Little Strongheart loved the feeling of the rich land underneath her cloven hooves. The texture and the warmth were only part of it. The vitality and the magic of the world was communicated to her with every step she took. It was why the stampeding grounds the buffalo and the ponies had just fought over was so important. It was an instinctual process that was highly valued in buffalo society, to the point that every year her tribe would go on a great migration across the southern plains. On a cloudless day, basking underneath the gentle sun, a buffalo could see forever.
Which was why Strongheart found it odd that ponies would abandon the feeling of the ground under their own four hooves to sit in a carriage, such as was the case with the train now leaving Appleloosa. Certainly, pegasi could fly, but even they forwent the warm windstreams to laze around in a train. At least it was other ponies who pulled the train out of Appleloosa, taking it north to the centre of Equestria. Buffalo would pull around other buffalo from time to time: the elderly, the sick, and the very young, and it was a noble job to do. But the ponies who had hopped on the train were nothing of the sort.
And even the job of train-driver wasn’t sacrosanct. Apparently most trains in Equestria actually drove under magic drawn from the land, something the Appleloosans had insisted up and down had been proven to be sustainable on multiple occasions. The only reason there was no such magical engine on this train was that the tracks between Appleloosa and the north had been laid down quickly to support the frontier town, with the upgrades necessary for magical power to be done at a later date.
Perhaps that was just how things were meant to be, Little Strongheart thought as she looked over the horizon at the train, shrinking in the distance. She liked this spot where she was at, one of the rare rolling hills in the southern plains. Further down, she could only see things from a flat perspective. From up here, she could look down, down at the town of Appleloosa that seemed to grow exponentially every time the buffalo returned from their migration; down at the apple orchard that provided the ponies with their main source of food; down at the river that seemed to lazily wind around with several sharp turns as it continued its westward flow.
“Oh, hello there, Miss Strongheart. Fancy meeting you here.”
Strongheart raised her head, ears perking up at the familiar voice. Turning around, she was greeted by the pony named Braeburn, though something seemed slightly different about him today. Little Strongheart struggled sometimes with pony culture and customs, but even she could tell Braeburn was an outlier. The stallion was simply so eclectic and exuberant that it was at times uncomfortable to be around him.
Fortunately, when Strongheart had first met Braeburn, he was very tolerable. It was the other ponies around her at the time that were less well-behaved, as they decided to push her and Braeburn into one another.
“Good morning, Braeburn,” Strongheart greeted him. “How are you doing today?”
“I feel like I’m on top of the world! Which, given how high up this is, is a little more literal than usual, heheh,” Braeburn said, nervously laughing as he realised how bad his joke was.
“Yes, I enjoy this spot too,” Strongheart agreed, giving Braeburn an out.
The pony seized it, as he turned around and sat on his haunches, gazing at Appleloosa below. “So, how is he Chief, Chief Thunderhooves?”
Strongheart rolled her eyes. “Ugh, don’t remind me. The Chief has been suffering from a hangover all day. Maybe that’ll teach him not to go overboard on food and drink in the future.” The buffalo chief had gotten into a dare with Appeloosa’s local Sheriff, Silverstar, and the two had attempted to outdo the other with how many slices of pie and mugs of apple cider they could done. Thunderhooves had won, thanks to his larger size, but he was paying for it with his upset stomach.
“Well, hopefully he enjoyed it, at least. The cooks and distillers pride themselves on their craft,” Braeburn said sanguinely.
“It was. It did stop the fight, after all,” Strongheart said, remembering her own several slices of apple pie. The way the warm, freshly-baked crust practically melted as it made contact on her tongue, mingled with the light fragrance of cinnamon and sugar and the rich fragrance of treated apples was something to simply die for. Strongheart had never really understood the concept of a calf curling her cloven hooves until she had had that first slice of apple pie.
