An Apple Doesn't Fall Far From the Tree

by Non Uberis

Rating: mature
Tags: Sex, Anthro, Applejack, Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Granny Smith, Pear Butter, Other, Drama, Porn, Fetish, Bright Mac
Length: 11828

Applejack didn't expect one of her indulgent fantasies to become reality. Even more, she didn't anticipate the repercussions it would have.

Applejack lives a good life. It's not always easy maintaining the upkeep on a farm, but it's a rewarding experience for a pony who enjoys putting in hard work, and she has her family to support her.

There's a particular dream she has, though, one which can't merely be achieved through hard work. She can't help imagining what it would be like if she was bigger. Taller, stronger, sexier. Powerful and beautiful all at once. It's a lofty idea, an idle daydream, yet she can't resist it.

Imagine her surprise, then, when she suddenly finds that it has come true.

But her satisfaction at this discovery can't compare to what comes after, the ripple effect that spreads to her surroundings.

= = = = =

Contains the following: anthro, muscle, hyper, masturbation, intersex, mention of death, way too much drama.

Published 2023-10-31 16:20:00 UTC
Last updated 2023-10-31 16:20:00 UTC

Family Matters

Applejack sighs and allows a smile to crease across her muzzle.

“Look at that,” she says aloud to nopony in particular.

The multitudinous orchards of Sweet Apple Acres spread out before her. The sheer extent of the property can’t always be fully appreciated; while standing at the farm or along the main road, one would be met simply with a wall of trees. It’s only at the top of a hill like this that one can appreciate the full sprawl, dozens, hundreds of apple trees, as far as the eye can see, some of the finest in all of Equestria. The actual family home is far off in the distance, maybe a mile away—it was a light jog for Applejack to get here, a brisk exercise to loosen her up.

The sun hangs in the sky overhead, just on the cusp of its descending arc, casting shadows straight down toward the ground. Applejack positions herself in the shade of a tree and then leans back, slowly lowering herself to the ground. The smooth bark is familiar to her, a presence she has known from working with trees all her life, and though it is hardly a comfortable surface it nonetheless serves to provide her with a soothing sense of solace as she settles against it. She stretches her legs out in front of her and crosses her arms up behind her head. Most ponies who know Applejack will describe her first and foremost as a hard worker, thoroughly, even single-mindedly dedicated to the efforts of caring for the farm, but she knows that the harder one works, the better it feels to relax and take a break afterward.

It feels good in a profound, intrinsic way to sit there and let the ache wash away and forget about everything as she pulls the brim of her hat down over her eyes. The scale of the orchard also helps with that, just a little; when faced with such enormity, her problems seem so much smaller. What does it matter if she’s having a hard time balancing her teaching obligations at the school with her farmwork? What does it matter if Apple Bloom and Big McIntosh are moving on with their own lives while she stays on the farm? What does it matter if Granny Smith is getting on in years and experiencing increasing difficulty with everyday tasks? What does it matter if she doesn’t have her parents to fall back on for advice on any of these topics? It’s all just an inevitable part of the farm, part of the family, and the Apple family is nothing if not hardy. She will endure all of these and more for as long as she has to, if it means coming up to the hill and seeing it all one more time.

She still bears a smile as her eyes close, just enough to allow herself to shut out the world and leave herself purely with her own thoughts and impulses. She feels the tree trunk behind her and the grass beneath her. She feels the conforming embrace of her work clothes surrounding her form. She feels the cooling sweat which mats her fur. She feels the tension of her skin, the innate power of her muscles even at rest. It’s everything she could want.

Except for one thing, maybe, she thinks as she drifts off to a nap, an inkling of an idea which spreads through her unconscious mind like an infection and reaches out further beyond.

= = = = =

The world of Applejack’s dreams is not so different from reality; the core distinction one (such as Princess Luna, on one of her dreamwalking excursions) might make is that it is more.

The colors are brighter.

The trees are taller.

The apples are juicier.

And Applejack is bigger.

= = = = =

“Mnh…” A low groan rumbles in Applejack’s throat. Her eyes flick about behind their closed lids in the final throes of slumber. When she does finally wake, it’s with a jolt, rocking as her body tenses. She mumbles under her breath as she rubs at her head; she still feels some lingering exhaustion, which is strange to her as she’s usually able to power through a whole day without difficulty. It feels like she lapsed into full sleep, though when she gazes up at the sky she sees that the sun hasn’t moved too far, telling her that maybe not even an hour has passed. A good thing, since sleeping too long would mean falling behind on her chores, and she herself would be the one to chastise her for this, the harshest critic of them all.

The mare looks out across the orchard again; it’s still just as beautiful as before, just as perfect. She breathes an assured, contented sigh. “Welp, that’s enough of that for now,” she remarks, “back to the grind.”

Except, before she stands up, she feels her bushy golden mane upon her head. Her hat slipped off when she woke up; she sees it resting before her, just below her chin. “Don’t wanna be too reckless,” she mutters with a self-aware chuckle as she sets it upon her head, felt settling gently into place.

And then she sees what had been beneath the hat: a pair of breasts bigger than watermelons.

Though it seems utterly absurd, she knows immediately that that is exactly what she is looking at. She knows that even before she, breathless, eyes wide, places her hands upon them and feels their warmth, their softness, their suppleness, thin fur over smooth skin and a balloon of cushy flesh. These are breasts that ponies pine for, would die for, whether to touch them or possess them (strain upon the back be damned). They are significantly larger than her skull, broader than the span of her arms, and the canyon of cleavage between them could easily smother a pony.

It also quickly becomes apparent that these are her breasts. There’s no mistaking that light orange hue and the scattering of white dapples across their upper surface. They meet seamlessly with her chest. They are garbed in the top which she wore this morning, a red sash which ties around her thorax—a rather alluring garment, though her purpose in wearing it is more for the sake of its airiness. And in touching them, she immediately feels a soothing wave of pleasure which surges throughout her nervous system.

These are the breasts which Applejack has dreamed of.

“I gotta be dreamin,” she says to herself in shallow breaths, even as she watches the motions of her chest, the rise and fall bobbing through the supple mounds.

And so, she pinches herself, right on one tit, and that results in a sharp pain and a yelp.

“I…I ain’t dreamin…?”

But in the midst of her astonishment, her focus shifts to the arm which had groped at herself. Again, the orange fur makes it clear that it must be hers, responding to the impulses of her brain, lifting up before her, palm out. Applejack is accustomed to being a pony of outstanding physical condition, a mare stronger than many stallions, her form laden with knitted sinew just underneath the surface of the skin. Her arm should have been merely thick and firm, though, not bulging with cords of muscle which visibly flex and tense as she wills the limb to move. A raw sensation of strength courses through her, the tension of mass curling and bending, and it mixes with the pleasure which she feels from her bosom, eliciting a low, guttural groan and a pang within her loins.

