Post by Applejack on Nov 28, 2014 3:09:38 GMT -5
"Ugh," says Blueblood, bloodshot and bleary-eyed as he stacks a barrel of apples perfectly atop another. That's about fifty bushels. Not bad in a day's work. He most definitely cheated when he thought Applejack and Big Mac weren't looking and used magic here and there, but *most* of it was his own bucking. His hooves are sore. His mane is a mess. Sweat makes his pelt stick to his body. There's discolored splotches all. Over. His. Hooves. But the screeching horror that once was has been reduced, bit by bit, to a dull ache. He has mastered the art of the farmpony - or at least the art of not fleeing from it like a mouse from a cat. "Uh," he says again, strapping himself to the cart and preparing to haul the next load in on burning shoulders. "These are my apples," he mutters. "There are many like them but these ones are mine." One wobbles and falls... and is caught in his magic, replaced without him even having to look back. "My name is Blueblood," he says with a heaving sigh. "And today... I am a Prince of apples. And apples. Are not. Nothing." And at that, he manages a tiny, tiny little smile.
"Nope, they ain't nothin'. Ta some folk they're dang near everythin'." says a voice, and even if there was any way to mistake it for someone else's - which there isn't - Applejack appears in the barn door and continues, "Ta some they're just a means to an end, too. Ya may as well unbuckle yerself; these here" - she indicates the two carts she's pulling - "are almost th' last ones. Reckon Mac's gettin' th' last of all fer this season, then..." She heaves a sigh, then grins, bringing in her carts to clear out. "We're done."
"Done?" Blueblood asks, astonished. He looks over his shoulder at the trees, conspicuously barren. "Done?" He blinks several times. He can't seem to comprehend it. The last few weeks of his life have been apples. Everything was apples. Or punching trees for their apples. Or packing or shipping or storing apples. Several times he was convinced he *was* an apple. "But... then what shall we *do*?" he asks, sounding awed and slightly alarmed as he unhitches himself.
Applejack gets her apples tucked away all nice and kentucky. "Welp, th' harvest's in, cider presses already runnin', traditionally what we do now-" AJ is cut off suddenly as a clanging, ringing noise starts outside! It seems like an alarm of some sort until Granny Smith's hoarse but shockingly powerful voice is added to it: "COME AN' GIT IT! AH DONE COOKED A PASSEL, LET'S GET 'ER GONE!!" AJ winces and grins. "... what we do now is eat." She beckons for Prince Blueblood to follow her and trots off into the farmhouse.
"Eat." Blueblood finds his mouth watering. He touches a hoof to his lips and glances back and forth to make sure nopony noticed. What would they say if they knew he actually craved farmer's fare? Which, as he's learned, is... actually quite good on an empty stomach. He trots after Applejack, looking around the farm with apprehension and perhaps a note of careful admiration. He helped do all this. He has *done* something. "It's amazing," he murmurs, apparently thinking Applejack cannot hear him. He's taken to talking to himself sometimes. "How doing something here made me realize how much nothing I was doing back there."
Applejack does hear him, and grins to herself, but has managed to pick up enough tact to keep that fact to herself. Instead, she precedes Blueblood into the Apples' dining room, where the nice china and tablecloth are out, and barely visible under the ENORMOUS spread of food Granny Smith has laid on! Stuffed hayloaf, cornbread, glazed carrots- regular farm fare may be good on an empty stomach, but this is a feast by anypony's standards. AJ plunks down in a seat. "Where's Apple Bloom?" she asks her grandmother, who points a withered hoof at an empty seat that also seems to have had its place setting stolen. "She done took a plate o' vittles an' run off! Somethin' 'bout that dad-blamed ship o' hers." Applejack shakes her head and chuckles, then turns to explain this to the prince. "We Apples got us a tradition: last day o' th' harvest, we lay on a BIG spread, an' spend a little while celebratin' one more year we lived ta tell about."
