Complaints Department

Chapters

A Rough Tuesday
Professional-ish Help
Artists and Underpinnings
The Tapestry
Things Crashing Down
Correcting Errors

A Rough Tuesday

There is no recourse to deal with unsatisfactory cutiemarks. That's a necessary fact because if there was such a thing, it would admit that there's an intelligence and a plan behind them, and if that were the case, the option of dissatisfaction would arise and the pastoral order of Equestria as a whole would be thrown into chaos. Honor and duty aside, how many amongst us would not protest the toilsome muck and mire of the ditchdigger's lot, if between that and the royal cupcake taster's position, stood only the arbitrary judgment of some capricious power?

If any great deal of thought was given to the matter, one would see cutiemarks for the artworks that they are; however, refuting the notion that they spring from a pony's own psyche, one would find that they are stylistically cohesive, where variation as infinite as the creative diversity of pony's souls should be the case. This alone points to that troubling notion that somewhere, somehow, there is some entity in charge of these vexatious marks, and, necessarily, of our fates which they do foretell.

I do fear for the day when this revelation is universally acknowledged as self evident, for it presages nothing short of revolution against the entrenched order.

-Clover the Clever, from her private diaries.

It was ten in the morning and Derpy Hooves had already managed to lose her job. In point of fact, the job had lost her, seeing as how she'd been substituting for the lead goose in a formation and her flock had peeled off behind her, she knew not when. They were undoubtedly marooned on a lake somewhere, unable to continue on without their lead goose, or a fairly reasonable substitute.

It wouldn't be hard to find them save that they'd been flying over a section of north central Equestria that had the nickname, land of ten thousand lakes. If one were to count the pools, ponds, streams, large puddles and outright morasses on which a goose might see fit to settle it drove the number considerably higher than that, well out of the bounds of what she could realistically investigate by herself, though she'd tried for just long enough to finally realize the task's utter futility.

She'd had a bad feeling about the job, but Fluttershy had begged her to take it on. She'd been too busy with a sick badger to see to the task herself, and Derpy, perpetually strained for bits, had been easily coerced with a promise of a simple, relaxing flight.

The whole grey goose species was endangered, largely because they were so humble that when their lead goose was unfortunately lost, they couldn't find amongst them one willing to elevate themselves above their brothers for fear of alienating them. The whole lot of them were likely to polite themselves to death, but that was no great surprise, they were Caneighdian grey geese, after all.

Thus she was hired as a fill in grey goose and had easily been accepted in the role by her charges, but now that she'd lost the flock, she feared they'd remain just where they'd lit and never make it to their breeding grounds in the South. She'd tried to remedy the situation, asking advice from the Equestrian Wildlife Society, her employer, but they'd blamed her for not looking back to check on her flock often enough and fired her outright, citing gross incompetence for their reason.

Derpy lied aloud to herself, but in fact she did know what went wrong, just what went wrong. It was her, same as always. She'd failed her employer, the geese, and most damningly, an ever forgiving Fluttershy, who would likely be forced away from her ill friend to clean up after her. A pony can blame the world for treating her unfairly only so many times until the realization that it was, in fact, her own fault sets in, and even if she still couldn't admit it aloud, in her heart, she knew.

Yes, deep down inside, in a place that Derpy's unwavering smile never reached, she knew, and even if she should have been more careful, should have paid better attention, should have known better so very many times she could still feel the injustice of it all. It was hard to comprehend, difficult to quantify and outright impossible to articulate, but sometimes when she was thinking about all the jobs she'd had and lost, she caught glimpses in the corner of her mind of the very shape of her frustrations. It looked, for all the world, like a cluster of bubbles.

Huddled between discarded crates in a filthy alley was a little yellow filly who would vehemently deny that she'd run away from home because, in her mind, she no longer had a home. Somewhere deep down in her soul she'd betrayed her home and family. She must have, else what justification could be put forth for the abomination tattooed on her flank? Involuntarily as it might be, she was too ashamed to let anypony see her, so she'd donned some worn and grease spattered denim coveralls, and run for town.

It would be an hour yet before she was missed for certain but the train wouldn't arrive for another three so she was hiding and hoping her luck held out. It happens that it did not.

"Whoopsidoo!" Derpy exclaimed as she tripped over the little filly's tail and planted her face firmly against the smooth cobblestone. With stumbling difficulty she reclaimed her footing, and stood, swaying slightly while she waited for her head to regain it's usual crude semblance of order. When she looked down to see what had tripped her up she saw a red maned filly in dirty coveralls trying to make herself as small as possible between a pair of discarded boxes. Derpy guiltily thought that she must have hurt the foal as her eyes were watering such that they were on the verge of overtopping their bounds and inundating her cheeks with their salty torrent. Matted tracks in her fur hinted that she'd been troubled before being assaulted by Derpy's clumsy hooves, "Oh, hi Apple Bloom, I didn't see you there! Are you okay?" Apple Bloom nodded, choking back her emotions and hoping this interaction would be swiftly concluded, "Are you playing box fort?" Apple Bloom shook her head, "Hide and seek?" Again the little filly indicated that wasn't it either, "Well unless you're running away from home, I'm stumped."

Apple Bloom gasped at seemingly being found out by Derpy, of all ponies.

"Maybe you should play somewhere else, where ponies won't trip on you?" Derpy said helpfully.

"Maybe you should watch where you're goin'." Apple Bloom growled. Derpy nodded, acceding that this was also true, "There could have just as easily been a board with a rusty nail in it and you'd've stepped right on it, or... or a snake! What if'n I'd been a snake? I coulda' bit you just now, then where would you be? Snakebit, that's where."

Derpy bobbed her head in agreement, it really was something she needed to work on. It seemed like she was always stumbling over one thing or another. Usually it wasn't fillies. Her own little Dinky was agile as a cat and knew to stay safely out from under her mother's plodding hooves, "You're right Apple Bloom, I'll try real hard not to step on you when you're a snake or a board with a rusty nail in it, I promise."

"Say what now?" Apple Bloom cocked her head. This wasn't the way she'd expected a full grown mare to react to her outburst, not that she'd put much thought into it before she'd snapped at Derpy, who was now looking at her expectantly with her wobbly eyes. Generally an adult would either tell her off and threaten to tell her family how she'd been acting, or simply react with disgust and walk away. Derpy, though, Derpy was different. She'd seen and heard enough to understand this obliquely but it had never really clicked in the forefront of her brain until just now, "Say, Derpy, what're you doin' cuttin' through this alley anyhow? It's a dead end. It don't go nowhere."

"I was just going to check behind..." Suddenly Derpy's smile faltered and when it returned it was a sheepish, skittish thing which she tried to dress up with the extra garnish of a scrunched up nose and screwed shut eyes, "I mean nothing. I was out for a walk, nothing else. No ma'am." When she reopened her eyes Apple Bloom had climbed up on a crate and taken to rummaging through the grey mare's saddlebag to slake her curiosity.

Three halves of muffins, a half dozen apples that were either bitten or had unappetizing defects and a greasy bag that surely constituted half an order of hay fries from the cafe lay in Derpy's bag. She started and turned away from the crate causing the filly to pinwheel for balance before dropping back down to the ground with a grunt.

Apple Bloom's eyes hardened and she fixed Derpy in her gaze. Derpy either met her gaze haughtily or looked to the cobblestone in a brief fit of depression, according to which eye one were to believe, "You ain't feedin' Dinky off a' this garbage are you?"

Derpy was shocked, but slowly her smile returned, thinking of her kind friend and darling little muffin, "I...Um, Carrot Top helps out with Dinky when I'm short on bits. She gets upset when I eat all her food so I was trying to find some for myself."

"You can't go around eatin' garbage, Derpy." Apple Bloom flatly stated.

"It's not garbage." Derpy protested, "It's good food after you cut the bad parts off and I don't mind. It gives me something to do until I find my next job."

"Is that what this is about?" Apple Bloom kindly smiled, "Why don'tcha' go on down to Sweet Apple Acres and ask my sister if she'll give you a job? Seems like she could always use a good, honest worker this time of year."

"I don't think that would work." Derpy admitted. She was thinking of a time before Apple Bloom was old enough to remember, when she had worked for the farm. There was the incident after one particular running of the leaves in which Applejack had hired her on to clear the remaining leaves off the South field. It had been neglected during the official proceedings and still bore millions of withered brown leaves. A snow was scheduled shortly and the leaves needed to be removed lest the weight of the ice and snow clinging to them shattered the branches and damaged the trees.

Derpy cleared about half of the leaves away before being distracted watching the cows stampede back and forth each time she flew by too low. She'd swooped in once just for the joy of watching them swirl around the corral, their earthy colors and chaotic dance mimicking the leaves as the gusts from her wings plucked them from their branches.

When she got close enough to see the real panic in their eyes, guilty remorse overwhelmed her. She landed on the fence and tried to calm them but she couldn't be heard over their clamor and lowing and she resorted to yelling for them to calm down which only escalated things further and spooked them beyond all reason. The cows exploded outwards. A small number trampled the fence and broke for the orchards while others retreated through the barn itself, their reckless passage eroding the barn's supporting structure and causing the hayloft to collapse down into the milking stalls which pushed the walls outward and effectively decimated the whole structure.

While Applejack, after visibly fighting back a fit of anger, told Derpy that cows were easily provoked and not to worry, it hadn't been her fault, she also sent her home and hired another Pegasus to finish clearing the leaves.

After Applejack had seemingly forgotten, she'd asked Derpy, in her capacity as a weathermare, to water a section of orchard that had somehow been missed. Flooding and several lightning struck trees had somehow been the result of her zeal to get it right for Applejack this time. It wouldn't have happened if she hadn't been trying so hard, Derpy rationalized uselessly.

The most recent incident had Applejack at the Equestrian Parcel Service office bawling out everypony unlucky enough to be within earshot. She'd shipped a case of Zap Apple jam to the Princesses in Canterlot and somepony had dropped and broken them. That's bad enough, considering the value of Zap Apple jam and it's intended recipients, but the perpetrator had scooped up the jam and poured it into fresh jars.

Hygienically speaking that was poor practice, but more than that it happened that she hadn't strained the glass out as carefully as she'd thought and all three princesses, the captain of the guard and another third of a dozen high ranking ponies had suffered, to varying degrees, for it. Even after explanations were made and a case for each tainted jar given in recompense Applejack feared her reputation amongst the highest echelons of Equestrian society were irreparably harmed.

The ensuing investigation brought Derpy to the boss' office. Applejack's tirade went on unabated for half an hour before Derpy entered, and it was brought to a halt as soon as she had. Damningly, Applejack realized who it was, sighed with deep resignation and told her it wasn't her fault and not to worry about it, even though it entirely and conspicuously was her fault. That's when she realized just how Applejack viewed her. A buck up, a charity case and a simpleton who was so pathetic that she could not be culpable for her failings.

Derpy's smile faltered and collapsed as she thought of it. No, kind heart or not, she couldn't go to Applejack for a job, that was certain. It was equally certain she wouldn't beg for charity for her own sake. Dinky's, if it came to it, but not for her own. She had a little pride left.