When she did, Strongheart understood why Chief Thunderhooves had called off the battle. Even before, the big buffalo had been hesitant to charge into Appleloosa, almost getting cold hooves before that annoying pink pony had intervened. Good food, however, was something every culture seemed to treasure, and the tribe was no different. For good food and compromise, a fight between ponies and buffalo had been averted.
“Whew, that’s good to know,” said Braeburn as he put his front limbs down so the full length of his barrel laid on the ground. “My grandma would be happy to know that her baking recipes were so good that they even stopped a war.”
“Your grandma?”
“Yes, Granny Smith. She lives in Ponyville, just a horseshoe’s throw away from Canterlot,” said Braeburn. “Her family built an orchard there nearly a century ago, but she single-hoofedly tamed a wild cultivar of apples that grow in the Everfree Forest. She’s practically our family matriarch, even if most of us live as far away as Los Pegasus or Manehatten.”
“Oh, Ponyville. Wasn’t that where Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie and Spike were from?” Little Strongheart asked. She thought she had heard their hometown mentioned in passing, but wasn’t certain.
“Yeppers. Applejack, you remember her, she’s my cousin and she lives with Granny Smith. Her father and my father were brothers,” said Braeburn.
“Interesting. Did you grow up in Ponyville, then?” Strongheart asked, as she found herself enjoying their idle conversation.
“Yeah, I did. Applejack has an older brother, Macintosh, who I practically grew up with. I wish he had come, but he was too busy to. It’s a shame.”
“You can’t go visit him?”
Braeburn shook his head. “Not for a while, no. When my parents retired, they moved to Vanhoofer, but I decided to strike out from Ponyville. I heard about a new land grant being made for a frontier town, and knew what I wanted to do. Of course,” he nervously chuckled, “It’s been a lot of work since I came here, getting the land ready for planting and actually getting the orchard going.”
“It sounds lonely is what,” observed Strongheart. “I couldn’t imagine being away from the tribe for more than a few days.”
“Whoo-ee,” Braeburn let out a deep breath. “It has been, I’ll tell you that. Ma and pa visit occasionally, but never more than a few days at that. But I’ve made lots of good friends here in Appleloosa from those who also moved here. Ah, I’ve heard some of the buffalo will be moving in, too.”
That was familiar ground for Little Strongheart. “Yes, some of our older buffalo, those who will no longer be able to make the yearly migration. We had a camp further south they usually stay at during that time, but the Chief figured it would be easier for us all to integrate if they stayed in Appleloosa instead from now on.”
It was then that the young calf realised what seemed odd about Braeburn. “Say, where are your hat and vest today? I’ve never seen you without them.”
Braeburn looked sheepish. “Today’s a day off for me. I don’t like wearing them on days like today. Sitting up here, the sun is so nice and warm. My clothes would just get in the way of that.”
Strongheart smirked as she saw a rare opportunity for teasing. She brought a hoof up, and traced the visible demarcation on Braeburn’s barrel between sun-dyed light fur and a slightly darker straw-gold upper torso. “Perhaps you should wear it less. That way, your coat might be all the same colour,” she said.
“Y-yes, heh, sorry, I’m a little ticklish there,” Braeburn said. The stallion tired of keeping his head craned left to look at Strongheart, and rolled over onto his side so his entire body faced her instead. To Strongheart’s amusement, she noted the stallion had the quirk of keeping his front hooves and his back hooves locked together, rather than laid apart. “You know, I never did thank you for taking care of Miss Dash and Miss Pie and Mr. Spike.”
“It was nothing, really, it was,” said Little Strongheart. “We might have had our issues with you ponies, but they were lost. We wouldn’t have turned them away just because they were ponies. Of course, I think the young whelp, Spike, enjoyed staying with us for the night. My tribe values dragons, after all.”
“Oh? Why is that?” Braebrun asked. “Ponies usually associate dragons with fire-breathing menaces. We have more than a few stories about dragons burning villages down or hoarding jewelry, gold and food.”
