April 18th, 993 Domina Solaria

Doug yawns as he leans his head against the rough applewood of the farm’s largest wagon. Steady *thunks* ring out, always followed by a cascade of lighter pit-pit-pats as sometimes red, sometimes green, but this time golden apples fill up the baskets. And then, like clockwork, the contented sigh of the farmmare as she surveys the new apple blooms, gives a satisfied nod that again fails to dislodge her Stetson, and ambles up to the next heavily laden tree.

It takes little effort for Doug to lift each basket in turn and pile them into the wagon, finishing up the second row along the back. A thin layer of plywood starts a third layer, and he might end up with a fourth. He smiles to himself as he flexes an arm; that’ll depend on Applejack, since he no longer struggles even with a full wagon. He grabs another stack of empty baskets, walking the short distance to the next tree.

He gets lost in thought as he stares up at the partly cloudy sky. Little blurs of color are hard at work assembling the afternoon’s storms, and he tries to gauge how much water is in each cloud. The dark, taller ones generally hold much more, arriving at Ponyville from Cloudsdale with a full two and a half hooves - or ten inches - of rain. But they tend to get purposefully emptied out either in transit or over one of the lakes or aquifers, since the farms only want about an inch or so of rain a day. Otherwise they’d flood, like after an incursion of the Everfree storms.

Doug grabs another set of full baskets and drags them to the wagon. Rainbow Dash has only needed to improvise once due to those storms, and the weather pegasi got things back on track without too much difficulty. He could see ways to improve, though; while clear skies is the easiest thing to fix the excess water problem, there were areas with better drainage that suffered from a lack of water before balance is restored, or something.

He goes to grab one of the baskets on the ground. It comes up easily - too easily - and he stumbles backwards, slipping on the dew-laced grass and landing quite unceremoniously. It doesn’t help to hear Applejack’s throaty chuckle, no attempt made to hide her chagrin.

“Y’all right there, partner?” Applejack asks more out of a duty to her stallion than any thought he might be injured. Well, besides his pride.

Doug merely grunts as he rises, wiping away the wetness.

Applejack carefully nudges the basket back in place, squinting as she glances to the branches above. Then she carefully plants her hooves, rears back, and strikes the twin-pocked tree, another perfect buck in a long line of perfect bucks. Her face beams like the sun above as she deeply inhales, cherishing the thrum that echoes more in the back of her head than among the many trees.

She barely reacts when Doug tips her hat to cover her face, almost like she doesn’t need her eyes to make her way around the orchard. She merely takes a few steps to the next tree in line, a hoof adjusting the hat back to its natural habitat atwixt her ears.

“Not goin’ fast enough for ya?” Applejack quips as she gathers her strength.

“Well,” Doug stalls, awkwardly turning his head to the side as he scratches at his hair.

“Nah, Ah get it.” Applejack bucks the tree, reveling in the cascade of apples. Her euphoria is short lived; she sighs, mostly at herself. “Can’t go quick, what with this’un sappin’ mah strength.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything.” Doug ruffles her thick mane as he steps up to the next tree with her. He looks up at the rotund apples, practically begging to be bucked.

“Ya wanna give it a shot?” Applejack says, raising an eyebrow. She shrugs, her head slipping out of his grasp to motion forwards.

“Why not,” Doug says blithely, glancing down at his feet. They’ve certainly toughened up after two months of walking around barefoot on dirt paths through what is essentially a forest. Same with his hands; the callouses that used to only be on his thumbs have spread, though none of the mares have commented on the slightly rougher touch.

He walks forward, a quick breath steeling himself before his leg kicks out. His heel impacts somewhere around waist level, just under the two pock marks where Applejack’s hooves have impacted for years. He grunts, though the cadence of apples plummeting around him helps ameliorate the sharp pain.

“Not... bad,” Applejack says with a thin smile as she watches the apples fall, though it fades faster than Doug might have liked.

Doug matches her frown, gazing up at the bare branches. He got every apple, surprisingly, and into the baskets! It takes a moment, the two of them staring and hoping for something to happen, but nothing does.

“It’s alright, partner,” Applejack says, nuzzling Doug’s side. She lifts a hoof to the trunk, concentrating for a moment. Almost immediately small green buds poke out from the branches, red blossoms peppered with white spreading their petals to the not yet concealed sun. She pushes against him again, sliding until his hand rests against her belly. “Just ‘cause you can’t get blossoms up there don’t mean you can’t get this Apple to bloom.”

Doug allows himself a thin smile, tapping against her side.

“Ah think Ah’ll be okay out here,” Applejack continues, rubbing her mane against him.

