Sweat soaked through her coat and Applejack wobbled slightly on hooves she couldn't feel anymore. Her mouth relaxed into a carefree smile as a potent sense of euphoria swamped her brain. She had pushed herself right to the limit this time, but it was worth it.
Before her was bushels of apples. Bushels upon bushels of apples piled from floor to ceiling and into every corner of the cellar. Tens of thousands, glistening and ripe like jewels in the dark. Rigorously divided into sections depending on quality and size. She could look in any direction and see the future of each apple, be it in baked, jam, cider, juice or as a whole eating apple.
She was done. The harvest was completed and stored away. At least for today. Tomorrow was tomorrow and would have it's own trials.
But she had to face those trials without... that. It was important. Very important that she put that away tonight.
Applejack giggled softly with exhaustion as she closed the cellar door and bared it shut.
“Howdy,” interrupted a pony behind her. She said it almost ironically.
The farmer turned to face the newcomer.
It was Carrot Top, she lived on a small acreage bordering on her farm. She was covered in a dry coat of dirt. “I managed to finish harvesting early so I came by to see if you needed a hoof?”
Applejack hardened her expression.
“Ah was just finishing up mah'self. Thank ya, fer yer concern.” Her eyes did not look thankful.
“You're welcome. Us farmers do have to stick together, right?”
“Right.”
A gentle autumn breeze dragged against Applejack's sweat soaked coat pulling away a gentle steam while from Carrot Top's coat it pulled nothing but dry dust.
The farmer's neighbor shuffled her hooves in uncertainty. “Well, that is all that I came for. I'll be going now.”
“I'll see ya around,” something about the way she said it suggested that she wasn't happy about that.
“Listen, I'm just trying to be neighborly!”
“Ah never said you wasn't.”
Carrot Top looked back as she left. Her eyes frightened and uncertain.
* * *
The farmer clenched her eyes shut as a curious keening filled her ears and her vision filled out with white. She had to hurry, she couldn't stop. It would cost her dearly if she gave in and laid down right now.
Her body betrayed her as she slowly started to drift off the path to the left.
Applejack pumped into something soft, comfortable and familiar. She could feel the body of the mare next to her. She could smell her perfume. And the strategically placed saddle blanket to ward off the farmer's sweat.
The other mare leaned into her, holding her up and on the right path. While lighter and weaker she was fresh and vital.
A bottle of lemonade was held to her lips and poured onto her dry tongue and stung her parched pallet. Tart refreshment flowed down her throat forming a ball of cold ache in her belly.
Almost imperceptibly the lightest of touches began to flit over her, picking away stray bits of leaves and other debris. This she indulged, it was sort of soothing but she would never be able to say so.
Applejack opened her eyes. The other mare smiled back.
Rarity would make some lucky colt a wonderful wife someday.
“I thought I saw Carrot Top crying.”
“She should really know better.”
“She just wants to help.”
“She just wants me to owe her a favor.”
“Darling! If she does you a favor first, then what's the problem?”
“Mah favors are worth more then hers.”
“Huh,” was the reply.
Time passed, Rarity dutifully supporting Applejack's weight and tending to her as best as she could.
“Ye ain't got a piece of land you need me to take care of for ya... Ye might need a wagon pulled or maybe a bit of time but you don't need nothin' that would really cost me.”
The pale unicorn considered this for a time. “Just supposing I did have a field of trees that needed a good kicking, would you brush me off like you do Carrot top?”
“I reckon that maybe I could help you out, in the hypothetical.” The orange earth pony raised an eyebrow, “But how much and when would depend on what you could do for me in return?”
Rarity flushed slightly. “I imagine I could find someway of reimbursing you for your services.”
“Ye, reckon?”
“Truly and surely, I'm not a mare to let debt lay about unpaid.” Rarity opened her mouth, slightly in anticipation.
Applejack met Rarity's eyes and understood.
There was room there in that moment for a kiss. A powerful and bold kiss that would claim the designer for herself. It would be a whirlwind romance through the winter months. They would spend nights snuggling by the fire sipping on hot cider, whispering to each other and delving into each others eyes. They would be married in the spring in front of the entirety of the town. Applejack would wear a tux and Rarity... could she still wear white? The mayor would officiate the ceremony and the crowds would cheer. They'd have to get either her brother or one of her cousins to stud. Rarity would look so radiant with an Apple growing inside of her. They'd name the kid something fancy like Strudel. Their love, the heat and the passion, would forge a new and strong link in the unending chain of the Apple family. The farm would flourish under the keen business sense of the unicorn. Rarity would never quite fit into farm life though. She would struggle and give everything she had give. It would age her and sap away her vitality. Then she would find her equilibrium for a time but only after sacrificing her youth, beauty and her dreams. Eventually her life it's self would be fed into the ever hungry maw of the farm.
She had spent a number of nights thinking about it. Wistful like.
Rarity's ear flicked impatiently as she waited for the kiss that make her a farmer's wife.
Applejack just laughed and kept walking.
Rarity left in an indignant huff.
