What are you doing New Year's Eve?

by WishyWish

Whole Lotta Yammerin'

High winter in Ponyville. A season of silence and song, featuring voices raised in merriment with the breaking of sleds over snow dunes, cast in contrast alongside quiet vales where pristine white lulls everything into a deep sleep. Relentless in her chill as her sister season in sweltering heat, winter commands her portion of the year with a strange dichotomy. Ponies end up chilled to their very bones, only to find cozy joy in the process of warming up again that’s sorely absent for the rest of the year. With the harvest done and their troubles packed away, ponies seek their pleasure while the soil finds welcome solace from the jarring process of tilling.

Winter may be at its apex, but the year is not long for the world. With Hearth’s Warming behind them, ponies throughout the land look to the celebration of the new year as a different sort of party - an opportunity to relax away the hustle and bustle of the holiday season with a glass of champagne and the remainder of the seven-layer bean dip. It is a last hurrah for days gone by, and the kind of closure everypony looks for in order to face the remaining bite of winter, which boasts no additional holiday season to look forward to.

While her citizens rejoice, Ponyville sleeps.

Though the fields may be wrapped up in a blanket of white hibernation, the great house at Sweet Apple Acres sports a candle of pure beeswax in every window. Their combined glow is testament to the stubborn spirit of the Ponyville Apples, who would sooner walk around the entire house twice a day to light and extinguish each flame than put their faith in the enchanted candles available at most holiday stores, that will do the job for you by way of simple spoken commands. Within, the home fires burn with the trappings of a modest affair - warm apple pie fills the nostrils, cider flows freely, and the denizens of the house mingle with their closest companions.

“...shush ‘n junk.”

“Huh?” Apple Bloom, distracted from a game of Parcheesi on the living room floor with her crusader friends by the strange uttering, turned to the sound. “What’d you say, Granny?”

Granny Smith, who had helped out in the kitchen until the combination of her groaning hips and the insistence of younger mares that she get some rest chased her away, sat upon her rocker. Shielded in a thick quilt from the cold she insisted was more intense than what her fellows could perceive, she peered at the falling snow out the nearest sealed window, giving it a firm stink-eye.

“That’s what we used t’call it when I was about up to where yer withers are now, Apple Bloom,” the matriarch replied. “All that white out there I mean. Shush ‘n junk.”

Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle each uttered the phrase, passing it back and forth like a volleyball. Giggles went along with it, but the Apple crusader voiced her thoughts first.

“Shush ‘n...is that like slush or...slurry or somethin’?”

Granny Smith regarded the outdoor landscape with a slow wave of her foreleg. “Alla it. It’s pretty sure, but it’s just a buncha junk what gets in the way of the growin’ season when it goes on too long. Makes everything outside shush-up, too. Just a bunch of shushy-junk.”

“Did you come up with that when you were a filly?” Sweetie Belle asked innocently.

Granny nodded without looking to the little one. “Sure’n I did. Done caught on too. Every pony in town was sayin’ it before long.”

Scootaloo wrinkled her brow - a feat for such a young filly. “I’ve never heard anypony say that before.”

“Me either,” Apple Bloom shrugged. “It’s sure got a funny ring to it though. Shush ‘n junk, eh heh.”

Granny Smith opened her mouth to give the young ponies a dissertation on the height of usage concerning her coined phrase, but they had already turned back to their game.

“Ain’t th’ same Ponyville s’why…” Granny Smith muttered. “Ain’t nothin’ around here like it once was, an’ that there’s a fact.”

“What’s a fact?” A creaky, husky voice asked. “That you’d still be chilly even if that was beach sand out there?”

Granny’s left ear flicked. She tilted her head thoughtfully, eying the source of the comment as a reflection in her beloved window. “Aw hush it,” she replied. “If’n that were sand out there, you’d have half of it in yer britches by now. Itchin’ all the way home.”

A bent old-stallion, as doopy in the jowls as Granny Smith herself and sporting a coat of tanned leather over his bones, stepped into view. He had one hoof threaded through a mug of cider, and bore a cutie mark that once upon a time would have been the very height of sacrilege to see upon Apple soil at all - much less in the house. “You sound like a banshee with all your wailing,” he smirked. “I guess some things never change.”

The stallion was in full view, but Granny Smith was still addressing his reflection. “Yeah, well some things do change, I reckon.” She nodded at his mug. “You spike that with pear juice, or are ya just carryin’ it around for show?”

Grand Pear, his tail the color of the winter wonderland outside, sauntered towards the mirror. He placed a hoof on it and pretended to enjoy the view, while poignantly blocking that of Granny Smith. “Well now, I see you have your eye on the back forty. As I recall that prime patch of real-estate used to be all pear trees, as far as the eye could see.”

“Used t’be,” Granny Smith huffed. She rocked her chair with a bit more spunk, as though the squeak of complaint from the old wood was some sort of thumbing of her muzzle at her elderly guest. “It was a sight for sore eyes. When I got my hooves on it though, them eyes weren’t sore no more.”

“Touche,” Grand Pear quipped. He breathed on the glass, fogging it up on purpose, and began to draw a pear on it with the tip of his hoof. “You should come up and see my spread in Vanhoover sometime. Well, I’m retired now so I guess it’s better called the family’s spread, but we’ve got four times the land we ever had here, and three times again the production output. You can barely find a pear in all of Equestria that doesn’t have our brand on it.”

“Oughtta be,” Granny Smith agreed. “Given yer the only ponies what ever thought raisin’ pears was a worthwhile thing. Weren’t no competition back then, and there ain’t now, neither.”

“Perhaps,” Grand Pear finished his drawing with a second crude rendition of the fruit behind his family’s success. “But I’ll corner a market nopony else is working any day of the week.

Granny Smith gestured at an easy chair. “Sit a spell. Yer blockin’ my view, an’ if you creak yer bones any more I’m gonna hire a jug band t’play xylophone with yer ribs.”

Grand Pear touched a hoof to his chest and plopped himself down a in chair next to Granny’s, separated from hers by a narrow end-table. “You wound me, you old crabapple. But that’s the first time you ever offered me a seat, too. A red letter day, I’d say.”

“Well, git used to it I guess,” Granny Smith shrugged. “And don’t you be turnin’ yer muzzle up at that mug of cider. That there’s the top shelf. I keep a barrel of the good stuff every year for this here shindig. You’d be insultin’ generations of Apples if y’let it get cold.”

Grand Pear smiled thoughtfully at his mug. “Well, far it from me to insult every pony that ever wore an apple on their flank since the dawn of time.” With that, he treated himself to a sip. The action was followed by a soft sigh, as he reclined on the seat in a somewhat humanoid fashion. “I bet you think I hate apples.”

Granny Smith rolled her eyes sardonically. “Y’don’t say? Gee, that thought never crossed my mind, even b’fore all the cobwebs started growin’ over everything I got upstairs.”

The Pear patriarch was about to return the jab, but his companion’s commentary gave him pause. He turned his attention to a group of younger ponies who were sharing merry conversation. None of them were familiar to him, but the sight was pleasant enough. “Never thought you’d say something like that to me, you know. I might even be flattered.”

“What’re you yammerin’ about this time?” Granny Smith muttered.

“Nothing,” Grand pear replied. “Just that I could swear you just admitted to being old. I bet you’d never do that around your grandfoals.”

“Tch,” Granny Smith spat, “takes one t’know one.”

Grand Pear stretched his back and grunted with the effort. “To that, I can’t help but agree.”

