Nocturne
She was on her own ground.
It wasn't something she had to actively listen for, not anymore. Instead, it was a level of inherent, instinctive recognition which reached the soul. There would be a point at which she was still just barely outside the Acres and then, with one extra hoofstep... she would know. Yes, the sights were familiar along the old road, and certain portions came with their own sounds and smells. But block every sense except the hidden and she would still know. Her own magic had spent a lifetime soaking into the soil, as had that of her living family. Yes, an earth pony's specific signature (or echo, because breaking the Secret had eventually required using the appropriate vocabulary) would fade beyond personal recognition in time: when it came to identifying individual singers, a week was about the limit. A few of the missions had taken her away from the Acres for longer than that, as had her time in Manehattan. But even then...
There had been many lessons in the mission, and one had been something she'd already known: that the moment of birth could also be one of destiny. Applejack had been born on the Acres.
Granny had told her the story. That her Mommy had seen no need to use the hospital unless things began to go wrong, and everything had been normal. It had also been a clear day, with the weather schedule providing a little extra warmth for the earliest part of spring. So her parents had -- gone outside. A tent provided privacy, blankets and pillows offered what little comfort might exist in the midst of labor. But when it had finished, before they'd taken her to greet Sun, while there was still blood and afterbirth staining her fur... they had cradled her between them. Gently brought forehooves up to her head, hooves which had been coated in honest soil. Rubbed it into the muck.
And they sang. Ancient lyrics, words which could only be heard by the land, a song which might have been sung as far back as the Discordian Era. Perhaps beyond.
All life comes from the earth.
All life returns to the earth.
A new singer rises.
Her voice will sound in time. For now, until she comes to truly hear, to understand... greet her. Feel her presence upon the world. She pledges to return. And for all the days and nights between, she will honor the contract.
Know her.
Hear her.
Love her.
So many families tried to do that, if there was privacy. Even when hospitals were involved, getting a newborn earth pony outside within the first hours of their life was often considered crucial. It took a major health crisis to delay that first contact by a day or more, the sort of thing which --
-- don't want t' think 'bout that right now --
-- and some families took it further. Pinkie had told her that a number of rock farmers tried to give birth underground: why let the sky have any degree of first claim? (The baker's blood family was counted in that group, but Pinkie had been a breech birth, one where things had started going wrong from the start: there had been no chance to move her mother to the caves.) Those who were considerably less traditional just tried to stay on the ground floor.
Within the first minute of Applejack's life, she had been introduced to the world. To the Acres. Perhaps that did something, or it could have just been the years of having her echo sounding within the same patch of land. Hers, and those of her living family.
She would take a hoofstep, and her soul heard the familiar chords. The background chorus which had resounded throughout her life. Music which raised her up.
She was home.
That was what her soul knew. But when she included the other senses...
Mah Daddy planted that tree. It was Winter Wrap-Up, the first one where Ah was old enough t' help, an' he wanted me t' see how it was done. So he asked the soil t' open, an' it jus' happened. Ah couldn't sing yet, couldn't hear. Ah jus' saw the world answer him. He laughed, when Ah couldn't stop starin'. Nudged the seed in, closed the hole, told me the next thing t' do was make sure the tree got a fast start. He an' Mommy worked on it t'gether and in a few moons...
Mah Mommy shifted that boulder. Always rocks t' clear when you're stretching out the border. Mommy was strong. Ah picked out her echo first. Ah... (and her head briefly dipped under the weight of old shame) ...thought I held onto it longer than anypony else.
That barn... Well, that was worth a snort. ...was mostly me. Jus' like the last five. Only difference is that this one ain't taken any dents yet. It hadn't taken all that long for Applejack to decide the Crusade was actually trying to gain a mark in barn destruction, and not much longer before she'd decided that no such mark existed because the trio would have had it before wrapping up one year of futility, let alone nearly three.