The tapping slows, his smile getting just a little more forced. “I guess I can help with the cooking.”

“Um,” Applejack hesitates, rubbing a hoof against her knee. “Ah’m pretty sure Granny Smith is at the market right now, and…”

“Fine,” Doug says, rolling his shoulders at the reminder. “Just because I don’t like flowers doesn’t mean I don’t know how to include them.”

“Ah’d like to agree with ya,” Applejack says dubiously, “but there’s also hay, ‘n gettin’ the spices right, and-”

“Roger,” Doug cuts her off with a huff. It irks him when she’s right about their differences, though in this case it’s probably because his taste buds have eroded through years of abuse from wasabi and peppers. Or malic acid, coincidentally enough. “Chopping wood?”

“How much wood would a wood Doug chuck?” Applejack says with a cheesy grin, far too much cheer for Doug’s liking.

He musses with her mane, her elusive efforts in vain, and his tickles leave her a twitching wreck laying in the grass. They share a quick kiss before he hops up, sharing her disappointed sigh they didn't go any further, and he heads back to the farmhouse for a quick stop.

The Apple sawmill to the southwest isn’t much, nowhere near as equipped or large as Burnt Oak’s, but it’s enough for their needs. It looks like many of their other barns, except for the waterwheel powered by one of the streams that runs from the western mountains to the Ponyville River. They even have the stream dammed up, making one of the many ponds that dots Sweet Apple Acres.

‘Chopping’ might have been a misnomer, as the saw is made to be run by one pony, but none of them care much for the work. Doug suspects Burnt Oak would love the business, the dark brown stallion often coming by to see how the Apples are doing, and leaves with quite a few apples for his own herd. It’d free them up for more productive work, at the very least.

Still, it’s something different, and his hands make the work easy. At least, compared to the ponies, and he sometimes struggles maneuvering the requisite logs. He dons his boots and gloves before going to the pear trunks set along the back, many old and weathered. But it’s just the outside bark, and that’ll come off easily enough. He can roll the logs to the pitsaw and cut them to the requisite two strides - that conversion is at least easy, two slightly long paces, about six and a half feet - before loading to the powered saw. Then it’s carefully setting up the guides, making sure he’s cutting everything to the right thickness, double checking, and carefully pushing them through.

While the saws might only take a chunk out of a hoof - something Rarity still complains about on occasion - he’s under no illusion what the oscillating metal will do to his hand, or any other body part that gets caught in the way. The work requires most of his attention, and it seems like no time at all to turn three trunks into long boards. At least he doesn’t need to make his own nails, even though their smithy is capable, and pretty soon Doug has a good number of crates ready to ship apples. More than likely destined for the train station, heading for Canterlot or Manehattan or Cloudsdale. The cloud city especially, being forced to import nearly all of its food compared to the land based ones, minus whatever cloudgardens are able to provide.

Something seems wrong about using pear wood to store apples. Actually, other than fence railings and kindling that seems like all they use pear wood for. Doug shrugs to himself. Superstition? Could they be similar to wine barrels, and affect the taste? An enduring grudge between fruit growers that culminated in a Romeo and Juliette style sundering of the families?

Doug glances towards the hidden grove of apples and pears. No; that’d just be silly.

He looks up, gauging the sun. Still before noon. He locates one of the smaller carts that litter the farm, loading the crates in a haphazard tower. He starts towards the sorting barn, a casual walk as he gets lost in thought again.

It must have looked too dangerous because it doesn’t take long for Rainbow Dash to land next to him, trotting along.

“Bit for your thoughts?” She asks, startling him out of his musing.

“Hey, Dash.” Doug takes a deep breath as his gaze raises to the sky. “Just thinking about the weather.”

“Oh?” Rainbow Dash says, not finding the same fascination. She thinks entirely too much about the weather these days, and needs a good distraction. “Worried about it spoiling your next date?”

Doug chuckles to himself. “If only. No, those have been going well.”

“Well?” Rainbow Dash prompts, curiously regarding Doug. “You’ve been on… what, seven by now?”

“Thereabouts,” Doug says, nodding along. “Why?”

“No reason,” Rainbow Dash says curtly, failing to not appear as bad a gossip as Rarity. “No reason at all.” Her head flicks forward just a little, as if prompting him to get a move on.

Doug does not look amused; either that, or he’s really good at holding in his smirk. “Can you get your legs to move in really, really fast circles?” Doug motions with his hand, making very small, very fast circles.

Rainbow Dash cocks her head to the side. “Why?”

Doug can’t hide the smirk any more. “So you’re in character when you say ‘You’re too slow’!”

