big head of yours, Mac.”
“Yup,” he said, with the soft breathy “yup” that even he didn’t know the meaning of.
They cleaned up together, her washing and him drying, then went up early to their separate bedrooms. They had twenty barrels to pack and haul to the station before the afternoon train left for Canterlot next day.
As Big Mac drifted off to sleep, he thought of all the bushel baskets of apples stacked and shelved up to the barn’s rafters, waiting for him. It was a lot of apples. He wondered, half into the dream world, what he would do if they turned on him, packed him into a barrel and rolled him down to the cider press. Then he felt the soft black curtain of darkness over him, and the wood staves squeezing his shoulders together, and realized it was too late. They already had.
He smelled their sharp tangy breath all around him, and heard prayers murmured for him by a thousand trembling leaves. He was their slave and their god, and they poured him out into the cider press barrel, not roughly, but reverentially. The barrel's oaken slats were stained with the juice of a thousand Apples. He poured in smooth and filled it snug and tight.
Then the big screw pressed down on him from above, and he was flowing out between the slats. They caught everything dull and dirty, so that only what was sweet and strong ran through the gaps, down the trough, and spilled into another barrel. The apples sealed it, bunged it, and shipped it off to the palace, where a purple princess on a throne of gilt-edged books sipped the fresh cider from a silver goblet, and smiled.
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- Bad Horse · 3.7k words · 512 16 · 8.2k views
- SamRose · 3.8k words · 126 10 · 4.8k views
- Bad Horse · 3.7k words · 188 8 · 4.4k views
- Daedalus Aegle · 8.3k words · 484 15 · 5.8k views
- Closer-To-The-Sun · 7.2k words · 216 9 · 6.3k views
- Vivid Syntax · 1.7k words · 87 4 · 1.7k views
- AlphaOmega · 3k words · 25 1 · 1.3k views
- Captain Unstoppable · 3.5k words · 238 12 · 4.5k views
Stats
Page generated in 0.195 seconds
Total duration
995 users online
162,939 hits today, 2,054,621 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Was Chapter 2 a metaphor?
...and off in Canterlot, Princess Luna was doodling on a piece of paper while sitting in Night Court, writing over and over.
I like apples. I like apples. I like apples.
Why can't we let the characters be happy?
Also nice story.
I really liked this. Will there be more?
I lack the smarts to understand the dream and instead say that that dream is damn creepy.
...That dream is damn creepy.
~Skeeter The Lurker
I wish my dreams were that interesting.
Yeah, I don't even think I could handle the dream metaphor here if I wasn't half asleep...
Hmm... interesting, a story of a fellow who sees the strings of life, but isn't at the top.
I feel like I should read this again tomorow, when I've had time to properly reflect.
3634296
The dream is deliberately vague, I think. I liked it.
For the love of pony, Bad Horse, stop torturing Big Mac! He's an illiterate, lovelorn, depressed, dissatisfied wreck in your world.
The fact that you write so well only makes it worse.
3634492
Have you met Bad Horse?
3634148
Because Bad Horse feeds on misery and suffering? Fan tears make him perpetually youthful. Or so I've heard.
Bah, you tricked me writer! I knew it was going to be sad, but this is out and out depressing.
Ga-ha-ha-ha!
That name of this story... I thought its some horror-story including Twilight being smashed into raw material fo cider, but, to my disappointment, this is sad romance story.
Lets read.
meh...
Dreams are weird.
3634125
You sir, have made me laugh in the aftermath of a Bad Horse story.
Sir. I am genuinely impressed.
I guess not all stories have to go somewhere, but it's still unsatisfying…
Damn, Big Mac gets dreams of getting killed by apples and ironically consumed by the pony he loves, and all I get are visions of the future.
3633732
Of course Chapter 2 was a metaphor. When Applejack says,
The symbolism of the potatoes is the key to this whole story. Potatoes are vegetables which mature underground — accumulating starch based on energy from the sun yet locked within eternal darkness — which are uprooted and consumed, providing sustenance.
