The subtle racket of a warm summer day thrummed through the air around the Apple family farm. Birds chirped, brooks burbled, and insects chittered shrilly into an organically weaving concerto of nature, that was subtly dulled through the sturdy wooden walls of the Apple family farmhouse. It was an older building, but it was as full of life as it had always been. A haven and a monument to the Apple family, it was a testament to their love for Ponyville and for one another.
Inside the dwelling, Applejack raised her hammer up into the air. Balancing a single nail delicately in her hoof, she took aim and with a great *whack!* that echoed briefly around the small living room, she hammered the nail into place.
“Perfect!”, the country mare exclaimed, a smile lighting up her face and a chipper tune singing her heart. Her ears flicked at the familiar shuffling from behind her, but she momentarily ignored it in favor of reaching for the picture frame. Feeling the rustic and sturdy wood in her hoof, she gave it a quick look. It was a rudimentary piece of work she had done herself, but it got the job done. And as Granny always said, why pay 40 bits for something you could get in the back orchard for free?
It wasn’t a perfect saying, but it worked well enough to keep Applejack from spending all her bits at Barn, Barrel, and Beyond.
She smiled in satisfaction as she hung the frame carefully on the nail, the picture settling on the wall bringing a feeling of lightness to her heart. As it always did each time she stared into those prideful magenta eyes. Now that they'd been dating for just over a year, Applejack had noticed the farmhouse feeling a bit empty. She'd felt it only right that she add a little something to the old house to match all the other memories that hung on the wall. Fond smiles of happy ponies, immortalized forever in her heart and on her wall.
“It’s crooked.”
Applejack's ear twitched lightly at the raspy sound behind her. Her idle musing stopped as she stopped looking at the picture itself, flicking her own emerald eyes from side to side. Trailing down one edge of the rough applewood frame there was a noticeable tilt. Nothing she'd notice normally, though now that it had been pointed out to her she was sure she'd never be able to unsee it. Huh. Stepping forwards, she nudged the side of the frame with her hoof, pushing it slightly to the left and correcting the tilt.
She stepped back once more to admire the way the picture hung, now properly aligned on the wall. It did seem to brighten up the room. The picture was nothing fancy. Just a simple shot of the two of them smiling in the orchard, laughing at whatever it was they had been talking about that summer day so long ago.
Perfect.
“It's still crooked.”
Applejack rolled her eyes before looking behind her. Laying on a cloud and flipped upside down, Rainbow Dash watched her girlfriend lazily, barely even twitching her wings to keep her impromptu cushion floating in place. Choosing to ignore for the moment just why Rainbow had brought a cloud into her house, Applejack drawled, “And just how would you know that? You’re not lookin too straight yourself there, sugarcube.”
Snorting dismissively in response, the pegasus rolled over, easily settling onto her front in a more cat-like pose. With her hooves relaxed straight out in front of her, the tips wrapping just over the edge of the cloud, and her prismatic mane draping over her shoulders, Applejack thought she looked rather sphinx-like. The farmer's heart skipped a beat as the comparisons continued in her mind.
Elegant. Powerful. Beautiful.
“Psh, I don’t need to be right side up to see it’s crooked. Pegasi have great eyes!” She crowed, tilting her head up pridefully, lifting a fuzzy hoof to her chest.
Always talkin nonsense.
This time it was her ear that skipped, once more twitching under the effort it took not to roll her eyes. Giving no response other than a raised eyebrow, Applejack stared down the pegasus till the blue mare ceased singing her own praises. Hesitating a moment to read her partner’s face, Dash tilted her head to the side to look behind the country mare at the picture on the wall.
“It is still crooked though.”
Letting out a far too familiar sigh of exasperation, Applejack turned back to the picture. “Consarn it…” she muttered, realizing the right side definitely looked off. Nudging it back to the right, she said a bit louder, “There, fixed it. Ya happy now?” It was still a nice picture, and that was what mattered.
“Uh, it’s still crooked though.”
“Whaddaya mean crooked? It’s fine! It don’t have ta be perfect anyways, it’s what’s in the picture that counts anyways!” The farmer retorted, extending a hoof to gesture to the important part of what she was doing. Sometimes Rainbow needed things a little more blunt.
“Well, I mean yeah! I’m just saying…”
Scrunching her nose, Applejack turned around to face her marefriend once again, “And ah keep sayin stop bringin clouds in the house, but that don’t stop you from ignorin me," she said, eyeing the cloud a bit more intently. "Where did ya even get that anyways? There wasn’t a cloud in the sky this morning.”
“I made it,” Rainbow replied with a confused look, as though it were the simplest answer in the world.
“In zero humidity?”
“In the shower.”
“Oh, well...hang on, what?” Applejack replied with a dumbfounded look on her face. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting, but as with every interaction with the flighty pegasus she was left feeling ever so slightly dazed. Whether that was her natural beauty or her sometimes literally dizzying intellect Applejack had never managed to decide.
As if noticing her girlfriend’s helpless expression, Rainbow supplied with a shrug, “Apple Bloom takes really hot showers.”