“And so do we,” Strongheart agreed. “But long ago, according to our oral lore, when the planet was younger and colder, a dragon saved the buffalo by providing the chief at the time with a gem. The Heartstone, it was called. Supposedly it was a part of his own heart, with the eternal burning fire of a dragon’s magic. Wherever we took it, the cold was repelled, and the buffalo could live with warm conditions.” The young calf sighed wistfully as she thought about the Heartstone’s ultimate fate. “Over time, we lost the Heartstone, but since the planet warmed up, we didn’t need it anymore. But because of the Heartstone, we’ve always pledged to feed and house any dragons who come to the southern plains, no matter how large they might be or how long they may stay.”
“Oh,” said Braeburn. He continued to turn over until he was completely on his back, the underside of his barrel now facing the sun. Braeburn closed his eyes to avoid the sun’s glare, but it was clear he was quite comfortable otherwise. “I guess I have much more to learn about the buffalo.”
Little Strongheart bit her lip, but decided to go for it. The agreement forged between the tribe and the town of Appleloosa had been a close thing. While neither side was especially hostile, there had existed some distrust. She and Braeburn had attempted to talk when they first met, only for the ponies on either side to argue. Strongheart thought it best they continue that chat.
“I could tell you some more,” Strongheart offered. “I mean, it’s not like we keep it secret or anything. It’s just that until Appleloosa was started, we never really interacted with ponies much, and never saw the need to share our history.”
“Oh, really?” Braeburn asked, turning back around slightly so he could open his eyes. “That would be great!” He squinted, as a thoughtful expression crawled across his face. “Um, I don’t know how much you would like pony history, or where I could even begin. Heck, I don’t even know our history that well, either.”
“You could tell me a bit about your family history,” Strongheart said. “The wild cultivar your grandma tamed, for example. Even down here, we’ve heard about the Everfree Forest. The idea of a forest that grows on its own with all sorts of flora and fauna inside, and wild magic, fascinates me. So much different than the endless fields of grass.”
Braeburn sat up again. “Oh, yeah, I can tell you all about that. Where to begin...well, I suppose it would start with Princess Celestia granting Granny Smith’s parents a plot of land near the Everfree…”
As Braeburn launched into his family’s history, Strongheart listened, fascinated. Until a few years ago, she had not even once seen a pony in her life. Now, she would be living next door to a town of ponies part of the year, eating with them, drinking with them, and working alongside them as the buffalo pitched in to expand the ponies’ farming and orchard efforts. For Little Strongheart, learning the history of the ponies was just a natural step on the way to the fuller integration the Chief was already envisioning.
It was certainly a better way to make friends too than having to go through that terrible song again.
Author's Note
I'm one of the minority of people who seem to actually like Over a Barrel, and I once even wrote a blogpost about it. Though they fade away following the second act, Little Strongheart and Braeburn are memorable characters. Little Strongheart has been wasted as a character ever since though, making a two-second cameo in Pinkie Pride and nothing in Appleloosa's Most Wanted. Fortunately, she gets to make an appearance with Rainbow Dash in an IDW comic later this month, but that may be the end of the line for her.
There was basically no planning for this fanfic, beyond the basic premise of 'Strongheart and Braeburn have a chat after Over a Barrel'. This is something I intend to do a lot for short fics, where I just write and let the spontaneity of my writing take events wherever they go, instead of following a pre-determined plot. I didn't even know if this would be friendshipping or light romance until I actually wrote it. Braeburn loses a little bit of his voice from the show in the process, however.
Here's a fun fact I didn't realise until I rewatched the episode: Strongheart and Thunderhooves never identify one another as being family members. Strongheart always calls him Thunderhooves. I thought they were daughter and father but nothing in the dialogue supports it, nor in what little non-show official material I could find.
For those who want to argue about whether it's Appleloosa or Appleoosa with or without the second L, I'd like to point out that even the show and official material can't keep it straight. Since Appleloosa is named after the Appaloosa horse, I opt to have that second L.