The two eldest ponies at the party by far sat in silence for a time, watching the snow pile up. There was a slurping noise, and Granny Smith turned to notice that Grand Pear’s mug stood empty.

“I didn’t let it get cold.” He crossed his heart with a hoof. “My word as a Pear.”

“Izzat a good word?”

Grand pear returned Granny Smith’s crotchety stare, intended to intimidate the young, with one of equal measure. “You gave me your word that the cider’s good.”

“Sure’n it is!!” Granny Smith huffed.

“Well, it was good, and if I give you my word on that, then my word not being any good means your word is also not any good.”

“That’s just...dagnabbit what’n Celestia’s garters are we talkin’ about!?” Without giving Grand Pear time to respond, Granny Smith whacked her sagely green hoof on the arm of her chair. “Applejack! Where y’at, youngun!?”

Applejack, who had been in conversation with a number of familiar faces, excused herself and approached her elders. Filled with an energy that the older ponies were both pleased with and jealous of, she smiled at each in turn. “Hey there Grand Pear; Granny. What’s the dander?”

“I ain’t got my dander up!” Granny Smith insisted sharply. “How’s them dishes comin’? Do I gotta git in there and show y’all how it’s done?”

“Aw shucks, we finished that half an hour ago,” Applejack chuckled. “Turns out Rarity and Fluttershy both got real good systems for it, though Fluttershy said somethin’ about normally using woodchucks...can’t figure how exactly...and the detergent was too rough on Rarity’s hooves.” She shrugged. “Well, it all worked out.”

“What’sa matter with our system?” Granny Smith croaked. “Th’ one where we do th’dishwashin’ and th’cleanup after the guests have gone, because it ain’t polite to ask ‘em to help with all that there.”

“Now now Granny,” Applejack chided, “Nopony asked them to help out. They offered, and it’s right neighborly of ‘em, seein’ as how--”

“Seein’ as how y’all don’t want me in there ‘cause I ain’t got no giddy in my up no more,” Granny Smith interrupted.

Applejack’s smile wilted. “It ain’t like that, Granny. It ain’t so much of an imposition anymore for party guests to do somethin’ like that. It woulda been more rude not to let ‘em help.” She chuckled sheepishly. “...don’t I know that, ‘cause it’s a lesson I’ve had to learn myself.”

“Well, in my day--”

Again Granny Smith was interrupted; this time by Grand Pear. “Applejack, that was some fantastic cider, by the way. Did you harvest those apples yourself?”

Applejack beamed, as if her own father had just lavished her with praise as a filly. “Sure did! Well, the whole family helped--”

“‘cept me,” Granny Smith butted in.

“--the whole family helped,” Applejack repeated. “But I sure am glad you liked it. For some reason I had this notion maybe you wouldn’t like apples much. Gosh darn silly of me, I guess.”

Grand Pear smiled wanly. “It was never the apples themselves that were trouble for me.”

“Git him another mug,” Granny Smith spoke up. “Be a dear an’ git us both one, so’s I can see how long he really went before finishin’ that last one.”

Applejack looked apologetic. “Gee Granny, I think there’s only one mug’s worth left. Unless you want me to go down into the cellar and roll up another--”

“--naw,” Granny Smith held up her hoof. “Ain’t no point in that this late. Give it t’him. He’s got a lotta catchin’ up to do.”

Applejack smiled. “I sure will, Granny.” She nodded at Grand Pear, and finally retreated.

Grand Pear smirked. “Are you always so full of piss and potpourri, Crabapple?”

“Hush,” Granny Smith replied. “You heard what I said. You ain’t tasted real top-quality Apple Acres cider until you’ve had more’n one mug. So y’all drink the last one.” She shouted in the direction of the kitchen. “An’ git another quilt in here, ya hear? This old stallion’s liable to freeze his fetlocks off!”

Grand Pear finally determined just how to properly release the foot of his easy chair. It kicked open with a thump, and he wasted no time stretching his knobby hind legs. “Applejack’s a fine mare.”

“Sure as shootin’,” Granny Smith agreed. “All the magic mumbo-jumbo in Equestria ain’t lyin’ about it neither.”

“She’s got her mother’s spirit,” Grand Pear commented. “And her daddy’s sense of honesty. Right cute young thing she is, too. I don’t see a ring on her though.”

“Are you kiddin’?” Granny Smith huffed. “Last thing on her mind’s tyin’ the knot. She’s so young yet, an--”

“I know, I know,” Grand Pear waved a hoof to signal no contest. “No strapping stallions in her life at all though?”

Granny Smith looked dismayed. “...naw. Too busy savin’ the world over’n over again. Big deal, all that.”

“You know, in our parents’ day, she’d be nearly a spinster at her age.”

Granny Smith snorted. “Them’s all old-fashioned ways.”

Grand Pear organized his forelegs on his chest and sighed. “So are our ways. Like the idea of clearing a marriage to the love of your life with your parents.”

Neither nag had the right words to keep the conversation going. They sat in silence, save for a few refusals for any sort of assistance any younger pony who happened to be trotting by could offer. Granny Smith finally spoke up, when the last small group was out of earshot.

“Dagnabbit, what do they take us for? I don’t need help every consarned minute!”

“They’re just trying to be nice,” Grand Pear explained. “Or maybe they’re just trying to be good youngsters.”

“They oughtta hush, then. ‘Cause more trouble speakin’ up than not.”

Grand Pear had a comment, but Applejack interrupted via returning with the requested items. He offered the mug to her grandfather with a smile, and had the new quilt draped over him before he could say anything about it. Like a good granddaughter, she politely asked if there was anything else she could do, and when nothing more was required, made her exit.

“I’ll say it again,” Grand Pear observed. “She’s a fine mare. Capable and strong. She’d make a fine companion for a hardworking stallion.”

Granny Smith planted her hooves on one arm of her chair and craned her neck, trying in vain to bore through her companion’s body with her gaze alone. “Why’re you all up in legs about it?” she interrogated. “Got some Pear you think would make her a match?”

“No,” Grand Pear replied. “But you seem pretty insistent to the contrary.”

“She ain’t ready for all that marryin’-off jazz,” Granny Smith insisted. “Ain’t none of ‘em ready for it. If it weren’t fer me, they’d all be gallopin’ ‘round this here farm in circles, not knowin’ what to do with themselves!”

Grand Pear couldn’t help the old rivalry. He continued to move his pieces, maneuvering his opponent where he wanted her to go. “Think they can’t handle life without you, huh?”

“Sure as!”

“Think they can’t save Equestria without you, hm?”

“Sure it--whuh?”

“Think they can’t haul apples, or buck trees, or run everything you can’t run on your own anymore without you I bet too, right?”

Granny Smith’s ears drooped. She sat back. “...i-it ain’t like I don’t trust ‘em to live their own lives, s’just--”

“You’re right,” Grand Pear agreed. “It’s not like that. You trust them plenty. You just don’t want them to leave you. The more independant they become, the higher chance of that. Every ‘family’ farm has to start with somepony, after all.”

Granny Smith wilted. She turned to her own quilt, which she began to fiddle with. “...mebbe. Are y’all happy now that y’went an’ got that outta me?”

Grand Pear didn’t reply. When Granny Smith looked, she noticed that the codger of a stallion was doing the same thing with his quilt - but his eyes were on it, as though the very fabric enraptured him.

