Trebuchet
The walk home to retrieve her sister and Big Mac had been a silent one. Neither mare had anything to say to one another. The doctor and nurses had been on the receiving end of standard questions like when the foal would be born. "How?" was added to the mix for good measure.
It was a question he had been ill-prepared to answer.
More than anypony, Applejack felt she had a basic need to understand just how the laws of nature had decided to stay home sick for a day. Sex had certainly never been sparse between the couple, but no matter how magical love and love-making ever felt, it had never felt... transcendental. As far as she knew, her body was beholden to all the same rules of reality as other mares.
It seemed that her reproductive system hadn't gotten that memo.
She sat dumbfounded in one of the wooden chairs of Golden Oaks and watched Pinkie spin a pair of albums on the far side of the room. She had no real fascination with the party pony or any real appreciation of the music, but it was better than staring at the blank wood wall behind her.
Her thoughts raced with a thousand questions and not a single answer. Each circled in on itself back to the lingering "How?", only to be nudged aside by worry and guilt that she shouldn't have had any business feeling in the first place.
Applejack was an honest pony. She loved Rainbow Dash with all her heart. She had adored her since they were little fillies, and they had spent more time together than anypony she knew of. And she certainly had never cheated on her beloved wife. The very thought of it made her sick to her stomach all over again.
It was a strange sensation, being pregnant. On one hoof, she was over-the-moon with joy and excitement. At another time in her life, nothing had mattered more to her than finding a mate, settling down and having foals to build her own family around. Foals of her own had been something she had thought about since she was young. She had always dreamed that one day, she would bring a young filly or colt into the world. She had imagined their first cries, those bright eyes opening to look at her for the first time. It had only been her imagination, but it had filled her heart with such emotions that she swore her cheeks could burst from the smiles it gave her.
When she had agreed to marry Rainbow Dash, she had reconciled to herself that she would never bear a foal. They had gone to Twilight and asked her to work her magic. No traditional magic existed, she remembered her friend saying, that was powerful enough to create a living being with a soul from nothing. And Applejack had shuddered at the thought of letting some strange stallion's seed fall into her belly.
She had discarded that dream to the bin of impossibilities. It had broken her heart to do it. She hated it. For months she had wanted to be angry at Rainbow Dash for being her ideal mate. She wanted to be bitter at her for forcing her to choose between which she wanted more.
"Not even gonna try the carrot cake?" came a familiar voice to her left.
Applejack, of course, couldn't bring herself to be bitter towards a pony that had given her the nerve to dream again in the first place.
She stared at Rainbow's outstretched hoof, holding a small paper plate and a napkin. The cake didn't even move her appetite. Silently, she shook her head.
Rainbow plopped into the seat next to her and watched Rarity, Twilight and Fluttershy blitz the dance floor amongst other townsponies that had showed up for the party. Applejack recognized a few of them. Applebloom and her Crusader friends appeared to be going for dancing cutie marks amongst the flailing adults, while Big Mac attended the cider bowl.
"What's up, babe?" Rainbow Dash asked from around a mouthful of cake.
She sighed, but refrained from replying beyond a shake of her head. She was afraid that her vocabulary would fail her, and be unable to express just what she was feeling. She felt betrayed by her own body, and it scared her.
"I thought you'd be happier than this..." the pegasus murmured next to her.
Applejack didn't have the words to express the odd mixture of elation and self-disappointment she had. Her tongue was still, and her speech dry.
"I mean, it's what you wanted, right?"
"It is," she finally said, choking on her words. She reached to wipe a tear out of her eye.
"So why the long face?" Rainbow joked.
Applejack couldn't help snorting a short laugh at the stupid pun.
"That ain't funny," she murmured. "That's just stupid."
Rainbow smirked. "You laughed."
"You just caught me off-guard, that's all. Ain't nothin' funny about puns, sugarcube."
"I know. Every once in awhile I get lucky, though," her mate said with a wink, nudging her with a wink. "I mean, if I just wanted to make you laugh all the time without the challenge, it'd get boring."
She watched from the corner of her eye as her wife messily devoured the cake in a few bites, then pitched the plate like a discus to see who she could hit with it.
The stubborn silence again fell over them. It stood like a bulwark between the two, dauntless and unrelenting, but it was a wall that could not stand. Applejack squirmed in her chair as she felt Rainbow's eyes dart between the dancing Ponyvillians, her and back again. She struggled for words.
The music pounded.
The dancing ponies writhed about.
They sat together, unmoving and unspeaking.
It was from a barrage of realization and a trebuchet of emotion that the walls finally crumbled.
"I don't even know what you did..." she muttered, feeling the sentence swell painfully in her throat. She never got to finish her statement. The burning sensation of tears derailed her train of thought and spun it into fragments that disappeared into her mindscape like fragile tufts of cloud.
