"Eeeeeugh..." She yawns from across the apartment. A feminine squeak briefly breaks through, and then the southern drawl returns in full force twang. "Just what are y'all workin' on, now?"

I can't help it. A smirk crosses my lips while I'm in the midst of navigating the holo-board. "Why do you do that?"

A tiny pair of green eyes blink in my peripheral vision. "Do what?"

"Say 'y'all' when you're clearly talking to one person?"

"Look, I sure dun badger y'all—er... you for the funny way ya say things!"

"Uh huh..." My gloved hand twitches and pivots, cycling through various windows of the browser across the translucent, levitating screen in the center of my living room. I enter a field, and my left gloved hand joins in, typing a user name and password in midair. "And just what funny way is that?"

"Well, y'know... erm..." She fidgets, an orange smudge in the center of the floor. "All them silly words like 'hand' and 'fingers' and 'flat-footed.'"

"Applejack, those aren't funny words. That's just human vocabulary."

"And just where in yer dictionary does it give y'all the right to tease me for the way I... th-the way I..." Her voice undulates like she's on an invisible roller coaster. I can sense her teeting through the blurry holofield. "Land's sakes! I'm a yawnin' machine today!"

"You're cute when you're sleepy," I mutter. "Hell, you're cute all the time."

"Quiet, you." Light hooves pad across the carpet as she makes her way to the couch. "Ya still didn't answer my question."

"Oh. Sorry. I'm... uh..." I sigh a bit, glaring apathetically at the flickering spreadsheet floating before my face. "I'm making sure there are no mistakes in the road schedule. We gotta be on the move two days from now, heading to a filming location in the southern hemisphere before Europa disappears from the night's sky."

"Shucks. Yer quite the hard worker, ain'tcha?"

"Heh..." I smirk. "That's flattering, coming from you."

"Hay, I can't pretend to understand half of it. I think it's awful swell that yer workin' in the broadcastin' business. I dun know why yer so glum about it." She reaches the foot of the couch and stands up on her hind quarters. "Sounds downright excitin' to me!"

"I'm not glum. It's just that... well... when you've been doing the same damn thing for so long, you start to feel a bit exhausted—"

"Nnnngh! Darn it!" She hops and hops and hops. "Unnngh! This is plum embarrassin'. I made it last time!"

"Whoops. Allow me, girl." I reach down and pick her up by her waist. I plop her down on the couch cushion to my left. "Y'know, all you need to do is ask."

She looks up at me with bleary, bleary eyes. "Hmmmph... I know that! I ain't no mare to..." She yawns again, fidgeting with the lengthy ends of her blue hoodie. "Mmmm... to r-refuse kind hospitality."

I giggle. "God's hooks, you're really tired."

"I am... n-not..." She nevertheless teeters on the brink, her frazzled blonde bangs flouncing. "Just a lil' dizzy from the ticklepopcorn."

"Teleportation."

"Mfff... Whatever."

My nose wrinkles. Squinting, I lean over her fuzzy golden head and sniff again. "And would it kill ya to take a shower before coming over, for once?"

"And what is that supposed to mean?"

I return to typing away at my holoboard. "In case you haven't noticed, human society has evolved beyond the need for mud and backsweat."

"As well as the need for bein' polite and neighborly!"

"Heh..." I smirk. "Yeah, okay."

"Well excuse me for pollutin' yer hoity toity apartment with my dirty pony ways!"

"Applejack..." I giggle once more, shaking my head. "I'm only teasing. Seriously, though, did you come straight here from the fields?"

"Ermm..." She sits back, raising the neck of the hoodie high enough to cover her blushing freckles. "M-maybe..."

"Shhh—hey hey..." I lightly bat her hooves, forcing the hoodie to drop back over her orange chest. "Don't mess with it like that."

"Err... Why not?"

"We've been through this. It's just a prototype. I don't want you accidentally being warped away to another moon, or—Zoram forbid—some godawful dimension. Like the Flatulence Zone."