Contrast this with the cider at the end, in which the best parts of Big Mac are pressed out and poured for princess Twilight, providing sustenance.
This is, on the surface, a story of a farmer's unrequited love. But through the magic of complex parallelism, at its heart it is actually a story of a princess' unrequited love. The tragedy of the unattainable Twiluna.
tomorrowlands.org/images/the-point-vs-me.png
But anyway, neat little read.
3637657 or maybe they're, I dunno...potatoes?
Now I'm a philosophical guy, but I'm having trouble understanding the meaning of the dream.
I am suddenly hankering for some more TwiMac. If that was your deliberate intention, well done.
If it wasn't, well, well done anyway.
3637911>>3637657>>3637109>>3636132>>3634583>>3634439>>3634296>>3633732
I don't know how clear the dream should be. I thought that if it were clear, it would seem fake. Mac is both the slave and master of the apples, because they control so much of his life. The cider press simultaneously destroys and purifies him. He feels like his occupation is too humble for Twilight's status, but is the only way he can be of service to her. He imagines his life being squeezed out for her, and I imagine this makes Big Mac feel sad, but also joyful and honored to be of service to her. The dream suggests to him to accept this feudalistic attitude. You could consider it either courtly love, or a vassal / Lord relationship.
see 3638756
3638756
This is pretty much what I got out of the dream sequence. I can't say it was exactly what I got out because that was like yesterday, man, and the nature of human memory means that reading your explanation now causes the memory to recrystallize around that explanation.
So anyway, I think you hit the obscurity level about right on that sequence.
Holy heck that was horribly, wonderfully beautiful. So many tears....
Thank you, Bad Horse. That was very, very well done.
Poor Big Mac.
And though she'll never know it, poor Twilight. 
Light and laughter,
SongCoyote
I feel I have been mislead by your tags, Bad Horse. Sad implies that there is a sad tone to the story as a whole, not necessarily the ending. The right tag would be a Tragedy tag, since it ends poorly for our Hero, one Master Macintosh Apple. I have been deceived, and demand full recompense for your lies!
3638826
He sees within he the aggregate of all that can be aspired to. All hope, all that is good and beautiful, incarnated in one pony. The dream, then, is his will towards self-destructive sublimation. The dross would fall away and only the best of him would remain and join in the perfection. He cannot love her--he thinks--but something good is in him, that bit of him that loves her, and he wishes that that bit alone would survive and ascend.
He's wrong, of course. In turning Twilight into a symbol he is both exalting and demeaning her. It reminds me of a fragment I once wrote. It's about Celestia, but it suffices for Twilight in this instance:
"Celestia is Light, says here. And Celestia is Love. And Celestia is the Sun Victorious, the Sun Ascendant, the Sun Invincible. And Kindness, and Justice, and a thousand other things. And all of them, all these sages and philosophers, every single one of them is wrong!"
"What is she?"
"A pony. Above all, a pony."
Anyway. I digress. I still think the story's awesome, of course. I'm just sad it ends with Big Mac still suffering. He's earned a happy story from you, BH. Many times over.
3637657
By Jove, I think you got it!
...I always wanted to say that.
3634296
It's more tragic than creepy, really.
3636947
Wow. That is impressive. Generally it takes at least a few hours after a Bad Horse read before I can smile again. Several days in case of one story.
3643311
Which story, if I may ask?
(I am still recovering from "Moving On", myself.)
3643530
Moving On ended happily, though. And the scene with Luna hit me right in the proverbial feels.
No, the story that traumatized me is "Twenty Minutes." I've only read it once (a rarity for me and BH stories) and I shudder at the prospect of reading it again. One of only two pieces of fiction that gave me legitimate no-joke nightmares.
3643604
The jester walked in the garden:
The garden had fallen still;
He bade his soul rise upward
And stand on her window-sill.
It rose in a straight blue garment,
When owls began to call:
It had grown wise-tongued by thinking
Of a quiet and light footfall;
But the young queen would not listen;
She rose in her pale night-gown;
She drew in the heavy casement
And pushed the latches down.
