The Stone

by Martian

Rating: everyone
Tags: Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Romance, Trixie, Big Macintosh
Length: 26163

Hard lives breed hard ponies, whether by choice or by need.

Hard lives breed hard ponies, whether by choice or by need. A chance meeting, a kindness rebuffed, and a direction of travel shared all lead to a journey of self-discovery on two fronts.

Cover is a composite of images from the talented artists Murphylaw4me and Dufy.

Published 2013-06-04 10:00:03 UTC
Last updated 2014-06-16 09:31:54 UTC

Act 1 - Prologue

The pale glow surrounded the stone, enveloping the entirety of its surface in a glittering pink haze. It wasn’t going to be any sort of a challenge- matter of fact, it was going to be the single easiest thing she had ever done.

"Come on..."

She was focused, she was rested, she was empowered. There was nothing she couldn't do, nothing that could stand before her might. The very idea that anything could ever be so willful as to ignore her power was laughable, and Trixie would have indeed laughed had she not been so busy trying to catch her breath.

Hooves ground against gravel, teeth clenched hard enough to crack. Sweat beaded on her forehead, across her shoulders and flank as she bent every iota of her unmatched power and will to heaving the stone free from the shackles of gravity, to loft it up and away like it was a feather. It would speed across the sky like it was shot from a cannon, would cut through the high clouds and arch over the distant mountains to splash down in the sea a hundred miles distant...

The hoof-sized stone shifted slightly, then settled a bit deeper in the furrow it had spent several eons carving for itself. It had seen thunderstorms, hurricanes, tornados and hungry-eyed ponies looking for building materials, yet had not budged an inch in all that time. In fact, the last thing to ever have a say in just what the stone did was that upstart glacier some fifty thousand years ago, and even that had only managed to move it some ten paces. It has settled there when the planet was still a ball of burning sulphur and lava, has seen the first water fall from the first clouds, had felt the first snow from the very first ice age settle atop it like a gentle blanket...

Be damned if it was going to let some wild-eyed blue pony in a bad hat shift it now.

Trixie's horn flared and sparked as she pushed every last bit of power she had into it, forcing her will on the stone- outright demanding through magic that it get up and vacate the continent in the most expedient fashion possible, preferably while making a whoosh or fweee noise.

It displayed little interest in acquiescing to her request.

The magic flickered once, then died with an unceremonious and decidedly unimpressive fwizzle. Trixie slumped to the ground, eyes squeezed shut, belly heaving as she tried to catch her breath. She had been at this for hours, and she wasn't used to pushing this kind of power, and certainly not working so hard. Oh, that isn’t to say she had never sweated in her life; there was her time at the rock farm, after all... but that had not been at all pleasant or really befitting her stature and class, so Trixie glossed over that part of her memory, preferring to think of it as a bad dream that never really happened.

Imagine, the Great and Powerful Trixie, reduced to turning and cutting stones for a living...

She cracked open one eye and gave the rock a suddenly suspicious look, like she might have seen it before... like maybe it was a relative of that giant chunk of basalt that had been her inanimate nemesis for an entire week during that time that never happened.

If stones had eyes, this one would have been regarding the pony with one of those steady, unimpressed looks that could last all day.

Trixie was growing familiar with those looks. She had certainly been getting more than her fair share of them of late, and they were not a look one wanted to see when one is essentially singing for one's daily bread. Uninspired ponies as a rule don't give away their bits, and more than once had Trixie had to get by on a pittance and whatever she could scrounge up after a show.

Talentless hacks and mouth-breathing yokels, the lot of them. They had no idea the wonder they were privileged to, the incredibly rare opportunity to bask in the glow of Trixie’s magic and show-stopping perfection! Like it was her fault the magic just wasn’t obeying...

She sat up with a sigh, rubbing the bridge of her nose with one hoof. Her magic had be getting temperamental in the past few months, and even her admittedly superior talents with sleight-of-hoof could only go so far without that extra spark of magic to really make them shine. It was like something had been burnt out inside of her, ever since...

Since she had lost the amulet.

The memory sent a chill curling down Trixie’s back. As needful as she might be to prove she was indeed the Greatest and Most Powerful Unicorn in all Equestria, it was best that the amulet was no longer around her neck. She had been powerful, but there was no denying that trinket demanded a price even she wasn't willing to pay. With it gone though, Trixie could only remember the giddy, exalted feeling of weidling magic like it was a plaything, like she had done when a she had been a foal who had just discovered levitation spells. She had been able to do anything she wanted with the merest effort of will, and now...

She couldn't even lift a rock when she wanted to.

Trixie stared at that rock for a long time, no expression on her face. She didn't hear the wind stirring the springtime branches above her, didn't listen to the twitter and call of birds reveling in the warming sunshine, didn't even notice the way the shadows crawled across the ground as the sun made its ponderous way across the sky. The pot was boiling itself dry on her cookfire, unheeded. A thieving squirrel darted from her wagon's door with a mouthful of pilfered biscuits, unacosted. Trixie's world had shrunk to the size of one hard-hearted and uncaring stone: grey and dirty and utterly impervious to her will.

One hoof prodded the stone, disrupting some twenty thousand years of careful erosion that would have settled it perfectly flush with the earth. It would have to start all over again. Had it been anything other than a rock, there could have been a number of things it may have done to express displeasure about its work being ruined. Happily though, it didn't actually give a damn: it was a rock. For it, everything was sorted. It just had to sit there, quietly, for a few billion eons. It had all the time in the world to be a rock, and it was excelling at it.

Trixie was being outperformed by a random piece of geology.

The thought lit a sudden fire in the unicorn's heart. She was up now, all four hooves braced, her hat carelessly flung aside, letting her mane fall free in a messy tumble. The sun struck her glimmering horn just so as she willed the magic to life, glinting with a perfect theatrical flourish. The faint nimbus took hold of the offending stone once more, wrapped it in a pale pink glow that swirled and crackled with unfettered anger. Trixie grit her teeth hard, bent every neuron to her will, forced the magic up and out and into that rock. She willed it shattering into dust, willed it being flung to the moon, willed it being driven down to the very core of the planet to be boiled away into nothing by the ancient heat that had originally forged it.

The rock continued to do absolutely nothing. Worse, it somehow looked smug.

Trixie's exasperated cry startled a few birds from their perches, setting them to twittering as they darted off, the nervous chatter underlined by the slamming of the wagon door.

Author's Note

But is it a shipfic? Trixie is about to meet Big Macintosh, and the tag at the top of this story is indeed 'Romance', but you may find that the movement in that direction is slow. I'm not just throwing Trixie and Big Mac at one another for the sake of seeing ponies snogging; there are deep character traits to be explored, and I should like to sound them and see if TrixieMac is a relationship that can actually work.

I think it can, and some of the headcanon I've built with the hep of a few other writers here on the site has brought me to several important conclusions into just why Trixie Lulamoon behaves the way she does. I'm not trying to redeem Trixie, but you may come to understand her, at least.

There is no plan for this fic; it goes where the characters take me. I am just along for the ride, much as you are. :twilightsmile:

Chapter 1 - Chance Meeting

Morning saw fresh golden light streaming through the window set high into the side of the wagon, which caused to wake a slightly less unhappy but slightly more disheveled Trixie, who eventually pushed open the door and stepped down the little set of stairs.

The morning light also saw that a second wagon had moved into the little clearing, though it was more like a cart- half of it stacked with wicker pots and the other half with carefully arranged sapling trees. It must have been owned by the rather large and heavyset red stallion who was standing beside the blazing cookfire, minding a black pot set on a metal tripod above it. Trixie’s own pot was sitting on the ground beside the rings of stones, obviously carelessly discarded by the oaf when he stole her campfire.

“And just what do you think you are doing?!” she snapped, in no mood for using such complex tools as logic or common sense.

The stallion gave her a slow look, then looked carefully around the clearing, then down to the pot he had been stirring. He let the wooden spoon go and regarded the mare again. He considered his options, though judging by the time it took him, he was weighing them with consideration to the rest of the universe as a whole. One could practically see the gears slowly turning, driven by some vast and ponderous mechanism. The answer was surprisingly succinct for the amount of time it took to arrive.

“Makin’ breakfast.” He went back to stirring.

Incensed, Trixie stomped a hoof, “Over my fire!”

The spoon was released. Again the slow searching examination of the clearing and all the things within it, including quite possibly every leaf on the elm tree behind Trixie’s wagon.

“Fire was out.”

“A likely story! I suppose you threw away my sup- my breakfast while you were at it, didn’t you?!”

The stallion didn’t get angry, didn’t seem much perturbed in any fashion. He simply turned a bit and stretched out one soup-plate-sized hoof to knock Trixie’s pot onto its side. The unicorn sucked in a breath of air, ready to give this laconic hick the kind of verbal thrashing that only The Great and Powerful Trixie could, when she noticed that what had once been her pot was now a kind of really short, blackened pipe.

“Bottom burnt through,” he said, stating the obvious.

The loss of her cooking pot was an annoyance she could have certainly gone without, and the unexpected company was not at all cooling off what had already been a fairly unhappy pony to begin with. Worse than all of that, though, was the way the big red pony just went back to minding his food, like Trixie didn’t matter whatsoever.

This was the wrong thing to do.

A bolt of pale pink magic smacked into his pot, knocking it clean off its chain to roll across the ground. The sudden burst of magical potency actually shocked Trixie, causing her to fall back onto her haunches. The big pony, who was right beside the pot, just sort of turned his head to watch the old black iron cauldron gently spin to a stop on its side, the spoon still held in his mouth. A dollop of oatmeal fell from the end of it, landing in the fire with a faint hiss. The rest of his breakfast was now spattered across the ground.

Neither moved for a moment. A smell of cinnamon and apples curled through the air between them.

Without a word of complaint, the stallion stretched out a hoof and lifted the pot, setting the handle back on the chain that hung from the iron tripod over the fire. Trixie watched him, her breath held tight in her throat as the fellow stood and ambled slowly to his cart to draw out a little bag and a jug from a bundle that was beneath it. Trixie recognized the habit from the days before she had the roofed travelling wagon; a groundsheet and a few blankets were under the cart. He had slept there with it as his roof.

Not paying her any mind, he carefully poured out a measure of water from the jug, corked it, then sat down heavily just where he had before to watch the pot, apparently waiting for it to come to a boil again.

Trixie let out her breath, then nearly jumped out of her skin when he turned his great head to peer at her.

“I have enough for two.”

Trixie grew suspicious. “What? Why?”

Macintosh shrugged one heavy shoulder. “Your pot’s busted.”

“And you think that’s a good enough reason for you to just sashay into my campsite and take over my fire?!” Trixie advanced on him, fixing on Macintosh the kind of glare that would have reduced any other pony to a quivering heap. “Do you have any idea the pony you have insulted?! I am the Great and Powerful-”

“Trixie. Yup.” He eyed the water in the cauldron, then ferreted about a little in the bag at his side. These were not the actions of an intimidated pony, and Trixie was well aware that her reputation had spread to a fair sized chunk of Equestria, and not in a good way. Her outburst was stymied, but instead of calming down, she grew all the more suspicious. Why would a pony who knew her name, and who had just had his breakfast poured into the dirt, still offer to make her some food? There was no reason at all for him to do anything of the sort, and Trixie herself would have probably packed up and left in a very loud huff had she received the kind of treatment she had just given.

“Why?” she asked again, slowly.

Oats were poured into the water just as it was starting to boil. The spoon was taken up to give the mixture a swirl. The slow, unhurried movements might have been relaxing to him, but every second he took built up the kind of pressure in Trixie that usually caused alarms and klaxons to go off in industrial centers.

“Your pot’s busted.”

Trixie was ready to go off like a bomb, but before she could Big Macintosh shrugged his shoulder and continued, “Neighbourly thing to do.”

The explosion was stymied, but the sputtering outrage was no less fierce. “The Great and Powerful Trixie doesn’t need your charity! I have my own breakfast, thank you very much!” Stale biscuits and staler jam were a breakfast... of a sort. With a pot of tea it was actually very nearly enjoyable, but to get some tea going she’d have to bring her kettle out to the fire and just now she had no inclination to let this presumptuous oaf feel like she owed him something.

Without waiting for a reply, she whirled and stormed her way back into her wagon, taking care to slam the door good and hard to get the point across that she really did not need any help, and certainly not the help of some slow-witted hick, no matter that his apple cinnamon oatmeal smelled like something out of a very lovely dream, no doubt made all the better with a generous dash of rich brown sugar and just a splash of fresh cream...

Grumbling to herself,Trixie pushed open the lid of the box that held her supplies and peered at the dwindling stockpile, selecting the last plain brown box of wrapped biscuits and the remains of a jar of grape jelly that had probably been lurking in the bottom of the box since before Nightmare Moon made her first appearance. It wasn’t so much jelly as it was some kind of strange, grape-scented amethyst crystal.

It broke her last spoon.

Big Macintosh glanced up curiously when he heard a shout from the wagon, and caught a glimpse of something vaguely jar-shaped speeding off towards the horizon at the kind of velocity usually reserved for the space shuttle.

The biscuits were dry, and sorely lacking for tea, but at least they served to fill the hole in her stomach for a little while. It didn’t do much to dampen her mood, but Trixie wasn’t going to venture outside and risk seeing that smug stallion’s face.

Instead, she busied herself about inside the wagon’s close confines as best she could, organizing her costume rack in between bites of powdery biscuit, then sitting down in front of her storage crate with a small parcel of tools and a glitchy stage prop she had been meaning to fix. In working order, the springs should be causing it to spin wildly back and forth with sparklers attached to its flywheel for a dazzling, hypnotic display, but all it managed in her last performance was to sort of sizzle a moment before falling off and singeing her cloak.

It only took a moment to find the problem; two of the three springs had given up the ghost and snapped into pieces. Trixie had no spares, and wasn’t even sure she could find a place to buy fresh ones. She sighed, and was about to chuck it into the old crate beneath her bunk that held the dozen or so other ever-broken props when she heard heavy hoofsteps approaching her door.

She sat still, turning her head to stare at the close door to her wagon, bracing herself to lash out with the very worst verbal weaponry she had in store should that backwater hillbilly so much as dare to knock. It never came, though. Instead, there was a momentary pause then the soft thump of something being set down on the step before the hoofsteps retreated.

“How kind of you, making sure I remember by ruined kitchenware,” she muttered, angrily finishing off the last of the horrid biscuit and not caring about the crumbs that fell to the floor. It’d mean she’d have to sweep up before she left to avoid attracting mice, but really if any mouse was foolish enough to try and get into her wagon these days, it would have been a boon- Trixie could always use more stage animals to win the hearts of younger ponies...

She found herself growing hungry again rather swiftly, and curse her brain, she couldn’t help but be reminded of the sweet and spicy scent of the oatmeal, couldn’t help but imagine the tanginess of the apple slices that were probably in it, and how it would be sweetened with more than a little brown sugar, and perhaps even just a touch of delicious maple syrup...

