“Now this here,” said Braeburn, pointing to the first small glass with the tip of his hoof, “is Calvados. This here is scumble—that’s mostly apples—and then these four over here are applejack.” Trenderhoof flinched. “You know applejack?”

“We’ve met,” he said.

“If you want to be introduced to your drinks, don’t let me stop you. Now see if you recognize this one.”

The journalist placed his hoof over Braeburn’s. “You are not looking at this the right way.”

“What do you mean, tenderhoof?” said the apple rancher, talking as though he had a mouth full of molasses. “I mean, Trenderhoof? I mean, Trend?”

“It isn’t a question of where it’s from. It’s a question of what food it ought to be paired with.”

Cheese had more or less given up by now. He’d eaten a disappointingly expensive flat thing that someone had decided to call pizza as a cruel joke, and now he was staring at a piece of pink cotton candy dissolving itself in a cocktail glass, and feeling utterly depressed.

“---and that one,” he heard Trenderhoof’s voice, filtering through the fog, “only ought to be served with artisanal vanilla ice cream. This one would be best with a nice Camembert.”

Camembert? What were they saying about Camembert? That one was personal. It was his most serious oath. He couldn’t hear it without thinking of when he’d said it last and what pony he’d said it to. He glanced up at Braeburn.

“So,” he was saying, “wouldja say that one was a good cheese pairing?” He elbowed the party stallion in the ribs. “Cheese pairing, geddit?”

“Snnrrk!” said Trenderhoof, and then “ow,” as apple brandy went up his nose. He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes.

“Leave comedy to the professionals,” Cheese muttered bitterly.

“Whaddya say, Hoofatrend? Wanna try ‘em all again?”

“Sh. . .sl. . . yes,” nodded Trenderhoof, pushing the sleeves of his argyle sweater up. The leather patches made it stick. “Say, I’m beginning to feel inspired.”

Green eyes, shaded deep, like a deer fern,
Knows apples, at least, and he can learn,
Surprisingly wise,
Did I mention those eyes?
That interesting stallion named—hic!—Applejack.

Cheese began to worry again. Their hotel room was small, and this was not in the contract, not even in the fine print. By Cheddar, he was not taking the ferry back to Bayroan. He’d rather sleep on the ferry—or in the park—or just about anywhere—but he was hard pressed to know whether Bayroan or piling in with both Braeburn and Trenderhoof would be worse. And now he had the eerie feeling that the pink cocktail was staring at him. Instinctively, he shoved it behind a menu.

“I’m no expert on fancy poetry,” said Braeburn, shaking his head, “but I don’t reckon that one rhymes.”

“I have always wanted,” Trenderhoof said, eyes watering, “to live on a real farm. An honest, authentic, working apple farm. I love apples. Absolutely adore them. Do you know I once had an apple so rare that they thought it was extinct? Have I told you this before? I ate,” he glanced down at his hoof, which was moving around on its own, “four of them.” Braeburn smacked his hoof on the back of his head. “Ow!”

“Why in the hay would you do a fool thing like that? Why didn’t you plant it?"

“I can’t,” said the journalist, sniffing. “I’m not an Earth Pony. I’ve got a black hoof.”

“Then why didn’t you give the cores to one of us?” Braeburn scolded. “We would of known what to do. Then everypony could of enjoyed one, instead of just you!”

Trenderhoof hung his head. “I didn’t think of that.”

Braeburn snorted again. “Guess you didn’t.”

“Of course I didn’t!” Trenderhoof said tragically. He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes with a napkin. “What good am I, anyway? Just a—hic!—s’unicorn—journalis’—Cannerlot elitist, everypony says. And I have so much respect for you Earth Ponies, ‘cause you’re so strong and competent an’ all. Even him,” he added, pointing at Cheese. “An’ I just wanna live the simple life on a simple farm—hic!—with simple ponies.”

“Well, then, why don’t you?” said Braeburn, efficiently tidying up the glasses.

“Really?” breathed Trenderhoof.

“Um, Braeburn?” said Cheese, suddenly anxious, “you do understand this—stuff, don’t you?”

Braeburn rolled his eyes. “Why does everypony assume I’m so naïve? I come from a small town. Everypony knows everything about everypony else’s business. You couldn’t keep a secret if you tried. Mr. Trenderhoof, I could tell you I’m sorry, but I just don’t like stallions, and that would be the truth. I could tell you I’m sorry, but I just don’t think you’re all that pretty, and that would be the truth, too, only it would be kind of mean to say so. But the real truth is that I just got my heart broken pretty bad, and I think I broke somepony else’s, which is worse. I did some stupid stuff, and I’d be really stupid if I did some more.”

“Oh,” said Trenderhoof. “The good ones are never interested,” he lamented, “and I don’t know why.”