“That one ain’t finished,” Granny Smith explained. “Got plenty of quilts around here what never got finished. Ain’t like I got all day to sit around and pass needles through fabric yanno, so if’n yer gonna say somethin’ about--”

Grand Pear held up a silencing hoof, his eyes still on the quilt. “This...isn’t one of yours. It can’t be.” He held up a portion of the fabric. Upon it were a number of expertly sewn-together quilting squares. Some depicted images of apples, but just as many sported images of pears. A few even went so far as to feature both fruits together. “Don’t try and tell me you made this. I won’t believe it.”

Granny Smith hesitated. “...naw. Yer kin made it. Been in the linen closet so long, the younguns prolly never even noticed nothin’ different about it.”

Grand Pear’s touch softened until he was practically caressing the fabric. It was something his daughter had touched - had worked on, with her own Earth pony hooves. “She...made this for her foals...or her husband…” he reasoned.

“Nope. Made it fer you, as I recall.”

Grand Pear’s eyes widened, but he never took them off the fabric. “F-for...for me? But...why…?”

“Peace offerin’,” Granny Smith replied. “She was gonna mail it to ya, come the day it was ready.”

“...why...why didn’t she…?”

“Y’all know why,” Granny Smith replied sternly. She pointed out into the yard, though the twin trees and the carved rock they grew upon were well out of sight. “Never got th’ chance.”

Grand Pear’s soft smile was gone. He continued to bathe the quilt in the affection of his gentle touch, hugging it as though it were a pony itself. “The foals...never asked about it?”

Granny Smith shook her head. “Nope. Just told ya, it’s been in the linen closet since way back. It’d take three friendship princesses as many years t’organize everything in there, and iffn you look at somethin’ enough, you stop seein’ it after a spell.”

“Why didn’t you give it to the foals, then? As something to remember their mother by?”

Granny Smith folded her forelegs stubbornly. “I woulda, but she didn’t want that.”

“Why?”

“Dernit, this here’s a party, this ain’t the time--”

“Why?”

Granny Smith sighed. “...on accounta it bein’ too complicated to explain. You were gone b’fore Big Mac even came along. Weren’t nothin’ but a smatterin’ of pear trees left by then. Nothin’ t’be the wiser of.”

“Are you telling me that my own daughter didn’t want her children to know about her entire side of the family?”

“They thought she was an Apple.” Granny Smith made a gesture in the air as though she were holding a jar of preserves. “Can’t tell with a cutie mark like their momma’s, and everypony was so used to callin’ her ‘Buttercup’ by then, her younguns thought that was her real name.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Grand Pear seethed, the quilt now tightly pinched between his hooves. “Why didn’t she just tell them?”

Granny Smith sat up. “Y’all know her. She was the sweetest darn filly what ever graced th’grass in this here hundred-horse town. Couldn’t bring herself to.”

“She couldn’t bring herself to talk about me?”

“Naw, she couldn’t,” Granny Smith repeated. “On account’a the fact that she would’a been totally honest with them. An’ there was some stuff she just couldn’t bring herself t’talk about no more.”

“Then why didn’t you tell them? After the fact? They’re all old enough to understand now-” Grand Pear thrust his hoof at the Crusaders, raising his voice such that it drew their attention, “-so why didn’t you say anything?”

“Wait, what?” Apple Bloom spoke up. “What’s goin’ on?”

“It weren’t my place!” Granny Smith replied sharply. “It ain’t an easy apple t’swallow, but when it comes to foals, momma comes b’fore grandmare! She didn’t want it, so I respected her wishes ‘till they figured it out on their own!”

“Or maybe you were just afraid to,” Grand Pear concluded.

“Y’know what?” Granny Smith admitted, “Mebbe it was some’a that too. Mebbe I am afraid’a losin’ them too, just like y’said! But you sure ain’t!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Y’all know what I’m sayin’,” Granny Smith seethed. “Y’can’t worry none if’n y’don’t care. An’ disownin’ your own daughter, right in front of everypony, just like that, sure keeps to the sayin’ - actions speak louder’n words!”

Grand Pear was up in his seat as well - he might have bolted to his hooves, had he the dexterity for such a sudden explosion of movement. “Wh-why you dusky old crabapple…! You don’t know the half of how I felt after all that happened! How I missed her!”

“Y’got a funny way of showin’ it,” Granny Smith muttered.

The room had quieted to the sound of only two voices, but the pair of bickering ponies who owned said voices didn’t notice. Grand Pear went on.

“That was years ago! I was upset, and I made a mistake, I admit that! I came back here to make up for that mistake in the only way I can!” By now the three Apple children had gathered, and Grand Pear regarded them with a snap of his foreleg. “I came here to be a part of their lives, because I can’t be a part of hers anymore! I was afraid, and by the time I got up the courage to do anything about it, it was too late! I came here because I was hoping that maybe somepony might still have a use for me, because nopony else does!”

Granny Smith tilted her head, “Ain’t got no use fer ya? Whatzat s’posed t’mean?”

“You know exactly what it means,” Grand Pear rumbled. “Because nopony has a use for you anymore, either. That’s what happens when you get old. Ponies don’t need you anymore, unless you’re an alicorn princess.”

Applejack attempted to insert herself into the conversation. “N-now just hold on a minute, everypony. I’m sure if we just take a deep breath an’ relax, we can all-”

“Applejack, hush,” Granny Smith warned.

“B-but Granny,” Applejack hesitated, “It’s New Year’s Eve. This ain’t the time for--”

“Oh, this here’s the perfect time,” Granny Smith countered. “It’s th’perfect time to air out alla these here dirty stockings!” She got out of her chair with such speed that Big Mcintosh instantly moved to her aid, but she waved him off. “I can get up m’self, dernit!”

Big Mac, the largest pony in the room and the bulkiest by far, folded his ears and stepped away, both submissive and bewildered. Applejack’s brow narrowed.

“Granny, he was just tryin’ to help you,” she pointed out. “We’re all just concerned that you may fall and hurt yourself--”

“I ain’t gonna fall!” Granny Smith insisted.

Applejack opened her mouth again, and then closed it. Apple Bloom looked as if she planned to say something, but elder sister thrust her hoof out before younger, blocking the thought before it came out. Applejack closed her eyes long enough to let out a calming breath, and then gestured at Big Mac to fall in with her.

“Y’know what?” Applejack said staunchly. “That’s just fine. If you don’t need any help, then we’ll all just let you both scratch each other’s eyes out and be done with it.” She turned to her kin, and gestured towards the rest of the partygoers. “Come on, everypony. There’s some more apple pie in the kitchen that y’all’re welcome to.”

Grand Pear had found his way to his hooves as well. Both of the expressions of the elderly ponies broke as their younger kin began to file out of the room. Each looked as though they had something they wanted to say to the retreating ponies, but neither did, until the only sound in the living room was the crackling of the hearth.

“...now look what y’went and did,” Granny Smith said in a low voice.

“Me? You’ve been in a crotchety mood all night,” Grand Pear pointed out. “You can’t tell me you treat your family like that all the time.”

“How I treat my own kin ain’t yer affair.”

“Yes it is, because they’re my kin too.”

Granny Smith winced. She went to a nearby coat hanger and retrieved a heavier shawl, which she began to tie over her usual one. “You an’ me have had this here comin’ for a long time, Prickly Pear. Long before our own younguns was ever born. And I think it’s about time we stepped outside.”

“You can’t be serious,” Grand Pear mumbled.

