Sea-foam green and foggy mauve.
Applejack padded as quietly as she could across the dirt road that ran through Sweet Apple Acres, but for someone like her, moving “quietly” was a relative term.
Even by Earth Pony standards, she had a stocky build that was made for hauling, not sneaking. She also still had her workmare’s shoes firmly nailed to her weathered capsules, which meant no matter how gingerly she moved, each step carried the sound of metal on gravel to her nervous, flicking ears. She was halfway to the barn. Halfway to relaxing. Keep looking casual, that’s what was most important.
Firehouse brick and azure shade.
The contents hidden under Applejack’s stetson shifted uncomfortably, pulling her hair and earning a wince, but at least there was no threat of anything tumbling out. Applejack could always count on her supplies to behave themselves. They weren’t alive. They weren’t able to actively rebel or defy or belittle her for how she used them.
They weren’t other ponies.
Slate grey...
At last, Applejack crossed into the barn and with a kick to the latch from her left hind, she heard the door slam shut behind her. The only light still making its way into this, her private place for the time being, was a few sunbeams from the west window, courtesy of it being late evening. Supper had been half an hour ago. Bedtime was half an hour from now. Apple Bloom was inside doing dishes and Granny Smith was sitting on the porch watching for fireflies, a hobby of hers leftover from early foalhood nights. Applejack empathized with her granny. Everypony had holdover passions from their early days. Some were just more self-conscious about them.
….and burnt sienna.
Applejack swept her tail on the pavement beneath her once, twice, and a third time to clear away stray straw and mulch chips. Satisfied that she had a clean area to work, she knelt down and in a fluid practiced motion, whipped off her hat and poured her supplies onto the clean floor in front of her. The crayons spilled out of their box, though thankfully none broke on impact nor rolled very far. Applejack’s trusty sketchbook fared much better, landing face up and stuck tightly closed due to all the time it spent jammed flat under the front leg of her dresser. It was in plain sight at all times, very cleverly disguised as a simple notebook with no purpose other than keeping the furniture on top of it from wobbling. And while that was indeed its job most days and nights, every few months it had a more important job to do: being Applejack’s receptive, nonjudgmental canvas. With a nudge from her nose, it opened up.
“Evening to ya, Nelli. Been a few, hasn’t it?”
A crude but lovingly made portrait of a unicorn smiled emptily up at her artist. Applejack smiled back. Nelli was a good friend. Always happy to see her, no matter how long they went between visits.
“What shade’re you feeling today, sugar?”
Applejack tapped a nearby crayon, rolling it over so the label was showing. Not that she needed to actually read it, having memorized all seven colors back when she was a filly.
“Coal black, maybe? That one’s a mite heavy to be used on its own. I was thinkin’ on the trot over that it was a sea-foam green and foggy mauve kinda day, but then I just started fancying firehouse brick and azure shade out of nowhere.” With her clumsy, fingerless hoof Applejack pulled the four crayons she’d listed off into a line.
“But that would leave burnt sienna ‘n slate grey all left out. Seems unfair, don’tcha think?”
Applejack looked at the seven crayons all aligned in front of her. She didn’t feel like playing favorites today, but she also wasn’t keen on using all of them. They’d been her companions for years and years now, too precious to be wasted all together on a whim. Applejack had been careful, so very careful, to make sure her supplies lasted, because going out and getting more was not an option. Ponyville was a small town where everypony knew everypony else, and Applejack’s stomach twisted itself in knots at the thought of her, the perpetually dirty farm worker, going down to Pastel Prancy’s art shop, looking that talented, Manehatten-educated master of the brush in the eye, and having the gall to ask where-
The latched door behind Applejack swung open like the jaws of a predator, and she didn’t even have time to gasp in panic before a messy mane of pink blocked her light.
“There you are! Out here in the barn by your lonely lonely lonesome, just like Granny Smith said!”
Applejack still hadn’t found her voice, but she did make an involuntary squealing noise more fitting for a pig than a pony as she flailed her forelegs, already tingling with adrenaline, in a far too late attempt to hide Nelli and her crayons from Pinkie Pie’s prying eyes.