Bringing an orange hoof to the bridge of her muzzle, Applejack took a calming breath. She loved Rainbow. She definitely loved that crazy mare. Just needed to remind herself of that from time to time. Grabbing her hat and placing the familiar stetson on her head, Applejack turned to walk away, “Ah’ll be right back.”
Taking her marefriends departure as her cue to get back to her relaxing, Dash simply rolled over and closed her eyes, letting the familiar sound of hoofsteps echoing through the wooden farmhouse lull her back into a light doze. She could never tire of the familiar sound of Applejack at work. It was like a comfortable old flight jacket, familiar and well worn, but sturdy and always there for her to come back to. It was what kept her coming back to the orchard every day for so long, even if she did get bucked out of a few trees in the process.
It was worth all the bruises in the end, Dash figured. That was what first brought them together after all.
"And jus so we're clear, if ah catch you in the shower with Apple Bloom ah'm pluckin ya and serving ya for dinner!"
A few minutes later, Applejack wandered back into the room with a bright yellow level in her mouth to find Rainbow once more lounging on her back on her cloud and looking altogether far too comfortable. Ignoring her the same way she always did while working, she walked back to the picture on the wall, hers and Rainbow’s smiling faces immortalizing the fact that if they could at least agree on one thing it was that they liked each other.
Well, a little more than 'liked'.
She brought the level she carried in her mouth to the top of the frame, resting it there and using the bubble in the glass to guide the soft taps of her hoof to either side of the frame. Cracking an eye open, Rainbow watched silently behind her, seemingly content to just audit Applejack's handiwork. No sense in changing her theme this late in the day she supposed.
After a moment, Applejack stepped back, looking over the picture with a critical eye. Her concentration was quickly broken by the sensation of someone hovering over her shoulder. A soft current of air disturbed her mane, and caused her ear to twitch. At this rate, she was pretty sure her eye would follow suit before too long.
“We do have chairs here for a reason ya know, sugarcube.”
“Eh, clouds are more comfortable,” Rainbow dismissed before continuing, “It is still crooked though.”
“Horseapples, no it ain’t!” Applejack yelled back, throwing her hat on the ground in frustration, only growing more fed up at the melodic cackling of her marefriend’s laughter filling the comfortable air of the room. Glaring up at her, she found only a token effort from the pegasus to stop herself from laughing at the farmer’s behavior. It was enough to suppress the urge to throw the level at the lovable featherbrain and simply hand it to her peacefully instead. “Well if’n you’ve got eagle eyes why don’t you fix it then!”
Taking the level while continuing to giggle quietly at her marefriend’s frustration, Dash took off from her cloud and flew over to the frame. Bringing the level to the side of the frame she checked it quickly with the horizontal glass...before moving it to the other side of the frame...and then to the top.
Grumbling to herself and cursing the fact that it was so hard to stay mad at the mare who had so inconsiderately brightened her life with her love, Applejack poked and prodded at the now loose cloud. Dash said they were comfortable, but Applejack had always considered herself to be a mare with trust issues where gravity and distance were concerned.
“Uh, Applejack?”
The orange mare blew a stray strand of straw colored mane out of her face, “Not so smart now, are ya! I used a level, so ah know it’s straight this time.”
“This frame is crooked.”
Outside the Apple family farmhouse, Celestia's golden sun was shining brightly as usual, and bearing down on the earth below. In the southern fields of the family orchard, a very sweaty Big Macintosh wiped his brow and continued to do his best to ignore the oppressive heat. Taking a quick moment from bucking to hydrate himself, he trotted easily down to the nearby stream. The sun was at its highest point, and it was a particularly dry day according to the pegasus weather report, so he figured it wouldn't do to interrupt Applejack on her one day off to come drag his dehydrated butt back inside when he collapsed.
Taking a sip of water from the fresh stream, he relished the refreshing water filling his mouth and cooling his body. Suddenly, through the buzzing ambiance of the summer air, a brash sound echoed through the orchard. His ears twitched as the rough, yet familiar cackling of a particular pony echoed through the sky, shifting with a doppler effect as it grew closer.
The resounding laughter of Rainbow Dash preceded the arrival of the pony herself, wearing what looked like a homemade necklace of roughly-hewn timber around her neck. Speeding through the sky as she was, her presence was as short lived as it always seemed to be. And right on schedule mere seconds later it was followed by the predictable shouted curses of his oldest sister, giving pursuit from the ground and throwing anything within reach along the way.
Deciding that nothing out of the ordinary was going on, Mac walked back over to the next tree in line to buck it, leaving the two to do whatever it was they did to fall so head over hooves for one another. The trees weren't going to buck themselves, after all.
Author's Note
A brief piece from one of Quills and Sofa's speedwriting prompts, and double dipping into Krazy's Appledash contest. Because if you're going to publish something after 4 years of silence you might as well tick off all the boxes!
Just a silly excerpt from the imagined life of Applejack and Rainbow Dash.