Her green eyes squint. "There's really such an awful place?"

"Professor Reginald P. Flatulence became a scientific martyr for a reason."

"Well, who in tarnation am I to argue with that?"

"Now you're just being sassy."

"Guilty as charged." She turns around three times, folds her legs from underneath, and curls up beside me. "Mmmmm... Celestia alive, I've never seen so many apples fall between sunup and sundown..."

"Had a long day?"

"And h-how." She pauses to yawn for the umpteenth time. "Big Mac's gone to help with a barn raisin' in Appleloosa. I had the fields all to myself, and there's no way in blazes I'm makin' Apple Bloom wear herself to the bone. Not yet, anyway..." Her freckled cheeks curved. "Eheheh..."

"You didn't have to come here, AJ," I say, typing a quick e-mail to the rest of my department. My eyes dart left and right across the fluctuating screen. "You deserve a good night's sleep. How about I send you back home?"

"Are y'all kiddin'?" She lifts her head up towards me. "I can't get a wink of sleep back there!"

"And why not?"

"Just 'cuz..." She sighs out her nostrils, resting the back of her head against my thigh from where she's curled. "All I ever seem to do these nights is lay wide awake, starin' at the ceiling and frettin' over gettin' the next week's harvest done on time."

"Sounds like somepony's got insomnia."

"Yeah... th-that's what Twilight thinks too."

"Maybe you should... uh... go see Nurse Joy about it."

"Her name's Nurse Redheart, ya dummy."

"Jee..." I smirk. "How could I ever have made that mistake."

"Naw, I just find it plum impossible to get some decent shut-eye these days," Applejack mutters. "Even when I'm tuckered out. It's almost like... like..."

"Like what?"

"I'm sorely missin' somethin'. Somethin' to distract me as I'm restin' my head against my pillow. Somethin' to rest my weary mind." She looks up and not so stealthily assaults me with a pair of sparkling emerald eyes. "Somethin' like a fancy shmancy human bedtime story that runs off of light and gadgetry."

"Ennnnnghhhh..." I sigh through a smirking expression. "You're the worst at giving subtle hints, AJ."

"Ya really think so?" She tiredly grins. "Then why are ya'all smilin'?"

"Fine. Fine." I swipe my gloved hand across the screen, closing out the plethora of work documents. "Have it your way. Movie time."

She yawns out the quietest "Yeeeeeha" I've ever heard in my life, followed by, "Can we continue the one we left off at?"

"Pffft. You mean the one you fell asleep halfway through?"

"I did not!"

"Yeah, heh, okay." My hand motions drag a folder into view. I poke it open, reach in, grab a file with my palm, and fling it across the living room wall. A holographic projection sparks to life, showing a hero in black and a regal maiden stumbling through a boggy swamp. "Right... I think we were two minutes before this spot..."

"Uh huh uh huh uh huh..." Applejack climbs onto my lap and drapes herself on her side.

"Heh..." I smile and brush her blonde hairs behind her fuzzy ears. "Make yourself at home, why don't you?"

"Mmmm..." She curls her legs to her chest and breathes easier, gazing at the screen across from the sofa. "Don't mind if I do."

"You do remember what's happened up to this point, right?"

"Reckon I do. This here pirate fella is actually the gal's long lost sweetheart, Westley."

"Right. And he's gotta get Buttercup through the Fire Swamp to safety."

"Hmmmm..." Applejack rests her cheek against my knee. I can bet her eyes are already shut. "The thangs that you people come up with."

"Heh... I know, right?"

"Do they ever make it out of the Fire Swamp?"

"Just watch it and find out for yourself, silly pony."

"You've seen this movie before, haven't ya?"

"Well, yeah. It's a classic. And, between you and me, I'm not too fond of the remake they did in 2019 with Ellen Page and Joseph Gordon Levitt."