Granny Smith went so far as to buck the chair next to her. The kick didn’t so much as move the furniture and her hips weren’t in it, but the gesture had meaning nonetheless. “Think I can’t keep up with you ‘cause yer a stallion? Got yerself another think comin’, ‘cause I done taught my grandfoals every dern thing they know about buckin’ apple trees. Git yer coat on.”

Grand Pear stood in silent shock for a moment. Finally he pulled his coat from another rack and took to gearing himself up for a trot outdoors. “I know you can’t, but it’s because apples practically fall right off the tree and beg you to take them in. You haven’t kicked a tree at all until you’ve taken on a proud pear, and that’s just what you’re about to do.”

As they stepped off the porch and made prints in the snow up to their fetlocks, each combatant felt the light of eyes on them from the house, as surely as any blazing summer sun. Grand Pear, who was bringing up the rear, almost glanced back.

“Are they just going to watch us beat one another senseless?” He thought aloud.

“They’s just waitin’ fer us to git it outta our systems,” Granny Smith called into the night breeze without looking back. “Like we done with them, when they was nothin’ but bean sprouts. I hope yer ready fer a whuppin’, Pear.”

Grand Pear snorted derisively, his breath visible as a puff of white smoke. “I see what this is now,” he chided. “You weren’t afraid to tell them...you just didn’t want them to know they were half Pear!”

“Oh psh,” Granny Smith spat as she led the procession to a favorable patch of flat land near the pig pens. “If that were it, I’da burned that there quilt b’fore they ever done seen it!”

Grand Pear stopped, allowing his rival to put some distance between them. “You don’t have the gumption to do something like that. It would have made your son sad.”

Granny Smith whirled. “Don’t ya dare go bringin’ my boy into this here spat!”

“Why not? Isn’t that what this is all about?” Grand Pear bucked at the snow, as if he were preparing to start a stampede all by himself. “That boy ran off with my little girl. If it hadn’t been for him--”

“If it hadn’t been fer him,” Granny Smith interrupted, “ya’ll wouldn’t have three wonderful grandfoals that y’ain’t never seen up till a couple months ago!”

Grand Pear grit his teeth. “Oh that just about does it. That’s the last bit of flack in all these years that I’m going to take from you, Granny Smith! I tried to come back here, to this town, with my tail between my legs. I tried to make amends for everything, but you haven’t changed since that last glare we shared on that last day! We were neighbors for so long, but if this fight is all we have left--” he dropped into a stance, “--then I guess we’d better get to it!”

Granny Smith matched the combat posture of her opponent. “That’s the first right thing y’said in a coon’s age, y’old gelding! Thinkin’ yer all high and mighty - that you ain’t got no sins left no more just ‘cause yer kissin’ up all around the farm. I could’a taken you in a scuffle back then, and sure’n I can now!”

At the farm house, Apple Bloom attempted to trot out into the snow. An orange foreleg blocked her way.

“Applejack,” the younger sister whined, “What are you doin’? Somepony’s gotta go out there and stop ‘em before they get hurt!”

Big Mac shifted uncomfortably, but Applejack caught the aura of action from him and barred his approach the same way. “Normally I’d agree with ya both.” she sighed, “but this ain’t our affair. The two of them got blood that’s been boiling since before any of us were apples in mom and dad’s eyes.”

“Th-that’s why we gotta stop them!” Apple Bloom whined.

“No, that’s why we gotta do nuthin’,” Applejack corrected. “Pull ‘em apart now, and nothing’s ever gonna get solved.”

“What’re you waitin’ fer!?” Granny Smith called to her opponent. “Come on in git some’a this!”

Grand Pear stood still. “This was your idea, nag. You come and get some of this!”

“Just like a Pear never t’finish somethin’ what gets started!”

“You started it!”

“You done started it!” Granny Smith riposted. “Th’ day you left yer little girl cryin’ on my doorstep!”

“You started it, the day you encouraged your son to make my little girl abandon her family!”

“I never encouraged nothin’! It just happened! I was as shocked as you!”

“Very shocked I’m sure,” Grand Pear growled. “Shocked enough to take them right in like it was nothing. Your Pear prize.”

“A-are you callin’ me a liar!?”

“If the yoke fits, plow the fields with it!”

“That tears it!” Granny Smith shouted. “I don’t take bein’ called a liar offa nopony!”

In their minds, the two were mighty ponies - strapping stallion and elegantly dangerous mare. They kicked off their heels and charged at speed towards one another with all the force of the sun and the moon, intent upon creating a thunderclap that would engulf the farm, and possibly the whole town, in a mushroom cloud of explosive action. Their battle would be fierce, the stuff of legends, and ponies would sing tales of their plight for centuries to come.

...in reality, their pace was more of a canter. Or perhaps a slow walk. When they came together, their battle opened with mutual attempts to burn one another’s faces off with dirty stares, and a peppering of light hoof-slaps to one another’s cheeks.

“Y’all take that!” Granny Smith croaked. “An’ that! An’ that! I’ll bust yer hips up so bad, they’ll be worse’n mine!”

“You twang-speaking, arrogant, ignorant bumpkin!” Grand Pear shot back. “You’re a hundred years too late for me!”

“Two years.”

“What?”

“I said two years,” Granny Smith repeated. “Ain’t you two years younger’n me?”

Grand Pear pondered. “I...I think so, yes. Wait, how do I know that…?”

“Uh…” Granny Smith touched her dirty hoof to her chin. “Think it mighta been the grammar school we went to b’fore they put up the Ponyville Schoolhouse.”

“Hey, I remember that,” Grand Pear nodded. “Do you remember that old nag that used to slap every foal’s hooves with a ruler for every little thing we did?”

“Heh, back b’fore they made it so that was considered ‘cruel’,” Granny Smith recalled. “If’n y’ask me, that’s one sure way t’knock some sense into a filly!”

Grand Pear chuckled. Granny Smith paused and looked around.

“Wait...what were we doin’ agin?”

Grand Pear stopped to think as well. He regarded his hoof. Then he slapped Granny Smith across the face with the back of it. “That.”

The Apple matron’s scowl immediately returned. “D-dern tootin’ that was it! Come here’n lemme bruise ya up just like all yer pears were!”

“You and what army!?” Grand Pear snarled as he reacted to an incoming blow. “It would take six bushels of apples to even present a tiny challenge to a peck of pears!”

“Apples is juicy, round, delicious, and a sight prettier t’look at then them weirdo pears!” Granny Smith insisted. “You stick a hunnerd pears in a room with an apple, and sure’n as I got crow’s hooves under my eyes, you’ll have a pile of pearsauce with an apple on top!”

Grand Pear considered the odd comment. “What...are we talking about?”

“Y’done heard me!” Granny Smith barked, her hoof coming down again and again ineffectually upon her adversary’s chest. “All y’ever wanted was to make trouble, and y’gone an’ done it again! Y’came back here, and now everytime I look at ya, all I can think about is my boy!”

Grand Pear struck back a few times, and though every blow from both combatants was landing, none showed any sign of doing damage. “Wait--”

“I was tryin’ to fergit!!” Granny Smith wailed, her blows intensifying. “I had just about done it, too! Just about figured I’m ready t’meet my maker someday soon, and then y’came back and y’opened it all up agin! My boy done gone away, there ain’t nothin’ I can do about it, and he ain’t never comin’ back!!”

Grand Pear ceased his attack. “Crabapple, hold it--”

“I done buried my own son!” Granny Smith went on. “Ain’t nopony ought ever t’have to do that! You know what that’s like, goin’ through that!?”