She fumbles momentarily as she moves to stand. Though any last shreds of exhaustion have been washed away, she is taken aback by the weight of her body, throwing off the balance she has been used to. Her limbs are more than capable of movement, and yet she is distinctly aware of the sheer mass which each one carries. She feels like she could stomp her hoof into the earth and leave a crater. She feels like she could crush a tree trunk between her thighs.

When she’s upright, she comes to the realization that it doesn’t exactly help any more with observing herself. The canopy of her chest, jutting out in front, completely occludes all view of her stomach, and she can only see her legs by sticking them out away from her. Though she can twist herself about, push the breasts aside to get a better view, admire the swells and curves of her form, the shapeliness and the power of it, she can tell clearly what she has become at this point without the need to see. She would have to suppose that she shouldn’t be surprised—if the breasts are there, then surely she would have the whole package, the entire body she wanted.

It's everything she wanted.

There are joyous tears in her eyes as she makes a decidedly un-Applejack-like squeal and wraps her arms about herself, an embrace that squeezes and grinds. Her breasts heave upward as her arms push into them, bringing them close enough to her face that she can lean forward and press her muzzle into them, marveling at their softness. “I can’t believe it,” she whispers, slightly muffled.

Applejack had certainly never been what one might call unattractive. Her physique, sculpted from years of rigorous exercise and farm chores, had been toned and firm, yet not so much to distract from the feminine curves of her chest and hips. The Apple family had lived in Ponyville for many years, yet just as much as their produce they were known for their stunning beauty, the envy and heartthrob of many a pony among the other longstanding families in the town—Applejack certainly knew that both her father and grandmother had been sought after by numerous suitors in their youths, valued for both their looks and their capabilities. All the same, there had been a selfish part of her that couldn’t help yearning for more. Applejack wished to be truly Amarezonian, a statuesque specimen of both strength and beauty, to have the power to run the farm better than she ever had before while also being drop-dead gorgeous.

And as she caresses herself, squirming in a languid rhythm, she rubs against her breasts again and again, at first by accident—it’s hard not to touch them when they occupy so much space—and then purposefully. She croons as she reflexively clenches her fingers and kneads at the pert mounds; the flesh is warm and supple, and she’s capable of squeezing them so much more than she’s accustomed to, wringing the pleasure and delight from them. She has to really reach and compress them in order to get her fingers upon the nipples, stiffening and pushing through the fabric confines. Another moan escapes her as she tugs and kneads; the cushy flesh of her bosom contrasts with the firmness of her musculature, creasing around her bulging biceps.

Applejack keeps groping at her breasts a while longer before one hand plunges downward, digging into her shorts (she doesn’t think much about how her clothes seem to be the same ones she was wearing before she went to sleep, and yet they still fit her perfectly well despite her dimensions having increased significantly) to feel at the moist slit between her legs. It’s already damp in there, and a single touch upon her eager clit produces an electric convulsion throughout her body. This time she cries out as she staggers and comes to lean back against the tree behind her—which even creaks a little in response to her weight—and with that support she’s able to go all out on prying at herself, stuffing her fingers into her vagina and kneading the folds within. All that is typical for her, even accounting for the heightened sensitivity of her breasts, she’s accustomed to pleasuring herself every now and again. What really pushes it over the top is the sensation of her muscular strength, the tension and the power, coursing through her. It is something she has imagined, an object of her deepest fantasies, but to actually experience it so vividly is rapidly driving her to the edge. She knows without a doubt that this has to be real.

“Sweet Celestia,” she murmurs, eyelids fluttering, panting for breath, tongue lolling out, her hat going askew as she bucks and shakes, “please don’t let this end.”

But of course it does have to end inevitably when she cums, wailing passionately to the heavens as her wholy body clenches like one huge muscle.

= = = = =

Though she hardly regrets her indulgence, Applejack does find herself wishing she had disrobed more thoroughly beforehand. Her shorts have become thoroughly soaked through by her fluids, and now as she walks back through the orchards they chafe against her nethers. It is what it is, ultimately; Applejack has long since internalized the necessity of coming to terms with one’s actions, and she’s willing to make sacrifices along the way to being her truest self. She’s already aware that there are going to have to be some accommodations and compromises made in order to get used to what she has become. She’ll have to be more careful about her size and strength around other ponies. She might even need to exercise caution in her farmwork, lest she kick a tree over.

And she knows that she’s going to have to explain this to her family somehow. She still isn’t sure how it could have happened—she doesn’t feel like there was any magic involved, though given that she isn’t a scholar on these topics like some of her friends she can’t exactly say for certain. Can she come up to the house and say “Hey y’all, I wished really hard to be huge and it just happened, ain’t that somethin?” Well, that’s what it boils down to, for better or worse. It doesn’t matter as much as the follow-up explanation of her yearning to be this way. Applejack thinks that she knows her family well enough that they won’t raise much of a fuss, but there’s a part of her that worries.

She strides briskly through the trees, unerringly maintaining her course. Her thighs brush together and her breasts shake lightly with each pounding hoofstep upon the earth—she might need to invest in better support. There’s no urgency at the moment, no need to run, though a part of her ponders the repercussions that might result from that, if the sheer force of her motion would be enough to knock leaves and apples from the trees around her, a one-mare Running of the Leaves. The idea of such a show of strength elicits another surge of satisfaction within her. At the same time, however, she does consider that this build isn’t exactly an athletic one, which might make it harder for her to compete with Rainbow Dash in the future. At least she knows that she’ll have a clear advantage in any weightlifting competitions.

She only stops in place when she hears a commotion nearby: a dull thunk accompanied by rustling tree branches, which then repeats a few more times. Applejack knows that sound well, the sound of a hoof kicking against a tree trunk, shaking its apples loose for harvest. Some ponies may scoff at their methods, questioning how hard it could be to kick a tree, but the Apple family has developed the perfect bucking technique over the years. The thought of having to relearn that technique is pushed aside for the time being as Applejack considers that there must be somepony nearby, another of her family working on the harvest—probably Big McIntosh, if she had to guess, that knocking sounded too loud to be Apple Bloom.

It's only now, as she stands there, looking through the trees in the direction of the noise, that she feels the trepidation crawling over her skin, a force which seeps through her, heedless of the armor of her muscles. She knows that Big Mac is calm and levelheaded, he isn’t liable to freak out on her even if it takes time to explain to him. But the topic of being a musclebound titan isn’t one that has ever come up naturally in discussion between them before. For all she knows, he might take poorly to the idea that he’s no longer so “big” by comparison.

But she banishes those thoughts, those doubts, steeling herself, jaw and fists clenched. Applejack has learned not to sidestep an issue; for better or worse, she is a stubborn, bullheaded mare, and she is well-aware that her preferred approach to any confrontation is head-on. Besides, it’s not like this much bulk is ideal for sneaking around.

At least she has enough time as she starts pressing forward to consider what she’s going to say, muttering under her breath.

