The sky was just starting to truly lighten with the glow of the coming dawn, the early morning breeze rustling happily through the fall-coloured leaves. In the barn and a few guest rooms, any number of ponies were settling back down with blankets and pillows, tired out from the previous night’s festivities and the search that had followed.
Somewhere on the farm, a rooster crowed.
The door to Apple Bloom’s room opened to admit Babs, who entered slow and silent. It had been hours since the end of the Jamboree, the annual Apple celebration of story, dance and song. And it had been hours since she had left without a word, chasing after a life she’d barely dreamed of and a grown stallion she’d barely met.
The revelation that they were kin made up for exactly none of that. Especially since she’d not known that herself when she’d run off, vanishing into the dead of the autumn night.
Now, Babs re-entered her cousin’s room, head and tail down, gently closing the door behind her. She didn’t look at the fillies around her, just sat where she was, staring at the floor.
“I know, I know,” she sighed, “irresponsible, scared ev’rybody, no excuse. Jus’ make it quick.”
“You kiddin'? Heck, we’re just glad you’re okay!” Apple Bloom exclaimed, she and her fellow Cutie Mark Crusaders hugging her cousin fiercely.
When they separated again, Apple Bloom took a step back, looking her over. Finally, she asked, “So, ya got any butt left?”
After a moment Babs finally looked up, giving her cousin a rueful smile. “Not much. Aunt Applejack chewed most of it off.”
Sweetie Belle stepped forward. “And John?”
Babs looked over her shoulder with apprehension. “Uh, he’s gonna have less’n me, I think.”
“…more thoughtless, headstrong, irresponsible stunt I ain’t seen in a dog’s age!”
“Yes’m.”
“Now, I ain’t meanin’ ta disrespect you none, grandsire—”
“You ain’t.”
“—But you coulda known that she was too young ta be traipsin’ off like that, much less with a fella none of us really knew! You shoulda known! Heck, how could you not know!? Why, you like ta scared me outta ten years’ growth with that little stunt a’yours! Outta all of us, fer that matter—”
“Now, Applejack, I did tell ye—” Granny Smith tried.
“That was well after the fact, Granny,” the orange mare snapped. “An’ more’n a just little late, if’n you ask me!”
Twilight touched Applejack with a wing, and with some difficulty the earth pony reeled herself in.
Cautiously, politely, John Songsmith addressed his descendant. “May Ah say somethin’?”
Applejack sighed, leaned on Twilight a little. “I don’t see why not. Roof’s a little higher’n it was when I started, anyway. You go right on ahead.”
John nodded. “An’ Ah don’t blame you for raisin’ it. Neither of us, not me nor Babs, aimed t’scare anypony. An’ when she started thinkin’ again, she caught me up on how things was, an’ we came right back.”
Applejack peered at him. “Took you a spell.”
“We were a good ways away, darlin’. An’ the wind was with us leavin’ but against us comin’ back.”
She made an exasperated noise. “That don’t make no sense…”
John shrugged. “I can’t help that.”
Granny said softly, “Now John, that ain’t helpin’ nopony. This here ain’t no time fer mysteries.”
John sighed. “Fair enough, love. All right then.”
He addressed Applejack again. “We made mistakes, both of us, an’ we’re both powerful sorry. But… try an’ look at it from Babs’ position. The music is in her soul, sure as there’s sun in the mornin’ or moonlight at night. It calls to her. It’s a hunger, an’ a pull, an’ an ache that needs to be answered. An’ for all her brains – an’ stars above know she’s got ‘em – she’s still a foal. She got caught up in the moment, an’ it picked her up an’ whisked her away. She weren’t thinkin’, as I said. An’ when she recollected herself proper, she told me what was what, an’ we came straight back.”
“An’ your part in all this?”
John’s smile was rueful. “Well, now, Ah’ll allow that Ah’ve got less an excuse. But time was, she’d be aroun’ the right age to be ‘prenticed to somepony who could teach her the path she’d set her hooves on. More generations were spent with that bein’ done than without.”
He considered the young mares before him. “It ain’t all gone, neither. Miss Twilight, here, she started learnin’ under Celestia’s wing way younger’n Babs is.”
He gave a helpless half-shrug. “You folks’ve kept so many other traditions alive, it never occurred to me that this one’d be left behind.”
“Twi didn’t up an’ leave her folks in the middle of the night.”
“Ah imagine not. But Ah’ll allow Ah wasn’t thinkin’ much, myself.” He looked into Applejack’s eyes then, desperate to find some understanding there. “She’s got the Gift, gran’child. All that joy, all that music, comin’ alive again in her eyes an’ her heart, an’ all the while her soul singin’ the way that only a few ever will! This is the road to her cutie mark, I’d bet you money, marbles, or chalk. An’ in the face of all that… Ah… kinda forgot about anythin’ else.”
He blinked, adding softly, “An’ Ah am sorry about that, Applejack. Powerful sorry.”
Applejack sighed. “That’s okay, I guess. There weren’t no real harm done, aside from a few grey hairs here an’ there. Just, try an’ be more careful next time, will ya?”
John’s ears perked up. “So… there might be a next time?”
Applejack ran her hoof through her mane.
“I guess there might,” she allowed. “We’ll need to send a letter to Babs’ folks first off, an’ explain things a bit. An’ they’ll want her to finish school first, we can be pretty sure a’that. But she spends her summers with us anyway, so maybe you two could travel a little then.”
Her eyes were stern again as she added, “If her folks say it’s okay, an’ if you can promise to bring her back on time every year.”
Delighted, John opened his mouth, but Granny cut him off. “Eh, let’s keep this ta one thing at a time, Applejack. It may be that we’d be better off havin’ John visit ev’ry summer, an’ see where that goes.”
She gave her husband a knowing look, who, uncomfortable, took a sudden interest in examining the ceiling.
“But sendin’ that letter’s surely the way to start,” the old mare finished.
“Yeah, I reckon.” Applejack sighed again. “Man. This has been a weird night all aroun’.”
Twilight nodded. “Sure. It’s not every day you find out you’re descended from Princess Luna.”
Applejack’s eyes got the size of dinner plates. “Oh. Oh, yeah. That… does follow, don’t it?”
Twilight gave her an amused smile. “You okay?”
“Sure. Just… still processin’ that.”
Cautiously, Apple Bloom peered down from the stairs, three more big pairs of eyes right behind her. “Hey… um… it safe fer us to come down yet?”
Granny smiled. “Looks that way. Yer big sister’s jus’ a little boggled, is all.”
As Babs and the other CMC came down, Apple Bloom went to Granny and John, her eyes full of uncertainty. “So… this mean we gotta start wearin’ finery, an’ doin’ events an’ such?”
John laughed, and the wind blew merrily around the house. Outside, Wynonna barked happily and chased the swirling leaves.
“No, sweetheart, it don’t,” he said, tousling her mane. “Not unless you really want to.”
He winked at Applejack while he put a foreleg around a smiling Granny Smith and drew her in close.
“After all, why d’you think we kept it all so quiet in the first place?”
Author's Note
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There will be other stories in this timeline - and its sister timeline - in the future.
And, of course, the seminal story that starts it all begins here.
