Near the Tree

by Comma Typer

Discovery

“Yeah, Twilight, I already heard the news minutes ago. Can’t believe the mad girls actually did it.”

“Really, Applejack?” she says, scrolling down her phone by the stall counter, ignoring the Closed sign as tiny videos in her feed show off the horse-run truck blasting through traffic. Legally, she might’ve added.

Applejack sighs and checks the still-empty buckets of no-apples. At least some apple cider hangs back in the age-old barrel. “Big Mac… their Big Mac just suddenly gettin’ round and…”

Her own Big Mac looks up, distracted from rechecking the balances.

“Here!”

That gets Applejack standing up from her humble stool.

The counter bursts with an apple avalanche rolling from their baskets, too many to count for now, more than enough for the trays to handle. Ballpark estimate says three dozen apple pies at minimum.

“What’re ya doin’?!”

“Supply run!” Apple Bloom declares with a shiny grin, her pink bow sprucing up an adorably proud grin.

“And in record time too!” Sweetie Belle adds, stopping the running timer on her phone.

“I didn’t you know you kept speed records!” Scootaloo goes on, taking out a scrap of paper where she wrote down said records down to the millisecond. And her eyes spot some spare aprons and hairnets. “Hey, since Apple Bloom’s gonna be hanging out a bit more, maybe we can help? With a special discount on your apple pies?”

Applejack double-takes. “Wait, hangin’ out with who?”

Before she can ask more, a hulking stallion comes into view: Big Mac, wiping the sweat off his forehead, panting for some air.

“I’m tellin’ ya, the scrappers should be givin’ me more bang for my buck for that run!” Granny announces as she makes her entrance, with a guard warding her away from causing any trouble. Applejack can only watch as her grandmother half-argues, half-gloats with him and some of the Expo’s staff, a couple of which are ponies themselves. “Those young’ns squeezed life out of the old guzzler when it was already dead!”

But while Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle hurry into the stall and don the aprons, waiting for instructions, Applejack looks at the farthest table they have. A four-seater, it’s accompanied by none other than Apple Bloom and that same Big Mac. No food, no drink save for bottled water.

“Is that…?”

She looks beside her, sees her big brother with his mouth open, unable to say the rest of his question as he stares at himself.

Applejack smiles a little. “Loss for words, huh?”

---

“Well, I guess… thanks for the help, big brother,” Apple Bloom begins. Her fingers tap and twaddle, but she keeps them under the table as a clumsy rush of tourists form yet another line by the stall, wallets out and baked scents already rolling.

“Eeyup.”

For a few seconds, there’s silence. Awkward silence, just looking at each other. Waiting for the other to say something first. Get it over with, already.

But the whole fair catches their attention first. More Wonderbolts rock the skies in round two of their show, and a couple other Earth ponies either wagon-pull more equipment for the upcoming concert or are the concert themselves as they field questions from enthusiastic fans and TV stations. Equestrian merchants hawk souvenirs from the other side at luxurious prices: crystal flowers and Everfree medicines, which are all humanely tested. Not to be outdone, roving food carts wheel fresh scents of hay and plucked leaves nestled in crunched veggie sandwiches, assisted by slurped-up herb-infused wheat noodles. A griffon’s there too, selling rabbit meat and venison, a butcher-cook in the Griffonstone style.

The line quickly reforms. Cheerilee is there once again, and some Crystal Preppers waltz into it, fancy uniforms and all. The faces of familiar aliens also hang around, getting spots in the line for a callback to home in the form of cozy apple dishes, cooked and baked with tender love and care.

“I’m… I’m sorry for going off on ya like that, Big Mac. I was… just too excited about meetin’ ya. I saw Sweetie Belle off with your world’s Rarity, and then Scootaloo with your Rainbow Dash… I thought it’d be the same here too. But I went off the rails this time. I was out of line…”

Big Mac looks on, eyes still on the growing line for apples. Applejack and the other CMC busy themselves preparing pies and pouring down cider, decked out in extra aprons and hairnets. Just like family.

“I’m sorry too, Apple Bloom.”

Her face sharp-turns, lights up. “Wait, what? You’re also sorry? What did ya do?”

Big Mac lets his huge head hang and his scruffy mane fall. Takes his time, gnawing on his jaw. “You were… rowdy. Just like the Crusaders back home… or whatever yer’ called. I… like that.”

A gasp catches her throat. “You did?”

A short-lived stare shoots into the distance. “Eeyup. I brushed you off as jus’ city folk. Should’ve seen your farm first… made you run off instead.”

