"Today's the day," Applejack muttered, the light of dawn glowing just enough at her bedroom window to show the red circle around the date on her calendar. Unless, of course—she rolled over, snuggled deeper into her pillow—she put it off another month same way she'd been doing all year.

But no. Apple Bloom had been making like her name and blossoming ever since she'd started hanging around with Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo, and if Applejack waited any longer, well, The Talk was s'pposed to get a filly ready for that awful, messy moment when she became a mare. Didn't do a licka good to wait till it'd already happened: that, she knew all too well.

Consarned biology...

Sighing, grumbling, rolling her hoofs onto the cold wooden planks of the floor, she bit into the brim of her hat, flipped it from its peg onto her head, and stepped into the hallway. Apple Bloom'd be up—that girl was definitely an Apple when it came to waking with the sun—so Applejack crossed the hall and tapped her sister's door.

A muffled "C'mon in!" from the other side, and Applejack pushed through, Apple Bloom sprawled over her bedspread among six or seven books, the pencil in her teeth making neat little marks in a notebook.

"Well, now!" AJ leaned against the door with a grin. "Didn't I hear somepony say she had her homework all done yesterday when she was asking to go crusading with her friends? Didn't I hear that?"

Primmer than any schoolmarm, Apple Bloom gave a purse-lipped look and set the pencil down. "I knew I'd have time afore school this morning, so it wasn't like I was telling a fib or nothing. It's all about being prepared, y'see?"

Which made Applejack feel all the more that first telltale tightness just below her stomach. "Well, what I gots to show you's all about being another kinda prepared." She nodded toward the door. "You're right near old enough, I reckon, so off that bed, sugar cube. It's you and me in the bathroom for a couple minutes."

Apple Bloom's ears perked, and she leaped to the floor. "This gotta do with me getting my cutie mark??"

"Different thing altogether." Applejack moved out into the hall, heard the clatter of hoofs as Apple Bloom hurried to catch up. "This ain't about what you got on your flanks. It's about what you got between your hind legs."

"Y'mean my flap?"

Halfway into the bathroom, Applejack gasped and spun. "Where'd you ever hear a filthy word like that??"

Eyes wide, Apple Bloom took half a step backwards. "From...from Sweetie Belle. She said—"

"Rarity!" Applejack couldn't hold back a snort. "Saying such things to foals! Ain't she got no decency??"

"'Tweren't Rarity! It was Sweetie Belle's ma and pa!"

Applejack's ears folded. "Huh. Well." Rarity's folks were great—Applejack wouldn't stand for anypony thinking otherwise—but, well, she had to admit the only reason she didn't call 'em dumb as posts was because she found posts to be pretty darn useful....

A little flush glowed at Apple Bloom's cheeks. "A month or three back, Sweetie Belle said her folks'd been sorta giggling at each other all day, and when it got on toward nightfall, they told her to head on over and spend the night at Rarity's place. She got about halfway there when she remembered she'd forgot her schoolbooks, and when she went back to get 'em, her folks were— Well, she didn't rightly know what they was doing!"

Which was more than Applejack needed to hear; she held up a hoof. "All right, let's just—"

"Sweetie Belle said her mama was all stretched out on the sofa moaning and laughing, and her daddy kept saying how much he loved licking her flap! And he had his nose pressed right up between her—"

"Enough!" Only thing that stopped Applejack from stomping the floor was her not wanting to wake Granny Smith and get her in the middle of all this. Or worse, Big Macintosh! Taking a breath, she struggled to keep her voice down. "First off, I don't ever wanna hear you using that word no more. It ain't proper. You calls it your lacinia if you gotta call it anything, y'hear?"

Apple Bloom blinked up at her. "Lacinia?"

"That's right." No matter how much Applejack didn't wanna do this, she was determined to do better than Granny's stammered explanation that awful day all those years ago when AJ had come screaming and running in from the fields with blood gushing out of a place she hadn't even had five minutes before. "Our lacinia's wunna the things that separates us ponies from the less-civilized folks and the rude animals of the forest, y'see: we keep our parts back there all nice and tucked away inside insteada having 'em flop around out in the open."