“Hey, Mac, somethin funny happened.”

“Now Mac, don’t freak out, but I gotta show you somethin.”

“Mac, why didn’t you tell me that bein big was so good?”

“Hey you don’t have any spare shorts on you, do you?”

She purses her lips. She had wanted to be big, but now she feels that she’s understanding Big Mac’s difficulty with talking instead.

There’s no more time. She comes around a tree trunk and walks into a clear space, a lane that runs through the orchard. The pony who was bucking trees is in front of her, kneeling low to the ground. They seem to be picking up fallen apples, adding them to the buckets which are lying on the grass around them.

But Applejack is no longer thinking about what she was going to say, because this pony isn’t Big McIntosh, Apple Bloom, or even Granny Smith.

The pony is wearing a dirty set of overalls, very similar at least to the kind of work clothes Big Mac would be wearing on the farm. Their form, however, is utterly enormous, surely bigger than her brother, maybe even bigger than she has become. Though she has difficulty perceiving the exact shape with the current angle and position, the pony hunched over and facing away from her, but she can identify the burgeoning muscles of the back which bulge through their clothing. Past the sleeves, their arms, light yellow, are thick and pronounced, rippling along the biceps and triceps as the limb bends, but Applejack also notices the presence of gaps in the fur where the skin is marred by light red slashes of scar tissue.

And their hair is a brilliant scarlet color. Applejack feels as if there’s something not right about seeing that hair like this. Like it’s supposed to be covered. She unconsciously reaches to touch the brim of her hat.

After all that thinking, in the end all she can call out is “Hey.” Her voice doesn’t sound as assured as she’s accustomed to.

And the pony twists about to look back toward her. He has green eyes—the same eyes Applejack sees in the mirror every day. Less familiar is the presence of the scars raking along his cheek.

“Oh, there you are, Jackie,” he says to her with a warm smile. His words cut through her thoughts, a voice that she distinctly remembers but has not heard in a long time.

That feeling of horrible trepidation sets upon Applejack once again, but this time it washes over her all at once like a bucket of ice water. Despite the physical strength which courses through her, she now feels like a filly all over again. Maybe it’s appropriate, considering that she had been a filly the last time she spoke to this stallion.

“D…Dad?” she asks, quavering.

(“Dad” becomes a very different word when one letter is added to it, she thinks.)

Bright McIntosh chuckles, a rich, warm sound. “Yeah, of course, who else?” He squats with his hands on his knees as he looks up at her. Now Applejack can better see his chest where there is yet further musculature pressing through the taut denim and cloth of his clothing. “Y’all doin okay, Jackie? Haven’t seen you for a bit, you didn’t go on a buckin spree by yourself again did you?”

Her father had been the only one who used the “Jackie” nickname for her.

Yet all the same, Applejack takes a step back, trembling. “N-no, you…you’re not…” she mutters, shaking her head, “you must be a changeling or…one of Discord’s tricks.”

“Changeling?” He tilts his head at her, that calm demeanor shifting toward concern. “Ain’t they all good now?”

Applejack can only stammer and sputter in incoherent fragments of syllables.

Then Bright Mac stands. The full picture finally becomes apparent. The stallion is huge, a towering specimen of pony strength just like Applejack herself, broad across the chest and shoulders, burly arms and legs. It’s a gross exaggeration of the image that has lingered in her memory; Bright Mac had of course possessed a toned physique, as one would expect of a farmer, but Applejack thinks that he had never been as large as Big Mac got to be as an adult. And though she doesn’t want to stare, Applejack can’t help noticing the very distinctly promiscuous way that the overalls cover his groin, a bulging mass that appears comparable to her bosom.

She doesn’t think that she’s staring, and yet she doesn’t notice when he’s right in front of her and has a hand upon her shoulder. They can look each other in the eye now, though he’s still a little taller. And despite how she has changed, Applejack doesn’t feel so strong at the moment.

“You okay, Jackie?” he asks again. “You know you don’t need to hide anythin from us, right?”

“I’m…fine,” she replies. She has to fight to keep her voice steady. She can’t meet his gaze.

Bright Mac doesn’t seem entirely convinced by this, but he gives her another pat on the shoulder. “You should go back to the house. You can afford to take a break, we can handle everythin out here.” He smiles at her again before turning around and walking toward the buckets of apples that are on the ground around the tree.

“I-I can, uh, take some of those,” Applejack interjects, following after him.

He looks back, the obvious question unspoken.

“It ain’t nothin, I can handle a couple bushels,” She crosses her arms over her chest. The feel of her burly arms against her cushy breasts helps steel her, reigniting her confidence.

Bright Mac shakes his head, but still he smirks at her. “Can’t keep a good Apple down, huh? Fine, Jackie, you can take some.” He gestures to two of the buckets and then takes two more himself. Applejack does as instructed, taking each one under an arm, tucked against her side; they seem a little smaller than she’s used to, and the effort of carrying them is almost nonexistent, though she knows not to get careless lest she knock some apples out or even crush them in her grasp.

The stallion seems content to leave her to her thoughts as they walk through the orchard, back toward the farmhouse, which is good as she is awash in thoughts. She cannot believe that this is actually Bright Mac speaking to her—he can’t just be here. It may be true that the changelings reformed, but there could still be some bad eggs out there pulling a cruel prank, or even some holdouts still loyal to Chrysalis for all she knows. And she refuses to believe that it would be beyond Discord’s willingness to taunt her even now.

But why would he be all huge?

And why does he have those scars?

And, perhaps most bizarrely, now that she reflects on it, why didn’t he question Applejack’s own altered appearance?

“There’s somethin funny about this…” she mutters under her breath.

All she had wanted to be able to do was revel in her strength, not fuss about mysteries—maybe she should have wished for bigger brains instead.

= = = = =

Applejack has to make a conscious effort not to stop in place and stare as they leave the treeline behind them and approach the family home at the heart of Sweet Apple Acres, lest Bright McIntosh stop and question her once again. The big red building looks superficially correct at a distance, bearing all the features that she remembers, the right windows, the right fixtures, the right walls and roof. As the distance closes, however, it becomes apparent to her that there’s something not quite right about it in a way that tickles at the base of her skull. She has walked this path up to the house many times, and she knows what kind of view she should have as she looks up at the edifice and the sky beyond. It feels like the building takes up more space than it should, stretched, distorted, as if viewed through a funhouse mirror.

And before the porch is completely in view, she can already hear the steady back-and-forth creaking of a rocking chair, and she has to mentally prepare herself for the moment in which she sees Granny Smith.

“Welcome back, Brighty n AJ!” a familiar voice calls to them, shrill and creaky like a door hinge that needed oiling. Granny Smith is indeed sitting upon her rocking chair, watching them as they walk past the porch. “I see y’all got a nice haul there,” she remarks with a gesture at their buckets, “lookin good?”