But then...maybe...yes maybe if she did an especially good job she could redeem herself in Applejack's eyes and she wouldn't feel a stab of shame every time she saw her, "I don't know, but if you think it's a good idea, maybe you could put in a good word with Applejack?"

Apple Bloom deflated, "I'm afraid I can't do that."

"Oh. That's okay. I understand." Derpy turned away morosely, prepared to continue on her scavenging mission.

"Oh, shucks now, I didn't mean it like that." Apple Bloom scooted out in front of the grey mare, "It's just that I really can't tell her. I would if I could, but I just ain't gonna be able to."

"It's okay." Derpy repeated, her forward progress unhindered.

"No really, Derpy, it's just...well...I may not be going back there ever again." Apple Bloom said with a sniffle that degraded into a full blown deluge. It had been abstruse in her mind, but once she'd said it aloud it seemed so much more real. Derpy stopped and did what any mother would, simply pressing the filly to her chest until she'd cried herself out.

Derpy patted her back and nodded in understanding, "Did you make the Princess eat broken glass too?"

Apple Bloom's sniffles hitched and then dried up, "Wait, what now?" She shook her head in confusion, "It's just that I, um, finally got my cutiemark..."

"Congratulations!" Derpy's smile returned with a vengeance.

"...and it's not really what I expected it to be." Apple Bloom finished.

"Oh." Derpy considered the problem for a moment, "So you're going away to do what your cutiemark is telling you?"

"No, I just can't." Apple Bloom's features hardened, "I'm going to Canterlot to see the Princess and get her to change it."

"Change your cutiemark?"

"Yup. After I had the cutiepox I read up on cutiemarks. Only the highest level unicorns are powerful enough to do anything to a cutiemark and have it stick. Even Zecora just about said as much, so I figure the Princess herself is the only one who can help me now. I don't know if'n she will, but I've got to try. The alternative is just too terrible." Apple Bloom revealed and to a large degree it made sense. There seemed to be one big flaw in her plan.

"I don't think the Princess is in charge of cutiemarks." Derpy said.

"The Princess is in charge of everythin', why wouldn't she be in charge of cutiemarks too?"

"Come with me to my house and I'll show you why." Derpy mysteriously replied, but Apple Bloom balked.

"I can't go out in public! Somepony'll see me!" She objected. Fortunately Derpy had a solution and, without warning, she nudged Apple Bloom backwards into one of the open crates, eliciting a scared little squeak, then she hammered it's lid back down with a hoof, hefted it onto her back, and took off at a gallop. Ponyvillians cleared a path when they saw the grey pegasus bearing down on them at speed, her load erratically shifting from side to side and seemingly squealing in terror itself.

Professional-ish Help

Strange adventures, and getting wet, and carrying on alone and that sort of thing are all very well, but they're not comfortable in the long run.

-Starswirl the Bearded, from a prehistory of the Equestrian nation

After a harrowing trip as unbalanced and unsecured cargo, more terifying than any mere carnival amusement, they were at Derpy's house. She stepped in and set down the hoarsely panting crate with surprising care, found Dinky on the couch and hugged her.

"Mommy! Did you find all kinds of good things to eat? Carrot Top gave me two banana nut muffins and I know how much you like them so I saved one for you." The pale lavender unicorn filly exclaimed laughingly, then cocked her head, "Hey, what's in the box?"

"Now mommy can't show you right now. Why don't you go in your room and color for a bit?" Derpy said and Dinky disappointedly went into her room, only to peek back out almost immediately. Her mother turned to scold her but she'd already slipped back out of sight. She walked over and shut the door to Dinky's room then opened the crate back up. Apple Bloom was curled within in an unnatural and painful looking position.

She wriggled her way upright and shook her way out of the crate. Ignoring the filly's accusatory death stare, Derpy gestured that she should follow her and they went into Derpy's bedroom. From beneath the neatly made, but shortsheeted and swaybacked bed, she pulled an old wooden box, glossy from wear and abuse. Within were all manner of little baubles, letters, certificates, medals and bits of cloth. Wrapped in a ragged piece of fine gold silk was a scroll case and within it, a scroll which bore the royal seal, the wax of which was starting to crumble with age. Derpy gingerly unrolled it and hoofed it to Apple Bloom to read.

Dear Miss Hooves,

I find myself quite moved by your plight. Indeed it is a severe hindrance not to know the deeper message and meaning behind one's cutiemark. Often it seems that a pony would pursue their true destiny even if they were not given a cutiemark and, in the longterm, one hopes that it proves to be true in your case as well.

I have researched the subject on your behalf and while there are numerous tomes purporting to know the special meanings and hidden messages held in our cutiemarks, (I find them of dubious merit, as a whole.) there are but a few that make any mention of how, precisely, they come about. In short, if you were to come upon a 'complaints department' as you were asking about, you would be the first one I've known of to have done so.

While I'm certain this answer is less satisfying an answer than you are after, it's all I have to answer with just now. If I find some further information I will be certain to pass it along forthwith.

Sincerely,
HRH, Princess Celestia

Apple Bloom reread the letter three times before relinquishing it to Derpy, "So, then, you don't know what your cutie mark means?"

"Nope. That's why I wrote to the Princess. There has to be something I'm good at, but I don't know what job to take because I don't know my density." Derpy admitted, "I hope someday I'll find a job that I'm good at and then I'll know what the bubbles mean."

"Don't you know what you were doing when you got your cutiemark?" Apple Bloom asked.

"I was at camp. Nopony knew me well enough to know if I had my cutiemark or not, so when I got it, I guess nopony noticed. It could have been days before I found out. I traced my steps and tried to figure it out from that, but nothing seemed to fit." Derpy shrugged, "It wasn't a very nice camp anyway, it was dirty, I got bug bites and everypony made fun of me, but the next year I got to go to Junior Speedster's camp. That's where I met Rainbow Dash. Even though she gets pretty mad at me sometimes, she's still my best...second best friend."

Apple Bloom scrunched her face in concentration, "So I guess we both need to find this complaints department, but I ain't got the slightest idea where to start."

"I know where I have to start. I have to get Carrot Top to look after Dinky while we're gone." Derpy said and excused herself to go track down her best friend. Apple Bloom was left in her house, alone and in abject boredom, so she plucked the Ponyville directory from the bookshelf and started flipping through it in hopes of finding an answer. Between 'detectors (jewel)' and 'disc jockeys' she found one.

The frosted glass in the door to the second story office had been neatly lettered, 'Pie Investigations' and it swung into a waiting room in which Pinkie Pie sat behind a slim desk, wearing a blazer and pillbox hat. She was bereft of her usual smile as she assessed the two ponies before her. It looked as if she was gauging their status and ability to pay and found it, rightly, lacking. "I suppose you're the three o'clock? I'll see if the detective is in." Pinkie pushed a button on her desk, "Your three o'clock is here. What? No they look pretty scruffy to me. No, I'd say this looks like pro bono work to me. You want I should amscray the bums? You sure? Alright. Your lookout, mac. So long as my paycheck ain't made of rubber it's no skin of my muzzle." Pinkie warily turned her attention back to Derpy and Apple Bloom, "You can go on in."

Inside the detective's office, lit by one bare bulb that swayed slowly, propelled by the gyrations of the ceiling fan, was Pinkie Pie. Apple Bloom walked back out and found the secretary's desk was now unoccupied, which was both surprising and un at the same time. Behind the massive teak desk with it's battered metal undercarriage, Pinkie sat wearing a fedora atop her poofy mane and a stern, no-nonsense attitude. When she spoke it was terse and hard boiled, wholly unlike the Pinkie Pie she'd known.

"Well, if it isn't Dixie Lee Doohan, in the flesh." Pinkie Pie tilted her fedora back and dropped it, the barest facsimile of a chivalrous gesture, "Who's the kid?"

"Oh, hi Pinkie, I brought Apple Bloom, but don't tell anypony." Derpy replied. She considered correcting Pinkie about her name but was fearful of correcting a pony who'd been listed as the best P.I.(e) in Ponyville's business directory. It might turn out that she knew more than Derpy on the matter and then she'd be stuck going through life with a nickname like Dixie Doo, or something of the sort, after she'd finally gotten used to Derpy.

"Listen dame, I know plenty well enough who the doll is, she runs with that gang of fillies terrorizing the streets after dark." Pinkie's eyes narrowed in appraisal of the little Apple, "Didn't you used to belong to the Apple cartel? What're you doing going around with Miss Doohan here. Dame's trouble and I should know from trouble, trouble's my mother's maiden name."

"Derpy's try'n'ta help me with my cutie mark. We're hoping we can find whoever's in charge of'em." Apple Bloom ignored Pinkie's ostensibly bad opinion of Derpy, the Crusaders and Sweet Apple Acres, as she was fairly certain it was part of the detective act. Often a pony had to give Pinkie Pie a lot of leeway and Apple Bloom didn't want to be the one to jinx it if she could possibly find out anything.

"Kid, I can't help you get a cutie mark, nothing but time and elbow grease can do that and if you aren't willing to put those into the process then you're wasting both of our time." Pinkie said.

"Oh, but she got her cutiemark and there's something wrong with it. We need to see about getting it changed," Derpy smiled brightly, "and while we're there I was hoping I could find out what mine's supposed to mean."

"Got her cutiemark? You don't say?" Pinkie knit her brows, "Well what makes you think I can do anything for you? Maybe you should ask Twilight or write to the Princess. I think this kind of thing might be above my pay grade."

"Oh that's okay, we don't have any money to pay you anyway." Derpy replied with a shamed chuckle.

"Why am I not surprised?" Pinkie icily said.

"I've got thirty seven bits that I've been saving up from Hearth's Warming money and doin' chores. I'll get some more, I promise." Apple Bloom pled, "Hey, Derpy, show her the letter."

Pinkie took the letter from the Princess, read it over once, grunted in acknowledgment and flicked it back across the table, "I'll look into it, but don't come here expecting miracles and come back bawling me out if I can't produce. I'm not promising anything."

"I'm sure you'll figure it out, I heard you're the best detective in Ponyville!" Derpy exclaimed.

"Sister, it's easy to be the best detective in town when you're holding a monopoly over the racket." Pinkie sneered.

"So, you're sayin' you're the only detective in town?" Apple Bloom clarified.

"Kid, I used to have competition and now one fellow got himself whacked and the dame I took this office over from is sleeping with the fishes." Pinkie took a flask from her desk drawer, unscrewed the top and took a long belt. The dribble that ran off her chin had the fruity smell and bright hue of punch.

"Whacked, really? I didn't hear anythin' about that, who was it?" Apple Bloom asked skeptically.

"Featherweight." Pinkie cast her eyes down.

"Oh, right. He got caught taking embarrassin' pictures of ponies last week. His parents took his camera away and gave him a good paddlin' for it." Apple Bloom clarified for Derpy's sake.

"Sea Swirl was using this office before you, I used to deliver her mail." Derpy said with a smile, then turned to Apple Bloom, "She went off to visit the seaponies. They gave her the royal suite for the whole time she's there! I know because she said so on a post card to Rarity, and I uh, accidentally read it. "

"Well, duh!" Pinkie exclaimed, dropping the detective's mannerisms and returning to her normal tone of voice, "Whacked and Sleeping with the fishes, what did you think I meant?"

