Sweet Memories

Chapter Two: That Summer

"I remember that summer that I spent with you. We were working on the farm, and we didn't have much to do."

Two years ago.

"Ugh, come on Applejack! This is soooo booooooring! Can't we do something cool? Like a race or something?" Rainbow Dash whined while hovering a few feet off the ground next to Applejack. The two were in the east fields of Sweet Apple Acres. It was late afternoon, the mid summer sun's rays were scorching and relentless. Rainbow's flapping wings provided very little comfort, but there was a very slight breeze, however just enough to tease a pony with its slight, godly coolness. The heat far outweighed the seemingly almost non-existent breeze. This was very unfortunate and frustrating, as the two mares had been harvesting apples all day.

"Rainbow, when Ah asked you if you would be so kind ta' help me on th' farm, Ah meant help," Applejack began as she rolled her emerald eyes, "Not whine about it bein' boring. Ah guess th' work's just too hard for y'all's little Pegasus body." She finished with a smug grin on her face.

Rainbow Dash's face expression turned into a scowl. She landed with a thud on the dirt path the two were on in front of Applejack. "Hey," she began with a voice crack, "I can handle the work! You watch, I'll clear this entire field all by myself without even breaking a sweat!" A prideful Rainbow Dash boasted as she puffed out her chest. She could take any challenge! Or so she thought...

Applejack flashed a complacent grin at her friend's overly confident defense, which made her fall into Applejack's trap. "Hehe," she began with a chuckle, "y'all go ahead and do that RD." With that, the work pony turned around to walk back to the farm house, but not without playfully flicking her tail in Rainbow Dash's face. Despite the intentions of the movement, however, Rainbow couldn't help but feel something....something different. She had felt it quite a few times over the course of her friendship with Applejack, but she just couldn't put a hoof on it.

As the orange earth pony trotted off to the farm house, Rainbow Dash yelled after her, "You'll see!"

A few short moments later, Applejack arrived at the farm house. She pushed open the dark oak wood door and stepped inside while wiping the sweat off of her forehead. She walked over to the faucet and poured herself a glass of cold water with ice cubes from the freezer. The heavenly cool liquid moisturizing her parched throat felt like somepony had just given her water after spending a week in a dry desert. The earth pony took a few more drinks of water, then placed the glass in the sink and trotted over to a small desk near the front door. From one of the drawers, she pulled out a dusty, large leather bound book. She opened to the first page of the book, which housed a tear-stained photo of two ponies. One was a mare, and the other one was a stallion. They were smiling at the camera, and the stallion had his hoof wrapped around the mare.

Applejack sighed. Ah sure miss y'all, ma and pa.

Distant memories started to softly float into Applejack's mind. Images of her parents together, happy and enjoying life. Images of her mother, Apple Blossom, chasing her around the farm while giggling and laughing when she was young. She then saw her father sitting on the edge of her bed at night, reading a bedtime story in a deep, calming voice. After a few more memories, they started to drift closer. Nine years ago, exactly; the day Apple Bloom had been born. She remembered the ear splitting cries of pain, the frantic panicking of the doctors, and the soft cries of a newborn foal.

"Come on honey, just push a little harder!"

"Shut up Big Mac!" Apple Blossom growled at her husband as she put a death grip onto her husband's hoof. Big Mac Sr. cringed in pain, however he said nothing because he knew that his pain was nothing compared to the pain his wife was experiencing. They were in a room in the Ponyville hospital. The room had a plain white wall with a single paining of a mountainous scene during a sunset, and there was a bed on the left wall. Apple Blossom was laying on the bed as her husband held her hoof and doctors in white coats were adjusting various monitors and buttons.

"Sorry Bloom!" Big Mac Sr. apologized. His crimson coat and blonde mane were drenched with sweat from rushing his wife to the hospital when she went into labor.

"Well you better be for making me go through this for a third time!" Apple Blossom growled again with the same volume and anger as before. She was panting heavily and was sweating pools of perspiration.

One of the two nurses in the room walked to the side of the bed opposite to Big Mac Sr. and said to Apple Blossom, "Miss Blossom, we need you to attempt to relax. Take deep breaths, focus, and listen to the doctors, okay?" The white-coated nurse said in a calming voice.

"Ok. Ok." Apple Blossom echoed. She inhaled slowly and deeply from her nose, and slowly exhaled through her mouth. She repeated this pattern.

One of the doctors working on the end of the bed looked up and said, "Miss Blossom, you're doing great. On my count, I want you to give a hard push, understand?"

Apple Blossom nodded her head as she continued her breathing pattern.

"Okay. Three...."

"Two one!" Apple Blossom frantically screeched as she screamed in pain. Sweat was pouring down her face, and she gave it a final push. She pushed hard and long. The pain was excruciating, but it was worth it. After the final push, the cries of a newborn foal could be heard.

The unicorn doctor carefully picked up the newborn foal with his magic, and examined the foal. After a moment, he turned to Apple Blossom and Big Mac Sr and said with a smile, "It's a filly, congratulations."

Apple Blossom and Big Mac Sr both looked at each other with the same grin of prideful accomplishment, and gave each other a loving kiss. The doctor wrapped the filly in a pink blanket and levitated her to her parents. Apple Blossom held her in her hooves and gave her a motherly smile.

