Every Time Feels Like The First Time
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The Thin Line Between Wife And Death

Every Time Feels Like The First Time

Applejack heaved the last of the day’s harvest onto the back of the wagon, grunting with the effort. A bushel of apples wasn’t much to her, usually. She’d been lifting them since even before she was her baby sister’s age. Still, a day’s work took a toll on the body, and even the strongest back was a little bent by sundown. Working a farm was hard, and you can’t live that hard without at least a little give. You gotta know when to give sometimes, or you break – momma had always said that.

Sometimes Applejack forgot that particular lesson. Maybe pushed herself a little too hard on account of she didn’t want to admit she couldn’t shoulder more than any one pony should be able to. With her momma gone, it was hard to remember, but her friends were always around to remind her.

Well, except for Rainbow Dash. You couldn’t ever slow down where that girl stuck her hooves in. Everything she touched turned to Zap Apples, but that was what Applejack loved about her and she wouldn’t have changed it for anything.

“Alright, then, Big Mac,” she said, sighing as she ran a hoof over her brow. The movement lifted her hat, releasing a thin rivulet of sweat that had been trapped in the band of her hat. She blinked, biting back a curse as it rolled into her eye. “You get on back and get this wagon in the barn, and cover it up good so the flies don’t get at it. We’ll rinse ‘em off and take it on in to market in the mornin’.”

“You ain’t coming?” Big Macintosh asked as he shrugged into the harness and checked the traces. He always checked the traces, ever since that time they snapped on him and sent a whole cart of apples rolling down a hill and into the swimming hole. “Supper’s probably ready by now.”

“Nah, I still got stuff to do out here,” Applejack said, twisting her body until the vertebrae in her back popped. She still had a little more in her before she’d bend. “I’ll probably be a couple more hours. Don’t wait up on me, just leave me some pie or somethin’.”

“Couple hours?” Big Mac repeated, frowning. “Ain’t but a couple hours of sun left. You’re gonna be walking back in the dark.”

“Eh, Princess Luna’ll help me home,” she replied with a smile, lifting a hoof to point at the sky. “Now you get, and don’t you be goin’ to bed without a bath.”

“I know,” he grumbled, frowning as he pulled away. “Careful.”

Applejack waited until her brother was out of sight to take off her hat, tossing it onto the stump of a trimmed branch on the nearest tree. She trotted over to the pump and drew some water up out of the ground. She stuck her head under the stream, moaning as the cold groundwater washed away the gritty feeling of dirt and sweat. It wasn’t as refreshing as a bath, but it was good enough to keep her going for now.

She reclaimed her hat once she felt less dirty and had her fill of water. There was still work. There was always work.

The South end of the property had an older orchard, but the trees here had deep roots and made some of the plumpest apples on the farm. But old trees like this needed just as much care as the young ones. They tended to get sick, and one bad tree could make the whole lot sick.

Applejack walked the line, eyeballing the trees as she went and looking for discoloration, loose bark, or any sort of odd growth that might signal trouble. She also made sure to stop every few trees and dig a few inches into the ground at the base. Years back they’d had a problem with Fiddleshrooms, and her dad had missed more than a few suppers tending to it. It wasn’t a common problem – most you got on record was an infestation once every century or so, and that was for all of Equestria – but Applejack had seen what trouble they were and she was the cautious type, so she always made sure to check, just in case.

She kept at it, stopping to pay special attention to a tree every now and again at random. Before she knew it, another hour had gone by and the sky had flipped from its usual blue to the soft orange it turned once the day got tired.

Vigorous sky blue and tired orange. She laughed at that.

“You laughing at these trees, you weirdo?”

Applejack couldn’t help but grin.

“You’re the weirdo,” she teased back, chuckling as she looked up to find Rainbow Dash lounging in the branches of a tree.

Rainbow Dash held a stolen apple in her upturned hoof, slowly biting at it, sloppily, letting the juice run down her chin. If that wasn’t a metaphor, then Applejack didn’t know what metaphors were.

“You just wake up?” Applejack asked, walking past the tree Rainbow was in to continue her inspection. Much as she would’ve loved to just stare at Rainbow with what was left of the daylight, she still had work. She had responsibility, and she knew that Rainbow was the only girl who could get her to forget that, but only if she let her.

“Nah, had a busy day, I’ve been up and flying around since dawn,” Rainbow said, fluttering down from the trees to collect a saddlebag hidden just out of sight. She flung it over her withers without bothering to secure it and fell into step alongside Applejack.

“Not gonna give me a kiss?” Rainbow asked.

Applejack rolled her eyes and leaned over to give her gal a chaste peck on the cheek. She knew Rainbow wanted more, wanted Applejack to get deep in there and really taste the back of her throat, and that was why she just got a peck. Applejack loved teasing that girl. Loved it almost as much as the girl herself.

“I guess that’ll do for right now,” Rainbow muttered under her breath. If Applejack didn’t know any better, she’d say Rainbow was sounding smug, like she knew she’d be getting something better real soon. Then again, Rainbow always sounded smug, and she always ended up getting something better.

Applejack would give her what she wanted, she’d just make her wait for it. After all, teasing is fun, but actual fun is even more fun.

“What got a lazybones like you outta bed before breakfast?” Applejack asked. “Mattress catch on fire?”

“You know you’re the only one hot enough between the sheets to set my bed on fire,” Rainbow quipped, wagging her eyebrows. “I had to fly out to Cloudsdale and the city’s drifted all the way over near Whinneapolis. I don’t know what’s wrong with the Department of Transportation up there. They’re not supposed to let it go that far.”

“Well that’s what you pegasi get for livin’ in the clouds,” Applejack said, swatting Rainbow on the rump with her tail as she stooped to check some roots that had grown out of the ground. “What’d you go to Cloudsdale for, anyhow?”

“Couple things,” Rainbow said. “Mostly I just wanted to see my parents, and I also had business with the Bolts.”

“Y’all got a show comin’ up or somethin’?” Applejack asked, the wheels in her head already turning away to try and figure out how to fit a Wonderbolts show into her already busy schedule.

“Nope,” Rainbow said, her face splitting into a huge grin. “Probably won’t for a while. I had them move me back down to reserves for the rest of the year, told them it might be two.”

That gave Applejack pause. She’d known Rainbow Dash for a while, even before they’d become a bit more than just gal pals, and the Wonderbolts had been the only thing the lazy pegasus had ever taken seriously – aside from her friends, that is.

“What’d you do a fool thing like that for?” Applejack asked crossly.

Rainbow Dash chuckled to herself. It was the kind of little self-servicing laugh that folks had when they thought they had a secret, and that made Applejack’s eyebrow crawl all the way up to her hat brim.

“I needed to free up my schedule for something else I’ve been neglecting,” Rainbow said mysteriously.

Applejack scoffed, unconvinced of Rainbow’s reasoning. Girl was hiding something.

“You made us all sick of hearing about how much you wanted on that team, and now you’re bored of it?” Applejack asked.

“Not bored, just shifting my focus for a little while,” Rainbow explained. “I’ve gotta prioritize, y’know?”

“Prioritize on what?” Applejack asked, scrunching up her nose.

“You know, stuff,” Rainbow said, waving her hoof around vaguely. “Important stuff.”

Applejack turned away, annoyed with the runaround she was getting. If that was how Rainbow wanted to play things, that was fine.

“Shoot, well I ain’t about to keep you from ‘important stuff’,” Applejack said as she cantered ahead. “I got business of my own here. I can’t be sittin’ around jawin’ with you while I’m on Celestia’s time. She ain’t gonna hold up the sun just so’s I can check these trees.”

Applejack hurried along the path cutting between the trees, intent on letting her stride do the talking. Rainbow Dash may have been her favorite gal, but there was just no talking to her when she knew something someone else didn’t. She’d hint and and dance around it, begging to be begged for more information, and much fun as that was sometimes, Applejack was too tired for it today.

Rainbow Dash kept up, staying just a few paces behind. Applejack could tell it from the sound of hooves pounding the dirt. Dash was light on her wings but heavy on her hooves, stomping everywhere she went like she didn’t trust the ground to hold her and had to test it every time. It was a funny habit, considering she’d grown up walking on clouds.

Eventually the trees started to close in. Most of the rest of the trees on the farm had enough space between them that you could weave a wagon through, on account of that made it easier to harvest, but some of the older fields had just gotten too big for all that.

Fact was, Sweet Apple Acres was a lot bigger than most folk realized. There were the orchards closest to the house, which was what everyone thought of as the whole of the farm, but the Apple family had settled Ponyville. Used to be the whole town was just their trees. Some of the older parts of the orchard even brushed up against the wilds of Whitetail Woods.

There wasn’t much call to tend to the trees out this far. The family just let them go wild, let the forest have them. Weren’t no harm in it, and the animals of the forest needed to eat, too. Still, it was better to give these trees a once over every now and then, just in case they caught something they didn’t want spreading to the rest of the trees.

Eventually, Applejack came across a pair of trees that had fused together. They were both a little thin at the trunks, and their roots had grown all tangled up from being planted so close. Big fruiting trees like this needed lots of room to grow, and the roots had pushed themselves right up out the ground, thick as brambles, fighting one another for ground even though the bits above ground were inseparable.

Marriage trees, they were called. Elsewhere on the farm, in another corner tucked away so deep that Applejack had only seen it recently, there was another tree like this one, but much more meaningful and all the nicer for it. Those trees had been planted by her parents, one apple, one pear.

Not everybody called them marriage trees, though. Grandad had called them ‘Humpin’ Trees’, on account of they humped up against each other in the wind, which stripped away the bark so the soft stuff beneath could touch, and that’s how they fused. Big Macintosh had carelessly referred to their parents’ tree like this once.

That boy still had the knot she’d put in his head.

Applejack had the notion to sit for a minute, not so much to catch her breath as to appreciate the way the wind made the trees dance. She felt something warm and firm and familiar pressed up against her back, draping itself over her shoulders. She was still a little peeved at Rainbow for being Rainbow, but this was nice, so she leaned into the warmth, a smile working its way to her face.

Neither of them was very soft. Girls like Rarity and Fluttershy were soft. Their squishy, curvy bodies were practically made for snuggling. Applejack and Rainbow both worked too hard to have that inviting softness. If Rarity and Fluttershy were like silk, Rainbow and Applejack were more like burlap – rough and functional.

They made do, though, and neither complained about a little closeness when the opportunity came around. Applejack would be fine with sitting here all day, watching the trees sway and the day melt away, just enjoying the feel of her gal’s warmth against her back.

“How long’ve we been doing this, AJ?” Rainbow Dash asked after they been sitting a spell. She reached forward a little, rubbing the tip of her hoof up and down Applejack’s breastbone, tracing a line in the fur and smoothing it out, over and over.