Grand Pear let the angry sage hoof batter him, with no attempts to block it. “...no. I don’t. Because I wasn’t even here to do it.”

Granny Smith’s assault abruptly ceased, and the two elderly ponies shared a wide-eyed stare. They stayed that way until a dusting of silent snow warned them of future frozen entombment, should they fail to move again that night.

“Do you…” Grand Pear whispered, “...know how much I want to know what that’s like? No matter how much it hurts?”

“Y-y’dont…” Granny Smith sputtered, “y’don’t wanna know...y’don’t know what yer sayin’...”

“Yes I do…” Grand Pear said softly, eyes still locked with his counterpart. “...I want it, because...dammit...I deserve every second of it. I made Pear Butter dead to her whole family years before it happened for real.”

For the first time in as long as her disorderly memories could recall, Granny Smith found herself with no snappy comeback. She shivered, and pulled both her shawls tighter around her.

“...dern cold out here,” she complained. “Th’ heck you make me come out here fer, this here’s settin’ my old bones t’rattle…”

Grand Pear glanced at the house. “...we could go back inside.”

“Naw,” Granny Smith objected. “I...ain’t ready to yet.” With that, she turned on her heels and began marching towards the treeline.

“Wait, where are you going out in this mess?” Grand Pear called.

“Hush yer yammerin’, kick up yer hooves, and git t’followin’ me,” Granny Smith replied. She offered no other explanation and refused to lessen her pace, forcing her companion to fall in.

The companions trotted on through a moderate drift, until the view of the farmhouse fell behind. Lastly the glow vanished, taken over by stars above, and the world was swallowed up in a gentle, silent wonderland. When they were far enough away from civilization that he wasn’t certain he could find his way back alone, Grand Pear spoke up.

“Are you taking me out into the fields deep enough so nopony will find the body?”

Both aged ponies spat in unison.

“I said quit yer yappin’,” Granny Smith replied. She pointed ahead, into a clearing. “Y’all ought to know where this is. Lookit.”

The clearing was indeed familiar, even if the season and the march of years had crusted Grand Pear’s memories of it. The rock that still marked the meeting between lines of pear trees and apple was an old memory. In the center, growing atop the engravings their children had left behind, was a more recent memory - two trees, apple and pear, with trunks twisted around each other. They were not a magical construct and thus the trees were as bereft of fruit and leaves as their companions all around, but they stood, tall and firm, holding one another close as they withstood the passage of white nature that built up on their boughs.

Grand Pear looked away, even as he felt the pointy tips of each branch leap across the clearing and stab at his heart. “...I can’t fight you here.”

Granny Smith walked out into the clearing and made an effort out of plopping her rump down in the snow. “Ain’t here fer that. Siddown.”

Grand Pear stayed on his hooves. “What’s this about?”

The Apple matron turned to look her companion in the face. “I’ll tell ya plain. I hated you for a lotta years. It weren’t no ‘dislike’. I dun hated you. You were always over there with yer kin, growin’ pears and makin’ plans. I hated yer dirty horseguts so dern much that I don’t even remember how it got started, or why. Don’tcha think that’s a heck of a thing? Hatin’ somepony so bad y’fergit how it even started?”

“I...don’t remember either. I was just...so angry.”

Granny Smith nodded. “Y’said that before, when y’first came back to this here farm. And that’s all y’could say, because y’don’t know what other excuse to give. I don’t neither.”

Grand Pear raised a brow. He eschewed speech, allowing the matron to complete her thought.

Granny Smith’s eyes were full of determination, but the rest of her body seemed smaller, and even older, than usual. “Ima gonna tell you somethin’ - somethin’ I ain’t told nopony, not even our younguns, or their younguns. I fergit how the feud started, but I know what kept it goin’. I was intimidated. A’feared that you an’ yer kin would get the better of me.”

Grand Pear looked as though he had an itch on his muzzle in polite company, and didn’t want to scratch it. “...oh?”

“Yep,” Granny Smith confirmed. “My kin meant everything t’me. They still do. I was afraid you all would win out in the end - that it were some sorta competition, us bein’ neighbors. That pears would be the next big thing, and I’d have to come tell my family that we’re outta luck. That I can’t help ‘em no more.”

“Running a farm takes more than one pony--”

“Sure’n it does, but even before the farm was mine, it was still mine.” Granny Smith flexed a droopy muscle in her foreleg and grinned a flabby grin. “Applejack an’ Big Mac think it’s all about them runnin’ things now, but I was doin’ twice what they did in my day, and that was before my pappy was as worn out as I am now. Y’all could say that they love what they do, but me? I was obsessed. You were a threat to that. Even though you...never really did nothin’ fer me to think that way. It was all just a stupid game of one-uppin’ each other fer no good reason.”

Grand Pear looked down at his wrinkled hooves and let out a small breath. When there was nothing else, he glanced up.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what I think?”

Granny Smith shrugged. “Naw. Ain’t my place. I kicked yer butt right out there fer everypony t’see, and now I’m tellin’ you what’s fer. ‘Cause I gotta say it.”

“...why now?”

Granny Smith swiveled back towards the rock that held up the loving trees and bore the initials of her son and daughter-in-law. “‘Cause I ain’t no fool. I got less years in front of me than ahead by far. My boy, he…” she paused, as if the initials had become headlights and she a deer caught in them. “...he’s gone away. Yer kin made him happy, and if I’da had my way back then, he would’a spent his last days miserable instead. I almost caused my boy to have a short, sad life. Instead he had a short an’ happy one. Y’all helped make that happen. Someday soon I’m gonna go to my rest in the sky, and when I do, they’re gonna lay me down beside him, his daddy, and his wife. I ain’t fixin’ to go there with hate in my heart.”

Grand Pear said nothing for a long time. The wind whipped up for a moment, long enough to singe four pony ears with cold. Granny Smith shrank and closed her eyes, opening them again only when she heard a pony rump flop down beside her.

Grand Pear was laughing softly.

“...what in the horsehocky is yer issue?” Granny Smith snorted. “I’m pourin’ my heart out here, an’ you--”

Grand Pear held up a hoof. “N-no, heh, no...it’s not that. It’s just…” He collected himself. “...it was the same for me. Why do you think I moved my family to Vanhoover? Increasing our output was about making pears a thing in Equestria, but not just for the money. It was because I was terrified that pears would fall out of favor. I’m not a fool either. I know you were outselling me. Apples were eeking out pears everywhere, and I figured that if we stayed, it would be me who would have to tell my family that the game was over. That we’d lost.”

Granny Smith blinked. “What about all that talk? All them big words about production an’ all that?”

Grand Pear sighed. “Oh, it was a thing. We increased our production up there, sure. But I only ever felt the need to go so far. It was only ever about making a safe, secure future for the ponies I loved. That’s why Pear Butter staying here...felt so much like betrayal…” he shook his head and brought himself back on track. “But my vision wasn’t enough. My sons bought me out. I let them do it because I wanted to retire, but now they’re kicking it up past the level I ever envisioned, and...nopony needs me anymore. So I came to live here again. This time though, I don’t have a farm. So there was no need to be afraid of you anymore.”

“...Applejack needs ya,” Granny Smith offered. “So does Big Mac. An’ Apple Bloom, too.”

Grand Pear smiled wanly at the tree. “I know. And even though I abandoned their dear, sweet mother, that thought still makes me happy. I wonder if that means that I only came here to feel useful again.” He chuckled dryly. “See? I deserve every painful memory I can gather up.”