"Hi there little filly." Apple Blossom sniffled as tears of joy built up in her eyes. She looked down at her third foal. The foal had a light buttery coat and a faded, smooth reddish-pink mane. Her eyes were a mix of fiery orange and red. She was the perfect mix of her mother and father. She had her mother's light buttery colored mane for her coat, and her father's faded crimson coat for her mane.

"What are we going to name her?" Big Mac Sr asked his wife as he remained eye contact with his second daughter.

"Apple Bl-..." Apple Blossom began, but she trailed off with a weak breath. Her head was spinning, and she had a look in her eyes that looked severely out of place. Her grip loosened on the filly, and Big Mac Sr had to catch his daughter when his wife's grip was completely lost.

"Apple Blossom! What's wrong?!" He panicked.

"Ap-" She began with a sickening cough. "Apple Bloom."

The doctors immediately rushed over to her side, and began frantically writing things down and adjusting knobs.

"Her heart rate is dropping!" That was all Big Mac Sr heard as he was being pushed out of the room by multiple doctors with a nurse carrying his newborn foal in a crib on its way to the Foal Care Unit.

Applejack skipped the next couple of pages to more recent photos of her friends. As much as she loved looking at her sister's foal pictures, they just brought too much pain. The pain of loosing her mother the day Apple Bloom was born, and the pain of loosing her father the next day after he had a heart attack, leaving an old grandmother, an adolescent Big Mac Jr, and a pre-teen Applejack to care for a newborn foal.

Applejack turned to the page after the last pictures of a newborn Apple Bloom, and she looked at the various pictures on the two pages. Pictures of her and her best friend: Rainbow Dash. There were pictures of them doing silly poses, giving each other mock death glares(except for one true one that Big Mac had taken while hiding), and a couple of them laughing together. Applejack found herself staring at the magenta irises of the rainbow maned Pegasus, like she did every time she looked at pictures of Rainbow Dash.

Applejack sighed and closed the book. She wanted to tell Rainbow Dash how she felt, she really did. But she was too afraid of the consequences to do it. She had asked Big Mac for advice multiple times, but he always said the same thing.

"Ah think ya should just tell 'er AJ. If ya like her so much, y'all should tell her."

The orange earth pony decided to check on Apple Bloom before going back out to the fields to check on Dash. She turned around and walked across the dark wooden floor and through the narrow door frame of the kitchen, which was the room that the front door was in. She trotted across the living room and to the back right wall, where the stairs were. She ascended the stairs and walked down the hallway at the top. At the third door on the right, she stopped to knock on her little sister's bedroom door. However, the door was slightly open, and she could hear two voices from inside of the room.

Applejack grinned at what she saw. Big Macintosh was sitting down on the floor in the corner of the room, and Apple Bloom was at her desk by the window with a rapidly moving pencil in her mouth. Apple Bloom and Big Mac were talking about something, but Applejack couldn't quite hear. She opened the door of the room and stepped inside quietly, so as to not interrupt her sister with whatever she was working on. Big Mac noticed his sister, and reached over to his youngest sister and nudged her on her shoulder, and pointed to Applejack.

"Hey there big sis!" Apple Bloom beamed with a large grin as she turned around in the chair she was sitting in.

"Howdy little sis. Howdy Big Mac."

"How you doing AJ?" Big Mac asked quietly in his usual deep voice.

"Ah'm alright. So what are ya workin' on Apple Bloom?" Applejack asked her sister.

The filly's eyes widened and and she quickly responded, "Oh! Err, just my...uh, math homework! Yeah, math. Big Mac was helping me, eeyup!" Apple Bloom put on a pathetic guilty grin and let a nervous laugh.

Big Mac chuckled and said, "S'okay Apple Bloom. Y'all don't have ta lie ta AJ."

Apple Bloom looked at her brother with a puzzled expression and replied, "Really? But Ah thought stallions and colts wanted to look," Apple Bloom paused and puffed out her chest and said in the deepest voice she could speak in, "manly!"

"There's nothin' wrong with a stallion learnin' to draw from his sister, Apple Bloom."

"Y'all are teachin' him how ta draw?" Applejack asked her sister.

Apple Bloom's expression returned to its usual happy self and she replied, "Yup! Before you came in Ah was showing him how to do shading!"

Applejack chuckled  and said, "Well Ah'll stop distractin' ya now. Ah'm gonna go check on Rainbow Dash now. She said she could clear the entire fields herself, so of course Ah had to see if she could live up to th' chal-" Applejack immediately stopped as she heard a yelp outside, followed by a loud crash.

Applejack galloped down the stairs and out her home, and to the area of the loud crash. She zigged and zagged through rows of trees and galloped hard and fast. Her calves were burning and she was sweating by the time she got there, but she didn't care. All she cared about was her friend who was unconscious in front of her. There was a large branch on top Rainbow Dash's wing, which was bent forward in a way that didn't seem possible, and her head was bleeding. Applejack mustered all of her strength to lift the thick tree branch off of her unconscious friend. She lifted the knocked out Pegasus onto her back, and she began to gallop as fast as she could back to the house. As she drew near to the house, Big Mac and Apple Bloom were standing near the entrance of the house.

Applejack spotted her siblings and yelled out to them, "Go get a doctor! Ah think her wing's broken!"