“Ten minutes or so,” Applejack replied. She pulled off her hat and set it down, just to get it out of the way as she nuzzled up against Rainbow. The other filly smelled like sweat, too. She wasn’t lying when she said she’d been on her wings all day. “You bored already?”

“I don’t get as bored as quick as you think I do…” she grumbled cutely. She stopped playing with the fluff of Applejack’s chest and gave her a squeeze. “I meant this. How long we been doing this you-and-me thing?”

“A few months,” Applejack replied. “Good months.”

“Real good.”

Applejack frowned as the comforting weight of Rainbow pressing against her back lightened. She looked back to find the girl digging a hoof around in her saddlebag.

“Don’t look,” Rainbow said insistently.

Applejack shrugged, allowing the pegasus girl to lift a wing over her eyes like a blindfold.

“I… I got you something while I was in Cloudsdale,” Rainbow said, a little quaver in her voice that bespoke a measure of nervousness. “It’s actually the main reason I went. I didn’t trust the courier, so I had to go pick it up myself.”

Applejack’s ears perked at the mention of presents. Early in their little courting, Rainbow had thrown presents at her every day, sometimes more than once in a day. She made good money and she didn’t have anyone to share it with before she’d had Applejack, so she’d gone a little crazy once or twice.

Applejack liked presents, but she’d had to put a stop to it. Much as she enjoyed getting gifts, and enjoyed who she was getting them from, she didn’t much care for wasting money, and Rainbow never went half-way on anything.

“Rainbow, you know you and I had this talk about spendin’ money on me...” she began.

“And I told you that it was my money and I could spend it on you if I wanted to,” Rainbow replied, a little bit of heat coming back to her voice. “Look, don’t be like that. Not for this one. This one’s special.”

That got Applejack’s attention. She tried to duck under the wing to get a peek, but Rainbow’s wings were too fast.

“I’m going to give you this…” Rainbow swallowed hard enough that Applejack could hear it over the rustle of the trees in the late-evening wind. “But you… you gotta say yes. You can’t have it if you don’t say yes.”

“Yes to what?” Applejack asked.

Rainbow Dash pulled her wing away, and Applejack found herself looking at Rainbow's blushing, flustered mug. The pink in her cheeks could fill in for the sun if Celestia ever wanted a day off. She was holding a heart-shaped pendant in her hooves, close to her chest, like she was afraid it’d blow away in the wind.

Applejack didn’t know a lot about jewelry, but she knew enough to know the good stuff when she saw it. It wasn’t the right color for gold, and shined too nice to be silver. It was probably platinum, or one of those other really fancy metals that cost more than it was worth. Whatever it was, she could tell it was custom-made by the engravings, which looked like her’s and Dash’s Cutie Marks and were inlaid with diamonds.

“You gotta…” Rainbow began, but she flubbed the words as a dribble of spit fell out of her mouth. She wiped it away with the back of her hoof, going even redder but still soldiering on. “I wanted to know if you would… Applejack, will you… Aw, dangit!” She squeeze her eyes shut and thrust the fancy jewelry into Applejack’s chest. “Just marry me already, you stupid!”

Applejack stared at the necklace for a second or two, drinking in the significance of it. This wasn’t like any other gift, it was the kind that came with strings – chains even. But they were the best kind of chains.

She reached out and took the necklace from Rainbow’s shaking hooves, silently slipping the chain over her head. It was just a bit of metal with a couple of rocks in it, but the way it sat on her chest – the weight of it almost as much as she felt when Rainbow leaned her whole body on her – felt good. She felt prideful. It was like the day she’d gotten her Mark, like she’d been picked by something bigger than she was and told, “This is what you are.”

“Are… are you saying yes, or did you just steal my necklace?” Rainbow asked. Poor girl looked ready to break into tears she was so nervous. She was mighty arrogant most days, but thorny stalks protected delicate buds, and it couldn’t have been easy for Rainbow to ask like how she did.

Applejack knew for a fact that it couldn’t have been easy for Rainbow, because it wouldn’t have been easy for her, either. They knew they were in love, but that last hill was a steep one, and if there was even a chance you’d stumble on a hill that tall… well, it took courage to take a run up it.

“Shoot, this ain’t your necklace, Dash,” Applejack said, waiting just long enough to put a little scare in the filly, “this here’s your wife’s.”

Rainbow was fast – all of Equestria knew that – so Applejack barely had time to brace before she found herself tumbling over the rooty, overgrown earth. Most folk might get hurt tumbling like that after a tackle by the fastest pegasus for a hundred miles, but Applejack wasn’t that delicate. She just laughed, the scuffs and bumps she took as they rolled around weren’t important in the face of the kisses Rainbow was planting on her everywhere her lips would reach.

Rainbow Dash was so dang excited she didn’t seem to know what to do, like Winona after the family came back from a long trip. Applejack gave direction to all that energy, grabbing the back of the mare’s head and guiding Rainbow’s lips to hers. That frantic energy sharpened to a point, and Rainbow got to kissing for all she was worth. She was finally getting that lick-the-back-the-throat action she’d wanted, and Applejack wanted it too, to be honest. It was like there was a fire in her chest and the only way to let it out was to breathe it into the other girl’s mouth.

But no matter how much she breathed into Rainbow, the fire in her got worse – real worse. It had started in her chest, filled out her face, slipped into her belly, down between her legs, even all the way out to the tips of her hooves. A little hay-rolling wasn’t so strange for them, but this was different. Applejack was starting to feel like maybe, for once, she didn’t want it to stop.

But this wasn’t the place. She didn’t want it in the dirt, with roots jabbing her in the back and rocks scratching at her hide. Her first go at the Momma-and-Poppa-Thing was going to be something nicer than that.

Not too nice, mind. She was feeling like she’d pop if she didn’t scratch one off real soon.

She shoved Rainbow off her with a grunt. She was a strong filly, but so was Rainbow, and Rainbow’s brains were currently dribbling out from under her tail, if the wet spot where she’d been grinding against Applejack’s belly was any sign. Horny little thing wasn’t really thinking straight enough to catch the hint with just a tap.

“That’s enough of that,” Applejack said, feeling a bit of anger with herself for ending the moment so abrupt. She trotted over to where her hat laid, all crumbled up just a few paces away, a victim of their none-too-gentle love.

Her whole body was already sore from a day of work, and their short little make-out had already beat her up pretty good. It wasn’t the kind of kissing you just did with your mouth, they’d put their whole bodies into it, and now that they'd stopped, she hurt all over. Her tongue hurt, her teeth hurt, her lips felt puffy and sore, and she probably had a couple of new hoof-shaped Cutie Marks over her old ones.

Dang but she felt good.

“Come with me,” Applejack said, flicking her ears excitedly. “There’s something I wanna show you.”

“Can’t it wait?” Rainbow whined pathetically, with a hangdog look on her face like a filly that had just got told to go to bed. “We were in the middle of something.”

Rainbow leapt forward, her lips already puckered and arms outstretched to again snare her prey. Applejack ducked the grab, swerving out of the way and catching Rainbow’s tail in the face as the pegasus girl fell to the ground. It was like getting slapped with a wet towel, and the marely scent clinging to Applejack’s face gave her the jelly-legs something fierce.

She persevered, though. She was nothing if not stubborn, and she’d already set her mind on what she wanted.

“It can't wait,” Applejack insisted, giving Rainbow’s flank a playful kick with her back hoof. “Come on, you’ll like this.”

Applejack took off at a canter, pushing further into trees. She could tell from the ruffle of feathers and the soft murmur of complaining that Rainbow was right behind her.

The sun was already set, but Luna had already taken over. Granny had once said that the moon shone brightest on lovers, and Applejack had never known what that meant until this moment. It was like she was seeing the world with new eyes. Everything was so bright and cheery, and even the sound of chirping crickets, which usually drove her up the wall, was a pleasant choir singing the praises to her love. It was like the whole world only existed to celebrate what she’d found with Rainbow, and maybe that was selfish to think, but she didn’t care. She was never the selfish or greedy type, except where Rainbow was concerned. Rainbow was something she’d never share with anybody.

Applejack kept running until they’d left what was recognizable as Apple land. Not too many trees this far into the woods bore fruit, save for the few aforementioned wild trees that had naturally wandered off the reservation. Less and less of the moonlight managed to make it through the canopy, but the moon was full and bright, and enough bled through that she only had to slow her steps a little.

They made it to their destination, and not a moment too soon – her kitty was yowling for a scritch and she aimed to get it one.

The shack wasn’t anything special. It was just some scrap wood leftover from a barn that had been torn down before she’d even been born, pieced together into a nondescript box with a couple of stovepipes poking out the top of the bit of tin sheet fitted as a roof. It had been clearly put together in a hurry, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t sturdy. Apples didn’t do flimsy when it came to building.

“What’s this?” Rainbow asked as she landed beside Applejack.

Applejack stepped forward, panting from her heat almost as much as the run. “Grandad and his cousin Elstar build this here shack when my dad was just a colt.” She pushed the door open, a smile on her face as the dirty, rusted hinges moves without so much as a squeak. “This is my secret place. Somewhere I can go to be by myself. I don’t come out here as often as I used to, but I keep it clean inside.”

“Is this like your little clubhouse, then?” Rainbow teased. She was forcing her brave face, but the way her tail twitched said a lot about the need she was feeling too. “Like the one the Crusaders have?”

“Shoot, somethin’ like it,” Applejack said, laughing. “There’s a lot of little places like this been built over the years. They’re all over the farm. We Apples might love our family, but even we know a body needs someplace to be alone. I’m sure Mac’s got his own spot ain’t nobody else knows about, Bloom’s got her clubhouse, and Granny pretty much owns the root cellar.”

Applejack stepped inside and found the kerosene lamp and the box of matches waiting on the shelf next to the door, right where she’d left them. She lit the lamp, the motion so familiar she could do it in total dark, and beckoned Rainbow to follow her in before shutting the door.

The inside of the shack did look a bit better, just like she’d promised. There were even a few pictures hanging up on the wall – copies she’d made of some of her favorites from the family photo album – and random pieces of furniture she’d saved from the trash pile over the years. There weren’t any floorboards, though, except for one spot in the corner where Applejack had set up a brass-frame bed. She’d had many a nap on that old bed in her younger and less responsible days.

Applejack hung up the lantern and went around the room, lighting up a few more and hanging them. There was a wood stove over in the corner across from the bed, and a firepit beneath the big brass tank in the middle of the room, but both of those would’ve taken too long to get going. Maybe after, once she’d gotten off once or twice and the fire inside her wasn’t hot enough to keep her warm tonight.

“What’s this thing?” Rainbow Dash asked, examining the brass tank with all its gauges and spouts and flywheels.

“Whiskey still,” Applejack explained. “This is where Grandad used to make Ol’ Grand-Dad. Cousin Elstar’s the one that taught him. They ran barrels of the stuff out to Canterlot under bushels of apples, so’s Granny wouldn’t know about it and they wouldn’t have to pay for a license.”

