Details Create the Big Mac Picture

by eemoo1o

Rating: everyone
Tags: Alternate Universe, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Comedy, Other, Romance, Big Macintosh, Daybreaker
Length: 5153

In an alternate universe where Discord is ruler of Equestria as the only one powerful enough to raise the sun and moon, Big Mac and Daybreaker have been friends for quite some time. He knows how to read certain details. That’s what friends do, right?

In an alternate universe where Discord is ruler of Equestria as the only one powerful enough to raise the sun and moon, Big Mac, the Element of Kindness, and Daybreaker, an ex-tyrannical fiery overlady, have been friends for quite some time.

Big Mac knows how to read certain details about her. It keeps him in tune with her. That’s what friends do, right? And that’s what they are. Friends.

Right?

Created for the 2022 Crackships Contest.

If you’re interested in this old AU of mine, you can check out more details about it here, but doing or not doing so won’t affect much of the story. Now on Fimfiction!

The title kind of came from the AU’s ‘parody’ of Keep Calm and Flutter On called Be The Bigger Mac Pony.

Published 2022-01-16 22:00:01 UTC
Last updated 2022-01-16 22:00:01 UTC

Details Create the Big Mac Picture

Author's Note

This was only meant to be, like, 1.7k words. I guess that's out of the window.

Details Create the Big Mac Picture

Big McIntosh was, like the rest of his family, an early riser. After all, they all lived by a saying that Granny Smith said often: the early farmer bucked the ripest apples. It was a phrase easy enough to remember, and doing so helped cease any grumble of complaint as the rising sun pierced through their eyelids and forcefully roused them from their sleep, accompanied by the solo of a screaming cockerel.

Being an early riser didn’t necessarily mean that you were a morning pony, though.

Big McIntosh yawned and smacked his lips, and the black teapot on the stove stopped its deaf whistling in rallentando. With a greatly practised jaw and pair of hooves, Big Mac extinguished the kitchen stove’s flame and poured himself a steaming hot mug of black coffee.

Birds chirping a saccharine symphony in the orchard overtook the farm’s hoarse cockerel. Big Mac’s eyelids drooped as he sat at the kitchen table, and rested his forehoof gently around his plain white mug. Applejack had gotten a custom one as a birthday present from Apple Bloom for being the Best Big Sister/Pillar to Bring Down a Fiery Overlord.

Daybreaker had smashed it upon starting her reformation process, of course.

Now, both Applejack and Big Mac had a plain white one equally. They didn’t share, obviously; that would be like sharing a toothbrush.

An’ ain’t nopony gonna share a toothbrush, Big McIntosh thought defiantly, almost mustering enough energy to nod his head fervorously, but could only settle for a slight tilt downwards - and then upwards rather unsurely - with his eyelids still stinging with sleep.

Big Mac opened his eyes skilfully, braving the eye-watering pinch of sleep still holding his eyelids securely together as he had done many mornings before. He yawned again, this time silently, and then blew on his coffee in hopes of cooling it instantly.

The stallion shook his head as his bleary eyes focussed long enough to notice the lack of milk in his hot drink. So, he got up, opened the refrigerator, and leaned in to grab the half-empty bottle of milk from within.

“Tuzzah!” A flash of savage, indescribable scarlet ignited the morning scene, which to the untrained pony would mean danger and make them flee.

Big Mac remained slouched and motionless. He barely even blinked. Once upon a time, he would have run. He would have collected Apple Bloom, then Granny Smith, and then Applejack, as he scrambled to find a hiding place in his unyielding terror.

Big Mac was big and strong, but he was no fighter. He could do damage, but had no such instinct to do so. So, he’d run, of course. He never really had a way of sticking up for himself.

Somehow, this had inspired Lord Discord to change his life forever.

Before Big McIntosh hovered a large pony - larger than himself, but much more lithe, with sharper edges - donning both a horn and a set of wings, each attribute much larger and sharper than anypony else’s, and a fiery white coat that used to coax the phrase ‘white-hot anger’ to his mind.

