Things Your Parents Didn't Teach You
Twilight groaned in frustration for what had to have been the third or fourth time that hour. Not a personal record by a long stretch, but it felt sufficient enough to get her irritation across. Usually, such an unsubtle hint would be enough for even Rainbow to realize something was wrong, but…
Well, Rainbow wasn’t here. So she paused her pacing and pointed herself in the direction of the next best sounding board in Ponyville. (Or, more accurately, the one least likely to kick her out for rambling. In her case, the main reason Twilight suspected she hadn’t been kicked out was because her friend spent most of her energy kicking elsewhere, but… hey.)
“I’m going out,” she called over her shoulder to wherever Spike had wedged himself in the castle. Probably between a beanbag and a comic book, if she had to guess.
A gentle lack of reply waved to her as she trotted out, frustration radiating off of her like… like… ugh! She couldn’t think of a metaphor. Stupid brain, stupid situation.
Stupid stupid pegasi.
The only thing that worried her more was the fact that nopony else seemed to care that they were gone.
“So, uh, how much do you know about salmon?”
Rainbow Dash considered that for a moment, rubbing her hoof against ground too soft to be dirt and not tacky enough to be clouds. Not any old cloud, anyway. These were special.
…what? She wasn’t a nerd or something, so that’s all she could confirm to herself.
“Huh?” She finally went with, turning towards Night Glider. Celestia’s sunburnt buttcheeks, when did she look so attractive?
“Salmon,” Night Glider repeated unhelpfully, glistening in the golden evening. “I grew up in Hayfield, did I ever tell you? We’d have salmon spawning every autumn. They migrate, you know, kind of like we did.”
Rainbow nodded for a few seconds before her brain realized she didn’t actually have any idea what the conversation was about and forced herself to stop. “Uhh… yeah, right?” That response felt as good in her mouth as any could have.
“Mm-hm.” Night Glider preened her wing. “I just… do you know what happens to salmon once they reach their home?”
Rainbow Dash was many things, some of which were too crass to put on the list Twilight had compiled one sleepless night, a list that, when rolled out, could have been used to toilet paper Mayor Mare’s house. If Twilight hadn’t caught her before she’d finished, that would’ve been the funniest prank! Scootaloo…
Scootaloo…
No, she wasn’t thinking about Scootaloo.
Anyways, Rainbow Dash was many things, but stupid, uneducated, and generally clueless were… well, they wouldn’t be on the list once she managed to crack the key to the safe in Twilight’s basement, that was for sure. “I, uh, don’t.”
That felt like the wrong thing to say. She would’ve sounded totally smarter if she just agreed. Ugh, why didn’t she do that? Now she looked like an idiot!
Night Glider picked at an errant feather, not looking Rainbow Dash in the eye. Not looking anypony in the eye, either. Just the too-perfect ground, springy and cool beneath their hooves, stretching on and billowing up around them. “Well, first of all, salmon go to their birthplace to breed, and-”
“But I’m too young to be a father!”
Night Glider’s glare silenced her. “Look, I’m just telling you what I know. They go back home to breed when they’re old enough to, and then they never come back. They die up there.”
“Yeah?” It felt like the only response now. Rainbow stared at Night Glider’s cutie mark, which was convenient since it was right on Night Glider’s butt. Two awesome things to look at at once!
“Do you know what happens to male salmon, Rainbow?” Night Glider sounded almost irritated, but she hadn’t ditched her yet, so Rainbow was taking that as a win. The last glimmers of sunset sunk beneath the clouded horizon, and when Rainbow offered a wing to curl up against, Night Glider leaned into it. You know, just in case it was gonna be cold outside.
You could never be too careful.
“Ah really don’t get why yer so worked up about this, Twi,” Applejack calmly applejacked at Twilight. “It ain’t like y- well, come ta think of it, it’s exactly like you, but-”
“Do you think you’re all under a spell? Is that what’s going on? Honestly, aren’t you even a LITTLE BIT worried that EVERY SINGLE PEGASU-”
“Not every!” Applejack set her hoe aside and rolled her eyes at Twilight. “Scootaloo and some of the other little ones can’t fly yet, so they spend the winter with other ponies.”
