I.
The zap apples are not in the western field.
They aren't in the northern field, either.
Granny Smith stands in the slushy muck of the Southern orchard, frowning at the tree before her. Moonlight trickles through the bare branches, casting a lacework of shadows upon the ground and highlighting the total absence of ripened fruit. In one of the uppermost boughs, a single, shriveled leaf vibrates in the wind—the only decoration upon an otherwise-barren tree.
"You're just toyin' with me, aren't ya?"
The zap apple tree is silent. As Granny Smith watches, the dead leaf breaks free of its branch and falls, swirling around and around to land upon an untouched patch of snow.
Granny Smith chuckles, fighting back a cough. "Now, it's gettin' mighty late in the year for that nonsense, dontcha think? The timber wolves were howlin' just last night, so what are you waitin' on?"
"grrnysmth," says a faint murmur at the edge of her hearing.
"What was that?" She presses her ear to the dark trunk.
"Granny Smith!" the tree says, a bit louder.
Granny frowns. The trees are waiting on her? "You've never needed my permission a day in your life! Why are you foolin' around no—"
"GRANNY SMIII-AAAAAAIIIIEE!" A high-pitched shriek tears through the orchard. Granny Smith turns around in time to catch a glimpse of a tiny filly tumbling down the hill, a long orange scarf trailing behind her. What in tarnation?
Her hip twinges as she hurries down the incline, but the elderly mare follows the filly-sized furrow freshly gouged into the snow as it leads out of the southern orchard and directly into a sizable ditch lurking on the field's fringes. Why hasn't Apple Strudel filled that in, yet?
At the bottom of the ditch, four hooves stick out of the snow, waggling furiously at the sky. Muffled sounds of indignation float up to Granny Smith's ears. She chuckles.
"Hold on there, lil midget. I'm a-comin."
The intermittent breeze becomes a steady wind as Granny teeters down the slick trench walls, narrowly avoiding toppling head-over-hooves down the whole thing. Picking her way over to the thrashing pile of snow, the elderly mare grabs a hoof and pulls. With a soft floof, she hauls a miffed, pink-coated filly into the open air. The filly immediately springs to her hooves, looking around wildly.
"OhnoohnoOHNOOOO—oh, there it is." She snags her scarf from the ground and gives it a thorough brushing, before bouncing over to Granny Smith and proffering it up. "Dis is fer yu," she says, through a mouthful of yarn.
Granny squints at the filly. She's about Apple Bloom's age, though a bit smaller in height, and quivering like a leaf in the fall. Granny pats her head, chuckling.
"You're a silly one, aren't ya? Put that scarf on before you get common sense shaken into you. What exactly do you think you're doin' out here, anyways?"
The filly inexplicably deflates, and resignedly tugs the scarf around her neck. "C'mon, Granny, let's get inside. It's getting colder."
The two begin the long trudge out of the southern orchard, the little filly shuffling along dejectedly. A life of parenting tells Granny that it's more than just the Blank Flank Blues, and she speaks up after the filly heaves a sigh.
"What's botherin' you, pipsqueak?"
Pipsqueak kicks a lump of snow but says nothing. Granny's about to cajole her some more—somepony's being a pouty petunia—when the midget surprises her. "There's this... filly... At school. I'm having trouble with her."
"Isn't my grandfilly, is it? Apple Bloom? She's 'bout your age. A right little firecracker, that one."
The filly shakes her head. "Not angry kind of trouble. I just wanna be friends, but no matter what I do, she doesn't care," she huffs, glaring at the ground. "At all! And I've tried everything!"
"Hmm." The snow beneath their hooves crunches softly. "So you've been real nice to this filly?"
Midgetsticks looks up, nodding eagerly. "Yeah, I share my flowers with her and draw and we even planted some daffodils once and I dunno why she won't be my friend 'cause she acts like she likes me--"
"Whoah, slow down there, hotshot. Y'know what that reminds me of?"
Whippersnipper bites her lip, frowning. "When... you were a young filly?" she asks tentatively, as Granny Smith says, "When I was a young fil—oh, aren't you a clever clover!" The filly beams.
"Whaddya know 'bout Zap Apples, frittercakes?"
"They're magic and Mama really loves Zap Apple Jam. She says you make it the best."
Granny chuckles. "Well..."
"The first time we ever picked Zap Apples, there were barely enough leftovers to smack your lips at—we certainly had no need t'jam any of it. But after our second harvest—hot dang! We were practically drowning in apples, so I started cookin' up jam like it was going outta style! Or at least, I tried to..."