Cheese opened his mouth to tell him why, but Braeburn interrupted.

“You say you want to live on a farm; well, you can come on out and live on a ranch. We have everything anypony could ever want in Appleloosa, but one thing we don’t have is tourism, and we could sure as hay use some. Here,” he said, slapping his leather vest, “let me give you one of my cards.”

Cheese’s jaw dropped. “You have business cards?”

“Of course I do. What do you think I wear a vest for? Here,” he said, sliding a card across the table to Trenderhoof. “Now, you listen, Mr. Trenderhoof. Come on out and see Appleloosa for yourself. Find out what it’s really like to live on an apple ranch. Send those articles back to your editors—Trenderhoof living the Simple Life. What the hay, make it a book. Be a real Appleloosan, be one of us, for a while at least.”

“Come and live with you?” said Trenderhoof, eyes wide. “For real?”

“Yep. You take that card to Silversaddle, Duke of Appleloosa. Biggest ranch in the area. He’ll be more than happy to take you in, stay as long as you like.”

“There’s a Duke of Appleloosa? I never heard of that,” said Cheese, “and I’ve been there a few times now.”

“Is it a new title?” asked Trenderhoof.

Braeburn shrugged. “Beats me. Around Appleloosa, we’ve always just called him The Duke.”

Trenderhoof put his glasses back on and looked at the card for a moment or two. “You couldn’t have any idea how much this means to me,” he said finally. “But I don’t see how I could possibly be any use. I’ll be in your way, and I can’t do any work.”

“But you will be doing something useful,” said Braeburn. “You’ll be writing about us and telling your readers, because I can practically guarantee that you’re going to love it. As for doing work, don’t you worry. We’ll get some work out of you, one way or t’other. We’re good at that.”

The unicorn levitated Braeburn’s card into the breast pocket of his sweater. “I really must get back to my guests,” he said. “You’ve given me something to consider.” He rose from the bench a bit unsteadily.

Braeburn rose and caught him under one leg. “Are you sure you’ll be ok? You want me to walk you over there? Come to think of it, maybe you oughta go home.”

“Oh, no. I’ll be fine,” Trenderhoof said, patting Braeburn on the chest and straightening himself up. “After all,” he added with a rueful smile, “what kind of travel writer would I be if I couldn’t function when I’d had too much to drink?” He turned and disappeared into the crowd of ponies.

Braeburn dropped back down onto the bench. “You’re mighty quiet, Cheese. You haven’t been yourself all day. What’s rustling your oats?”

Cheese drew a deep breath. “You really want to know what it is? There are too many ponies here, and too many of them are miserable. They make each other miserable, they make themselves miserable, and some of them are miserable for very good reasons I can’t do anything about. I want to make them all happy, and that’s impossible. Even if I threw the biggest party in Equestria in the Great Park, there would still be too many miserable ponies, and it drives me crazy. After a few days, I’m miserable, too: miserable on the inside, and miserable to everypony else. That’s the effect it has on me. I’ve been a bad host, and a bad friend, Braeburn, and I’m really sorry about that.” He tossed the pink drink he’d ordered earlier down in one gulp, and gagged. “Eurgh.”

Braeburn shook his head, clicking his tongue. “I’m surprised at you, Cheese. You’re an Earth Pony. You know how this works.” Seeing Cheese’s perplexity, he explained, “You start small, and make it grow. Everything’s gotta start little before it grows big. You said it yourself: the ponies here aren’t really enjoying themselves. Why don’t you start with them?”

Cheese felt the spasm in his flank as the sandwich accordion began its runs, louder and louder, squealing high over the tasteful mood music. His leg banged the underside of the table, rattling the glasses, and then the spirit of laughter punched through him, blowing him high like a geyser. He exploded over the table in one bound, pulling out his accordion in one smooth gesture, and screamed the battle cry of his mentor, the Great Ponyacci, “Wa-hey-hey! Who’s ready to laugh?”

And that is how, as Trenderhoof wrote in a later column, The Slice single-hoofedly was turned into a comedy club.

~~

“Whoo!” sighed Cheese, as they stood outside the Slice of Life, and stretched his legs. “That was a good one.” He pulled out his straw hat and tilted it on the back of his head as they began to walk back to the hotel.

“Aren’t you tired?” asked Braeburn.

“Are you kidding?” Cheese said exultantly. “I feel great.” He leapt up on the railing surrounding the nearest brownstone townhouse, and strolled along, balancing and jumping from railing to railing as he reached the end of each, whistling. Every party pony in Equestria has got to have felt that one, thought Cheese. Whoo! He spun himself around a lamppost and spiraled down to the street.