The flaming mane and tail didn’t help, either.

Slamming the refrigerator door shut with one of his hind legs, Big Mac returned to the kitchen table and poured some milk into his steaming mug of hot coffee, and only managed to stop himself when the liquid dared to pour over the top.

The same shade of red as before engulfed the bottle of milk, and replaced it back on its shelf in the refrigerator.

Big McIntosh didn’t acknowledge this action outright, and instead voiced his gratitude in his head. Instead, he took in the scent of his coffee as he raised it to his muzzle with two deft hooves, and sipped at it.

Eventually, he met the amber and gaze of the alicorn before him. “Mornin’.”

“Oh, and a marvellous one it is, too!” Daybreaker let out a shrill laugh, displaying her saliva-glistened fangs, and clapped her front hooves together, her vermillion horseshoes clinking one-two-three times. “Guess what! Guess what, Big Mac! Oh, you won’t believe it!”

Big Mac only slurped on his milky coffee in reply. He waited for her to continue.

“Sunburst has asked me to star in that little play of his!” Daybreaker did continue. Her tone was not much different to before: passionate and elated. She rolled her hoof around as she said the last part, her bright smile slacking into one of her arrogant grins. “Isn’t that exciting?”

Big Mac swallowed. “Eeyup!”

“Oh, picture it, Big Mac!” Daybreaker exploded in excitement again, and her wings restarted their powerful flaps so that all four hooves lifted off of the hardwood floor. “Scene: The Great Wizards are raising the sun. They collapse from the effort, and the spotlight shifts to me! All eyes are on me: Daybreaker! It is time for a new day in Equestria!”

Big Mac flinched at the usage of the Royal Canterlot Voice, and he could hear a startled Granny Smith cursing from upstairs.

“I, Empress Daybreaker, raise the sun! The crowd goes wild! My adoring fans beg for more! The curtain closes behind me, and all that is left on stage is me performing the rest of the play, symbolising my millennium-long reign over Equestria after banishing You-Know-Who to the moon!”

Big McIntosh cleared his throat sharply.

Daybreaker recoiled, and her countenance turned into something of weary remorse. “Well, I- I figured that-” Big Mac’s glare didn’t waver. “But you can’t be serious!” This time, her outburst was defensive. “Hand over the spotlight to a couple of mismatched foals? Big Mac, dear, you must be joking! The Empress of the Sun must be heard!”

“Nope.” Big Mac meant no ill-will in his response. He liked listening to what she had to say, most of the time. He remembered when all Daybreaker thought of him as was a mute fool, a coward, a mere farmcolt. How times had changed things.

Daybreaker blinked, and her eyes scanned over Big McIntosh’s tired frame, and seemed to assess every tiny detail on his face. Suddenly, he found himself feeling rather self-conscious about his body. He covered half a flank with his cropped tail.

A small grin curled her lips. “Remind me to overthrow Discord later so you can sleep in tomorrow morning.”

Big Mac shot her a pointed look.

“Oh, pish! You’re too easy. But, perhaps you should take a break from digging holes and planting seeds for once and relax.”

Big Mac certainly didn’t appreciate Daybreaker’s turn of phrase. He redid his previous expression, and punctuated it with a snort of air through his nostrils.

“My, you’re not going to hold that against me forever, are you?” Daybreaker exclaimed. “How was I to know that ponies didn’t like magically digging holes in the sun? Oh, how you’ve hurt me!” She threw herself backwards.

Big Mac knew she wasn’t truly hurt. The clue was in the details. Over the years of their friendship, he had noticed that if she had truly been hurt, her voice would take on a nasal, brittle quality, and she would not have been as dramatic and excitable as what she was being currently.

In the most likely scenario, Big McIntosh figured that Daybreaker would shrink into herself and stammer out a quick response before departing. She had never been good with handling her more negative emotions.