Trixie was relieved then to hear the sound of wheels on gravel, amd of hooves leading them, wheeling about outside then receding off in some direction or another. The oaf had vacated- now maybe she could have a decent breakfast. She was sure she still had some Dajeerling in the tin, and a bit of sugar besides.

The kettle was filled with fresh water from her store, a teapot prepped with what was left of the dried leaves, and an old chipped cup set atop the crate amidst the pile of tools and broken springs. The door was opened, and Trixie very nearly planted her hoof into the small cast iron cauldron the stallion had been cooking with. A spoon was stuck in it, and the thing still half-full of gently steaming oatmeal, filling Trixie’s world with the delicious, homely scent of cinnamon apples.

The little metal tripod the pot had hung from was leaning against her wagon. At its feet, the remains of her own pot, somehow sheepish, there on the gravel. Always pragmatic, Trixie’s first moment of shock there on her stoop with one hoof raised was spent noticing that with a cut, a bit of shaping and some soldering, she could turn that ruined pot into a serviceable and re-usable mortar tube for a large firework.

The second moment was used to realise that the stallion had obviously left his cauldron for her, with no intention of having it back.

The third moment belonged to Trixie’s temper, which heated, glowed, flared, then detonated spectacularly, along with the water in her kettle.

“Hey!”

She ran out from the clearing to the road, the cauldron and tripod in tow, gripped in a pink nimbus. Trixie’s head swiveled sharply for side to side, her pale mane flying as she searched for the source of her vexation. There, of a goodly distance down the road, just dropping beneath the crest of a rise, the rear of a wagon, a few small bundles of green leaves showing just above its rear gate.

“Hey!” she shouted again, starting to trot down the road, hoping to catch the oaf’s attention. The wagon just rolled along its merry way, disappearing out of sight. Trixie’s teeth ground together as she whirled around and stomped rapidly to her wagon. The pot and tripod were flung unceremoniously through the open door, followed shortly by her own ruined one.

It should be noted that no mess was produced from the hastily tossed pot; no oatmeal was spattered across her floor or bunk, as there was none left inside of it to do so. Proud as Trixie might be, it has been Apple Family porridge, and the family knew how to make their food irresistible; even the most basic travelling supplies they kept were above and beyond anything bits could buy in a shop, and were certainly lightyears beyond Doctor Perrywinkle’s Dry Traveler’s Wafers, (guaranteed to be just as edible ten years down the roads as the day they had been when freshly baked, which tells you pretty much everything you need to know.)

The gift of a decent breakfast wouldn’t stop her from verbally thrashing that hick when she caught up to him, but a full belly would probably make her less inclined to swatting him about the ear with a switch, or whatever it was those backwater ponies used.

Her wagon rattled as she got onto the road, moving slow at first as she built up momentum, then advancing to a steady trot that she could keep up for hours. As much as Trixie would have loved a soft life, she had lived on the road long enough to have a surprising reserve of stamina and strength- her muscles could have been carved from wood.

And given how massive that idiot is, I’ll likely catch up to him within the hour. Then he’ll see just how big of a mistake he made.

It didn’t take an hour. Matter of fact, by the second hour, Trixie had only just caught sight of Macintosh and his cart at the far end of a long straight. It baffled her as to just how fast and steady a clip the muscle-bound behemoth was keeping up: most thick-necked oafs Trixie had seen on the road got winded within minutes of just trying to keep up with her, but this fellow moved along like he was powered by steam.

By the third hour, Trixie was sweating and right at the edge of starting to breathe hard, but had managed to close the distance between herself and the source of her vexation.

“Hey you!” she shouted, giving her voice a magical spin to make sure it reached him. She had superb vision of course, and so noticed how his ear twitched before his turned his big, stupid head to glance over his shoulder. Seeing her, he slowed down to a gentle walk rather than simply stop,which would let him avoid the stiffness that would come from cramping muscles. Perhaps he wasn’t nearly as dumb as he looked, but that was a very deep pit for him to try and climb out of, in Trixie’s opinion.

She had caught up to him and pulled alongside after a few more moments, matching his slow stride and grateful for the chance to catch her breath, though not that she’d show it to him.

“You,” she said, practically spitting the word.

“Yup. Me,” he answered, nodding cheerfully. He was chewing on a grass stalk. Not a bead of sweat showed on his forehead. Two sets of hooves thumped along the gravel road, underlined with the rattle and squeak of wheels and the occasional clatter of pots in the back of Mac’s cart.

“You can take your things back, thank you very much,” she said, not deigning to even look at Macintosh. She marched along at his side, nose lifted into the air.

He thought about it for a few moment, his grass stalk traversing his mouth a few times as he chewed. “Nope.”

Trixie scoffed, “Like you have a choice in the matter! You can have them back right this very instant, and be grateful that the Great and Powerful Trixie didn’t just throw them into the ditch!” So saying, she flicked her head to the side, and drew out both the pot and tripod through the front window of the wagon. They drifted out and hovered in the air beside the steadily plodding Macintosh, who eyed them curiously before giving his head a shake.

“Nope.”

“Take them back right this instant! Trixie did not ask for any kind of help, nor does she want your pathetic charity!”

Macintosh frowned and eyed her anew. She was trying her best to look aloof and disdainful, but she was absolutely furious, to the point where the old adage ‘champing at the bit’ was very nearly true.

“It was a gift,” he said.

“Trixie doesn’t want your gifts!”

Macintosh was not the kind of pony who got angry easily. Matter of fact, last time he had gotten well and truly angry enough to raise his voice was nearly a year ago, and he had felt awful for days afterwards, not least of all because it had been directed towards his littlest sister. Still, Trixie’s attitude was abrasive to say the least, and the big stallion could feel his hackles starting to rise.

“You ain’t from around here, are you?”

She scoffed, again. “I should think not. My family lives in Canterlot, not some tree-studded muck hole.”

“Well missy, you ain’t in Canterlot, and out here when you get something given to you, you smile and accept. You don’t give it back; that’s rude as rude can be.”

“As if the Great and Powerful Trixie cares what your quaint folk-ways are.” So saying, she dropped the things right in Macintosh’s path, forcing the big pony to draw up short to avoid trampling them. Truth be told, it wasn’t like he could really damage them; the pot was cast iron, made by the kind of craftsponies who believed that the best pots were the kind that could float down an active lava flow without so much as deforming. If anything, it would probably damage the cart rather than the other way around.

Trixie drew her own wagon to a stop a little further on, turning back with a smirk to watch what Macintosh would do.

The big pony rubbed his face into a hoof, letting out a long sigh. He could sort of grasp just why Trixie was being stubborn and he had a fair bit of experience dealing with such ponies, considering he lived with a sister who could put twelve mules to shame, but Trixie was a level of stubborn even that bull-headed mare could not dream of achieving.

“Listen,” he said, taking up the pot and tripod and balancing them neatly across his back. He marched towards Trixie, pulling up alongside her, “Yours is broken, and I don’t mind letting you have mine. I can borrow a set from my cousin just up the road. It is no trouble whatsoever.”

“Trixie doesn’t need your help,” she repeated, tossing her mane and starting forward again. This was actually the wrong direction she wanted to travel, but one way was just as good as another in the end, and she wasn’t about to admit to a wrong decision in front of the hick.

Macintosh felt his temper starting to roil, but forced it down. He tossed the pot and tripod into the back of his cart before moving to catch up to the singularly most stubborn pony he had ever met. “Fine. I’ll not help you then, but how about I let you know that my aunt is a ‘smith? Dunno if she could fix that pot o’ yours, but you could ask.”

“This is salient to my exigency,” said Trixie, who grinned when she noticed how Big Mac’s forehead wrinkled a bit as he tried to decipher just what she had said. “It means yes,” she added, and smiled when she saw Mac’s frown deepen.

It wasn’t far to Turnover Hills, though it is amazing just what one’s company can do to distance. Had Macintosh been travelling with either of his sisters, they would have probably been singing or telling stories or any number of other things to pass the time. Hours and miles would have drifted by unnoticed, and there would have been any amount of smiles and laughs shared along the way.

Trixie was not cheerful company. It wasn’t that she was miserable company, it was just she had no apparent interest in doing any of the usual things ponies in a company did to pass time on the road, primarily by being company. Instead, she made sure to stay several cart lengths in front of Macintosh, marching with purpose and her head held high.

It wasn’t the silence that was grating on Mac’s nerves; there was few things the stallion enjoyed more than simply watching the world go by without a word being said. It was the way the silence was being presented, with Trixie taking pains to let him know that she had no interest in talking or even sharing the trip.

This was one of the rare moments in Mac’s life where he was seriously considering actually disliking a pony.

Every minute felt like five, but by the time the sun was overhead both wagons had drawn up at an ornate gate set before a neat little cobbled path that drove in through tidy rows of apple trees all in bloom. Green leaves were outnumbered ten to one by the tiny white petals of the flowers, their scent filling the air with a delicate perfume. The ground beneath the trees was blanketed white with fallen blossoms, white as snow, giving the impression that a blizzard had passed through leaving the look but none of the cold.

Sweet Apple Acres had the best soil for growing, all the family agreed, but Turnover Hills was easily the most picturesque.

Macintosh looked up to the sign above the gate. It was all carved woodwork, his great uncle Turnover having been a fair hoof at carpentry back in the day. A latticework of varnished wood, looking much like the strips of pastry on a cherry pie, with carved bundles of apples and grapes and cherries all surrounding the ornate lettering that spelled out Turnover Hills.

"This is your cousin's farm? What a mess."

"What?" Macintosh was startled; how could any pony with working eyes not be taken with the beauty of the place?

Trixie frowned and waved a hoof at the petal-strewn path. "Would it be so hard to pass a broom over this, or take a rake to the grounds? I mean, honestly..."

Mac's jaw worked soundlessly as he stared at the strange pony, then turned his head to look again at the world beyond the gate.

Silky white petals drifted down from the trees in ones and twos, a soft snowfall in the late spring warmth. Tiny bees buzzed about amongst the blossoms, a living chorus to the songs of joy from the countless birds that lived amongst the branches. There, over the trees, the largest hill on the land was striped with the green vineyards that produced some of the sweetest grapes and the best wine in central Equestria. Sharp eyes could spot a few colourful shapes moving along the rows on that hill; ponies seeing to their day's work. Turnover Hills was the very picture of an established farm governed by honest, hard-working ponies who genuinely loved the land...

"You know, I met city folks who would love to see this place," said Mac slowly. "Matter of fact, there's been a few photo shoots done here by some big magazines-"

"No doubt for issues favoured the uncultured sort who dig the ditches or whatever on the outskirts. The real elite don't enjoy this kind of... low living."

He gave her a long sideways look and wondered if describing Twilight Sparkle's eager helpfulness on occasion around Sweet Apple Acres, even with her new royal title and wings, would knock the uptight pony down a peg. He decided against it though, namely because he knew the two had butted heads more than once, and Trixie struck him as the kind of pony who would gleefully pounce on the opportunity to insult the pleasant librarian princess. Macintosh would be the first to agree he wasn't the fastest horse in the race, but he knew enough not to kick over anthills.

"Well, they're just flower petals, and no one's gonna be sweeping them up for you," said Mac with unusual sharpness. He gave his cart a tug and pulled through the gates, not particularly caring if Trixie followed.

His parents had gotten married beneath the blossoms at Turnover Hills...

Chapter 3 - Sweet and Sour

Trixie blew out a breath, forcing her nerves and temper to simmer down as she strode stiffly away from the blacksmith shacks, focusing her eyes straight ahead to her wagon.

Thirty bits for a stupid cauldron! Trixie had less than forty bits left to her name until she could set up a show. With any luck she could glean a sizable fee from the unreasonably loud pony who seemed to own the land, but farmers were either poor or ferociously guarded about opening their wallets. Turnover seemed to be taken with her though, so just maybe she could wheedle a nice number out of him with a better show than she had originally planned.

It wasn’t hard to impress earth ponies- they were about as gullible as you could get, really, but an extra bit of flair would be in order, both to seeing to her fee and to establishing that the Great and Powerful Trixie was indeed far greater and powerfuller than they could ever dream of being.

Wait... was that a word?

Trixie let out an exasperated breath; she was starting to think in their language, like their hillbilly drawl was contagious or something. If she ever caught herself saying y’all, she’d die of acute embarrassment.

She noticed the squadron of foals running about the carts, most of which seeming focused on the one the hick had been pulling- ‘Mac’, that awful blacksmith had called him. They were shouting and chattering in the usual maddening way of children everywhere, and a few were carrying watering cans and only occasionally managing not to slosh water over themselves and one another. Two of the older foals were perched precariously on the back of the cart, trying their best to get some water into the various baskets that were arrayed within. Just how they’d reach the ones in the center was a mystery, but one the unicorn had little interest in solving- she had more pressing concerns.

Namely, just where her hat had gotten to.

Trixie blinked at the empty peg at the front of her wagon- the peg where she had always left her hat, and where she fully remembered leaving her hat after the little demonstration for Turnover. There was certainly no breeze strong enough to steal it away, and it hadn’t fallen to the ground...

An eruption of giggles from the playing foals caught her ear, and Trixie very slowly turned around, one brow raised. Half a dozen pairs of eyes were watching her, from beneath Mac’s cart, a few furtive whispers and hushes sounding from the shadowy retreat.

“Go on,” said one tiny voice.

“But she’s watching..”

“Well yeah, how else are you gonna ask the question, dummy?”

“Don’t call my brother that.”

“Well, he's being dumb...”

There was a thump and the sounds of a brief scuffle beneath the cart before Trixie’s hat walked out from beneath it, along with a few small fillies and colts aiming to get away from the fight that seemed to be escalating behind one of the cartwheels. Trixie exercised a bit of willpower and lifted up the brim of her hat, revealing a set of four pale yellow legs and a nervous pair of dark blue eyes, which widened when they saw her.

“Um...” the colt quavered, and squeaked faintly when the filly at his side nudged him forward an extra step.

It wasn’t often these days that Trixie had awed gazes fixed upon her, but if there was one group that truly appreciated a spectacle and a show, it was the younger generation. She lifted her chin and shifted her stance just a little, taking on her carefully practiced ‘Sorceress’ pose, guaranteed to inspire mystery in a crowd. Trixie was pleased to see it was a resounding success; when she took a step forward, one little filly squeaked and scuttled backwards to hide behind the protection of a cartwheel.

Trixie stood tall over the colt wearing her hat.

“You have a question for me?" she said, adding a little magical spin to her voice that caused her words to echo strangely in the air. A few more gasps and nervous noises sounded from the crowd.

“G-go on, Greensleeves!”

“A-ahh...” the colt looked ready to run, faint, widdle himself, or even all three at once. Trixie dialed back her Mysterious Sorceress look, her smile widening to a friendly one. She plucked the hat from the foal’s head with an effort of will and lifted it up into the air.

“Are you...” Greensleeves prodded a hoof at the ground a bit, glancing nervously to peers. They all egged him on with silent waves and expressive nods, secure in the knowledge that they had a head start at running away should Trixie turn into a manticore or something. He tried one more time. “Are you a wizard?”

