Author's Note

Hello, everyone.

I want to apologize for the gap. I hit a slump and might be in it for a bit longer, but I was able to finish the following scene of a longer update that will be published later.

I left things at a bad spot considering how much I dislike dialogue and the sheer amount of talking to come between most of the cast up to this point in the story.

There may be some edits to the following, but I wanted to get something out to all of you as an assurance that I am still here and before my better judgement shelves what I have written for another few months. That said, most of this is what I intended from the scene, as muddled as the execution may be.

Please, enjoy.

(21.1) Florescence (Scene One)

Even through the distant sounds of hoofclaps, hollers and the hiss of pyrotechnics, it was a nearly serene day on the outskirts of Ponyville. The staunchly sweet scent of apple blossoms, so prevalent in months prior, had faded away to herald the approaching harvest. In its place, at least this far into town and away from the edges of the Everfree, Mac could smell the notes of anise from the coreopsis' foliage. It was fainter here than nearer to that strange place, where the flower that Daisy, Lily and Rosebud called a tickseed grew unfettered by the local wildlife, except for the occasional peckish grazing by one striped mare...

Big Mac may have just hazarded to buckle down and enjoy himself if his companion carried a less frazzled composure.

"So then," the stallion finally enounced after some time of walking beside Miss Cheerilee, "Are ye' gonna speak wha's on yer mind?"

Cheerilee let out a sigh. "Please, can we just walk for a bit?"

"Na' if yer huffin' is gonna ruin arh stroll."

Cheerilee groaned this time before condemning his verbage, "You know I reviewed all of your essays our graduating year, right? Sure, it was anonymous but who else would be able to use all their pomological terms correctly? Or even choose to write about pomology in the first place."

He snorted and asked, "An' was that suppose to be for?"

"I know you've got a lot more words up there, McIntosh. You can use them around me if you want."

Big Mac reflected for a moment before he asserted, "That is a fair proposition, Miss Cheerilee. I will admit that most o' what I say is not verbatim to my thoughts but it is far from equipoise for you to ask me to act all sesquipedalian when you are over there all closed off."

Cheerilee chuckled and echoed the word, "Sesquipedalian?"

"Apple Bloom learned it from ya durin' some lesson about Puddin'ead, an' then she called me one the next time ah' used a word that did not staht with two E's!" Big Mac stressed his pronunciation of the letter, in direct contrast to his normal casual rolling of it before his characteristic answers. "O' course she missed a few syllables, which was ironic in the moment, but aye find what she was goin' for in Granny Smith's thesaurus the next time sha was nappin'."

"Why does Granny Smith have a thesaurus?" Cheerilee questioned.

"I reckon she used to use it fer crafting insults ta hurl ore' the fence at Grand Pear," Mac answered before belting out a round of laughter, "that's what started muh vocabulary in the first place!"

Cheerilee laughed with him for a spell until he fell silent and sighed.

"Don' dodge the question, Cheers. What's on your mind?"

"Please," she implored once again, "Can we just walk for a while more?"

Mac glanced up and down the street ahead and behind them before lowering his voice. "Just tell me, did they accept your application?"

Cheerilee fell quiet and cancelled her stride. After looking up and down the street, she whispered, "How did you know about that?"

Big Mac spoke low in response, "There weren't no desire to snoop but aye saw the paperwork on your desk when you had me fixing up the schoolhouse roof. Any ole' parent could have spotted that on summer school enrollment weekend so I slid it in your drawer 'afor they started to waltz in."

Cheerilee thought she had been the one to do that before remembering her frazzled state of mind from around the end of the prior school year and the much conflicted choices it had urged forth of her and the myriad of mistakes she'd nearly made. "Thank you," she muttered, "and no, not yet. There's still other steps. Interviews, visits, fees, it's a whole... Thing."

They stood with a silence between them for a minute until Cheerilee inquired, "Do you think they will?"

"They would be fools not to say yes." McIntosh answered emphatically. "Miss Cheerilee, you are finer mare than you are a teacher, and if my Apple Bloom is anyfilly to hear on the matter, all those foals in that school treasure you."