“Yup, reckon it’s gonna make for some sweet cider,” Bright responds while patting the side of one bucket. “Jackie’s feelin a little down though, she’s gonna take a break.”

“Really?” Applejack cringes as she feels her grandmother’s scrutinizing gaze upon her. “She don look like she needs a break.”

“I’m just, uh…feelin out of it, a little dizzy, you know,” she hurriedly replies before Bright can try to explain the situation for her. She tries to put on the appropriate affect, that of weariness. Ironically, the inherent wrongness of telling a half-truth, something diametrically opposed to her base penchant for honesty, serves to make her feel uncomfortable enough to disrupt her stance.

“Mmm, well if’n you say so,” Granny replies, sufficiently placated, easing back into her seat. “Ain’t no point in pushin yourself too hard. I guess you know all about that, huh, Applejack?” She chuckles and flashes a gap-toothed smirk. “Jus don make a habit of worryin so much that you skip out on your chores.”

“I’d never do that, Granny,” Applejack says, managing to scoff and put on a smile of her own, “I ain’t a worryin type.” A twinge in her leg; it might normally be true to say that, but she’s certainly worrying now.

“Well, you jus let ol Granny know if you need anythin, sugarcube,” the old mare says, waving with one hand, bidding her to return to her business while she does the same, looking out toward the horizon.

And Applejack starts to turn away, to follow Bright Mac, but not before taking in as much of her grandmother as she can. The differences aren’t quite as immediately noticeable—this isn’t another case of a pony suddenly turning into a bodybuilder. The change is more drastic this time in comparison to what the pony had been before. The last time Applejack saw Granny Smith, she had been a withered old mare, hunched over, gnarled from arthritis, often struggling to keep up with the goings-on around her. Now she’s wearing a baggy long-sleeved shirt and a skirt, preventing her from discerning how muscular or even endowed she might be, as the trend thus far would suggest to her. The part that’s most striking is not the way she looks as much as the way she sits: firm, steady, comfortable, no overt suggestions of pain. She seems far more well-off overall.

Applejack’s imagination gets to work, theorizing, as she continues walking around the house. She recalls the times when Granny Smith recounted the past to her and her siblings, the origins of the Apple family, settling in Ponyville, building the farm, fending off adversaries ranging from wild animals to pony bandits. She has seen pictures of her grandmother when she was younger, full of fire and determination, even beautiful. Now she imagines those stories but with a mare like she is now; her light green form ripped and taut with muscle fiber and accentuated by broad curves, the envy of mare and stallion alike. She can envision her in those grainy, faded photographs, not a wrinkle on her face, her light straw hair tied in long braids that extend past her shoulders, flashing a smirk and flexing her biceps. It’s just her imagination, as she has imagined herself in the past, when this kind of idea was nothing more than a fantasy, yet Applejack feels like it’s so much more vivid now.

“Jackie?”

She jolts as if coming out of a bout of slumber. Bright Mac is a dozen paces ahead and looking back at her. “C-comin!” she hurriedly responds on instinct, and in the process of lurching forward she nearly trips over her own hooves.

“Gosh, kiddo, you’re really out of it, ain’t you?” His words are laced with just a hint of jest to go along with his parental apprehension. “Just what do you got on your mind that’s so distractin?”

“The fact that I’m talkin to somepony who’s supposed to be sleepin eternally out in the orchard,” Applejack says to herself, the words rattling about in her skull. Her gaze stays set on the path ahead of her, looking down past her cleavage.

“I bet I know,” Bright Mac says before she can think of a response, leaning closer to her, grin widening, “you were thinkin bout some pretty pony, weren’t you?”

She whirls toward him and sputters, “H-huh?”

“Was it that pegasus you hang with at the gym, the loud one with the rainbow hair?” He nudges his elbow against her shoulder and she stumbles again—even considering the sturdiness of her frame, she’s taken aback. “Or was it that buxom unicorn with the long eyelashes?”

“Dad!” She shoves back, and he laughs. Neither of them notices or cares much about how they’re spilling some of their apples. She finds that she’s smiling without thinking about it. “C’mon, this is serious!”

“I always take you seriously, Jackie,” Bright Mac says while shifting about the buckets he’s carrying, wrapping one arm around both of them so the free one can pat her on the head, pushing her hat down. “That’s why you’re the one in charge around here. But as your dad, I can still tell you to take a load off n rest if I feel like it.”

“Sure, whatever you say,” Applejack replies with a scoff and a roll of her eyes, the rare rebellious child who might act out in the form of asking for more chores. Though her brain mentally catalogs that information: despite the circumstances, she is still the one spearheading operations at Sweet Apple Acres.

They come around to the big open barn doors on the side of the house which lead into the storeroom. As Applejack sets down the buckets she had been carrying, Bright Mac remarks, “Make sure you actually take some rest too; I know how much you can’t get enough of puttin in reps, Jackie, but you gotta sleep sometime.”

“Yeah, I know,” she replies blithely, though in this case she isn’t especially planning to do otherwise. Some soreness lingers in her back, so even though she isn’t particularly tired she still feels that lying down on something soft might be welcome. All the same, the idea of exercise intrigues her. She hasn’t really had much of an opportunity to truly test her strength thus far.

And then, while she’s still in the midst of her thoughts, Bright Mac comes beside her and wraps his arms around her in an embrace. Their musculature grinds together, yet despite the firmness of their flesh there’s still a consoling warmth that seeps between them. Applejack freezes up even before he leans in to gently nuzzle against her cheek. “Love you, Jackie,” he murmurs to her.

“…Love you too, Dad,” she whispers while reciprocating the gesture, meeting the warmth and pressure of his grasp. There’s a smell about him, an earthy fragrance, which she hasn’t known in a long time. She squeezes tightly around him with her powerful arms, and he does the same to her in turn—there is some mild discomfort, though her body is able to withstand it, but she welcomes it regardless. It reminds her that she is awake and alive.

“Well, I’d best be gettin back to work,” Bright Mac remarks while he steps away, and he picks up one of the buckets again, “better make sure we didn’t drop too many. You have a nice rest now!”

“Yeah, of course,” Applejack replies. She starts to walk away, to go back inside, but she still watches until after he’s left to open the door to the building interior and stagger inside.

The mare has to stop and stand still, catching her breath. “Sweet Celestia, this is really happenin,” she gasps to herself. Tears come streaming over her cheeks; she can’t hold them back any longer. She can only cover her mouth and desperately keep her sobbing to a minimum to avoid alerting anypony else in the house to her presence before she can be prepared to meet more of the family. She hadn’t been aware of just how much of a void there was in her heart, missing the affection of her parents which had been denied of her for the better part of her life.