The alicorn reframed. “You know, Big Mac, even you - no, especially you - deserve to be treated like royalty once in a while. Oh,” Daybreaker propped her elbows up on the kitchen table and held her head in her shoed hooves as she swooned, “how I remember the good old days.”

Big Mac didn’t answer. He assumed she’d go off on one of her tangents, anyway, and whatever she’d say until it ended would be rather rhetorical. Most of the time, his ear heard more than what was spoken to him. He knew when to put his hoof down, though. It had been a feat he had been practising and practising, over and over, for years.

He recalled the time when Breezie Season had come about, and Zephyr’s house had become manifested by a lost colony. Being the brother to the original Element of Kindness, and inhabiting the Element of Generosity himself, he didn’t really know how to kick them out. Big McIntosh had been the one to do so after some time of plucking up the courage to. His first attempt had landed him in a barn full of Breezies that gobbled up more apples than a starving fruit bat.

There was a similar instance when Granny Smith had asked him to repair the gazebo near the farmhouse. It seemed that everypony in Ponyville had needed him that day, and he just couldn’t say no to them. When he finally crawled back to Sweet Apple Acres long after sundown, with the gazebo barely even touched, he had decided enough was enough, and found some flyers for a seminar about ‘putting your hoof down’.

Daybreaker had found both stories rather hilarious in their own rights when Big Mac had told her. That was, until Iron Will came into the picture.

Big Mac shuddered; he still vividly remembered the fear in Cheese and Zephyr’s eyes when he had verbally bullied them to the point where one of them - Zephyr, to be exact, who remained nameless in most reiterations Big Mac told of the story - burst into tears.

Daybreaker had called Iron Will many things when she became aware of Big Mac’s emotions as he made it to the story’s end, none of which he’d care to repeat.

“The scorching heat, the ponies feeding me grapes on my royal chaise lounger. Plays were put on in my honour, you know! Ah, the never-ending feasts and cake and wealth, and cake! You know the story: the attempted sororicide, from endless night to endless day - the best years of my life, might I add - crowning myself as Empress of Equestria, Sombean unites the Second Pillars just because he’s the last of the shadow ponies, now, or whatever they’re blasted called! And for what? To overthrow me!” She wailed, and dipped backwards again, this time with a foreleg over her closed eyes.

As per usual, Big McIntosh knew not of the meanings of the more archaic or longer words that Daybreaker used, but still followed along. He didn’t mind. Really, he didn’t.

“They banish me to the sun, like I had banished You-Know-Who to the moon! Sombra earns his wings, the seven of them get knighted through the power of democracy, and then that Element of Kindness-mare calls upon the creature who started this whole mess by begging the others to free him so that he can take charge of the sun and moon, and so on.”

Big Mac knew what regards Daybreaker held Lord Discord in. He wasn’t the best ruler, and still enjoyed the odd wreaking of havoc - particularly amidst the current Elements of Harmony and Moondancer, and Sunburst’s school - but beyond that, whatever Lady Fluttershy had been thinking at the time of Equestria’s slow, never-ending peril was pure genius.

She had tamed a creature thought to be completely blind to friendship - and dangerous, to say the least - and had gotten him to save Equestria through simply befriending him.

Big Mac never pointed out that the parallels to his and Daybreaker’s friendship were there. That job was usually left to Soarin, as the Element of Honesty, or Zephyr, as the Element of Big-Mouthedness.

Daybreaker hummed, and Big Mac looked up at her. “I do suppose it was a lonely life, mind you. Luxurious, but lonely.” She met his gaze, and made sure to add another “I suppose” quickly. He smiled in approval anyway. Not at her loneliness, of course, but at the fact that she - her head especially - had returned back down to earth. “Might I make myself some tea?”

“Eeyup.”

“You never used to be this tired,” Daybreaker said matter-of-factly as her horn ignited in red. “Uh...” her horn defused, and she frowned, “where do you keep Granny’s earl grey again, dear?”