Moon shone down on all of it, helped her spot the border which existed within her own land -- but that was still an aspect where scent did as much as sight. A pony body had inherent odors, and would continue to possess them no matter how much perfume Rarity dedicated to the futility of burial at flower-stinking sea. They weren't necessarily harsh scents. A clean newborn had a unmistakable olfactory presence: a dirty one could clear out a bakery. There was the smell of light sweat which came from an honest worker -- but pony instinct knew how to spot the alert signal which rose from froth, demanding that somepony step in before the final collapse took place. A rather subtle scent was supposedly connected to arousal: you had to be right on top of it, with nothing else occupying your attention. Conversely, it could potentially take a very long shower to prevent everypony around you from figuring out that you'd just had sex, and the debates regarding 'with whom?' might last a while, especially if it was Rarity trying to not-so-secretly figure out the actual whoms.
Ponies had their own aromas. And drifting in from the right were different scents. The gentle current had aspects of musk. There was also a lot of outright muck, which was inevitably laced with swill because for some of them, muck and swill equaled life. And within the soft darkness of a settled zone's night, a contented low-level rumble of chorused soft bellows reached her ears.
The Acres were her land. (This was true on multiple levels.) But a portion had been rented out.
It was, in many ways, her least favorite thing about the farming life. But her Daddy had explained it to her, when she was very young. That there were species who were just as intelligent as ponies. Some of them had enough magic and determination to hold their own land: there were nations beyond Equestria, places where ponies were minority or distant rumor. And for the most part, each nation would have its population dominated by the founding species. If you had the power to go with your sapience, the ability to either overcome your flaws or had found some means of turning them into a strength... you thrived.
Ponies had gone into the wild and carved out settled zones. Minotaurs fought back the chaos. Griffons tried to dominate it. Zebras worked with the flow of the world. Donkeys simply endured. Every successful species had their own way...
...but not every species had succeeded.
As a species, ponies had flaws: every sapient race did. Griffons could become too caught up in their domination chain to pay attention to the real. The minotaur tendency to stay on their hooves long after everyone else had dropped could easily carry them forward into lost causes. As Zecora had once tried to explain it, zebra society didn't change so much as fracture, and too much could be lost in the cracks. But with ponies... with all three of the major pony races, it was herd instinct and all the subtle (and sometimes overt) horrors which came with it. Something which could be battled, but never completely silenced. And one way to look at a tenant species was through close examination of that instinct. Picking out an aspect and realizing what would happen if it won every single time.
Applejack had felt the voice which constantly lurked at the back of a pony's brain, that which tried to respond to the scents of fear and panic by drowning out all reason because if everypony else was afraid, then the herd knew best and so the best thing to do was run. Felt it, fought against it... occasionally lost. And if you wanted to understand cattle, you took everything you'd experienced from that horrible mindless drive and cubed it. One cow or bull, isolated and calm, was an individual. If things were exceptionally quiet, you could say the same for small groups. But anything beyond that would begin to see them cluster around invisible social accretion points. The little groups began to think as one. Disturb them (and they could be so easy to disturb) and they would react as one. A single startled cow, jolted out of her natural placidity by a sharp noise, was one cow: someone who might quickly calm again. That same cow, standing within a pasture of fifty others, became the trigger for a stampede -- and a stampede couldn't think. It simply moved until one of two things was gone: the fear or the cattle. An individual of exceptional control and temperament could find their place in a mixed society. But for cattle to found a nation would mean a tremendous group moving through a wild zone where anything could set them off. Trying to take control, for a species which could barely control itself.
By contrast, sheep tended to be passive. Oh, some of the males could be on the aggressive side during mating season (because sheep actually had a season), and you never wanted to get between a ewe and her lambs. But on the whole, a sheep felt the best way to go about thinking was to let someone else do most of it. And ponies had that flaw: so many would simply line up behind what they saw as the strongest leader, or followed the loudest voice. But it was possible to break away, if you tried hard enough. To think for yourself. And so often, a sheep wouldn't care, because taking directions -- just about any directions -- was easier. According to Twilight, a few nations had tried using the less-fearful ones in battalions: something which had worked right up until the moment a more charismatic commander came along on the opposing side. They often believed what they were told just because someone else had thought of it, to the point where one term for being taken by a con was fleeced: no contract signed by a sheep was considered legal without the presence of multiple court-appointed witnesses. And a nation which was somehow founded by that species could be conquered by force or, in the worst case, asking forcefully.
