A/N: Hello, all! This is my little collection here, where I will be posting all of the shorts and snippets for MLP:FIM. If any of them should be expanded into a larger, more expansive story, please let me know!

Applejack is hardwork, honesty, and a warm summer day embody in reality. She smiles and the sun shines, she laughs and the wind blows, she speaks and it is like the birds singing high up in the oak tree.

To say that she is her element, it is easy.

To say that her element is reality, it is harder.

You see, Applejack is honest and that is what makes her strong. It is also what makes her weak, because she is far, far too honest and far too loyal and her own needs they come third, fourth, fifth, last. Always and always last.

It is apple picking season and she is last once more. Her brother, he is sick. Too sick to leave the bed, to leave the house, and there is no one else that can collect those apples. It is their biggest crop too, enough to keep the family afloat for the long months between harvests.

So she smiles and nods and, of course I can do it, Granny, don't be so silly.

Because loyalty to her family, that runs deep. It makes the way her vision blur worth it, and it makes the ache that runs deeply through her legs and hooves and up, up, up into her spine.

Deeper than that though, is fear. Fear that they will finally lose everything. Their home, their name, their very creed. They cannot be the Apple family without their apples, and they cannot have their apples without a farm, and they cannot have their farm without their apples.

So Applejack bucks and her hooves strike bark once more.

All she can think about is bright lights and her name up in stars, except it is the name of her cousins and aunts and uncles there and not her own, not the name of her mother or her father or her brother or granny. Certainly not her own name.

Bucks again, and those bright red apples fall to the ground.

They are her only name sake, and her name sake is honesty.