Trixie let the question hang in the air a moment, using the breath of silence to set her hat down upon her head. The sequined stars glittered in the sunlight.

“I am,” she said, turning away and starting back towards her wagon. She counted three steps before she heard the dejected sounds from the group. She stopped, then looked to the foals over her shoulder, her smile broad and sly.

“Should The Great and Powerful Trixie prove it?”

The cheers lit up her world.

Years ago, had anyone asked Trixie to perform for foals, she would have laughed at the very idea. Bending her peerless talents and show-stopping abilities for ponies far too young to ever appreciate her gifts? She would have thought it a crime...

The past few months had taught her differently, though. While her good name was recovering from the Ursa Minor fiasco years ago, she still wrestled sometimes with halfwit hecklers who couldn’t forget such trivial happenings and would insist on bringing it up to poison the well. It made it tricky to get the high-paying audiences as she had been able to draw in before, but Trixie was nothing if not a quick learner, and a lucky break outside of Trottingham had her re-evaluate the whole idea of performing for fillies and colts.

It wasn’t to say she liked them overmuch, of course, and she certainly didn’t go out of her way to advertise that she would perform for a younger audience. What Trixie did do was perform little impromptu demonstrations near playgrounds, then drop the word that she would be performing at this park or another that evening. It was remarkable just how many parents would let themselves be dragged out by their kids to see Trixie perform.

Perhaps her shows weren’t quite as astounding or impressive as they had been before, when she had to focus on keeping her peers entertained, but Trixie found that the simpler tricks that so easily fooled younger minds didn’t take near so much energy, and working enough of her higher tier pieces in could earn some applause and cheers from the parents, which was as good as money in the sock under the mattress.

To put it simply, Trixie had discovered that the quickest way to a pony’s wallet was through their kids. It was a genius piece of tactical accounting prowess that Trixie was quite proud of.

She didn’t enjoy it of course. That would be silly; foals were so, well, childish... A puff of smoke, a few sparks, a rabbit produced from the cunning little pocket in her hat and they went absolutely mad. They were so simple to please, and always so eager for the next trick...

Every eye was on Trixie as she swirled her cape, raising one hoof and grinning as she cast a fine mixture of conjurer’s dust into the air before her with a sweep of a hoof. It made for an expanding crescent of glittering silver that drifted over the heads of the awe-struck foals. They shrieked with sudden panic and glee as Trixie sparked the dust to life with a tiny spark of magic, turning the pretty fog into a crescent of pink flame. She took hold of it, keeping the shape of the cold-burning fire and lifting it higher into the air, giving it an expert spin so the edges sparked and flashed.

It was one of her more impressive tricks, usually one saved for the evening hours when the effect would be far more impressive, but Trixie was feeling creative. While the dust still burned, she spun it into shapes above the heads of the wide-eyed foals, forming the shape of a crescent moon, then the circle of the sun, then, just before the powder burned away entirely, she drew open the sphere.

Burning wings spread wide, the majestic head of a phoenix rising and reaching towards the blue sky above before the dust gave up the ghost and went out, now just dust drifting on the faint breeze.

Bright cheers and clapping hooves filled Trixie’s world, but she wasn’t done just yet; at the heart of where the image of the phoenix had been, she cast an orb of light from her own magic, fat green and pink sparks falling from it with hisses and sizzles.

“The Great and Powerful Trixie needs an assistant! Hurry now; she can only hold the Gate of Akahto open for a few seconds!” She grit her teeth and gave her legs a quiver, for all the world looking like a pony fighting with the very nature of reality. Excited whispers and cries, scuttling hooves and nervous squeaks all came from the foals as they performed the rapid schoolyard arithmetic of ‘not me!’ until there was only one small pony remaining; the pale brown colt they had called Greensleeves.

Trixie nudge the light orb a bit until it hung over his head, a few harmless sparks falling about him. She managed to hold back her laughter at seeing the awestruck look on his face as he stared straight up at the ghostly light.

“Lift your hooves and catch what falls!” she cried, then simultaneously let the light flare out and blinked in the little box that she knew had been resting on her nightstand in the wagon.

Greensleeves yelped and lifted both hooves, eyes squeezing shut as whatever it was dropped from the very sky towards him. Having once experienced this when she first tried on the act with kids, Trixie deftly caught the little oblong box with her magic and safely settled it onto the colt’s hooves rather than letting a rather stiff wooden corner thump into his forehead.

She had to do a lot of apologizing that first time...

Trixie panted for breath where she stood, though she probably didn’t have to bother with that little bit of theatre given how every foal’s attention was on the still-cringing Greensleeves and the ornate little wooden box he now held. A few fillies and colts drifted towards him, one particularly brave one reaching out with a little hoof to prod at the box, but before she could touch it Trixie called out.

“Be careful! The only pony that can touch that box is the one who caught it. If anypony touches it without his permission...” she let the unspoken threat hang in the air, adding just that extra bit of mystery and wonder to their world.

Greensleeves seemed to realise that he had not been crushed under a falling mountain or hydra, or whatever else had come from the sparking ball of light. He cautiously opened one blue eye, then the other, then sat back and held the box before him, looking surprised. The box was old, the wood chipped and nicked and very nearly black with age (and carefully applied shoe-polish.) It was about the same size as a juice box, though perhaps a little longer and narrower, and for sure there was no juice box in the world that had strange carvings cut deeply into every surface. It felt strangely heavy for its small size, and it rattled faintly like there was something inside.

Trixie stepped closer to the group of fillies and colts that surrounded the stunned pony, doing her very best not to fall into a fit of giggles at the sight of their expressions. Luckily, long practice had given Trixie perfect control.

“Behold, my young apprentice; what you have in your hooves is the Mystery of Akahto! Only a few ponies have ever seen what is within... do you think you can open it?”

The little colt blinked up at Trixie, then looked down to the box. He turned it this way and that, searching, then holding it out for his cousins to examine as well, but all agree that the box was sealed up tight; there was no way to open it.

“Ahh... but this is no ordinary box, and that isn’t a lid like on your mum’s cookie jar. It takes magic to open the Mystery...”

An older filly with a long braid of pale hair frowned and piped up, “But we’re all earth ponies, miss wizard...”

Indeed you are, thought Trixie, though curiously enough without the usual sense of superiority that would have warmed her heart. “Everypony has magic, and the Mystery can feel it.” She waved a hoof over the gathered foals, now numbering an even dozen since she had started. “All of you together just might be able to open the box, if you just try hard enough!”

An excited murmur rippled through her audience, and Trixie had to grin. “Put your hooves on one another’s shoulders, and on the shoulders of my Apprentice!” She waited for them to sort one another out, until there was a semi-circle two ponies deep around the wide-eyed Greensleeves, himself sporting a dozen hooves across both shoulders.

“Now,” said Trixie, “Close your eyes and think hard, all of you. Think about your magic; think about what makes you you. What you care about the most, what things you like the best...”

She watched their faces screw up into the fierce and focused mask concentration that only foals can manage, letting them think hard as they possibly can. A brief glance upwards spied a few adult ponies watching the show curiously from the porch of the homestead, though others were busily shunting about what looked to be long trestle tables. Oh well; a good show for their foals might just guarantee a willing and eager audience in the evening.

“Do you have it in your minds?” she murmured now, lowering her voice to a whisper, leaning towards them. Head bobbed and nodded all around in the half-circle. “My Apprentice, can you feel them, can you feel their magic?”

Always a tricky question to ask a foal of six, given their habit of bouncing back and forth between willing suspension of disbelief and terrifyingly level-headed truthfulness. Happily, Greensleeves seemed to have settled in the former category, though his voice was just a quavery squeak.

“I-I can...”

“Good... hold the Mystery of Akahto in both your hooves, and now... push all that magic into the box. Make it flow through your hooves into the wood.” Trixie watch the colt’s eyes screw up tight as he tried with all his might to do just that. “Like water running down your forelegs,” she murmured, “Like raindrops falling-” and here, with the precision of a pony who had practised the trick for a number of nights to get it just right, she pushed a spark of magic into the trick latch inside the ‘sealed’ box, tripping the spring that held the sliding lid closed.

Greensleeves gasped and very nearly dropped the box when he felt the lid shift between his hooves. “It’s open!” he cried, “We opened it!”

There was a brief beat of total silence, then world went mad as fillies and colts in every colour started talking and yelling and shouting all at once, every single one of them trying to climb over the others to get a look at their success.

Trixie couldn’t help herself but to laugh a bit at the spectacle, and she could see a few of the adults at the homestead grinning and slapping one another on the shoulder before moving off to do whatever it was they needed to do, apparently satisfied that their foals were in capable hooves. Trixie wasn’t entirely sure if she should have been happy or angry about that, but the thought was fleeting and her attention was drawn back to the crowd of tumblings foals when they discovered just what was kept in the strange and wonderful Mystery of Akahto.

“Toffees!”

The cheers redoubled as the foals raided Trixie’s private cache of sugary treats. In more serious shows, she’d have put in a special deck of cards fashioned from copper plates and cited ancient and mysterious powers that let her read minds - essentially just a particularly flashy and up-jumped version of one of the simplest card tricks out there. When not planning performances though, the box was a good place to keep her sweets, as otherwise she’d eat them all within minutes...

Trixie’s strength of will was second to none, except when it came to the topic of toffees, in which case she crumbled like a tower made of dry biscuit.

She broke out the card tricks and games next, using nothing much more complicated than simple sleight-of-hoof to dazzle the foals, sprinkled with a bit of proper magic here and there for that extra bit of flash. By the time Trixie brought her little impromptu performance to a close, the cheering was quite a bit more subdued, though it wasn’t because Trixie’s skills were lacking- it was simply that she loved the rock-hard toffee that stuck teeth together. Seeing as the foals had taken a sizable piece each, most of them probably won’t even be able to talk until the evening. Some parents would be overjoyed for such an occurrence, though Trixie realized a bit too late that if they were going to have a hard time talking, they would also have a hard time telling everyone about just how amazing Trixie was.

Well, it was too late to try and lever their jaws open now, and Trixie decided that while the extra adoration and publicity would be good, she likely already had everyone on the farm for a captive audience come the evening.

A glance to the sky revealed a sun that had travelled nearly a full hoof-width up towards its noonday zenith, an occasion marked not a moment later by the clamouring racket of a triangle being vigorously rung on the opposite side of the homestead. The foals were up on their hoofs and dashing off, calling out as best they could through mouths stuck shut from the rock toffee. Just how they’d actually manage to eat something with their jaws welded shut would have been worth watching. Trixie turned back to her wagon, lifting her hat with an effort of will to set it back onto its peg.

Something tugged on her cloak. She looked down into the earnest eyes of Greensleeves.

“Miss Trixie, are you gonna come for lunch?”

“I... don’t think that would be polite,” said Trixie carefully. She could hear voices all around, gathering to the opposite side of the homestead. Shapes were moving on the vineyard hill, drifting down the lazy slope towards her, maybe a dozen there alone. She wondered just how big the family actually was.

A chill curled down her spine.

Standing before a cheering crowd, yes. The focus of a hundred pairs of eyes, all wide with awe? It was something Trixie loved more than anything else. To be the center of attention was the most energizing thing she had ever known, but the last time she had eaten a meal amongst other ponies had been...

She was drawing a blank. The last time she remembered actually sitting down at a proper table was the last supper she had shared with her family before taking to the road. She had been the focus of attention then, for certain... but it wasn’t awed stares and stunned expressions that had been seated around her; it had been hard eyes and pursed lips, disdain written plainly across each face.

“Aww, please miss?” The wheedling voice drew Trixie back to the present. “There’ll be a whole lot of food, but I don’t mind sharing if you’re worried...”

She should have said yes. Trixie had been perfectly capable of getting by on meagre rations, but even her unparalleled patience was wearing thin when it came to dry biscuit and tea... especially when it was tea made from the leaves she already used that morning. She could hear the cheerful racket of the farming families through the close walls of her wagon, even from the opposite side of the homestead. She started to wonder about just what kind of foods they would have carted out for a group of ponies that big, but a grumble from her stomach told her to find something else to brood on.

So, she had pulled out the crate that was beneath her bed. Well, her bunk. The plank of wood that folded down from the wall so she could sleep on something other than the floor. Trixie had made it almost comfortable with a thin sheet of foam and a number of heavy blankets, though it didn’t much detract from the fact that it was just a plank of wood on hinges, held up with a two slender lengths of rope. It would be rather pleasant to have a real bed to sleep in that night, even if it was one she was just being lent as part of her payment.

With a bit of effort, she levered the crate out and set it next to the larger crate that made up her table. She ferreted around a bit inside the jumble of parts and pieces, causing a few things to clatter and clang, and discovered more than a few things that went sproing in dishearteningly weak ways. She dug up the pair of sparkler wheels that had been giving her problems two weeks ago and set them on the table, followed by the most recent malfunction.

Trixie pulled out the small screwdriver from her kit and carefully worked out the screws from all three props, her movements deft and sure from practice. She pried off the spinning jamb and arm, followed by the painted faceplate that was supposed to depict stars and moons. The cheap paint was flaking off, she saw; she’d have to find some fresh supplies to get them back into proper shape for the stage before she could use them.

Two springs left out of nine, one of which being the laughable attempt Trixie herself had tried to produce once in a desperate moment between acts in Manehattan. It was her kind of luck that the rubbish, half-strength piece of bent wire that she had fashioned would actually last longer than pieces she had paid good bits for. Of course, this was a sign that Trixie herself was talented at every single thing she put her hoof to, but she was willing to admit that all she really knew about making springs was that they were wire bent around a central spindle and put to heat. Just how they were heated, what kind of metal they were supposed to be and just what she was supposed to do after they were hot was beyond her.

Certainly, the awful Rosethorn probably knew every detail about forging them...

Trixie bit her lower lip and peered at the contents of her scrap crate. The trick lid on a second, larger version of her Mystery of Akahto needed springs, a starshower flywheel needed to be beaten back into shape after an unfortunate mishap with labelling had caused Trixie to attach an exploding firework to it rather than a simple comet-tail. The locking hinge on her bit-eater box (a handy and entertaining tool for acquiring a bit of extra coin during performances she added a bit of comedy to), had not only locked itself shut, but had sheared off its hidden latch. That was a particularly irritating, seeing as there was at least a dozen bits just sitting in it that she couldn’t reach without smashing the thing open. A broken crank for her fog machine, a bent but technically still serviceable trick knife...

Trixie sighed and crossed her hooves on the table before setting her forehead down atop them. She could really use a blacksmith for an afternoon. No doubt she could get all of her springs done within an hour (Trixie had managed to knock that ugly one together in a matter of minutes, and it had worked... after a fashion), and the rest could probably be finished by the evening...

She lifted her head and peered uneasily at the crate of busted tools of her chosen trade. With all of them working, she could probably put on her best performance in months. Trixie just had to bite down on her sense of personal affront and talk to that wretched Rosethorn again. No doubt the nag would probably try and take Trixie for every bit she had, again, but with them all fixed, bits wouldn’t be near so hard to come by. If she could put on three or four top-end performances before the wear and tear started to make itself known again...