Granny Smith stared at the tree as well. “...an’ now, our own younguns are gone.”

“...yep.”

“Whatta you suppose we’re even doin’, sittin’ out here catchin’ cold like idiots?

Grand Pear shrugged. “Healing, I suppose.”

Granny Smith chuckled. The sound was like appleseeds rolling around in a tin can, and it became more of a dissonant screech as it rose. “Hee hee...we hated each other for the same dern reason, and a dern fool reason it was!”

“Sure was,” Grand Pear laughed.

“All we hadda do was talk it out, and we’d have saved our kin years and years of heartache! Can y’imagine that?” Granny Smith laughed. “Just one dern conversation, one dern settin’ aside of pride, and imagine what mighta been.”

Grand Pear was laughing heavily now too. “Just...a-all that trouble, we’re idiots aren’t we?”

“Sure are!”

“We caused all the headaches and heartaches for our children, and now we can’t even tell them how sorry we are, can we?”

“Nope!” Granny Smith cackled. “Sure can’t!”

“We’re downright horrible ponies, aren’t we!”

“Sure’n!”

Beneath the entwined trees, both childless parents laughed at themselves until their wrinkled faces hurt. The cackling transmogrified into a pair of wails, and the two bayed mournfully at the moon together, unashamed, with voices that split the silent cold and raised to the very spots in the heavens where their own stars would soon be. There they sat until exhaustion took them, and the tolling of a clock out of the range of their diminished hearing tolled the 11th hour.

Granny Smith was dabbing at her eyes with one of her shawls. She sucked in a hard breath and made an effort to maintain the control she was building back up. “Horsefeathers...we been out here all night. Gonna catch our death’a cold.”

Grand Pear was trying to bring his daughter’s initials back into focus. “And we probably look foolish,” he added. His eyes slid to the nag. “Do you just...pile shawls on top of one another to keep warm?”

“Psh, naw,” Granny Smith replied as she took a bit of fabric up and examined it. “Always gotta have one, though. Don’t wanna distract them strappin’ young stallions, now do I?”

The two stared at one another. Then they cracked up laughing.

“Hah, you?” Grand Pear sputtered. “You couldn’t distract a rock!”

“Speak fer yerself!” Granny Smith laughed back. “Y’got so much crust I can’t see th’ cobbler no more!”

Grand Pear’s laughter intensified, but was cut off abruptly when he took a snowball full to the face. He toppled, and when he had brushed enough snow from his muzzle to look up, he found his adversary locked and loaded for another.

“Guess this here fight ain’t the only thing we got left after all!”

“Oh ho!” Grand Pear made it back to his hooves with a speed he hadn’t managed in twenty years. “There wasn’t an Apple ever made who could out-snowball a Pear!” He began to create a weapon of his own, but as his opponent was already armed, she simply pelted him again.

“There’s a reason Apples bloom in the fall!” Granny Smith cried energetically. “Yer dealin’ with the Ponyville grand snowball champion of aught eight! Why I’ll--OOF!”

“Bullseye! Your trap’s so big, it makes the perfect target!”

Again, the two rumpled ponies mixed it. This time each rode on high waves of laughter, and they battled like foals until neither could manage to lift hoof against the other - which took less than two minutes.

Flat on her back, Granny Smith stuck a foreleg in the air and pronounced the end of the conflict. “See there! I told ya I’m the best there ever was!”

Grand Pear, who was flat on his tummy in the snow, snorted. “I totally hit you more times than you hit me.”

“Y’did not!”

“I did too!”

“Y’didn’t!”

“I did!”

Grand Pear gave up the argument and paused to catch his breath. He rose, and his attention was again fixed upon the entwined trees. Granny Smith came up beside him.

“...makes y’feel small, don’t it.”

“Yep,” Grand Pear agreed. “Do you think they ever did what we just did?”

Granny Smith nodded. “Never done saw it, but sure as my trick knee knows when there’s a squall comin’, I know it.”

Grand Pear tilted his head, trying to make sense of the evening. “I was...crying a few minutes ago. Now this. How--”

Granny Smith pointed at one branch. “Look there.”

Upon the branch was a single leaf. Despite the death of winter, it had only just sprung from its bulb, and flourished in the face of the snow it grew through. Both ponies stared at it.

“You ever see anythin’ like that before?” Granny Smith asked.

“Nope,” Grand Pear replied. “What do you suppose it means?”

“It means apple trees are better’n p--wait,” Granny Smith squinted. “Is that comin’ from the apple tree, or th’pear tree?”

Grand Pear squinted. “I...I don’t know.”

“Whattaya...s’pose it means?” Granny Smith repeated the question. Grand Pear said nothing, until his eyes rolled up to the sky and he emitted a gasp. He pointed, and the pair watched as a duo of twinkling stars, brighter than their brethren, bathed the clearing in pale light.

“It...do you think…”

Granny Smith only nodded. “Think mebbe they...went ‘n put the hex on us back there a minute ago.”

“Can they do that?”

The Apple matron shrugged. “Y’got me. I ain’t never been dead before.” She looked down and flattened her ears. “Think...mebbe they know what’s good fer us better’n we know ourselves.”

“And we spent so many years trying to convince them otherwise,” Grand Pear observed. “Kind of puts things in perspective.”

“Hey! Hello?” A familiar voice called. “I heard some yellin’! Is everypony okay out here? Granny? Grand Pear?”

Applejack emerged from the brush, sporting several folded quilts on her back. “There y’all are! You got everypony worried that you’re gonna catch your death out here. Come inside, please?”

“We c’n take care of ours--”

Grand Pear put a hoof on Granny Smith’s shoulder and gently shook his head. He turned to Applejack. “What time is it?”

“Time?” Applejack thought about it. “About an’ hour till’ the new year! Y’all should come inside and toast it with us!” She paused, her attention on the odd smile between her grandparents. “Are y’all...square now?”

Grand Pear approached Applejack, his hooves crunching in the snow. “Actually dear, I wonder if you could do me a small favor.”

“Oh, uh...sure?”

Grand Pear whispered something in Applejack’s ear, until the latter made a face.

“Uh...pardon me for questionin’ my elders, but...what do you want a thing like that out here for?”

Grand Pear grinned. “Just trust me. It’s no trouble, is it?”

“O-oh no!” Applejack stuttered. “Not at all! I’ll uh...go an’ fetch it right away!”

Applejack turned to leave, but Granny Smith flagged her down as well.

“If’n yer headin’ back to the house, fetch this here fer me too, will ya dear?”

Applejack listened to the next whisper until she scratched her head in bewilderment. “I...guess, sure. A-are you sure yer all alright?”

“Yep!” Granny Smith assured. “But I’d just as soon y’all left those quilts, hear?”

Applejack unloaded her burden and vanished. Five minutes later she returned, making good time in the snow despite the thick binder and wrapped bundle that was approximately the size of her little sister upon her back.

“So uh...y’all gonna come inside and warm up?”

The elderly ponies were sitting together, wrapped in quilts, chatting with a familiarity that deepened Applejack’s confusion all the more. Grand Pear patted the ground beside him.

“We’ll be along. Sit it down here,” he said dismissively.

Applejack shrugged, hefted the binder and bundle into the snow atop another quilt that had been spread out, and stood there like a bellhop waiting for a tip, until she drew her grandmare’s eye.

“Eh? Somethin’ else?”

Applejack balked. “U-uh no, uh...I was just gonna ask y’all the same thing.”