Big Mac was rather surprised to hear her say Granny Smith’s name without grimacing. She hadn’t been able to do that since the first Grand Galloping Gala she was invited to after her reformation, and Big Mac had taken Granny Smith as his plus one instead of her. She had turned up to the gala with a red octopus-type monster called the Squirk, in a beautiful blush-pink dress with golden outline-shapes of her sun-cutie mark, and her mane and tail were glittering and flowing and equinox coloured.

If not for her eyes, which had remained dark red and amber, Big Mac - who had been quite enamoured, if he remembered so correctly - didn’t quite think he would have recognised her. She had tried to act uninterested in him, but always seemed to keep an eye on him at all times, and trail back after waltzing by.

Of course, the Squirk had destroyed the party, and Lord Discord found it all a hoot - referred to some sort of illy-put-together anecdote about a green ball of slime in a bow tie and top hat, a ruined thousand-year-old silk handkerchief and corduroy jacket, and a hippie amnesiac in a nightgown or blouse - and cleaned up the party with a snap of his fingers after Big Mac and Daybreaker made some form of brief amends. She had learned her lesson.

Now, as he heard her say Granny Smith’s name with no disgusted or jealous inflection, Big Mac knew that he was proud of her maturity. In some ways, she was mature anyway, by her choice of words and - much to her dismay - age. Her bragging, however, was another story. Despite this, Big Mac knew that Daybreaker was a keen opportunist. She, like Lord Discord, chose her words carefully to adjust the variables of the future responses from Big Mac and his friends. The detail was in the particular curl of her grin.

Calling Big Mac ‘darling’ or ‘dear’ had once been a part of that. He remembered that continuous curl. It was bent, crooked, like a fishing hook that had been stepped on by a half-alert traveller. When Daybreaker’s reformation had started, Soarin had took his first chance to pounce on the matter, stating that perhaps she’d be making Big Mac - who was infamous for not really standing up for himself - uncomfortable. It had.

Now, it was a term of friendly endearment. Habit, if you would. And he really didn’t mind.

Big Mac nodded in the direction of the cabinet, and she thanked him.

“Maybe you need me to watch over you as you sleep. Perhaps you’re doing it wrong.” Daybreaker sat in front of the table instead of at it. She was too large to. It sort of alienated her a bit. So did her fangs, fiery mane, wings, and horn. But Big Mac barely even saw that anymore. Daybreaker was just there, as herself, and he accommodated her differences. Physical and personal.

Big Mac wasn’t quite sure how a pony could ‘sleep wrong’, and he wasn’t all that fond of being watched as he slept. Especially by her. He had been informed countless times that he snored, anyhow. “Nope.”

“Suit yourself,” before Big Mac knew it, Daybreaker had a steaming cup and saucer in between her front hooves, and she turned to look out of the window and onto the orchard. “Perhaps it’s stress. You-Know-Who always used to say that stress made ponies restless.”

Big Mac took three long gulps of his tepid coffee. “Maybe.”

“I can help,” Daybreaker said in earnest, “honest to me, I can help. All you have to do is say the word, and I’ll-”

“Nope,” Big Mac’s sense of appreciation for the offer was strong, but an Apple’s pride was stronger.

“Very well, then,” Daybreaker sipped her black tea. It was scorching hot, and she drank it like it was merely lukewarm. It was how she liked any beverage. “Are we still on for our picnic in the orchard, tomorrow?”

“Eeyup,” Big Mac returned her smile. He enjoyed their weekly picnics, as did she.

“Good,” the alicorn said, before grinning wildly. “Oh, I just can’t wait for Daybreaker’s big debut on the big stage!”

Big Mac made a motion of thought with his tongue: he pushed it out slowly, licked the middle of his lips, and then retracted it with a pace just a little bit quicker than what it slid out with. He sipped his coffee. “But Daybreaker weren’t there,” he mused, at last, “’n’ you know it.”