Well, she had dealt with unscrupulous and distasteful ponies before; Trixie could do it again to meet her own needs.

Author's Note

For those wondering about some of the unusual pony names I may be using (Albermarle in the last chapter, Greensleeves in this one,) those are actual apple varieties. There is a wonderful selection of them to be found here, so if you find yourself struggling for Apple family names, well, now you have a source of good ones. :ajsmug:

Chapter 4 - Tempering Iron

“I’m surprised you aren’t with the rest of your family,” said Trixie, stepping beneath the drooping roof of Rosethorn’s forge.

“Already ate. Anyways, too many ponies gets noisy in a hurry. Apples, especially.”

“Well, you’re an Apple,” Trixie set her prop crate down on the floor, the nimbus of magic fading swiftly away.

“Nope. Apples don’t have thorns.”

“The big one- uh, Mac- said you were his aunt.”

Rosethorn shrugged, giving the coals a light raking, then stepping a hoof down on a bellows set on the floor. The glow turned a shade paler, sparks drifting upwards to the tin cylinder that hung above it. “Ain’t. Just been here long enough, I guess. Close enough to be family without sharing the blood.”

Trixie considered the taciturn blacksmith a moment and compared her to the stoic Macintosh. You’d never guess they weren’t related, though given that the former was sharp as a knife while the other was blunt as a sack full of mud...

“Regardless. Springs; can you make them?”

“Depends. Only have iron wire, not steel.”

“There’s a difference?”

“Plenty. Rusts quicker, more temperamental with its heating, gets brittle.”

Trixie frowned some, eyeing the box of wrecks. It was just her luck to be stuck with hillbilly technology. Well, she would have to make due; she had done it before, she could do it again. Even if they just lasted for a little while, it would be enough.

“Well, it’ll do.”

Rosethorn pulled down a kind of half-circle lid over the coals before turning to the unicorn, nodding, “Show me what you need, then.”

Trixie expected to have to describe every piece to the loutish mare, but to her surprise, Rosethorn seemed to understand just what was needed. She asked a few short questions, namely about length and strength, before drawing a few metal spindles from a rack and yanking down a line of wire from a large spool set on a cunningly fashioned cradle hung from the rafters. It was hard for Trixie to admit to being impressed, but she very nearly was when she saw the practiced ease for which Rosethorn moved.

The blacksmith stuck the end through a little notch cut at one end of the rod and set the other end into an odd-looking clamp with a handle. A few quick cranks and she had a coil of wire resting on the spindle. A few more deft, energy-saving motions later and she had the coil cut from the spool, slid off the spindle and set into the edge of the forge. She didn’t talk, didn’t try for light conversation, didn’t even acknowledge that Trixie existed; there was simply the fire and the metal.

A moment later, Rosethorn plucked the coil from the flames when it glowed red, set it on her anvil and, with the kind of care and skill Trixie would have never dreamed of seeing in an Earth pony, used a pair of pliers to curl each end of the spring before setting it back into the heat. It took her ten seconds, if that. The motions were almost poetic in a way; every movement was performed with the ease and grace of a pony long familiar with every inch of her surroundings. Trixie did not doubt for a second that the mare could have done it blindfolded. She could have probably heard the colour of the metal as it heated.

Fifteen seconds of studious focus later and the newly fashioned spring was sizzling away at the bottom of a trough full of water.

Perhaps two minutes had passed from drawing out the spindle to the wire hitting the water.

Rosethorn dredged the piece from the trough. “That good?”

Trixie stared at the offered spring. “It was indeed...”

“What?”

“Oh, I mean,” she blinked and plucked up the little coil with her magic. She compared it to the last good one she had left (having carefully left the horribly bodged one in her wagon), and nodded, “Looks like a good match. How much for, say, twelve more?”

Rosethorn rolled her eyes and sighed, “Not gonna fight. A bit for two, five bits for twelve.”

“Six bits,” Trixie corrected her, frowning just a bit. Honestly, she didn’t know basic math?

“Package deal; five for twelve. Take it or leave it.”

“Fine.”

“What else?”

“I need this flywheel flattened.”

“Looks like you blew it up.”

Trixie coughed, “Yes, well, there was a mix-up.”

“Fair enough. Not hard to fix; half bit will do. Paint will be burnt off, though.”

Trixie thought a moment as Rosethorn got to spooling out another coil. “I don’t suppose you have any paint I could buy?”

“Nope. Might have some old stuff in the barn though; ask dad.”

“Your father is here?”

“Turnover. The loud one,” Feeling that this wasn’t quite accurate, she added, “The loudest one.”

“I thought you said you weren’t an Apple.”

Rosethorn gave Trixie a narrow-eyed look. “Not by blood, but that don’t make him any less my da, nor Merlot any less my mum.”

“Ah,” said Trixie, suddenly (and unusually) apologetic. “Sorry.”

Rosethorn grunted, turning back to her spindle. In a matter of moments she had coiled and cut a dozen pieces and tossed them into the fire. Without even pausing, she took up the first from the batch and began shaping it with the pliers. Not a movement nor moment was wasted.

“I also need a smaller, lighter spring for this piece...”

“Out of luck there, I expect; only have this wire, and it’s pretty thick.”

“Can’t you, like, make it thinner?”

“Yes...” said Rosethorn slowly, “I’d have to refit my crucible to be able to pull iron thin enough first, though. You got three days?”

“Mmn. Fine.”

The bent knife was a quick fix, and Rosethorn was certain that she could weld the smoke machine’s handle back into one piece with little trouble. After making a few promises to be careful and to replace everything she used back where they belonged, Trixie was allowed to use a few of the blacksmith’s dizzying array of tools to try and work open her bit-eater box.

Trixie hadn’t ever found herself working alongside another pony before, or not in a while, in any case. Despite her abrasive nature, Rosethorn actually made for pleasant company; she didn’t try to make smalltalk, didn’t interrupt with needless advice, didn’t do much of anything other than work, and work she did.

The coals rattled as she raked them, the bellows wheezed, glowing metal hissed as it was dropped into the quench. It gave the air a steamy, tinny flavour.

It was an oddly relaxing environment, for all the smoke and heat and noise. Trixie actually found herself grinning faintly as she tried cutting at the sheared metal of the bit-eater’s latch with a chisel, cutting off a few flakes of brass and scoring the hinge itself a fair bit before there was a satisfying jolt and the trick bottom sprang open. There were actually only three coins there, nestled into the sound-muffling velvet, but it was still three bits...

Trixie’s grin widened just a little more when she realised that one of those bits happened to be larger than the rest, and sporting a different pony’s profile than the usual Celestia: it was a ten-bit piece. All of a sudden the expression on the face of that one rather well-dressed pony she’d tricked with the little joke box made perfect sense.

Well, those were the breaks of not keeping your eye on the bits, old pony. You should have known better.

Now wealthier by twelve bits (or rather by ten, given that the first two were hers to begin with), and feeling exceedingly clever with the memory of a rich pony successfully shown up, Trixie started to hum to herself. It was a rather happy tune.

“Do you mind?”

“What?”

“I’m trying to work here and your humming is throwing off my rhythm.”

“Oh, sorry.”

Even so, the grin didn’t lessen.

“So what’s the word off west, nephew?”

Turnover dropped down onto the seat beside Mac, their combined weight causing the wooden bench to creak in an alarming fashion. The world around them was filled with ponies talking at various levels of shout. Given that many were children or grandchildren of Turnover himself, it wasn’t really a surprise; talking loudly was more or less the family pass-time.

Mac chewed thoughtfully on a cherry-bread doughnut as he considered just what would be worth sharing.

“Quiet,” he said.

Turnover snorted. “You could have at least told me you built another barn or something, which I happen to know you did, hah!”

Mac had to concede this. “Two, actually. Two and half might be more accurate, mind,” he added.

“What, you get bored halfway through the last one and left it? I suppose when you have to build as many in a week as you lot do...” Mac rolled his eyes and gave his great uncle a little bump with his shoulder, causing the old stallion to chortle merrily as he struggled to keep his sandwich in hoof.

“Earlier one, we were actually replacing in the north end. Ended up collapsing on us halfway through because of...” Mac trailed off, his brow furrowing.

Because we was overrun with two dozen manic Pinkie Pies was not the kind of thing one really wanted to share, if one wanted to maintain at least some level of respect within the family. Mac didn’t even pretend to understand how that had happened or how the problem had fixed itself; AJ had said something about magic and that was enough for Macintosh. Anyway, that kind of answer would mean he’d have to try and explain what a Pinkie Pie was, and he was not at all certain he was capable of broaching that kind of philosophy. He caught Apple Fritter’s eye and saw her wince; she had heard the question and did not seem willing to try and approach it either.

“Bad nails,” he finished, lamely.

“Uh huh,” said Turnover, recognizing the old family code-word for ‘don’t ask’. “Other than that?”

Mac thought a moment then shrugged, “Nope. Been quiet.”

Turnover rolled his eyes, “I’d swear left and right that yer Granny Smith is indeed my sister, but I’m starting to think you were adopted or something, nephew. You realise you are allowed to talk around here, right?”

“Yup.”

The older stallion watched Macintosh calmly bite into a fresh donut, the big fellow apparently feeling he had contributed enough to the conversation. Turnover chortled, “Fine, be that way.”

Lunchtime at Turnover Hills was a raucous affair on the calmest occasion. By adding some thirty relations to the mix, it became something closer to a good-natured riot, with everyone trying to talk over their neighbour. Friendly shouting matches and mingling laughter painted the air, highlighted here and there with the rattle of flatware and dishes as war was waged on the mountains of food that would have been called a banquet in any other company, but was referred to here as a light lunch.

Cherry donuts and glazed apple fritters, pies, sandwiches, dumplings, and soups in half a dozen pots, each different from the next. A small mountain of dusted sourdough bread loaves sat beside a crock of freshly churned butter, which itself was sat beside a wheel of white cheese that could have been fit to Mac’s cart in a pinch. All three had suffered grave casualties in this war of attrition, and just now there were ponies lining up to make a second pass.

The Apples would show no mercy; leftovers was a four-letter word in these parts.

Mac blinked as a mug was set before him. He looked into the beaming face of another uncle... or maybe just a cousin; it was hard to keep the bloodlines straight sometimes. His memory held up a card, identifying the dapper fellow as Dandee Red, his neat white jacket and hat going well with his earthy red hide.

“Hello, cuz! Been awhile since we’ve seen you around here.” He had the friendly, lazy drawl that all the Apples seemed to inherit, but with a somehow high-class tone to it.

Cousin then. Mac nodded to himself as he did the mental gymnastics to sort Dandee into the right part of the family tree. He was fairly certain the fellow was from great aunt Weirouge’s side. “Likewise. This fresh?” Mac picked up the mug and gave the gently fizzing cider a sniff, discovering a pleasant hint of cherry under the bright apple scent. If a warm spring sunset had a flavour, it would have been in that mug.

“Two weeks since casking. A bit light, but good for this weather.”

“You did mark the barrel, right?” This was Turnover, his booming voice muffled by his sandwich.

“Yep; red tap for the adults, up high. Blue tap with the soft stuff for the ankle-biters.”

Mac polished off the mug in a few short gulps. There were drinks that you spent time carefully nursing and savouring, there were others that you belted down quick or risked burning out your sinuses, and then there were drinks like this; so delicious that you simply could not stop drinking until you had tasted every last drop. He set the mug down reluctantly, a cherry-scented breath escaping his lips.

“I think,” he started, then craned his neck around to get a bead on this barrel of heavenly nectar, “That I am gonna see to planting a few cherry trees at Sweet Apple Acres. You got a recipe for this, cousin?”

Dandee Red grinned through a mouthful of butter tart. “Ain’t enough diamonds in Canterlot to wrangle it out of me, Mac. It’s proprietary.”

Macintosh looked hurt. “Now that just ain’t fair. I thought all us Apples shared and shared alike.”

“Uh huh. You just go ahead and ask your Granny Smith to send me her method for distilling her brandy, then we can talk.”

Mac smiles ruefully, “We’ll need forty or fifty teamsters pulling on that chain to lever it out of her. Doesn’t trust anyone else with it since someone blew up her still and burned her journals.”

Turnover huffed, “Not my fault. She shoulda shown me how to use that gizmo of hers. How was I to know that it would catch fire and blow the shack? I was lucky to get away with my arse in one piece.”

“Dad, language!” This was from a rather plump mare with a pale yellow coat at the table next to them. “There are foals about!”

Turnover shrugged sheepishly and looked around, noting that there were indeed a number of little ponies seated all around. He eyed pair of young colts that were giving him the kind of knowing grin that said they had heard everything.

“Hey, you two. If anyone asks, I said bum, got it?”

“Sure, grandpa!” Their grins didn’t lessen.

Turnover waved towards them as he leaned towards the mare who had given him the scolding. “Go on, ask’em what I said, Jazzy! I’m sure yer ears were wrong!” The look she gave him in return was withering, but Turnover managed to diffuse it with a jolly grin. It really was hard to keep a frown going in the face of that beard, flecked as it was with various crumbs.

It didn’t stop her- Jazz Apple, Macintosh’s memory suddenly revealed- from scolding him a bit more for it, much to the glee of the two colts.

Mac leaned back on the bench, glancing about casually and trying to place faces to names and farms, though the way everyone moved and milled about in the jolly chaos of the gathering, he was only able to remember a few faces for certain. Dandee Red was talking to him again, so Mac figured it would be easier to take stock of everyone and get an idea for just who wanted what by way of the seedling exchange later that night.

“So, where is that pretty friend of yours?”

Mac had to think for a second on just who his cousin was referring to. He drew a blank. “Uhhh, who?”

“That mare with the rather fancy wagon that followed you in,” Dandee grinned impishly, “Don’t think I wouldn’t notice her.”

Mac blinked slowly, then again when that wayward neuron found what it was looking for. “Oh, Trixie?” He looked about again, and indeed she didn’t seem to be in the crowd. “Huh, I dunno.”

Dandee waggled his mug towards the homestead, “Saw her dazzling the little ones. Must have been at it for near two hours. Do you have any idea how nice it feels to have two hours free from a dozen foals? Eh, you probably don’t. Well, I didn’t trip over a single kid, nor had to yell at anyone other than uncle to keep his hooves off the food the whole time.”

“Eh, you talking about me?”

“You stole an entire tray of cherry tarts, uncle.”

“Well, no one told me I couldn’t.”

“Auntie Jazz had a sign over them saying ‘Do not touch’-”

“I thought she meant somepony else.”

“-And a second sign saying, ‘This means you, Dad.’”

Turnover started to laugh. “Shoulda known that I am selectively illiterate.”

The two went back-and-forth over Mac’s head (or around him, given his stature), but he didn’t mind. He took a longer look around at the general hubbub of eating ponies, but did not see one blue mare with a pale mane amongst them, and certainly not one in a slightly ridiculous hat.