Rainbow's angelic wing wrapped around her like a comfort blanket, curling about her form and pulling her closer.
"Twilight said it was impossible..." Applejack choked.
A chuckle.
"Well, you know me... Everypony said a Sonic Rainboom was impossible too."
All the strength in her mighty earth pony limbs left her.
"How...?" she managed in a squeak, before leaning heavily into Rainbow's hooves. She buried her face in the downy cyan coat and let the tears flow.
"C'mon, AJ," she heard as the pegasus leaned in and held her closely. "I thought you'd be happy... now you're crying all over me?"
It was phrased as rhetorical. Applejack knew that. The only response she could formulate was more tears. She clutched to her wife like she was a life-raft.
It didn't matter how she had done it at that point. What mattered was that she was pregnant.
She was going to have a foal.
They were going to have a foal. Together. Nopony else was involved in it.
"I love you," she sobbed, summoning the only words her many scattered thought processes could concur on together. "Sweet Luna, I love you so much..."
Rainbow leaned back and grinned her adorably obnoxious grin.
"Yeah... I love me too."
Applejack couldn't help laughing. Her loud hearty guffaws rang across the library and drew a few short-lived looks. She'd normally give her wife a hard stare, the look she always gave whenever the pegasus said something silly or annoying.
Her outer crying was betrayed by her inner jubilation. Music sounded in her heart and warmed her soul with the rays of happiness. Joyful tears intermixed down her freckled cheeks, speckling her mate's cyan coat with dark splotches of moisture.
She paid no attention to the worried whispers around her, instead tucking her forehead up beneath that perfectly-placed jawline, and nuzzled the underside of her wife's chin.
"So, uh..." the pegasus said nervously, scooting back from her iron-like grip, "did you wanna go check out this party or something?" She chuckled. "I don't know if you've noticed, but there are a couple signs hanging around the room that say, 'Happy Birthday, Applejack!' on em."
She looked up and over to the crowd. They tried to hide the fact that they'd been fretting all that time.
"I-I guess..." she sniffed, "a little partyin' wouldn't be too bad." Applejack grinned. "You still need somepony to whup ya in a dance contest."
Rainbow giggled and pranced in a circle around Applejack as they padded towards the center of the room where their friends writhed to Pinkie's music.
The pegasus leaned in and whispered into her ear, "So, when do we tell 'em?"
Smiling, the farmpony chuckled and nudged her mate's cutie mark with her own. "I ain't exactly sure I'd know what to say, sugarcube... I mean... it's a foal right? My foal?"
Rainbow rolled her eyes and chuckled. "Our foal," she agreed, draping a wing over her form.
"M-maybe just... just a little while longer?" she said softly. "I ain't even sure I believe it myself yet..."
Her wife smiled and nuzzled her nose softly. "You got it, girl. So what do you say tonight we let the party do the talking?"
Applejack nodded.
The party then transformed, and her world became alive with color, noise, and life.
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Not entirely sure where trebuchet fits in this, unless I skimmed over it.
But ooooh, who did she sell her soul to for this!?
Make that the prompt. Soul.
4003768
It was more subtle this time around. Go back through it again after looking up what a trebuchet was and what they were used for.
It's more symbolic this time around than overt.
4003780 oh, I know what a trebuchet is, I just missed the line the first time around. Found it now.
4003780
And such a magnificent job of symbolism it was! I did not expect that you would do that.
And mostly to give you a diverse set of choices to choose from : "Water"
was browsing through apple dash and stumbled across this, It is a ingenious idea if I may say, may I offer you this as your next piece? Helpless
:rainbow laugh: I want to see what you can come up with...
4003768 Agreed? Where is the trebuchet???? I was hoping to see Pinkie use one!!!!!!!!!!
Ok, Prompt: Friends. (Yeah, again)
Ah, this story is getting better and better :D I like it. I can't even imagine how sad and betrayed Applejack must feel. It wasn't her perfect birthday.
Prompt... Heart.
Awww.
Did you have to bring the sads so soon?
Love this story.
Prompts (yeah, there's more than one):
• Party
• Revelations
• Family
4001277
You deserve a thousand hugs and golden cookies.
Now you've got me wondering what happened/how it happened... Was it a wish, perhaps?
In any case, here's my prompt: Wish
WTFDIJR!?
What the heck is going n here!? Please post next chapter soon!
I thought the story was going to start with Applejack giving birth to a foal, but it turned out to be an AppleDash fic. Well, here's a stache.
Um...I don't get the "So why the long face?" pun...
5174185 horses have a long face. Applejack a a horse.
This is a beautiful story, I'm loving it.
Thank you for sharing your vision with us!