Blueblood looks down at the feast before them and relaxes himself in a chair, sitting down nice and slow and letting out a long, contented sigh all the way. "I feel like my limbs are all going to plop right off," he declares, barely able to lift a hoof to get at the sumptuous setup before him. "One more year lived?" he asks after AJ's proclamation. "Bit morbid, that..." He taps his hooves together, wondering what they're going to eat first. His privileges are far behind him, but his table manners are another matter: he will retain his dignity no matter how much his stomach rumbles, thank you very much. Timidly, he reaches for a plate *without* using his magic, seeming inordinately nervous about something. "Oh, and, um, thank you Granny Smith," he says with a little smile. "It's, um... this is all very... it looks *amazing.*" He never thought he'd say that. Until he came here of course.
Applejack nods. "Might be a little. Comes from th' days when there was a good chance we wouldn't, ya know? An'-" At this point, the door slams open and Big Macintosh moseys inside and takes his usual spot at the foot of the table. The chair - and the floorboards - creak ominously, but everything holds together. "Got th' last ones in, Mac?" AJ asks. Mac chuckles and shakes his head indulgently. "Eeyup." he says, in a tone that conveys 'well of course, otherwise I'd still be out there'. Applejack nods and says, "Ah was just explainin' our harvest dinner ta Blueblood." She turns back to him. "As Ah was sayin'... an' it gives us a moment to remember th' ones that didn't make it." At this, AJ, Mac, and Granny all turn to look at a picture on the mantelpiece, of a mare and a stallion Blueblood's never met. They stare at it silently for a moment, then suddenly Granny breaks the tension: "DIG IN, EVERYPONY!" And dig in they do!
Blueblood's ears droop the longer he stares at the picture. He may be an ignorant fool but he isn't stupid, and can piece together the meaning of it easily. And yet everypony is always *smiling* in this house. It's not something he noticed before, but now it seems to hit especially hard. He can't remember that many smiles back in Canterlot. He almost falls backwards when the call to eat blasts his eardrums, and looks around the table, shellshocked as the Apples start consuming. He licks his lips, wondering how best to arrange his portion of food. Should he start with the carrots or the pie? Does he eat with the fork on the left or the right in a farmhouse? Should he - "Oh, horsefeathers," he tells himself when his stomach rumbles again, and in a matter of seconds you couldn't tell him apart from the rest of the ponies at the table.
After a few moments of gazing at the photograph, Big Mac's head casts downward and his eyes close, as if taking the images from the picture and using them to make his memories all the more vivid for a few moments. His chest heaves deep as he breathes in and lets it out long and slow. The sigh he releases is almost exactly timed to finish when Granny Smith cries out for the feast to begin and his eyes spring open and without hesitation begins digging in, taking hefty scoops of everything within reach - which really means everything on the table - There's nothing quite like the seasons end feast for a hard working family, and definitely not for a big hard working stallion like himself. Of course, Blueblood is liable to loose a hoof if he's not careful, or accustomed to a farmhouse feast, or possibly even going without on some of the vittles if he's not quick. Noticing Blueblood hesitating and with an empty plate for at least a good 10 seconds, Mac leans over. "Y'all okay? 'ain't hungry?" he asks with genuine concern, at least until Blueblood begins catching up with the family.
For the most part, not a lot is said during the meal proper. Everypony's mouths are otherwise occupied, and unnecessary chatter would just net someone a lungful of stuffing. Granny Smith finishes eating first, as with her delicate constitution she only ate one and a half typical stallions' worth of dinner, then stands up and hobbles off to the kitchen. Applejack looks up. "Y'all did good work today. Actually, fer th' last coupla weeks. So, we-" but then Granny returns and plunks a platter and an odd, frosty little bucket down on the table. She lifts the lid and a new, sweet pungent smell fills the room. This is Granny's special Harvest Feast Zap-Apple Pie; she only makes one a year, and this is it. The bucket contains apple-chip vanilla ice cream, Applejack's hoofiwork this time.