He did see a little colt with a pale yellow hide sporting a pointy hat made out of folded newspaper though. It was a hat that held no small resemblance to the stereotypical wizarding number, albeit with a point that stuck straight up rather than flopped around. The colt was up on his back legs, hopping this way and that while waggling his forehooves around in a more-or-less mystical fashion, though the effect was reduced by the half-sandwich that was hanging from his mouth. There was a crowd around him of other foals, all chatting away excitedly through their own mouthfuls of food.

For a brief moment, Macintosh disconnected from the world and seriously wondered if that was how everyone saw the Apples; giant groups of yelling ponies all stuffing away enough food to choke a... well, a horse. Several dozen normal horses, anyway. At least.

He came back to the bustle at hand with a shake of his head, interrupting Dandee and Turnover mid-argument.

“You haven’t seen her here?”

“Nope. I was cooking and bringing out the tables with the rest, so I’ve been here the whole while,” Dandee Red plucked an apple out of the basket in front of him, taking a generous bite of the ripe flesh. “Mmn, kids rolled on in like a tidal wave and hit the buffet table all in one go, but didn’t see hide nor hair of her. She shy?”

Turnover snorted, “I don’t think a filly who prances about on stage is gonna be shy. Would be a hair on the side of silly.”

“Huh,” Mac shook his head, “She’s not shy, that’s for sure. She’s just, well...” Stubborn as any five mules and bad-mannered as a timberwolf with a toothache was probably a rude thing to say. She enslaved our town for a day because someone showed her up once was accurate, but also probably the wrong thing to say. As Mac heard it told, that trinket that was around her neck had been the cause of all the trouble, and he wasn’t one to hold a grudge on a pony for what was probably a mistake. He tried a different tack.

“Well, remember when Granny Smith wrote you about me getting them busted ribs, and my sister got it into her fool head to harvest the entire acreage on her own?”

“Way I heard it, a certain brother of hers challenged her to do it,” said Dandee, grinning as he took a bite out of the applecore, seeds and all.

Mac gave him a sideways glance, “What I told her was that it was too big a job for her alone, and I was proved right.”

Turnover laughed. “Same thing, with your Granny’s side, hah!”

“Yeah well, she’s kinda like that; doesn’t like help. Rubs her the wrong way, I guess.”

“Figure out how to rub her the right way, then.”

“Uhh...” Mac’s brain shorted out for half a beat. “What?”

Turnover had a toothy grin showing through his beard, and Dandee Red’s sly smile was likewise suggestive. “Yeah, thought so,” he said. “Look, we got enough food to share and if she’s too stubborn to come and get it, you should bring it to her.”

Fresh memories from the road stood to the fore of Mac’s mind, particularly the parts involving an angry, shouting mare who nearly caused him to smash his hooves into a cast iron pot that could otherwise have been used as a wrecking ball.

“I don’t think... she’d take to that,” he said slowly, a frown forming. Mac picked up one of those apples from the basket Dandee had raided and sheared it in half with one bite. Sweet and tart, with the kind of crunchy flesh that Mac’s head immediately identified as a Splendour. He nearly choked on it when Turnover smashed a soup-plate sized hoof into his shoulder.

“Hah, so you think! Merlot wouldn’t give me the time of day when we first met; never stopped me none!”

Dandee spat out a stem. “So that’s why auntie doesn’t own a clock.”

“You’ll be sleeping in the field tonight, pup.”

Mac left the two to their newest round of playful banter. He took with him his mug and drifted towards the stands that held the barrels to draw a full serving out of the spigot with a practiced hoof. He paused in mid-sip when he saw a small pair of sunny yellow hooves holding up a half-sized mug, a hopeful expression on the face of his little barnacle.

“How many is that for you now, sweetheart?”

“Only three!”

“Uh huh,” Mac glanced about and immediately caught the eye of Inkie Pie, who was giving him a sort of calm warning look that said more than any number of words ever could. “Well, three’s an awful lot of a little filly. You can have half a one and that’s all, okay?”

Peachy Pie tried giving Macintosh the kind of sorrowful, wet-eyed look of a puppy that had just been kicked, but Mac hardened his heart to it and measured out a careful half-pint for the half-pint from the blue tap. It broke his heart to see the little filly frown, but he’d rather have a broken heart than a broken ear; Inkie Pie was always incredibly calm and soft-spoken, but she had a way of delivering lectures that made one almost wish she’d take to raising her voice.

When she realised that she wasn’t going to get a full mug, Peachy, to her credit, took it in stride and settled on giving Mac as big a hug as she could manage before trotting back to the group of chattering foals with her prize balanced neatly on her back.

He stayed near the barrels for the moment, taking slow sips of the delicious cherry-apple cider, letting the fizzy bubbles play across his tongue as he took in the world all around for what it was. He wasn’t really looking at anything, more using it as an excuse to let his mind wander. The infuriating part was how his head kept wandering to the bull-headed mare in the absurd wagon, and the way she had practically exploded when he had offered her a share of breakfast.

What kind of road-bound pony would ever turn down free food? There was being stubborn, then there was being a plain fool.

His eyes focused on the gently-creaking trestle table at the edge of the gathering, still weighed down with enough food to kill a starving hippopotamus.

Big Macintosh downed the rest of his mug, gave it a refill, then ambled to the small mountain of eats. He drew out one of the cutting boards that looked to no longer be in use and went about building a hearty selection of what was on offer.

Chapter 5 - Dinner is Magic

The oaf found Trixie busily searching through the cabinet in her wagon. She had been certain there was leftover paint somewhere that she could use to touch-up her newly-repaired props. So far though, after sifting through most of the drawers, she was ready to concede defeat and head out to find that dreadful shouting pony to inquire after buying some.

Certainly, Trixie could perform a beyond-dazzling show with her props as they were, but she would feel much better with everything being just right.

She must have been just too focused on her task; when the hick knocked at the front of the wagon, Trixie jumped and slammed the back of her head into the bottom of a shelf. Since she had invested in particularly durable furniture, the shelf did not budge one iota.

“Ah! What is it?” she snapped, rubbing the back of her head with one hoof as she leaned back into the narrow space that functioned as her hallway, living room, bedroom, and kitchen at any given time. The face peering in through the open door was one showing the calm, serene look of a pony that needed a warning and a good run up before attempting advanced-level calculus questions like two-plus-two.

“Oh. What do you want?” she demanded, trying her best to look haughty while simultaneously picking up the little stack of copper cards from the top of the cabinet. She pressed the cool metal to the back of her head, hoping to ward off a goose-egg.

Mac frowned, just a bit, but did not otherwise seem perturbed. “Brought you some food,” he said, his silly drawl making him near impossible to understand. So saying, he climbed the few short steps that led up to the doorway, but thought better of trying to actually enter. For one thing, it really was a small space and his shoulders would barely be able to fit through the doorframe much less further inside, given the way things were stacked. There was also Trixie’s glare to consider; it was the kind of look that reduced sizable towns to rubble.

In order to diffuse the situation, Mac coughed and carefully took the cutting board where he had balanced it across his back and held it through the door for the entertainer to examine. On it was a full assortment of peerless Apple family fare, ranging from cherry donuts to fritters to an entire loaf of sourdough bread, stuck through with a breadknife. This was pinning a wedge of cheese near as wide as Mac’s hoof to it, sort of like a really strange olive stick in an equally strange cocktail. At the very center of the tray was a mug with a froth of pink foam that was fizzing away merrily, giving the air a cheerful, apple-cherry scent.

“Trixie isn’t interested,” she started, but into the beat of silence between the last word and the next her stomach interjected a compelling, and rather vocal, argument. The little bowl on that tray must have held soup, and by the rich, spicy scent, it would be butternut squash soup. It would be hot. There would be crushed walnuts in it. Maybe a sprinkle of cinnamon on the top, too.

The idiot stallion seemed not to have heard the world-rattling growl of her belly, instead just blinking once, slowly. Probably to be trying to remember how to breathe. “Paymin’,” he said around the edge of the tray.

Trixie managed to keep herself from drooling long enough to grow suspicious. “Payment for what?”

“M’ndin’ th’ lil’uns.” It was hard to believe it, but he was even harder to understand with his mouth full. Trixie had half-expected the universe to get in on the joke and have him sound like a professor of logic or something; it would have been hysterical. He nodded his head gently, “Pl’th?”

Still suspicious, but not denying her hunger, Trixie took hold of the tray with an effort of will and lifted it free from the oaf’s mouth. A second brief effort of magic cleared enough space on the crate that made up her table for her to set it down. There was butter on there, too: a little bowl of it, rich and yellow and probably freshly made this morning, given the way these hillbillies never stopped working.

That little spark of admiration was overruled by the way her stomach was threatening to eat her liver if she didn’t placate it.

She quelled the desire to leap at the offering and go at it with knife, fork and rammer, instead pushing herself upright, lifting her nose just that extra few aristocratic inches, and sort of crabwalking as haughtily as she could to take a seat on her pallet. Then, with the exquisite care of one trying desperately not to show weakness, Trixie plucked up one of the admittedly good-looking donuts and took a dainty bite.

She almost fainted as the rich, buttery-soft treat melted on her tongue, the taste and scent of sweet cherries momentarily overwhelming a palate that had been surviving on stale biscuits and watery tea for the better part of a month.

It was so good she wanted to cry.

More importantly, she wanted to know where the rest of them went. Trixie eyed the tray with renewed suspicion. She had counted no less than three of those cherry donuts there half a second before, but now all that remained was a notably empty space and a fairly large number of crumbs on the floor between her hooves.

Her glance slid to Macintosh, who was still standing where he had been. As far as it was possible for him to actually have an expression on that dumb face, he looked startled.

“Was there something else you needed?” She had meant to snap at the hick, but found it hard to get properly angry with the taste of cherry lingering on her tongue. The nearly-polite question had almost the same effect of putting the stallion off-balance at least, though he did not seem quite so intimidated as she would have liked. For his part, Macintosh didn’t say anything, but he had taken on an expectant countenance.

Trixie tried to stare him down, but she might as well have tried to stare down a cat, or a brick wall.

“Ahem,” he said, nodding towards the tray he had brought.

“What?”

“You said you’re from Canterlot. They have no manners up there?”

Affronted, she scoffed, “You should be thanking Trixie for looking after those brats.”

Macintosh’s look didn’t sway nor lessen. Beneath that steady gaze, Trixie found herself starting to flush, even as she tried to distract herself with cutting the mouth-watering bread.

The steps creaked a little as Mac settled his weight. He seemed disinclined to leave. Finding herself growing uncomfortable with an audience for quite possibly the first time in her life, Trixie grit her teeth, swallowed a tiny measure of pride from her vast reserves, and uttered the two syllables she hated most in all the world.

“Thank you.”

“Enjoy,” said Mac, grinning, his eyes wandering about the interior of the wagon as he backed down the steps. The place was a madness of things, all somehow carefully ordered and organized to actually be able to fit in a space where they really shouldn’t have been able to. It had the worrying feel that, if something got jostled in the wrong way, it would cause everything to collapse or, quite possibly, explode.

He turned away, idly wondering about the little blue ribbon Trixie had pinned to the wall beside her pillow. It was curious that in a wagon so packed to the brim, a bit of cloth would have an empty space all to itself.

“Mac?”

His train of thought was derailed when he heard Trixie call his name. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw the mare peering out from the doorway, a half-devoured fritter hanging in the air beside her head.

“Would your uncle have some paint?”

She wasn’t yelling. She wasn’t shouting. She wasn’t... okay, actually she was still scowling a bit, but given her reaction to him a minute before, it was like she had become an entirely different pony. Mac waited patiently for his brain to come to terms with the idea that Trixie Lulamoon might not always be insufferable before answering.

“I reckon so. Need some?”

“Yes,” she said, lifting her nose again to a more familiar angle before leaning back inside. Mac started back towards the house and got three steps closer before Trixie called out again.

“And can you bring me a spoon?”

He waited patiently for a short moment before turning his head and clearing his throat, loudly. An exasperated sigh and quite possibly the sound of rolling eyes drifted out from the open door of Trixie’s wagon.

“Please?”

“Sure thing.”

He rounded the corner of the homestead and was greeted with the sight of the small feast winding down. A number of ponies were still sitting around the tables, chatting and nursing their last mugs of cider while others were busily clearing away plates and cutlery. Those ponies with the most robust appetites were seeing to the last of the offerings, and alongside them were a number of fillies and colts whom, being Apples, were bottomless pits one and all.

Mac found Turnover sitting where he had left him, the old pony now turned around and relaxing with his back against the table, with what looked to be a fresh mug sitting in one hoof.

“Hey uncle.”

“Mmn?”

“You have any paint laying around?”

“Paint?” The old stallion scratched at his beard, causing a number of crumbs to come tumbling out. “I reckon so, over in the main barn. What you need that for?”

“Trixie was asking after some.”

That drew Turnover’s eye and, worse, his grin. “Oh hoo; you two are setting up house already! Well then...” He started to laugh when he saw Mac’s expression. “Ah, don’t look at me like that. Just head on over to the barn and take a look around the workbenches. Come to it, I think Cherrywood and his girls have already headed over there to see to some of the chores; they can point you to it.”

“Thanks, uncle. I’ll get this done then head out with the rest to finish up.”

“Ah, don’t fret about that none; the work is pretty much over with and you’ve been hauling that wagon for a few days now. Stretch your legs and enjoy the place!”

“Nope; there’s work to be done.”

“I used to say that, and let me tell you: there’s always work to be done, nephew. Don’t be afraid to just sit on yer arse and take a look around.” Turnover took a draught from his mug, smacking his lips a bit before continuing. “The work’ll wait for you.”

Mac gave the old stallion a friendly pat on the shoulder as he passed on by, starting towards the indicated barn before getting a better idea and veering towards a group of foals made conspicuous with the shape of a tall, pointed hat amongst them.

It was the work of a moment to convince The Wizard Greensleeves to bring some cutlery out to his new idol, and a cursory examination at the barn produced no less than five tins of paint. They looked to be on the ancient side, but shaking a few of them produced a sloshing sound, and that was hopeful. After a bit of balancing and the clever use of a broomhandle, Macintosh was striding out of the wide doors and back towards the homestead.

Ponies were streaming down into the cherry orchard in ones and twos, ready to finish what they had been called out to do. There was already the sound of chopping and sawing drifting through the air as the last of the dead wood was being rounded up and seen to. As he walked, Mac’s mind drifted to the work that still had to be done, namely getting all the wood stacked and corded at the homestead and the barn. A kind of country arithmetic whirled away at the back of his head as he counted up the number of stumps and multiplied them by the size of the trees, figuring out that there would be a good fifteen cords of firewood to stack up: enough to keep a big house warm through two hard winters, and then some.