Twilight sputtered indignantly. “You’re not even worried? Our friends just vanished, and you’re-”
“Y’all seriously didn’t learn about the pegasus migration when you were little?” Applejack considered this, shoving a few errant clods of dirt aside, then nodded to herself in that particular way one does when they remember their friend grew up sheltered from the cruel realities of the world and had yet to realize that their family dog had not, in fact, gone to the giant happy puppy lake in the sky.
Twilight, for her part, got the feeling that she was being thought down to, and she was probably right. “Unicorn school, remember? There are pegasi in Canterlot, but, uh…” Nothing she could say here would make her sound less like a jerk.
“Yer family didn’t hang out with ‘em much, did they?” Applejack laughed and threw a pebble a bit harder than was strictly necessary out of the field. “Eh, well, basically, the older ones fly off every few years, and then they’ll come back in the Spring with the birds.”
The alicorn scowled in academic displeasure. “This wasn’t documented anywhere?”
Applejack blinked. “Ah don’t know. If it wasn’t, ah guess everypony just assumed we all knew about it. Maybe the pegasi don’t wanna talk about what happens there. It ain’t that weird, ya know. Some of ‘em come back pregnant, so wherever they’re goin’, ah bet they’re having a good time. Us earth ponies prefer to stick a lot closer to home.”
Twilight tried to direct her pacing towards places that already needed hoof-worn divots in the dirt. “I just don’t get why nopony would have told me. I mean, pegasi migrate? That’s huge! And weird!”
“Ain’t weird at all, Twi! Ah mean, the only reason we haven’t had one fly over Ponyville in a while is because of all that weirdness that seems to happen with us.” Applejack shrugged, tapped where her Element of Harmony used to sit meaningfully, and went back to doing farming crap in the dirt.
“You mean that a crisis set off the schedule?” Twilight groaned, mentally picturing all of the work it was going to take to properly document it all.
Applejack dug one hoof into the earth and hummed thoughtfully. “Yeah, they do mean we have to reschedule stuff an awful lot. Why, Ponyville hasn’t had a proper hibernation since-”
“A what?” The scowl on Twilight’s face was threatening a grand encore.
“The- yer saying ya weren’t taught about the earth pony hibernation, either?”
“The WHAT?”
“It wouldn’t make sense if it weren’t temporary,” Night Glider reassured herself as she paced in the thickening clouds. “Who would control the weather? I mean, if half of us didn’t change back somehow, we wouldn’t have survived as a species! So there’s a bright side, though, uh, that’ll probably be pretty painful, won’t it?”
“Yeah,” whispered her companion, trailing her steps, one hoof after the other, wings folded awkwardly, as though they didn’t quite fit there anymore.
“I wish I knew what was in these clouds.” Night Glider slouched as she wandered, not in any particular direction. “My parents always did their best to explain to me how salmon work. It didn’t seem like it mattered much as a kid, but it’s awfully important right now. Do you ever have that kind of thing, where… oh. Sorry.”
A blue hoof scuffed at the clouds beneath them. It was thinner and bonier than it used to be, except in the horrible places where it wasn’t. “Yeah,” her friend repeated.
“It has to be temporary,” Night Glider failed to reassure either of them. “I wonder where everypony else went. Probably lost on the cloud, right? We haven’t seen anypony since,” and they both shuddered at the memory. “Last night, I believe. But that showed that what happened to you has been happening to other ponies, too! You aren’t even the worst-looking one either, not by a long shot. And some of the older ones don’t seem especially worried, just, resigned, so we know they came out alright through this!”
“Yeah.” Hopeful, this time.
“I mean, it’s not like I’ve seen any pegasi that look like, um, like you do, right now. Have you seen anypony as, uh… that looked like this before now?”
Rainbow huffed. It was a lot more forceful than her normal huffing, because she was a lot stronger than she used to be. “Yeah,” she grumped, corded muscles shifting under her skin, bulking out, making her disturbingly unaerodynamic.
The other - somehow normal - pegasus frowned. “Yeah as in no, or yeah as in yeah.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Rainbow nodded, grimacing. That one white pegasus in Ponyville… well, he was nice enough, but she hoped Night Glider was right and that this was temporary, because she didn’t want to join him in being this muscular.