"What about Night Crawler? He had this place for years." Derpy pointed to a picture of him that hung on the wall.

"I'm afraid he's pushing up daises." Pinkie said with a ragged sigh and shook her head, "I mean Roseluck keeps telling him they aren't going to grow right if he keeps doing that, but he says the deep roots keep getting in the way of his worms. Stallions always have such weird superstitions about fishing bait, but what are ya' gonna do? Right? Eh? Right?"

Carrot Top, being the ever sensible mare she was, vociferously objected to Derpy's plans but eventually found a work around. She wrote a letter to Applejack saying that Apple Bloom wanted to stay with her, Derpy and Dinky for a couple nights, then had Derpy drop it off with Big Mac. When she asked him if he thought it was okay whilst he was still reading the letter that said the same thing, he just said, "Eeyup." and with an, "Okay, thanks, bye!" Derpy was gone before he could think to ask any questions or refer her to Applejack, which is just what he would have done in his next breath. She was purposely vague about where they were staying, meaning that tracking them down should be a task not worth the effort save for the direst emergency. It felt low and devious, but Applejack and Carrot Top had been neighbors forever so she trusted her and she assumed she'd let it slide. Carrot Top had nothing but the best of intentions.

"Listen Derpy," Carrot Top told her as soon as they found a moment of privacy in Derpy's kitchen, "I know you're just trying to help and I've tried to put up with this as far as I could, but this just isn't going to work. You can't go on some half baked adventure with Pinkie Pie and somepony else's foal. How would you feel if Applejack did that with Dinky?"

"Pinkie Pie's just going to tell us where to go, she doesn't have to come with us, and Dinky's not even old enough to have a cutie mark yet!" Derpy countered.

"Yeah, okay, but I didn't mean exactly the same thing. I just meant if she ran off with Dinky on a trip without telling you. You wouldn't like it, would you? I know you Derpy, you'd be furious and you'd fly off after them to get Dinky back, so you can't really do that to Applejack." Carrot Top chided. Derpy's ears fell flat.

"But...But she would have run off and been all alone in Canterlot if I hadn't stepped on her. I just have to help her or she'll run off again, won't she?"

"It was the right thing to do to stop her and letting her stay here for a couple days to cool off, that's fine too. That's probably the best thing for her, but don't get the idea that you're really going to find some bureaucratic office in Tartarus or Canterlot's forgotten basement or somewhere that's in charge of cutiemarks. There just isn't such a thing, it's silly." Carrot Top told her as gently but firmly as she could.

"I...I guess. If you say so, but, It won't hurt to let Pinkie look for it anyway, will it?" Derpy asked, her hopes visibly withering.

"No, I don't suppose it will, but just...don't get your hopes up." Carrot Top had little faith in Pinkie Pie finding any worthwhile information, which just goes to show how little she really knew about the pink party pony and the extents she would go to to make a friend smile.

Carrot Top was cooking a carrot cake for Derpy, Apple Bloom and Dinky on the pretense of needing taste testers, which was partially true. She'd also brought the fixings for a salad using the excuse that they needed something to snack on while she worked and Derpy had prepared it and set it out for the four of them.

She'd been overly hard on her grey pegasus friend last week when she'd emptied her fridge without a word or so much as a thank you note. She'd called her friend a mooch and instantly been sorry for it. She'd been surreptitiously coming up with reasons to share meals with her since then, but often Derpy wouldn't eat with Dinky and her, stubborn pride got in the way. Much to her dismay and embarrassment she'd discovered her friend had been dining on discarded refuse. The soul crushing guilt every time she thought about it wracked her with weighty shudders.

She'd yet to be able to apologize, the pained reproach in those skewed eyes too much to bear whenever the subject came up, so she was baking as penance, the only sort she knew. She turned the oven on to preheat, but for some reason it hadn't lit. For a moment she wondered if Derpy had missed a payment and had the gas shut off, but checking she found the pilot to be lit. She turned the knob on and off a few times, then hmphed at it.

"Derpy, what's going on with your stove?" Carrot Top asked. Derpy shrugged, walked over and turned the knob as Carrot Top had already done several times. Then she checked the pilot light, turned the knob back and forth several times and scowled at it. Then she opened the door and discovered the problem.

"Were you followed?" A pink maned head thrust out from the oven and demanded of her. Carrot Top leapt back in fright and yelped.

"Er...No, I mean, yes, Carrot Top followed me, but, um, I asked her to so I think it's okay. Is it okay Pinkie Pie? Should I send her away?" Derpy stammered. Pinkie Pie climbed out of the oven, trailing a loose fitting trenchcoat over a black catsuit. She brushed herself off, clunked the oven door shut behind her and turned the knob. With a soft whoosh the oven ignited.

"If you vouch for her it's your own lookout." Pinkie dipped her head in a curt bow to Carrot Top who was seething at the intrusion into their peaceful night.

"I heard a yelp!" Apple Bloom said as she skidded into the kitchen in a barely controlled slide, "I figured it was you, Pinkie."

"Wait wait wait, what do you mean followed? Who's supposed to be following us? Also, we've been here most of the day, you're the one who just got here, are you sure you weren't followed?" Carrot Top huffed.

"I can assure you I wasn't tailed." Pinkie Pie said gruffly, "I'm an old pro in this cat and mouse game."

"Again, who's meant to be following you?" Carrot Top shook her head, "Also, why are you talking like that?"

"Duh! I'm a detective!" Pinkie Exclaimed.

"I don't know," Apple Bloom trained a critical eye on Pinkie's getup, "The trenchcoat says detective but the black long underwear ain't sayin' nothin' but spy. You sure you ain't mixing your mediums a bit?"

"Eh, I lost my fedora," Pinkie shrugged, "I thought maybe I could pull off a modern noir kind of thing, but if you don't think it works, I can go change."

"No no, when you say it like that, I see what you're goin' for." Applebloom nodded while Derpy looked expectantly between Pinkie Pie and Carrot Top. Pinkie took the hint.

"Oh, she can stay if she wants to, but be forewarned, the things I'm about to tell you can't be unheard." Pinkie warbled her voice to make it sound spooky, but ruined the effect by giggling.

Carrot Top sighed deeply and painfully, "What about Dinky?" She asked Apple Bloom, who'd been forced to make her presence known to the delighted filly and had been entertaining her for most of the day to keep her mind off of her current troubles.

"She's playing with blocks. She just started so we've probably got a while 'fore she gets bored, knocks the whole mess over and comes lookin' for attention." Apple Bloom said.

"Fine, I know I'll regret it, but curiosity is getting the better of me so let's just get it over with before I change my mind." Carrot Top acceded and Pinkie's grin grew to encompass her whole face. With stories like this, the more the merrier.

"First, you've got to swear that what I'm about to tell you doesn't leave this room. It could change the face of Equestrian civilization if it got out, cause riots in the streets, dogs would bury acorns and squirrels would climb cats, so you've got to Pinkie promise." She narrowed her eyes.

"Cross our hearts, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in our eye." The three said in unison. Promises made, Pinkie dimmed the lights and told them what she'd discovered.

Artists and Underpinnings

Entropy is the natural state of the universe, so in the long run, I win. That being the case, we may as well have a few laughs along the way, no?
-Discord, Lord of Chaos, from his recent biography, Disinvited Guest, Ways to amuse one's self at everyponies expense without being wholly excluded from polite company and turned into a statue for a millenia, a primer

"So, have these ponies they're looking for got names?" Carrot top asked. She was standing in the corner of the kitchen near where a chalk spell circle had been drawn that supported a small, but insistent portal that ostensibly led to some shadowy dream dimension. It glowed with a green swirling energy that burned no brighter than a candle's flame. With the lights on it would hardly be noticed. She eyed it with disdain, even after Pinkie Pie's insistence that it was perfectly safe, something about arcane runes and mysterious, lost, earth pony spell craft gave her the willies. Pinkie's sometimes tenuous grasp on reality, though it always turned out alright in the end, didn't reassure her either.

"Sure," Answered Pinkie Pie with a snort, "Everypony's got a name, and they've got doozies!"

"So, you're really not comin' with us?" Apple Bloom wondered, finding it remarkable given her reputation that she would, in fact, feel much safer with Pinkie Pie along.

"Nah, I was in there earlier and I may have worn out my welcome maybe the teeny tiniest little bit." Pinkie said dismissively.

"You never did tell us how you know about all this. In fact, how do you even know how to make a portal like this?" Carrot Top asked.

"Silly, put me in the kitchen and I can whip up just about anything." Pinkie giggled and held up an index card with diagrams and instructions crammed front and back in tiny copperplate script that seemed to seethe maddeningly, as if it were expanding and contracting in time with an unseen, inky heart, "Especially since Discord gave me the recipe."

"Wait, Discord, the draconequus, the Lord of Chaos? That Discord?" Apple Bloom gasped.

"No no. No no no...well actually, yeah, exactly that one. I mean I had to ask him. Twilight didn't know and Princess Celestia didn't seem to have any idea in that letter and I didn't think Luna would know either, so I thought, who's been around as long as them and might be willing to help put together an adventure? All signs point to Discord, and Fluttershy promises he's not even evil anymore, so when he told me how to make the portal I tried it. He only did the cackling with lightning crashing behind him thing for forty five seconds, a minute tops and he said he was like, seventy five percent sure it wouldn't end up dropping me into a dimension full of eternal torment at the hooves of Tartarus spawned demon ponies, so I figured it was O-kay!" Pinkie's eyes glinted wickedly, "In you go!" Then she unceremoniously shoved the two ponies through the diminutive portal, "Have fun! Don't be long! Send a post card if you get the chance!"

Carrot Top was torn. On the one hoof, she wanted to help Apple Bloom and protect Derpy, but on the other, she needed to keep an eye on Dinky and the other potential babysitter present was clearly a madmare. Carrot Top searchingly looked at the pink pony, weighing her options, "I'm...Can you keep an eye on Dinky, maybe? I think I should go too...maybe."

Pinkie thrashed her head in the negative, mane bouncing wildly as it followed her movements at a slightly slower speed, "No can do, that's a portal built for two, or that's what Discord said. Huh. Now that he's not evil, I need a nickname for him, don't I? Dissy? Cordy? No. The big D? Nah, too easy to misinterpret. Oh well, it'll come to me. Ooh, do you wanna help me brainstorm while we're waiting?"

Derpy's entire world exploded into streamers of light as she tumbled through the portal, flailing for footing and howling in abject terror. A small hoof fitted itself over her mouth and Apple Bloom's familiar voice shushed her.

"It's alright, we're safe...ish. I guess." The coverall clad filly reassured her, though she was not feeling too confidant about their location herself. Derpy's legs and wings were splayed and locked solid. It took her considerable mental fortitude to restore mobility to her limbs."But just where in the hay are we?"

The bright, verdant world around them wavered and parts that were not under immediate scrutiny tended to melt back into an ill defined chaos of vaguely defined, impressionistic color and sound that assaulted peripheral vision and nibbled at the edges of awareness. Apple Bloom internally remarked that it was quite as Scootaloo had described her lucid dreams in which Luna had interceded.

