Window Shopping

by Parallel Black

1 - Applejack Opens Her Eyes

Applejack wiped her brow and looked up at the nearing rainclouds. There weren’t very many, but then today’s rain was only meant to serve as a constant, light shower. A refreshing break from the untimely Autumn heat. The farmer looked back to her baskets and felt a small sense of satisfaction in seeing them full. An extra apple fell from the tree and plonked itself in the middle of one of them.

“Must have been a latecomer,” Applejack mumbled to herself. As she got a better look at the apple, she frowned; it was perfectly ripe, meaning it should have detached alongside the rest of them. Just as she looked up to see where it had fallen from, another late apple fell from the leaves and landed atop the first.

Again, it was a bright, healthy red. It had wobbled after landing, but quickly gained balance to make a small podium of apples in the centre of the basket. Applejack found herself staring at it in curiosity. “Gotta happen sometime, I suppose…?” she reasoned to herself.

A third apple fell, and landed perfectly on the second. Applejack growled. “Hey! Who’s up there in my apple tree?”

All the apples in the four baskets turned to face her with a one-toothed grin. Applejack watched in horror as her precious apples floated into the air in a miniature whirlwind of fruit, and glommed together to make the shape of a familiar draconequus.

“Discord!” Applejack shouted. “Gimme back my apples, you darn vandal!”

Discord stood and leaned against the tree he had grown from. He picked the last apple from his mouth and spat out the seeds, ignoring Applejack’s rant. “Bleh, these apples really are nothing special,” he commented. “So boring and tasteless. Hmhm, never thought I’d hear myself saying that.” He popped it back in and happily gulped it down.

Applejack took a step forward, her expression contorted with fury. “Discord! Did you eat all of my apples?”

He gave her a weird look before covering his snack in maple syrup. “What do you mean all of your apples? You have a whole… something-something acres of them!”

“That ain’t the point! That’s my family’s livelihood you’re eating, pay up!” Applejack extended a hoof, intending to make Discord pay.

He looked at the hoof closely for a moment. “Hmm… nah,” he batted it away and carried on eating.

Applejack cried in horror for a moment, and looked between the stump on the end of her foreleg and her hoof laying on the ground a few feet away. She quickly trotted over and jammed them back together. She looked back at Discord and growled, her hoof doing the same before dropping off its owner once again.

Discord dug a small ball of dirt out of the ground and popped that in his mouth as well. A shiver ran down his spine at the taste. “Really though, in all seriousness: ‘tastiest, highest-quality farm in Equestria’? This place may as well be a baked, sandy wasteland. The texture might leave something to be desired but at least it’ll have been cooked!”

Applejack caught the escaping thing. It writhed in anger beneath her grip. “Discord! Bring my hoof back to normal, you’re freaking me out!”

“This place tasted better when it was producing popcorn and grossly-oversized fruits!”

*WHACK*

Discord fell to the ground, tongue lolling out and eyes rolling back into his head. Applejack’s chosen weapon was a fallen branch, tipped with her own orange hoof. She watched, only growing more and more annoyed by the moment, as Discord’s “ghost” rose from his body.

“OoOoH Applejack! How could you do such a thing?” he weeped, dabbing his spectral eyes with a transparent cloth.

“You’re fine.” Applejack once again held out her hoof-stick. “Now come on and pay up. I don’t have all day to harvest y'know.”

Discord looked between the stick-borne hoof and its owner a few times before letting out a sigh. He reluctantly materialized a small sack of bits and placed it in the hoof. “There, everything I have.” He popped back into his body and poked Applejack’s chest. “And that’s only because you were persistent.”

Applejack took the bag in her free hoof, and caught the other one on her stump as it tried to leap after it. She flexed the reformed joint with a smile. “Good enough for me!”

Discord wound himself around the tree he’d been stealing from and looked across the orchard as if he were manning a crow’s nest. “Bland, bland, and bland as far the eye can see. We be travelling rough turf today…”

“Wait, why’s it moving?”

Discord coiled down to the ground again and tossed the waking bag out of Applejack’s grasp. “No reason. Now, as I was saying,” he began as he guided the farmer away, “one of the things I hate in this world is boredom. Most Draconequi feel the same way.”

Applejack looked up at him with a question on her tongue. “So… are you telling me that there’s more of you out there?”

Discord nodded, then flicked the end of her muzzle. “Don’t interrupt me.” Applejack glared at him. “This hatred of mine is one of the reasons I dislike Celestia enough for her to turn me to stone. She’s so boring that they had to put her in charge of the Sun itself just to make her more interesting!”

“‘They’ being?” Another flick.

“Whoever was in control of it before her, I can’t remember her name. Anyway…” He bent down to look Applejack in the eyes. “Your farm is boring,” he commented.