Sometimes when reorganizing the storeroom, Applejack would heave a hay bale aside to reveal a terrified mouse staring up at her, too scared and helpless to even run. Now reflexively curled up and squeezing Nelli to her sunbleached chest fluff, Applejack understood what it meant to be a mouse without a hay bale. What in the wide world of Equus was Pinkie Pie doing at Sweet Apple Acres near sundown on a weekday? Applejack had been so sure no one would catch her. This barn was supposed to be her sanctuary.
Finally registering something was wrong, Pinkie’s bubbly smile faltered into a concerned frown and then her whole face became a featureless smudge as embarrassment and betrayal filled Applejack’s eyes with hot, stinging tears.
“Oh no AJ, are you hurt?! Did I clock you just now with the swingy thingy?”
The caring hoof of a very gentle cake decorator found and massaged Applejack’s shoulder in an attempt to soothe, and although it shamed her to do it Applejack jerked away, rolling over so her back was to Pinkie. Some feverish, foalish part of her grasped for some hope that Pinkie would take the hint and leave, never bringing up what she just saw to anypony, least of all not to Applejack herself the next time they saw each other. Pinkie did not get the hint, though. Or more likely she did but knew better than to let weeping dogs lie. Her hoof instead went to Applejack’s ear and its subsequent stroking made the hardened farm mare’s heart lurch in her throat. Her late father used to give her ear scratches to calm her down when she was upset. It was an unfailing trick, even working when Applejack had came home sobbing from her first day of kindergarten after making the horrible mistake of picking up a crayon in front of those unicorn classma-
“Hey… um… AJ? Listen, I may be bubblegum colored, but I’m not bubblegum thick. I definitely just trotted in on something personal, and if you want me to go so you can finish, I can. But you gotta tell me to, okay? You gotta tell me it’s okay to leave you like this, cuz friends don’t leave friends crying in the dirt unless they ask first.”
Applejack loosened her grip on Nelli and looked down. Pinkie was another Earth Pony. Pinkie wouldn’t judge. Applejack cleared her throat, deciding to take the plunge before this moment of resolve left her.
“Don’t go, sugarcube. Please don’t go.”
“You suuuure you want me to have a go?” It was impossible for Pinkie Pie to curb her voice’s natural playfulness, but her expression was doing its best imitation of someone who was serious. Applejack nodded, still flushed from earlier but feeling slightly more even keeled. Slightly. She gestured to the crayons still on the ground between them.
“Take your pick of whatever color you want, sugarcube. Doesn’t matter which. Doesn’t matter what you draw either. I just wanna see how you yourself do it.”
Pinkie Pie nodded despite her complete and openly apparent lack of understanding what the big deal was. She’d originally come over to present a spare soufflé that the bakery hadn’t sold that day, hoping the gift would bring some surprised but pleased smiles to her distant cousin’s family. And to be fair, Granny Smith and Apple Bloom absolutely gave her a welcome warmer than the tupperware tin gripped in her teeth at the time. At Granny’s request, Pinkie’d left the soufflé on the table and skipped over to fetch Applejack from the barn she was last seen going into. And now… well… here she was being prompted to draw with crayons in an open and ancient looking notebook. Not an objectionable hobby, but a fairly foalish one even by her standards.
“I haven’t handled a crayon since the last toddler party I catered,” Pinkie confessed as she selected a red one and pinched it between her forehooves. “Which okay, was only a few days ago, but the point is I’m awfully outta practice. Now that I think hard about it, I didn’t even really draw that much in grade school either. Not because I didn’t like to, but because I had a couple Pegasus classmates who- oh drat.” Pinkie had managed half an outline of a balloon before fumbling the red crayon and smearing her picture-to-be.
“Drat,” she repeated before looking back at Applejack sheepishly. “Butterfingers. Or lack thereof, I guess.”
Applejack nodded sadly. So sadly that Pinkie felt her usually unflappable optimism start to waver. For reasons Pinkie could still only guess at, it was supery-dupery important that she succeed in drawing something. Well, she was determined to deliver. There was a more reliable way to draw than using one’s hooves. It was also a bit humiliating, but humility was no obstacle for Pinkamena Diane Pie. She’d been an eager victim of her own dunk tank display for the past six Summer Sun Celebrations. Drawing with her mouth was nothing compared to that.