He knew that she understood him well enough. She shifted in her place, and her mane and tail flickered. He waited for her to respond. It wasn’t until her silence went over the typical five-second mark - a detail accounted for many times before - that Big Mac realised that he might have struck a nerve.

Big McIntosh downed the last of his coffee, put his mug in the sink, and headed for the door without another word.

“And that’s why Sunburst asked me, isn’t it?”

Big Mac stopped, and turned back to Daybreaker with a sympathetic look. She hadn’t read Sunburst like a book, as she regularly said. Acting obviously meant a lot to her.

“I hadn’t even thought about that. I had just been so excited, I just didn’t realise.”

It’s all about th’ details, Big Mac thought, and sat back down opposite her.

“’T’s okay,” he put one of his large, shaven hooves on her cladded one. Once upon a time, touching one of her horseshoes would have been like touching a saucepan that had been placed on a cooker ring in preparation to fry some eggs. Now, Big Mac was so conditioned to touching her, being around her, that it just felt like a pleasurable heat like what anypony would get from a hot bubble bath.

Daybreaker smiled, and Big Mac noticed that he couldn’t see much of her fangs. She was going to speak about her life before ‘Daybreaker’ ever existed. “Can I tell you why I’ve always wanted to act?”

“Yup,” Big Mac didn’t drag out the ‘ee’ sound like he normally did. He had his own little details, too, which he knew full well that Daybreaker could read herself. Again, he waited for her to speak.

“Well, during my foalhood, every foal in the village would put on these plays, but I was always too busy with my magic studies. So, one night I snuck out and...”

Big Mac reared up in front of a large apple tree and bucked it with only half of his strength. He could work with barely any thought. It was instinct by now. Rear up, buck, rear up, buck. He had heard from Soarin and Sunburst that that was how his friendly rivalry with Shining Armor started.

Big McIntosh was perfectly fine with following muscle memory instead of actual memory. He reared up again, and slammed his hind hooves into another tree’s trunk. It was orders and instructions that he was rather iffy with. As Granny Smith and Daybreaker have both said: he’d forget his hooves if they weren’t stuck to his barrel.

That, alongside his rather soft-spoken nature, was one of Big Mac’s few weaknesses. He was a worker, sometimes even a confidant, and he was content with that.

Big Mac bucked another apple tree, and then put three full baskets on his back to carry back to the barn.

A flash of scarlet made the surrounding patch of orchard brilliant with light the colour of most of the apples it consisted of. Ah, yes, his third weakness.

“I am so mad at you right now!”

Big Mac’s ears stood erect. He frowned, and awaited an explanation. It would come any minute now. He didn’t stop walking, of course, as he knew that Daybreaker - gliding just a little bit behind him or next to him, depending on the ferocity of her current emotions - would follow.

“How could you, Big Mac?”

He still waited patiently.

“Look at me!” Daybreaker shrieked like a hawk. Big Mac froze.

“Eeyup?” He turned to her, and the weight on his back disappeared with a brief red spark. Much earlier in their friendship, Big Mac would have been startled by so many apples disappearing - especially ones that he had harvested - that it would have taken him a full half hour to calm down. Now, he knew that Daybreaker had sent the three basket-fulls to the barn, and he didn’t mind all that much.

A shower of green, red, and yellow apples rained down on Big Mac like stones. Each apple was hard and ripe, and in that moment Big Mac cursed his and his whole family’s gift of green hooves.

Jus’ the baskets, then, Big Mac realised, and just as he thought the supply of falling apples had run out, one final one conked him on the head as if it had been late to the party. Big Mac held a hoof to his temple, steadied his dizzy self, and shook his head to look up at Daybreaker.

She put her face right up in his, the great flaps of her wings increasing with each beat of anger. “Didn’t you tell Sunburst that I had changed? How good I’ve been?” She reared back, and put her front hooves on her chest, now taking more to the side of emotional offence than irascibility.