"Not hungry?" Blueblood says, narrowing his eyes. "Not hungry? You all work me to death over the course of the most torturous month of my life and ask if I'm not hungry? Well, I'll show you!" And then his indignance turns to humor as he smiles and collects as much as he can carry in his hooves and puts it down in front of him. He picks up a fork (a tiny one at that) and holds it points down over a slice of pie, and then *stabs* it straight down to pick up the whole mess and consume half of it in one bite. He lets out an uncomfortably pleased moan, and even dares to speak with his mouth full. "My mother would *kill* me if she saw me eating like this, but it's so good it's worth it!" he says, tears springing to his eyes and crumbs falling out of his mouth. He probably says more, but it's pushed right back down his throat by the food he's stuffing himself with. There's no nobility here to judge him. No cameras watching his every move. It's exquisitely liberating.
Big_Mac pauses a moment, the contents of his plate teetering a little from its heaping helping as Blueblood strikes an indignant tone. Mac, of course, choosing this time to sit himself up straight and leaning toward - if not slightly looming over - Blueblood, seeming almost ready to get affronted, at least until the stallion makes it clear its a lead in to humor and prompts a big, hearty chuckle from the draft stallion. "Tha's mighty impressive, but ah reckon ah've got y' beat!" he grins, stabbing a slice of pie in a much similar fashion and with a /slight/ bit of effort, crams the entire thing into his muzzle and swallows in a mighty *GULP* followed by a satisfied grin. He turns to AJ and Granny Smith upon her return with what appears to be dessert, prompting him to finish up perhaps a bit faster than he might normally. He nods in agreement to Applejack's praise of Blueblood. "Eeyup, y'all done a might good." he adds with a smile before trying to sneak a taste of the ice cream prematurely.
Applejack bursts into laughter at Blueblood's famished antics for a few moments before being distracted by Granny's pie. The old mare has cut several slices of the rainbow-colored pie and set them on plates, and added a scoop of the apple chip ice cream to each piece - pausing for a moment to whack Mac's reaching hoof with the serving spoon and give him a squinty warning look! Nonetheless, in a few moments, each of the ponies at the table has dessert in front of them, and what a dessert it is. The slices are not large, but there's something about them... this pie is special, it is only EVER served to ponies involved in the harvest work, which means there are only a hoof-ful of ponies anywhere that have tasted it and are not members of the Apple family, and Blueblood is about to join that exclusive club. The pie is special: it does not taste like apple; rather, it tastes like ALL the apples, all of them, everywhere, at once, as though the whole harvest has come to say thank you and goodbye. The ice cream is just ice cream, albeit GOOD ice cream. Granny eats placidly; she made it, and to her it's not quite as special. AJ savors hers, and anypony paying close attention may notice that at the end, she has just a few tears in her eyes, and steals another glance or at the picture.
Blueblood is back to bleary-eyed and bloodshot, but that might have to do with all the food he ate trying to keep up with Big Macintosh. Somewhere he got it into his head that "I am a real farm pony now!" as he said, and he wasn't about to be beaten. And then he was beaten. Soundly. Embarrassingly. But given the food, also deliciously. He manages to lift his chin off the table when the pie arrives. "More pie," he mumbles, and it's hard to tell if that's a *request* for more pie or a horrified realization that there *is* more pie. Probably both. He's going to make room in his gut if it kills him. He takes one bite and starts crying again. This is a good kind of pain. "I will never be able to eat properly in Canterlot again," he declares. "Every bite will feel too small."
Big_Mac gasps sharply at the swat to his hoof by Granny Smith, partly because she always catches him, partly because she /always/ does to the point where it's become almost tradition. His pace at clearing his plate slows as he nears the end of it, getting a little packed himself but having been careful to make sure he save a bit of room for dessert. By the time his serving reaches him, he's practically salivating and looking quite entranced as curls of steam and scent roll from i t and into tMac's nose where he nearly turns into a puddle o f bliss at the scent, which he savours a moment longer before prodding with a fork, though this time gingerly taking bits at a time, taking his time and enjoying every bit left to him.
