Applejack
Fungi
Sometimes Applejack feels tuckered out.
Working an apple orchard is rarely about fun. It's mostly about work, plain and simple. Any fun is an occasional side effect. Applejack lives by this philosophy, and it has never failed her.
She sees Apple Bloom run off with her filly friends without a care in the world for the barely-started jobs she leaves behind. Applejack always lets her run, never calls her back. Instead, she finishes Apple Bloom's chores, shrugging to herself as she contemplates her wayward sister. Affection swells in her chest, but envy stirs in her belly—briefly, before it's stamped out by her good sense and maturity.
And yet, she can't help but long for her filly days when she, too, was young enough to abandon a half-filled barrel of apples with nary a twinge of regret. Apple Bloom is free, unspoiled. Applejack is confined, though of her own free will. But some days that will feels inescapable, as though an omnipotent iron hoof pins her to responsibility and duty.
When the southern orchard trees suddenly begin drooping, some mysterious growth hanging from every branch, Applejack panics. She ignores the desperate pleading from her family and immediately seeks out Twilight's library, where she begins pouring through botanical books trying to find a cure. Sweet Apple Acres is her home, and she'll be damned if she won't save it from ruin.
Big Macintosh can barely slow her down long enough to tell her the fungus is not a fungus at all, but a harmless variety of moss. She drags her tail in the dirt all the way back to the farm, embarrassed.
"It's okay," Apple Bloom chirps. "Everyone knows you've been working too hard!"
Maybe too hard, Applejack thinks, and races her sister all the way to Pinkie Pie's.