“Did I ask for flowers, Dash,” Applejack said, the statement lacking even a hint of any questioning inflection.
Rainbow dug into dirt of the barn floor with a hoof, ears flicking back turning her head to the side. “I thought they were pretty?” she said weakly.
“Dash. I know for a fact that you haven’t worked in weeks. You’ve been out with that gang of would-be Wonderbolts every day since, or you’ve been napping above the orchard, snacking on my income. I know your dream’s important, and I don’t fault you for it. But I do expect you to have enough common sense to spend what bits you have on property tax, which, again, I know you haven’t paid. The mayor ain’t shy about saying so. Or, if the idea of having your home auctioned off in three months doesn’t sway you, maybe food, which you could buy, instead of nabbing mine.”
“I—okay, you’re mad about the apples, I get that. I’ll pay it back, okay? You know I can make that kind of money in like three days. I just thought you’d like a present? You’re special to me. Thought I’d show that.” Rainbow pranced in place, uneasy, a lump forming in her throat. She’d arrived in high spirits, but hearing all that was giving her whiplash.
“My crop isn’t the point. You say I’m special to you, but you don’t seem to give a damn about anything I say. I appreciate gifts that are practical. Twilight got me a special fertiziler the other month that makes the new batch of saplings we put down grow twice as fast, and let me tell you, I was nothing but grateful.”
One of the cows mooed, the low sound startling them both. Rainbow jumped into the air, wings fluttering at a frantic pace. She grasped fruitlessly for something to say.
Applejack beat her to it. “You caught me in the middle of the workday, but this really ain’t the best place to have a real sit-down conversation. Let me cool off, I’ll get a pie out, and we’ll talk in the house, alright?”
Rainbow nodded, keeping the buzzy, panicked energy confined to her wings. She needed the time out more than AJ, at the moment.
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate the thought,” Applejack said, finishing her last slice with a neatness that stood in stark contrast the messy fur around Rainbow’s mouth. “I do. You just don’t have your priorities straight. When something comes around that needs the Elements, I trust you with my life. If an Ursa Major were about to squash me flat, I know with every last hair on my flank I can depend on you.”
But, Rainbow silently added, before distracting her racing thoughts with more pie. It was apple, which, well, it really sucked as a distraction.
“Emotionally, though? You’re worse than a bull in a china shop. You can’t remember what I like, any advice I give goes in one ear and out the other, and while I’m happy to be a shoulder to cry on when needed, or a sounding board when you’re excited about your new whirligig technique, I entirely lack the time, energy, and interest to be as engaged as you expect me to be. I have to be your therapist, nag you over and over again to go to work and pay your bills, and constantly remind you of incredibly basic things you never stop forgetting. That’s not being a partner, Dash. That’s expecting me to be your parent.”
Rainbow … wilted. “I’m not that bad,” she tried, the last slices of her pie losing all appeal. She pushed her plate away.
“Honestly, Dash? Yes. You are.” The words were as blunt as a kick to the face. “When you even remember to show you care, you’re the equivalent of a cat dropping a dead bird at my doorstep.”
I’d be happy with a dead bird, really, as long as it was from you, Rainbow didn’t say. Right now, any words she spoke would break the facade of calm she had going on in an instant. Her thoughts, speeding up where her wings couldn’t, continued on. I can do better, how do I remember everything like you do, I always manage to scrape enough bits together to pay what I need, I love you and it sounds like you’re breaking up with me, how can I fix it or is it too late—
Applejack’s voice softened. “I ain’t trying to kill your spirit, Dash. I know that if I told you I needed you to work, get all your bills paid, cover the cost of everything you’ve nibbled on in your entire life and then some, you’d do it. I can’t say you’re not a hard worker, ‘cause when you work, you work. If I tell you to put out a paper on microbiology that Twilight’ll pat you on the back for, it may take you a whole year, but you’ll sit your butt down in her treehouse and scribble until you manage it. You have enough drive, intelligence, and sheer bloody-minded determination to rival the Princess herself. Princesses, I mean. But you don’t have a single ounce of consistency. You’re as distractible as Pinkie, but she nails the birthdays and preferences of an entire town’s worth of ponies. You can’t even get one.”
“Jackie,” Dash said, voice cracking.
“Please don’t call me that right now, Dash. You care. I can tell, everypony can. But caring just ain’t enough.”
Rainbow fled.
“That’s what she said, as best as I remember, word for word. I don’t think I even can forget, really. So, how do I fix it?” Rainbow looked up at Twilight with hopeful eyes.
The frown that met her killed that hope in its cradle. “I can’t say anything with any real certainty until I talk to Applejack, and definitely not before I take some time to sort out my thoughts in my diary.”
Rainbow’s tail twitched. She took a leaf from Twilight’s book, and several deep breaths later, nostrils no longer flaring, replied, “Twi, I’m not looking for certainty here. You’re smart, and I know you have something to say about all this, and you aren’t. Maybe it’s not what I want to hear, but I have to hear it. I’m a big filly, so let’s cut to the chase. Lay it on me.”