By the time Applejack looks up at Blueblood again, she's all smiles, and her slice of pie is gone the way of all good foods. "Ahem. Ah was sayin'... *Prince* Blueblood, y'all did good work these last few weeks. Y'all were a real help, an' we appreciate it. So here ya go." AJ trots over to a sideboard (a little unsteadily - all that grub shifted her center of balance!), picks up an unsealed scroll, and sets it in front of Blueblood. It's a letter, signed by Granny, Mac, and AJ, outlining what a help Blueblood has been in the last little while. Applejack gives a nod and half smile. "Reckon whatever it is th' Princesses wanted y'all ta do here, that'll tell 'em ya got 'er done. So, less'n we got that all wrong... yer free ta go back ta Canterlot." She glances out the window. Night fell during the meal, as it does during November, and there are a few drops of rain. "In th' mornin', prob'ly. When it's easier ta travel."
Blueblood looks down at the scroll for a good few minutes in total silence. He is still a mess, looking hardly anything like the Prince he keeps saying he is. He holds the letter in his magic, hooves crossed over his distended belly, and then gently rolls it back up. "Yes," he says, looking down at the table. "Yes, erm... in the morning. Back. Going back! Leaving. Like I said." He worries his bottom lip. "Probably... probably for the best."
Applejack nods, apparently missing the hesitation there. "Back ta yer life, sugar. Fetes an' balls an' th' like. Everythin' from soiree ta soir-zee, heh heh." There is a brief blur of activity as Apple Bloom bursts in, grabs a piece of pie, says "THANKSGRANNYBAW!" and gallops upstairs. The other Apples chuckle and start putting away the remains of the feast; the table is clear in moments, and soon Granny Smith (who is old) and Big Macintosh (who is just really really full) say their g'nights and toddle upstairs too. In a moment of calm, Applejack watches them go, standing by Blueblood. "Heh. Reckon Ah might turn in too, could read a bit first or somethin'. We don't got *so* much ta do in th' winter months, but habits are habits, we'll still be up with th' sun tomorrow." AJ pats Blueblood on the shoulder companionably and smiles. "G'night, yer Grace. Reckon when it comes right down t'it, y'all're a good pony." Then AJ makes her own way upstairs, leaving the prince alone with they dying fire for a few moments to think about what it means that possibly for the first time ever, it is himself - and not his title - that has won somepony's respect.
"Nope, they ain't nothin'. Ta some folk they're dang near everythin'." says a voice, and even if there was any way to mistake it for someone else's - which there isn't - Applejack appears in the barn door and continues, "Ta some they're just a means to an end, too. Ya may as well unbuckle yerself; these here" - she indicates the two carts she's pulling - "are almost th' last ones. Reckon Mac's gettin' th' last of all fer this season, then..." She heaves a sigh, then grins, bringing in her carts to clear out. "We're done."
"Done?" Blueblood asks, astonished. He looks over his shoulder at the trees, conspicuously barren. "Done?" He blinks several times. He can't seem to comprehend it. The last few weeks of his life have been apples. Everything was apples. Or punching trees for their apples. Or packing or shipping or storing apples. Several times he was convinced he *was* an apple. "But... then what shall we *do*?" he asks, sounding awed and slightly alarmed as he unhitches himself.
Applejack gets her apples tucked away all nice and kentucky. "Welp, th' harvest's in, cider presses already runnin', traditionally what we do now-" AJ is cut off suddenly as a clanging, ringing noise starts outside! It seems like an alarm of some sort until Granny Smith's hoarse but shockingly powerful voice is added to it: "COME AN' GIT IT! AH DONE COOKED A PASSEL, LET'S GET 'ER GONE!!" AJ winces and grins. "... what we do now is eat." She beckons for Prince Blueblood to follow her and trots off into the farmhouse.
