Rooms Of The House

by sleepyhead

Hudsonville, Mi 1956

Applejack remembers the tornado as a major turning point in her childhood. Before the tornado, she had lived in a small town just south of Manehattan. Her father and mother, Bramley Apple, and Ms. Murcott Mandarin owned and ran a small grocery shop there. Their life was a simple one, Ms. Murcott Mandarin ran the shop and cared for AJ and her older brother while her father got shipments of fruits and delivered homemade jams and preserves to other ships all throughout Equestria. It was hard work, but both the Apple and Orange families had strong work ethic.

The business didn’t go well, but Applejack barely remembers this. She also barely remembers the move to Ponyville, only that they were packed up and moved to the ranch house, where Granny Smith and Grandpop Elstar ran the Apple Family Farm. Bramley and Ms. Murcott continued to make jams, selling them to make a living. The farm didn’t make enough to comfortably support both the elder apples and the addition of four extra mouths.

Applejack does, however, remember doing farm work with her mother and brother. Later on, after she had returned from her stay with the Oranges, she took over her mother’s share as well. Her mother, pregnant with her younger sister, spent most of this time sitting on the porch, watching her children work. Ms. Murcott grew quite weak during her pregnancy, Granny Smith often stayed up all night helping her daughter in law cope with the pains.

Apple Bloom was born only a week before the tornado. Bramley Apple wasn’t home when this happened. Ms. Murcott and the Apples had tried hard to get a letter to him, but the time went on by. The weather across Equestrian had been windier than usual this season. The summer heat was starting to meet the coolness of oncoming autumn. Tornado warnings, which came over an old radio Grandpop Elstar kept next to his chair, were common. Almost every evening for a week they were informed of a warning.

Applejack remembers the night of the tornado with vivid clarity. Even looking back upon it, she could hear and smell and see it, somewhere in her mind. It had been a particularly hot day when the weather turned. Big Mac was helping Grandpop Elstar with his plowing. Applejack, who had finished feeding the hogs, sat on the porch and watched. Looking back on it, AJ remembers how closely her brothers red pelt matched her grandfathers. Both of them were covered in sweat, and she remembers hearing one of them remark the breeze was nice.

Applejack had, at the time, agreed with it, it was, only shortly after that moment that she noticed how quickly the clouds were rolling in. Had they escaped the pegasi that would have normally broke them? If Applejack had paid better attention to the radio at that time in her life she would have known that the work of the weather wasn’t quite the pegasi’s fault.

Her mother is the one who calls out to them. Opening the door, “Storm’s coming!” She yelled. Applejack can remember her mother’s voice, Light and flowy with a heavy Manehattan accent. The boys headed inside. Applejack remembers how they smelled, like dirt, and sweat. The same way she did when she worked on the farm.

The family had dinner as normal that night. Murcott Mandarin wrote a letter to her husband and stored it away to mail out the next day. Apple Bloom cried all through dinner, and when her mother had tried to stand with the baby, Grandpop Elstar spoke. Applejack doesn't quite remember what he said, but it was something along the lines of “Coddling that baby ain't gonna do nothing but make her lazy”

The next thing Applejack remembers about the night was the wind. It traveled through an open window, cold and fast and loud. The bluster extinguished several candles and chilled the room. The house had grown dark, and the family sat quietly for a few moments. Frightened. Even baby Apple Bloom was quiet.

That night was the first time that AJ had heard the emergency alarm. It cut through the silence with a terrible wail. Applejack remembers her brother jumping up, she remembers the look of surprise her mother held when she realized the baby did not cry out with fright.
Her grandfather was the first pony to break the quiet of that moment. “Everypony in the cellar!” He went first; Applejack remembers this being one of the last times she saw her granddad run. Grandpop Elstar would only a few years later grow terribly ill from cancer.

The red stallion, calls his grandson for help, and the two of them pried the storm doors open. Ms. Murcott swaddled the baby in a blanket and the two of them disappeared down the stairs. She remembered the wind catching her mother’s long yellow hair, blowing it back and forth. AJ helped her grandmother get candles and matches, and they were the next ones in the cool, dark cellar. When Big Mac had entered, Grandpop Elstar closed the door.

She can still hear it, how it clanged shut, muffling the wheezing cries of the wind. Applejack sat next to her older brother. No one spoke. Everything was quiet. Granny Smith lit a candle and set it on the hard dirt floor beneath them.

Applejack can remember everything. The baby was quiet, and it scared her, made everything feel eerie. When AJ had asked if her sister was okay, her mother replied quietly that the baby was asleep. There is calmness downstairs. And it felt, at the time, like a lifetime had passed.

The only noises that came from the room were from her grandfather, sitting at his workbench, carving away at something, and her mother, humming softly as if it would make her children feel calmer. Applejack had, at the time, examined the jars kept in the cellar. Most of them were different jellies and preserves, some of them made by her parents. In the corner of the cellar, on a high shelf that, at the time only Elstar could reach, were bottles of wine and whiskey. Special aged cider sat there as well.

Applejack turned her head, looking at her mother, noticing only then that her mother was crying. Ms. Murcott had been a strong, spitfire of a woman, with a plump frame, and orange fur, this was the first time she had cried in front of her children.

“You ok Ma?” Mac would ask, his tenderness had gotten him bullied in school, but AJ loved her older brother dearly. Her mother just nodded; her humming wavering only for a few moments as the women took a big breath and composed herself.

“Just frightened,” Her mother told them. There was more silence; for quite a while. Applejack now realizes that the fear her mother had was for her father. She didn’t know it at the time, but he would have been traveling through the terrible weather and storms in Equestria. His lack of letters filled her mother with incredible worry.

AJ can understand it too. She remembers the worry she felt when she first stopped getting letters from Coloratura. That was also in the past, though. Applejack spent her current days moving. She had found a nice house, not too far out of the town she had lived in her entire life, and was starting to settle. Big Mac and Miss. Cheerilee had settled, and gotten married. AJ wasn’t told to move, but with Apple Bloom away in college, she didn’t see a reason to stay. Cheerilee would help granny do chores, and she would come back to do farm work, every day.

It was time for her to move on finally. Stop pretending that most of the time she wasn’t stuck in the past.

Author's Note:

This will be the first of 11 Chapters. Thank you for reading.