“Your grandpa was a moonshiner?” Rainbow asked.

She laughed. “Who do you think named me Applejack?”

She finished lighting the lanterns and went over to the bed. The mattress was newer than anything else in the shack. The frame was nearly as old as Granny and had come out of the attic, but the original mattress had been so moldy and moth-eaten that she hadn’t even tried to save it from the dump. She’d replaced it with something store-bought. Saved up her birthday bits to buy it, back before she’d been old enough to deserve pay for what she did around the farm.

The frame groaned a little as she settled onto it, but it didn’t squeak none. It was real solid. Proper solid.

Applejack was a firm believer in having the right tool for a job.

Applejack licked her lips as the fire in her belly stoked itself again. “Hey, Dash,” Applejack said as she hung her hat on the post.

Rainbow Dash was studying the still’s many little gauges and such with a curious glimmer in her eye. She twisted one of the spigots, and a puff of eighty-proof dust plastered her face.

“Yeah?” she asked as she coughed, scrubbing at her face with dirty hooves.

Applejack snickered and pulled the case off one of the pillows. She tossed the improvised towel over to the sputtering pegasus and waited for her to get mostly cleaned up before continuing.

“Hey,” she repeated. “I think I’m ready.”

“What? To leave? Already?”

“No, not to leave,” Applejack said, heaving a sigh. “I’m ready. For… that thing… the thing you were buggin’ about a couple months ago.”

Rainbow Dash’s whole body stiffened up, from the tips of her ears to the tip of her tail. Her head whipped around so fast that her neck cricked. Applejack flinched at the sound, but Rainbow didn’t seem to be hurt, or maybe she had actually hurt herself and just didn’t care.

“You serious?” Rainbow asked. She swallowed hard enough that Applejack could hear it from all the way across the room. “I… I thought you wanted to wait until you got married…”

Applejack just smiled, tracing her hoof along the edge of the pendant Rainbow had just given her. “Yeah... and? Isn’t that what this was for?” She leaned back onto the pillows and, after only a second of hesitation, opened her legs up to show the mess that her tail had been concealing between her thighs. “Don’t tell me Rainbow Dash, Element of Loyalty, is the kind of gal that runs off after she gets the first taste of pussy.”

The bit of dirty cloth slipped between Rainbow’s hooves. She stepped over it, walking to the bed with the kind of caution you approached a forest critter with, like she was afraid the opportunity to get close might escape. As if Applejack’s vagina was a skittish bunny that might get spooked and dart off into the bushes.

She joined Applejack on the bed, hesitation in her every move as she crept forward until she was looming over the other mare. She’d been outright on top of Applejack before, but somehow, even without touching, this seemed like it might’ve been the closest they’d ever been.

Eyes are the windows to the soul – Applejack had read that in a book, once – but right now, with nothing but air and nervous hesitation separating them, looking up into Rainbow’s eyes was more like looking into a mirror than a window. It was like she could see her own soul looking down into herself.

Rainbow was nervous, and Applejack knew it because she was nervous, too.

What they needed was a little kick in the seat to get this thing rolling. This was just a hump in the road, and the only way over it was to hump, and Applejack knew just how to get started.

Folks that didn’t know them thought maybe they might not like each other, on account of they took every chance they got to get to fussing and fighting and feuding, but anyone who knew them knew that wasn’t true. They just both were too much the same pony to get along with how well they got along. Fighting and arguing and competing was just a part of their relationship, just the same as cuddles and ear nibbling on a cold night.

Applejack could use that. Contention was love for them, and it was exactly what they needed.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, bringing up her back leg to drag her hock against Rainbow’s swollen, drippy slit. “You scared?”

“I’m not scared!” Rainbow Dash countered, her face going red with embarrassment even as she shivered excitedly. Her legs buckled a bit as Applejack pressed into her a little harder, but Rainbow managed to keep from falling. Maybe the only thing holding her up was her pride. “You’re the one that’s scared!”

Applejack gasped as Rainbow’s tail slapped between her legs with a none-too-gentle flick.

“Oh, that’s dirty,” Applejack purred, finally feeling the mood proper. “You really think you can keep up with me? You been on your wings all day, probably ain’t even had a nap. Lazy slug like you is probably half-dead.”

Rainbow Dash scoffed petulantly. “Pshhh, yeah, whatever,” she shot back, rolling her eyes dramatically. “You’ve been doing chores since before Celestia was up. If anybody’s on their last legs, it’s you.”

“Shoot, my middle name is Stamina!” Applejack shot back, a grin on her face and her heart beating wildly. “Skinny little thing like you thinks she’s going to tire me out? I could buck a whole field, by myself, and still have energy to pound you like a fence-post.”

“You’re going to need a stretcher after I’m done with you,” Rainbow growled, her lips pulling into a smile like a wolf looking at a particularly fat sheep. “You’re not going to be able to buck trees for a month, because I’ll have bucked the buck out of you. And then you’re going to have to tell your whole family, ‘Sorry I can’t help around the farm, Rainbow Dash fucked me too good and now I’m broken’!”

“You?” Applejack snapped. “You’re gonna break me?”

“Yeah!”

Applejack felt something tingling up her spine and back down. It was a shock, something electric and powerful. It tingled and surged and spread through her whole body, burning every nerve like fire.

It was an itch like she’d never felt, and the only thing that could scratch it was the girl standing above her. She reached up and pulled Rainbow Dash down on top of her, kissing her so hard that their teeth clicked.

This was happening. It was finally happening. She and her filly were about to become mares.

And Applejack was going to win at losing her virginity.

No matter what it took.

* * *

She felt weightless. And wet. And sore.

Her throat hurt real bad, like the time she found a bottle of Grandad’s ancient hooch buried next to the outhouse and drank the whole thing in a single pull. She tried to cough, but a flutter of panic sprung up in her when she realized she couldn’t. She was choking on something. She tried to open her eyes, but they weren’t working either, no matter how much she twisted and struggled and flailed.

And then she wasn’t weightless anymore. Gravity pulled her down – no, not gravity, a vacuum, like she was getting sucked through a straw. She felt like she was being squeezed from all sides, until finally, with a noise like the last burble of water draining out of the bathtub, she felt solid ground beneath her.

She could finally reach up and pull off the helmet she’d been wearing. There was something still in her throat, and she tugged at it until the long rubber hose fell out with a plop. She curled up on herself, like a newborn in its crib, shivering and coughing up the green gunk in her lungs. She was only vaguely aware that someone was only a few paces away, sputtering and mewling just as pathetically as she was.

“That’s it, Applejack, just cough it all up,” a voice called to her.

The voice was familiar, and she looked up to see the smiling face of a pretty girl looking down on her.

“Who’s Applejack?” Applejack asked.

“Don’t worry about that right now,” Twilight replied.

Yeah, her name was Twilight. She remembered that. She couldn’t remember everything – there were a lot of bits and pieces that were already there, like Grandad’s hooch – but it was starting to come back a piece or two at a time.

Twilight’s horn lit up and a big mug of something hot set on the ground in front of her. It was steamy, and it smelled real bad.

“Drink this,” Twilight said. She went over to the other girl and told her the same thing.

The drink was gross and bitter, powerful salty. It was so gross that she gagged again, but her body demanded she take another drink. There was something in it that her body wanted, so she just took in a little more – just a little.

“Yes, yes, that’s it, the both of you,” Twilight said encouragingly. “Just keep drinking that brine.”

“What’s brine?” the other girl next to Applejack asked.

A pause.

“It’s pickle juice,” Twilight explained.

“What’s a pickle?” Applejack asked.

“What’s juice?” the other girl asked.

“Just keep drinking it…” Twilight said, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, like she was tired... or maybe bored?

Applejack took another sip of ‘pickle brine’.

Sighing... It was a sigh. Twilight had sighed, that’s what it was called.

And the girl next to her was Rainbow Shy...

...Pinkinty?

“Rainbow Dash?” Applejack guessed, poking the other girl, who was just as slimy and gross and covered in green jizz as Applejack felt.

“What’s Rainbow Dash?” Rainbow Dash asked as she drank greedily at the pickle juice.

“Who is Rainbow Dash,” Twilight corrected.

“You don’t know either?” Rainbow asked.

“Just keep drinking the brine until your brains start working!” Twilight shouted, sighing again.

The door opened with a creak, and a little purple lizard guy – his name was Spike, Applejack remembered – poked his head in.

“Everything go okay?” Spike asked.

“Yeah, you can bring the girls in,” Twilight said as she used her magic to start fiddling with the humming machinery behind her.

Applejack’s head finally felt clear enough to look around. She was in Twilight’s castle. In her lab, where she did her science stuff. She was the Princess of Magic, but she dabbled a bit in not-magic from time to time, and frankly, somehow the non-magic seemed even more mysterious than the magic.

There were tubes full of lightning, flashing lights, and machines that did nothing but beep and spit out a single long sheet of paper with one jagged line on it. Twilight turned a knob and something popped behind Applejack. The big tube she’d just slid out of let out a pneumatic puff of air and the green gunk inside drained out like a flushing toilet.

“Hey, you guys are alive!” Pinkie Pie shouted as she burst into the room. “Rarity owes me a dress!”

“I was going to have to make you a dress either way,” Rarity said with a huff, striding into the room with her usual prissy flair. “At least now it won’t have to be black.”

“I’m sorry,” Applejack muttered, blinking in confusion as she set down her mug of pickle juice, “but what was that about being alive? Why wouldn’t we be alive?”

“You two died,” Fluttershy explained. Her entire face was candy-apple red and had been since she’d stepped in through the door.

The bottom fell out of Applejack’s stomach at the word.

“We died?” she repeated. She looked over at Rainbow, and the other girl’s face mirrored the confusion she was feeling.

Died? But… they were fine.

“The two of you went missing a week ago,” Twilight said, picking up the explanation. “We all just assumed you’d eloped, but Granny Smith insisted that you’d have at least left a note.”

“We didn’t elope,” Rainbow Dash explained, her cheeks pinkening at the implication. It looked like the pickle juice had done its work for her, too. “We got engaged, yeah, but we… uh… you know...”

“Ran off to a shack in the woods to have sex, we know,” Twilight said, rolling her eyes. “Big Macintosh had looked all over the farm for you, but Granny Smith told me in private that you had a hiding place where you went to be alone sometimes. We walked out there and found the two of you.”

Applejack shivered. She was afraid to ask, but she had to know. “You found us dead?” A nod. “What happened? Did the shack fall on us? Did we get attacked by Timberwolves?”

“You died of exhaustion.”

Applejack blinked.

Rainbow Dash blinked.

“I’m sorry, what?” they both asked, simultaneously.