Despite what his great uncle had said, Mac was looking forward to help with the cording. It was all well and good to pull a cart for a few days, but it wasn’t exactly hard work and it had only done to leave him feeling restless. He liked to go to sleep with an ache in his muscles; it reminded him that he had put in a solid day’s effort, and that was something he had grown into… Had needed to grow into: farms were busy places even during quiet times, and Mac had been seeing to their Acres since AJ had been Apple Bloom’s age. That torch had been passed so suddenly to Macintosh, and even as sprightly as Granny Smith had been when she had come to mind him and his sisters, her apple-bucking days had been long behind her. It was Mac that had to keep Sweet Apple Acres afloat, and it was no small bit of pride that warmed his heart when he considered how successful it had become.

Mac knew the real value of hard work, and danged if he was going to just sit around and sniff flowers: that idea alone got his hooves to itching. Carting a few tins of paint wasn’t exactly hard work, but it was something to do, and the notion of pitching timber into stacks and rows in the near future was worth looking forward to.

When he rounded the homestead to where all the wagons had been parked, he discovered that Trixie’s wagon had exploded. Oh, this wasn’t the violent, debris-strewn mess that the word makes it out to be. Come to that, maybe ‘unfolded’ is a more accurate word, though it was hard to grasp just how such a neat and compact little wagon could open up to produce a stage twice as wide and long as the wall it had folded down from. There was also the long curtains to consider, and the dazzling array of...

Mac tried to make heads or tails of the things sprouting from the top of the wagon, but gave up. There was any number of strange shapes up there, all gently bobbing around on deely-bopper springs and painted in glitter. Oh, he could see that there were cutouts of moons and stars and comets, but precisely why they were there in the first place was baffling; there really was no point to have them there, to his mind. Even stranger, Trixie was sticking halfway out from the curtains, giving orders to a small cloud of foals that were running about on the stage. She actually looked cheerful.

Happily, this strange state of affairs was swiftly corrected when Mac deposited the tins.

“Bit of paint for you.”

She frowned at him, then looked down her nose at the decidedly battered and rusty and dirty cans. They were spattered and caked in patches, some red and others white.

“Hmmph. I take it there’s no blue or silver?”

“Uh, nope.”

Trixie sighed and rolled her eyes, then turned her attention to a crash of noise at the other end of the stage. A filly with a coat the colour of a blushing rose was seated there. It was hard to make out more detail, given that the rest of her was currently swallowed by the bell of a tall brass horn. The pair of little pink hooves sticking out the bottom wobbled a bit as her new hat was claimed by gravity and started to topple, taking her along with it. Before the instrument hit the stage though, it was caught in a pale plume of magic and gently lifted upwards, revealing the cheerful, giggling visage of Sweet Berry, whom did not seem the least bothered with having been stuffed into a horn.

“Ugh. Red and white are so not my colours,” said Trixie, lofting the instrument upwards and fixing it into place, or at least, into what Mac assumed was its place. Sweet Berry was up and pushing behind the curtain like nothing had happened. For a brief moment, Mac felt upset that they weren’t getting Trixie’s death glare like he had, but the moment swiftly passed. The crowd of chattering foals looked to be hauling out bits and pieces for her, or at least a few of them were. A pointed newspaper cap was conspicuous there in the trio studiously wrapping small cylinders in colourful paper.

“You don’t have anything else? Even purple would do.”

“Nope. No use for fancy colours out here.”

“Why not? You could use more colour around here...”

“Well,” Mac frowned some, “Red and white is cheap. Takes a lot to do a barn.”

“Hmmph.” A long screwdriver drifted out from behind the curtains as Trixie stepped up to the cans, giving them a thoughtful look. A knock with the handle and a deft bit of prying caused two lids to pop up, to be carried upwards by a bit more magic. She let out a sigh.

“If I paint anything in this, it’ll end up looking like some kind of stupid fishing lure.”

“Try blueberries.”

Trixie eyed Macintosh, trying to decide whether he was pulling one of her legs or not, but he looked entirely serious. That, and she was quite certain humour was far beyond his capabilities.

“You’re joking.”

“Nope. Frozen blueberries,” Mac turned and started ambling away. “Stains my sisters’ coats up and turns them both purple. Might work for the white paint.”

Well, it wasn’t exactly the best solution, but it was a solution of a sort. Anyway, Trixie didn’t have anything to lose in trying. She considered the paint for a moment as a small riot of voices filled the air around her, then turned her head.

“Apprentice!”

There was a brief scuffle around the side of the wagon, followed by a clatter of small hooves on the wood of the stage. Trixie had to lean back just a bit to avoid losing an eye to the rather sharp point of the cap the colt had made for himself. It was an impressive bit of origami, even she had to admit.

“Miss!” He stood to attention, the very picture of awe and adulation.

“I have a very important mission for you!”

It had been a task and a half, but he had done it. He emerged from the house, one half of his face dusted white from flour and a cinnamon roll stuck in his mane. There was a streak of cherry pie filling decorating his sunny flank, and his proud pointed wizarding hat now sported a 90-degree angle and a decorative donut, but he had succeeded in raiding the homestead’s icebox. Set across his back was a bag near as big as his head, frosty from the warm air and speckled with dark spots from the tiny treasures within.

There was a ruckus behind him, of shouting ponies and a few wayward curses that turned the air blue, but that didn’t matter; he had won out.

Proudly, the little colt deposited his prize before Trixie and stood up as tall and straight as he could, even going so far as to try and suck in a bit of his pudge, to mixed results. He was vibrating with excitement when Trixie solemnly accepted the hard-won prize, and then nearly exploded when she declared him an Apprentice of the Third Water.

Okay, so Greensleeves had no idea just what that was, but it sounded impressive and The Great and Powerful Trixie had fastened a cloak about his shoulders.

A real wizarding cloak, with glittery stars and everything!

As it happened, Trixie didn’t really need the extra curtain; it was just taking up space in the wagon that would be better served for some of her tools. As she watched the little yellow colt hare off with a cloud of her helpers on his tail, she couldn’t help but do a bit of mental arithmetic, subtracting the worth of that bit of cloth and sequins from the total value of the wagon. She decided it was a useful investment.

Eager as they might have been, foals tended to be loud and unfocused at the best of times, and Trixie needed calm to paint properly. That is, if she could make the odd idea work. She lofted the bag of gently thawing berries upwards, then took up one of the two tins of white paint, eyeing it critically before retiring behind the curtains.

It came out a sort of reddish-purple, but it was purple, and that was suitable. Using it and the other tin of white, Trixie resurfaced some of her more necessary props. She even found a use for the gaudy red on one or two pieces that were meant to draw the eye. Trixie was feeling quite pleased with it all as she picked out the last few details on the spiral pattern of the sparkler wheel, chewing industriously on a slice of bread slathered in rich butter and topped with a thick slice of cheese.

The show would indeed go on, and it would be one of the best she’d ever done.

Author's Note

I do apologize for the wait; a number of things were kicking me around the past few weeks, both good and bad, depleting my attention and drive.

Here's hoping that, with a number of things recently resolved, I can get to work and get this moving sharpish.

Chapter 6 - In Hot Water

Jazz Apple poked her head out the door of the farmhouse, her greying mane a messy tumble and one pale yellow cheek sporting a dusting of flour. From the doorway came the sound of bustle and general business as yet more food was being prepared. It might be true that less than an hour has passed since the lunch banquet had been packed up, but that was no reason to get complacent: this wasn’t a family you wanted to keep waiting at the dinner table.

For starters, they might eat the table, and there was no telling what they’d turn to for the main course.

“Greenie! Sonata!” she called out, her voice bright and sharp as the strike of a bell. Jazz used a damp cloth to wipe away the flour from her cheek while she waited for either a response or for the echo to die down- she was Turnover’s eldest daughter and had inherited the lung power. She stepped out the door, now dusting off her forehooves with the cloth while casting her eye around the grounds for the colt and filly. Most of the ponies were back out in the fields now, leaving just a few colourful instances moving about here and there in the main yard amongst the parked wagons. There looked to be a game of tag going on, or possibly a fight- it was hard to tell sometimes. Hell, it could very well be both.

Jazz started to take in another breath in preparation for an even louder call, at the risk of deafening every bird and critter in a three-mile radius, but caught sight of the pale pink filly approaching and so disarmed her weapons-grade vocal chords.

“Yes, gran?” said Sonata, setting her hooves onto the edge of the porch. She was maybe ten years old, pretty if a bit on the willowy side, and her red mane, while once a lovely pair of long braids, would now be rejected as unsuitable living space by destitute rats. There looked to be part of a sticky bun stuck in it.

“There y'are. Can you go an find yer- What on earth happened to your eye, young lady?” Most grandparents might have been startled out of their wits at seeing their daughter’s daughter with a freshly bruised black eye, but Jazz had raised a half-dozen ponies in her years and knew them one and all to have the kind of thick skull to back up their feisty nature. Fights were practically an everyday occurrence, and she learned not to start worrying about things unless there was actual blood drawn. That her kids had gone on to have kids of the same nature was no real surprise, and was actually kind of amusing in its own way.

Sonata, for her part, just sort of sniffed and shrugged one shoulder, not seeming to even notice the swelling. “Stetson went and called Greensleeves ‘dumb’. I hadta do something, didn’t I?”

Jazz rolled her eyes and clicked her tongue, “Dear, you should leave that kind of business up to the adults; we told y’all there was to be no fighting while you were here…”

Sonata’s nose wrinkled as she weighed the benefits and complications of letting the adults take care of problems, and concluded that the option did not seem near as quick or direct as applying a hoof stoutly to an offending nose. Still, Sonata liked her grandmother and so tried her best to look sheepish. Jazz, for her part, wasn’t fooled for an instant, but didn’t have the heart to scold the filly any more than she had to. Anyway, it was her duty as a grandmother to spoil her grandkids rotten, and she wasn’t about to ruin her reputation as being the adult that would let them get away with anything.

“Well, go and find your brother, then get some frozen peas on that eye. You’re gonna look a fright playing with a shiner tonight, but that’ll be your own fault. Yer granddaddy tuned up his old piano, so you two get in some practice before the evening, you hear?”

“Yes, gran!” Sonata grinned, the guilty look vanishing like fog in the sun.

“And get your mum to comb out your mane again; it’s a fright!” Jazz called after the filly as she dashed off, before pushing her way back into the kitchen to meet the wall of noise and bustle head-on. Truth be told, she much preferred her day job as a music teacher over baking, but there was something to be said about getting the hooves into the old habits, traditions, and recipes of the family.

Anyways, she’d get a chance to heckle Dandee Red about his boy picking fights with fillies and losing, and that was worth getting flour in her mane.

Trixie polished off the last bit of cheese from the tray, which had already been cleared of every last morsel and crumb. The bowl may have even been licked clean, but Trixie would deny such an accusation outright as lies and slander.

It wasn't like there were witnesses: she had made sure of that.

Her stomach was pleasantly full, her tastebuds still gently concussed from the flood of truly spectacular flavours, and her props were very nearly back to the kind of standards Trixie found suitable. The sparkler wheels had even gotten a dusting of sequins that Trixie had discovered in a near-empty tin at the bottom of her tool box. That extra bit of flash and dazzle that would be sure to catch the eye at just the right moment, preferably when she was pulling something out from one of the many hidden pockets in her show cloak.

Real teleportation was tiring after all: sleight-of-hoof was much less taxing, though took quite a bit more dexterity of body and mind. In Trixie’s own opinion, it was much trickier to do than magic, and took a whole other level of skill that went beyond simply thinking about doing something. If anything, her incredible talent with sleight-of-hoof put her leaps and bounds ahead of any other unicorn, as she had proven any number of times…

And had it proven to her…

The memory of being so fooled by her own bait-and-switch techniques a year past didn’t anger her like it used to. Certainly, her smile faltered a bit and there was that nagging feeling of resentment and embarrassment of having been so deftly showed up a second time, but there was no clenching of teeth or heart-pounding fury or… the need to weep into her pillow.

Just a frown and a slight huff of bad feelings before she turned back to the business at hoof, namely sealing the tins of paint before a mess was made.

The door burst open.

A mess was made.

Without a doubt it was Trixie’s peerless reflexes saved her home from getting a gaudy new red-and-white paint job, catching most of the liquid with a cradle of magic before it could really spread out, but the same couldn’t be said for the mare herself: the spray had given her hide a pattern of polka dots that didn’t go well at all with her natural powder blue.

Greensleeves sat in the doorway, head low, his battered wizarding hat held before him in his hooves like a poorly-made shield. Its various accidental decorations and the colt himself now included a fresh speckling of paint. Trixie tried her very best not to scold the colt, for all that she wanted to yell- it would do her business no good to terrorize a child, and… well, he was just excited to see her, and Trixie could hardly blame him for such a thing, could she?

Had Trixie not been Trixie, she would have been excited out of her wits to meet The Great and Powerful Trixie in person, so it stood to reason.

Even so, such a thing had to have a repercussion.

“Wizards,” she said, carefully raising the ball of liquid paint with her magic, to siphon back into the tins, “Do not like to be surprised, my young apprentice. I could have been casting a dangerous spell, and who knows what might have happened to you had you disturbed the Great and Powerful Trixie at such a moment?”

“Um…”

“You might have become a toad, or a weasel, or worse!”

Greensleeves cringed a bit more where he sat, every bit of him radiating remorse.

Trixie sniffed as she dropped the lids onto both full tins, both now sporting a kind of pinkish colour instead of their original tones. “And an apprentice must learn to be cautious and careful in their dealings,” she finished, using her old hammer to tap the lids down securely.

“I’m sorry, miss Trixie,” Greensleeves mumbled, a picture of misery.

Trixie sighed softly and set the tins closer to the opening to the stage, safely out of the way of any errant hoof. “What was it you needed, my apprentice?”

The colt scuffed at the floor of the wagon sheepishly, “I just wanted to see if you’d come and play, miss Trixie.”

The mare stared at the colt for a long moment, a look of confusion playing across her features before she could catch it. She started to open her mouth to say something, but a pale pink filly with a truly messy mane vaulted up the steps to the door and gave the colt a playful shove before the words could escape.

“Greenie! Gran wants us to go and prac-ugh! Why are you covered in paint?”

Trixie let out another sigh and gave her head a shake to clear away those strange feelings that had emerged from the back of her mind like something clawing its way out of a tar pit.

The two foals engaged in a short round of bickering about paint and blame, and weighing the importance of playing versus the need to practice as they jumped down from Trixie’s wagon. The mare waited a moment before following them to the farmhouse, a slight frown on her face the whole while. She had noticed the black eye on the filly and felt the need to comment, but farmponies were the sort to fight all the time, as she knew their crude sort to be…

The two youngsters entering the kitchen caused a certain amount of ruckus by itself, and the mention of the word ‘blueberries’ drifting out the doorway roused Trixie from her reverie. She arrived at the conclusion that waiting a few minutes would be in her best interest. She opted for a seat on the edge of the porch open to the warmth of the afternoon sun, where she could think.

The windows of the farmhouse’s kitchen were numerous and every last one of them was open, spilling noise and scents out in the world. One might think that the cacophony of voices and laughter mixed with the catastrophic clatter that baking seemed to produce would have made thought impossible, and Trixie would have been the first to say such a thing, quite possibly at the top of her voice just to be sure everyone knew, but it wasn’t really true: there was something calming in it all that turned the raucous energy into a comforting white noise.

