“Eeyup,” Big Mac says to himself as he looks over the cartfuls of harvested apples with a certain satisfaction. Six large piles, two each of scrumptious Red Delicious, Granny Smith, and Golden Delicious, enough to fill their orders with more than enough left over for the Cider Squeezy. Nothing in life quite compares to that sense of meaning. Of a job well done. Of fulfilling one’s mark. He’s not really surprised it’s already dinnertime. The days go by so quickly with his hooves in the orchards, just himself and his thoughts and the apples.

That sneaking suspicion somepony is watching him remains. It isn’t a pegasus, as far as he can tell, for all he can’t get a certain pegasus out of his mind. His thoughts about Misty Fly had been all jumbled when he was working, and still are.

Is this something he wants to pursue? Well, if not now, when? Never? He can hear the clock ticking, that soon enough he won’t have the energy to chase foals around and take care of his responsibilities on the farm. What mare would want a stallion that isn’t able to do both, who would either get bitter and resentful about not fulfilling his mark or neglect the foal(s) to do his own thing? He does want foals, and a herd, yet waiting around for a mare to ask him hasn’t worked, so he’ll have to take things into his own hooves.

What would Granny Smith say? He’s certain Ma and Pa would have told him to follow his heart, and everypony else can keep their opinions to themselves. He can hear the objections, though, the same asked about his sister’s stallion. How will it impact their foal, assuming she wants one (or more!)? He’s heard mixed breeds can sometimes turn out stunted one way or the other, like a pegasus with small wings who struggles to fly, but the worst of those are nowhere near as crippled as Doug’s foals. His sister certainly seems okay with it, seeing how she’s carrying another one of his, but he can see how she bites her lip when Pomarbo talks so passionately about the Cider Squeezy and not the orchards. He’s had a lot of time to come to grips with how they have turned out; he hopes his foals will be inclined to work on the farm, where even many full-dirted earth ponies struggle.

When Fluttershy arrives with a newly marked Hedge, the green hedge on the brown filly’s flanks shyly displayed, he feels the same swelling in his heart. Here is another pony who will be able to find that same satisfaction. He can’t wait to see how the young mare makes her mark, especially if the greenery indicates a talent that can be utilized on the farm. Truth be told he was worried about her getting some sort of animal cutie mark more in line with Pharynx and the Abattoir than Dr. Fauna.

He isn’t the only one excited, even if his reaction is the most subdued. The three are almost to the Carrot House when he hears a booming exclamation from the horizon, followed by a dust cloud that cuts across the path along the Everfree Forest to the southwest and heads straight for them. Big Mac gulps, stoically standing his ground while Fluttershy and Hedge take refuge behind him.

He squints, trying to make out who or what is the pink blur at the head of the dust cloud. Could it be the head of a Tatzlewurm, kicking up an excess of dirt as it burrows toward them? Or something far worse? Oh, who is he foaling, it’s obviously Pinkie Pie, the crazed mare skidding to a stop inches away from him and staring with an intensity that makes him question if she is looking straight through him. She peers one direction, then the other, and he can sense the two mares behind him swaying the opposite direction, as if they could stop instead of only delay the inevitable.

“Hedge!” Pinkie Pie finally exclaims as the young mare reacts a fraction of a second too slow. “Your cutie mark!”

“Mm,” Hedge reluctantly answers, stepping out and bashfully showing off her mark.

“That’s amazing!” Pinkie Pie presses a pink hoof into Hedge’s flank, tracing the vines and planter and pausing on the pair of orange eyes. “Oh! And it even seems like it’s looking at you!” She whirls on Fluttershy, who shies away from the excited attention. “You must have been so proud when it happened! Tell me all about it! Where were you standing? Did you have a good angle to see it, or were her flanks obscured by the-” Pinkie Pie takes two quick sniffs, tongue flicking out like a snake ”-Flo-Gro brand soil and fertilizer?”

Hedge’s muzzle scrunches up. “You know what imbued dirt smells like?”

“Of course, silly,” Pinkie Pie says, ruffling her brown mane. “The real question is why I know what imbued dirt tastes like.”

“Why do you know what imbued dirt tastes like?” Hedge asks, giggling at the silly question.