They stood just outside of a ruin. A dusty stone floor surrounded on three sides by high, vaulted windows set into crudely mortared stone walls with no ceilings that partitioned off a gymnasium sized patch of the world. In the center stood a statue of a mare with a brush in her mouth, caught in the midst of a vicious swipe at a canvas that would forever be absent. Around it was a boundless, tropical jungle, accentuated by temples, ruins and towers that bravely rose through the canopy. The vegetation partially encroached on the room, dwarfed sentries of the great trees around them stood against the interior walls and poked through the gaping, unglazed window frames. At this point it was more a suggestion of a room than any sort of proper structure.

Scanning the forest, suggestions of numerous ponies were visible, bright blurs flitting about in the far distances, to and from the various edifices the pegasi flew and unicorns teleported by magic, the telltale flashes of their transit marking their passage. Presumably the humbler earth ponies made the same journeys beneath the canopy and out of view. For all they knew there could be a whole railroad concealed in the shade of the lush forest.

"Hey, look at that in the sky!" Derpy pointed excitedly and Apple Bloom took in the oddities that rose above them. From the horizons, arching into the cerulean dome with as ghostly an outline as the moon in the full daylight, but taking up a full third of the sky's expanse, three titanic white ponies could be seen towering high above. They were engaged in weaving a tapestry so large that it might just as well be the sky itself. They moved slowly, as was most suitable in scale to their extraordinary size, and were working diligently at their various tasks.

One, it seemed, was taking individual strands and spinning them into threads of varying thickness at a monumentally sized wheel. The second one sat at a rude loom whose frame spanned the sky, and interwove the threads into unimaginably complex patterns, her deft hooves never ceasing their movement. The third appeared to be overseeing the whole process and occasionally reached out, snipped an offending thread and did away with the remains.

They were dumbstruck and looked on in awe for some time before Apple Bloom spat out, "Is that what I think it is?"

Derpy didn't know what to think it was, she'd never seen anything so grand yet confusing. On the whole it reminded her of modern art, full of whorls and snarls that could just as easily have been put there by chance as on purpose and that's not even mentioning the giants themselves.

"Whatever you think it is, it's probably not." A shy but velvety sounding voice from inside the vacant room spoke, startling them, but when they looked around they could not ascertain it's source.

"What is it then? It looks like that tapestry of life thing that Miss Cheerilee was telling us about, but that was supposed to be a legend, she said there ain't no hook rug nowhere that's controlling our lives." Apple Bloom asked as they followed the voice towards the room.

"Well...it's a tapestry of life, yes, but done largely for symbolism at this point as we've taken to storing information in more practical, if less poetic ways. I mean symbolism is great, don't get me wrong, but it's bulk data entry that pays the bills. Come come, all the action's over this way." He said and so they stepped into the room. As soon as their hooves crossed the seemingly ill defined threshold they found themselves in a more conventionally behaving room the same dimensions and style as the pseudo-ruin. This one, however, was enclosed on all four sides, five counting the plaster ceiling that came into being. The windows were all sealed and the trees around the periphery were all much smaller than before and potted besides. Moreover, the details were content to stay put rather than skitter away as soon as one's eye wandered, though the room was now covered with book strewn tables and canvases leaned against every available surface.

Before them stood a fine black stallion, the finest specimen that might ever be seen. His stature was just a hair smaller than a Royal Guard's might be, but he was superbly built. He carried a stack of books upon his back. On his flank he bore a rendering of a pony whose back half was depicted as stone and whose front half seemed just come to life.

"Are you the one we see about gettin' a cutimark changed?" Apple Bloom asked, taking the relative oddity of their environs in stride. She was considerably less sensitive to his stallionly charms than the grey pegasus mare who was presently staring in an unseemly, borderline lascivious, fashion, or looking shyly at the floor. Again it's according to which eye was telling the more honest truth.

"What? Oh my, No! Nowadays I'm just an assistant here, keeping the boss supplied with inspirational books and paints and what have you, aside from which I keep the paperwork in order." He smiled timidly and pointed to a corner of the room that was cleared out slightly better than the rest of them, "The boss is over there, but I suspect you'll have little enough luck. Genius and a supercilious nature walk hoof in shoe and complaining about a cutiemark is akin to blasphemy around here."

Apple Bloom was not to be deterred and approached the work area. The artist could not be seen from without, stacks of canvasses obscuring the view and when she entered the workshop proper it appeared cramped despite it's large size. It was carelessly piled with open books in an area lined with bookshelves, which themselves were full of thick tomes with dog eared pages stuffed with slips of paper to mark one thing or another. In the center of the room an odd looking earth pony mare paced nervously between a dozen half yard square paintings arrayed on eight easels. Each canvas was a solid color or shade with a stripe of contrasting or complimentary color across the top and bottom. Some had stripes mixed into that stripe.

As they watched, she painted a bugle on a green canvas in no more than a dozen strokes and one swipe with a palette knife. Her lines were crisp and bold, conveying her intent with a minimum of fussiness. Finished, the canvas seemed to burn away into a wisp of colored smoke, to float upwards, a bit of fiber to be incorporated into the thread of that growing tapestry. They both knew her work already, they'd studied it unintentionally their entire lives.

"She's painting cutiemarks!" Derpy said gleefully and rushed forward to look over her shoulder. The stallion who'd escorted them in drove her off with a withering glare and the artist herself ignored her, but gestured to her assistant, who sat the tomes from his back around his master in a semi-circle. Then he whispered in his master's ear, picked up a different pile of books and presumably went elsewhere to reshelve them.

"It's all these damned special orders," The artist said at length, with a forcefully atonal voice, grabbing up another canvas with a bony foreleg. When she turned, her profile was suddenly visible and it was clear why she looked somewhat off. Her thin legs, more elegant body, longer face and smaller eyes fell somewhere between a pony and a horse. She, like the stallion, were what ponies looked like eons before their modern era, but on a mare, instead of elegantly handsome, it just looked out of place.

Stapled to the corner of each painting was a sheet of paper. When she picked up the canvas from the stack on the left she would briefly study it, fold the paper back and set it on an easel. The other canvases already bore colors, this one was blank, but not for long. With a broad brush she laid out a pale lavender background, a white stripe on top split by a tapering pink dash. Then she studied the books that had been brought in for her, flipping around until she found the right page in each and squinting at them intently. Finally pleased she scratched out a pattern of stars with the handle of a brush, compared it to the book, grumbled a bit, considered it, then finally set the canvas aside, unfinished, and moved on to the next one. "Special orders take so much more inspiration to get right and what with the number I'm going through lately it's hard to spend the time on them I need to. Really, how many weirdo ponies with special destinies and potential alicorns do you need out there that I've got to keep pushing the boundaries?"

"Pushing boundaries is an artist's raisin deeter." Derpy said mechanically, as if she'd heard it so many times that the response had become automatic, which, in fact, was the case. It was what Carrot Top said whenever she cooked something inedible, which was more often than might be expected. Though she was a good cook in general, she was also one to experiment with new recipes in a quest for something exceptional. Derpy squinted at the mare's flank, "What's wrong with your cutiemark? It's all squiggly."

"Raison d'etre, I believe you mean. As to my cutiemark, what's it to you? Moreover, who are you and what are you doing in my studio?" The creature asked without pausing her work.

"I'm Derpy Hooves!" Derpy said with a broad smile, wasted, as the mare did not turn, "This is my friend Apple Bloom. She wants to get her cutiemark changed."

"And Derpy wants to know what her cutiemark means." Apple Bloom interjected. She, too, was studying the mare's cutie mark. Her ivory coat, when it reached her flank, indeed had a patch that was odd and distorted, a monochromatic whorl spiraling inward with every second that passed, much in the general style of the dream realm outside this room had appeared, but Apple Bloom thought she understood, "Me and Scootaloo talked about this, about how if getting our cutiemarks itself was our special talent, we'd have a cutiemark of a cutiemark which would have our cutiemark inside it and so on forever. That's what that it isn't it? It's just how I imagined it."

The artist finally halted her work to stare incredulously at Apple Bloom, "Did she tell you?"

"She, who?"

The mare let a lock of grey mane flop down and obscure her bright blue eyes and she trembled slightly, "The pink one. The only other one who ever figured out what my cutiemark meant. Are you friends with that menace, that hellion, that typhoon encapsulated in the body of a Discord cursed mad genius of a mare?"

"Oh! You mean Pinkie Pie!" Derpy bobbed her head and grinned. She always liked to be helpful where she could. Apple Bloom groaned.

"Why, what did she do? Whatever it was, we'll help fix it." Apple Bloom said sadly.

"Oh no you won't! She already helped me enough as it is!" The mare stamped her feet in anger, then started pulling paintings off the shelf that had clearly been spoilt by the hoof of the aforementioned mare, "Just look at what she's done!"

Lunatic or savant, Pinkie Pie painted in a fairly foalish manner, and each canvas bore crudely rendered marks that might suit her, but not some random, run of the mill pony. There were every manner of pastry and baked good, party hats, noise makers, even a Twister spinner and one which Derpy was staring at trying to understand. Finally the artist pointed at it and shrilly blurted out, "It's supposed to be a balloon animal, a dog, I think." The two Ponyvillians oh'ed, turned their heads, then oh'ed again in sudden comprehension,

"Each one of these represents a pony who's going to be a blank flank longer than they were meant to be and Luna knows what effect that's going to have on the fabric of fate. A whole generation might be lost just trying to adjust for it and take up the slack, and what does she care so long as I concede myself to be her friend? Well I don't and if she thinks she's going to take over my shop and throw a party whenever she feels like it she's sadly mistaken. I'll cut ties with the mortal plain for a few centuries before that happens again! I can't abide the damage, I can't take the stress and I just don't deserve it!"

Apple Bloom waited out the tirade, "Ma'am, I'm real sorry for whatever Pinkie Pie's done, but I can't do much about spilt milk and I've got a real problem here that needs fixin' and I expect you're the only what that can help me."

"As if what I'm talking about isn't a real problem. Right, let's see, so you want your cutiemark changed and she wants to know what hers means?" They nodded, "You've come all this way for something impossible and something you could find out from any library." she stated tersely and turned back to her work, "Now leave me be. There's more ponies than you can imagine being born every day and each one needs a cutie mark to guide them to their destiny."

"I don't know," Derpy said, "I can imagine a lot of ponies. Especially if they're little foals, they don't take up nearly as much room to imagine."

The mare cocked an eyebrow and assessed Derpy, "Is she...for real?"

"Yeah, that's Derpy for you." Apple Bloom chuckled sheepishly.

"It's so odd. I really wanted to hate her, but she's just so adorable and...what's with the eyes, is she doing that on purpose?" She reared up on her hind legs, raised her hooves and moved them slowly back and forth at different rates, Derpy's eyes tracking each one independently. It caused Derpy to get dizzy and she fell back on her haunches with a plop. The artist patted her on the head, produced a sugarcube from thin air and fed it to her as if she were an animal. Apple Bloom knew that Derpy's eyes didn't work that way and she'd seen this type of magic before.

