"Daybreak is my time of day," decided Applejack. "I know on account it's the same color as my backside."
The pony chuckled to herself as she cantered up the trail from the back forty to the farmhouse. "Suppose that means Pinkie Pie gets sunsets...Shucks, Twilight already has her name all over hers." The morning sun lit her path in hues of orange while she mused what a yellow sky entailed for poor Fluttershy. A hot day, like today was expected to be, would mean the sapling apple trees would need water; better to haul all that weight up the hills in the relative cool of the morning. A third of the day's work done, and it was just now time for breakfast.
"Definitely time for breakfast," she thought as she picked up the scent of alfalfa from a nearby field. Alfalfa sounded good. Maybe Granny would be making pancakes...
Applejack trotted briskly up the hill to the house and through the front door. "Go fetch yer sister, Applejack! Breakfast is on the table!" called Granny Smith from the kitchen, who--despite being deaf as a post--somehow always knew when someone was walking in the front door. (Or trying to sneak out, AJ had learned in her younger days...)
"Must be nice to sleep in 'til sunrise," AJ smiled with a mockingly haughty toss of her golden hair. She bounded up the stairs, wheeled around the corner and burst through the door to Apple Bloom's room. "Up and at'em, Squirt! Granny's got breakfast a-waitin'!"
Applejack ducked in anticipation of a pillow thrown her direction, one that never came. The pillow was instead neatly perched at the head of a carefully made bed (more carefully made than her own, AJ hated to admit), but Apple Bloom was nowhere to be found.
"Apple Bloom? Where'd you run off to?" Applejack thought for a moment, and then started down the hallway toward the bathroom. "Hey, sis! Didja fall in?"
As she passed the open door to her own bedroom, Applejack found her sister balancing precariously on a chair. Apple Bloom's eyes flashed wide open as if she'd been bitten by a rattlesnake, realizing she'd been caught in the act of reaching and straining to push an object back up on a shelf. An object that was up on a shelf out of the reach of little fillies for good reason.
"Just what in the sugar-dusted sassafrass do you think you're doin' in here," snapped the older pony. "And who said you could touch that?"
"Ah just wanted to see it!" replied her sister. "It's no big deal...whoah!" Apple Bloom fell backwards off the chair, the slamming of her backside against the oaken floorboards muffled slightly by her bushy red tail but still audible as a WHUMP. "Ow, look what you made me do!"
Applejack was not paying attention to her sister, as she could only watch the object up on the shelf. It was a small cylindrical box with a domed lid, made of white porcelain with a molded flower on the front delicately trimmed in blue paint. Both the box and the lid sported molded beading details, painted to look like brass or gold. On the bottom next to a faded stamp that read "Guanzhong Import Company, Chinatown, Manehattan", there was real brass in the form of a key, a winding mechanism for a music box. The music box was unmistakably older than anything else in the room. It was also unmistakably wobbling as two of the three short cabriole legs that held it up were slipping over the edge of the shelf. Applejack started diving forward in anticipation of disaster.
Both ponies gasped as it fell, watching in horror as it bounced off Apple Bloom's hooves and then Applejack's before tumbling to the floor.
"You had better hope you didn't break it!" Applejack hissed at her sister as she carefully picked her keepsake up off of the floor and started turning it around in her hooves and peering at it as if she were examining a gem for flaws.
Apple Bloom stammered nervously at the floor, "Ah didn't mean to do nuthin' to it! You just won't ever let me see it!"
Applejack stared intently at a small white chip in the lid for a few seconds before closing her eyes and breathing deeply, shuddering a bit in righteous fury. "That's because I knew you would break it! You had no right to be in here, and you had no right to mess with my things!"
The tendons in Applejack's powerful back legs quivered a bit as she willed herself back to a relative state of calm. She opened her eyes to glare at her sister, somewhat shocked to see Apple Bloom seemingly just as angry and glaring right back. She wondered what she could have said to provoke that look.
"Get. Out." growled Applejack.
"Fine!" shouted her sister, tears starting to well in her eyes as she galloped out into the hallway and stomped down the stairs.
Applejack placed the item back on its shelf, far from the edge and away from the hooves of hooligan little fillies. She frowned at the the chip; maybe she could still glue it together. The orange pony was kneeling on the floor searching for a porcelain fragment when she heard a voice from the doorway. "I'm pert near certain that chink in the lid was already there when you got it, young'un..."