“We found your corpses in flagrante delicto,” Rarity said, a lascivious grin playing across her lips.

“We were deliciously on fire!?” Rainbow blurted out.

“That’s not what that means!” Rarity insisted.

“Well then speak Equish so I know what you mean!”

“It means the two of you banged each other to death!” Pinkie declared, giggling into her hooves uncontrollably.

There was a moment of silence that followed that revelation, powerful enough to stifle even Pinkie-laughter.

And then another.

And another.

It was a series of silent moments, seemingly stretching on infinitely into the horizon, like one of those fancy hotel swimming pools that didn’t have an edge. A silence so perpetual and profound that it was beautiful.

And, of course, Rainbow Dash ruined it.

“Hoooooo-leeeeeee shit!” Rainbow exclaimed.

“Language, Rainbow Dash!” Rarity declared, pulling Spike against her chest and placing her hooves over his ears. “A lady doesn’t speak this way!”

“Dude! No! I am the greatest lover Equestria has ever known!” Rainbow held up her hooves and pumped them up and down in triumph, her wings vibrating like an excited hummingbird. “This is the most radical death I could have ever hoped for! I! Am! A! Legend!”

“Rainbow Dash, I am sittin’ right here!” Applejack shouted, fuming in utter embarrassment. “You ain’t exactly bein’ respectful to me! And don’t make it like you did somethin’ special or better than I did! You died, too!”

“That only makes it more heroic! I died on my hooves, like that old story about the steel-driving stallion that got into a fight with a machine!”

“You didn’t die on your hooves,” Applejack insisted, “you were on your back! Maybe I’m the one that’s a legend, you ever think about that?”

“Enough!” Twilight shouted, her wings flaring in that dramatic way that seemed instinctive to alicorns. “This is exactly the kind of attitude that led to the two of you dying. Everything's a competition with you two, and you’d both rather literally die than admit defeat in anything! This isn’t normal. A normal, healthy competitive spirit doesn’t make this,” Twilight gestured wildly at the two slimy, recently-dead mares, “happen!”

“It’s not that big a deal,” Rainbow Dash grumbled, crossing her arms over her chest in a huff, looking for all the world like a filly a quarter her age. “You fixed us up, didn’t you? All we needed was some science and rest and pickle juice, right?”

“Oh, yes, of course!” Twilight said, throwing her hooves into the air helplessly. “How could scientists, wizards, philosophers, and alchemists have been so stupid all this time? Pickle juice! The secret to cheating death! Oh, what’s this? Rainbow Dash and Applejack have expended so much moisture from their bodies through sexual activity that they’ve desiccated themselves? That’s fine! I’ve got a whole barrel of pickles at home! We’ll just take the sex-mummies and dip them in, just like soppin’ up gravy with some of Granny’s world famous biscuits! Mmmm-mmmm, that’s good immortality!”

“Twilight, darling,” Rarity said, clearing her throat to get the irate mare’s attention. “Your, um… your neurosis is showing.”

Twilight groaned into her hooves and pulled at the dark circles beneath her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she muttered weakly. “I’m just so tired. I’ve been up for four days straight, pumping myself full of coffee and casting the kind of ‘Stay-Awake’ spells that they warn you against using in Freshpony Orientation.”

A coffee mug floated over to Twilight, wreathed in the aura of her magic. She brought it to her lips and tried to drink, but frowned as she found it empty. She set it down with a moan of quiet longing.

“Look, I didn’t just soak you in liquid like you were dehydrated fruit,” Twilight explained. “Your bodies were basically trash.”

“You were actually mummies,” Fluttershy chimed in, “she wasn’t exaggerating about that.”

“So if our bodies were trash, how’d you fix us up?” Applejack asked.

“With hard work,” Twilight replied in a deadpan look. “I had to construct entirely new bodies and transfer your essences directly into them with some tricky magitech backflips. Most of which involved converting your former shells into a bio-nutrient jelly which could be used as a catalyst for reprogramming the stem cells that I cultivated to form your current bodies. It wasn’t a perfect one-to-one transition, though, so be on the lookout for—”

“Hold your horses there,” Applejack said, tapping her hoof on the crystalline floor and cutting across Twilight’s incomprehensible, nearly rambling, explanation. “Back that wagon up and tell us more about this convertin’ stuff. Somethin’ ‘bout a bio-nutrient? Like that stuff in the fertilizer we use on the farm?”

Twilight pouted, clearly put out by the interruption. She never liked being cut off mid-explanation, but the girls had all known her long enough that they knew it had to be done, otherwise she’d just blab on and on until they all had honorary doctorates in whatever she was talking about.

“Well, it’s a severe oversimplification, but I basically melted your useless bodies to create the ‘brine’ that I used as a growth medium for your new ones.” Twilight floated the two jugs Rainbow and Applejack had been instructed to drink from and peered into them. “It was important to the development of your new tissues, and the brain, being the most complex organ, obviously took the longest. That’s why I had you ingest a little of your own fluid when you woke up.”

In another show of unified thought, Rainbow Dash and Applejack both threw back their heads and groaned in disgust.

“That’s gross, Twilight!” Rainbow Dash shouted.

“Oh, is it?” Twilight demanded. She slammed the two mugs on the ground, splashing a healthy dose of the Apple-juice and Rainbow-juice on her nice castle floor. “Was that too real for you? You know what else was gross? Literally having to pry the two of you apart with a board because you were basically glued together!”

“Ew!” everyone in the room said.

“Yeah, ‘ew’!” Twilight said, turning to look at the rest of the girls. “I had to singe the bedsheets off them with a blowtorch, so I’m sorry if I’m a little testy!”

Fluttershy fainted at that particular revelation, because of course she did. Rarity followed suit, taking Spike down with her as he tried, and failed, to support the falling unicorn. Pinkie seemed a little green, but otherwise alright.

“I’m tryin’ to vomit that gunk, but nothin’s comin’ up,” Applejack said, holding her hooves over her middle like she was trying to soothe an upset tummy. “I think my body already absorbed it all.”

Twilight conjured a pair of fluffy white towels and levitated them over to her two newly-reconstituted friends.

“I’m not trying to be mean here,” Twilight said, her voice thick with weariness, sadness, and concern. “I was really scared when we found you girls, and I pushed myself a little hard to figure out a way to make this right. I’m just very tired…”

“We understand, Twilight,” Rainbow said as she toweled off her mane.

“Yeah, we’re sorry we scared you,” Applejack added.

Twilight rubbed at her eyes, obviously fighting off the urge to just collapse on the floor of her lab. “Look, this whole thing? It’s weird. It’s really weird. I get that the two of you love each other, but come on. Being a little more competitive than average shouldn’t lead to this kind of self-destructive indulgence. I think the two of you need to sit back and take a long, hard look at yourselves before you even think of trying your hooves at sexual congress again.”

Applejack had to admit that Twilight had a point. She hated losing to Dash, and every time she felt her libido flagging, that big-headed pegasus fiancée of hers started flapping her gums about her being tired. It got her blood so angried up that she’d done the same right back, every time it looked like Dash was about to tap out.

In the end, it looked like they’d both pushed each other a little far. Maybe that wasn’t healthy... okay, it definitely wasn’t.

Still... it felt really, really… really-really-really good.

Like… like reeeeee~aaaaaaal good...

“Your new bodies are going to take some getting used to,” Twilight continued as she cantered listlessly over to the table where a percolator was bubbling away with a fresh pot of coffee. “You’re definitely going to feel some fatigue for the first couple of weeks, that’s just without saying. I did basically just grow meat out of more or less nothing, so there’s obviously going to be conditioning problems.” Twilight sighed heavily as she poured a cup of the steamy brew. “Do me a favor, please, and just take it easy for the next month or so. No stress, no work, just bed rest.”

“We can do that,” Applejack said in agreement.

Twilight took a long, slurping drink from her mug, smacking her lips in satisfaction and already looking more alert. She turned and grinned at the two lovers.

“And by the way, congratulations on your engagement.”

A drawer opened, the handle shimmering with Twilight’s magic, and a small jewelry box floated out. She set it on the floor before the two girls, and inside was Applejack’s engagement gift, still as pretty as ever, if a little sticky-looking.

“Thanks, Twi,” Applejack said, her voice catching in her throat at the sight of the necklace. She picked up the box and held it close to her chest, a blush filling her whole face. “Mighty nice of you to say that after all the trouble we put you through.”

“Oh, it’s fine,” Twilight replied with a wave of her hoof. “I guess it did all work out in the end. And hey, what’s a little necroscience between friends?” The happy smile on Twilight’s face flipped, slipping into a frown as she fixed the two girls with a hard glare, like a reproving schoolmarm. “But no sex. You hear me?”

“Definitely,” they said.

* * *

Applejack and Rainbow Dash sat on the hard crystalline floors of Twilight’s laboratory, shoulder to shoulder, cuddling up beneath a big fluffy beach towel like it was a thick quilt on a cold winter’s night. Their tails were entwined, and each of them was sipping the disgusting, salty muck in the mugs Twilight had given them.

There were even little white marshmallows floating in them. That was likely Pinkie’s doing while Twilight’s back had been turned. The stuff was actually kind of good once you got used to it, even though they knew it should be disgusting – kind of like those weird food cravings pregnant mares got.

“A day-and-a-half,” Twilight muttered, incensed, her voice carrying the timbre of a judge reading charges to the condemned. She paced back and forth in front of them. It was likely only to keep herself awake, but it still looked intimidating. “Not even a full forty-eight hours after I bring you two back from the dead, you run off and do it again.”

“Twilight, we can explain,” Applejack said.

Applejack’s attempt to defend herself was cut short by a sharply raised hoof from Twilight.

“The celebratory cake that Pinkie baked you didn’t even have time to go stale,” Twilight said.

“At least I get to bake another one now,” Pinkie said from the corner of the room.

She, Fluttershy, Rarity, and Spike were exchanging bits in hushed whispers. The majority of the coins ended up in Spike’s claws.

Pinkie shrunk away as Twilight gave her the same reproachful glare she was giving Applejack and Rainbow Dash.

“You’re not helping,” Twilight growled out.

“Look, Twi, seriously,” Rainbow Dash said as she set down her mug of science-brine. “We were going to follow doctor’s orders, honest.” She turned to look at Applejack. “Honest?”

Applejack nodded. “Honest,” she said.

“Honest,” Rainbow repeated. “But then… you know… we got to talking, and it occurred to us that we were both in new bodies, and that kind of technically meant we were both virgins again.”

“And that was kinda a turn-on,” Applejack said.

“Yeah, we got real horny, real fast,” Rainbow said. “And when you get that horny, sometimes you make mistakes.”

“Big mistakes,” Applejack added.

“Real big,” Rainbow said, nodding in agreement. “And we both figured, ‘hey, we’re both smart enough to know when to give up, now that we know we’re not smart enough to know when to give up, so there’s no way we’ll make that same mistake’.”