“Hope… heh heh. Hope you don’t mind a little spittle on your art supplies, AJ. Cuz my hoofers aren’t cutting it.”
Applejack’s jaw dropped, but before she could say something in response Pinkie bashfully bit the back end of the red crayon and finished her balloon doodle in what felt like an instant. On a roll, she dropped the red crayon with an undignified pitooie and got her teeth around a blue one, then a purple one, and finally she presented her finished work.
“Ta da! It’s my Cutie Mark.” Pinkie flashed a winning smile, but when her mind’s eye saw colored wax in her teeth, she clamped her lips shut and probed around with her tongue for offending flakes. Fortunately, she wasn’t feeling any. And even more fortunately, Applejack finally looked happy. Actually, scratch that: she looked positively thrilled.
“Top notch, Pinkie. You used your teeth like it was nothin’!”
Pinkie bowed bashfully. “Not exactly nothing,” she insisted. “I can barely believe I remember this happening, but like I was saying earlier I actually got made fun of back in kindergarten for how I drew things. See, there were these two Pegasus colts who would hog all the markers, but I got one from them one day and was drawing my own picture, and even though I can’t remember what color I had or what I was drawing I remember they both pointed and laughed at me for having to use my mouth while they had wing feathers to grip stuff, and that really stuck with me for a long time. So much that I spent years learning to draw with my hooves instead, just to prove to myself… sheesh, this is probably sounding like a super silly story from an even supery-er sillier mare, huh?”
Applejack, who’d been patiently listening with a knowing twinkle in her eye, shook her head slowly. “Not a silly story at all, sugarcube. No outright admissions, but maybe there’s another Earth Pony in town who had a similar happening happen with a few Unicorn classmates when she was young. And maybe she didn’t get over it as easy as you did.”
“Sounds like this other pony… whoever she is… has a lot more self-respect than I do. Just hope she learns to loosen up a little someday. I feel sorry for her. Would give her a hug if I could.”
“Nah, she wouldn’t want something that sappy. She would want you to give your pic a nice background though.”
“Can do!”
Pinkie chomped a third color, this one an off-purple, and began deftly drawing a background for her balloons to float in. She paid no mind to the notebook’s opposite page being unintrusively ripped out until her ears swiveled to pick up some scritching and scratching coming from Applejack’s direction. Pinkie dropped her utensil and smiled encouragingly at her friend, who’d produced a pencil from somewhere and was sketching away on a drawing of her own.
“That’s a nice one, AJ. Is it a self-portrait?”
“Nah. Her name’s Nelli. She was an imaginary friend of mine I made a long time back. Before I had a baby sister who looked up to me.”
“Yeah? And what did Nelli look up to you for?”
Applejack smiled past her pencil. “She thought my way of holdin’ tools wasn’t a thing that should be made fun of.”
Satisfied, the two friends silently continued on their own drawings for a few minutes. Predictably, it was Pinkie who eventually broke the ice again.
“These crayons are pretty old, ya know.”
“Hm?”
“Old. Crayons. They’re also in weird colors. Like they were stolen from school ages ago by a filly who knew they wouldn’t be missed by anyone.”
Applejack pulled her stetson down over her eyes.
“Tell ya what AJ: you an’ me should head out to Pastel Prancy’s this weekend. Get some modern crayons in big bold colors. I think that could be fun. Do you think that could be fun?”
Applejack cleared her throat a few times, then a few more for good measure.
“I do, sugarcube. I think it’d be a lot of fun.”
“Atta girl. Hey, while I’m tossing out random suggestions for things we can do, how about heading back to the house and sampling a dessert that may or may not have been brought over by the most generous and thoughtful cook in Ponyville?”
Applejack sighed contentedly and stood up, swiping her pencil, crayons, and new Nelli picture into her hat with a single motion. “I’m glad you decided to come by today, Pinkie.”
“Me too. Now let’s go stuff our faces to celebrate getting over our foalhood social traumas.”
Pinkie Pie did an effortless somersault over the barn latchdoor while Applejack, ever practical, simply pulled it open after picking up her sketchbook from where Pinkie’d left it. Then she let the latch ease shut behind her, knowing these sessions of drawing in secret were good and over. Time to find a new book to prop up her dresser.