"She's a draconequus, like Discord! Be careful!" Apple Bloom shouted, fear blossoming on her young face.

The mare glared in annoyance, "Now now, you don't need to go comparing me to that someone with such a bad reputation. Besides, there's only the one draconequus and he's it. I most certainly am not so mischievous as he is, nor do I have such a weight of responsibility as he has. I am merely a humble artist, doing the best I can to guide all the little ponies' destinies in a cruel and uncaring world. Besides, I like her. She's...decorative."

"Is that why you gave her a cutiemark that doesn't mean anythin'? She ain't but just some kind of set dressin' to you?" Apple Bloom hotly demanded, "Derpy here's been bouncin' around job to job tryin' to sort out just what it is she's destined for and you think it's some kinda joke? You think she's some kind of joke?"

She was taken aback. Apple Bloom's outburst considerably blunted the mare's own anger, "Well...Perhaps I was a bit glib there. I just meant...well whatever. Sigh." She actually said sigh, aloud, "If you think it's as important as all that, let me look." She stared at Derpy's flank for a bit, clucked her tongue a bit and finally announced that she had no idea, "I just make so many cutiemarks, I'll have to check the records and get back to you."

"You don't know?" Apple Bloom huffed, "You were just sayin' how easy it would be to look up in a library and here you're supposed to be the expert and you don't know? How in the hoof can you not know?"

"Well, as I said, there's just so many and bubbles, it's, well, ambiguous? It's meaning should have been apparent from the context she got it in. Like if she was washing things they could be soap bubbles, they could have to do with diving, or they could be very literal. They could mean her special talent is blowing bubbles. I used to know someone who could blow square bubbles, but that was, erm...Discord as well. He was rather a prominent figure around here until somepony went and petrified him. The one thing I can say without equivocation is that her cutie mark does, most assuredly mean something, there's not a throwaway in the bunch."

"There's a colt in my class with a snail cutiemark." Apple Bloom stated flatly as if to call her to account for it.

"Surely a budding malacologist...or a mobile home salesman." She said with a smirk.

"If y'all say so." Apple Bloom said, nonplussed, "So if you're not a draconequus, what are you anyway, some kinda ghost?"

"A ghost? Such spurious allegations! Why I've never even been subjected to the indignity and ostensible wonder of being alive. All of us here are just persistent dreams in an ephemeral world." She sneered and looked to the ceiling, "Something like that anyway, maybe...I don't know. Philosophy's for ponies with too much time on their hooves, which, thanks to your friend, is not me."

Derpy laid down on her belly, shivering, "You're sure you're not a ghost?"

"I'm neither a ghost nor a god, though there might be a couple of those about still. They're getting to be a real rarity these days. There's all sorts here, behind the scenes, keeping your world in order. There's every manner of pony, zebra and horse, griffon, goblin, troll, dragon, bird of prey, bird of peace, bakeneko, minotaurs, several phoenixes, and at least one very clever tree, and that's just the ones I can think of right off. The rest of the universe can pretty well regulate itself, but it takes a lot of effort to keep your world running smoothly because you have something they don't; magic!"

"Magic makes it so that everything has to be manually controlled. The sun, moon, stars, wind, rain, all the animals and all the fish in the seas as well as the destinies of every living pony. Working in concert, our little ad hoc group of possibly imaginary creatures has been keeping a pretty good handle on it. There are darker forces too that are just as necessary to keep things running. Time that wears away the stoutest stone, pain and greed and cruelty that give kindness and love it's meaning...and death, too. Death is a big bugaboo amongst you ponies, but it makes way for new ponies with new ideas. Death is the biggest force for progress we have next to chaos."

"Oh, big surprise, you're gonna defend Discord again. I think you really are a draconequus or somethin'" Apple Bloom groused.

"Well, he is my eldest brother after all. Eldest brother to us all, if truth be told, but whether I defend him or not, chaos is vital. All order necessarily comes from chaos. But without random occurrences and atypical thoughts you'd just follow the same old lines over and over and never improve anything or get anywhere. Ponies would be no better than ants, or robots, or robot ants. Chaos is breaking the rules just because something seems like it may be better or more fun. Inventing a microscope and discovering bacteria, dipping a chocolate bar in Dijon mustard, building the first steam engine, poking a beehive for no good reason, it's all chaotic. For instance, the rules say I should throw you both out immediately, but I haven't had a break in so long and I'm enjoying this adversarial exchange, for the time being. That also is chaos. Chaos, you see, is the very root and the very pinnacle of inspiration!" She reared back and raised her hooves in a mighty gesture, eyes wild with passion, then stated quickly, and nearly under her breath, "That being said, Discord is a bit of a jerk."

"I hear he's good now, he made up with the Princess and everything." Derpy said in his defense, "He even showed Pinkie Pie how to get here."

She jolted back, "Ah, there you have it, there you have it! Even if he were an angel, he'd still be an angel with the ulterior motive of getting one over on everypony. You think he intended to help you, intended to let you plead your case but he was doing no more than spreading misery and pandemonium with that frizzy maned agent of disorder!"

"Hey!" Apple Bloom hollered, "Pinkie Pie might get a little out of hoof at times, but she ain't no agent of discord, or whatever. She's a good mare and a good friend and I don't appreciate you bad mouthin' her like that!"

The mare marched up to the filly and stood face to face, a grimace blooming on her lips, "You have no idea the damage she's done, not just to my work but to my sanity. She spent three days nonstop trying to force me to be her friend. She threw parties that took the other aspects away from their tasks, left the world unshepherded for hours at a time and she never stopped talking. Celestia, she never stopped talking. I was reduced to begging, in my own workshop, I had to kneel down and swear that I was her friend, would be her friend forever! Do you have any concept of how long forever is? It's so much longer than any of you can comprehend! Now that she's gone I have to work so hard to catch up and meet my deadlines. It took a week to get my shop back into the barest semblance of order."

"It couldn't have been any three days or a week of cleanup neither, that would have been before I went and hired her." Applebloom suspiciously said.

She chuckled, "Time works differently here, well, when I want it to. It's rather more fluid than in your world."

"If you can change time why do you keep complaining about deadlines?" Apple Bloom ventured.

She answered with a smile full of glittering teeth, "I do my best work when I'm under the gun."

Apple Bloom snorted, "What you're saying, if I haven't missed somethin' somewhere, is that it don't really matter what Pinkie Pie did 'cuz you've got all the time in the world to fix it."

Her assistant chose that moment to make his continued presence known with a barely stifled giggle. The artist glared at him and though he looked sheepish for a moment he quickly brushed it off, "I really think she's got you on that one, but they don't know you like I do. Making only a mountain out of a molehill would be quite liberal in your mind."

She snarled and flung a book in his direction. He caught it in his teeth and set it back down, "I'll have you know that it was my very peace of mind that was affected by her shenanigans and that is by far more precious than mere time. Now, I've wasted plenty enough of my serenity helping you lot already, so please do bug off."

"But you haven't helped us at all!" Apple Bloom protested, "Derpy doesn't know what her cutiemark means and I still need to get mine fixed!"

"I said I would help...Derpy, was it? And I will. Probably. If I remember and it's not too much trouble." She qualified, "Now as to you, it's quite impossible even if I were to accede to changing one of my masterpieces."

"It ain't no masterpiece." Apple Bloom grumbled. The artist gasped mockingly, holding a hoof over her chest as if she might swoon, "I mean I know you've got a lot of these things to turn out, but there's hardly any detail in any of 'em and they ain't as hard as you're makin' 'em out to be. You ain't got to be so prissy about it. I just need you to touch it up a bit, that's all. Nopony but me's ever seen it so nopony will know."

The creature took on an harsh tone, all pretense of humor evaporating, "I don't think you appreciate how hard it is to convey a concept with a limited color palette and still make it discernible on unkempt fur. I'll have you know I am an artist of the highest caliber. I've had eons to practice and every piece is a true master work!"

Apple Bloom quailed at her words, "Okay, okay, I see what you mean and I might have gone and oversold it a bit, but still, there's been a mistake and y'all need to set it right."

"Impossible. I never make mistakes." She huffed.

"Now, statistically that can't possibly be true." Apple Bloom pointed out. The argument was fresh in her mind, Cheerilee had been teaching probabilities and statistics all last week, Apple Bloom had paid very close attention on the grounds that she might try to use it to get a cutiemark as a cardshark, "If'n you've worked for centuries and painted millions of cutiemarks, there had to have been a couple clunkers."

"Well....Maybe in the early days when the world was young. But in the paleopony period nothing was quite so refined as it is now and the cutiemarks were likewise crude. Now I don't make mistakes. Every once and again I have happy accidents."

"If'n you can admit to these happy accidents, can't you admit that you just might have let a mistake or two slip by?" Apple Bloom goaded.

"Unlikely." She said flatly, giving little room for debate, "Besides, even if, and that's a big if, I managed to let some error slip by, there's little enough I can do to fix it. It's woven into the tapestry of life and I guess it could be picked out and redone with some effort but I don't have the slightest idea how to find it. You saw the size of that thing out there? There's millions, maybe billions of ponies represented there, who's to say? All the ponies that have ever lived and quite a few that haven't lived yet and you have to find one amongst them; yourself. Do you think you can do that?"

"We can do it!" Derpy shouted, "Just watch us!"

"It is, quite honestly, impossible. Woven in there are ponies like there are grains of sand in the desert. If you had any concept of the numbers I'm talking about you'd understand. No amount of determination is going to help you here." She said insistently.

"We still have to try." Apple Bloom said sadly.

"Ah, well, if that's how you'd like to waste your life, so be it." She walked to the corner of the shop and rummaged around. At length she produced a pair of wrought iron scissors, covered over in rust save for their keen cutting edges. Dramatically they were dropped at Apple Bloom's hooves where they gaped open with a cluck.

"Scissors?" Apple Bloom stated in confusion. They looked somewhere between a normal pair and the overgrown ones used to cut ribbons at grand openings. While it was a mystical place and all, they looked for all the world like regular roofing shears, just oversized scissors intended to cut shingles and tar paper. The barn back home had a bucket full of them, their chewed up edges just waiting to be sharpened, these looked no better.

"Yes, they are at that. Were you to find your thread, which you won't, you'd have to have a way to cut the cutiemark loose, and since we're using elemental, but very symbolist, forces here, it will have to be done manually. Just snip the errant strand loose, neatly, mind you, and bring it back here. Then will come the hard part." She sneered, "Convincing me I made a mistake."

"Oh, that won't be hard at all." Apple Bloom grumbled, looking back at her covered flank.

Author's Note

Kind of loosely based on the vague thought of a misremembered bunch of Piers Anthony novels on the one hand, and shoddy bits of Greek legend on the other.

The Tapestry

Promises may be made to be broken, but mistakes are made to be mended.
-The Great and Powerful Trixie, from her autobiographical self help book, The Great and Penitent Mare

Ponyville is a nice little town filled with nice little ponies, that's what Apple Bloom had thought. After walking across the tapestry of life for half a day she'd developed serious doubts. They'd been brought here by the artist's assistant in an elevator that reminded Derpy of the ones at Ponyville General Hospital, but this one had opened from a blank wall in the studio and disgorged them out the other side onto the vast, fibrous expanse with no apparent motion. The assistant had followed them out, just until they got the lay of the land, he'd said.