Applejack wheeled her head around to see an elderly green pony with brittle white hair and brittler bones watching her with concern. That must have been quite a commotion she and Apple Bloom made for Granny Smith to hear it. Even more so for her to make the rather arduous journey up the stairs with her hip in the shape it was in. Applejack stared at the floor. "You're probably right," she managed to say. Then she felt her ears pin back despite herself, and spouted, "But she still had no right to touch that music box without permission. You know who gave me that!"
Granny Smith sighed, with a knowing weariness. "She knows, too. Why do you think she's so curious about it? You even make a point of keeping it out of her reach..."
Applejack felt the hair in her mane stand up from ears to withers. "Well, it sure as the consarned cinnamon swirl doesn't help that *you* won't ever talk about 'em either! Ya smooth mouthed..."
Applejack's jaw snapped shut and she bolted upright as if she'd been slapped, shocked at the recognition of the horrible thing she had just said.
Granny Smith's expression mercifully never changed, and she merely stepped aside quietly as Applejack walked slowly out of the room and down the stairs. Applejack groaned slightly as she trotted out the door. There was no way she could sit at that breakfast table right now, even for all the alfalfa pancakes in the world.
The sun was almost at the top of the sky as Applejack hauled the last bucket of spoiled apples to the trough for the hogs. This was Apple Bloom's job, but of course she was nowhere to be found. Applejack muttered something about lazy irresponsible fillies as she dumped the bucket over the side of the fence, the sound of her muttering drowned out by the growling of her stomach. Six hours of chores and no breakfast was making even the hog slop look decent.
With a clang, a fresh bucket of oats fell to the ground in front of her. It was only then that Applejack had taken notice of her brother, who she noted could walk up beside someone awful quietly for someone so dadburned *big*.
"Granny thought you might not want to come to the house for lunch, so she sent this out." Big Macintosh said flatly. This was probably the longest sentence he'd spoken this week.
Applejack gratefully wolfed down a bite before hesitantly asking her brother, "Is...is she mad?"
"Nope."
She breathed a sigh of relief, taking another bite and mumbling through stuffed cheeks, "Thank goodneth. I hope thee knowth I didn't mean it."
"Yeeup."
Applejacks polished off the last of the oats--and polished the bottom of the bucket--before continuing, "But she has to understand why I was mad. Can you believe she was *defending* what Apple Bloom did?"
This time there was no reply from the large red pony. His shoulder shuddered a little under his horse collar to chase off a landing fly. He flicked one ear off to the side to deprive it of its next landing place. But otherwise he was motionless, watching her calmly through not-quite half-lidded eyes, waiting for her to continue.
"I mean, you know who gave that to me. If it was broken, I'd have nothing left of her. That's why I keep it up there where that clumsy filly can't ruin it!"
Still no reply.
"C'mon, you gotta at least admit I was in the right!"
The same calm, almost half-lidded expression continued to watch her from beneath a shaggy but short-cropped mane. A familiar expression for more reasons than one.
"Criminy, I'm tryin' to talk to you and you stand there for all the world like you have a dagblasted snaffle bit in your mouth! Sometimes you're so much like him it's ridiculous; you know that, right?"
Suddenly, a grin, if not a full-on smile, crept across the large red pony's face. With a glint of pride in his eye, he replied:
"Yeeup."
Applejack couldn't help but smile back, but betrayed a little sadness in her eyes when she said, "Y'know, it's been so long, and he spoke so little, I don't even know if I really remember his voice, or just confuse it with yours..."
Her brother nodded, the gleam in his eye fading a little and reflecting the same sadness. "Long time," he said. "So how much do you figger Apple Bloom can remember?"
Apple Bloom lay on the deck of the treehouse that served as Cutie Mark Crusaders headquarters, thankful that the sun had finally peaked and was sinking to the other side of the tree, affording her a little shade as she stared out at the fields and orchards.
Even though she was in the shade now, she could still feel the heat radiating from the boards of the deck where they had baked all morning. She had spent that morning stewing in the sweltering heat of the treehouse, and now she was just exhausted from the work of being angry. She was glad for the intermittent breeze, closing her eyes for a moment to savor it along with the sounds of the cicaidas. The chirps built up just a little faster, then a little faster, then finally trailed off...into the tinkling bell tones of a waltz?