Pigs? Take that part of a pony which was content to simply graze while the world went by, then put it in charge. Drastically lower grazing standards, make sure any minor shortage of food led to fights, and typically discard all concept of personal hygiene beyond 'the air around me hasn't turned into a solid, so I'm fine.' A well-fed pig could be an excellent conversationalist, capable of stunning insights into the pony condition -- for the whole three minutes you might have until their appetite took over again. Essentially, a pig was a parasprite which had figured out how to get someone else to feed it, because that was better than seeing what they would do to get food for themselves. And they were perfectly capable of forming a government, as long as every pig in it received all the benefits of leadership, at the same time, while being privately convinced that no pig outside their immediate family was getting anything at all.
And then there were alpacas, who took a buffalo's territoriality, combined it with a rather odd sense of personal space, kicked in a tendency to follow any roughly alpaca-sized object which was passing by, then just about finished the whole experience off with the ability to deliberately (and instinctively, but most of the time, it was deliberate) vomit on anything which upset them. Alpacas were extremely easy to upset. Coming up behind one could do it. The same applied to a side approach. There was an argument to be made for the front, but that was where their aim was best. And assuming a pony could get past every last tenth-bit of it, there were three more words to consider: 'communal dung heap.' Any theoretical alpaca nation would have certain problems conducting diplomacy, and just about as many with the restrooms.
Tenants. They had needs. Requirements. One particularly disagreeable ancient specimen regularly appeared with a list of demands. (She had spent a measurable fraction of her life in waiting for Cloven to die, and half-expected his near-eternal quest to spite her would result in his sprouting horn and wings.) It was something she never would have chosen for herself, but... her Daddy had been charitable. Just about every adult tenant dated back to his lifetime. He was the one who had offered sanctuary, and it was in his name that, even in the worst of times, she allowed them to stay. Because there were species where individuals might thrive -- but a group wouldn't. They couldn't exist for long outside of highly-controlled, precisely-regulated environments. A tenant species needed help, and so there were places all over the world which took them in, looked for those who were trying to take advantage and attempted to stop it. Ultimately, it was the choice between protection or, if everypony turned them away, extinction.
But that didn't mean it was easy. Applejack had tried reading multiple books about pony-tenant relations, and the realization that the author had no concept of how to work with her tenants never took any longer than Chapter Five. It was approaching someone who didn't have a pony's mindset. Often, it was dealing with an individual incapable of recognizing their own flaws, or that anything about them could even be one (although to be fair, more than a few ponies qualified there). It was attempting to communicate with something just a little bit alien, sapients who too often weren't quite sapient enough, and it had taken some time to realize that her tenant interactions had made it so much easier to initially view Zecora while looking down.
She genuinely liked some of her tenants. She hated being a landlord, hated carrying any part of the responsibility for those who could so easily lose control. Tenant presence added a constant low-level miasma of stress to Acres life, whether it was trying to round up the cattle after yet another stampede, getting the pigs separated with a minimum of personal bruises, or lambing. Just about nothing was worse than lambing season, because the first moon of spring would see the ewes giving birth. Lambs were precious. Lambs were frankly adorable. They were, once they'd been cleaned and gotten to their hooves for the first time, just about the most precious sight on the planet. A newborn lamb's presence was, in Applejack's opinion, one of the surest tests for determining whether something was a monster: only a monster wouldn't coo. And lambing was a horror, because ewes tended to have multiple births. Worse: births where the newborns had become tangled up with each other within the womb, a sliding puzzle of limbs which needed to be sorted out quickly, working from the exterior, or both mother and children could die...
For Applejack, lambing season meant frantic shivering as she stood just outside the fence which defined that part of the rented land. Listening for one particular bleat. And then she would gallop, trying to find help, the helplessness chasing her across Ponyville as she prayed onto Sun and Moon that the few ponies who could even try to do something weren't already at other tenant sites.
She loved to greet newborn lambs, because it meant there were newborns. She'd... seen the other option. Been present at the funerals, again and again.
And then she'd met the stallion who had the solution. A unicorn whose special trick allowed him to physically move the unborn while they were still within the womb, his field reaching inside. A pony who had saved hundreds, possibly thousands of foal lives, and...
...she'd been thinking about asking him to visit the Acres, during the first moon of spring.