It was disconcerting. Laid all about them like an infinite expanse of old mare's tatty, knotted throw rug, was the tapestry of life, taut as a drumhead. Objectively they knew it had edges, they'd seen them from below, but now it stretched to the horizons, an undulating savannah with no oasis to be found. The worst part came when they inspected the woven elements and they began to writhe wormily in their vision and produce in their mind's eye a few moments in time, loosely connected in a herky jerky, flipbook fashion.

It's one thing to see an event, it's another thing altogether to see it from inside another pony's mind and experience the internal why that had caused them to make the decisions they had. The tapestry gave them that too. It did not present ponies in a positive light. It seemed like, more often than not, they did the right thing in spite of themselves, grudgingly, accidentally and for their own reasons. At first they'd chucklingly told each other it was just Fillydelphia, which the majority of the first section they'd explored had been composed of, Fillydelphian ponies and ones largely associated with it, but Ponyville had proven no more saintly.

When Apple Bloom had lost her sense of urgency it had been Derpy who'd found that first Ponyvillian and trailed his thread to the a cluster of residents. They'd figured it for a break through, but they'd been looking for hours and discovered no more than half a dozen ponies they'd even heard of and none they knew. The problem was that even though they'd found the correct area they still had to search through every moment of every day of every pony's life, which was daunting, to say the least. Moreover, a great many strands were non-linear, zigzagging from place to place with gossamer threads that dwindled to nothing or were hopelessly buried when they were traced.

The assistant had long since given it up as hopeless and was just going through the motions, waiting for Apple Bloom and Derpy to concede. The former had grown terribly taciturn, grunting acknowledgment at any potential lead and no more. The latter seemed wholly enchanted and consumed by the task at hoof, carefully tracing her way down the gnarled tangles.

Finally Apple Bloom plopped down on her plot in defeat, causing a little ripple to radiate outward and draw the stallion's attention. He'd been examining the fabric with just as much wonder as everypony else, but not knowing anypony save for the two ponies before him, he wasn't much help.

"Are you giving up so soon?" He inquired.

Applebloom was not ready to admit to the failure she was gradually becoming resigned to, "Takin' a break's all."

"Oh, okay. I'll probably have to head back pretty soon anyway, she can't do without me for very long, it seems like." He rubbed a hoof against his chest nervously, "All part of being in demand, I guess."

Apple Bloom grumbled, thinking that she wasn't having any luck and they would eventually have to go home, "It's funny though, I ain't hungry or tired and it's been long enough I should be."

"Well...this place isn't strictly real, so I don't suppose you would get hungry in a dream, would you? Again, there's the whole time dilation thing the boss is working for you, so you probably haven't even been here very long." He scuffed the pliant fabric with his hoof, "I just wish I could help you more, but I don't know anything about your world, really, and I've never even been up here before. Truth be told, I'm rarely anywhere but the studio and the library these days, I'm not precisely worldly."

"Just bringin' us up here and givin' us a chance is enough to make me more'n grateful. Say, I don't believe I got your name, or your bosses either?" Apple Bloom graciously held out her hoof so as to require a more proper introduction. A groan implied that he'd rather it not be known, "What, don't y'all have names?"

"Everypony's got a name, it's just that I don't like mine much. I guess, though, you can call me what Galatea, that's the boss, calls me, though it's no better," He shut his eyes and shuddered, "Piggy."

"Piggy?" She quirked an eyebrow, "How bad's your real name that that's an improvement?"

Sputtering and flushing, he managed, "It's a dumb pun and it's wasted in this day and age besides. Just, don't ask."

"Okay, Piggy." She giggled, "I have to figure there's some manner of organization to all this," She gestured expansively to the continental textile, "Maybe your...Galatea, would have some kinda' idea and she just didn't want to tell us?"

"I'm afraid not. Galatea's the very embodiment of inspiration, but uncommonly single minded, it serves her well for her task. She hasn't left the studio in all our time together and unless she's been doing some heavy reading on the side, I doubt she knows any more about this place than me. We've been around forever and we've heard rumors, but in the end, we just work here."

"Ain't anypony in charge?" she asked.

"Nopony, so far as I'm aware. There doesn't really need to be. We each have our tasks and we do them as best as we are able. It's the case that we came into our roles as they themselves became necessary, and learned about the rest of the works via eons of scuttlebutt." He smirked, "You could say that we hit the ground running and never took the time to wonder why, and now...now it doesn't even matter, because what else would we do?"

Apple Bloom pondered the question but was interrupted by Derpy before she could come to a conclusion. She'd strayed hundreds of leagues away and had come gliding back, pointing a hoof and calling out gleefully, "I found my Dinky, all grown up with her own little foals!"

"That's great! Maybe we can follow her thread back to Cheerilee's class and find my cutiemark." Apple Bloom beamed, "So whereabouts did you see her?"

Derpy pointed and looked back, then her ears fell. The desert of yarny fabric all looked the same. The longer she stood still the less certain she was even about which direction she'd come from, "I guess I should have marked it somehow. Whoops."

"It's alright Derpy, if you found it once, we can find it again." Apple Bloom kindly stated, reminding the easily confused pegasus for all the world of her sister, and the condescending kindnesses she'd always offered when Derpy had failed. Apple Bloom started walking in the direction she'd thought Derpy had come from, though she had not even a guess as to just how far she'd gone.

Apple Bloom was deep in thought and started mumbling out a question, "If...if this old quilt has the future sewn up in it, too, what happens if we don't do the stuff it says we're supposed to?"

"A temporal pair of socks!" Derpy came out of her short lived funk and stated exuberantly, then made some squealy noises that she'd meant to be the whole of the universe coming unraveled in some sort of singularity. It didn't translate as well as it might have.

For his part the stallion seemed unconcerned by the fine imitation of the brutal end of an entire universe, "That's the obvious question, isn't it? But, just because somepony happens to know what you're destined to do and have recorded it here, it doesn't mean that free will is an illusion. You still chose it, after all, or will choose it...barring just the sort of interference that seeing the future and willfully choosing to diverge from it causes." He glared, "There are contingencies that account for the repair of the tapestry, should such a thing occur, but they tend to be rather slapdash and relatively unpleasant for the mavericks who've upset order, or so I hear."

Unsettled by what may have been interpreted as a threat, Apple Bloom scuffed her hooves acrost the roving that was the physical representations of a pony's life, Lovestruck's to be precise. She wasn't anyone Apple Bloom knew, but she appeared to be a Ponyvillian, though it was hard to pinpoint the time period very precisely.

Lovestruck's experiences flickered through Apple Bloom's mind as she traced the thick, multicolored tangles that orbited her. As an inveterate matchmaker, destinies seem to be greatly altered once they found their way into her thrall. The young filly blushed as she followed along one of these branches for a moment and saw the immediate results the object of her studies achieved. Lovestruck herself led a considerably more chaste life, but not by choice.

Indeed she played team sports and worked out constantly in an attempt to make herself more appealing to the stallions, and attract them she did, as friends, whom she hooked up with other friends. She was never convinced of the earnestness of her suitors as she had a poor body image, self esteem issues and a considerable inferiority complex and it was all Apple Bloom could do to keep following and experiencing her uniquely pathetic outlook. What kept her following along, though, was the fact that when she flicked her eyes forward along the strand she found that another burst from the thicket, twined with it, and created a rope thick as a filly's leg, marking the mare's eventual success. Like a soap opera, she could bear wading through the overwrought drama for the promise of a satisfying bit of romance.

The bulk of the tapestry was woven in shades of beige and grey. Gouts of color were woven in at intervals, though. They were moments of special note. Achievements, milestones, tender moments and times of simple contemplation that refocused a pony's path. The intersection of those two strands was a garish explosion of reds, oranges and pinks, a gash of color that ran perpendicular for as far as the eye could see. It was a small striation, but distinctly visible. Momentous as the moment was for Lovestruck and her beau, Meadow Song, it was the circumstance of their meeting that accounted for the widely noted moment.

They met during a song, a song in which the whole town had participated, the first time, in fact, that that had happened. That was the day that Pinkie Pie had arrived in town, fresh off the rock farm and proclaimed the various sights of her newfound home, in musical form. Her innocent enthusiasm had drawn each resident into an impromptu parade and chorus, first for the sake of curiosity and then as willing participants. Apple Bloom had heard stories about it, but experiencing it first hoof through the mind of a love struck Lovestruck was a glorious experience.

She ushered for Derpy and the stallion she still couldn't think of as Piggy to come and see it as well. Derpy was immediately awash in ebullient joy, "I remember this! It seemed crazy at the time, but now it seems like every week that Pinkie has half the ponies in town singing."

"That really is something." Piggy blissfully murmured. Derpy skipped from strand to strand, grinning wildly and humming off key to the chorus as she experienced the event from as many perspectives as she could.

"Y'all know what this means?" Apple Bloom pointed a hoof to the left and then the right, "If this effected everypony in town then wherever this here little line ends is the edge of Ponyville. So this line is all the ponies in town, that line," She pointed forward and back, "Is time, even though a lot of the strands ain't no kind of parallel, I think that's true. So...we need to go forward and just find more songs, or things that effected everypony to find the right time, then we'll just have to find my place in it."

"Hey, Derpy? Can you carry me up in the air so I can get a better look at how far this stripe goes?" Apple Bloom asked, and Derpy nodded her head violently before sweeping her up in her forelegs and hauling her into the air.

The take off was rough and Derpy seemed to judder to the left every thirteenth wing beat, but the view paid for the risk. The colored stripe went on for miles uninterrupted to the right until it faded into oblivion. The other way it was simply truncated unceremoniously. Looking ahead there were further striations and she pointed Derpy towards one in particular, a thick black slash that marred the whole fabric from horizon to horizon, though it was thickest in Ponyville and in one spot in particular and the filly pointed vehemently towards it.

A troublesome landing was softened by the slightly bouncy nature of their environs, and a minor rugburn was the whole of the damage dealt by the grey pegasus' lack of depth perception. Apple Bloom sorted out her bunched and tangled coveralls and roughly knotted then back around her waist. It had been a close call, the slide of landing had nearly peeled them so far back as to expose her cursed cutie mark. That taken care of she took off at a gallop towards the snarl she'd seen from above.

The vibrant colors greyed and blackened over a scant few inches of space, and for several yards they remained that way before abruptly transitioning to gold that faded back into the mundane beige and interspersed colors. She knew without looking at the individual strands what it was and how long a period it represented. It was the time that Nightmare Moon had been at large and the bulky mass of converging threads up ahead was where the fate of the world had pivoted around six mare's bravery and determination. Most importantly to Apple Bloom, her sister was in there somewhere.

"What have we here?" Piggy halted from a trot and looked over the mound of fiber. Where the rest of the tapestry was largely flat this section rose considerably proud of the field, a gordian tangle and the filly was having a devilish time trying to track any particular pony through the all black weave.

"This is where Princess Luna was saved by the Elements of Harmony." She said, poking at random yarny bits, "My sister's right here somewhere."