Apple Bloom chuckles, cupping his big hoof on the table with both her hands. No fingers grasp hers, but she swears she can feel his grip, more than enough for a shake.“I guess we both should’ve asked, huh? We should’ve just… opened up from the start...”

And Big Mac chuckles back, warm like a hearth, hearty just like family.

“Say, what about having a family dinner with both of our families?” Apple Bloom suggests, and possibilities blossom into a million parties: bobbing their heads in water for more apples together, wearing silly cowgirl/cowstallion costumes together, even cook some apple pie for each other and the whole clan. “I don’t mind either place for the venue, but—”

“Why not both?!”

The shout of the CMC declare their entrance, with a tray’s serving of several apple pies along with some apple juice for everyone, Sweetie and Scoots taking off their hairnets and sitting down on spare plastic chairs.

“Come on, Scoots, think of the logistics!” Sweetie says, stuffing herself with a slice of apple pie she just cooked with her “uncouth” hands. “Just going back and forth! And what if the portal breaks, and—oh hi, Apple Bloom!”

And Apple Bloom can only stifle a bout of laughter. “Gettin’ ahead of ourselves here, huh? But yeah, if we can pull both off, that’d more than make up for it!”

“Make up… for what?” Scoots says, checking Apple Bloom’s eyes drifting towards her stallion step-brother.

“That’s… a story for another time! But yeah, Big Mac? I’m glad I got to know ya’ more.”

And Big Mac himself takes a slice of apple pie right to his hoof. How he does it without fingers, Apple Bloom will never understand. Though he doesn’t say a word, a little grunt of approval is more than enough.

“Whaddaya say, Big Mac?” And a cheerful Apple Bloom holds her paper cup of cider sky-high. “Ready to meet the whole family, like, next week?”

“Already?!” yell out Scoots and Sweets.

But Apple Bloom and Big Mac share a little snicker, as they get in on some homemade apple pie and toast their cider together, clinking their cups and letting loose a bellyful of laughter and a serving of hugs.

Comments

[Rojack79]

Well, I was going to write today but first I'm going to binge this cause I'm a sucker for heartfelt family reunions, even if that family is interdimensional.

[Casketbase77]

I’ve said before that no one describes food like you do. In Langit at Lupa, food prep is Garlan’s emotional barrier against his surroundings. He works, he gets paid, he eschews socializing. He also focuses on cooking toils when he’s feeling troubled, like in the second act low point of his focal fic. His food cart is reliable. It's comfortably consistent. Plus his customers don’t prod at his character flaws the way his family does. 

In this fic, Apple Bloom is if Garlan was completely inverted. She’s in no way indifferent to the setting; hundreds of words of narration is spent reveling in the Multiverse Expo. Nor is her commitment to helping run the family fruit stand a comfort; work obligation is actually the closest thing this story has to an antagonist, since it keeps Apple Bloom isolated from her friends and dimensional brother for the story’s first half, and then the sudden dearth of inventory drives tension in the story’s second half. 

Apple Bloom does however parallel Garlan in one specific way: she retreats into her food prep after a discouraging social experience. For Garlan, it was friction with his relatives and wife. For Apple Bloom, it was a perceived failure to make a good impression on Big Mac. And while Garlan shakes his melancholia mostly on his own (give or take some minimal prodding from a priest) befitting Apple Bloom’s more extroverted character, she gets literally rescued by her two closest friends that drop everything and rush to find her.

Many fics that focus on one member of the CMC (or in this story the Cinema Club) tend to shoehorn in the remaining two out of some perceived obligation. Here though, Scoots and Sweetie were important tonal counterbalances. Every scene (with three deliberate exceptions) is filtered through Apple Bloom’s increasingly discouraged and neurotic POV. Her family constantly interrupts her marveling at Equestrians, her projection onto the pony version of Big Mac fuels a lot of apprehension, and the already mentioned low point causes her to completely withdraw into working the stand. In short, Apple Bloom’s heavy emotions are omnipresent and it's Scootaloo’s scrappy gumton and Sweetie Belle’s teeny bopper frivolity that add background banter to scenes that would otherwise feel smothered in introspection. There’s also unexpected payoffs to their ostensibly throwaway talents, such as Scootaloo’s skill with machines and Sweetie Belle’s knowledge of the concert schedule contributing to solving the Act Three crisis. 