Ah don't want t' --
But there was no way around it. A single stallion had changed Equestria. He was the one who saw the high-risk births, things which delayed that first contact for a day -- or, without his presence, would make the initial touch of earth come from the damp soil of a grave. If he had lived in Ponyville, there would be no yearly gatherings at the edge of the sheep pasture. There were ways in which he was a miracle granted to the world, and he had... changed everything. A change which might echo into every generation to come, and just about nopony knew anything had happened at all.
Two of his were Bearers, and she trusted them with her life because they were her friends. She had asked a third to go out with her. A fourth worked in town. And those were just the ones she knew...
She didn't want to think about it. But she would, because she loved Pinkie and Fluttershy, and so had to love them for what they truly were.
The world changed, an' nopony noticed. Not yet. But that can't hold forever.
She had changed. But the Acres were the same. The land her grandparents had been granted, as the first to be sent into what would become the new settled zone. Given land rights directly at the forehooves of the Princess: something which had made them nobility. They had been honored, and followed that honor by not really thinking about or acting on the implications: something which had been passed down to the subsequent generations.
Her family had founded Ponyville. They were Ponyville. And the Acres, through three generations, through Nightmare and parasprites and Crusade -- persisted. She always came home because there was a home to which she could return, on her land, hers in every sense of the possessive. She was walking past trees planted by the dead, listening to the sounds produced by those who had first been invited in by the lost, looking at that which she had built. The land remembered everypony who had lived there, and to trot across it under Moon was to bring it all back. To feel as if she could almost bring them back...
...almost.
She took a deep breath, drew in the cooling night air. Looked at the light which streamed from familiar windows. Thought about the ponies waiting for her within. Those who loved her.
Mah own ground.
Her hat (hers now, truly hers) remained stable as she gazed up, found Moon. Green eyes took in silvery light.
She'd never been much for faith. She invoked the Princesses for oaths more than prayers, because the most important prayer hadn't been answered. In that sense, it hadn't been much of an impact to learn that the alicorns had once been normal ponies: in fact, there were ways in which it made things easier.
But there was a chasm before her. And when there was a crisis waiting, it felt as if she had to believe in something. It was hard for Applejack to ask anypony for help. Requesting aid from a void was worse.
Help me. Help them understand. Help me get through this...
Just about every earth pony who'd reached puberty could speak to the land -- but there was only one pony who might have been able to speak with Moon. For Applejack, there was silence, and she found herself wondering why she'd tried.
Jus' get it over with.
She did, and so many things began to end.
He was so happy.
That remained with Applejack for the rest of her life. She'd opened the door, doing so just about on top of Mac's face: he had in fact been about to head down the road, checking to see where she was. To find out if everything was okay -- no, if anything was okay, because she'd been home for three days already, wandering the Acres without hat or accent, they'd all known something was wrong and...
She was Honesty: her family knew that, and made the usual jokes. But they also understood it more than most. Being Honesty didn't mean she had to answer any question anypony asked. 'Ah don't want t' talk 'bout it,' was an honest answer, as was 'The palace asked us t' keep things secret for a while.' Apple Bloom had been known to snoop through her big sister's bedroom on a desperate search for clues, but her family didn't pry. They recognized that when it came to the missions, if Applejack didn't talk on her own, then talking just wasn't going to happen. It was a courtesy which most of Ponyville was still working on.
But without hat, without her proper voice -- they'd worried. She'd seen it on their faces every day, watched as they desperately searched for some way to make her feel better, to find out what was wrong. To fix it, because -- they loved her. They just hadn't found the words to bring her voice back.
But then she'd trotted into the house, hat upon her head, told Mac "Sorry for making y'worry. Jus' got caught up in --"
It was as far as she'd gotten before he'd nuzzled her.
Mac wasn't much for nuzzling, not even the nuzzle meant for family. (She blamed his lack of skill with the other variants on his reluctance to date.) When he made contact, it meant something.
(He had stayed so close to her after the news of their parents' deaths came back, refused to leave her side for more than a few minutes at a time for days...)
He'd nuzzled her, leaning in and down. Pressed his head against hers, kept it there long after the angle would have become painful for him. Because her voice was normal, the hat was on her head, and that meant his sister was feeling better. It meant the world was tilting back towards normal.