"Well, I don't think you're going to find her that way." He looked away, towards the future, "Maybe you can pick them out where it's less busy."

Apple Bloom conceded and it turned out to be just the case. Once the more regular pattern returned it was easy to pick out six thick paths, often running parallel or touching, rarely wandering farther than a dozen yards from each other. Orbiting and crisscrossing them, with spiderwebs and dendrites running far afield, were associations and shared experiences with other ponies. Running ahead she picked up four moderately sized vines that tended to stay quite close to the six mares.

The one that stayed closest in orbit, unsurprisingly, was Spike and the filly briefly saw the world through a dragon's eyes. Whether it was because they weren't so different, or the fact that he was raised by ponies, his perspective didn't seem as far removed as she would have guessed. In the back of his mind a measureless greed slumbered, only awakening for long enough to gobble down gemstones and various other delicacies.

The specific memories she saw were of simple domesticity, Spike putting the finishing touches on Twilight Sparkle's breakfast while the librarian herself finished preparations for the day's checklist. Apple Bloom had long wondered about the propriety of Spike's situation, specifically in that he seemed to be a slave. From his point of view, though, there was nothing else he'd rather be doing. Much like Applejack was to her, Twilight was both a mother and a sister to him and he was no more indentured to her than Apple Bloom herself was to Sweet Apple Acres. That didn't mean that she wasn't likely to live out her life on that farm, if only she could get her cutie mark sorted out.

A hoof nudged her and she reemerged from Spike's memories. It was Piggy scowling down at her, "You shouldn't be doing that."

She started and looked abashed, "Oh...I'm sorry, I didn't know it was against the rules or anythin', it's just that I ain't never had the chance to really understand somepony...or dragon, that way."

He shook his head and chuckled, a tentative smile softened his face, "It's not against the rules, there aren't any here. From this vantage it would be hard to swear that there's even much in the way of strategy. It just seems improper to root through the mind of those you actually know well unless there's some reason for it. It's just a matter of manners. You wouldn't want other ponies looking through your brain, would you?"

"Well...No, I guess not just anypony." She admitted.

"What about me?" Derpy butted in.

"Um...I don't know, I guess I wouldn't mind so long as you weren't gonna go around telling everypony what ya' found rattlin' around in there," Apple Bloom nodded once, firmly, Derpy could be trusted, sort of, but, "Why you askin'?"

"Because I found your brain, it's right over here." Derpy pointed a hoof at the ground up ahead and at one particular strand. It was one of the four that she'd just been looking at, the one most closely entwined with Applejack.

Proximity indicated the other pairings to be Sweetiebelle and Rarity, and at a greater distance, but no less reliably constrained, Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash. Pinkie Pie's strand was a fuzzy explosion of interconnections, a background of static worming and insinuating it's way across the broad, woven expanse. It looked almost as cotton candy would, had it gotten caught in the loom. Fluttershy's cord looked desolate and lonely by comparison until one noted the background of tiny threads running in parallel, indicative of all the little lives to which she was connected.

"This bigger beige one's Applejack. I expected her to be red, like an apple, but it's just kind of tan with a few squiggles of color, just like the rest. Your thread seems pretty small and it wanders all over. Maybe you could just follow hers up to where you got your cutie mark?"

"Yeah, I reckon that's as good a plan as any." She said and started following Applejack's strand.

After several long miles of searching there was an interruption much like Nightmare Moon had caused, but it's checkerboard pattern was a telltale mark of Discord. Scootaloo, Sweetiebelle and her strands bulked up to hoof thick size. The spell had weakened and somepony would have broken it soon enough anyway, but she realized that it really had been the Cutiemark Crusaders who'd loosed the draconequus on the land and the size of their threads reflected it. All this time she'd thought Rarity had just been teasing Sweetiebelle when she told her that she'd unleashed a god of chaos on the land. It sounded a bit hyperbolic.

Looking too closely at her sister's strands within that section was a mistake. Everypony was full of bitterness, confusion and madness, it was overwhelming. Literally it was and she stumbled to the ground with a grunt, hooves to her temples.

"Serves you right for snooping." Piggy singsonged and helped her to her up.

"I had'ta see what was going on, didn't I?" She shot back, Discord's influence having momentarily infused a petulant rebelliousness into her mind, even from briefly browsing through the events of that strange day.

The distance between Nightmare Moon's return and Discord's was great, but it gave her a sense of scale that let her continue on at a faster clip with little need to see the fine details. Derpy and Piggy broke into a fast trot to keep pace and then a gallop as Apple Bloom crossed over another threshold, much smaller, but of sparkling white, that might have marked the return of the Crystal empire and the fall of King Sombra. Then at last, as Piggy began to pant heavily and Derpy finally realized that she had wings and took to them, the filly crossed a mauled and tangled patch, only those six strands wide to start and then hemmed in by a band of purple that stretched across the land. She finally jolted to a stop.

"Lookit!" Apple Bloom pawed the yielding ground, "That right there's the coronation, which means that right up ahead....yup, there it is, this is it. This is where I got my cutiemark." She stared contemplatively at the half yard long orange discoloration on the beige rope that was her life, then scrunched up her nose in disgust and pulled out the scissors. Their comically oversized construction was precisely the opposite of what was called for and she had to open them wide to start picking at the fibers with the sharp point.

After a time she got frustrated and threw the scissors down. Her strand of fate was a couple inches thick at this point and the errant mark was easily seen and picked at, but it was deeply embedded and interwoven making it extremely difficult to work loose.

"Just how neat do I have to be? If'n I've got to get every single bit of it I'll be at it forever!"

"I don't know, really none of this is my department, but I'd think you'd have to get most of it and try to keep it in one piece, too." Piggy posited.

Derpy offered to help, but Apple Bloom thought it a bad idea and said that it was something she needed to do for herself, even if she didn't know how she was going to manage it.

"Well, maybe you can go up ahead and see how you did it?" Derpy scratched her chin, "No, wait, what if you do it wrong because you did it wrong because you saw you doing it wrong and then you couldn't do it right?"

"Well, if I can't change anything anyway I expect it doesn't matter and I ought to just look anyway. What do you think, Piggy?" Apple Bloom deferred to her guide.

"Oh, um...I don't know. Somehow it strikes me as wrong hearted, but I can't see anything in it that's really so terrible. Why don't you try it and if it causes some sort of paradox that reduces you to a subatomic singularity, I'll know to tell the next dumb filly why she shouldn't do that." Piggy smirked. His sarcasm was ignored and Apple Bloom followed the path up ahead, right up to the very point that she went through the portal.

"It's gone!" She she exclaimed, "The whole chunk of time after I went through Pinkie's portal ain't there."

"It picks back up right here." Derpy helpfully stated from just up ahead, "It looks like we just got back and you're talking to yourself, 'Don't give up, it gets easier once you get one end loose, and don'tcha go snooping around.'"

"Huh, that's considerate of me. Hope I remember to tell myself that when I get back." Apple Bloom chuckled, "Guess it's back to work for me. It's libel to take a while, and I was thinking, Derpy, maybe you ought to go on back to when you were at camp and see how you ended up with your cutiemark. After I'm done here I can just head on back that way and find y'all. I figure if y'all follow Apple Jack's thread back 'til she got her cutimark, then go back another mile or two and you ought to be at about the right time. All you'll have to do is try'n find yourself."

Author's Note

Dumb pun: Pygstallion, who'd carved the archetypical bodies and variations on them. After enough versions, like any good sculptor, he made molds and outsourced the project. Then he had considerable time on his hooves with little to do. Thus Galatea, the statue given life.
That was my thought on it, anyway.

Things Crashing Down

You can't fight fate! Unless it's your fate to fight fate, in which case it was probably a fake fate that you were fated to fight, and that means you can't fight that fate, only fake fate, and then maybe you're fated to fight fate forever!

-Pinkie Pie, from the introduction to her cookbook, Chimi Cherry Chongas and 101 other Sugar Cube Corner Specialties

Derpy quickly agreed and she and Piggy headed back into the past, promising to meet back up with Applejack's strand as home base as soon as they found what they were looking for. Apple Bloom settled into the long task of picking each individual fiber loose with the tip of the unwieldy shears. She found that, indeed, once she got an end up, the rest peeled away and the whole tuft of orange mohair looking fuzz pulled right loose. She wadded it up and stuffed it in her coverall's pocket. It took far less time than she'd expected and she was about to run after Derpy and Piggy, who were still visible as specks in the far distance, but she came to consider her warning to herself. It seemed like a shame to just run right after them now that she had a moment alone, but...

Don't go snooping around? Why did she think to warn herself about that, she wondered, trying to dismiss it from her mind, but it gnawed at her, what was it she'd found? When she tried not to think about it she found she could think of nothing but insidious scenarios in which she would snoop for the good of all ponykind. She could amble ahead to the next big disruption and figure out how to save the day before it even happened.

In her imagination she was at the Equestria Games and a disaster loomed, Sombra was returning, again. But she was there and as soon as his form crystallized from out of his putrid miasma, her cocked and ready legs bucked his wicked horn right off the top of his head, putting an end to his latest incursion. They'd probably even give her a gold medal and everything for her bravery, and in her mind it seemed like quite a solid plan, until she thought about her family congratulating her.

The games were a ways off yet, and though none of the younger apples spoke about it, they all knew Granny Smith wasn't long for this world. What if fate snipped her dwindling thread before then, could she really go on knowing that with nothing she could do to change it? With a hitch in her throat, she decided she couldn't.

Then her fantasies shifted to discovering her friend's cutiemarks ahead of time and directing them towards them, but not long into that fantasy the impending dissolution of the Cutie Mark Crusaders became obvious and she vowed to do nothing unnatural to hasten it.

Poking around in the future seemed a hazardous endeavor, but she searched contemporary times, briefly, and found Diamond Tiara. The moment she glimpsed found her lashing out against Snips for being overweight and Snails for being stupid, and then Silver Spoon swooped in to finish the job by calling them ugly hollow horned brown muzzlers from the wrong side of the tracks. It was pretty standard fare for those two bullies, and Apple Bloom started walking into the past, skimming her deeds for appropriate blackmail material.

Beyond more bullying, a scene unfolded before her that appeared, at first, to be just what she was looking for. Diamond Tiara was in her room, tucked in snugly and feigning sleep. Furtively she slipped out from between the sheets and padded to her dresser and the trifold mirror sitting atop it. With a barely audible squeak she slid it out, turned it around and placed a pair of candles before it which she reverently lit with a long wooden match.

Apple Bloom couldn't figure out precisely what she was doing, Diamond's thoughts were muddled and distracted as if this was a set of actions she'd done so often as to require no attention. It looked for all the world like a shrine. She'd seen this sort of thing before, where fillies collect a collage of pictures of the object of their affections and worship them in the false hopes that their intentions will be returned. In point of fact, Scootaloo had just such a shrine dedicated to Rainbow Dash, but her friend had assured her that it wasn't creepy, and she'd had to give her the benefit of the doubt, even though she was pretty sure that it actually was.