As she looks through the halls and corridors of the building, it becomes apparent to her exactly what it was that had made it seem so strange to her as she approached: the dimensions have all been increased, just slightly. The doorways are wider than she’s used to, even accounting for the fact that she herself has grown wider, broad enough for her to reach out with both arms, fully extended, and touch the edge on either side with her fingertips. The living room appears emptier to her despite having all the same furniture that she remembers, and that’s because there’s more floor space for that furniture to cover. The big table in the dining room, though, is also different than she remembers, much longer than it used to be—how much of it is because the ponies who sit there are larger, and how much of it is because there are more of them?

In the front hall of the house, the walls are lined with photographs of the Apple family, stretching back over generations. She can go to specific spots in the collection and pick out pictures that she remembers, still in the same spaces they were before: the last big family reunion; Hearth’s Warming get-togethers; the meetup with the Oranges in Manehatten; her and Apple Bloom at the Sisterhooves Social; Big Mac and Apple Bloom at the Sisterhooves Social; the commemorative photo they took after showing up Flim and Flam and their cider machine. They are very similar in their compositions to what she remembers, their groupings and poses. That is, with one major caveat: all the members of the Apple family are absolutely ripped and stacked. It varies somewhat from one to the next, but there are none among the adults at least who don’t look like they take regular visits to a gym. She sees breasts that fill the confines of their shirts nearly to bursting and pants which are stretched taut over junk which she balks to imagine unrestrained. There are grainy sepia-tinted or black-and-white photos depicting the family from before her time, and among those she sees a younger Granny Smith who doesn’t look so different from how she envisioned earlier.

But the one she’s really looking for, the one she hones in on, is right next to the front door: the most recent family portrait of Sweet Apple Acres, one which they rotate out every year. The last time should have been just a couple months ago at the end of summer. She’s trembling as she places a hand on the frame. It’s a lot to take in; she has to make a conscious effort to slow down and analyze the picture piece by piece. She also has to ease her grip when the frame starts to creak in her hand.

She sees herself. It’s not the same as looking into a mirror, but it’s something to work off of. The Applejack in the photo is smiling with her hands on hips in roughly the center of the frame. She looks proud of herself, which in this context is probably primarily in reference to the family and their business, but Applejack wants to believe at least some of that must be for herself—her accomplishments, her abilities, her strength, her beauty. She stands tall with her thick, chiseled frame, muscular definition visible even where covered by clothing.

Granny Smith is next to her. The elderly mare is a far cry from any of the others in the picture, or even her past self as seen in other pictures, yet she is still a great deal more kept together than Applejack remembers. She is able to stand completely on her own power, no need for a cane or walker, no pain or discomfort in her expression and posture. She almost looks younger, by a decade or even two, thin yet toned, with only faint wrinkles around her face.

And then the next one over is Bright McIntosh. Dear Celestia, Applejack still can’t believe it. He’s built much the same way that she is, albeit more distinctly masculine, broader in the shoulders than the hips. She’s so used to seeing him wearing his hat in the old photos of him, the hat which she now wears every day; she wonders what circumstances must have led to him choosing to give it to her. Also much like Applejack, he’s clearly brimming with happiness for the family, and the observation of this brings a tear to her eye anew.

Yet that’s merely the tip of the iceberg because Pear Butter is right next to Bright Mac. She differs in that her figure seems more on the soft side than firm. Though there is distinct tone in her arms, the majority of her body trends toward the broad and curvaceous. She wears a yellow sundress over her creamy peach fur, yet despite being completely covered the entirety of her form is clearly detailed, from her full breasts to her cushy stomach to her wide, wide hips. The shelf around her waist is so great that it presses into Bright Mac on her side as she leans upon him, surely nearly as broad across as the reach of her arms. Her serenely smiling face peers from around her puffy orange mane, and Applejack thinks that she can’t imagine anything prettier than that.

On the other side of the picture there’s Apple Bloom, who looks like she took more after her mother. Despite being shorter than Applejack, she has far more pronounced curves, a wide hourglass figure flaring outward in the chest and rear, swelling out and in and out again. Her breasts almost completely occlude her torso and her hips and thighs, though smaller than Pear Butter’s, look like they would struggle to fit in most chairs. Her muscle mass is noticeable, the sort that Applejack would have considered significant in the past, but compared to the pictures of the Apple family she has seen it’s rather light. Her choice of dress is considerably different from the rest of the family, a shirt and skirt that look too dainty for regular work on the farm; she wonders if her little sister has been spending less time doing chores than the others. She still seems just as happy to be there as everypony else, even if at the back of her mind she’s likely thinking about what she’ll be doing with her friends later.

And at the far end of the frame is Big McIntosh. She can only stare at him for several seconds, utterly astounded. “Big” is definitely the operative word. The red stallion is utterly enormous, even more of a muscular hulk than Applejack and Bright Mac, taller too by nearly a whole head. There’s nothing about him that isn’t thick: his arms, his legs, his chest, even his neck, sinewy cords running through the skin, traps visible bulging up past the shoulders from behind. The shape of his groin pressing through his pants is distressingly large, like a beanbag chair hanging past his knees, and Applejack’s mind boggles at imagining what he must look like when fully unleashed and erect (not that she wants to). More than that, however, she’s reasonably certain that he has breasts. The mounds which fill his shirt, which is unbuttoned just enough to tease cleavage, seem too soft and weighty to just be pecs. His carrot-orange hair, both his mane and tail, is a fair deal longer as well, flowing and lightly mussed instead of cropped short. She feels that there must be something different about her brother, but she sees the same softspoken warmth in his eyes that she’s grown used to, and that much is enough for the time being.

Applejack finally sets the picture down again, and she lets out a breath that she didn’t realize she’d been holding. She places her hand on her brow to brush away her mane and she finds herself slick with sweat. “What the hay is goin on?” she whispers to herself.

Turning around, she looks about, through the halls of the house. It’s quiet, the only sound being the distant continued creaking of Granny Smith’s rocking chair on the porch. She doesn’t know if anypony is inside or if they’re all out and about, but for the time being she doesn’t want to get into any more awkward conversations; she needs more time to herself, to think and to calm down. She creeps over to the stairs to go up to her room, but once again the unwieldiness of her form hampers her ability to be stealthy, compounded by the age of the house around her. Floorboards creak beneath the tromping of her hoofsteps, and as she ascends the steps she observes that the banisters seem thicker and sturdier than she remembers, though they still groan ominously when she grasps them for support. The effort of having to take care not to damage her surroundings with her empowered strength does not bring her as much satisfaction as she’d hope for.

Up the stairs and down the corridor and into her room. As with much of the rest of the house, the quaint quarters are much as she remembers but with slight differences. All the furniture is in the same spots, the bed and dresser and cupboard and the desk where she sits down to wrack her brain over sales numbers and taxes. The desk and bed are noticeably larger, and she sees that the frame of the latter is much sturdier, made of thick wood with reinforcing metal struts. In addition, though, there is a green mat on the floor at the foot of the bed, and in one corner is a metal rack which holds an assortment of dumbbells and barbells. She knows that Big Mac has a number of similar implements of his own, but these are outrageously large, the weights on either end of the handles broader than dinner plates and thicker than bricks. Experimentally, she puts her hand on one and lifts, and for a moment her skin flexes and pulsates as muscles bulge and veins tighten, clenching around her bones, straining on her limb, until with a grunt she manages to do a complete curl, holding it for a couple seconds in the air before setting the weight back down on the rack with a clatter and a thud.

