"AJ, what the heck is wrong with this year's cider?" Dash glared into the mug. The foam head was weak, barely a hoof-shaving thick. Dash used a forehoof to wipe the mustache of the offensively weak foam from her lips.
"It tastes a mite weird this time," Applejack admitted.
"It tastes like spoiled apple juice, Darling," Rarity said, pouring her mug onto the grass.
"It is spoiled apple juice," Dash said with a grimace.
Fluttershy sobbed and kicked Dash in the shin. "You woke me up at five in the morning so we could be first in line for this?"
Twilight teleported away—crack!—and returned a moment later—crack!—with a delicate piece of scientific glassware held in her aura, which she then floated in her mug. "The specific gravity is too high. What's the alcohol percentage? Zero?"
Starlight sipped. "Zero, yeah."
Pinkie said, "I like it better this way."
DJ P0N-3 lunged over the sales table at Applejack. Just before she could punch AJ in the face—and earn an Apple-sized beatdown in return—Octavia grabbed her by the midriff and yanked her backwards.
"Please excuse us," Octavia said, putting DJ P0N-3 across her withers and trotting away. She shouted over her shoulder as she disappeared, "Someone needs to get her bass dropped. At home."
"I'd drop her bass," Sunburst muttered, watching the two mares leave. Starlight smacked the back of his head and he spilled cider on his cape.
Granny came back from the barn, Apple Bloom at her side, the young teenager struggling to carry the next barrel of cider.
"Granny, what in tarnation is wrong with the cider?" Applejack demanded. "It didn't take!"
"The whozit now?" Granny said. "Ain't nothing wrong, made it the same way as the last thirteen years."
Apple Bloom dropped the barrel of cider, plopped down to her butt, and wiped sweat from her forehead.
"There's no alcohol in the cider," Twilight said.
"None!" Dash agreed. "I'm a professional athlete on a strict training and diet regimen. The only booze I drink all year is yours, and you flubbed it."
Granny took the mug from Dash's hooves, sniffed it, glared at it like a jeweler examining a potentially counterfeit gem, and then swallowed the entire mug in a single toothless-mouth-full.
"Tarnation!" Granny said. "There's ain't no alky-haul!"
"See?" Dash said with a smirk.
"How long did you let the barrels ferment?" Starlight asked.
Everypony looked at her.
"My dad is a bit of a home-brewer," Starlight said. "A weird hobby for a unicorn, I know, but his lambics were the talk of Sire's Hollow fall festival every year. Last year, his strawberry lambic was..." Starlight smacked her lips and made a chef's-kiss gesture with her hoof.
"We don't talk about strawberry nothin' on my property," Applejack growled.
"Regardless," Starlight said. "Fermentation time?"
"The same amount o' time we let 'em ferment as every year!" Granny shouted.
"Which is...?" Starlight insisted.
"An hour!"
Starlight's nose scrunched up. "Well, no wonder there's no head or alcohol. The yeast takes days—"
"We don't need no stinkin' yeast to ferment booze, young filly," Granny said. "We're earth ponies!"
Twilight cocked her head. "Run that past me one more time."
"Put the cider in a caldron," Granny intoned. "At the center of a goat's-blood pentagram."
"Uh-oh," said Sunburst, Starlight, and Twilight.
"It ain't like that!" Applejack insisted. "We get the goat's blood from the blood bank at the hospital."
Nurse Redheart turned even more pale than usual and poured her cider out, into the puddle that had been Rarity's cider before she poured hers out.
"In the caldron poisoned entrails throw," Applejack chanted.
"Double, double, toil and trouble, eeeyup," Mac continued with a nod.
"Fire burn and caldron bubble," Apple Bloom said with a nod and a smile, standing up.
"Betcha' unicorns didn't know we had that kinda magic, now didja?" Granny asked, elbowing Sunburst. He spilled more cider on his cape.
"Eye of newt and toe of frog," Apple Bloom continued, bouncing up and down.
"Quiet, you," Granny said. "If we tell them all the ingred'nts they won't need us no more, now will they?"
"Well," Twilight said, squinting at the glassware still floating in her mug, "it clearly didn't work this time, now did it? Maybe if you run us through the spell, we can help you find the problem."
"We all don't call it a 'spell'," Applejack said. "That has unicorny connotations. We call it an 'applechantment'."
"Has anypony been near poison joke lately?" Twilight asked. "That could easily affect one's ability to engage in an... applechanting."
"Nah, no poison joke," Granny said.
"Has Discord been around?" Fluttershy asked.
"Nah, we ain't seen him none," Apple Bloom confirmed.
"All right, lemme remember the ingredients," Granny said. "Eye of newt, toe of frog, and hydra poo from Froggy Bottom Bog."
"Hydra Poo," Dash said, turning greenish as she poured out the mug of cider. "Okay, I'm straight-edge all year round now."
Granny continued, "Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, lizard's leg, and owlet's wing."
Twilight glared. "If Owlowiscious isn't in my castle when I get home, we'll have words."
Apple Bloom sing-songed, "For a charm of powerful trouble, like a hell broth boil and bubble..."
Applejack took up the song: "Wool of sheep and fur of dog, grease of bacon from the fattest hog."
"Bacon," Fluttershy said flatly.
Granny took over the chant once more. "Sauce of breezy, made extra cheesy, and sweat of hippogriff, give it just a whiff."
Silverstream pointed a thumb at herself and grinned. "I helped!"
Raising her hooves, voice loud, Granny concluded, "Egg of goose and caviar of sturgeon, then at last, one drop of blood from a red-haired virgin."
Slowly, one by one at first, then more rapidly, everypony turned to stare at Apple Bloom.
The teenager turned pale under all the attention.
"Bloom," Granny said. "Is there something ya forgot to tell us before the applechanting?"
"So, y'all, I apologize for the quality of the cider this year, because here's the situation, and let me explain," Apple Bloom said, her words spilling out quickly. "And by 'let me explain,' I mean, 'let me blame Rumble'."
THE END
Author's Note
"Well, what about Twist?" Starlight asked. "I want some cider!"
Twist stepped to the front of the crowd, adjusted her glasses, and then looked at her forehooves. "Stuff got weird when I was a were-wolfth."
