The Apple Family Orchard was what had made Ponyville.
It was what had fed the first settlers of the little village. It was what had helped the village grow larger and more prosperous. It was the very reason why the town came to be, and it was what the town depended on to this day. It was the backbone and defining feature of Ponyville.
The orchard was dying.
It started slow at first. Smaller harvests, a dead tree, less zap apple jam. Big Mac had noticed and thought that it was simply the weather being bad that harvest.
Then, more trees started dying, more apples went bad before they were harvested, and the zap apples were almost completely gone.
The mood on the orchard had fallen as the health of the trees started worsening. Granny Smith had looked older than she ever had, Applejack was working till she dropped, and Apple Bloom had lost all her positivity and charm, opting to work on the farm instead of doing things fillies her age would do.
Applejack had called her friends to see if they could find what was wrong with the orchard but they had found nothing, even after a week of doing so. No-one had an idea of what was wrong.
No-one but Big Mac.
Seeing the state of the orchard had brought back to him a repressed memory from when he was just a little colt. The orchard had been dying, just like it was now, but it had seemingly bounced back overnight, just like that.
Big Mac knew that it didn't happen just like that. He knew what had to be done to make something similar happen.
He had walked back to the place where his parents had grown the winding pear and apple trees to signify their love. He didn't stop at it and instead continued moving to a nearby clearing, a pit forming in his stomach as he did.
The clearing was like it had been years ago when Big Mac last went into it. It was hidden behind thorny bushes and tall trees and there were still the two flowers he had left there — perfectly preserved.
What had changed though was the hole in the center of the clearing. The very sight of it made the normally fearless stallion almost turn and bolt. He didn't run and approached it instead, just to confirm that it was what he remembered.
He stopped at the edge of the hole and looked down, and it was what he had feared: the maw of the earth.
Years ago, before the orchard had first started dying, his father had discovered the maw and he had talked to the land spirit it belonged to. The earth they had grown their trees in had given them a lot over the years in the form of bountiful farmlands and plentiful harvests. The earth wanted something in return.
It wanted sacrifice.
At first, his father had vehemently refused and told the spirit that it could cut its aid to the orchard. That was when the orchard has started dying.
His father had stubbornly tried to keep the orchard as bountiful as it had been with the spirit's aid. He remembered how hard his father worked in those two weeks.
After those two weeks, his father finally gave up and went back to grovel before the earth for forgiveness and to know what it wanted.
The earth didn't forgive him in Big Mac's opinion, for it wanted his father to be the sacrifice.
His father had begged the spirit to ask for something else. In response, the spirit demanded both him and his wife.
He still remembered how his parents had taken him to this place in the morning, explained everything to him, made him swear to take care of the family, and to not to tell anyone — not even Granny Smith — about the spirit.
He remembered how they had jumped into the maw with tears on their faces, and how the hole had closed after they did and how the orchard started recovering the very next day.
His family had been devastated, thinking that his parents had been lost to the Everfree forest's monsters. He was more devastated because he couldn't tell them of the sacrifice they had made, and because he couldn't speak then, he rarely ever spoke again.
In the present, he stared down the maw, knowing that the spirit wanted a sacrifice once more.
He couldn't go to the royal guard and tell them about the spirit because they would seize the land and throw him in jail for keeping the spirit a secret. His family would be destroyed, the Apple clan's ancestral land would be gone, and his parents would be labelled as cultists.
"What do ye want, spirit?" he asked after a long moment of staring down the maw.
An answer came, not in the form of words, but rather as images in his mind.
The image of his parents jumping into the maw played in his mind; the sacrifice part recieving great emphasis. That was already troubling.
Then the image of Apple Bloom flashed in his mind.
Tears made easy into his eyes and his hind legs gave out, making him sit down in the dirt.
The spirit wanted his sister.
He immediately started begging and pleading for the spirit to ask for anything but his family. He has already watched them be devastated once, he couldn't let it happen again.
The spirit stayed silent, making him beg harder. It seemed that it would be unmoved, just like when his father begged.
Then, when Big Mac almost lost all hope, the spirit decided that it would listen to his pleas and take something else.
The image of his parents' sacrifice played in his head once again, but this time, there was no specifications for the sacrifice, besides it being a pony. Still appalling.
He accepted, uncaring about the consequences.
His family was more important than anyone or anything.