Big Mac only stared at her. He didn’t doubt for one second that Sunburst didn’t throw him under the carriage. Perhaps he just hadn’t told her of his own stubbornness. Either way, the show had been yesterday evening. She must have been sulking up until now, trying to figure out what to say, and how he might respond.

“Eeyup,” Big Mac said adamantly.

Daybreaker shrank into herself. “He said he thought he might hurt my feelings so much that I’d try to take over Equestria all over again!” She picked up a yellowish apple from the ground and bit into it. As a satisfying crunch sounded - signalling to Big Mac that this month was going to be an especially good harvest - Daybreaker started to chew with a sad little moan.

Big Mac sighed. A chill ran through him, and he noted that the sky was turning a pale lilacy-blue colour. He’d never been all that good with colours. “Eeyup.”

“And I suppose Soarin wanted to tell the truth,” Daybreaker swallowed another crisp bite of apple. Her eyebrows were furrowed. She looked rather upset.

Big Mac sighed again, and bucked the tree next to her. A few more wouldn’t hurt. “Eeyup.”

Daybreaker set her hooves on the ground and threw her apple core over her shoulder. It landed in one of the empty buckets. “I suppose I need to work on just asking you, instead of blowing up like that.”

Big Mac was surprised by how easily she had calmed herself down. Daybreaker was always full of surprises, though. The orchard used to be so quiet and mundane before she came along. Before their weekly picnics, daily chats, growing friendship. They had both grown like one of the many trees in Sweet Apple Acres. “Eeyup.”

The two stood in silence, until another tree rustled as Big Mac’s hind legs made impact. Daybreaker was waiting for him to continue, he could sense it. The two watched as the apples fell like rainwater into the buckets laid out around the roots.

“Zeph’s friend from th’ Gala runs a class, ah’ think,” said Big Mac at last. Daybreaker groaned in disdain. She, like Lord Discord, hadn’t been much of a fan of Tree Hugger. Zephyr had, though. He didn’t stop talking about her for weeks. Just then, a recollection hit Big Mac in the face like a buckball. “Ah’ can’t make it to the picnic after tomorrow. Zeph’s giv’n’ me a ’cut.”

Zephyr had been begging to do it for a while now, so it only seemed right to let him. He had been dying to ‘fix’ Daybreaker’s, too, but she had always told him to get lost. Apparently, he had been the one to do her hair for the Grand Galloping Gala, but she always denied it.

Daybreaker sucked a long and heavy breath through her teeth. “We can reschedule for tomorrow.”

Big Mac took a moment to think. Eventually, he came to a simple conclusion with a smile: “Eeyup.”

“I can schedule a game of Ogres and Oubliettes with Ember and Cheerilee,” said the alicorn wistfully. It wasn’t a tone she used often. “Did you know that she has a coltfriend now? Sickening, isn’t it?”

Big Mac frowned. “Nope.”

“Blarty... something,” Daybreaker looked away and grimaced. He knew that she was pretending not to know. She had never been a pony of romance, anyhow. “From Moondancer’s old village. A unicorn-fella. Maybe you remember him?”

Big Mac did. Not a natural matchmaker, he wouldn’t have had any inkling whatsoever that Party Favor and Cheerilee would like each other, let alone meet. But, as long as they were happy - which he assumed that they were - who was he to complain? “Eeyup.”

“Hey, maybe I should take up acting lessons!”

Big Mac took another moment to think as he bucked another tree. He chose his next words carefully: “Eeyup.” It was all in the inflection.

Daybreaker didn’t take offence. Her talk with Sunburst after she had overheard all the mean things he had said about her backstage had definitely brought her closer to earth. “Would you care to watch the sunset with me? I think your shift has long since ended. We don’t want you falling nose-first into tomorrow morning’s coffee, now, do we?” She bared her fangs in a crooked grin.