"Eat." Blueblood finds his mouth watering. He touches a hoof to his lips and glances back and forth to make sure nopony noticed. What would they say if they knew he actually craved farmer's fare? Which, as he's learned, is... actually quite good on an empty stomach. He trots after Applejack, looking around the farm with apprehension and perhaps a note of careful admiration. He helped do all this. He has *done* something. "It's amazing," he murmurs, apparently thinking Applejack cannot hear him. He's taken to talking to himself sometimes. "How doing something here made me realize how much nothing I was doing back there."
Applejack does hear him, and grins to herself, but has managed to pick up enough tact to keep that fact to herself. Instead, she precedes Blueblood into the Apples' dining room, where the nice china and tablecloth are out, and barely visible under the ENORMOUS spread of food Granny Smith has laid on! Stuffed hayloaf, cornbread, glazed carrots- regular farm fare may be good on an empty stomach, but this is a feast by anypony's standards. AJ plunks down in a seat. "Where's Apple Bloom?" she asks her grandmother, who points a withered hoof at an empty seat that also seems to have had its place setting stolen. "She done took a plate o' vittles an' run off! Somethin' 'bout that dad-blamed ship o' hers." Applejack shakes her head and chuckles, then turns to explain this to the prince. "We Apples got us a tradition: last day o' th' harvest, we lay on a BIG spread, an' spend a little while celebratin' one more year we lived ta tell about."
Blueblood looks down at the feast before them and relaxes himself in a chair, sitting down nice and slow and letting out a long, contented sigh all the way. "I feel like my limbs are all going to plop right off," he declares, barely able to lift a hoof to get at the sumptuous setup before him. "One more year lived?" he asks after AJ's proclamation. "Bit morbid, that..." He taps his hooves together, wondering what they're going to eat first. His privileges are far behind him, but his table manners are another matter: he will retain his dignity no matter how much his stomach rumbles, thank you very much. Timidly, he reaches for a plate *without* using his magic, seeming inordinately nervous about something. "Oh, and, um, thank you Granny Smith," he says with a little smile. "It's, um... this is all very... it looks *amazing.*" He never thought he'd say that. Until he came here of course.
Applejack nods. "Might be a little. Comes from th' days when there was a good chance we wouldn't, ya know? An'-" At this point, the door slams open and Big Macintosh moseys inside and takes his usual spot at the foot of the table. The chair - and the floorboards - creak ominously, but everything holds together. "Got th' last ones in, Mac?" AJ asks. Mac chuckles and shakes his head indulgently. "Eeyup." he says, in a tone that conveys 'well of course, otherwise I'd still be out there'. Applejack nods and says, "Ah was just explainin' our harvest dinner ta Blueblood." She turns back to him. "As Ah was sayin'... an' it gives us a moment to remember th' ones that didn't make it." At this, AJ, Mac, and Granny all turn to look at a picture on the mantelpiece, of a mare and a stallion Blueblood's never met. They stare at it silently for a moment, then suddenly Granny breaks the tension: "DIG IN, EVERYPONY!" And dig in they do!
Blueblood's ears droop the longer he stares at the picture. He may be an ignorant fool but he isn't stupid, and can piece together the meaning of it easily. And yet everypony is always *smiling* in this house. It's not something he noticed before, but now it seems to hit especially hard. He can't remember that many smiles back in Canterlot. He almost falls backwards when the call to eat blasts his eardrums, and looks around the table, shellshocked as the Apples start consuming. He licks his lips, wondering how best to arrange his portion of food. Should he start with the carrots or the pie? Does he eat with the fork on the left or the right in a farmhouse? Should he - "Oh, horsefeathers," he tells himself when his stomach rumbles again, and in a matter of seconds you couldn't tell him apart from the rest of the ponies at the table.