"Parts?" Half a second, and Apple Bloom's face brightened like the sun coming up. "Oh! You mean like on cattle and sheep with their pizzles and cunnies?"

"Apple Bloom!" The air heating up around her, Applejack had to struggle again to keep her voice down. This was the main reason she preferred dealing with trees: plant biology weren't anywhere near as gruesome. "If you hafta—and far as I'm concerned, you don't ever hafta—the polite word for a male's part is 'penis' and for us females, it's 'vulva.'"

"Y'mean—" Somehow, Apple Bloom's eyes got even wider. "I've got a cunny same as a cow??"

"What did I say 'bout that word??"

Her sister flinched. "Vulna—or something?"

"Vulva." Another clench in her stomach, and Applejack nodded, moved into the bathroom, tried to push every horrible detail of her first menses back into the part of her head where she kept stuff she didn't wanna think about. "Now, sometime soon—maybe before you get your cutie mark, maybe after—your lacinia's gonna open up, and, well, blood's gonna come out."

Apple Bloom's ears folded even tighter. "Blood?? I ain't never seen no cow bleeding back there!"

"That's 'cause cows ain't ponies." Applejack popped open the cupboard under the sink, pulled out her box of sanitary napkins, set it on the counter. "We're special in a lotta ways, and this is one of 'em." Which weren't a lie: after all, just 'cause something was special didn't make it good. "Now, lemme show you how it works."

"What??" The filly was standing in the doorway smelling scared enough to bolt and run, a feeling Applejack knew all too well when it came to this sorta thing. "You're gonna start bleeding right now??"

"It gets you once a month, give or take." She pulled a paper-wrapped packet from the box with her teeth, tore the covering off, positioned the clean white cottony strip on the closed toilet seat, and settled her hindquarters over it. "It ain't that big a deal long as you're careful. It's like you said: you gotta be prepared."

Apple Bloom had sidled into the bathroom, was craning her neck, trying to peer along Applejack's stomach. "So this lacinia just...opens up? And your guts don't fall out?"

Sometimes feels like it, she wanted to say, but instead: "It's kinda like an eyelid." Rising a bit from the napkin, she swallowed and let the clench in her stomach have its way. "See?"

A shudder rippled the muscles all along her flanks, and while it didn't hurt, it just didn't feel right, a sudden wet slipperiness sloshing between her hind legs, things sliding and curling that stayed straight and firm the rest of the time. She heard Apple Bloom gasp, and she couldn't help but look down past her chest as well, her tawny orange hide folding open like some weird meaty flower, the skin underneath all pink and shiny and damp.

More heat flooded her face, and she pressed her nether parts back onto the napkin. "Like...like that," she stammered.

"Whoa!" Apple Bloom said, and when AJ looked up, her sister was bent around on the bathroom rug and staring at the smooth yellow between her own hind legs, unbroken and unblemished in any way. "And that's gonna happen to me??"

"It ain't that big a deal," she said again, more to herself than to Apple Bloom. Happened to ev'ry mare in Equestria, after all, maybe even to the princesses themselves, though it plain made her queasy to think that....

"Cool!" Apple Bloom was grinning from ear to ear. "What about colts?? Do they bleed back there, too?"

For a second, Applejack could only blink, then her mouth went sideways. Weren't that always the way? Tell foals the awfullest thing in the whole wide world, and they come all over bright-eyed and interested. "Actually, boys've gotta open up ev'ry time they wanna pee."

"No way!" Apple Bloom's jaw dropped. "But if they open up all the time, how come I ain't never heard of it afore??"

Another shudder along her flanks, and AJ felt her flow slacken, the last bit of tightness in her stomach loosening and letting her sigh with relief. "'Cause it ain't polite anytime anywhere anyhow! The boys, they gets taught a special little chant early on to help keep 'em from opening up when they gets too excited or rambunctious, and Miss Cheerilee'll teach you gals the one y'all need soon as you start needing it."

