The sun hasn’t come up yet, but I already hear hoofsteps coming up the stairs.

I hate it when I know I have to get up early, but my brain wakes me up even earlier instead of letting me sleep. As long as possible, anyway. But when those clomping sounds keep coming down the hallway and pause in front of my door, my heart sinks.

There’s a quiet knock at the door. “Apple Bloom?”

I sigh and pull the blanket up over my nose. Do I have to do this?

“Apple Bloom,” Sis repeats, a little louder. “Wake up. It’s time to go.”

It doesn’t even matter if we’re late. I can’t stay in here forever and make her go on without me. Whenever I get up, that’s when we’ll leave. “Can I have breakfast first?” I mumble through the covers.

“I s’pose. Pack some in a basket and take it along, if you like.”

I groan, but I don’t think she heard. No getting out of this. There never is.

So, I roll off the bed, yawn, scratch an itchy spot on my ribs, and head to the washroom to straighten my bow and brush my teeth, Applejack’s steady eye on me the whole time. She’s one of those ponies who get fixed on something and can’t imagine there’s any other way to see it. In other words, she’s an Apple.

Down the stairs I trudge, then off to the kitchen. Bread and peanut butter from the pantry, then apple jelly from the fridge. “You want one, Sis?” I ask. She’s staring out past the hills, and the heavy shadows outside pull her frown down a little harder. Finally, she nods, not so’s I’d notice if I wasn’t looking for it.

Two sandwiches, then. I spread the jelly on thick, how I know she likes it, and wrap them up in a couple of napkins. In the basket they go, along with a bit of fresh hay and a bottle of apple juice. When I’m done, I balance the picnic basket on my back and poke Sis in the side. It only takes two more pokes to get her attention.

Out the door, onto the road, and finally a few rays of sun peek over the horizon. Let’s get this day over with.

We go a good three miles before Sis says anything. Too bad I already knew what it’d be. Too bad I already know how every minute of this morning will go.

I form the words in my mind: [i]I don’t s’pose I’ve ever told you this before, but…[/i]

“Apple Bloom, I don’t s’pose I’ve ever told you this before, but… the reason we went so long without a family reunion is ’cause folks didn’t have the heart so soon after Mom and Dad passed, then after a few years, it’s like they plumb forgot.” She keeps trotting straight ahead, looking straight ahead, still wearing that mask that looks like Applejack but never moves.

[i]Y’know, we should spend the time…[/i]

“Y’know, we should spend the time until we get there tellin’ stories ’bout Mom and Dad.” I’ve heard every one of those stories before. She tells the same ones every year. They’re just as much a part of the script as the rest of it. “Lemme start with the first Hearth’s Warming I remember—I must’ve been three, four at most…”

I trot on with her, listening to the birds and wind and creek and breeze instead. She doesn’t get it. I tried explaining it to her once, but I got nowhere. That’s [i]her[/i] memory. She might as well tell me a story about June Bug or Mayor Mare or Carrot Top. It doesn’t mean anything to me. Sure, I feel bad for Sis, but I wasn’t there when she was three or four or whatever during Hearth’s Warming. It’s just a story.

“…And Mom forgot all about the oranges in my stocking! A week later, we came down to breakfast, only to have a big ol’ wall o’ stink greetin’ us. Not the best way to start a day, lemme tell you.” At least the mask cracks, and she gets a little laugh out of it.

Sis has dragged me along on this trip four years running now, always on December twenty-second. Rain or shine or snow or—yuck!—the one year she had a nasty case of the flu.

“Then there was the time,” she starts again, “that I got in trouble for cheatin’ on a test at school, even though it was the [i]other[/i] pony copyin’ off [i]me[/i]. Now, Mom knew she couldn’t give ol’ Miss Slate what for, since I had to sit in her class the rest o’ the year, so…”

And the next one’ll be about the time Braeburn came for a visit, and the one after about her first applebuckin’ season. Then it’ll all wrap up with how she got her hat. I get to hear that one on Mother’s Day, too.

We finally take the turn into the forest, but I lose the pebble I’ve been kicking along, somewhere in the ditch. Sis’d tell me not to dawdle if I went down there to get it, but I don’t feel like playing now, anyway. Just another mile or so.

“Anyways, Apple Bloom, it sure came as a shock to everypony at the reunion when it happened. No fun that year—all somber and… I dunno, stunned silence.” She shrugs and twitches her nose the way she always does when she’s trying not to cry but doesn’t want to rub it and look too deliberate.

“The day everypony showed up, too. We just couldn’t do it. Not for a few years after, either.” She [i]does[/i] brush some mane out of her eyes. At least that’s what she’ll say, if I ask her.

Off in the distance, I can see where we’ll stop. The little bend in the road, where an oak root sticks through the wagon ruts, and there’s a little pile of rocks on the edge of the forest. It’s fallen over.

As soon as she sees it, Sis rushes over and tries to stack them back up again. She’s got two or three of them together, but she keeps looking around frantically. “Wh-where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

“The red stone. Th-there’s s’posed to be a red stone!” She jumps off the left side of the path and pokes her nose down toward the stream, her hoof ready to snatch something out of the cold water. “Darned kids. They—they don’t think before… I gotta find it!”

I can’t remember the last time I saw Sis cry. Well, I guess that ain’t true. But I can’t remember the last time she didn’t do anything to hide it. I-I can’t move.