“We had a safe-word and everything,” Applejack said.

“It was ‘pickle-juice’,” Rainbow clarified, needlessly. “But then, you know… One thing led to another... and...”

“And the two of you screwed each other to death again!” Twilight shouted as she jumped up and down, stamping her hooves and bucking the air like a pissed-off yak. “You specifically ignored not only my instructions for bed rest, but your own basic sense of self-preservation! Even the dumbest animals know to stop copulating if they’re about to die!”

“Hold on a second there,” Applejack protested feebly. “That ain’t true at all. What about spiders? Don’t spiders still go at it even knowin’ one of them’s gonna get ate up?”

Twilight stared at them, her mouth agape and her eyes so wide that they looked ready to fall out. “Is that seriously the yardstick that you’re measuring yourself against?” she asked in utter naked disbelief. “‘Oh, we’re both morons, but at least we’re as smart as spiders’!”

“That’s a little harsh,” Rainbow Dash protested.

“I don’t think it’s harsh enough!” Twilight said. “In fact, you know what? No more Miss Softie! The two of you are grounded – forbidden to see one another unsupervised!”

Applejack threw down her mug of goop. “What!? For how long!?”

“Until I say so!”

“That’s not fair!” Rainbow shouted, rising to her hooves. “You’re not our mom, you can’t ground us!”

“You’re right, I’m not your mom, I’m your princess!” Twilight spread her wings and raised her head, staring down her muzzle at the two girls with an imperious scowl. “As your princess, I banish you from each other! This is my royal decree, and ifsoever it should be contravened, the punishment is imprisonment in the darkest cell in Tartarus!”

To everyone’s surprise, it was Fluttershy to voice the first protest.

“Twilight,” Fluttershy said. “I know tough love is important, but that’s going too far, don’t you think?”

Twilight spun on her hooves, a wild, fiery look smouldering in her tired eyes. “You know what’s going too far? Me having to stay up a week straight, because these two hoof-heads canoodled themselves into the grave.”

“What’s the big deal?” Rainbow asked. “You didn’t need to fix us up right away. You could’ve taken a nap first.”

“It’s that easy, is it?” Twilight asked, rounding back on the pair of re-reanimated lovers. “You have degrees in biology, necromancy, medicine, and biomedical engineering that you never told me about? You must be good at tests, then. Well here’s a test for you, rub your stomach and pat your head at the same time! I’m not kidding with you, do it and see what happens!”

Rainbow Dash scoffed, clearly offended by aspersions being levied against her top-class motor skills. “You think I don’t have the coordination to do that? I’m a Wonderbolt, I’m one of the best athletes in the world. Check this out!”

Rainbow Dash held out a hoof, making a big production of showing it off like she was a stage magician. She dramatically placed it on her belly, then, just as dramatically, placed the other hoof atop her head.

With both hooves firmly in place, Rainbow Dash promptly tipped over, falling gracelessly onto her side. Her hooves shot out, spasming in an uncontrollable gallop.

“What is this?” Rainbow Dash asked, with panic in her voice as she kicked her legs, spinning on an axis so it looked like she was running in a circle. “What’s happening to me?”

Applejack stepped back, unsure what to do to help her mare, but too freaked out to even try. Rainbow just kept running, spinning around like an old top until Twilight picked her up by the scruff with magic, like a mother cat carrying one of her young.

“Remember when I told you that your brains were complex organs?” Twilight asked. “Do you think that was a joke? Nothing about this situation is funny, this is serious. A month of rest is what I prescribed, precisely because the two of you still needed some time to finish gestating outside of the tank. You didn’t even wait two days, so of course the clones made from immatured clones are going to have some problems.”

Rainbow’s legs had finally stopped kicking, so Twilight set her down.

Applejack hurried to fuss over her mare, checking her all over like she might find something she could fix. That little display had spooked her pretty good, and if the looks on the rest of the gang’s faces were any indication, she wasn’t the only one that was scared.

“So… so we’ll be fine if we wait the full month?” Rainbow Dash asked.

Twilight groaned into her hooves. She was the second youngest of the five alicorn princesses in Equestria, but the look in her eyes was as weary and ancient-looking as anything they’d ever seen from Celestia.

“I can’t guarantee that,” Twilight said. “Even if you’d have waited the full term, there probably would’ve been a degree of degradation, but it would have been negligible. Now, though, not only did I have to do this twice, I had to do it with immature clone bodies as the medium. Making copies from copies is never a good thing, especially when you’re making copies from bad copies. It's only going to get worse the more often I need to do this.”

Something dark had wrapped itself around Applejack’s heart, squeezing it tighter with every word out of Twilight’s mouth and every thought she put in her head. She wasn’t quite following, not every little detail, but Twilight was good about dumbing it down, and what Applejack could catch on to was scary.

Real scary.

“What’re you sayin’, sug?” she asked.

“I’m saying that the two of you had a second chance at life and you traded it for orgasms,” Twilight said, her voice and temper rising as one. “And now I can’t even trust the two of you to not do it again! You know what that’s like for me? To see two of my best friends dying because of something this outright dumb? It’s stupid! It’s impossibly stupid, and if it were any two ponies except the two of you, who I know to be stubborn beyond mortal limitations, I wouldn’t believe it happened! But no, this is my life! I get to track the two of you down and drag your sweaty, sticky, disgusting-smelling corpses out of whatever hovel you chose to die in, and dissolve them into science-gak! But it’s fine, right!? Who cares what it does to everyone who loves you, because Applejack and Rainbow Dash need to get their rocks off!”

Applejack hadn’t even realized she’d shrunk away from Twilight. The soft-spoken, bookish girl hadn’t ever been someone a stranger might call intimidating, but everyone in the room knew just what a firebrand she could be when she got herself worked up. And for the first time, all that righteous indignation and fervor was brought down to bear on Applejack and her fiancée.

But just like that, all that anger was gone. The furious mask shattered like porcelain, and all that was left was the scared look of a girl who just wanted her friends to stop hurting themselves. Twilight fell to the ground, her hooves over her head like a depressed old hound dog.

Applejack wanted to reach out to her, but the urge felt dirty. She knew she was the cause of Twilight’s suffering, and it wouldn’t feel right to try and comfort her. Rainbow must’ve felt the same, if the way she tensed up was any indication. She just sat there next to Applejack, ears flat against her head and her weight shifting restlessly as they watched the other girls and Spike help Twilight to their hooves.

“Banished from each other!” Twilight shouted hoarsely as she was led out of the room in tears. “Forever!”

Twilight didn’t look back as she repeated her declaration, but the rest of the gang did, just to give the pair what must've been the dirtiest looks they could manage.

Applejack and Rainbow were left alone in the lab. A loud buzzer went off somewhere in the room, startling them both – there were so many machines that it was impossible to tell which one was buzzing at them. The noise stopped, something clanged behind them, and the gunk made out of their former bodies flushed down the drain with a sad burble.

* * *

Dinner at the Apple homestead was always a lively affair. Whether it was just the four, or a whole mess of kin visiting, Applejack and her family always treated dinner like a feast. That’s just how things were on a farm. You work hard, you eat hard. Every day was like a little celebration, filling in the rest of the family about the events of the day, sharing plans, and laughing together.

Tonight, though, dinner was anything but a celebration.

Applejack kept her eyes fixed on her plate like she was afraid her spaghetti and applesauce would up and run off, and little peeks out of the corner of her eye told her Big Mac and Apple Bloom were doing likewise. Granny, though, hadn’t looked anywhere but straight at Applejack. Hadn’t looked away even once. The old mare hadn’t even blinked.

Applejack had seen that powerful stink-eye before. Granny was a small mare, but she’d beat down and tamed generations of strapping Apple stallions with that look. Her dad, her grandad, uncles, cousins, her brother – no one was immune, didn’t make no matter how big and strong or tough you were. Granny’s stink-eye could witch the paint off a barn and bring alicorns underhoof if she had a mind for it.

And that nasty glare was fixed on Applejack. It was like the moon was sitting on her back, bowing her head with its weight.

Applejack cleared her throat. “Big Mac, could you pass—”

Granny’s hoof slammed on the table and nobody said another word. Big Mac silently nudged the bowl of hayballs over and slumped back over his plate.

Applejack grabbed the serving fork with her teeth and tried to push a couple of the morsels onto her plate. She was nervous, the kind of nervous that you got when someone was watching your every move with a sharp, judgmental eye, but she managed to get a hayball onto her plate. She went for another, and a big wooden mixing spoon slapped the fork out of her mouth.

“Yeh git one,” Granny said, stinkin’ up her eye even harder as she wagged her mixing spoon at Applejack.

Applejack swallowed hard, watching the spoon wave around like a cobra readying to strike. “Yes, Granny,” she muttered, lowering her gaze back to her plate.

“Damn fool,” Granny muttered, smacking the spoon on the table. “Make an old lady worry. Comin’ home stinkin’ of pickles, hat in hooves like yer grandaddy ‘fore he learnt his lesson ‘bout the shine. Ah woulda kilt ya if’n yer damn fool self hadn’t already gone and done it.”

Granny whacked the table even harder, making all three siblings flinch – especially Apple Bloom, who instinctively reached down and covered up her butt with both hooves. They all knew just how hard Granny could whack with that spoon, and out of the three, Apple Bloom was the one who was still at the recklessly curious age where she felt its bite the most often.

“Yes, Granny,” Applejack said. “I’m sorry, Granny.”

Applejack felt tired. Tired of getting chewed out, tired of explaining that she didn’t rightly know why she did what she did, and just tired. Twilight had said she’d feel weak, said she and Dash’d be needing bed rest.

The walk home from Twilight’s castle wasn’t far, but heavy hooves make miles out of paces. She’d been expecting a little flack for running off like she did, but Granny had given her the business like nobody’s business. She’d half expected to get sent up to bed without dinner, like a filly, but Granny couldn’t stand to see someone go to bed hungry, even when she was angry.

Applejack let Granny keep glaring – she owed her that. Uncomfortable as she felt, she just ket her head down and tucked into her dinner, silently wishing she had something else to eat.

Spaghetti and applesauce was one of her favorites – had been since she was a foal – but every bite felt weird in her mouth. The applesauce was too tangy and the mushiness was all wrong. Even the spaghetti felt stickier than normal. She knew it was all the same as it had always been. She’d sat right there in the kitchen and watched Granny cook while she got the chewing-out of her life.

Maybe it was her mouth that was wrong now... That was a scary thought.

Applejack didn’t disbelieve she’d died. Her friends weren’t the types to joke about something like that, and she had enough little bits and pieces of memory left over to know it was true. Even knowing the facts, it hadn’t set in that she wasn’t in her own body. Not her real one, anyway.