"I musta made close to a hundred batches of zap apple jam, and none of 'em tasted even close to decent! The first batch was too sticky. Then it was too runny. Then it lost all its color. I even had a batch that started glowing and melted right through the jar, if you can believe that nonsense!
"Now believe me, lil' pumpernickel, when I say I was rightly panicked. I had tried every trick my mama taught me, and every trick her mama taught her, and nothing was working!"
"What did you do?" The filly looks at Granny, frowning, then nearly trips and thinks better of it, turning her eyes back to the well-worn path before them.
"I made my worst mistake yet, skipperdoodle. I tried to force the Zap Apples into jam! My determination set me on a single-pony crusade for eternal jammin' glory, and I got a mite carried away in the process.
"I played hide and seek with those apples. We visited their tree parents, went swimming in the lake—even converted the entire history of jam-makin into poetry! Every day, I tried something new—a lot like my grandfilly Apple Bloom and her cutie mark tomfoolery—and every day I wound up with a goopy, disgustin' sludge at the bottom of my pot.
"After a fruit therapy session didn't work, I mighta said a few choice words. Lemme tell you somethin, Hopscotch: if you're ever gonna call a Zap Apple a sulky lump o' colorless gunk, make sure you're wearing some substantial face protection.
"By the time my eyebrows grew back, I remember feelin' pretty dejected. I stared at my last pot of sliced Zap Apples, boiling over the fire, and decided that maybe I should give up. The fruit just didn't wanna jamify.
"Well, giving up lasted for a good ten minutes before the apples started boilin' all funky-punky again. Instead of plump, round bubbles, I noticed they were making squares, triangles—all sorts of odd shapes, and the liquid was hissing an' popping something fierce. It kinda sounded like the jam was confused, or upset, so I painted up a polka dot, nice and round, to show the Zap Apples how they should be bubbling."
The filly blinks at her as they draw near to the barn. "That worked?"
"It sure helped! The jam calmed right down, and once I started paying attention to it, I noticed all sorts of things the Zap Apples were trying to tell me, in their own way. It took years of trying, and a lot of failing, but I eventually figured out how to get the sweetness just right, and how to keep the jars from breakin' and makin' a sticky mess of the pantry floor. It took some patience, sure, but once I took the time to figure out what the apples needed, I was on my way to whippin' up the best darn jam you ever tasted—and I use that recipe even now!
"So maybe, pumpkinella, you should be patient with this pony pal o'yers. It sounds like you're right determined to be her friend, but she doesn't quite know how to work with you. Listen to her! See what she wants! And don't try to force her into friendship." Granny Smith chuckles as they step onto the front porch. "Things like friends and cutie marks can't be forced. They'll come when they're ready; they just need some patience."
"Huh." Doodlepop processes the idea for a minute, then brightens up and throws herself around Granny's legs. "Thanks a bunch, Granny Smith! I'll try to be more patient and listen to her, and I bet we'll be friends super-soon!" She detangles herself from the hug, and scampers off into the snow. The elderly mare's about to call after her, when Applejack's voice rings through the air.
"Granny? Is that you? Come inside, it's freezin' out."
II.
For a sprawling orchard, it's hard to find a tree in Sweet Apple Acres.
A Zap Apple tree, that is.
Granny Smith scowls at a patch of flowers, pale-gold in the moonlight. Darn grandfoals, movin' plants around again. She oughta have a word with Big Macintosh, now that she thinks abou—
"Hiya, Granny! Whatcha doooin?" The interruption comes in the form of a small filly boinging across the lawn, red-and-green bangs flopping into her eyes with each bounce. Must be one'a Apple Bloom's friends. She never does tell me when she's havin' sleepovers.
"I'm a-tendin' to my Zap Apples."
The filly cocks her head. "Granny, those are daffodils."
"Well I would be tending my Zap Apples, if somepony hadn't moved 'em someplace else! You don't happen t'know anything about that, do ya?" Granny eyeballs her.
The filly frowns. "But Zap Apple season—"
"Is gonna be a catastrophe if I can't get to my trees!"
"Okay, Granny, be right back!" She scurries off.
After a moment, the filly returns with a crayon and some paper, which she carefully smooths onto the grass. She draws two stick ponies. "Mmkay, that's us." She draws a bunch of circles, scattered haphazardly across the paper. "Those are the trees, and there's—" She draws a excessively buff stick pony. "—where I saw Big Macintosh yesterday. He might've been tending to the Zap Apples, maybe?"
She offers the map to Granny, who squints at it suspiciously. "I suppose this'll work. Lead the way, munchkin."