“Do something!” she barks at me, and a jolt shoots through my body. “Look for it!”

“For what?”

“The stone! The red stone!” She points a trembling hoof at the toppled stack. “An old piece o’ jasper. It goes right in the middle!”

Her wide, wild eyes look right through me. “Apple Bloom, help me find it!”

Somehow, I pull my hooves off the ground and gingerly creep down the stream bank, but she jumps full in, splashing about and shivering so hard I think her hat’s gonna come flying off.

She’s… [i]possessed[/i]. I don’t know what to do—I wanna dash off find somepony to help, who can knock some sense into her, but I can’t leave her here. Not like this.

She’ll freeze in that water! I have to—I leap back up into the road, where I dropped my basket, and on the other side, a spot of color behind a sapling catches my eye. It’s… well, brownish-red, I guess. “This it, Applejack?” I ask, pointing a hoof toward it.

Her head whips around, and it takes a second for her eyes to come into focus, but then she staggers up out of the water and drops to her haunches, with a hoof held to her chest. She nods hard, flinging drops from her soaked mane at me, and then she just starts shaking.

With those jittering hooves, she somehow manages to pile up the rocks again, but by then, her lips have turned blue, and the creek water in her coat is turning to frost.

“Sis!” I shout. “I’ll get help!”

But she shakes her head and juts her snout toward the picnic basket. Of course! The blanket! But she’s too wet. If I put it on her, it’ll just get soaked. I need some way of drying her off first.

My heart sinks. But not for me.

I undo my bow.

“N-no,” she chatters, shaking her head. “W-was M-mom’s.”

I ignore her, press my bow against her neck, and try to wring out her mane as best I can. Then her tail, and finally her coat, all the while fighting her attempts to wriggle away. When I finish, I toss the sopping wet ribbon over a low branch. Red dye bleeds onto the ground.

“N-no,” she repeats.

For once, I get to be the big sister, the one who knows what to do. I shush her, throw the blanket around her, and huddle inside it with her. That first icy shock of her coat against me sucks out my breath, but I keep rubbing my hooves up and down her back and sides, and after what feels like half an hour, she’s stopped shivering.

“You ready for a sandwich?” I ask, and she bursts out laughing.

When she’s settled down, she wipes her eyes dry, then shrugs and nods. I can’t believe how fast she wolfs it down, then I shove mine at her, too, and for once, she doesn’t argue.

“I—I’m glad,” she pants, “we got that rock back in there. That’s… that’s the heart.” She clutches her hooves to her chest.

It’s snowing.

Those heavy flakes that hiss softly through the trees and soak up every sound—even the stream sounds far away, but right up by my ear, her breath keeps coming, steadier now.

“It means a lot to me that you come along every year,” she says. “It’s important to remember.”

I figure she’s warmed up enough, so I duck out from under the blanket, tuck it around Sis, then squeeze out the water from my ribbon and stuff it in the picnic basket.

“Over there.” Applejack points at a gash cut into a tree trunk next to the pile of stones. New bark has long since grown over it. “That’s where it happened. That’s where I found them.”

Sis closes her eyes and sees something that I can’t. “I’ll never forget,” she adds. “And you won’t, either.”

“Forget? I-I wasn’t there. I was too young to remember.” I never get anywhere with her, but I have the time, I guess. Might as well give it another try. “I… I hate coming here.”

She stares at me, but she doesn’t gape or anything. She expected this. She has tears welling up again, but she expected this.

“I don’t come here ’cause it’s fun,” Sis says, brushing the snow off the piece of forelock hanging out of her blanket. “I come here ’cause it’s important.”

I can’t look her in the eye. “It’s important to [i]you[/i],” I tell her. “That’s why [i]I[/i] come with you.” She doesn’t answer, letting the silence press in on me.

“Applejack, I barely remember Mom. Just a fuzzy picture of a blonde mare leaning over me once when I had a bad dream, and following her around on my first Nightmare Night. The only way I remember what she looks like is the photo on the hearth.” When I risk a look up, she bites her lip.

I’ve never gone this far before, and she looks like a wagon hit her. “I know you want to honor her, Sis. I just can’t feel the same way you do. But I know how much it means to you, and I love you, so I’ll come here with you next year, and the year after, and every year from now on. I just didn’t know her like you did.”

“B-but… she’s your [i]mother[/i].” Her eyes glisten in the weak daylight.

I sigh and shake my head. “No. She’s not. [i]You’re[/i] my mother. As far back as I can remember, [i]you[/i] did all the things that a mother does. That doesn’t take anything away from her or make her any less special.”

She sniffles, but she eventually gives me a hesitant nod, and I think I see a smile. “When I think of a mom, I think of you. I [i]love[/i] you.”

“C’mere,” she says, and she wraps me in a hug. “I love you too.” Using a corner of the blanket, she dabs the tears off her cheeks. “I s’pose we should be gettin’ on home.” She keeps the blanket draped over her, and she picks up her hat while I get our basket.

“When we come back next year—” I start. She looks up quickly and raises her eyebrows. “[i]When[/i] we come back next year, just don’t tell those same stories [i]again[/i], okay?”

She nods. And somehow, I know that she’s answering much more than that one question. “Done,” she replies.

And we start home, through the quiet snowfall.