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It was a chilly day towards the end of this year’s apple-harvesting season.
The main six needed a vacation and some quality bonding time, but Apple-Jack couldn’t join them because she was busy at the orchard. They decided to bring the vacation and fun to her instead.
Apple-Jack had a lodge large enough for all of them, with cots for sleeping. She made them to each of their likings. Extra pillows for Rarity. A nightstand for Twilight’s books. A cooler for the drinks that Fluttershy liked and a pen outside for whichever critters she wanted to bring. A cloud-shaped pillow for rainbow-dash that rarity had helped sew. It wasn’t soft like a cloud though, it was very durable because rainbow-dash sometimes tries to destroy things in her sleep. A chest of party-supplies for Pinkie-Pie, including tube-shaped balloons and a comical-looking gadget with a nozzle for inflating them. AJ didn’t worry about accessorizing her own cot.
The girls agreed they’d help collect apples. But after the second day, with the wind a bit nappier, it began to get boring. So they decided to make a game out of it.
Apple-Jack was captain of one team and Rainbow-Dash wanted to be captain of another. They randomly selected from a basket with their names.
Apple-Jack was with Rarity and Pinkie-Pie.
Rainbow-Dash was with Fluttershy and Twilight.
They also decided it was only fair if both teams had a full day to prepare before the harvesting competition.
Apple-Jack knew the best way to harvest and taught her team that. With demonstrations that Pinkie-Pie helped make. Rarity insisted on dazzling-up their denim overalls and baskets. One basket had a hole and she patched that easy. One over-hoof shoe was falling apart and she sewed that back together.
Meanwhile, Team 2 had a three baskets, one per each. Rainbow-Dash played a little too hard with her basket and it got a hole in it. Rarity is the only one who know how to fix a basket, but she was busy preparing with Team 1. Twilight tried to use a spell on the remaining baskets to make them larger to hold enough apples. The first basket got bigger and heavier to carry. The second one she sneezed and accidentally shrank it instead. So they were left with: one broken basket, one basket that could barely hold a single apple, and one very large basket that had to be balanced on the backs of two ponies.
The next day, Team 1 filled their baskets from lunch time til suppertime with apples, and managed to hull them back by sunset.
Team 2 awkwardly carried their big basket up the hill. Twilight used her horn to levitate apples one by one to the basket. Rainbow dash kept getting her wings stuck in the branches while trying to collect apples by hand. Fluttershy was scared of every little noise. They collected about ten or so apples in total and went back down the hill for supper.
Team 1 won that game. Team 2 had to work the early-morning shift because they lost. And Team 1 got to sleep in because they earned it.
The calming sound of crickets, and grasshoppers' chirps, played throughout the night and into the morning.
As promised: Out rolled twilight, fluttershy, and rainbow-dash. Their wooden picnic table for meals was waiting for them. Breakfast was a team effort too, oatmeal with apple slices. Twilight levated the recipe book and fluttershy helped stir up the oatmeal. Rainbow-Dash helped slice some apples and put them into a bowl in the center of the table.
It was a cloudy dawn. The fresh apples were red.
Apple-Jack had the option to sleepin but woke up early anyway. She greeted the girls at the breakfast table and asked if they wanted any drinks from the cooler. Fluttershy wanted chocolate milk. AJ and the others wanted apple juice. Her and Rainbow-Dash got those from the cooler and brought them back to the table.
AJ passed the chocolate milk to Fluttershy and sat down across from her at the table.
AJ was munching on an apple and drinking apple juice, she was lost in her own world, talking about the harvest, the sensation of drinking hot apple cider and feeling it ooze to the stomach. Twilight said, “did you know that liquid takes seven seconds to pass down the esophagus and into the stomach?”
The girls wanted to test that theory.
AJ’s brassy voice was quiet for a moment. Her lips circled around the small straw of the juice box.
Fluttershy’s beverage was a chocolate milk carton AJ had given her. She sipped it and had begun counting to seven, looking over to her friend AJ, a lass who never seemed afraid of uncertainty, a complete opposite of the skittish fluttershy. Even in uncertainty, AJ manages to sort out what to do. Fluttershy admired that about her, and watched her reaction.
AJ had a curious way of navigating uncertainty. She pointed a hoof to her throat where the liquid was flowing, as pantomiming helped her sort out her thoughts, and brought it down per second.
