Chapter 1
The July heat beat down upon the farm pony's back sending beads of perspiration running down her orange coat. Applebloom had left the farm with her friends to do some of her "crusading". Big Macintosh was working on the other side of the farm, so she had an entire wing of the orchard to buck by herself.
In one swift motion she brought back her hind legs as far as she could and then extended them in the blink of an eye. Her hooves were still embedded in the soft bark as as flashes of red started to collect in the baskets she had laid out. She dropped her hooves to the earth again and blew a tuft of blonde hair from her eye.
It was just another dull harvest for applejack, but she couldn't even dream of doing anything else. Sweet apple acres had been her passion since she came back home after seeing Rainbow's sonic rainboom that fateful night as a filly. Yet, even now when she was doing the thing she loved, she couldn't help but to feel the slightest bit bored by the task of harvesting every apple-bearing tree in the east field.
She had been doing this since before she could remember; when would things change in her life? The farmer's life at first seemed ideal because her family had an undisputed monopoly over Ponyville. Plus, with the demand for cider so high, Applejack could sleep away half of the season away without reducing profits... or at least she hoped that was the case. Yet, as time moved on, the earth pony had grown restless in her flimsy fiscal safe haven. Even when the diamond dogs broke Big Mac's leg for protection money she hadn't been scared, but the fear of never improving nagged at her like a hog with flies on it's unmentionables.
It had been months since Applejack had taken a break from her routine. The Apple family didn't really have a reputation of taking breaks... quite to the contrary. In fact, last summer a group of fillies took a field trip to Sweet Apple Acres to learn how to make cider. After only a measly seven hours of work, three fillies collapsed and one actually "checked out faster than it took for mayor mare to start making promises on election day" as granny smith had put it. That following growing season, Applejack noticed that a small patch of the hay fields grew faster than the rest of the field. She didn't think much into it and figured it must just have been a fertilizer spill.
The workpony continued the backbreaking work throughout the day with her mind elsewhere, she could go through the motions better than anyone else in the family. She reached the last tree just as the first hues of orange were beginning to touch the sky and the trees became shapeless jet-black silhouettes. This last tree was right on the border between the farm and the ominous everfree forest.
Applejack recalled her grandmother telling her about this tree as she approached it cautiously. She had mentioned something about how it had been there even before the settler ponies founded Ponyville. It looked like a mere shell of the mighty apple tree it had once been, yet it still produced apples for some strange reason. Naturally, on an apple farm, the red fruits were money and this tree produced some of the finest in the entire orchard.
She studied its peculiar bark as she slowly inched towards the base of the trunk. It was commonly believed by the Apple Family that this particular tree was possessed by Satan, which gave it its immortality and extremely tacky appearance. She had always thought that it had always gave off a faint glow, but there was no mistaking it today. The ancient arbor was definitely producing a golden aura.
"Consarndit! Celestia told us that the nuclear waste wouldn't run off into our orchards!" Applejack slammed her hoof into the earth in frustration. "Oh well, if the folk a' ponyville get the Ebola it won't be mah fault." She sighed.
She brought up her hind legs and prepared her entire body to deliver a swift buck to the gnarled tree. Instead time stopped for her as her emerald green eyes became transfixed. Hanging from a low branch right in front of Applejack's face was the sharpest looking apple she had ever seen in her entire life. Celestia's sun illuminated the scarlet skin and revealed of this masterpiece from mother nature. Its geometric shape was one that the professors and mathematicians in Canterlot would swoon over. A heavenly aroma took her nostrils by force and left the farmer wondering how something that she probably smelled every single day could catch her so off guard.
Applejack didn't realize her mouth hung agape until she saw her own face reflected off the smooth exterior of the apple. Was it just the tint of the apple or was her face... In a movement of pure habit and instinct Applejack struck the trunk of the tree and sent the perfect apple careening into a basket full of the unworthy. Without thinking, she had full on sprinted to the basket and tripped on a protruding rock that sent her flying into the side of the handwoven container. She laid there for a moment in apprehension among the apples and her life. She massaged her head which had hit the ground first and grumbled to herself.
"What in tarnation' just happened... did big mac slip something in mah breakfast?" She laid her head back in the grass and groaned.
Did she just get distracted from her work... BY her work? This had to be a low point, even for her. She realized laying there in that pile of apples just how much her life revolved around the blasted fruit. She sat up and started angrily throwing hoof-fulls of apples back into the basket. She stopped cold when she reached out and saw the perfect apple which now had a small indentation in the skin that permeated through the succulent flesh of the fruit. She turned her head away from the living masterpiece and squeezed her eyes shut. Applejack thought about a dead puppy while she slowly picked up the master apple and carefully placed it on top of it's subjects inside the basket.