She was intelligent. She was beautiful. She was well-spoken, kind, and basically the best mare he had ever met.
She’s off limits, he told himself, bucking another apple tree. Even before she became a princess, she was out of your league. If you really think royalty and farm ponies ever end up together, you’re crazier than that pink friend of Applejack’s. You missed your chance, Mac—not that you had much of one to begin with.
The apples fell into the baskets, and Big Macintosh allowed himself a little breather. He liked working hard, for much the same reason as he didn’t like to talk too much. Neither activity presented much opportunity to show your emotions. Mac could deal with physical pain; that was par for the course when it came to farm work. Hurt feelings, however, were a whole different animal, one he never wanted to tangle with again. The first and only time he’d ever had to had been a long time ago. In fact, he had been no older than Apple Bloom was now.
It was Hearts and Hooves day. Coming to school that day, he’d noticed that it was almost unseasonably warm, which had spurred his good mood on even farther.
Now he sat behind his desk (which he was almost too big for) with both his happiness and his nerves coming to a crescendo. He’d been up half the night making the card that lay in front of him, and he’d steeled himself in preparation to give it to that pretty filly with the white coat, sunset-colored mane, and yellow eyes (to Mac, they looked like the skin of a Golden Delicious apple) that sat on the other side of the room from him. He didn’t know her name, but he loved her with the strong emotions only felt in a schoolcolt’s first crush.
He just had to wait until the teacher, Ms. Sweetmind, gave them permission to start exchanging cards.
Mac’s cue came after Ms. Sweetmind had passed out a piece of chocolate to each student. After the class had enjoyed their sweet, Ms. Sweetmind said, “Alright, class, if you have a Hearts and Hooves day card for that special somepony, now’s the time.”
Mac picked up the card—gently, oh so gently—in his teeth and moved toward the yellow-eyed filly. He got a small pang of fear when he saw a queue of four or five other colts gathered around her. He quelled this by remembering what first his mommy (Mommy was in heaven now), and then Granny Smith had told him: he was the most handsome colt they had ever seen.
Once the others had dispersed, he silently laid his card on her desk. He watched as she opened it, watched those golden apple eyes slide back and forth over the message he’d written inside.
She finished, put the card aside, and, smiling, said, “Thank you, Mac.”
He smiled back. “Yer—” he tried to say, but his mouth felt scratchy as sandpaper. He swallowed and tried again. “Yer welcome. And Ah’m glad ya know my name. What’s yers?”
“Sunlight Sprinkle.”
“Oh.”
He stood there for a few more seconds, then, when she didn’t say anything else, went back to his seat. His mind raced. Is that all there is to it? Do I have a fillyfriend now?
He decided that yes, he did, and the thought buoyed him up like a leaf on a gust of autumn breeze. He remained that way until just after the final bell.
After a day of candy and fun, the bell sounded at three o’clock. Mac got up from his seat, carrying a little goody bag full of conversation hearts and lollipops. It crossed his mind to find Sunlight and walk her home. It seemed like the kind of thing ponies who were in love did, at least judging from most of the storybooks he’d ever read. He began scanning the thronging students to find her.
Then, he heard a giggle, and it had to be her. The sound was too pretty to come from anypony else. He turned toward it and found that his hunch had been correct. But then he saw who she was laughing with: one of the other colts who’d given her a card. He caught a snatch of what they were saying.
“... Macintosh is such a haybrain.”
The colt had said this.
“I know. He’s the biggest haybrain.”
Mac heard Sunlight’s voice, heard the two of them laughing, and felt pretty lousy. The feeling of fall breeze from earlier was gone, replaced by the sensation that he had been buried in a winter snowdrift.
He rushed out of the schoolhouse and clear home. When he arrived, Granny Smith was on the front porch, feeding Apple Bloom a bottle of milk and watching amusedly as Applejack tried to feed herself a bowl of applesauce. More was smeared in her blonde mane than had ever found its way into her mouth.
Mac walked up the steps, wanting to slip quietly past them, wanting to hide in his room for a while. Alas, it wasn’t that easy; the question he was dreading caught him.
“How was yer little party at school, Macky?” Granny said.
He didn’t really want to answer, but now that it had been openly asked, he couldn’t stop himself from saying everything that had happened.
Granny listened and nodded, and when he finished, said, “Well, sugar, that’s too bad. Yer a nice, handsome colt—certainly ain’t no ‘haybrain’—and if that filly couldn’t see it, it’s her problem. You wait, one of these days you’ll find a pretty filly who you like, and who likes ya back.”
Mac sighed. “If ya say so, Granny.”
He went inside and up to his room. He sat on his bed and thought about what Granny had told him. He could almost believe that there was a girl out there who would like him back. The questions of how to find her and how long it would take were a little more daunting. He could be an old stallion before he met her. And in the meantime, would he have to keep going through this? He didn’t see how ponies got married, if to find each other they had to feel this terrible so many times.
Mac continued his chores, pumping water for the pigs and still remembering. He had hurt for quite a while over Sunlight Sprinkle, but he felt better eventually. It had been the same any other time he found himself developing feelings for a mare. Sure he’d felt lonely and longed almost unbearably for the object of his affection, but he’d always held it in, because the pain of being rejected was far worse than the pain of unspoken one-sided attachment. And he had always gotten over it. He hadn’t told anypony about his feelings since that Hearts and Hooves day party in grade school. And really, he thought, it’s better that way.
“Mac!” Applejack’s voice interrupted his thoughts.
He turned and saw her coming toward him.
“We got a delivery to make. Can ya handle it?”
“Eeyup. Where to?”
“The library.”
He followed her back to find a fully-laden apple cart. He strapped himself into the harness and set off.
By the time he got to the library, he was panting a bit. He was pretty strong, but it was still a long way to haul a heavy cart of apples. He raised a hoof and knocked on the door.
Waiting for the response, he fell into a thinking spell. This is where she lives. And that made him a little nervous, but then he remembered that, nine times out of ten, a little dragon answered the door. Her assistant. So this won’t be that hard.
“Yes?” said a voice, and then Mac knew it was going to be hard. Harder than he’d expected, anyway. Twilight really was beautiful.
He bit his lip (unnoticeably, he hoped) and gestured to the apple cart.
“Oh, my delivery.” She stepped aside so he could come in. “Thank you very much, Big Macintosh.”
He went inside and she showed him into the kitchen, to the large bin where he could put the apples. He deposited his delivery, careful not to bruise any of them. Twilight thanked him once more, and he left.
As he pulled the much lighter cart home, Mac felt it—a little more of the flame he had for her was forcibly quenched. He felt a little bad, but knew it was for his own good, that it was just nature taking its course. He remembered something he had learned in science class in school: even volcanoes went dormant. Their lava cooled off, and it was better for everypony.