The earth pony snuck a look back at her as she walked away. Just because she couldn't have her didn't mean she couldn't have a look.
* * *
Applejack at last arrived at the secret heart of Sweet Apple Acres.
Not the beating heart of course. The beating heart was the proud house and the living family within it on open display to all of Ponyville proper.
The secret heart was... well secret.
The sun had not yet reached the horizon and so she had a moment. She took this moment to try to practice for the hardest conversation she would ever have.
“Ya see Applebloom...” she took a breath and tried to focus. “Farming is mighty hard work.”
“I know that much,” dismissed an imaginary Applebloom that was a little older then she was now.
“No, that's not what ah mean. Ah mean... You know how just me and Big Mac handle the farm?”
“Yeah...” replied Applebloom as she started to understand something. “But that time Big Mac got hurt, you asked fer help and your friends showed up.”
“Yup. Five whole ponies. One of them being among the most ridiculously powerful unicorns in all of Equestria mind you. To do half of the job Big Mac does every year all on his own.”
“What... What exactly are ya trying to say?”
“Sweet Apple Acres is just over a hundred acres in size. It would take nearly twenty ponies to manage the whole thing using old fashioned earth pony methods.”
“So... how do we do it?”
“With twenty ponies and old fashioned earth pony methods. Ah just told you that.” Applejack took a moment to tease her imaginary little sister for some precious levity.
“But... Ah haven't seen that many ponies around.”
“Of course not.” The farmer glanced toward the sky. The sun was dipping below the horizon, the moon had not yet risen. It was dusk. The tiny slice of day when nopony and especially no Princess was able to pay any attention to the little details. “Ah'll show ya. Watch this closely now.”
Applejack looked over the Apple family cemetery. Grave stones lay scattered about nearly randomly, some worn to illegibility and some fresh and new. At the center of it all was a tree. It wasn't an apple tree.
She wasn't a little filly anymore so it shouldn't frighten her anymore but it did. It always would.
Haralson was first. A second son and the first Apple to die upon the soil of Sweet Apple Acres. Tired he pulled his ethereal body free of his descendant's and made his way back to his grave. The lethal bite of a timberwolf upon the back of his neck a constant reminder of the method of his death.
Egremont and Jonared came next, side by side as they had been in life. Each had been taken by a hacking cough.
Pink Pearl who bled to death after stumbling over a plow two hundred years ago.
Jonagold who made it to the ripe old age of fifty before her heart gave out.
Gravenstein who a hundred and eighty years ago was the first Apple to harness the power of the dead and bring the farm into the age of modern agriculture. He died five years later when the primitive spell buffer gave way and his brain was cooked.
Antonovka who attempted to carry within her fourteen souls of the dead at once only to have her heart give out within the hour.
Cortland who tried to carry the souls through the winter. His rib cage had inexplicably been crushed in the night.
Idared and Ilstar were the last.
“Next time could you refrain from leering at that whore while I'm inside your head?”
“No, and don't talk about Rarity like that, mom.”
“If you're going to be a degenerate filly-fooler you should just grab that mare.”
“No, dad.”
“Listen, she wants you to. It would at least put her to some respectable use.”
“I know but no, dad.”
“I wish your brother Tart was still around. He was a much more dutiful child and could actually be relied on.”
“He was a fairy, mom.”
“You take that back!”
“If he hadn't of died he would have left and never come back!”
“You truly are a loathsome child.”
“You... try going with Mac next time. Or Ah... Ah... Ah'll make it so you have to do more then just see that 'whore!'”
Her father laughed and her mother scowled.
The moon rose and the spirits finished retreating to their graves.
Istar who died trying to wield the power of the dead while her body was compromised with her pregnancy with Applebloom. Her uterus was torn causing her to bleed out. Applebloom was forced into the world a month early. It was a miracle that the foal had been saved.
Idared died mysteriously in the night. The doctors said his body was just worn out. He had been thirty five at the time.
Bereft of the strength and vigor of nearly a dozen ponies Applejack had a sit down. She was just a normal pony now and would be until it was time for Winter-Wrap-Up day. It would be good to rest for the winter. But at the same time she felt so small and helpless as just herself.
Of course this would kill her someday. It would kill her brother and in time her little sister. It would kill whatever spouse she chose and certainly claim any children and grandchildren she would have.
There was a reason this kind of necromancy was outlawed by the Princess.
There was a reason that every large scale farm still relied on it.
She felt bad for sneering at Carrot Top for pretending to be a farmer. But she just couldn't help herself.
Big Mac pushed his nose into her shoulder. Of course he was there. Where else could he have been? He'd had to unload his own batch of souls. He was so quiet she hadn't even noticed him.
It was all for the family. Or was it for the farm? The farm was the family wasn't it? Was there a difference anymore? Could there be a family without the farm?
If the farm vanished wouldn't the pin that held them all together go along with it? Wouldn't they all just wander off on the breeze?
She just didn't know.
The brother and sister made their way to the house.
“Hey Mac? Do you think this is all worth it?”
He didn't answer.