On a surface level, the ease with which Sweetie and Scoots respectively bond with Rarity and Rainbow Dash reinforces Apple Bloom’s shame at her own apparent failure to connect with Big Mac. They also seem to ignore her when she reaches out via the group chat, intentionally tipping the reader into feeling embittered towards the two. Once this tipping point is reached however, the POV shifts to Scootaloo noticing the message completely pivoting to selfless crisis-management mode. Only after the supply run sequence gets underway do both characters fall back into their role as bantering comic relief. Their brief sequence of dramatic relief can’t be overstated in its importance, since by the time of the jalopy’s implosion, Apple Bloom has dipped fully into depressive doldrums where her reflexively upbeat friends are needed most. Their loyalty is doubly meaningful when the narration puts special focus on the two of them abandoning their dimensional surrogate sisters to find Apple Bloom. In the context of this fic, that’s the most serious sacrifice a character can make.

It really does speak to this fic’s character writing that one of the most meaningful moments is Scootaloo racing in the opposite direction of the Rainbow Dash meet and greet. Aiding Apple Bloom is simply more important. On a cosmic scale, the stakes in this story are incredibly low. Sweetie Belle’s triumph is trying on hats with her sister’s counterpart, Apple Bloom’s despair is caused by a botched lunchroom conversation, and the all-consuming crisis of the third act is spurred by an empty fruit stand and a broken down car. Still, there’s never any doubt in the reader’s mind that these events are supremely meaningful to the characters who are present for them. It’s what allows for the ultimate release of tension to be an orchard run intercut with flashbacks to unremarkable moments in Apple Bloom’s childhood. Plotwise, the orchard run accomplishes the mundane task of restocking the family fruit cart. Characterwise however, its the culmination of cooperation that the protagonist has been aching for.

Speaking of the orchard run, its prefaced by a brief but highly deliberate POV shift. As mentioned, this story mostly sticks to Apple Bloom and her high intensity emotions. Until now, the only departures from her were the aforementioned rush of her friends to her side and a strategically placed insight into Big Macintosh’s perception of her talk with him. Both instances are uses of Dramatic Irony; with Sweetie and Scoots, we see their emotional responses and their snap decisions that Apple Bloom is too gloomy to expect out of them. For Big Macintosh, the reader sees that he’s actually intimidated by the human version of his sister, and her feels just as regretful as she does about their mutual awkwardness. 

However, the third and final POV departure has a purely thematic purpose.

Cookie is mentioned a few times throughout the story, mostly as Apple Bloom’s point of reference for sorting out her feelings towards Equestrians. It’s perfectly believable that the EqG Apples would have a farm pony, and that Apple Bloom would hang onto said pony as a symbol of the bond between herself and her (real) brother. Allotting a few paragraphs to Cookie is unexpected, but her point of view enriches the story in two ways. First, it reinforces the bridge between species that is this fic’s focal point. Cookie is not sapient in the Equestrian sense, but her simple thoughts and feelings of companionship are universal. Second, due to Cookie’s aforementioned simple-mindedness, her opinions and perceptions can be considered more pure and unfiltered than Apple Bloom’s neurotic overthinking. Cookie considers Apple Bloom a “sweetheart” and is amazed at the arrival of Big Macintosh, so much that her only point of comparison is an equally fantastical encounter she had with Sunset Shimmer.

Through Cookie’s eyes we see the two leads - Apple Bloom and Big Macintosh- as they are. Not as they see each other, or see themselves, or believe the other sees. Cookie’s POV is a quick assurance that the bond has indeed formed. And immediately after this assurance, the harvest run proves it.

There’s not much to say regarding the story’s denouement at the return trip to the Expo. There is no high melodrama, no arcane artifact that needed retrieved or magical villain that had to be vanquished. The world would have kept turning whether or not the supply run was successful or whether Apple Bloom and Big Mac sufficiently bonded. But the run was successful and the dimensional siblings did bond. 11,000 words was a long time to maintain stakes through emotion alone, but finally everything is resolved with the promise of future meetings between the Apple Families.

Overall, this fic is a fully torqued showcase of EqG Apple Bloom’s emotional range as a character. We’re treated to aspiration, frustration, resignation, and sudden triumph. The Expo itself is a simple backdrop supercharged by the investment of not just Apple Bloom, but every other named character wanting the most out of their shared day. The reader is left feeling tired in the most wholesome way, and it's a shining showcase of how to make strong interplay between the Equestria Girls universe and the main one.

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[Boltstrike58]

I've never seen a FiM/EqG story take this particular route. Interesting. I think you limited yourself a little by focusing solely on the Apples/Crusaders, but as it is, this ain't a bad story.