After a few moments of gazing at the photograph, Big Mac's head casts downward and his eyes close, as if taking the images from the picture and using them to make his memories all the more vivid for a few moments. His chest heaves deep as he breathes in and lets it out long and slow. The sigh he releases is almost exactly timed to finish when Granny Smith cries out for the feast to begin and his eyes spring open and without hesitation begins digging in, taking hefty scoops of everything within reach - which really means everything on the table - There's nothing quite like the seasons end feast for a hard working family, and definitely not for a big hard working stallion like himself. Of course, Blueblood is liable to loose a hoof if he's not careful, or accustomed to a farmhouse feast, or possibly even going without on some of the vittles if he's not quick. Noticing Blueblood hesitating and with an empty plate for at least a good 10 seconds, Mac leans over. "Y'all okay? 'ain't hungry?" he asks with genuine concern, at least until Blueblood begins catching up with the family.
For the most part, not a lot is said during the meal proper. Everypony's mouths are otherwise occupied, and unnecessary chatter would just net someone a lungful of stuffing. Granny Smith finishes eating first, as with her delicate constitution she only ate one and a half typical stallions' worth of dinner, then stands up and hobbles off to the kitchen. Applejack looks up. "Y'all did good work today. Actually, fer th' last coupla weeks. So, we-" but then Granny returns and plunks a platter and an odd, frosty little bucket down on the table. She lifts the lid and a new, sweet pungent smell fills the room. This is Granny's special Harvest Feast Zap-Apple Pie; she only makes one a year, and this is it. The bucket contains apple-chip vanilla ice cream, Applejack's hoofiwork this time.
"Not hungry?" Blueblood says, narrowing his eyes. "Not hungry? You all work me to death over the course of the most torturous month of my life and ask if I'm not hungry? Well, I'll show you!" And then his indignance turns to humor as he smiles and collects as much as he can carry in his hooves and puts it down in front of him. He picks up a fork (a tiny one at that) and holds it points down over a slice of pie, and then *stabs* it straight down to pick up the whole mess and consume half of it in one bite. He lets out an uncomfortably pleased moan, and even dares to speak with his mouth full. "My mother would *kill* me if she saw me eating like this, but it's so good it's worth it!" he says, tears springing to his eyes and crumbs falling out of his mouth. He probably says more, but it's pushed right back down his throat by the food he's stuffing himself with. There's no nobility here to judge him. No cameras watching his every move. It's exquisitely liberating.
Big_Mac pauses a moment, the contents of his plate teetering a little from its heaping helping as Blueblood strikes an indignant tone. Mac, of course, choosing this time to sit himself up straight and leaning toward - if not slightly looming over - Blueblood, seeming almost ready to get affronted, at least until the stallion makes it clear its a lead in to humor and prompts a big, hearty chuckle from the draft stallion. "Tha's mighty impressive, but ah reckon ah've got y' beat!" he grins, stabbing a slice of pie in a much similar fashion and with a /slight/ bit of effort, crams the entire thing into his muzzle and swallows in a mighty *GULP* followed by a satisfied grin. He turns to AJ and Granny Smith upon her return with what appears to be dessert, prompting him to finish up perhaps a bit faster than he might normally. He nods in agreement to Applejack's praise of Blueblood. "Eeyup, y'all done a might good." he adds with a smile before trying to sneak a taste of the ice cream prematurely.
Applejack bursts into laughter at Blueblood's famished antics for a few moments before being distracted by Granny's pie. The old mare has cut several slices of the rainbow-colored pie and set them on plates, and added a scoop of the apple chip ice cream to each piece - pausing for a moment to whack Mac's reaching hoof with the serving spoon and give him a squinty warning look! Nonetheless, in a few moments, each of the ponies at the table has dessert in front of them, and what a dessert it is. The slices are not large, but there's something about them... this pie is special, it is only EVER served to ponies involved in the harvest work, which means there are only a hoof-ful of ponies anywhere that have tasted it and are not members of the Apple family, and Blueblood is about to join that exclusive club. The pie is special: it does not taste like apple; rather, it tastes like ALL the apples, all of them, everywhere, at once, as though the whole harvest has come to say thank you and goodbye. The ice cream is just ice cream, albeit GOOD ice cream. Granny eats placidly; she made it, and to her it's not quite as special. AJ savors hers, and anypony paying close attention may notice that at the end, she has just a few tears in her eyes, and steals another glance or at the picture.