"Do you really think," Cheerilee paused, before deciding keep the conversation nominally ambiguous, "they all do?"

"Well," Big Mac switched his tone to a defeated inflection as he continued, "that one young filly may be too wrapped up in her own narcissistic affairs to appreciate your lessons now, but she will one day, and hopefully one day soon."

Cheerilee rose her voice slightly in frustration as she said, "I didn't mean Diamond Tiara, Big Mac."

He wasted no time in saying, "Neither did I, I was referring to Silver Spoon!"

Cheerilee let out a scoff that quickly morphed into a chuckle at the stallion's farce.

"Scootaloo will understand," Big Mac confirmed to her as he set aside his attempt at levity, "ye both want the best for each other. However that comes to be."

A few moments passed before she welcomed him with a simple, muted, "Thank you..."

She took a few steps before he met her stride and their stroll continued unfettered by the hushed exchange.

"Since we are being so honest with each other now," Cheerilee reasoned at a more regular volume after they turned at the next street corner, "How's about you tell me her name?"

Big Mac let out a bewildered, "Ah'who now?"

"McIntosh, please," Cheerilee nudged his side with her shoulder, "You varnished your collar. The last time you did that was when you had that thing for Acryllic's cousin back in school. At least until Granny told you she was a Pear."

Big Mac let out a snort and raised a hoof to adjust his yoke. "That's ridiculous Cheerilee. That lass said she just wasn't interested be'in from out of town and all that."

"Not interested in an Apple, you mean?"

"Besides, I wax this ol' thing down every year or it'll start to warp."

Cheerilee leaned forward and made a show of peering closer at the wood. She asked, "Do you normally varnish it with a bottle of Lugnut's Lustrous Lumber Lather? Just admit someone new caught your eye, there's no other reason for you to spend far too much time polishing your knobs." She stood on her back hooves for a moment and flicked the face of her reflection in one of his collar's horns.

"Fine, fine..." Mac sat in the road and looked up and down the street for any creatures within earshot. Cheerilee placed her four hooves back to the earth and met his gaze. Satisfied in their privacy, he admitted, "Ay met a mare from out of town. That's all to be said now."

"I'm happy for you Mac, I hope it turns out better this time. Celestia knows you broke plenty of filly's hearts when you swore off dating last time." She saw his expression shift to one she hadn't oft seen on his face; .

"You were wrong just there, Cheers," the stallion corrected her, "Ann Jo wasn't the last lass I fancied. You spent how many years up there by the castle before coming back down like nothing could've changed?"

"Mac, I'm sorry," Cheerilee hesitated.

"Aye have been tryin' to be considerate but you never asked. Not about home, not about what's new, not about..." Big Mac held something back in his voice even as some tears swelled up in the corner of his eyes, "Not about what you weren't here fer."

She couldn't think of many things that could shake a stallion like Big Mac. Not many more than one of the few things a small town like Ponyville didn't speak of. "I didn't know... Not until I came back. It was too late then, I didn't want to bring anything back up..." Cheerilee tried to comfort him as she rested a hoof on his withers.

"You could have asked. I woulda told ya whether..." Big Mac groaned in frustration as he admitted, "It weren't yer job, Cheerilee. Everypony stopped asking, once Apple Bloom were old enough tah hear'em."

"We, should have wrote. I'd have read, of you wanted to quill me."

"There's no use dwelling on the could've. We're here now." Big Mac gulped back the knot in his throat before he apologized, "That was out of line of me. Uncouth, as that seamstress would put it." He patted her hoof with his own before moving it back to the ground.

"Let's just finish our walk, big guy," Cheerilee redirected the conversation before asking, "What would the neighbors think if they saw us out here alone while the town was all back at the square?"

He almost answered before the two of them realized that the air carried no noise of any traveling showmares or haphazard and gratuitous explosions.

"We should probably get back that way before." Cheerilee asserted.

"Ee'yup," Big Mac agreed. "Granny has a knack for waking back up when the town gets too silent."

They turned onto main street and trotted for a ways before Big Mac noticed a smirk on the teacher's face.

Against his better judgment, he asked "What's that for, now?"

Cheerilee giggled and said, "Sesquipedalian."