"Y'mean...magic?"

"Yep." Yet another parta this whole process that set her teeth on edge. Magic weren't bad, Applejack had to admit—getting to know Twilight Sparkle had shown her that time and time again—but combining the worst of biology with magic spells all just plain made her itchy.

"Wow..." Apple Bloom had a fascinated look on her face that AJ wasn't sure she liked. "Real magic! And...and you use this chant-thing, too, sis?"

Applejack gave a snort, one final tickle trickling from her hindquarters, her innards just about setted back into place. "Don't need to! Once a month I do this thing 'cause it's the way us ponies're built, but the resta the time, I'm sealed up smooth as ev'rypony always oughtta be."

Not that most ponies were, she didn't tell her little sister, not if even half the stories Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie told 'bout the ways they fooled around with stallions and mares and each other and themselves were true! And for all that Rarity never told stories, summa the talks she'd had with the fancy unicorn since they'd gotten to be friends told AJ she weren't no stranger to all that sex stuff.

And sure, AJ knew she weren't all that normal herself, the way she'd never felt anything like what Rarity called "the tingle of desire" for neither stallion nor mare. No question she loved a lotta ponies—her family, her friends, mosta the folks in town, the princesses—and she could even see herself maybe deciding someday that she needed to get hitched for the good of the farm and for carrying on the Apple line. But all that romance like Rarity obsessed over and all that rutting like Dash and Pinkie got so lathered about?

AJ shook her head. None of it struck her any different from what she was doing right now: plain ol' stupid biology, and nothing she wanted in her life.

Apple Bloom had bent herself practically into a horseshoe looking at her stomach again, but she finally sprang back to her hoofs with a squeal. "I can't wait to tell the girls 'bout this!"

"You just hold up there a minute more, little missy." Applejack stood, stepped away from the toilet seat, heaved a sigh of relief as she felt her lacinia sealing back up all tight and proper. "We ain't quite done yet."

Her sister's gaze, just like Applejack had figured, went straight to the bloody swatch of cotton, and AJ was glad to see the sight and smell finally got Apple Bloom making the proper face: her lips a little curled, her snout a little scrunched.

"That," Applejack went on, "in point of fact, ain't no different from what's inside a chicken's egg."

"What??" Apple Bloom kept looking back and forth from the napkin to AJ.

"You know how a chicken lays eggs that don't hatch when she ain't had a rooster in her? Well, a mare gets blood like this when she ain't had a stallion stick his penis inside her vulva. You seen a ram cover a ewe before, ain't'cha?"

Wordless and wide-eyed, Apple Bloom nodded. "Well," Applejack went on, waving a hoof at the cotton swatch, "if you ever open up and let a fella do that to you, it's 'cause of this stuff that you'll grow a brand-new foal inside you."

Apple Bloom looked like she'd been kicked in the gut. "You telling me true?" she asked in a wobbly voice.

"True as I know how." Reaching under the sink, AJ shoved the trashbasket out, swept the napkin in, and pushed it back under. "Like we both been saying: you gotta be prepared. Knowing how your body works means it won't take you by surprise if it ever starts making you wanna do things you really shouldn't wanna do." She smiled at her little sister, gave her a nuzzle along the side of her neck. "No pony's gotta be a slave to her biology, y'know? It's weird and it's stupid and it's maybe a little scary, but long as we can think, it can be us making the decisions and doing what we know is right."

A light came into Apple Bloom's eyes. "Like the Everfree Forest!"

AJ blinked down at her. "You what?"

"Ponies don't make the decisions there, so it's all wild and dangerous." She turned to the little bathroom window, and when Applejack followed her gaze, she saw the careful trees of Sweet Apple Acres standing in the early morning sun. "But here on the farm, we do what we know is right, and we make something good for ev'rypony." She looked back. "It's like that, ain't it, sis?"

Tears welled, Applejack's throat getting tight. "Exactly like that, sugar cube." She touched her nose to her sister's, proud and glad she'd finally followed through to make this day be the day. "Exactly."