It was the sound of ponies being busy and happy with their lives, where nothing was wrong and no one was struggling.

It was so alien to her world of hectic cities and empty roads, where a pony had to keep an eye out for every advantage or danger that might cross their path. There was no sense of urgency here at the farm though, and it left Trixie feeling somehow disconnected and uncertain- like she was a coiled spring ready to release, but with nothing to push against...

"Well don't you look a right mess."

The comment drew Trixie out of her sun-warmed reverie with a start. "Excuse me?" She said, voice tinged with disbelief that anyone could suggest she wasn't perfectly presented. Unfortunately, it was Turnover standing at the door and grinning at her, his beard sporting a fresh dusting of powdered sugar. There was a complaint somewhere behind him referring to missing donuts, but he didn't seem to mind. Trixie had half a mind to verbally flay the old farmer, but after just half a day on the farm she had come to realize that it would be like trying to swat away one of those huge, lovable dogs with skulls like concrete; they'd not feel a thing and would just lap up the attention.

"Well, unless yer making a bold new fashion statement, I'd say those spots aren't normal for you."

Trixie lifted a hoof and eyed her speckling, which was growing quite dry. She let out a breath, deflating somewhat. "There was a mishap."

"Har, usually the case. Them youngsters are all walking mishaps, ain’t that right Honeydew?” This last bit was directed cheerfully downwards to Turnover’s hooves, among which was a little pale green foal with huge blue eyes shyly peeking at Trixie. She half expected the foal to squeak or retreat or do something else delightfully cute and charming as would be expected of a foal in such a scenario, but Honeydew instead just grinned brightly and echoed, in a piping little voice, “Mishaps!” She giggled as Turnover ruffled her mane with a hoof near big as her head. It was quite possibly the most heartwarming thing Trixie had ever seen, though she’d never admit it.

“I suppose I should clean up before the show,” She admitted, albeit with a carefree flick of her mane. “I take it there is a stream or a pond nearby?”

“Well,” said Turnover, slowly, “If you’ve a thing for bathing in the cow’s reservoir, I’ll not hold you back missy. Seeing as I haven’t taken a cold bath in near forty years though, I can’t say I see the appeal.” The old pony jerked a hoof towards the farmhouse, “Cousin Venturi knocked together a boiler for us way back when while we was building the place, and I’ve kept it running since. Well, until Rosethorn joined us, then it was her job, hah. Ain’t nothing better after a day’s work, let me tell you.”

Despite her best efforts to remain calm, Trixie couldn’t stop her eyes from widening a little at the idea of hot, running water. The last time she had such luxury was nearly a year past, when she had been on her way to Manehattan and had happened upon a hot spring. It had smelled like a small mountain of eggs that were well past their sell-by date, but it had been worth braving it. Just the memory of the heavenly heat leeching into her bones made her breathe just that little bit harder.

“Head down the hall, third door on your left. Take yer time,” said Turnover cheerfully, hoisting up the little Honeydew from beneath his hooves and depositing her onto his shoulder. “Towels and soap and all is there. Oh, and by-the-by,” he added, before an over-excited Trixie could vanish through the door, “Reckon it’s alright if we shift your wagon to the front of the house?”

“What? Oh, yes, of course.” Trixie managed to keep herself from prancing into the house like a giddy filly, giving her nose an aristocratic lift, and matched it with a sweep of her tail. It was very nearly majestic, save for the spots. “The sun setting behind the house would make for a much better backdrop, after all.”

“Yeah, of course,” muttered Turnover as he eased himself down the porch steps after Trixie had disappeared through the door. The old stallion turned his great shaggy head to eye the garishly decorated travelling wagon at the end of the driveway, its sequinned edges glittering like nothing natural. For a farmer who had been perfectly happy with things that worked well even if not the prettiest, he couldn’t say he liked it much, but he did have to admit it certainly caught the eye. It would probably blind the same eye if it should glance at that wagon from the wrong angle in strong sunshine.

“You know what, my little mishap?”

“What, Grandad?” Honeydew stood on her grandfather’s shoulders with her forehooves resting on his head.

“I would say that pony is one very silly pony. Come on now- let’s go and find ourselves some lazy ponies with nothing to do to haul that wain on over.”

The bathroom wasn’t what one could describe as suitable for a mare of her status, but Trixie, benevolent and patient as she always was, was prepared to overlook the rustic decor. For the night’s show to be perfect, she herself would have to be perfectly presentable, and if that meant bathing in a room with three plaster ducks on the wall (to name the least horrible piece of decoration in there,) so be it. It would be one of the many, many trials she would have put herself through to get where she was today.

She wondered if it really would have been so hard to invest in proper artwork, or perhaps even some wallpaper instead of the bare wooden planks that made up pretty much every surface in the room. In a moment of deific selflessness, she might have admitted that the ancient, polished wood did have a warmth and charm to it that wallpaper and tiles would be hard-pressed to match, but as there was no member of the Apple family present to accept such high praise, she let it go.

The tub itself was wooden, which did not surprise her in the least- it resembled for all the world like a big barrel that had been sawed in half. It had bronze bands holding the staves together, which did give it a slight aesthetic edge compared to the rest of the room, but setting the room on fire would have been an improvement, to her mind. While it did maintain that rustic look so loved by the hillbilly farmer-type, she was relieved to find that the wooden tub had been sanded smooth as can be, so her bottom would be safe from potential splinters. The whole of it was nearly as high as her back, and had a set of steps fastened securely to the side facing the door. A glance within revealed not only a matching set of steps inside the tub, but also what could only be a seat on the opposite side. The whole thing was big enough around for two Trixies to have bathed comfortably together without getting in one another’s way. This was no doubt a necessity given how gigantic some of these bumpkins seemed to grow.

As promised, there was a large bar of soap and a selection of incredibly fluffy towels at hoof, folded neatly on a tall pile on a stool in the corner, no doubt in preparation for the crowd of ponies who would be needing it when the workday was done. Trixie lifted the topmost one with a wisp of magic and selected the one just beneath- a powder blue towel very nearly a match for her coat. A tentative sniff revealed that it was lightly scented with lavender, just enough to be pleasant without being overpowering. She set it onto the towel rack nearest the tub and warily examined the two taps jutting out of the wall, both made of brass with steel levers set atop each spigot. The rightmost one had the letter ‘H’ embossed on it.

Despite the size of it, it didn’t take all that long to fill the tub to a suitable level. Apparently, Cousin Venturi knew full well what he was doing, and had designed his system to be able to deliver a vast amount of steaming hot water to the tub in short order.

The room had taken on the warm, woody scent of a sauna as the tub’s cedar staves absorbed the moisture and released some of their aromatic oils. The windows set high in the wall opposite the doorway had fogged over entirely, and the air itself was heavy with wetness. Trixie closed the spigots, the rushing sound of the water faded quickly to just a few droplets, the sound like tiny bells as they splashed into the rippling surface.

She stood on the topmost step before the tub, one hoof resting on the edge, staring at the gently steaming water within, her heart fluttering just a little out of nerves and excitement at the promise of a proper warm bath for the first time in what felt like forever. Her world had shrunk down to just one wood-walled room, scented with cedar and heat.

The first step into the water was painful. Her second hoof felt like it was going to burn off. No doubt she had underestimated just how well the heating system worked, and so she should have favoured the cold tap a bit more, but…

The mare immersed herself neck-deep into the water, her breath escaping her chest in one shivery rush as the heat enveloped her entire body. She could feel it at her skin, tingling there as it warred with the cold insider her. Despite the heat, she shivered- she hadn’t though she had been so cold, but now with that delicious heat all around, she could feel how the chill sat in her muscles and her bones- a feeling she was so used to that she had stopped noticing.

She sat in the heat of the bath, shivering now and again, but the shakes slowed and faded swiftly as the tendrils of heat spread through her limb, reaching deep down into her very centre until it had chased away every last trace of the cold within her, leaving only delicious warmth.

Trixie sat in the bath, eyes half-closed but unseeing, breathing in the wet, woody air, her mind for the first time in a very long time utterly blank for want of having anything to take her attention. Her stomach was full with some of the best food she had eaten in years; every last prop and gadget she used for her shows was in good working order and ready to be used at a moment’s notice; and a warm, proper bed was waiting for her that evening. Nothing needed to be worried over, and nothing needed to be planned.

For the first time in a very long time, Trixie smiled.

It wasn’t a snide smirk or a haughty grin- it wasn’t even the dazzling, show-stopping smile she had practiced for hours in front of a mirror to get just right for her adoring fans.

It was just a smile of contentment, there in the privacy of the bath.

She woke up to the sound of a knocking on the door. Trixie had no idea how long she had been asleep, but the water, while still delightfully warm, was quite cooler than it had been.

“Miss Trixie?” said a voice on the other side of the door, “Are you alright in there?”

Somewhat flustered at having had what was a truly perfect nap interrupted, Trixie had every right to get angry, but her temper didn’t seem inclined to flare up like it was usually wont to do. She straightened up some in the bath, feeling the water ripple down her mane to her shoulders.

“Mmmn? Oh yes, I was simply enjoying your, ah, wonderful decor,” she said, eyeing the three plaster ducks dubiously.

“Ah, of course,” came the voice after a moment. “Was just letting y’all know that Turnover and his crew got yer wagon all set up out front, and that supper is gonna be served up real soon.”

Trixie rubbed the sleep from her eyes and glanced about for the soap, stifling a yawn as she did so. “Thank you very much, I will be done shortly.”

“Yer welcome, ma’am,” said Jazz Apple, turning and heading back towards the kitchen, where what had once been a cacophony of busy ponies had now managed to graduate into something entirely beyond madness. It couldn’t be called ‘chaos’, because chaos was far too orderly for the insanity of an Apple family kitchen an hour before a banquet for fifty Apples was to be served. It had the kind of frantic energy that could match the sun for power, and it was certainly hot enough there to make the metaphor all the more real.

The ponies in the kitchen were quite grateful for Jazz to return, mostly because her voice could carry over the bedlam of pots and pans and panicked shouting, making her the choice pony to have in charge of everyone and everything at such a time.

To their relief, she had also managed to stop Trixie’s snoring from rattling the beams off the ceiling.

Author's Note

And so we return... though I feel a bit embarrassed that it is on this chapter. Nothing is really going on here, it is just a necessary little snapshot with one particular point that will make something in the next chapter more poignant.

Well, a journey of a thousand miles, and all that.

Cheers, folks.

Chapter 2 - The Hills

“Big Macintosh! Land sakes, it must have been nigh on ten years since I saw you last! Do you think you can get any bigger?”

The bombastic voice arrived with its own pressure wave, loud enough to set Mac’s ears to ringing. It shattered the surly mood that had been starting to creep up on him and left the big stallion grinning.

“I think I’m done growing, uncle.”

“HAH! So you say! You’ll be leaving here twice as wide, and don’t you think I’m kidding! Your aunt figured out a new sugar pie recipe, and I’ll bet bits to burrs that she’s gonna be stuffing you full of it. You’ll be rolling your way home!”

Great-Uncle Turnover didn’t have volume control; whether you were across a field or across the room, he was going to shout at you in his big, jolly voice. He was of a stature to match his personality- a big, brown-coated stallion with the kind of beard you could lose a rat in. His cream-coloured mane had settled on being snowy white now and his once-powerful muscles had run mostly to fat, but there was no denying his presence and certainly not when his great voice was booming orders over his Hills.

The big old pony marched down off the porch of the homestead as Mac drew his cart up alongside the half-dozen others that were parked before it. He barely had time to get unharnessed before Turnover reached him and wrapped a huge hoof around his great-nephew’s neck, dragging Macintosh into a playful headlock-slash-embrace, complete with noogie. Turnover was one of those ponies who might look to have gotten soft with age, but had in fact turned to teakwood, or possibly concrete. Macintosh might have been able to break the lock if he had really tried, but it would have been a close-run thing, even with Turnover being near four times Mac’s age.

“Hah! Great seeing you again, pup!” Turnover let Mac go, and both were grinning like anything. “Rolled in just in time to see your cousins!”

“Noticed,” said Mac, nodding towards the number of wagons as he did his best to straighten his mane, though it was never really a tidy thing to begin with. “Building a barn?”

“I never understood how the Ponyville Apples could go through barns like they were made of paper! No; our cherries got hit with some blasted woodrot over the winter. Half our sweet reds are only good for firewood now; I drummed up the families last week to help get to cuttin’ and clearin’.”

Mac winced; it was never good to hear of that kind of problem, even if Turnover Hills did have three different types of crop growing at any one time as a safety net. “Shame,” he said.

Turnover shrugged one great shoulder, “Not so bad, really! I was thinking of trying on something different for a hobby in my old age. Maybe hop vines or somesuch- would have needed some clearing anyway. Saves money on firewood this winter, too. Who’s your pretty friend?”

It took Big Mac a second to realise that Trixie had in fact followed him to the farm. The mare was glancing abount with a look that might have been a mix of something between disdain and wonder.

Well, the homestead at Turnover Hills was sat right in the very center of their fields, which meant there were things growing and blossoming and being tended to in every direction up and down the lazily rolling terrain. Even the most jaded and nature-fearing city slicker couldn’t help but feel a bit awed by the scenery, though Trixie was doing her best to try not to gawk.

Still, so taken was she by the sight that she nearly jumped out of her skin when Turnover greeted her, his world-shaking voice causing a few things in her cart to rattle and quite possibly fall off shelves.

“Howdy missy! Welcome to my Hills!”

She recovered magnificently, as genuine a smile as Mac had ever seen blooming across her face, her voice sweet as treacle. “And what lovely hills they are, sir! I’ve passed by on the road before, but never while the trees were in bloom.”

Delighted to have someone new to shout at, Turnover ambled towards Trixie, helping her disengage from the harness of her wagon. “You’re much too kind! I’d try and say something humble, but you’ve seen the place so I ain’t gonna deny it, hah! What’s all this, then?” He was nodding to the side of Trixie’s wagon, where in bold, curling letters she had spelled out her full title in blue paint. “The Great and Powerful, eh? You some kinda travelling performer?”

Trixie had long ago learned to see an opportunity when it presented itself, and this was just such an occasion. She was running low on smoke bombs as it was, but she had done some fast arithmetic when she had spied all the wagons, and the distant shapes of ponies working in the fields. Three dozen or more ponies all in one place... not the biggest audience she had ever had, but country bumpkins were easy to impress and could often be quite generous with their bits. It would mean likely having to stay overnight in their company and listen to them drawl in their silly way, but a hatful of bits was a hatful of bits.

Turnover edged backwards in surprise when the firework went off at Trixie’s hooves, filling the air with a sudden burst of grey smoke.

“No mere performer! You have the pleasure and privilege to behold The Great and Powerful Trixie!”