The her that was in this kitchen, eating with her family – who were all sore with her, and rightly so – was a clone, like in the science-fiction funny books. It was something that Twilight had slapped together with that big brain of hers and all that science she was always tinkering with. It looked the same, it felt the same, it even smelled the same – though a little more pickled than before – but it wasn’t the same. It was goop and proteins and what-all else Twilight had thrown into the kettle. Just a big ol’ Applejack gumbo made out of whatever was laying around the kitchen.

That wasn’t to say she wasn’t impressed with what Twilight had done. Her new body was perfect as could be, right down to the tiny details. She still had split-ends in her mane, and her left hind leg was just a half-inch longer than the right, so when she walked she had the slightest little hobble. Nobody ever noticed it, except Rainbow, who said it made her butt wiggle a little harder than most gals’ did.

Even her chipped tooth was perfect. She’d earned that particular trophy proving that she could take her cousin Florina in a fight, and dang if that tooth wasn’t still chipped. That just went to show that a girl like Twilight didn’t do cut-corners. The crazy mare had probably gone to the dentist and got her dental records, just to be double sure all the teeth were right.

But even with all that, spaghetti and applesauce didn’t taste right. Maybe it wouldn’t ever taste right again.

“I’m going to bed, can I be excused?” Applejack asked, sliding off her seat and pushing it in without even bothering to wait to see if she actually was excused. She grabbed her hat off the counter and hurried out the kitchen door before Granny could tell her different.

She went upstairs, past the family photos that had been hung until there was hardly a bare spot on the wall. No matter where you went in an Apple house, you had the family’s eyes on you.

Her bedroom was just the way it had been when she’d left it. It hadn’t even been a week since the last time she’d been here. Or maybe it was more accurate to say it hadn’t even been a week since the last iteration of her was here. She closed the door and held it shut with her weight, feeling alone for the first time since she’d gotten flushed out of Twilight’s machine.

She needed this, needed the quiet, needed a second to catch her breath.

She looked around her room with literal new eyes, taking in the accretion of her life as it was. She owned remarkably few material things. Most of her stuff fit onto a few shelves, a dresser, her closet, and in an old toy chest that been emptied of toys not long after Apple Bloom had been born.

The shelves had a few pictures – most of them of Rainbow – but mostly they held her trophies. Medals and placards and belts and such that she’d won from competitions over the years. She didn’t compete as often as Rainbow did, but she usually did well in what few contests she bothered to challenge. She’d go a long spell without entering a rodeo or a hog-call, then get the itch for it and run out to rustle up some new awards for her shelves.

She got like that sometimes. Got that manic urge to compete and win, to show other folks she was the best at whatever she put her mind to. Rainbow was the same. That’s why they got on. They pushed each other to be better.

Pushed each other to be worse, too, when the chips fell that way. Seemed like they were falling that way a lot, these days.

The Applejack that had won those trophies was a different Applejack, though. Her physique was corn-fed and farm-grown, built on sweat and good, honest hard work. It wasn’t just something grown in a lab. It was something she’d earned.

Applejack was at the full-length mirror in the corner before she even knew her hooves were moving. The mirror had belonged to her mother. It had been a gift from one of her cousins who hadn’t completely turned his back on her for crossing the feud-lines.

Applejack took off her hat and tossed it on the bed. It was just in the way. She looked herself up and down, side to side. She spun around, reared upright, checked the bottom of her hooves – she even took a shot at counting the number of eyelashes she had, though she lost her place every time she blinked.

She knew her new body was perfect, but the spaghetti… and the applesauce… she couldn’t get that out of her head. She had to see what else was different. There had to be more, something she could hold on to that said she was really in a new body. It was too scary to think that she might get used to this. That she might get so comfortable in her new skin that she forgot the old.

She paused, hesitating a moment before finally giving in to her curiosity and turning her backside to the mirror. She lifted her tail and squinted at her private bits. Yup, that part was the same, too. Maybe the inside was...

“What’re you doing?”

Applejack froze at the sound of her baby sister’s voice. She turned her head slowly to find Apple Bloom standing in the doorway, a hoof covering her eyes as she turned her head away bashfully.

Applejack lowered her tail with a nervous laugh. She needed an excuse and she needed one fast. She wasn’t the type to tell fibs, but there was no way she could tell Bloom what she was up to. Her family knew that Twilight had fixed her up, but they didn’t know the specifics. Bad enough they probably thought she was a zombie, or a Frankenhoof’s Monster, or whatever. She wasn’t about to let on that she was some kind of… of Appleganger.

Applejack grimaced. “I was… lookin’ for a splinter...?”

Apple Bloom sucked air through her teeth, wincing in sympathy. Nobody liked getting a sliver in the tenders. “Ow… you don’t need help, do you?”

“No, uh, I already got it...“ Applejack sighed. “Look, I’m real tired. What all do you need?”

Apple Bloom tilted her head, her brow wrinkling up in something that was more hurt than curious. “Do I really need a reason to come see my big sister?” she asked sadly. “You died… I just… wanted to see you.”

“Oh, sorry,” Applejack said, suddenly real ashamed, for many reasons. “You, uh… you finish eatin’?”

“Nah, I told Granny I had to use the bathroom,” Apple Bloom said. She closed the door just as quietly as she’d opened it, as if she was afraid Granny was listening for the sound. “I got into a little argument with Granny. She told me to use the outhouse, but I told her I wanted to use the upstairs bath.”

“Well, you know Granny,” Applejack said, chuckling as she cantered over to the bed. “She don’t trust the septic tank, and she thinks usin’ drinkin’ water to flush is wasteful.”

“I don’t like the way the outhouse smells,” Apple Bloom said, scrunching up her nose.

“No one does. It ain’t for smellin’.”

Apple Bloom walked over and put a hoof up on the mattress, her back legs tensing up to leap up on the bed. She froze halfway through the movement and instead set her rump down on the floor.

Applejack wasn’t sure why Bloom hadn’t got up on the bed, but seeing her sister acting like that put something sour in her mouth.

“Somethin’ wrong?” Applejack asked, though she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

“You’d… you’d tell me if you were a zombie, right?” Apple Bloom asked. “Like, a bad zombie?”

Applejack opened her mouth to deny it, but Apple Bloom cut her off before she got the chance.

“‘Cuz Scootaloo told us this story the last time we had a sleepover, see,” the filly explained, her words coming out real fast like. “The stallion in the story lost his wife, and then she came back three days later and he was happy to have her back and all, but then that night she ate him. ‘Cuz she was a bad zombie, yanno? And like, that’s like what happened to you, so… like…” Apple Bloom looked up at her big sister, her eyes moist and her lip quivering. Kid was afraid. She was afraid of her big sister, and it made Applejack’s chest hurt to see it. “Like you’d tell me if’n you were gonna eat my brains, right?”

Applejack shook her head sadly. “I’m not gonna eat your brains.” When Apple Bloom’s cautious look didn’t fade, Applejack added, “Or Granny’s. Or Mac’s. Or anybody’s… I promise.”

Apple Bloom sighed, all that tension leaving her body in a big huff of air. “That’s good,” she muttered. She hopped up onto the bed and settled in next to Applejack. “Can I ask somethin’ else?”

“‘Course,” Applejack replied. She was a little scared of what the question might be, but whatever it was, she reckoned she’d do her best to answer.

“Why’d you do it, AJ?”

“Come on, Bloom, you ain’t that young,” Applejack said, shifting her weight uncomfortably. “You know why ponies have sex.”

“Yeah but you just kept doin’ it and doin’ it,” Apple Bloom said. “You think you woulda passed out or somethin’ first.”

“You know how Dash and me get when we’re together,” Applejack explained. “She starts up with her ‘I’m better’n you’ and I gotta prove she ain’t, so she’s gotta prove she is… and besides, it just felt really good, so we kept going. It was just an accident, we didn’t mean to go that far, we just sorta did.”

“Uh-huh,” Apple Bloom said, staring flatly and nodding her head. “And what about the second time?”

Applejack laughed nervously. “Well, reckon that was an accident, too.”

“What I don’t get is how you could say it felt good. I mean, I had the house to myself a couple weeks ago, and I only got off four times before my cooter got too sore to keep going.”

“Apple Bloom!” Applejack declared with a gasp. “I… I don’t want to hear about my baby sister pluckin’ her own fiddle!”

“Yeah, me explorin’ my buddin’ sexuality is way grosser than you and Rainbow humpin’ each other into the next dimension,” Apple Bloom said with an impish grin. “It was real inappropriate of me to bring it up. I’m real sorry.”

Applejack had to admit, the filly made sense. Still, she looked away so the girl wouldn’t see the embarrassed flush on her cheeks. She had to keep a little of her pride as a big sister, after all.

“‘Buddin’ sexuality’?” Applejack repeated.

Apple Bloom shrugged. “That’s what they called it in the brochure we got at school.”

Apple Bloom scooted over, pressing up against Applejack’s side. Applejack hadn’t even noticed how far apart they were sitting, but this was closer to how they usually sat. Sister-talk was something familiar for them, though this was probably the most ‘adult’ of a conversation they’d had since little Bloom had gotten old enough to need the sex talk.

“What’re you going to do about Rainbow Dash?” Apple Bloom asked.

“How d’ya mean?” Applejack asked, knowing exactly what she meant.

“You gonna see her again? You got engaged and all. Is that still on or… what?”

“I dunno…” Applejack’s eyes wandered towards her dresser. The bottom drawer was where she kept what few bits of jewelry she owned, and her engagement pendant was still there. She hadn’t even looked at it since Twilight had shown it to her the first time she’d woken up in the lab. “Me ‘n Dash are takin’ a little break right now. We figured it was for the best.”

“But you’re gonna be seein’ her again?” she said, pressing the issue.

“‘Course I’ll see her, I just dunno if it’ll be as… yanno…”

It was a hard place Applejack found herself sitting. She knew her and Rainbow were bad medicine for each other, but she also knew there were a lot of reasons she couldn’t just cut the little rainbow-headed idiot out of her life.

For one thing, they had a whole saving the world thing going on. There wasn’t as much call for that nowadays, but they were still there. They were still young and willing to step up for Equestria if it ever needed them. It was one of those ‘Greater Good’ type deals, and while it was a whole bucket of bad butter whenever she had to pony-up, it was still something she was proud to be a part of.

And that wasn’t even mentioning the simple fact that her and Dash were friends. Applejack’s life was just plain better with having Rainbow in it, in whatever form their relationship took.

So yeah, she knew this little break was temporary. The real question was whether they’d keep this engagement thing going.

Applejack eyed her sister slyly, out of the corner of her eye. She wasn’t a filly anymore, that much was for sure. Kids were like weeds – they grew fastest when you weren’t looking at them. Somehow, the little foal that used to scoot around the kitchen with a towel under her rump wasn’t so little. She wasn’t quite a mare, but she was definitely closer to it than Applejack had realized before this moment.