Night Glider sighed and flopped dramatically onto the cloud in front of her, wings splayed. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t like they were going anywhere until… whatever this thing was, ended. She shoved a piece of cloud in her mouth and wondered why she wasn’t more hungry. It tasted like nothing, but at least it was filling. She briefly considered asking what Rainbow thought about it, but quickly surmised that she knew her friend’s answer. “Hey, if we don’t go back home soon, wanna share a cloud? I… you really don’t look as bad as a lot of the others, you know? We’re in this together.”
Muscular ears lofted as Rainbow gave her the first genuine smile in days. “Yeah!”
“It’s really not that strange, Twilight.” Applejack set her tools down against the fence and leaned back, mentally preparing for a lecture. “Yer pegasi migrate, yer unicorns… well, Ah don’t know what y’all do, some winters, but us? We hibernate.”
Twilight groaned into her hooves. “Let’s just pretend that you’re saying something that makes sense. You mean to tell me that all the earth ponies in Equestria hibernate in the winter?? Like bears?”
“Nah.” The farmer pried herself upright and trotted over to the edge of the field before digging a little hole with her hoof and then stepping in it. It was a fantastically illustrative example that completely went over Twilight’s head. “Like, uh, potatoes.”
The unicorn felt that this exasperated “WHAT” was justified.
“See, unlike pegasi, our younger family members can join in on this with us! We jus’ dig ourselves a nice soft hole in the ground, close enough together that we could dig through the soil and touch if we wanted to but far enough apart to give us some space, an then we fill in the space with loose loamy soil-”
“Can you even breathe?”
“Do potatoes breathe?”
“Uh…”
“Anyway,” Applejack blissfully continued, having dug herself out a shallow trench to sit in. It just felt right. “Usually, earth pony families potato close to each other. It’s why a lot of us have farms, Twi. The Acres can fit most of Ponyville’s earth ponies!”
“That’s kind of-”
“An’ when we wake up,” she said, shuffling against the dirt. “Sometimes, more of us pop out of the soil than we put in. Also like potatoes.”
Twilight blinked. Baffled blinking felt appropriate. “What.”
“We help ‘em out of their shallow little holes!” Applejack put a hoof against her chest, rightfully defensive about the exact wrong part of Twilight’s dawning horror. “No baby earth pony could be expected to dig that much, and they’re usually tucked pretty close to the adults, so we jus’ dig around our own spots, when we wake up in the spring, just to make sure.”
“How does that even-” Twilight cut herself off, jumping to her hooves. “No. You know what? I don’t even want to know right now! That’s just… all of this is just… Ugh! I’m coming back in a few hours, and mark my words, Applejack, there will be QUESTIONS. There will be RESEARCH. There might even be A QUIZ at the end, until everything makes sense for once!”
Applejack closed her eyes, letting the words wash over her as Twilight continued to rant. It was okay. She felt at home as a part of the earth.
“Pegasi migrating suddenly makes more sense now! It’s like, what, they’re birds, right? It could make sense, in a weird way, they’re both animals, they both have wings. But no! This is just ridiculous! You aren’t a potato, Applejack!”
“Am so. Ah’m potato.” She couldn’t resist.
“You’re not! You aren’t a plant! You’re a pony who’s somehow more delusional than anypony could have expected! I swear to Celestia’s backside, this entire town is CRAZY!”
Wing beats announced Twilight’s exit, and only after they faded did Applejack feel comfortable enough to stretch out in her hole. It wasn’t time yet for a full hibernation, but after all the preparation she’d gotten done, it wouldn’t hurt to rest for a few hours to recover.
Somewhere, dimly in the comforting passage of time, she recognized the feeling of a smaller, familiar body nestling close by.
“What was that all about?” mumbled Apple Bloom, slumping onto the ground without bothering to dig a hole first. Applejack remembered when she was that young, to not care if she was properly enshrouded in soil.
“Ah guess Twilight hadn’t heard of the pegasus migration or our hibernation.” She shrugged and nestled closer into the warm damp embrace of the planet, and felt the slight vibrations through the ground as Apple Bloom did the same.
“Huh. D’ya think she’ll be alright? She seemed pretty darn mad as she flew over the southern fields.” Apple Bloom yawned. “They’re set up, by the way. Soil tilled ‘n all.”
Applejack smiled to herself and the dirt. “Yeah, Ah reckon she’s just cranky this time of year. Unicorns get so fussy when their horns are close ta shedding.” She chuckled as she drifted back into a light nap. “Ah wonder if her parents warned her about that, either.”