Yes, she could see she had timed it just right for once; the smoke had neatly concealed her leap to the top of her wagon, the perfect mimic of a teleportation spell, and a swift grab with her magic had deposited her hat atop her head and her cape about her shoulders. A timely gust of wind stirred it just so, giving Trixie the perfect profile of a wise and noble wizard about to perform ground-shaking sorcery.

As it happened, using magic to grab things out of line of sight is tricky, and she was in fact wearing her tablecloth about her shoulders rather than her cape. Still, Trixie was a fair bit clever, and after that had happened once a few months back, she had made sure that most all of the cape-like bits of cloth in her wagon were blue and most of them had some sequins sewn in to give a bit of flash. It wasn’t the star-bedecked glory of her actual cape, but she wasn’t about to admit to failure. Anyways, the old bumpkin looked suitably impressed regardless.

“Hah! Wonderful! Oh you have to stay on for the night; we’re gonna have everyone here for a grand’ol feast.”

Trixie tried on a bit of cunning, waggling one hoof a bit, “Tempting, but I’m not certain I can; I have a schedule that I absolutely must keep, and disappointed audiences really cut into my earnings...”

Turnover waved one soup-plate-sized hoof airily, “I’ll not hear a word against it, missy! We’ll stuff you full of food, loan you a room to sleep in and... we can work out some compensation for your talent, whatsay? I rightly think this will be a good apology for hauling them ponies off their farms to do my work for me, hah!”

Macintosh let out a breath and shook his his head a bit, peering into the back of his cart to make sure his load was still sitting properly. He counted off the saplings and checked them to the list in his head, adjusting one or two with a gentle hoof so they stood up a bit straighter in their wicker pots. They all looked like what one would expect; small trees, frail, just sprouting their first leaves to soak up the warm late-spring sunshine, but there were tiny details in each one that Mac’s practiced eye could spot. The differences in the Golden Delicious and the Braeburn, in the Gala and the Pink Lady, not to mention the subtleties between the Honeygold and Honeycrisp. They were all accounted for and looking healthy still, though their earth was starting to get a bit dry. Mac mentioned this much to Turnover.

“Ah, I’ll get some of the sprouts to see to them, nephew! We can look to the sapling exchange in the morning when everyone’s fresh... or as fresh as they can be after tonight, anyway! I have some apple-cherry hard cider I’ve been nursing since last autumn; should knock a few ponies off their hooves, hah!”

“Fair enough, uncle; I’ll head on out and help, then. Probably a few trees I could buck down for you.”

“No doubt. Try and leave some work for the rest of them though, hey? You’d never think the Apples could get so lazy, hah!”

“Yup.” Mac watched as Trixie carefully negotiated her way down from the roof of her wagon, then shook out his mane and started off towards the orchards, following the sound of axes and cheerful voices that bounced between the trunks and filtered through the trees.

“So what’s your story, missy?” Turnover held out a hoof for Trixie as she descended at last to solid ground. “Chasing after my nephew, are yah?”

To Trixie’s credit, she could read the playful grin through the old pony’s shaggy beard and managed to contain the potential explosion of outrage. “Ah haaa, thank you, no...” She took a moment to remove her hat and set it onto the little peg on the front of her wagon, using the time to diffuse any further chance to ruining a show before it had even started. “Chance met on the road this morning. I’m afraid my cooking pot was ruined and he suggested that his aunt might be able to fix it me for.”

“Ah, you want Rosethorn for that one,” he lowered his voice- well, tried to lower his voice. You might not have been able to hear it across a wide valley. “Tread carefully.”

“I heard that, grandad.”

Turnover straightened up quickly, “Ah, I mean, tread carefully because the paths out here are a bit rutted!”

“Riiiight.” There was a mare with a pale pink coat descending the stairs of the homestead’s porch. She had a plump look about her, though much was hidden beneath her baggy blue shirt and sturdy apron. Several tools were stuck through the pockets set in its front, and her mane was tied back in a tight braid. There was streaks of soot on her cheeks. If there ever was a look that said ‘blacksmith’, she was wearing it.

“Mention the banshee and she does appear,” Turnover muttered, but he was grinning when he said it. “Rosethorn there will be able to help you, missy! Now if you don’t mind, I need to go and make sure those whelps in my orchard are actually earning their seats at the table! If you are wanting for something to do, just ask about: always something worth doing around this place!”

“What he means is,” said Rosethorn as she strolled on by, “He is going to go and stand on the edge of the field and yell at ponies for a bit while they do all the work.”

“Same thing,” chortled Turnover as he ambled off, big hooves crunching on the dirt. He turned his great head and shouted something at the house, which produced a squadron of squealing foals that boiled out the door and ran after the old stallion. The noise was deafening, even at a distance.

“Rosethorn,” said Rosethorn, stopping and nodding towards Trixie’s wagon. “Need something repaired?”

Trixie considered the pony briefly and decided that she was not a pony that would be impressed by flash and dazzle or the regular fencing of words. ‘Blunt as an anvil’ drifted through her mind as she answered, “Trixie, and yes indeed. I was so busy with my arcane studies last night that I had forgotten one of my pots on the fire-”

“Well, bring it over,” said the other pony, starting towards an array of small, open-walled shacks opposite the yard. A pair of chimneys rose above their shared roof, smoke gently curling from them into the sky.

Trixie frowned, somewhat insulted by the curt interruption, but still pulled the destroyed pot from the back of her wagon and followed after the no-nonsense pony.

The prognosis was succinct.

“That’s scrap.”

Trixie sighed and nodded. “I thought so. Do you have any I could buy?”

Rosethorn shrugged a shoulder, doing a few blacksmith things around what Trixie assumed was the forge. It looked something like a round well made of brick, with a few strategically placed holes, metal grates, and hatches set along the bottom. Rather than water, it was filled with coals that glowed red and white in places, and here and there were lengths of metal stuck into the heat for whatever mysterious reason the blacksmith needed them for.

“Have plenty. Take one you like.”

Trixie looked to a bench that sported a number of odds and ends. There were indeed several cauldrons there, simple and rugged in design, and no doubt able to weather a night forgotten on the hottest fire without even noticing the heat. While Rosethorn raked at the coals with some odd tool, Trixie picked out a suitable-looking number with a sturdy iron handle.

“How much for this one?”

“Just take it, I don’t mind.”

Trixie frowned, just a little. “I insist.”

Rosethorn shrugged a shoulder again, and Trixie got the feeling that was her usual method of expression. She looked to be the kind of pony who preferred the company of metal and hammers and heat to other ponies.

“Friend of Mac’s. I don’t need the bits.”

Trixie grit her teeth through her smile, “Look, I have the coin and I am happy to pay.” She wasn’t sure if it was the heat from the forge or from her temper, but there was certainly an edge in her voice that the blacksmith noticed. Rosethorn leveled a look on Trixie. It was quite possibly the most intelligent and knowing look she had ever seen.

“Too proud, huh? Da’s that way. So mam. Most Apples are, really, but even the most stubborn Apple won’t say no to a kind offer.” Rosethorn nodded at the pot in Trixie’s hooves, “If you insist though, that one’s worth thirty bits at market.”

“Twenty,” said Trixie automatically, well versed in the art of market-talk. She was startled to run headlong into a force of will that may as well have been cast from the same metal as the pot.

“Thirty. Ain’t bartering: thirty or you take it as a gift. Your choice.”

Trixie started to sputter, but what objections she would have brought to bear were drowned out by the piercing ring of a hammer smashing into red-hot metal. Sparks and scale chipped and danced on the anvil as Rosethorn beat it over and over again with a broad-faced hammer, paying Trixie no mind whatsoever.

She left.

After a short while, Rosethorn set the half-formed horseshoe back into the forge, raking some of the coals over the metal to get the heat good and even. She set her forming hammer back into its place on the rack, then, with the merest hint of a frown, picked up the pot from where it had been dropped and returned it to the bench.

“Big Macintosh!”

The familiar cheer rose from the busy ponies all decorated with wood chips and sawdust. Axes and saws were set down as an impromptu break was called to welcome in yet another family member. Mares and stallions both took turns to shake Mac by the hoof, sharing smiles, bits of news, and a few swallows of sweet cider to wash down the dusty work.

“What brings you all this way, cousin?”

“Might ask you the same, Apple Fritter. I’m running the sapling exchange this time around, so I got the month away.”

The familiar mare grinned, rubbing her nose with the back of one hoof. Her bright green pigtails were stuck through with branches and flower petals and more than a few wood chips. “Pa sprained an ankle last week trying to pull out a stump, the stubborn old coot. I came up to take care of things while he mended and ended up getting lassoed by Uncle.”

“No rest for the Apples, hey?”

“Darn right. Nice time to come, though.”

“Yup.”

A few treats were passed around as well, and Mac found himself sporting a boot that happened to be in the shape of a tiny yellow filly with a sunny orange mane. She beamed at him with huge green eyes.

“Hi, Macintosh!”

He grinned back down at her then lifted his big hoof up, the filly clinging tightly to him and giggling the whole time. “You’re here too, Peachy Pie? Where’s your ma?”

A grey hoof wrapped around the filly’s middle and gently pulled her away. “Right here, trying unsuccessfully to keep her daughter from getting underhoof.” The voice was soft and kind, matching the subdued smile on the pretty mare it belonged to.

“Howdy, Inkie. Awfully far from home, aren’t you?”

Inkie Pie shrugged one shoulder and released her squirming daughter, who immediately latched onto Big Macintosh again, receiving a good mane-ruffling from him in return. Her laughter was bright as sunshine and bubbly as a brook.

“Well,” said Inkie, giving her daughter a look that was totally ignored, “Goldengrape wanted to show us where he grew up. Had I known that we were going to be put to hard labour, I might have reconsidered.” Inkie’s voice was soft as her eyes and lacking the inherited drawl of the Apple family, but she was grinning. She and Goldengrape had a vineyard of their own just on the other side of Ponyville from Sweet Apple Acres, and were starting to make a name for themselves in the wine business. Mac himself had helped them get the land ready for their first vines, and in doing so had become the beloved hero of their foal, who now took every chance she got to be around him.

“Aw, it can’t be that bad,” said Mac, then looked down to the filly on his hoof, “You’re gettin’ awfully big. Squeeze any harder and you’re like to snap off my leg.” Peachy stuck her tongue out to blow a raspberry at him, then tried all the more to squeeze the life from his leg.

“Well, it isn’t turning rocks, I will say that much,” said Inkie. The two adults shared a laugh and, after a bit of coaxing and a few solemn promises made, eventually managed to detach Barnacle Peachy from Mac.

The impromptu break concluded and ponies started to get back work. Most of the business of knocking down the damaged trees was done, save for a dozen or so still standing. The work now was clearing the branches and cutting up the logs into firewood, a task which was made simple by a kind of production line with everyone working together at certain tasks. Mac took up an axe and rested it across one big shoulder, ambling towards the last of the cherry trees that still stood upright. A number of them had white ribbons tied about their trunks, the long ends stirring and dancing in the blossom-scented breeze that flowed down from the apple orchard in the field over. It felt like the land itself was mourning the loss, and Mac couldn’t help but feel some sadness in knowing what had to be done, but such was the life of an orchard farmer- Trees were their livelihood and their love, but sometimes they had to be felled. So it goes.

The axe bit deep into the rotting wood beneath the white ribbon, chips of bark and punk falling to the grass. Two more swings cut through the weak timber, and a light kick sent the tree toppling down in a crash of snapping branches.

Mac whistled, “Haven’t seen rot this bad in a long while.”

“Yeah, some fungus or other,” said a big stallion Mac remembered as Albermarle. “We’re keeping an eye on the others, but we’re hoping its ran its course. Sparkling Delicious put out some medicine, but we won’t know if it’ll be any good for another few months.”

“Here’s hoping.”

“Yup,” said Albermarle, throwing a lanyard loop over a branch of Mac’s fallen tree and dragging it off to join the pile.

Mac discovered that his axe had wandered off during the exchange, though the search was a short one. Peachy Pie was trying to lift the heavy felling axe to attack the next ribboned tree, but given that the axe itself probably weighed near as much as she did, she wasn’t going to get it off the ground, much less buried in the target tree.

“Hey now, you should be careful with that, little lady,” he said, gently taking the axe from her. “It’s awful sharp; wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.”

Peachy puffed up her little chest as best she could, “I can do it!”

Mac grinned, “No doubt you could, but if you go and knock down all the trees, your Grandpa Turnover will come around and yell at the rest of us for being lazy.” Peachy Pie considered this thoughtfully. Mac added, “But, if you stand back a bit while I soften it up, you can help me buck it over, how about?”

This idea was met with an eager nod. Mac gently nudged the filly back so she’d be well out of axe-swing before taking up the tool and giving the tree a few sharp thumps with the heavy head, cutting out a bite from the punky flesh. He set aside the axe and nodded for the filly to join him, planting one big hoof on the trembling tree. “Alright now,” he said when Peachy planted both her forehooves on the trunk, “Give it a big push. Hard as you can!”

The filly put on a brave face and heaved with all of her tiny might, her face bunched up with the effort of it all. Mac leaned a bit of his weight against the tree, just enough to make the trunk creak and crackle. “Bit more. Push, push! I can’t do it on my own!”

Peachy redoubled her effort, and with a mighty grunt the two ponies managed to knock down their foe, their cry of ‘Timber!’ shouted in unison. As the tree crashed down, Mac scooped up the breathless filly, “You sure you got the right cutie mark? Should have yourself some crossed axes!”

“But Dad says my peach trees are the best he’d ever seen!”

“Well, they must be; they’re afraid of you should you take it into your head to pick up the axe!”

It was Inkie Pie that tossed the lasso around this tree, and she was eyeing the team, “Don’t you be giving my girl ideas, now. Last thing I need is some filly with shears going at my vineyard.”

The two solemnly assured her that they had no such intentions, and Inkie, after letting them know that she wasn’t entirely convinced, marched off with the fallen tree in tow. She might have looked to be soft and quiet, but Inkie Pie had the kind of strength that you could only get from a life on a rock farm. The tree would have to be lashed to a boulder to resist the inexorable force, and even then it might have only slowed her down.

Mac and Peachy watched her march off, then he leaned down to the filly’s ear, “Just make sure to give your trees and your mum’s vineyard a good talking to when you get home. Let them know who’s boss.”

Peachy nodded firmly, her eyes shining with importance.

“Come on then; we got the rest of these to knock down before Turnover starts shouting again.”

Author's Note

Martian's Fun Facts: Blacksmiths were not the muscle-bound, grunting oafs that popular culture has often painted them to be. Being a blacksmith required the kind of mind that could visualize how to solve almost any problem that was set before them; they had to build everything from nails to threshing machines and everything in between. More, they often had to build their own tools to actually be able to do such things, which required the kind of mental gymnastics the average human is simply not capable of.

A hundred years ago, almost every village had a blacksmith. A hundred and fifty years ago, there were no towns without a blacksmith. Every piece of technology or metalwork before the industrial revolution was done by a man standing in front of a fire with a hammer in hand.

Venerate the 'smith, for we would still be living in caves without them.