Another Day in Ponyville

by AnOrdinaryWriter

Story 8

Apple Bloom rested her head on her forelegs, her eyes half closed. She was barely listening to Cheerilee’s lesson; she desperately wanted the school day to end so she could hang out with her fellow crusaders. Cheerilee was giving her class some math lesson about graphs and variables. Apple Bloom caught a few words out of her lesson, and almost half of the class had also tuned Cheerilee out, twirling their pencils on their desks or just idly staring at their desks waiting for the school bell to indicate the end of class. Only a few of the students in the classroom paid attention and wrote down some notes on the subject, but even they didn’t keep that up for long before they dropped their pencils and Cheerilee’s words were in one ear and out the other.

The school teacher levitated a stick of chalk with her magic and brought it against the green board to demonstrate a math equation. Scootaloo in the meantime leaned towards Apple Bloom’s desk.

“Do you actually know what any of this means?” she whispered, and Apple Bloom looked over at her.

“Not really, sorry. Ah haven’t been listenin’.”

Scootaloo quickly scooched back to her spot when she heard the scraping of chalk on the board halt. Cheerilee turned back towards the class and revealed the mathematical formula she put down on the board. She wasn’t surprised when almost everypony in the class looked at the formula with a puzzled frown, and she didn’t bother asking any of her students what they thought it was.

“This is an example of an algebraic formula. This is what’s called a linear function, but don’t worry, you’re not learning about linear functions for another few years,” Cheerilee explained. A few fillies at the back of the room picked up their pencils again and wrote this down, but she noticed a lot of the class wasn’t listening to a word she was saying.

“I hope most of you are paying attention because you’re all going to have a test on this in the upcoming week.” Everypony who hadn’t been listening to Cheerilee before immediately looked up and then dug into their school supplies for a pencil and their scrapbooks. The teacher smiled and resumed her lesson.

Apple Bloom looked up at the clock above the green board, and was thankful to see that there were only five minutes left until the end of class. She looked back at Cheerilee, who was further explaining the equation she wrote on the board, and Apple Bloom noted in her book what her teacher was saying and copied down what she wrote on the board.

When she looked back up however, her eyes were defocused from her teacher, and drawn towards the window by the entrance of the school. Standing outside was the purple alicorn, Twilight Sparkle, who looked into the room through the glass with a smile on her face. When Cheerilee had turned her back on the class once again to write something else on the board, Apple Bloom raised her hoof and waved towards the window. Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo noticed this and looked in the direction Apple Bloom was facing, and they too waved at the alicorn. Twilight noticed the three fillies and waved back with a look of glee on her face. A couple of other students saw Twilight through the window and started whispering to each other, until Cheerilee turned to face her students again. Everypony stopped whispering to each other and looked back towards their teacher. Cheerilee noticed that a couple of her students were looking towards the window, and as she turned to look in that direction, Apple Bloom saw Twilight’s horn glow and she teleported away instantly.

“What I want you all to do tonight,” Cheerilee began, “is just review over everything we talked about today so that you have a better understanding of the lesson.”

The school bell rang, and everypony in the room began closing their notebooks and putting their supplies into their saddlebags.

“We’ll continue this lesson tomorrow! Have a nice day, everypony!” Cheerilee shouted over the ruckus of chairs dragging across the floor and fillies rushing to the door, free from another boring school day. Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo grouped up after packing their saddlebags and left the school house after the rest of their classmates.

As the three of them walked home, they talked to each other about random stuff, like how nice it was that they weren’t being picked on by Diamond Tiara or Silver Spoon anymore. They mostly discussed their cutie marks and who else they would need to help discover their special talent. The topic of Twilight arriving at the school came up but didn’t stick around for long before they switched the topic to something else.

The three friends arrived at Carousel Boutique first, subtracting one member from the group of friends, and afterwards, the two of them reached Scootaloo’s house, leaving Apple Bloom on her own. She walked by herself, taking left and right turns on Ponyville’s roads, waving at a few ponies as she passed and getting a smile in exchange. She was eventually greeted with the sight of the apple orchard and the dirt path that lead towards the family barn. Starting down the path, she began her daily ritual of admiring all of the Apple family’s work and taking in the beautiful smell of fertile earth.

She reached the end of the path and found herself in front of the Apple family barn, and was glad that she would now be able to relax in the comfort of her home. Approaching the front door, she entered the barn, and was greeted with the sweet smell of apple cider.

“Applejack, Granny, Big Mac! Ah’m home!” she announced, and put her saddlebag on the floor, leaning it against the wall.

“Welcome home, little sis’” Apple Bloom heard her big sister Applejack say, and saw her in the kitchen by the stove with a pot of bubbling liquid on one of the burners. “How was school today?”

“Really boring,” Apple Bloom replied. “Miss Cheerilee taught us about mathematical equations, and ah didn’t even understand half the stuff she was sayin’.”

Applejack smiled, reminiscing. “Ah used to have the best grades in math when ah was a filly. Maybe afterwards we can sit down and ah’ll tutor ya a little bit.”

Apple Bloom was about to say no, but she thought about it for a bit, and it actually didn’t sound like a bad idea at all. It meant spending with her favourite sibling, and she would never turn down an opportunity to do that.

“Okay, sure,” Apple Bloom said.

“Perfect,” Applejack said, and picked up a wooden spoon, stirring around the contents inside the bubbling pot.

“Oh yeah, Twilight came by the school today,” Apple Bloom said, just now remembering.

“She did?” Applejack responded. “What’d she talk ta y’all about?”

“She didn’t come in to talk to us; she just stood outside by the window looking into the classroom.”

Applejack frowned. “She just stood outside lookin’ in through the window? Why would she be doin’ that?” she asked rhetorically. “She knows she can’t be peepin’ into the school like that. Did Cheerilee notice?”

“No, she teleported away before Cheerilee saw her.”

Applejack started talking to herself for a little bit before she looked back towards Apple Bloom. “There’s apple cider on the stove here, want me ta pour you a mug?”

“That’d be great, thanks!” Apple Bloom happily responded, and Applejack grabbed a wooden mug out of one of the cabinets and spooned steaming hot cider into it. She extended the hoof holding the mug of cider towards Apple Bloom and she took it from her.

“Take your cup of cider up to your room and get done whatever school work you have, and later we’ll sit in the living room and ah’ll help you out with math.”

“Great!” Apple Bloom chirped and carried her saddlebag and her mug of cider up the stairs and to her room. Applejack soon heard the door upstairs open and then shut. She headed back to the stove and lowered the heat to a simmer before placing the lid on the pot of cider. She started to think about what her little sister had said about Twilight peering into the classroom through the window.

“Ah wonder what’s up with that pony,” she said to herself.

Author's Note:

So for some reason when I wrote this story I didn't know that cider was an alcoholic drink, so let's put it this way: the cider Applejack gave to Apple Bloom wasn't alcoholic. Applejack does not give alcohol to minors and I don't recommend doing that... it could get you in jail.