“Oh, that’s easy! You see, back at the rock farm after I got my cutie mark I wanted to make this confection called ‘dirt’. Most ponies make it with chocolate pudding, crumbled cookies, and gummy worms. But I didn’t have chocolate pudding, crumbled cookies, or gummy worms.”

Fluttershy and Hedge gasp in utter shock and disbelief. Big Mac joins in, but just to humor her.

“I know, I know!” Pinkie Pie melodramatically lifts the back of her hoof to her forehead. “But, don’t despair. At the rock farm, we had dirt in spades!”

Big Mac nearly, nearly, groans. He has to stay stoically above this humor or Pinkie Pie will hound him day and night with more jokes, which will really interfere with his farming. The other two aren’t as lucky, Pinkie Pie grinning all the wider at their mewling moans.

“Anyway, like I was saying,” Pinkie Pie explains, trying to sound particularly profound, “dirt is like the soil of the earth. You can braise it, grill it, poach it, roast it, simmer it, steam it, stew it. There’s chalky dirt, clay dirt, loamy dirt, sandy dirt, silty dirt. Oh, and if you get it wet, then you can make mud pies!”

Hedge pipes up, “What way’s your favorite?”

“My favorite?” Pinkie Pie blinks twice. Big Mac wonders if she - or anypony else - has ever been asked that question. “That’s easy! See, you take a clump of dirt - also known as a rock - and put it in a bowl of soup. Rock soup!”

Hedge snickers. “That’s silly.”

“Maybe I’ll make some for your cute-ceañera!” Pinkie Pie gasps at what she just said, whirling around to grab Hedge, lift her up, and stare directly into her eyes, suddenly super serious. “Now. On a scale of ninety six to one hundred, how off-the-hook do you want your cute-ceañera to be?!”

“Um,” Hedge stalls, glancing at her dam for support, “t-two?”

Pinkie Pie stops breathing, tears glistening in her slowly widening eyes. “You… you want your party to be the second most off the hook party I’ve ever thrown, paling only in comparison to the Crystal Empire’s escalating escapade?!”

“Um,” Hedge starts, but to no avail.

Pinkie Pie lets go of Hedge, leaving her suspended in midair, and takes off, disembodied words remaining. “SorryI’vegottogoprepareeverythingbye!”

Big Mac watches the dust cloud zoom toward Ponyville, then split off and go three different directions. He feels a rising sense of certain dread. And that it will somehow come back to him.

“Wait!” Hedge calls.

The three dust clouds stop, reverse, and zoom back together, coming to a stop just in front of Hedge. “Yes?” Pinkie Pie asks before exclaiming, “Oh! Silly me! I forgot to ask what kind of cake you want!”

“I-I like strawberries?” Hedge says.

“Okie Dokie Lokie!” Pinkie Pie pronks once, then she is off again with a trailing dust cloud that splits into three, then each of those splits in two.

“Oh, dear,” Fluttershy says, worry plainly etched across her face.

Some days Big Mac is glad he doesn’t have to deal with Pinkie Pie’s shenanigans. No, wait, that’s not true. It’s most days. His attention turns to Doug and the three ponies trotting along the southern road. The human is wearing his traveling clothes and boots, all dusty from the long trip and Pinkie Pie’s sprint. Wait, three ponies? He can make out Lemon and Meringue, but who is the gray mare next to them? She’s good looking, but he has a sinking feeling he can’t quite place.

“So,” Doug says to Fluttershy as he gets close, greeting Big Mac with a quick raise of the head that he returns, “how bad is it looking?”

“Pinkie Pie is throwing a party,” Fluttershy answers. Lemon and Meringue gasp before tackling Hedge, ecstatically bouncing around. “A big one.”

“Ah,” Doug says, mostly ignoring the fillies. “Snabu, then. What’s the occasion? Successful return to Ponyville?” He exchanges a quick nuzzle with Fluttershy, surprised but not saddened when she turns it to a deeper kiss. “Completion of our Friendship missions?” He glances at Big Mac, almost apologetically, as he fondly rubs Fluttershy’s flank. “New pony in Ponyville?”

Big Mac frowns. How did he know? “Eeyup?”

“Wait, really?” Doug focuses on Big Mac, picking up Fluttershy before she clambers onto him. “There’s a new pony in Ponyville and you know of him?” A smirk pulls at the corners of his mouth. “Or her?”