The amber glow of the sunset was starting to illuminate the orchard nicely. The warm glow touched Daybreaker’s white-hot coat like an enamoring glimmer of an enchanted something. Big Mac wasn’t too good with magic-doohickies and magical terms, but he was as sure as sugar that that was the right comparison.

“Nope,” Big Mac shook his head assuredly. In a blink of an eye, the two were on a hill that was dressed in thick, trimmed grass and a single tree that acted like a candle atop a rather generous cake. Big Mac knew this location in Sweet Apple Acres well: it was the place where he came to think.

He had come here when reevaluating his lessons with Iron Will, when thinking about how to handle Daybreaker when she was released from stone, and even after losing the Sisterhooves Social for Apple Bloom after dressing up as a mare and taking Applejack’s place because she had suffered a rodeo injury. He could go on.

Daybreaker had found the fact that Big Mac had dressed up as a mare rather entertaining, and had been quick to express her eagerness to see him as such for her own two eyes to see.

“This is where you came after the -” Daybreaker snorted into her wing; she was sitting down next to him - “Brotherhooves Social, isn’t it?” She already knew the answer to her question, so Big Mac, begrudgingly, understood that it was entirely rhetorical. “You know...” Big Mac didn’t look up at her, but he could hear an uncertainty wavering in her tone, “you- you won’t have to come in second place ever again.”

When Big Mac looked up at her, curious as to what that could have possibly meant, he realised that she had been coyly etching her left wing further towards him, one centimetre at a time. She recoiled, and Big Mac noticed it instantly. Against her white-hot coat was a rather modest pink tinting her cheeks.

“Daybreaker-”

Daybreaker coughed as she continued to fluster herself, and the pink on her cheeks grew in opacity. “You can call me Celestia.” She shifted. “If you want.”

Big Mac’s insides felt as though they were filled with helium. Too much, if you asked him. They were ready to pop at any second.

Daybreaker looked back to the sunset. “I forgot how beautiful sunsets could actually be. The only thing that ruins it, really, is the moon.”

Big Mac saw her wing open again in the corner of his eye, but it hesitated, faltered, and closed again.

“You-Know-Who used to say it the other way around,” she mumbled. “There’s... a reason why I don’t talk about her.”

Big Mac had always figured it was because she had banished her to the moon. Perhaps that was what she was talking about. Perhaps it was something else.

“But,” Daybreaker exclaimed, tossed her head back with her hoof over her eyes, and spread her wings, “it was my coronation day!” She slid an eye open to glance over at Big Mac when he put a hoof to his mouth and let out a light chuckle. “Well, our coronation day, but my point still stands.”

Big McIntosh’s eyes went wide when he felt her large, feathery wing wrap around him and pull him into her side as if he was as light as an apple. That familiar bubble bath-type warmth enveloped Big Mac as he peered out at the golden-orange setting sun.

Daybreaker’s horn ignited in a sparkling red, and the next thing Big Mac knew was that she was biting into a green apple. He covered his flank with his tail and felt a heat different from Daybreaker’s fill his cheeks. She noticed his staring, displayed her sharp fangs with a grin, and put it in between his hooves without a word.

“’T’s real purty, ain’t it?” He asked, and took a bite from the particularly green macintosh apple right next to where she had.

“Yeah,” Daybreaker exhaled, and her fanged grin turned into a small smile. She hunched herself over sideways so that the side of her head met the top of Big Mac’s. He could tell that it was an awkward position for her, but she showed no sign of complaining, like she hadn’t many times before. “You are.”

Big Mac blushed more. He could tell that she had thought that he hadn’t heard her, but he had, and his nerves were rattling around in his head, unsure of what to do. Despite this, Big Mac relaxed further against Daybreaker’s warm side. “Y’all are, too.” He said, after he had raked up a few delicate words like autumn leaves and licked his lips.

Big Mac felt her cheek contract into a grin atop his head. “I know.”