Apple Bloom's eyes flew open to see her sister standing at the top of the landing looking a little sheepish as she nodded toward the music box playing there at her hooves.
The domed lid of the cylindrical box was open, revealing a tiny pegasus pony figurine with a blue flower cutie mark--like the one on the outside--whirling to the music. The pegaus was dressed like a Buffalo princess, feather in her mane and all--the kind of old-fashioned, culturally insensitive depiction that would have made Applejack's friend Twilight roll her eyes. But it was considered perfectly fine at the time it was made, and for all its historical inaccuracy it was still beautiful as it pirouetted with a mechanical grace to the strains of a spring-powered symphony.
Apple Bloom glared out at the field for a moment, still feeling this morning's heat from the boards beneath her. "Told you ah didn't break it."
Applejack's expression didn't change. "Y'know, Daddy gave this to Mama back before they were married. It was when he first met her in Manehattan."
Apple Bloom spun around, her ears swiveled to aim straight at her sister. "Really?"
"Granny said he had some crazy notion to try and sell some seeds to some company in the city and raise money to fix things up back here. Instead, he met some posh city pony at a dance, and sold every seed he had at discount to free up enough cash to buy her a music box that played the first song they danced to."
"...And they got married in Manehattan?"
"No, no no. He knew he was just an orchard pony from Ponyville, and didn't have anything to offer a mare of her standing. Daddy was a lot of things but he wasn't a smooth talker. Or much of a talker at all, I reckon... So he just left the music box at her door and came back home. The way Granny tells it, she just showed up at the Ponyville train station a week later, asking folks where he lived. And she wasn't carrying nothing but a few dresses and that music box. Big to-do with her family, and a lot of bad blood betwixt for awhile, but Granny don't never want to talk about that part..."
The "buffalo princess" pegasus ballerina slowly came to a stop along with the music. Applejack nudged the music box toward her sister, and the filly smiled as she wound up the brass key on the bottom--maybe a little too tightly, as Applejack did her best to supress a flinch--to play it again.
Applejack continued, "I try to think about that: dropping everything you ever knew and travelling halfway acrost Equestria just to start a whole 'nother way of life. I actually tried going the other direction for a bit; stayed with Aunt and Uncle Orange in Manehattan. Thought I could be more like her if I lived where she started out. But I couldn't stand to be away from the farm. Couldn't change that much about who I thought I was; I guess I'm just not adventurous enough. Not like you and your little Crusader friends, flittin' about from one new thing to another without so much as blinkin' an eye. You're more like her than I am in that way, I suppose..."
Apple Bloom beamed at the thought of that. The sisters sat in silence for a while and were lost in the the music again, watching the feather sway in the pegasus' mane as she twirled around and around. Finally, Apple Bloom asked, "What else was Mama like?"
Applejack stared off into the distance at the orchard, but Apple Bloom could tell she wasn't seeing the apple trees. Applejack smiled, "She was a lady."
"You mean like Rarity?"
Applejack snorted a bit at the comparison, "Yeah, I suppose a little like Rarity. She liked to wear a dress now and then, anyway. But Mama wasn't afraid to get things done. It's like...it's like the dirt on her hooves made her look *more* dignified-like, somehow... Anypony can be a lady in the city. Mama was a lady even out here, and that takes some doin'."
The cicaidas started up again in the heat, their monotonous chirps mixing with three-quarter time. The music from Manehattan became even more sublime as it blended with the untamed noise of the fields.
Applejack put one hoof around Apple Bloom as they both sat on the decking and watched the horizon as they leaned against the railpost and idly kicked the legs they dangled over the edge. "So I just try to be a lady out here like Mama. But it's awful hard. Especially when it's so hard to remember, and Granny doesn't like to talk about her or Daddy or even want the pictures out where folks can see them. But at least Granny lets me keep this music box, so I can still hear the same tune I remember Mama used to hum when she was bakin' pies, or hangin' the warsh, or...or tuckin' you in your crib..."
The sky was the color of Pinkie Pie's backside when two young ladies made the slow walk back to the farmhouse. At the supper table that night, if Granny Smith minded that the afternoon's chores hadn't been done that day, she didn't say anything. She seemed to know that the day's time was better spent watching the field sway in the occasional breeze, with the cry of locusts broken by the tinkling of The WestFillya Waltz.