“Hey!” Applejack predictably replied.

“Perhaps the most interesting thing about this place is your use of pigs. Not many farmers figure out a use for them past feeding the local Griffon and/or Dog population.”

Applejack grimaced at the thought of her pigs being used in such a way. It would likely be best if I just see where he’s going with this… “Yeah. We got a whole routine set up for ‘em, nightly shifts around the farm, and sometimes around Ponyville when the Everfree starts sending out more monsters than usual.”

“Then again, not many farmers have to deal with threats such as Timberwolves.” Discord stopped and turned in place, suddenly appearing in front of Applejack. “Which brings me to the reason for my visit.”

“My farm is boring, right?” Applejack asked, unamused. “I don’t see why you came here if you hate boredom so much. Not that this is a boring job, if you know a thing or two about farming.”

“And yet,” Discord spoke, spreading his mismatched arms wide, “I was drawn here due to an excessive amount of nothing happening. The dirt in this place is stale and tasteless, with only a faint hint of apple. The farmland itself has a nicer little tang to it, but it still needs some extra life added in!”

Applejack gave him an odd look. “Some extra life? It’s a farm, the whole darn-” He eyes went wide. “Oh no.”

A few minutes passed of nothing happening, all except for a bag of golden coins hopping away and out of the orchard.

Discord sat on a cleanly-chopped tree stump, tapping his forehead to give himself a little bit of stimulus while Applejack slowly realized that the trees were not, in fact, coming to life to eat her. “Are you done yet?” he called.

Applejack patted the ground at the base of another apple tree, watching it with an intense gaze. She looked back to Discord. “No, I’m not. You don’t say something suspicious like ‘needs some extra life’ without something uprootin’ itself and walkin’ around!”

Discord shrugged. “Is it really so wrong that I found a chance to use that phrase in a non-implying fashion? One would almost think you don’t trust me, Applejack!”

“I don’t trust you, and you know that well enough!”

Discord snapped his fingers and a few bucket fulls of gooey, chopped fruit rained down upon the angry farmer. Applejack’s mouth hung agape as she laid her eyes upon Discord’s handiwork. She stomped her hooves on the ground, squishing a few pieces underneath. “QUIT RUININ’ MY APPLES!!”

Discord just sat there, smiling. “Those aren’t apples.”

Applejack scowled at him and slowly turned her gaze back to the mess that now covered her and the ground. The anger gradually shifted to confusion as she took a better look at what she had been doused with. “What’re these things…?” she asked, half to herself as she shifted the soft, yellow bits around, trying to identify what fruit they were from.

“Bananas,” Discord answered. “You won’t find them very often in Equestria. They can only grow in the tropics, and all Equestria has at its south is a huge swampland and miles upon miles of desert.”

One of the bananas reformed and was levitated into Applejack’s hoof. The curved, elongated shape barely balanced in one hoof, and the angles of the fruit’s skin made it wobble a bit as Applejack looked it over. “I’ve seen pictures of these before. Never actually seen one in real life though.” She leaned back in surprise as the top peeled away, revealing the lighter, softer flesh of the fruit within.

With Discord’s encouragement, she popped it into her mouth and bit a chunk off. Almost immediately, the aggravation dropped from her face and drool started to pool in her mouth. She swallowed the mushy fruit and the rest quickly vanished into her gullet as well, skin included.

Discord grinned at the sight. “Bananas are one of the tastiest, most addictive legal fruits in the world. They were once even seen as something only a royal could eat. The Royal Fruit.”

Applejack stared at the broken bits of many innocent bananas covering the ground. “All of a sudden… I feel like apples aren’t the best thing in the world anymore.”

Discord’s ears blew up in a pair of miniature mushroom clouds. “You what?”

“A veil has been lifted from my eyes and I am no longer blinded by what I have known all my life, except for that one time I tried oranges and didn’t like them.” Applejack patted Discord’s front. Her pupils had dilated, and they stared into the very essence of his soul. “Can I have another?”

“And… you’ve lost your mind. That was very quick.” For a few moments and for the first time in a very long time, Discord stopped to consider his options. “Well… yes. Celestia made a huge stash of them after she renovated the castle dungeons, but I doubt we could reach it without breaking my probation condi-”

Applejack leapt up and wrapped her forelegs around her best friend’s neck. “Does she have more? Can I have more? Can you make more?”

Discord looked her in the eyes and scratched his chin, bemused and rather taken aback by the normally strong-willed earth-pony’s reaction to the new fruit. “Yes to all,” he replied with a big smile stretching over his face.

Comments

[MerlosTheMad]

[Muggonny]

A decent story by far. I don't have too much to about this chapter. All I'll say is that Applejack is missing her accent. She talks like a normal character throughout, and will occasionally show sign of her accent. If you want help improving it, read scripts from the show.