He bade his heart go to her,
When the owls called out no more;
In a red and quivering garment
It sang to her through the door.
It had grown sweet-tongued by dreaming
Of a flutter of flower-like hair;
But she took up her fan from the table
And waved it off on the air.
'I have cap and bells,’ he pondered,
'I will send them to her and die’;
And when the morning whitened
He left them where she went by.
She laid them upon her bosom,
Under a cloud of her hair,
And her red lips sang them a love-song
Till stars grew out of the air.
She opened her door and her window,
And the heart and the soul came through,
To her right hand came the red one,
To her left hand came the blue.
They set up a noise like crickets,
A chattering wise and sweet,
And her hair was a folded flower
And the quiet of love in her feet.
--W. B. Yeats
3635047 For the love of pony, Bad Horse, stop torturing Big Mac! He's an illiterate, lovelorn, depressed, dissatisfied wreck in your world
You're right. It isn't fair to keep torturing Big Mac when there are so many other ponies I haven't tortured even once. That Dotted Line fellow, for instance... hmm...
3646141 Now that's creepy.
3643311 One where he get's Twilight and doesn't get stuck feeling like he no longer has a purpose in life because he's hitched to a princess.
Oh look. Another one.
3647158
Don't even joke about something like that.
3647175
Well, I don't know: it seems Yeats' jester comes to the same conclusion Big Mac does. Which is, if you can't win love through expressions of reason or passion, perhaps you should try expressions of self: being what you are, doing what you do best, whether it's making cider or making jests.
And perhaps your passion, and its reasons, will come through in that. It's not an unhopeful conclusion.
3647640 My reading of the poem is that he died to express his love, and that finally pleased her. I might have misread it. For some reason people are much less accepting of ambiguity in stories than in poetry.
3647531 Sorry. Comment edited to be Safe For Ghost.
3647695
His death may have been a necessary part of the expression, but I don't think it's what actually pleases her. What pleases her is what he did with his life: being a jester. All the jokes and funny stories--she remembers them when he's gone, and she realizes what a wise and loving person he was.
It's just my interpretation, of course, but in its defense I will say that Yeats returns to exactly that theme in other poems:
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
3647695
'Sokay. Thanks.
3647777 Remarkably similar, then. And admirably compact.
Poor Big Mac. Poor hard-working, long-suffering, masculine caryatid of the fandom.
Someday he's gonna read Atlas Shrugged and all hell will break loose.
Nasty little nightmare for Big Mac at the end, but I really really liked the variation in his yup's and nope's.
This was well done
Excellent read. Just excellent all round. I frankly love the dream sequence at the end. Also worth mentioning: the subtle intonations within his dialogue with Applejack is mirrored in Filli Vanilli, so you managed to capture the characterization of their relationship just as it was made canonical.
Cracking good read. I will now read through the rest of your works.
A nightmare? Or a soothing epiphany of the path left unchanged, unwilling to change, steadfast and stubborn in its goal. To alter it would be very painful.
The acceptance that we are cogs in the system is an agonizing one, something very few are humble to accept, their heads filled with ego and pettiness. But once that acceptance happens, a great weight is lifted and we can continue to grease the inner workings of society with our blood, sweat, and tears, our labour, bettering ourselves with a sense of gratitude and even happiness.
I like to think that in the end, Big Mac wasn't running scared, but joyful that his willing sacrifice has progressed society.
Yeah, guards don't really do work compared to farmers. Bureaucrats, secretaries, office workers, politicians? Quite extremely necessary, but bleh. They don't do physical stuff, real work. And they drone endlessly...
Well, that was whack.
Well done. I can't really see Applejack cursing like that, especially since she didn't seem to have a reason to be upset at Big Mac or in general. It just felt out of character.
Still, well done.
5066897
Hmm, I liked it when I wrote it, but I guess "big red behind" is just as good here. Changed.
I don't really see this as a sad story. A tragedy maybe, since Big Mac is the one holding himself back and causing himself pain here. Or perhaps a Slice of Life, as Big Mac somewhat accepts his station in life in the end.
A good story all around though, so have a fave.