And if this is just how big her weights are, imagine what Big Mac’s must be like now.

Applejack is too exhausted to manage that. She trudges back over to the bed and it takes all her effort not to fling herself upon it—for all she knows, the fortified frame might still sunder beneath her, and then the floor under that. She makes no effort to take off her clothes, just lets herself ease into the soft warmth of the blankets and mattress.

“I don’t get it,” she whispers to herself, “why’s everythin all different? I didn’t wish for any of this other stuff. Why’d everyone else change too? Why did Mom n Dad…?”

She remembers the scars on Bright Mac.

Those thoughts get banished back into the sea churning in her brain. A different fragment of an idea then washes up on the shore of her consciousness.

“What do I think about other ponies anyhow?” she mutters, her brow furrowing.

She had spent so long fantasizing about the idea of what it would like to be huge. She had never really bothered to consider what that look might be like on somepony else. She longed to flex and flaunt her body, she didn’t think about doing that alongside another pony. With another pony. To another pony. Standing flush with each other, their breasts pressed together, the arms tensing and bulging in unison as they grit their teeth.

Her hand is already reaching to unbutton her shorts again.

Except she mentally recoils when the images of her father and brother are the first things to come to her mind. Despite what some might think of the Apple family, they aren’t that close. Although, with how things have been going, who knows what might be expected of her the next time she and Big Mac find themselves together in private.

Applejack squirms with a stifled groan as a spasm of yearning lances through her. Her mind fumbles to piece together an idea, a daydream that would be suitable for her. She pulls her hat down over her eyes, blanketing everything in darkness, and tunes out the world around her. She used to do this before, when the idea of what she has now become was nothing more than a flight of fancy, an idle delusion to pass the time, who’s to say she can’t still do the same thing now?

(hey…)

She starts to probe for her groin again.

“Hey, AJ!” That scratchy tomboy voice is so familiar to her, in her imagination she can easily piece together the sounds into new speech. “You been getting some good gains in lately?”

Applejack’s ear twitches and her head flops to one side.

“Really, darling, don’t you think you can afford to push yourself a little harder?” That’s another voice, dainty and high-pitched, though the approximation in Applejack’s memory has just a slightly more exaggerated accent. “You look so dazzling when you’re glistening with sweat.”

“Ha, you should get a load of me when I’m working out!” The pegasus voice makes a dramatically protracted grunt to accompany the motions of flexing.

“Oh well of course, dear, we all are to die for, no doubt about that,” the unicorn responds, tut-tutting, and she makes a few grunts as well, daintier but no less showy.

“Well what do you think about that, AJ?”

The voices seem to converge, the owners approaching each other, and then they are together. An image coalesces in the farmpony’s mind, as if the two of them being together serves to make it easier to concentrate upon them. Rainbow Dash demonstrates her characteristic smug grin while Rarity is more refined and subtle in her smile. Both are wearing a tight sports top and both are jacked. Rainbow is slightly more exaggerated in her musculature but Rarity makes up for the difference by having a more pronounced bust. They each extend one arm toward the other and then flex while clasping their hands together.

“Do you suppose you can take both of us at once?” Rarity asks with a bat of her eyelashes.

And then something springs up in front of each of them: fleshy battering rams that are like tree trunks, deep blue and purple and pulsating, because if Big Mac can have tits and a dick then why can’t mares do the same?

Applejack is already cumming, furiously stroking at the inner walls of her vagina, gritting her teeth to hold back the cries, though the bed still creaks as she writhes and bucks her hips, and she goes back in for more.

The shorts she neglected to replace are getting drenched in mare-juice again, along with the blanket and sheets.

= = = = =

When Applejack’s eyes open, the fervor of passion long past, the bedroom around her is cast in the shadows of evening. Only the barest hints of a sunset are visible along the sky outside her window, though since this side of the house faces east (as a farmer, she knows that if she wakes to see the sunrise then she’s slept in too long) there’s even less to be seen. For a moment, she wonders if all of those lurid antics had just been a dream, yet another fantasy of hers, until she lifts her arm up in front of herself to inspect, and even before she sees the shadow of the bulky limb she already feels the rippling undulations of the muscles within. In the corner of the room, moonlight gleams upon the silvery surfaces of the rack of lifting weights. She lets her hand fall and it lands comfortably upon her bosom, cushy and warm, better than any pillow.

It’s everything she could ever want and then some, and yet she can’t help feeling that something isn’t right about this.

“Why’s this happenin?” she mutters to herself, staring up at the ceiling. It would be one thing if some inexplicable magical event granted a wish of hers. She can’t rationalize the notion of why so much more would also change on top of that. The fact that nopony seems to be questioning any of this, despite making it so that there’s less worry about having to explain herself, makes it all the more upsetting. She can only suppose that she’ll have to visit Twilight to work out an explanation, though she has to wonder what might have become of her friends if so much has already been altered. “Am I…am I losin my mind?” she whispers warily, thinking that calling it into question might make it true.

And then there’s a knock on her door.

“You feelin any better, sugarcube?”

The voice that calls out, sweet as honey, elicits a prickling of déjà vu along her brainstem; it’s another voice that she never thought she’d hear again.

She doesn’t realize that she’s been stunned into silence and immobility until the knocking comes again. “Applejack? You still in there?”

“I’m…I’m fine…” Applejack replies, barely audible. She finds herself hesitant to address the voice’s owner.

“Mind if I come in?”

“S-sure…”

Despite her profound strength, Applejack finds that it’s difficult to get herself to do the single crunch of her abdomen that would get her into a sitting position. It might be in part the irresistible allure of the soft bed, even though surely she has been asleep for hours. Or it could be that she’s not prepared to face what’s coming for her, just on the other side of a panel of wood.

Then, as she’s swinging her legs over the side of the bed, the door opens, and Pear Butter comes inside. The lights on in the hallway behind her frames her with a golden glow, blazing around her mane, but still Applejack can see the faint hint of a smile etched into her muzzle, even the laugh lines at the corners of her lips. It’s enough to distract her from the sight of the mare’s voluptuous body, the swelling curvature which flares outward further and further and further the lower her gaze falls, to the hips and thighs which scarcely fit through the doorway as she walks inside with a swaying gait.

“Brighty said you weren’t feelin well, so I thought you’d prefer to be left alone while we were havin dinner,” she explains, “but I whipped up somethin jus for you.” She’s also carrying a dinner tray with what looks and smells like like a bowl of soup and a slice of pie, their aroma wafting into the room, the good and proper kind of home cooking that makes Applejack’s mouth water, and it’s enough that she’s almost distracted from the ennui that has overtaken her. It’s distinctly not enough to keep Applejack from staring, as much as she doesn’t want to, her awe overpowering her, as Pear Butter comes past and leans over to set the tray on her desk, her enormous rear jutting out behind her. She fights to regain some control and decency before her mother turns back around to face her again.