They had walked straight past the street they were supposed to turn on to go uptown. Cheese had been too exuberant to notice, and Braeburn easily got lost. Now they had reached the end of the street on the river side of the island. The moon was huge and brilliant, hanging low, with its light doubled by its reflection in the water. At length, Cheese said, “You know, if you look at it just so, it sorta looks like a pizza.”

Braeburn frowned. “I can’t see it, myself.”

“You’re probably right,” Cheese acknowledged. “You probably have to be in a certain kind of mood. Do you think Trenderhoof will really come out to Appleloosa?”

“I think he will,” said Braeburn, leaning against the wall that bordered the water.

“Isn’t it going to be awkward having him around?”

“Oh, I doubt it,” said Braeburn, chuckling. “You said it yourself: he gets tired of everything. He’ll lose interest in me fast enough. But I don’t think he’s going to lose interest in Appleloosa. Appleloosa’s going to be real good for him. Call it a hunch. Besides, who said I’m going straight back to Appleloosa?”

Cheese pushed a pebble off the wall, and they watched as its rings spread out, larger and larger, until they disappeared.

“I miss her letters,” Braeburn burst out. “I don’t think I did right by her. I wish I could make it up to her. Sometimes I think about the mare I know she is, and the filly I thought she’d be, and I don’t know what I think. But I miss her letters, and that’s a solid fact. I love you like a brother, buddy, but it’s just not the same.”

“Yeah, well,” said Cheese, and pushed another pebble into the water. They didn’t speak for a while.

“Is it true that you party ponies have to make other ponies happy?” asked Braeburn. “I mean like, you have to, have to?”

“Pretty much.”

“Then what in the name of sour apples makes your mama so unhappy, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Probably me,” admitted Cheese. “She’s unhappy about my being a party pony at all. It’s what you call a vicious cycle. The more she sees me, the more unhappy she gets, and then I have to try to make her happy, but then that reminds her I’m a party pony, and she’s more unhappy. If I stick around, I’ll try to make her happy until it kills me, so it’s better not to try. I don’t think about it much. I may be from here, but it stopped being home a long time ago.”

“And where’s home?”

Good question, but one he couldn’t answer, and wouldn’t if he could. “Home is where I hang my hat.”

“But you don’t hang your hats,” Braeburn pointed out. “You just stash ‘em somewhere and when you need ‘em, you pull ‘em out of your—“

“What I’m trying to say is that I’m home everywhere.”

Braeburn snorted. “Doesn’t sound like it to me. No home, no kin—sounds like sheer misery.”

“It does to you, but you’re not a party pony,” Cheese said, his voice going upwards, one horseshoe anxiously clicking against the wall as he tried to explain. “You’re a rancher. You need kin. To be honest, this whole city is probably full of ponies I’m related to, and I don’t even want to know. I don’t want more kin. I don’t even like the ones I’ve got.”

“Not even me?” murmured Braeburn.

Cheese was speechless.

“I told you I love you like a brother. You think I was just blowing smoke? I’m telling you, you have kin in Appleloosa. You don’t come see me, I’m gonna come and see you, like it or not. You know how I am about kinfolk.”

It was stunning—the idea that he might have a brother, even a borrowed brother, especially one he actually liked. “Hold it,” he said. “Does that mean I have to be kin with the whole Apple family now? Because I don’t think I’m up for that.”

“Nope,” said Braeburn, pulling off Cheese’s hat, putting him in a headlock, and hoofing his mane. “We’ll say for now it’s just me. One relative at a time. Baby steps.”

“Shh!” he said, pushing Braeburn away, and holding up a hoof to silence him. There was something coming through.

It wasn’t Cheesy Sense: definitely not. There was no party he had to worry about.

He obviously didn’t need to have his party pony magic re-ignited. He was practically incandescent with it.

It wasn’t—that other thing that kept pulling at him. That wasn’t anything new, anyway. He always felt that. He thought about her more or less all the time. So what was this, this tiny blip, blip, blip?

. . . what did they call that? A homing signal?

“So, I was thinking, Cheese—I’m heading West pretty soon. Tomorrow, maybe.”

“Not tomorrow, Braeburn, remember? We’ll say goodbye day after tomorrow. Tomorrow, we’re going to the Broncs.”

It turned out not to be too hard to find a little white filly with a curly pink and red mane and tail named Cherry Blossom after all.

Author's Notes:

As of the Celestia and Spike Friends Forever comic book, there is indeed a Silversaddle, Duke of Appleloosa.

This turned out to be a bit longer than the little detour I planned! But I enjoyed it, and I hope you did, too.

---also, I would probably commit insecticide to see art of Braeburn, Trenderhoof, and Cheese hanging out in a bar, so if you're dying to do that, don't let me stop you.