“What do you think I should do?” Applejack asked, throwing caution to the wind.

Apple Bloom blinked, startled that her big sister might ask her for advice. Applejack couldn’t blame her for being surprised. This wasn’t exactly familiar grounds for them.

“I think that’s a hard question to answer,” Apple Bloom said, rubbing her chin thoughtfully.

Applejack laughed. “You don’t know either, huh?”

“Well, now, I didn’t say that,” Apple Bloom said. “I just said it was hard to answer. ‘Course I know what I think you should do, the thing is that I don’t know what to tell you.”

Applejack’s brow knitted in confusion. “How d’ya mean?”

“Lemme ask you this.” Apple Bloom tapped a hoof on the mattress, like a schoolmarm getting the class’ attention. “If you and Rainbow do decide to get back together, think this’ll happen again?”

“I dunno,” Applejack answered truthfully. She rolled over, spreading out on the bed and kicking her back hooves with nervous energy. “I think maybe? I mean, I thought I could control myself, once I knew that we were plum foolish enough to exhaust ourselves like that, but look how that turned out. Now I got so little trust in myself when it comes to her that I just can’t say for certain that it won’t happen again... truth is, I’m pretty sure it will.”

“But you do love her, right?” Apple Bloom asked. “Love her for more than the sex, I mean. Love her enough that this isn’t something easy for you.”

“I do,” Applejack declared without hesitation. “I love that gal real bad.”

“Then the way I see it, you only got a few choices. First, the two of y’all could break up and just go back to bein’ friends.”

Applejack frowned. “I don’t like that…”

“Second,” Apple Bloom continued, “you could get married and then just never touch each other again.”

“Ooph, naw, I like that even less,” Applejack said, wincing. She had a very precise idea of what she wanted for her future, and a sexless marriage wasn’t something she had a mind for. Maybe some folk could make do, but Applejack sure wasn’t one of them.

“Guess you’re only left with the third choice, then,” Apple Bloom said, sighing.

Apple Bloom didn’t elaborate. She didn’t need to. The only other choice there was to get back with Rainbow and just roll those dice.

Maybe they wouldn’t die the next time. Maybe a nap and a good meal and lots of water would be enough for her and Rainbow to satisfy their filthy urges without collapsing.

But what about the time after that? And the one after that? The odds weren’t real in their favor, and the odds would only get worse every time.

“Ain’t none of those easy or attractive,” Applejack muttered sadly.

“No, I s’pose they ain’t,” Apple Bloom agreed. “Like I said, I know what I’d like to say you should do, but what I think doesn’t matter. You gotta do what makes you happy – not Granny, or Mac, or me, just you.”

“And if I chose number three?”

“Then that better be what makes you happiest,” Apple Bloom said with deathly seriousness, “because I don’t think the rest of everybody that loves the two of you is gonna wanna stick around to see you ruttin’ yourselves to death every week.”

“Apple Bloom!” shouted Granny from downstairs. She was a frail old mare, but if there was any part of her that was still strong and young, it was those yellin’-pipes of hers. “You fall in up there? Hurry up and get down here so’s we can finish up supper!”

“I’d better go,” Apple Bloom said as she hurried to the door.

Applejack sat up, momentarily at a loss for what to say. “How’d you get so good at giving advice?” she finally managed to ask.

Apple Bloom stopped, turning a little to the side and jutting out her hip to show off her Mark. “Givin’ ponies advice is sorta my thing now, sis,” she said. “I’m kinda real great at it.”

“Huh, I s’pose you are,” Applejack said with a dry chuckle. “Flush the toilet before you head down. That way Granny won’t know you were talkin’ to me. No sense in you gettin’ in trouble, too.”

Apple Bloom smiled, and a mischievous light twinkled in her eyes. “Lyin’, AJ?” she asked. “Really? Maybe you are a zombie. I think you might’ve come back wrong.”

Applejack gave a wide, brittle smile. “Yeah, maybe I did.”

Apple Bloom left, shutting the door with the care of a safe cracker, and a few seconds later the walls shook with the sound of water running through the pipes as the toilet flushed. The sound of little teenaged hooves thundered down the hallway and back down the stairs, and Applejack was alone upstairs again.

Applejack got out of bed and went back over to the mirror. She was tired – powerful tired – but she stayed up another hour, looking in the mirror and trying to find every little bit of her that had come back wrong.

* * *

Applejack wasn’t much used to wasting the day away. Even on her days off, she usually found something productive to do. The only time she ever allowed herself to be frivolous was when she’d spend the day with her friends, but even that was productive. Friendships, as she saw it, were like her trees. They started small, and you watered them, took care of them, let the roots spread until there weren’t nothing that could knock them over.

A day spent at the spa with Rarity, or eating cupcakes until she felt sick wasn’t a waste. It was just her tending to her trees.

Today, though, she didn’t have anything to tend. Twilight had sent instructions to forbid her from work directly to Granny, and Granny was taking them seriously.

And her friends? They were all still sore at her.

Times like this in the past, she would’ve gone to find Rainbow specifically. Nobody could piss away an afternoon like Rainbow Dash could, and even if nobody else had time, Rainbow would make time. She was reliable like that. Wasn’t really an option today, though, Rainbow being the source of Applejack’s problems like she was. Even knowing that, Applejack couldn’t help but feel a thirst for just the sight of the girl.

It was going to be a rough month.

Applejack, being not sure what to do with herself and not wanting to be in the house with an extra irate Granny, decided to just walk. She walked without aim, until she came to one of the streams that wrapped around the edge of the Apple property, and decided to follow it.

The valley that Ponyville was situated in was very water rich. A good-sized river ran down from the mountains nearby, and a series of streams and ponds and lakes criss-crossed and dotted the valley. It was why Applejack’s family had settled the area. Fruiting trees were thirsty trees, and if you wanted to grow apples, you needed water.

Applejack just kept walking, following the shoreline all over the valley, and when the water veered off in a direction she couldn’t follow, she just started walking uphill in the same general direction. She walked for hours, until her tired hooves told her it was time to rest. To her surprise, she’d walked the long way around to the other side of town.

She was sat up on a hill overlooking the dam at the edge of town. The big concrete thing had been built just a few years after her dad had been born, and she didn’t know much about it other than the fact that it was what made the electricity that ran all the lights and appliances in her house.

There were ponies down there, moving around on the dam like ants crawling all over a log. Their jobs were probably important, but if you asked her about it she couldn’t tell you how. It was just one of those things that never rightly concerned her.

There was nothing else to do, though, and she was too tired to walk back home yet, so she just sat and watched. Sometimes it was nice to sit and watch without having to do any thinking.

“Hey, what’cha doin’?”

Speaking of not thinking…

“Nothin’,” Applejack said. She tried to play it cool, but just the sound of Rainbow’s voice had her ears twitching in excitement, and any notion of reminding her that they were supposed to be on a break from each other was pushed to the wayside. “Just not thinkin’.”

Rainbow trotted over and plopped her tight little blue butt onto the grass next to Applejack. “I get that,” she said. “Sometimes you just gotta flush the old brain out.”

Applejack snickered. “Sometimes.”

“Most times, then, I guess,” Rainbow said, smiling. “What were you not thinking about?”

“You. Me. Us. Our friends, my family, the future, the farm, my parents…”

Rainbow let out a low whistle. “That’s a lot of stuff to not think about.”

“Too much stuff,” Applejack agreed. “How you feelin’, Dash?”

Rainbow Dash was quiet. Real quiet. But Applejack could tell from the way she narrowed her eyes, like she was looking at something real far away, what Rainbow was thinking.

“Yeah… I feel the same…” Applejack said.

“This sucks,” Rainbow said under her breath. “It all feels so wrong.”

“I feel like we cheated, and there weren’t even no point in cheatin’,” Applejack said. “Like some poor guy might slip in his bathtub and break his neck, yeah? And that’s an accident, and it’s real sad and all, but that’s just how the cracker breaks. His folk get sad about it and they move on, and that’s nature.”

“But we’re not natural,” Rainbow Dash said, finishing the thought. “We’re friends with a crazy mad scientist who made us new bodies that are almost exactly the same in every way.”

“But not the same.”

“Not the exact same,” Rainbow said in agreement. “So then what was the point in cheating? Twilight did a good job, but no matter how I look at it, you and me, we’re not the same AJ and Dash that died in that shack – and if we’re not the same, then what are we?”

“We’re still Applejack and Rainbow,” Applejack said, “we’re just two different ones, with their memories and their hearts. All the same ‘cept for the things that ain’t the same.”

“Which feels wrong,” Rainbow said, sighing into the wind. “So what’s the point?”

“The point is we still get to be alive,” Applejack replied, frowning.

Rainbow stood up, pounding her hoof into the grass angrily. “But what’s the point of that?” she asked, her voice cracking. “When I asked you to marry me, I did it because I felt like I couldn’t live without you in my life for another second. And now what? Now I can’t even touch you, because I know I’m going to do something stupid.”

Applejack watched Rainbow kick and scrape at the grass. She hated seeing her mare like that, upset and frustrated. She felt the same, and it hurt her to see the pony she loved suffering under the same problems she was… but she knew that if she tried comforting Rainbow, they’d end up hugging, and then that heat in her belly would fire up again. They’d be hugging, and then suddenly kissing, and next thing they knew they’d be getting squeezed out of the pickle barrel by Twilight’s science-machines.

She knew it’d happen like that. She knew it for a fact… but that didn’t stop her.

“It’s okay,” Applejack said as she pulled Rainbow into a hug.

“We shouldn’t,” Rainbow said, burying her face into Applejack’s neck. “We’re going to hurt each other again.”

“I don’t wanna live like this either,” Applejack whispered into her lover’s ear. “Scared as I am to say it out loud, Twilight shouldn’t have brought us back. She shoulda let us lie in the bed we’d made for ourselves. This ain’t no kinda life I can live, not bein’ with you.”

“So what should we do?” Rainbow asked as she lovingly stroked Applejack’s mane.

“Let’s just do what we want,” Applejack said simply. “We’ll leave a note for Twilight, let her know what we decided… tell her we want to try and see if we can be better’n our own natures. Maybe we’ll get lucky and she won’t ever have to read the letter. Who knows? If we’re only ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine-nine percent of what we originally were, maybe that extra little percent was the stubborn part of us.”

“Okay, yeah, let’s kill ourselves,” Rainbow said immediately. “I didn’t think about it that way, but there’s no way I’m going to settle for being anything less than one-hundred percent of my full awesomeness.”

Applejack laughed. Celestia help her, she laughed as she plotted her own very probable demise.

* * *

Twilight looked up at the giant, gleaming white structure and sighed. This was it. Today was the day that she would be saying goodbye to two of her best friends.