“We c’n take care of ourse--”

With a sharp shake of his head, Grand Pear again cut off that particular sentiment from his companion. Granny Smith cleared her throat.

“I mean, uh...naw Applejack, we’re as right as the mail. An’ thank y’dear, fer puttin’ up with all this here yammerin’ from a pair of old coots.”

Applejack smiled warmly and dipped her head. “Aw, it ain’t nothin’. So long as you’re both ok. I’m just glad to see that you’re all--uh, well...” She took a hint, and made for the perimeter of the trees. “Y’all shout if you need anything, hear?”

When his grandfoal had made good her departure, Grand Pear immediately went for the larger bundle she had left behind. “Well, I had an idea, and--”

“Eh, eh, eh!” Granny Smith, who was between Grand Pear and the bundle, interposed herself. “Im’a goin’ first!”

“Tch, no you’re not. I’m--”

“Ain’t you a stallion what’s ever heard of ladies first?” Granny Smith grumped. “B’sides, apples come b’fer pears in the alphabet.”

Grand Pear sat back and folded his forelegs. “Fine. But only because I’m chivalrous. Not that other reason.”

Granny Smith ignored the quip and stood up, throwing off the quilt. She made for the thick binder and took it up to page through it, addressing her companion without looking at him. “Go an’ move all this here getout over to them two twisted trees.”

“Why should I have to--” Grand Pear cut himself off. Without another word, he simply went about the task, though he embellished the lifting with more grunts than were necessary. When everything but the bundle he had requested was moved, he plopped down and offered the quilt again. “We don’t need that right now.”

Granny Smith eyed the bundle and shrugged. “Fair’n.” She took the offered cover and sat beside her rival with the book spread out before them. “Funny how this here works. Us sittin’ here, wrapped up like these trees.”

Grand Pear tilted his head at the book. “What’s this?”

Granny Smith let out a small cackle. “This here’s a family album. Don’t think y’saw this one yet. Most of it’s pictures of Applejack, Apple Bloom, an’ Big Mac growin’ up.”

Grand Pear took over the flipping of the pages. Words failed him for a time, but he eventually found his voice.

“Why out here?”

“B’cause,” Granny Smith grinned. “These here are pics that was taken, well...” she glanced up at the trees. “...afterwards. Thought we oughtta show ‘em to mom ‘n dad. Lookit this’n here.”

With that, Granny Smith pointed at an image of a younger Big Mac. He was looking bewildered, posed upon a flooded field and beset by a number of angry older relatives, including Granny Smith herself.

“Like father like son I guess,” Granny Smith chuckled. “We done kept that water silo of yers after you left - until the day Big Mac was so pattyhooves over some local flower that he ran into it while plowin’ one day, and toppled it right down.”

Grand Pear cackled. “Is that what happened to it? I thought you’d all just torn it down on your own!”

“Nope, just never built it back agin’, ‘cause we had a better one by then. So as it turns out, one of those silos got cut down by his pappy, and th’ other by him, heh.”

“Oh, that boy of yours,” Grand Pear reminisced. “I worked his hooves to the fetlocks making him build that silo back the first time.”

“I know it,” Granny Smith replied. “An’ I made sure he went over every single day. Not that he needed much of an excuse to see Pear Butter again, but I wasn’t about to owe y’all, heh.”

“Bright Mac was a fine young man,” Grand Pear sighed. “Even when I was seeing you every time I looked at him, I knew it. The whole town is at a loss these days, for not knowing him.”

“Look here,” Granny Smith went on. “This one was the time Apple Bloom got convinced that holdin’ an apple under yer chin until yer coat glowed red meant y’liked ‘em.”

“Pear Butter used to love doing that with buttercups, heh…”

“Sure did. Nopony could figure out how Apple Bloom turned it into a notion like that though. She musta tried it with every apple in the orchard. Came home cryin’ up a storm ‘cause she was afraid she didn’t like apples!”

“How’d you deal with that?”

“Gave her a slice’a Brown Betty. Showed her what fer when she turned it into crumbs in about ten seconds.”

Grand Pear chuckled. The two of them spent the better part of the next hour going over the photo album, with plenty of room for the trees to watch over their shoulders. The sound of distant bells eventually perked both their ears, and brought them out of their reverie.

“Eh? Whatzat now?”

Grand Pear stared off into space. “That’s the new year. Looks like we survived another one. Makes you wonder how many more there will be.”

Granny Smith glanced over her shoulder. “We did, yeah…”

“It’s going to be strange someday, being up there,” Grand Pear commented. “Having those who came after us suddenly taking us by the hoof and showing us around.”

Granny Smith raised a brow. “Uh, well...yeah, sure’n it will.

Grand Pear paused for a time, his eyes on the dusting of snow that covered the quilts wherever they lay. “Do you remember the dance?”

The apple matron wriggled her muzzle. “Whatnow?”

“The dance,” Grand Pear repeated. “The Orchard Butterfly dance.”

Granny Smith wracked her brain. “...‘th heck are you on about? That there was a coon’s age ago! We were all younguns back then!”

“It was a square dance. Remember what happened when we ended up partners?”

“Sure I do. Never got past the bow. Hated yer dirty Pear guts, even back then.”

“The feeling was mutual,” Grand Pear chuckled. “But you were also the butterfly of the orchard in that gown of yours.”

“Yeah, ‘n you were a big ol’ stinky--waitwhat?”

“You heard me,” Grand Pear stood up and meandered over to the large covered bundle. “Every colt there knew it. So did I, even though I wasn’t about to say anything. Got lucky I guess, you never noticing any of the stolen glances that you could have made fun of later.”

Granny Smith felt her stinkeye coming on again. She watched her counterpart suspiciously as he fiddled with the covered contraption. “Jus’ what’re you gettin’ at, bringin’ that up now?”

“We spent a lot of years hating each other, Crabapple,” Grand Pear declared as he cast off the cover. “I thought maybe we ought to go back to the beginning, to mend fences.”

Beneath the sheet was the Apple family’s own phonograph, already loaded with a record. As Grand Pear began to crank it up, Granny Smith rose to her hooves, utterly dumbfounded.

“I...I don’t git it.”

“You will,” Grand Pear assured. He set the device, turned, and as a familiar, dusty old melody began to play, he turned and offered his hoof. “May I have this dance?”

Granny Smith stared at the offered hoof. Her ears flicked. “That...that ain’t no square-dancin’ song...”

“Do you know the tune? It’s an old crooner song. What are you doing New Year’s Eve.”

“I know that dernit,” Granny Smith huffed. “It’s my fav’rit holiday song. I oughtta know.”

“Mine too. So--” Grand Pear bowed slightly. “What are you doing, New Year’s Eve?”

Granny Smith’s eyes were still on the beige hoof. It was close enough that she had to focus to avoid seeing double. She shook her head, banishing the duplicated image, and tugged her shawls around her. “It ain’t New Year’s Eve no more.”

“Details.”

Such was the elderly genteel and poise of her dance partner, the Apple matron found herself with little recourse. She took the hoof, and he swept her into what was to them a spinning waltz, the like of which would billow her skirts, had she any. In reality they moved with the intensity of plodding cattle, but equal was their tenacity to the task. At length, Granny Smith found her hooves and sank into the movement, her droopy jowls finding a home upon his shoulder where she was spared eye contact.

“Don’t you git no ideas,” she whispered. “I’m too old fer romancin’.”