“Eeyup.” Big Mac can feel his blush returning, but there’s an acute sense of jealousy, that this is the mare he will be pursuing. “Misty Fly.”

Doug’s brow scrunches up. He asks Fluttershy, “That’s your sister?” She nods, nestling into Doug’s embrace, curiously watching Big Mac.

Fluttershy’s sister? Big Mac supposes he can see the resemblance. Hopefully it isn’t awkward, but she seems happy.

“...I see. Oh, and speaking of new ponies.” Doug motions toward the gray mare, cutie mark of three banded purple rocks. Big Mac is glad they got off that topic so quickly. “Big Mac, this is Marble Pie, Pinkie’s younger sister.”

“Eeyup,” Big Mac says. Wait. Two sisters?

“Marble Pie,” Doug says after only a momentary pause, “this is Big Mac.” That cursed smirk returns. “He farms apples.”

“Mmhmm,” the bashful mare greets, hiding behind her two-tone gray mane. There must be something Big Mac is missing, and he doesn’t like whatever it is.

Doug waits for her to say something else. When she doesn’t he continues, “Well, I’ll leave you two to it.”

He takes two steps, letting go of Fluttershy, and reaches down to pluck Hedge from Lemon and Meringue and give her a great big hug. When she’s halfway up he notices the green mark on her flank, spinning her around to get a better look. “Your cutie mark!” He squeezes her to his chest, happily swaying side to side while Fluttershy looks on, beaming. “How did it happen?”

“Urk,” is all Hedge can get out, compressed as she is, and he only reluctantly lets her go. “I was at Grandmare Shy’s house. She had all these, um, planters on the nearby clouds. Like big boxes! And she had dirt. It was really dirty dirt.” She looks down at her hooves, some still caked around her frogs. “I should go wash.”

“But you haven’t,” Doug starts before stopping himself, taking a deep breath as he lets Hedge gallop to the nearest pond. “That filly,” he mutters, shaking his head. Fluttershy gives him a consoling pat on the back, the two of them content to watch her run off.

“So you farm apples?” Marble Pie asks, taking hesitant steps toward Big Mac. She stops, their noses nearly touching.

“Eeyup,” Big Mac says, wary about pointing to the giant heaps of apples at the sorting barn behind him in case she decides to step even closer. Something about this doesn’t seem right, but he can’t put his hoof on it. She’s watching him really closely, except only focusing on his eyes, while his gaze roams all over her. She has a long, straight mane and tail, kind of like Applejack’s. Her flanks are just as wide, and well muscled, presumably from hauling stone at the rock farm. Would plowing fields fulfill her mark? He could see those flanks pulling a plow. He could see himself plowing those flanks.

Big Mac blinks as she holds up a long rock shaped like a bottle. When he just stands there she nudges it toward him, prompting him to take it. “Err, thanks,” he says, berating that he doesn’t have anything to give her in return. “Ah, um…”

She giggles, which he finds infuriatingly cute. She makes a twisting motion with her hoof. “You’re supposed to spin it.”

Spin it? Big Mac looks at the bottle in his hoof. Not seeing the harm, he puts it on the ground.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Pinkie Pie zip into a tree he would have sworn wasn’t there before, clasp her hooves to her cheeks, and take a deep breath.

With a shrug he gives it a good spin, ending up with the tip pointing at Marble Pie.

“Mm,” Marble Pie says, looking pleased. She leans over to give him a quick kiss on the corner of his mouth.

“Wow!” Pinkie Pie exclaims as she zooms over. “That was quick! Oh, now I need to update all my fliers! Good thing I already planned for a big celebration! Get it? Big?” She scrawls on a piece of paper, then another, slapping one into Big Mac’s hooves and one into Marble Pie’s, then pronks over to Doug and Fluttershy before disappearing with an explosion of confetti.

‘Welcome, one and all!’ the flier reads in bold letters, ‘to Hedge’s cute-ceañera! Enjoy classic games and fabulous fare from four to six!’

Scrawled on the bottom is ‘Don’t miss out on the grand announcement of Big McIntosh’s herding!’

His eyes bug out. Wait, what!?

Next Chapter: Ch. 181 - Omen on the Winds, Part Three Estimated time remaining: 3 Hours, 33 Minutes