“But,” Rainbow Dash says dryly, “you are too slow.”

Doug gives a long, exasperated sigh.

“You like her, right?” Rainbow Dash asks pointedly.

“Yes,” Doug says after a brief delay.

“And you’re not just stringing her along.” Rainbow Dash doesn’t really phrase it as a question, inspecting Doug’s reaction closely. “No, you’d be bucking her if you were.”

“Do you talk about all your friends like this?” Doug asks, mildly amused.

“Only to my herdmates. And my stallion.” Rainbow Dash frowns, tempted to take flight and get even closer to him. It’s kind of hard for her to gauge his reactions with those small eyes and non-expressive ears. “Do you want to buck her?”

“I mean, she’s cute, in an innocent sort of way,” Doug admits. It’s weird talking about Rainbow Dash’s friend and the pony he’s dating in such a crass way.

“Innocent?” Rainbow Dash asks, her head pulling back as she cocks to the side, her muzzle screwing up in disbelief. “Dude, she probably knows more about bucking than Rarity.”

“What?” Doug asks, genuinely surprised. “I mean, she’s talked about other stallions asking her out, but-”

“No, not personally, not her,” Rainbow Dash clarifies. “But what do you think those animal friends of hers do all day, since they don’t need to find food or watch out for predators?”

Doug stares at her for a long while. “I don’t believe you,” he says slowly.

Rainbow Dash rolls her eyes. “Okay, maybe not all day, but she does play midmare to, like, half of them. Even some of the reptiles.” She sticks her tongue out at the last one, looking adorable.

“That I’ll believe,” Doug says as they draw up to the barn. He musses with her mane as he drops off the wagon, both of them enjoying the contact. “But, what’s your point? We’re going at our own pace, and we’re happy.”

“Awesome.” Rainbow Dash nods. “Didn’t want you to be, you know,” she glances around, checking to see if any Apples are in earshot. Or animals, for that matter. Her voice drops to a whisper. “Worried about her flying.”

“It’s not her-” Doug says before cutting himself off. He takes a deep breath, then sighs.

“Then who?” Rainbow Dash looks around again, a little exasperated. “Me?” She doesn’t think that’s the case, but she’s still confused.

“No,” Doug says, sinking down. He motions, and Rainbow Dash moves over, joining him in a close hug.

“O-our foal?” Rainbow Dash asks, her brashness gone. She glances down her barrel. “I’m doing fine. And so is she.”

“Good,” Doug says. His eyes stare at the ground as he admits, “I guess I’m worried about her ability to fly.”

“Hey, mare up,” Rainbow Dash says, a hoof tilting Doug’s chin up. “I’m with a stallion that can’t fly. So there’s hope, right? Even if she doesn’t, she’ll scoot all over anyway, right?”

Even as she says it Rainbow Dash dreads the possibility, from the bottom of her being, and she offers a swift prayer to Celestia that it isn’t the case.

“Heh, I guess. Can they tell it’s a she?” Doug asks, rubbing at her belly with a soft smile, his hopes rising.

“Well, um, not yet. Most foals are fillies.” Rainbow Dash shrugs as if it’s obvious. “She’s just small, but that’s okay because I’m small.”

“Wouldn’t hurt to put some more meat on those bones,” Doug says, giving her flank a teasing squeeze.

“Dude, you sound like Doc Sharps,” Rainbow Dash says with a roll of her eyes. “He wants me to gain ten C’s in two months.” Her muzzle curls to a scowl as she spits out, “Do you know what that’ll do to my times?”

From what Doug remembers of the brief overview he got, a mare gains about fifteen percent of her weight during pregnancy. So Applejack will go from about one fifty C, or about three hundred thirty pounds, to about one sixty five C. While Rainbow Dash, less than half her mass, might not make it to eighty.

“It won’t be good?” Doug offers sympathetically.

Rainbow Dash huffs. “That’s putting it mildly. At least I’ve got two years to work it off. Still, nine months from now, and I’ll be back to hitting the air hard.”

“Ugh,” Doug says, “I keep forgetting it’s eleven months for you instead of nine.”

“Hey, I’m just waiting for when I can find a big enough apple.” Rainbow Dash makes a show of getting up, a hoof acting like a sunshade as she scans around. “You don’t think Applejack is going through this just to throw us all off, right?”

“No,” Doug says, chuckling. “I think it’s because I’m not an earth pony.”

“Ah, tail feathers,” Rainbow Dash exclaims, huffing as she drops back in Doug’s lap.

Next Chapter: Ch. 84 - Redblade Banner Estimated time remaining: 4 Hours, 26 Minutes