“So am I,” Grand Pear chided. “Hush. I haven’t done anything like this since my wife died. I’m pretending you’re her.”

Rather than take offense, Granny Smith chuckled and leaned into the movements, silently thankful that her partner was thinking to spare her worn hips from too much gyration. “Same here, on th’ opposite account.”

For a time, the pair turned together in the snow to the scratchy smoothness of a tune from their time, leaving behind them a pattern of hoofprints that might have, from above, resembled either a pear or an apple. Their quartet of eyes were closed, and failing the words they had so often tried to put to one another in their latter days, they spoke instead with their movements. Therein, they allowed the curious mixture of warmth within and cold without to bear away their ancient hurts, and portrayed in their swirling steps images they both wanted their departed offspring to look favorably down upon. When the song ended, Grand pear deftly manipulated the phonograph lever with his hind hoof, setting the vinyl to spinning again thrice more before the years caught up with them both and forced their parting.

They sat, there in the snow, as the last vestiges of the final verse bled away. In the distance there were still voices high in merriment, and the sound of glasses clinking was audible in their ears. Confused by the latter sound, they glanced at one another.

“You hear that?” Granny Smith asked.

“Did you?” Grand Pear returned. “I thought I was finally starting to hallucinate.”

Granny Smith flapped her jowls, chewing on nothing, and glanced around. “Ain’t natural. Even in my better days, can’t have heard nothin’ like that from all the way out here.”

Grand Pear’s eyes were on the twisted trees and the stone monument below. “...think it was them?”

“Ain’t got no idea, but...if it were, mebbe they was drinkin’ our toast.”

Grand Pear smiled. “I wonder if that means they forgive us.”

“Knowin’ them...they was never mad in the first place,” Granny Smith pointed out. “We’s the ones what hated, and we’s the ones who gotta live with it. That or...do somethin’ about it.”

“I prefer the latter,” Grand Pear concluded. He stood and offered his companion a hoof. “I think it’s time we got back to the party. Think we can both behave like civilized ponies now?”

Granny Smith took the hoof and rose with it. “I reckon so.” She glanced at the tree line. “Say...you got anythin’ goin’ on around town?”

“Nope,” Grand Pear admitted. “I have enough bits to keep one old nag running until my last day. I figured I’d just...coast.”

“Doesn’t suit ya,” Granny Smith protested. “You got as much spunk in ya as I ever did. We still got a bunch of pear trees on this here property. We just pick ‘em and sell ‘em off every season, or give ‘em away to friends. Don’t you get full up of yerself when I say this, but ain’t no Apple has any idea how to do anythin’ else with ‘em.”

Grand Pear grinned. “Why Crabapple...are you offering me a job?”

Granny Smith turned up her muzzle. “Call it teachin’ yer kin about th’other half of their heritage. ‘Bout time they learned anyway.”

A pattern of crunches denoted hooves on approach. Applejack’s voice rang out again, and they called to her, assuring her that they were well and planned to put her mind at ease by sensibly coming out of the cold.

“She worries like we used to,” Grand pear laughed. “I said it before, but they’re fine kids. All three of them. Any one of them would make a good parent someday.”

“Yeah. Pray to Celestia they never end up standin’ where we are now.” Granny Smith glanced at the phonograph and the album. “Dern fools we are. Now we gotta haul all this junk back, where we coulda just stayed inside.”

Grand Pear offered his hoof again. “Let’s let the young folks take care of it. It’s about time we acted our age, wouldn’t you say?”

Granny Smith allowed Grand Pear’s hoof to slip around her shoulders. He was warm, and there was a certain familiar scent that she was unused to being pleased around. She thought, however, that she could very well get used to it. She paused before the twisted trees, obliging him to do the same. To them, she spoke:

“It’s all okay now, Bright Mac. Y’all keep the kettle on. We’ll be along when we’ve finished makin’ things right.”

Grand Pear echoed the sentiment to his own offspring. His expression nearly broke, but Granny Smith chastised him with a crooked grin.

“It’s a new year. Mebbe we’ll be here for the next one. Mebbe we won’t. But we ain’t never gonna be nowhere, until we git back on the right road.”

“...yeah,” Grand Pear agreed. Encouraged by her, he made again towards the house. “You’re ok, Crabapple.”

“Y’ain’t so bad yerself, Prickly Pear.”

With that, the pair went back to their lives, leaving a confused but satisfied Applejack to scratch her head and clean up their mess.

Comments

[Autumn Colors Fall]

Absolutely wonderful. This was a great addition to one of the best episodes that has come out of the show, and you kept them both well in character!

[Elsaack]

Apples vs Pears, never surrender! Nice little (subjectively, over 10k words) story about family and the holidays. Looks a bit underappreciated at the moment.

[WishyWish]

8646614
Yeah, I was insistent upon releasing on New Year's Eve to accommodate the story, but it seems many other folks had that idea and this got pushed off the front page pretty fast. Ah well. 10K is "little" to me - I have trouble stopping myself!

8646572
Granny Smith is a more interesting character to write for than I think people give her credit for. I'm glad you enjoyed it, it was a pleasure to write

[howard035]

Very sweet.

I was honestly afraid it would turn out they died in that snow, and I'm relieved I was wrong. Maybe now Granny and Gran Pear can team up against the Orange Cousins.

[WishyWish]

8806891
Oh gosh no, that...would have ruined it, I think. It sounds like you agree. Glad you enjoyed!

[Maran]

This fanfic has excellent characterization of both Granny Smith and Grand Pear. The fight was a long time coming. As the Element of Honesty, Applejack realized that her grandparents had to be honest about their feelings before they could truly reconcile. If they continued to let their negative emotions fester beneath the surface, the two former rivals could never truly bond.

The pacing is expertly executed as well. Even though the story is more than 10,000 words long and not much actually happens, it never drags.

However, this fanfic could use an editor. I found several mechanical errors, inconsistencies, and some strange word choices. I won't list them all, but here are a couple that jumped out at me:

My sons bought me out. I let them do it because I wanted to retire, but now they’re kicking it up past the level I ever envisioned, and...nopony needs me anymore.
...
Beneath the entwined trees, both childless parents laughed at themselves until their wrinkled faces hurt.

Technically, Grand Pear still has adult children.

crow’s hooves

Crow's hooves? There are some terms that are impossible to equinize without making them sound entirely nonsensical. This is one of them.

[WishyWish]

8838404
The passage is referring just to the deceased children in that case, and 'crow's hooves' is just a play on 'crow's feet', heh.

Glad you enjoyed it! I was kinda surprised it went on that long too for it being just one scene where...honestly yes, not a whole lot happens. I'd intended it to be a shorter story, but my words have a tendency to get away from me when I really get into an idea. I find it tough to write things under 5k when I really get going!

[Maran]

8838509
Yeah, I understood that it's a play on crow's feet, but it still doesn't work because (1) crows don't have hooves, and (2) hooves don't look like the wrinkles around one's eyes.

Sorry to be so pedantic, but my tolerance for horse puns has a limit, and that one went over it.

But I am glad that you let this story go over your projected word count. I think this story is better for it.

[WishyWish]

8838538
Ponies both do and do not know what hands are, too. MLP is funny like that

Yeah though, this was supposed to be a tiny little side project...and it sort of got out of hand. I honestly just wanted a story where I could insert my favorite holiday song, and this is what built up around it.

[Eroraf86]

What a lovely story. Rest in peace, Bright Mac and Pear Butter, and shower your blessings upon your kin.

[WishyWish]

9075604