“Well, you asked.” It came as a resigned mutter. Twilight cleared her throat, slammed her book shut, and gave Rainbow her full attention. Rainbow twitched, suddenly nervous. “First of all, you’re talking to me. Talk to her. Communication is what friendships live and die on, and any partnership is built on friendship first.”
Rainbow bristled. “I tried that, Twilight. But every time I do, it turns into a rant about how awful I am.”
Twilight sighed, raising a hoof halfway to her face before evidently thinking better of it. “Rainbow Dash. If I went over there, right now, and asked Applejack what happened every time you tried talking about it, what do you think she would say?”
Ah. Rainbow settled down. Shuffled her wings. Thought about it for a moment. “Probably that it’s not the right time, she’s busy with her work, and I’m distracting her. But that’s the thing, she’s always working. And I really can’t let this go, there’s never a right time and it’s eating me, Twilight.”
Came the measured response, “I’d hazard a guess that she’d be more than happy to have a friendly chat with her while she’s doing her more repetitive tasks, on lighter topics, but that you keep pushing at her until she’s snaps at you. Do I have that right?”
How in the name of Celestia’s enormous flank was the bookworm the socially intelligent one? It never failed to stagger her. Rainbow shouldered on, “I can’t just chat about ‘lighter topics’ Twi, this is important!”
In the same tone, “And I’d also guess that, when you tell her that, she tells you that she’s said everything you need to work on already. You clearly remember it, given that you repeated it back to me just a moment ago, so that’s not the issue. So I’ll play Applejack, since she’s not here right now, and continue the thought. What, Rainbow Dash, have you done to resolve those problems she’s brought up with you?”
And now she was being judged by two ponies instead of one. This time, though, she had answers to give. “A lot, actually. I asked Pinkie how she remembers everything, and she showed me all those notes she has in her, uh, lair. That didn’t really work for me, so I talked to a few friends from work who know weather magic, and Starry Skies reminded me about that trick where you can put your voice in a bit of specially treated cloudstuff and have it play back at you. And I asked Spike to write me a letter to Celestia about the taxes stuff, and because I’m an Element of Harmony I actually got a royal exemption, so that’s not a problem. I’m about halfway back to paying AJ back all her bits, too, so there,” she said triumphantly.
Twilight waited patiently as she talked, then stood there for nearly an entire minute, still with the same expression. “I’m happy to hear that, and I’ll be sure to have a talk with Spike about what kind of mail he can send the Princess. I did say I couldn’t give you answers with any real certainty at this point. If you want me to continue to guess, I’d then say that, while this is progress, the fact that it took her practically screaming what was wrong at you for you to notice strained her trust in you. She may be looking for you to pick up on something she hasn’t mentioned, or she could just be watching and waiting to see if you have the patience to keep making that kind of progress. She may also be rather upset at you getting a royal pardon on your taxes; as far as I know, she still pays them. And before you try to do the same for her, I guarantee she’d be quite upset at you if you did.”
Rainbow stood stock still for a moment. “Why.”
“Consider this a test,” Twilight said with a smile, reopening her book. “Your goal is to study Applejack. Listen to her. Let her speak about what she’s interested in, stop yourself from interrupting or expositing at her, and exercise your patience. It’s how you learn, socially.”
There was silence. Then, “Are you actually giving me homework?”
“Then, we winch it open about mid-morning, right before the mist burns off. Wait too late, and the sun evaporates the water before it can soak into the ground and get to the roots. Applebloom did that one week for an entire year, on account of she didn’t consider how the season changing would throw off the timing. My fault, ‘cause I didn’t tell her proper about sensing that, but it still ruined about half the crop. Let me tell you, I was letting her have it before Big Mac stepped in. Then I spent the rest of the evening apologizing. The ice cream helped.”
Rainbow bit back the instinct to reply, and waited, waited, oh so patiently waited. Applejack quietly hummed a tune, stepping between sprouts, somehow crushing exactly none of them, reached down, and kept the sprinkler running for precisely thirty-one seconds.
“And ‘cause I know you, Dash, no, you can’t do the rest of them. The timing depends on which section of the field you’re at, what kind of crop you’re watering, where exactly the sun is, and a whole heap of other factors you can’t even account for ‘less you got your earthsense trained up and tuned to the field.”
“Wasn’t gonna ask that,” Rainbow said under her breath. She’d been wondering if she could do the next one, not the rest of them.
Applejack moved on with the grace of a pegasus, Rainbow hanging back and absorbing her, the way she swung her weight between the clustered greenery beneath, the serene smile on her face.
“Now,” Applejack said, breaking the silence. “You were working on some thing where you can make a cloud speak at you. Reckon you could make it play music?”
Dash perked up. “Actually, now that you mention it, I probably could if I tweaked the structure just a little. The hard part would be keeping other background noises from getting caught up in it. But that’s not a problem if you just record in an isolated room, there’s a design for a sound dampening cloud structure that would be perfect. What music were you thinking for the prototype?”
The day continued on. Peacefully, productively, and, admittedly, with more than a few impatient outbursts on Rainbow’s part.
At its close, she found herself glad she listened.