He hadn't cried: he seldom did. He'd just... stayed with her, among old portraits and furniture which had been purchased on the day Barnyard Bargains had opened. Held the position under the light cast by devices which her grandfather had purchased, which her friends kept charged.
Mac didn't speak much, not in public. He was more comfortable with family, much more verbose when it was just Apples about. But when it came to displays of affection... not often. He didn't feel he was good at them: he'd confessed that once. The 'love poison' hadn't exactly helped his confidence.
But for two precious minutes, right after she'd come home, he stayed with her. He loved her. He was her big brother and so there were ways in which he was always going to be a little bit stupid. But he had always loved her, and... even when he was her dumb brother, she loved him.
Later on, she would try to remember those two minutes. Over and over, to remind herself that she loved him still, after it all went wrong.
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Very foreboding
9461642
Agreed. But I'm always thinking about the twist. That he might not be angry or anything, but it's something he accidentally did, that made things bad.
----
Oooh, that reminisce on Sweet Apple Acres! So nice!
Could you possibly give us an estimate as to how long will the Duet be?
Asking because I'm (again...) torn between reading as it releases and waiting for it to finish.
9429660
Getting to read Triptych is one of the best gifts anyone on this site can receive. Inarguably.
Oh f
this is too ominous. I give it two chapters max before my heart is crushed.
This will not end well for anypony, will it?
I don't think I've ever seen a sentence that filled me with that much hope and dread in equal measure.
Welp, that tipped those scales.
Fascinating to get a better sense of tenant species, particularly pigs. I never would've even guessed they were sapient otherwise (though that would lead to the question of why the Apples would have them on the farm...) As for what will come, well, it'll come. It'll hurt. Change usually does, at least at first. Though it seems like this pain will linger for quite some time, and this chapter outlines all the reasons it will do so.
Wonderfully foreboding stuff. Looking forward to more.
Ultimately, it was the choice between protection or, if everypony turned them away, extinction.
Interesting how the other 'E' word is not used: Exploitation.
I like how Cows, Sheep, etc work in the verse, clears up the big moral problem
9461911
All races of human seem to be about equally intelligent. For the races in EQ, it would be rather remarkable if that were true.
It's VERY likely that some species are just flat out smarter than others.
Dragons don't rule the world because Ponies are better at working in groups + magic
(I've had enough bosses to know: Brains ain't all there is to being in charge)
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Working+in+the+Car+Wash+Blues&&view=detail&mid=9F779777A5748AB4CC199F779777A5748AB4CC19&&FORM=VRDGAR
Well... there is almost notthing uglier than a fight in the familly. It's going to be a though one to read I fear but it was hinted at for a long time now. Come on Big Mac, you are a smart one, dont be stupid over something like that.
But I wonder what will be the thing that will set him off. The fact that Applejack broke the secret and will teach Twilight (I mean, they were fighting for their lives there, good reason to break the secret)? Or maybe it will be the fact that she would like to date a pegasus? Canonicaly, Big Mac has something for Unicorn so...
"with swill because for some of them, muck and swirl equaled"
"with swill because for some of them, muck and swill equaled"?
9462037
Yup. Dragons are territorial, individualistic, highly powerful creatures. They're bad at cooperating, in no small part because they rarely see a point in doing so. And as such, ponies and griffons and other, individually much less powerful creatures, have their thriving (or not-so-thriving) civilizations, while dragons don't.
We've never seen pigs talk on the show: do they talk in any of the comics?
that part about the Tenants reminded me of a weird story: a group of people were trying to foil an evil time traveler. the group included a magician, a princess who always carried a pink parasol, her large bodyguard, her maid, and some others i can't recall...
but when they finally went back in time, it was suddenly revealed that they are all talking animals!
-the magician was a monkey.
-the princess was a pig.
-her bodyguard was a bear.
-her maid was a parrot.
and they all thought humans were stupid beasts of burden, which they called :"ummini"! they didn't know that humans could talk!
This is the most interesting, and least horrifying, explanation of cows, sheep, etc, in MLP that I've seen so far.
9470226
Do you happen to remember the name?
Shouldn't that be great grandparents? Pretty sure i recall Celestia granted the land to Granny's parents in S2E12.