Fluttershy’s pupils grew larger to absorb more information. She knew the hoof was washed before eating, but tiny bits of mud from working the harvest still clung to her horseshoe. Fluttershy’s mind began to daydream.
On one hoof, Apple-Jacks dedication to her work, even though she gets dirty, is admirable. On the other hoof, the bits of mud would be icky if they were to hold hooves. Wait, why was fluttershy thinking about holding hooves with Apple-Jack? They’re just friends. That’s what romantic partners do.
Fluttershy tries to keep her mind in present. She looks at her pastel hooves. She remembers every animal these have tended to. Every food and water dish she’s set out for them. Every critter that’s crawled out of her hand to send-off. She remembers how she was instructed to hold their house-kitten. One hoove beneath for the cat to sit on, and another by the scruff to keep it calm enough for her mother to feed it a special milk formula from a babybottle. Its face is orange, like apple-jack’s. The kitten had gotten sleepy, so she’d gently helped the kitten lift its head to drink the milk.
Apple-Jack was sleepy too today.
Fluttershy looked at her friend who nodding-off, and raised her hoof. It was shaking, she begged it to steady. She leveled it with AJ’s chin and hesitated. AJ is not a kitten. What was she doing?
“You’re sleepy? Rest your chin here.”
AJ rests her chin onto her hoof, and looks over to the beautiful eyes of fluttershy. Fluttershy was surprised at how comfortable AJ was with this. The sleepy girl began to nod off again.
Fluttershy almost never makes commands with her voice, because she doesn’t like being bossed around, but she spoke with the uncommon earnesty of a soft-natured nurse having gotten mad about their patient disobeying doctor’s orders.
“You should keep your chin up.”
Fluttershy raised AJ’s chin, like AJ was a stuffed toy horse. She inhaled to focus, and did not bother to ask if that was okay.
AJ trusted her gentle friend not to hurt her, so her muscles were already loose attop. She did not feel any tension while fluttershy lifted her chin up. It was a surprise to her though. Fluttershy hadn’t said she would raise her chin. This tiniest bit of surprise, and AJ suddenly felt a little weak, like maybe she shouldn’t move because Fluttershy a vet and knows what she’s doing.
Still with the command of Flutteryshy’s hoof, Apple-Jack involuntarily swallowed. Apple-flavored bits fell seven seconds down into her stomach, and she felt something else, off the natural trail down the center of someone, past her stomach.
Fluttershy’s face seemed very alluring so suddenly. Her big blueish-green eyes. Thin lips she would speak softly from for little animals. Those lips were often tersed to look smaller, but today fluttershy, while looking kindly at apple-jacks face, had allowed her lips to relax.
Rarity, a bit of a girlie girl, had gotten them all tinted lipbalm. She insisted the face be as orderly and clean as the dresses she made. She ensured the girls never had chapped lips. Apple-Jack often forgot to apply lip-balm and asked rarity to keep it safe from being crushed for her. Rarity obliged and frequently handed her the lipbalm.
So today, Apple-Jacks lips were looking extra soft and smooth. Like the skin of an apple.
Apple-Jack tried to speak but couldn’t, her brassy voice stuck by her friend’s hand. When she moved her chin, she realized the hoof of fluttershy was keeping it closed. So she hummed up some words and relented. This pleased Fluttershy.
Fluttershy watched her friend's confident, focused, dangerous eyes roll back, and heard an “eep” from AJ. Fluttershy’s self-confidence boosted from realizing the soft power she had on AJ.
For AJ, the feeling beneath her stomach was rising. And her lips had began to feel cold in the air.
She wanted to say, “Kiss me, kiss me please.” And with her remaining strength she puckered them out, almost like to point them.
She pointed them to fluttershy’s, her eyes practically begging.
Fluttershy understood. She took a deep breath for courage, and allowed her lips to press against Apple-Jack’s lips.
Apple-Jack wasn’t greedy when their lips pressed. She didn’t try to use tongue, and kept her hands back. She closed her eyes, furrowed her brows, and allowed herself to savor the moment.
Fluttershy’s lips tasted like the cardboard of the milk carton, and her breath tasted like chocolate milk, coffee and toothpaste. Apple-Jack’s lips tasted like apple juice, her breath like sweet mouthwash, no bitter coffee flavor. Adorable.