Blueblood is back to bleary-eyed and bloodshot, but that might have to do with all the food he ate trying to keep up with Big Macintosh. Somewhere he got it into his head that "I am a real farm pony now!" as he said, and he wasn't about to be beaten. And then he was beaten. Soundly. Embarrassingly. But given the food, also deliciously. He manages to lift his chin off the table when the pie arrives. "More pie," he mumbles, and it's hard to tell if that's a *request* for more pie or a horrified realization that there *is* more pie. Probably both. He's going to make room in his gut if it kills him. He takes one bite and starts crying again. This is a good kind of pain. "I will never be able to eat properly in Canterlot again," he declares. "Every bite will feel too small."
Big_Mac gasps sharply at the swat to his hoof by Granny Smith, partly because she always catches him, partly because she /always/ does to the point where it's become almost tradition. His pace at clearing his plate slows as he nears the end of it, getting a little packed himself but having been careful to make sure he save a bit of room for dessert. By the time his serving reaches him, he's practically salivating and looking quite entranced as curls of steam and scent roll from i t and into tMac's nose where he nearly turns into a puddle o f bliss at the scent, which he savours a moment longer before prodding with a fork, though this time gingerly taking bits at a time, taking his time and enjoying every bit left to him.
By the time Applejack looks up at Blueblood again, she's all smiles, and her slice of pie is gone the way of all good foods. "Ahem. Ah was sayin'... *Prince* Blueblood, y'all did good work these last few weeks. Y'all were a real help, an' we appreciate it. So here ya go." AJ trots over to a sideboard (a little unsteadily - all that grub shifted her center of balance!), picks up an unsealed scroll, and sets it in front of Blueblood. It's a letter, signed by Granny, Mac, and AJ, outlining what a help Blueblood has been in the last little while. Applejack gives a nod and half smile. "Reckon whatever it is th' Princesses wanted y'all ta do here, that'll tell 'em ya got 'er done. So, less'n we got that all wrong... yer free ta go back ta Canterlot." She glances out the window. Night fell during the meal, as it does during November, and there are a few drops of rain. "In th' mornin', prob'ly. When it's easier ta travel."
Blueblood looks down at the scroll for a good few minutes in total silence. He is still a mess, looking hardly anything like the Prince he keeps saying he is. He holds the letter in his magic, hooves crossed over his distended belly, and then gently rolls it back up. "Yes," he says, looking down at the table. "Yes, erm... in the morning. Back. Going back! Leaving. Like I said." He worries his bottom lip. "Probably... probably for the best."
Applejack nods, apparently missing the hesitation there. "Back ta yer life, sugar. Fetes an' balls an' th' like. Everythin' from soiree ta soir-zee, heh heh." There is a brief blur of activity as Apple Bloom bursts in, grabs a piece of pie, says "THANKSGRANNYBAW!" and gallops upstairs. The other Apples chuckle and start putting away the remains of the feast; the table is clear in moments, and soon Granny Smith (who is old) and Big Macintosh (who is just really really full) say their g'nights and toddle upstairs too. In a moment of calm, Applejack watches them go, standing by Blueblood. "Heh. Reckon Ah might turn in too, could read a bit first or somethin'. We don't got *so* much ta do in th' winter months, but habits are habits, we'll still be up with th' sun tomorrow." AJ pats Blueblood on the shoulder companionably and smiles. "G'night, yer Grace. Reckon when it comes right down t'it, y'all're a good pony." Then AJ makes her own way upstairs, leaving the prince alone with they dying fire for a few moments to think about what it means that possibly for the first time ever, it is himself - and not his title - that has won somepony's respect.