Twenty minutes later, they're hopelessly lost.
"You're not gettin' a cutie mark in cartography anytime soon, I'll tell you that," Granny says, scratching her chin. The filly rotates the map another ninety degrees, frowning.
"I think the problem is that the map says we're here—" She points at the two stick ponies. "—when I think we're over here." She taps an empty section of the paper.
"There's nothin' there, hopscotch."
The filly grins, tossing the map aside. "Isn't it great, Granny? We're in unknown lands! Who knows what we could find!"
As it turns out, they find the Zap Apple trees. But not before running into the chicken coop, questioning the general shape of the Earth, and having a competition to see who can sing the Ponyville anthem the loudest.
Granny Smith can.
"I still don't think it should count unless you remember all the words," the filly grumbles, as they reach the Zap Apple clearing.
"Horseapples," Granny replies. "If you wanted t'know the right words, you shoulda looked 'em up. Nopony cares what you say, once you start singing. In fact..."
The words die in her throat, because before her stands an orchard of spindly, leafless trees, barely swaying in the wind. They look like Zap Apple trees, but they can't be—Granny remembers seeing the third sign just the other day. She sits down with a thump. The branches should be positively covered in small, star-shaped blossoms; the fourth sign could appear any minute. But the trees are bare.
"This—this can't be right," Granny says, uncertainly. She turns around, but the empty trees surround her, taunting her with their naked branches. "I don't—there's—Some... somepony must've—must've taken the apples," she manages to choke out. "We gotta find 'em, Doodlepop, they should—should be here. We gotta go after 'em."
"Okay Granny, sure we will," the filly says hurriedly, taking her crayon back out. She pulls a wad of paper from behind her ear and smooths it on the ground before them. "Guess we better draw another map, then."
III.
CLANGITYcrashCLANG.
A pink-coated filly rolls out of bed, yawning. She blinks wearily at the clock—three AM, not too bad—and plods out of her bedroom and down the carpeted stairs. The tower of tin cans that should be guarding the front door lies scattered across the living room.
The filly picks her way across the shadowed floor, taking care to avoid kicking a stray can. It's unlikely that anypony's still asleep after such a ruckus, but she tries not to make things worse. They all get little enough sleep as it is.
Sure enough, Applejack pokes her head into the room. "Honeycrisp, is that you?"
"Yep! I gotta—owww." Applejack's turned a lamp on, and the sudden glow stabs at Honeycrisp's eyes. She blinks rapidly as the room comes into view. "I'm going to get her, Aunty; you can go back to sleep."
"Sugarcube," Applejack's voice is as soft as the nighttime sky, and twice as weary. "You don't always have to be the one to go after her. How about you run along to bed? I'll stay with Granny tonight."
The filly shakes her head vigorously, green-and-red bangs flopping around. "No thanks, Aunty. Granny and I are almost friends. She's probably waiting on me now!" Plodding over to the door, she begins carefully nudging aside the few tin cans still in the way.
For a moment, the gentle clinking is the only sound in the room, but then Applejack moves to look out the window, her hoofsteps firm and steady.
She clears her throat. "Honeycrisp, it's a good thing you're doin'—tryin' to be friends with Granny Smith. It means a lot to her, even if she don't act like it. But sugarcube—"
"It's okay, Aunt Applejack," Honeycrisp says quickly, mostly to stop her aunt from using that voice.
It's a tired voice, one as worn out by the years as the tattered Stetson hanging by the door.
It's Uncle Mac's voice, late at night, when he and Aunty sit at the kitchen table and murmur about herbs and spells and medicine.
It's Mama's voice, whenever Granny exclaims over the cutie mark Mama got ages and ages ago.
It's even the voice of Aunty's friends—Miss Fluttershy, especially—when they come to visit, and Granny hollers for 'em to introduce themselves.
But it's never Aunt Applejack's voice.
It can't be Aunt Applejack's voice, because that would mean that things are bad, the type of bad that doesn't go away by the end of her adventure books, and Honeycrisp knows, with all the vigor and determination of youth, that everything will get better. It has to.
She bounces up and gives Applejack a peck on the cheek. "Don't be sad, Aunty. Granny'll be okay. She doesn't even call me Apple Bloom, anymore!" She opens the front door, stepping out into the humid embrace of the midsummer night. She quickly spots Granny Smith, steadily shuffling towards the western orchard.
Honeycrisp gives her aunt one last smile. "You'll see, Aunty. She just needs some patience, is all."
The filly takes a deep breath and leaps from the porch, galloping after her great-grandmare.
"Hey Granny! The Zap Apples are thataway!"