“Th-thanks…Mom…” Applejack mumbles, her gaze falling. Dimly, she realizes that her hat fell off while she was lying down, leaving her head bare. Nothing can hide the drooping of her ears.

But, like all mothers, Pear Butter is not so easily dissuaded when it’s apparent to her that something is awry with one of her children. “What’s the matter, sugarcube?” she asks in a way that is warm and comforting while also firm enough to make it clear that this is a question that cannot be ignored. “I thought you were jus sick, but you’re lookin like you’re down in a funk real bad.”

Applejack looks up at her, at her face which seems to glow resplendently even in the gloom of the darkened bedroom. She hates that there is the voice at the back of her mind which continues to insist that this is wrong. There should be nothing wrong about any of this. And yet, here she is, unable to explain anything that’s happening to her.

With strength that is not physical but mental, Applejack sets herself upon meeting Pear’s gaze and asks, “Ma…why’re we like this?”

Her brow furrows and she tilts her head to the side. One hip cocks out at the same time like a counterbalance, a motion which might have been less noticeable if the slab of flesh weren’t so huge and thick. “What d’you mean?”

“Why’re we so…” Applejack fumbles to find the right way to say this but ultimately there doesn’t seem to be any other than that which is most obvious. It doesn’t help that, in the motions of thinking, of grasping her hands at the air in front of her as if trying to pluck the words out of the air, she presses her huge arms against the sides of her bosom. “Big?” she finishes at last.

Pear slowly smiles again, comfortingly, but there is still confusion hanging about her. “Well, I don’t know what you were expectin to happen from pumpin iron every day,” she remarks with a chuckle while gesturing to the weights in the corner. Still she keeps her focus upon Applejack, quietly mulling over her thoughts. “I reckon that you’re talkin bout somethin else, though, a different sense of this.”

“I mean why are we all so big. It’s…it’s kinda ridiculous, ain’t it? Ridiculous in a…amazin sorta way, I guess, but still it’s…weird.” The weird part is that admitting this carries the implication that her own desires are out of the ordinary, making her feel like she’s speaking out against herself. She doesn’t appreciate the bitter shame washing over her.

Pear Butter hums to herself momentarily before she turns to sit upon the bed beside Applejack. She moves with a careful grace that minimizes the impact of her buttocks upon the mattress, though she still occupies most of the remaining space on that side. Her thigh brushes against that of the orange mare, separated only by the thin cloth of her dress, yet there is still a broad gap between their shoulders. “Well, sugarcube, this is jus the way the Apple family has always been,” she explains, and she extends one hand to set upon Applejack’s own thigh, thick with bands of muscle instead of fat. It elicits a prickling along her spine, though it feels like a chaste gesture, as gentle and reassuring as always. “The Apples have had a high tolerance for muscle growth for generations, long before they even came to Ponyville. It served them well for the farmin business, hard to compete with ponies who have such an easy time with puttin up barns n tillin fields n haulin produce.” Then she leans in closer and whispers, “Grand Pear would never admit it, but part of the reason he moved his clan away was because he realized his fat ass just couldn’t match all that beef.”

“Sounds about right,” Applejack says with a lightly amused snort. She’d be embarrassed if it were to turn out that the Apple family had suddenly completely given up on the farming business.

It still doesn’t explain, though, why any of this is happening.

She purses and grinds her lips.

“Mom,” she asks, “what would you think if I were…if I wanted to be…different?”

“You mean like Big Mac?” Pear Butter asks in turn, “Applejack, you know we have nothin against whatever way somepony wants to express themselves.”

“What?” Applejack blinks back and stares. The gears of her brain try to turn but a wrench has been wedged in between them. She tables that topic, thinking that there are going to have to be some follow-up questions about her older sibling later. “No, I mean…physically different. Like what if I wanted to be…somethin completely different from what I am now, what if I wanted to be jus…small n skinny n…jus ordinary.” And then she adds, “Talkin purely hypothetically n all that.”

Pear holds her palm up in front her muzzle, obscuring her expression, and looks at Applejack long and hard. Applejack can tell that she’s worried, that she’s trying to tease out what might be the underlying issue at hand, but for the time being it eludes her. “Well, Applejack…I certainly wouldn’t mind you no matter what you looked like, but…” She makes her own dry knock of laughter. “If you didn’t want to be big, I’d say the only sure solution would be to not be born to the Apple family.”

Applejack’s eyes widen.

“I mean, like I said, it’s just kinda always been in the family,” Pear Butter goes on, and she pats Applejack again, this time on the shoulder. “There’re some lightweights here n there, but you’d have to get really unlucky to end up just completely unable to lift an apple bucket. Even then, you woulda had the Pear genes comin in from my side of the family too, you could’ve ended up as curvy as Apple Bloom with none of the muscle to hold yourself up.”

She laughs at this mental visual, but her daughter is only halfway paying attention at that point. Applejack is considering the full ramifications of her actions.

“What if…it wasn’t enough just to change me?” she thinks to herself, muttering under her breath. “What if the whole family had to change to make the wish true?”

“Applejack?” Pear Butter intrudes on her thoughts.

“It’s nothin.” The farmpony turns back to face her, to really look at her, to bask in her beauty and her warmth. She works to muster a smile, and she reaches to place her own hand in turn upon her mother’s shoulder, an embrace she hasn’t been able to feel for far longer than she’d like. Though so much of her body is soft and swollen, there is a definite firmness under the surface of her arm.

Then she feels something rough, a faint ridge along the skin. Applejack glances down and she sees that there are scars along Pear Butter’s arm. They are smaller than those on Bright Mac, but they are still distinctly visible.

“Where’d you get these?” she asks, blurting it out without a second’s thought, no attempt to create some kind of subterfuge to conceal her disconnection from reality.

Pear Butter looks down at herself and gasps a light “Oh” sound. “They’re from…the attack.” Her voice has turned flat and weary. There is a wariness to her words as she looks back up to meet Applejack’s gaze again. “On the day Apple Bloom was born.”

Applejack nods. She’s well aware of this. Though she was not present for the attack, she remembers all too well the day when it happened. She had barely been out of her foalhood at the time. Granny had yelled for Big Mac to take her out of the room when her parents came shambling back into the house, but he hadn’t been quick enough.

“We were…comin back from Fillydelphia, had a good haul to sell there. Your father didn’t want me to come with him when the foal could be due any minute, but I didn’t want him to go by himself.” She absentmindedly strokes at her midsection, and then she chuckles dryly. “And, wouldn’t you know it, my water broke as we were on the way back. It wasn’t that far away from the farm, we’d be able to make it, but…that was before we heard the Timberwolves howling.” She sighs and her ears droop, her posture wilting somewhat. “We ran, but I’m not exactly fast at the best of times, and back then I could barely move my legs at all. Couldn’t do nothin to stop the wolves from surroundin us.