For the life of her, she couldn’t even begin to understand the thought processes of the two girls. Stubborn didn’t even begin to describe them. Competitive wasn’t a sufficiently apt word for what they were. Even the word ‘love’ felt insufficient.

Maybe the only appropriate sentiment was idiocy... Yeah, that felt appropriate. It felt right.

Idiots though they were, they were still her friends. The pigheaded imbeciles had gone and killed themselves not once, not twice, but three times, and the third had been on purpose, apparently.

They were the stuff of legends – stupid, dumb, ignorant, disgustingly sticky legends.

And today was the last day she’d see them.

She loved them. Loved them more than she could ever hope to explain in words, just the way she loved all her friends. She loved them so much that she’d done a terribly selfish thing, bringing them back to life, and even forbidding them from seeing one another, for fear of them squandering the second chance she’d foisted upon them.

She’d cried as she read the letter they’d left tacked to the door of the shed behind Fluttershy’s house. It took a few tries to get what they were saying, since both girls had atrocious script, but the words had been genuine. Her heart had been moved, and her anger had been quelled by their sincerity. Their love may not have been beautiful – and was in fact quite gross – but it was the realest thing she’d ever seen.

And so, in the shadow of her palace, where she could look down on it every day, she built a monument to their love. The giant Love Sphere had taken over a month to craft, and hundreds of her own work hours. Other ponies had offered to help, but she had to do it herself. Everything had to be perfect. This was her gift to them.

“It looks great, Twilight,” Fluttershy said as she landed on the grass next to Twilight. “They’re going to love it.”

“I hope so,” Twilight said, stifling a yawn. “I only just barely finished.”

“Right on time,” Fluttershy said, smiling warmly. “It looks like we’re about to start.”

Twilight turned to find a group of ponies walking across the field in their direction. Rainbow’s parents were there, as were her teammates from the Wonderbolts – just a few pegasi peppered among the horde of Apples. The Crusaders led the procession, shepherding the herd, though it was hardly necessary. The Love Sphere was thrice the size of a house, and gleamed in the sunlight like a pearl sitting atop a golden pedestal. Nobody could possibly miss it.

“Good of you all to come,” Twilight said, straightening herself up as she tried to appear more regal. “I’m very happy you could all join us to say goodbye to Applejack and Rainbow Dash.”

The assembled ponies muttered to each other, and a few chuckles rolled through the crowd as someone told a joke at the expense of the recently-deceased couple.

Twilight took a deep breath, running through the speech she’d prepared for this occasion. Before she could say a word, however, the massive doors to her castle threw open, and her friends stepped out. Rainbow Dash and Applejack were between them, and Spike was at the fore, leading them down the hill to the monument.

“Ah should tan yer hides, yeh fool-ass thickwits!” Granny snapped as soon as they were within earshot.

“Yes, Granny, I’m sorry Granny,” Applejack replied, shrinking away from the withering glare of her grandmother.

“You’re the best at sex, Rainbow Dash!” Rainbow’s parents, and Scootaloo, declared in a single voice.

Rainbow groaned into her hoof. “Aw, come on, guys!” she pleaded. “I know you’re only doing that to mess with me.”

“We’re just so angry at you!” Windy Whistles declared in her usual chipper tone. She lifted the camera around her neck and snapped off a quick picture. “Worst daughter ever!”

“The best worst!” Bow Hothoof added. “Other parents have to worry about their daughters sneaking out at night, but our daughter keeps throwing herself off a cliff like a lemming, straight into her girlfriend’s legs!”

“Hey!” Applejack shouted indignantly at having her vagina indirectly compared to a chasm.

“She left the world the same way she entered it,” Scootaloo added, getting into the spirit of things, “through another mare’s vagina!”

“What is this?” Rainbow asked, fanning out her wings angrily. “Are you guys just here to roast us?”

And so for the next two hours, Applejack and Rainbow Dash were roasted mercilessly by the ponies that loved them most.

By the end of the event, the two subjects of the public execution were left fuming, nearly in tears as they got every ounce of guff they had coming to them. The fact that a catering company brought out tables and a sumptuous brunch didn’t so much as break the stride of the constant barrage of snaps and one-liners, cat-calls and put-downs.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Twilight declared, stepping between the victims and the crowd. “I think they’ve learned their lesson.”

“Why'd you do this?” Applejack asked. “Didn’t we leave you a letter specifically askin' you not to bring us back?”

“Yeah, I got that letter,” Twilight said with a nod of her head. “You said you couldn’t live without each other, so I made it so you wouldn’t have to.”

Applejack opened her mouth, fully intent on paying back every barb she’d just gotten stuck with, only to have Rainbow’s hoof shoved into her mouth.

“Whoa-whoa-whoa wait,” Rainbow said. “What do you mean we don’t have to?”

Twilight grinned smugly, swelling up with pride. “Your original bodies, and the subsequent clones, were too weak to survive your supernaturally sick obsessive love for one another. So the solution was simple... I built you better bodies.”

Rainbow and Applejack blinked, their ire forgotten in their curiosity. They both looked down, patting themselves and looking for anything different.

“I don’t get it,” Rainbow said. “What’s different?”

“You are,” Twilight replied. “I’ve made you two into flawless immortal sex-golems. You’ll never need to eat, never need to drink, never tire, and never die. Your body fluids will be replenished through a series of charms that… well, let’s just say that even without water, lubrication isn’t a problem.”

“So you’re saying…” Applejack said.

“...that we’re immortal…” Rainbow said.

“And you can be together!” Twilight said, hopping up and down in excitement. “I know you were worried about not being the original versions of yourselves, but I thought you might not mind so much as long as you could be together.”

“We’re fine with it!” Applejack said. She turned to Rainbow. “Right?”

“Definitely!” Rainbow said, nodding vigorously.

“Perfect!” Twilight clapped her hooves happily. “And with that, I believe I should introduce you to the Love Sphere!”

Twilight turned and gestured towards the enormous round structure.

Rainbow Dash tilted her head in confusion as she looked up at the big shiny thing that Twilight was pointing at. “The ‘Love Sphere’?” she repeated.

“Well, that’s the working name for it,” Twilight explained as she nudged the two confused girls closer to the sphere. “We’re not really at a consensus, but at the drafting stage I was calling this the ‘Perpetual Sex Machine’.” Twilight rolled her eyes dramatically. “Pinkie wanted to call it the ‘Screw Ball’. That’s a funny pun, I guess, but ‘Perpetual Sex Machine’ is a name you can put on a thesis!”

“And a t-shirt!” Spike added from somewhere in the crowd.

“Okay, but what is it?” Applejack asked, poking the structure. Her hoof struck the surface with a hollow thud, like an empty milk can.

“It’s your new home,” Twilight explained. “I needed to build your bodies to never need food or rest, so I talked to Cadance and she sent me the notes on changeling magic that she’s been putting together. She’s been studying the way changelings share love, and I turned her research into a magical circuitry pattern that I could print directly onto your artificial hearts. I also improved the process, increasing the magical resonance almost six-hundred percent over what changelings are naturally capable of.”

Twilight held up a hoof to cut off the protests that were assuredly forthcoming, because surely everyone was following her explanation.

“I know what you’re thinking!” she said. “You’re thinking ‘Twilight, it sounds like you’ve turned our hearts into high-yield magical bombs’! And you’re right, I did do that, but I also built this machine to siphon off the extra power. The Love Sphere will take the boundless mystical love energy you two expend during copulation and harness it, converting it into electrical power. It’s a clean, renewable energy that will last for as long as the two of you do. And since your perfect sex-bodies are capable of intimate congress until the end of time, it’s more or less a limitless power source.”

“We’re going to make electricity?” Rainbow asked.

Twilight nodded. “Endless electricity! By my calculations, this source of free energy will allow scientific progress to advance decades almost overnight.”

Twilight rounded on her wide-eyed friends and clapped them on the shoulders. “Rainbow, AJ,” she began. “The two of you are capable of literally thrusting Equestria into the next century. Will you do this for us? Will you give your bodies up for the greater good? Will you two, for the sake of your motherland, have mind-blowing, earth-shattering orgasms until the end of eternity itself?”

“Fuck yeah I will!” Rainbow Dash declared.

“Reckon I could give it a shot,” Applejack said, removing her hat and tossing it towards the crowd of her kin. The hat sailed through the air and landed neatly on Apple Bloom’s head, and the older Apple sister gave the younger a wink. “I can’t make no promises I won’t break this doodad, though. I ain’t exactly the gentle type.”

Twilight grinned, giving the two girls one last hug before lighting her horn.

A door opened in the center of the sphere at Twilight's command, bathing the onlookers in a bright white light so pure and brilliant that, even in the sunlight, it was blinding. A ramp slid down with a hiss, welcoming the new occupants inside.

Rainbow Dash and Applejack shared a look, nodded, and with confident strides they walked up the ramp. They paused at the top, standing just in the doorway to wave goodbye a final time. The assembled crowd called out to them, wishing them will and sending their teary-eyed, heartfelt support, as if the two mares were standing on the deck of a cruise ship, about to embark on their honeymoon. Perhaps that wasn’t so far from the truth.

“That’s it,” Twilight whispered under her breath. She was practically tingling with excitement, and her heart felt like it would burst with happiness for her friends. “Go, you horny morons. Go and save the world.”

With a pneumatic whisper, the door closed and the ramp retreated.

Almost immediately, the entire Love Sphere lit up with the same hot-pink glow as Twilight’s magic, revealing the complex runes and magical circuitry etched into the poly-carbon magitite shell. The machine hummed with an electric whine, and little arcs of lightning crackled along the surface.

The streetlights all over town came on, and Twilight heaved a sigh of relief. Her design was a success. The entire power grid of Ponyville was now carried on the back of this beast-with-two-backs, and that hefty burden wasn’t even a fraction of the generator’s theoretical output. In time, this one Love Sphere would light every home in Equestria, and maybe one day it would even take them to the stars.

The cheering continued on for several minutes more. Not everyone here understood the significance of what they’d witnessed, but they would soon. For now, it was good enough to treat this as just another celebration – a wedding of sorts.

Rarity, Fluttershy, Pinkie, and Spike, all came up to stand with Twilight. There would be time for celebration later.

“Think we’ll ever see them again?” Spike asked.

“Not for a very long time,” Twilight said, her chest swelling with pride. “But when that door opens again, it’ll be upon a better, brighter Equestria.”

They sat for a while, contemplating the nature of love and enjoying the warmth as the summer's day wore on. It was a truly perfect and still moment... right up until Pinkie opened her mouth.

"I can't wait to see the stained decorative window for this adventure."

* * *

Author's Note

It seems like every time I write something new, I think to myself "Surely this is the dumbest thing yet." Pretty sure the words have lost all meaning at this point.

As usual, see something, say something (in a PM, not a comment).

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it and that you'll all join me again next time!

Please be excited!