“Lucky us, though, Bright Mac had that Apple family strength on his side, I couldn’t do much but he wrestled with em til they had enough.” She looks at her arm again. “One of em got past him and clawed at me. It was just a little, hardly nothin compared to the scrapes he got—over a hundred stitches all over him when we finally got him to the hospital—but he smashed that wolf to the ground and pummeled it to pieces. After that…we finally had enough of an opening to make it back to the house, n I got to see my third beautiful little foal come into this world.”

Pear Butter musters a smile, though it fades quickly.

Applejack just stares. She feels she ought to say something, but her mouth won’t move. Even her arm is frozen, unable to reach out and comfort her mother. Though the story lines up with her memory, it’s crucially different in its ending. Bright Mac fought valiantly, but even he could not stand up to a pack of timberwolves. He only managed to fend them off long enough for him and Pear Butter to make their escape, but he collapsed immediately after getting through the front door, and he had exsanguinated before anypony was able to get medical help for him. Pear Butter had also succumbed by then, a combination of her own wounds and the complications of childbirth, only just managing to name Apple Bloom before she passed. Applejack had only been a filly when her parents were taken from her; there was nothing she could have done about it, yet she couldn’t help thinking all this time that she should have been able to do something, anything.

Maybe she did do something. By giving herself this body, by passing it back through her family, she made her parents strong enough to survive their fatal encounter. It seems absurd, and yet it is the truth.

And then Pear Butter turns to her and says something that completely catches her off-guard: “You’re not Applejack, are you?” Her expression is gentle and yet her eyes are hard and unflinching in their certainty. There is a kind of grim resignation to her tone, as if prepared for whatever creature is sitting beside her to fall upon her once its deception has been found out.

In response, Applejack can only heave a long sigh through her nostrils; so she has been found out, but that means she doesn’t have to play pretend anymore, a game which she has never been good at. “No, not exactly,” she replies. “I am Applejack, but I’m not sure that I’m…your Applejack.” She looks down at herself, and this time the sight of the jutting shelf of cleavage in front of her doesn’t serve to bring her any satisfaction.

Pear Butter nods back, at least partially assuaged, though her posture is still tense.

“You see, I…well…what I said earlier about wantin to be different, that was true, kinda.” The time has come for the moment Applejack had thought was coming, the explanation she knew she would have to give out, but the circumstances are so much more bizarre and awkward than she envisioned. “I was always a tough pony. Had to be, workin on a farm all day n night, y’know? But there was a part of me that always…kinda wanted to be more. I wanted to be tougher. I wanted to be bigger.” She feels the heat welling up in her cheeks; she’s never had the opportunity to say this out loud to somepony else. It’s hard not to think about how big she is; every slightest motion of her body is another reminder of her enormity, from the tensing of muscles to the creasing of flesh to the creaking of the mattress and bed frame beneath her.

“And today,” she continues, “I was jus…thinkin bout that again, and then the next thing I know I’m like this.” She holds her arms up and gestures to herself.

The look that Pear gives her almost makes her feel that she must be mad—it would probably be the most reasonable explanation for everything that’s happened so far today. But then all she can do in response is shrug her shoulders. “I suppose I can’t say strange things don’t happen all the time in Equestria.”

A chuckle escapes Applejack autonomously. “Ain’t that the truth.”

“But it seems like…the changes were a lot more than you expected?” Pear asks.

“Yeah, a whole lot more.” She rubs at her temples, fingers kneading sharply against flesh and bone. “I’d get if it was jus me changin, that’d be weird but understandable. Then I came back to the farm n it turned out…the whole family had changed.”

“Well…I guess that does make sense, in a weird way.” Pear Butter tilts her head and purses her lips as she thinks. “That kinda body don’t jus come outta nowhere. You’d need the beef from your dad’s side of the family.” She delicately touches Applejack’s bicep. “And the juice from mine.” She smirks lightly as she cups her own breast.

“I was jus thinkin the same thing,” Applejack replies, silently surprised; the two of them really think more alike than she expected.

“Does it make you happy, though?” Pear Butter looks at her. There’s no more worry, no trepidation, only that motherly concern for a filly’s wellbeing.

There’s more hesitation than Applejack might have once expected of herself in the moment that this achievement was upon her. The initial surge of endorphins which she felt at the initial discovery of her transformation has long since faded, leaving her with only the spasms that course through her. There is a trepidatious tension across her skin and muscles even while sitting completely still, but perhaps that is more the result of her present anxiety. She has to ponder how much damage she could cause if she were just a little careless—to her bed, her room, her home, even her family. It’s a daunting idea, but she has to be conscious of the responsibility now upon her.

Yet still, in the end, she can only respond in affirmation. “Of course it makes me happy,” she says decisively, “and as strange as it is, I’m glad that y’all can be more like me too. It’d be a whole lot weirder, now that I think about it, if I was the only huge pony in the family. And I’m…I’m especially glad I can be with you, Mom.” The reality of the situation is finally settling over her. She hardly notices the tears that are starting to trickle over her cheeks.

“And no matter what version of you it is, I’m always gonna be happy that you’re happy, Applejack,” Pear Butter coos back. She raises one leg and tucks it beneath herself so that she can twist to the side on the mattress, a position in which she can better face her daughter. She reaches out and takes both of Applejack’s hands in her own, squeezing firmly. “I don’t know what you’re gonna want to do after this, if you’re gonna talk with your friend Twilight about figurin this out, but for now you are still my girl, my sugarcube, and I only want the best for you.”

Applejack cracks a smile and stifles a sobbing hiccup as she replies, “I appreciate it.”

They simultaneously feel the magnetic pull that draws them together into a hug. Their cushy breasts press together, and though Applejack nearly engulfs Pear Butter’s back with her swollen arms, the less muscular mare still provides a strong, unyielding grasp of her own. This time, Applejack isn’t thinking about the embrace of flesh, the way her body squeezes and compresses, the tingling along her nerves, only the warmth which wells up from within which can only be described as joy.

She had always known that being bigger would make her happy, but she never thought it would fill her heart like this.

Author's Note

Celebrating Halloween with a very not-spooky story. Unless you're a normy I guess.

The prompt for this was the idea that a character wishes for some change to happen to them and that change then gets passed back through their family, with them being the only one to notice that anything is different. I could have done a lot of things that would have been much simpler, but the idea that immediately jumped out to me was Applejack wishing for something that has the unintended side effect of her parents still being alive and getting drama out of that.

I could have had a scene featuring all of the family at dinner so Big Mac and Apple Bloom could have actual screen time but I felt the word count creeping up and didn't want to push it any further.

There was much consternation about Pear Butter's name.

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