All signs indicated that as soon as Diamond looked up, Apple Bloom would know her secret crush. She grinned in anticipation of the embarrassment it would cause when she revealed it in front of the whole class, but the filly kept looking down. She plucked a pendant from a nub of a nail that hung it in place on the back of the mirror and pressed her lips against it gently, then she muttered a few words and lay it down before her. Apple Bloom thought she recognized her invocation. It was something old, something she hadn't heard in a very long time, and the pendant, now that she saw it, was an emblem of Princess Celestia's cutiemark.

Buck, she's a solar cultist and she's praying, Apple Bloom realized. That was insane, of course. The Princess discouraged such deification and stopped just short of banning such cults altogether, assuming that they would die away in time, along with their practitioners, and yet this young filly had a solar shrine and was folding her hooves together in preparation for prayer.

"Princess Celestia, it's me, Diamond Tiara, again. You know the drill by now. You know I don't want to be a dried up, beauty queen shill, and live out my life pimping Bargain Barn in this no horse town, but if that's what you want for me, I'll gladly do it. I'll do anything you ask, just, please, bring my mom back. Just for one night, that's all I'm asking. If you can do that for me I'd give anything. I'll spend every moment bringing glory to you, just for this one little thing. Please, Princess? It's been so long, I can't even remember her face on my own anymore..."

Here she finally looked up, and there in the center of her shrine was a picture of a lovely middle aged mare that Apple Bloom remembered having seen around Ponyville until very recently. She hadn't asked Diamond Tiara herself, but she'd overheard her say that her mother was out of town on business. One doesn't set up a shrine and pray before it for somepony who was coming back, she realized and withdrew from the the lost little filly's thoughts.

Apple Bloom thought she knew why she'd warned herself away from snooping, because now she couldn't ever be properly angry with Diamond Tiara ever again. More than that, she realized that the same lessons that they'd learned with Babs should have been applied to Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon, no matter how distasteful the idea seemed, and she was ashamed she hadn't understood that before now.

Walking backwards in time, eating up the miles and years between her and her companions gave her time to think. There was little benefit in anything she could learn from the tapestry, but Diamond's plight got her thinking. It shouldn't do any particular harm if she took a peek at her own parents. She was too young to remember them and it would be her only chance to hear their voices and see them move as living, breathing ponies. She mulled it over and didn't see how it could harm anypony, except maybe herself, dredging up old feelings and ripping open old wounds, but that was a risk she was willing to take and she vowed to be strong.

A couple years before Applejack's ill fated sojourn to Manehattan, Apple Bloom had been born and it was just after that event she'd found herself standing. The two strong cords that were lovingly twined round her infant self ended just hoofsteps ahead, and her own line was nakedly exposed beyond that. Certainly Granny Smith, Big Mac and Applejack were close by, but it wasn't the same as having her parents there and now she stood at the precipice of their deaths, not daring to step any closer.

She did finally get to hear them and to see them, in the flesh and from within their own flesh, and she knew, as she always had, just how much she was loved.

A new opportunity presented itself, however. A thick hempen sapsucker connected somepony to her family, and that tether was composed of that defective piece of farm equipment that had taken her parent's lives and scarred Big Mac's fragile psyche for life. He'd been there that day, been the one to shut off the machine, gather up the remains, fashion a pair of coffins, dig the graves and break the news to the rest of the family, in that order. Certainly he was a kindly and reliable stallion, but he'd never recovered entirely and remained withdrawn and taciturn from then on, much in contrast to the happy, loquacious colt he'd been before. Apple Bloom had not known about that, until that very moment when she saw his younger self bobbing between his beloved parents gabbing non-stop.

Now, she saw the single strand that laid them low just before her. One chance interaction that had caused so much pain, and though she doubted she could change the past, reasoned that it wasn't a good idea to try, she pulled the work blackened scissors back out, pinched the moment that the salesman had sold her father that infernal device in between the blades and slowly squeezed.

The taut material was tough as steel cable and Apple Bloom had to worry it until fatigue let it unravel with a 'Sproing!'

A tiny ripple expanded outward at half the speed of sound, traveling beyond sight, and many minutes later, echoed from off of the frame of the loom, it came back and found Apple Bloom still meditating on the events of the past. Reflections returned in quick succession from either side and when they hit each other, right at the damaged spot, the tapestry started to fray.

It creaked menacingly, tiny fibers tearing, large strands being overburdened and stretching to their limits. Apple Bloom leapt to her hooves in fright as the destruction began in earnest. A large cable of fiber snapped beside her and flung itself into air. Was that a pony's life that just severed itself so violently? It was so like the ones she'd been viewing, how could it not be? This maelstrom of destruction was all her fault, she'd disobeyed her own advice, snooping and snipping where she was not wanted, and now all around her, lives were raggedly tearing apart and giving way.

The ground she ran on was becoming less stable, it was roiled with waves and twice her hoof had gone through the cloth entirely, letting her fall through to her knee. Below the tapestry were not the ruins and forests she'd looked up from before, but a gaping black void into which strands of fate were already uncoiling and falling in snarled tangles.

The wrinkles grew to ten yard swells that threw her off her hooves at their passing, slinging her high into the air where loose lines whipped all around her with bowstring twangs, "Help me! Depry! Piggy! Anyone! Help me! I'm sorry I messed with the tapestry, I didn't mean it! Please, save me!"

Soon the quivering cords shredded under the abuse, their pent up energy released like an uncoiled mainspring made of confetti and it scattered it's remains in all directions. The entire tapestry of life reduced to an imitation of a firework's flash. Apple Bloom was briefly propelled skyward. At the apex of her ascent she found herself looking at towards the horizon where the featureless sky met the yawning void below her. Carnage thrown out by the energetic destruction created a semblance of fog in the distance, but so far as she could see, total destruction reigned, a steady snow of fibers drifting lazily downward.

She wondered, as she fell after them, flailing and screaming in terror, if there was some definite sort of ground below for her to be dashed upon, or if she would just keep falling forever. Her throat grew raw and her lungs grew heavy as she gathered speed. She felt almost as if she were drowning in the very atmosphere being rammed down her throat. She turned her head and closed her eyes against the stinging wind, her desperate cry petering out at last. In her mind she apologized to all the ponies her imminent death would hurt, if she hadn't doomed them directly.

Applejack, Big Mac and Granny Smith, first and foremost. Her parents, whom she felt were still with her in a way. Cousin Babs, who needed a loyal friend like her so badly. Sweetie Belle, who was too innocent to have this tragedy foisted upon her and Scootaloo who'd had to play brave for so long, for so many reasons. This would be just one more kick in the ribs for her, and a hard one to recover from. Pinkie Pie, who'd led them here, would undoubtedly take the blame on herself, and that would be the greatest shame. It would break the very element of laughter when she found out, and all because Apple Bloom had to meddle in a past that was already gone and done with.

Lastly, Derpy, that good hearted klutz of a mare. She had wings, but there was nothing left to fly to. She would just fly on until her body gave out and plummet into the abyss with her, and all for the questionable crime of trying to be helpful, "I'm so sorry, Derpy! I didn't mean it! Please, if there's somepony out there, just save her. Don't worry about me and my dumb old cutie mark no more, but please, she doesn't deserve this, she's a good mare who ain't never done nothin' worse than bein' in the wrong place at the wrong time!"

"Oh, jeez! Did you see that thing go all kerplooie?" A voice called out over the sound of the wind, "I don't think it was my fault this time."

Apple Bloom's fall was halted as she was gently scooped up and slung on the back of one cross eyed pegasus. "Derpy!" Apple Bloom exclaimed and hugged her tightly, almost forgetting for a moment that there was nowhere to land.

Derpy hovered and looked around, "Piggy? Where did you put that door? My wings are getting tired! Is that him? Oh, shoot, it's still way back where we were. Well, guess I better get to flapping, heh. You just hang on back there and think light thoughts."

The elevator door stood out by it's dim light and by the fact that it was the only speck of anything different around them. It took nearly an hour to get to and Derpy was huffing and sweating by the time she touched down. Touched down being a generous term for her graceless landing. The door and car beyond weren't meant to be approached in such a manner and Derpy only caught it with her forehooves which scrabbled over the slick marble for a grip as Apple Bloom deboarded. Piggy grabbed her and pulled her in easily. The doors shut with a ding and the ones opposite slid open.

Standing in the doorway behind a hellish scowl was Galatea, "Congratulations. You destroyed the world."

Author's Note

...and then everyone died.
The end.
Thanks, Apple Bloom.

Correcting Errors

All of us make mistakes.
-Princess Luna, from her collected musings on lunar exile.

Apple Bloom shrunk under the mare's withering glare, managing only to stammer out, "But, I...I only cut the one little thread, I...I didn't think..."

"You sure didn't think, and where does that put us? Minus one world." Galatea snorted, "See, you think it's just one thread and it shouldn't matter, but every pony is connected in that textile that is life, and if you go hacking at it things just start coming apart." She picked up a fresh scroll from the in basket on her cluttered table and studied it briefly.

"Looks like you saved a couple ponies, sure, but in so doing, you deprived the future Element of Honesty of the most formative experience of her young life and she goes a whole different way, which left Equestria one champion shy when that Nightmare Moon came back and everypony died, more or less."

"Princess Luna wouldn't kill everypony, she's a pretty nice Princess. I got to meet her on Nightmare Night and she shared her candy with me and helped me refill the apple bobbing tub when I bobbed the drain plug the second time." Derpy insisted. Galatea rolled her eyes.

Galatea stated simply, "Crops do not grow well in the moonlight and Nightmare Moon is rather less sensible about such things than Princess Luna, even if they are the same...-ish."

"But, that don't make any sense. Shouldn't everythin' before that Summer Sun Celebration have stayed the same?" Rather than exploding in a great dandelion poof, Apple Bloom thought.

"This isn't some time travel rubbish from some fairy book. Fate is interdependent, interwoven. Try to remove a single strand from a spiderweb and the whole thing folds over on itself, it's like that."

Piggy scoffed, "Now I don't think that's an apt simile. I like it, mind you, but if you do it opposite of how the spider put it together you should be able to..."

Galatea turned on him, "Oh, and is that what she did? Carefully study the construction and reverse engineer it to achieve the desired results without interrupting fate's design?"

"I wasn't there," Derpy admitted, "But I think she must have just cut something with those big rusty scissors."

"Quite. Yes, that's just what she did, hacked away at eons of labor with roofing shears and no regard for the consequences." Galatea flounced down onto her workstool, leaned back until it began to creak and pop and sighed.

"But, y'all can fix, it, right? It's not really the end of everything, is it?" The little filly pled, a shimmer of moisture building up in her eyes, threatening to break their bounds.

"Sure, sure. We can fix it." Piggy nodded.

"With all the other aspects working together, I suppose we can at that, and faster than the first time since we know pretty well how it's going to go this time and don't have to come up with everything off the top of our heads." Galatea concurred, sadly, but with a shade of optimism peeking through, "If everything goes okay we could probably get it right back to where we had it in...say...four hundred and thirty million years? I mean that would be tight, but there's a lot of corners we can cut in prehistory. Nopony will be around to complain if we use a little deus ex machina to skip some of the boring primordial stuff and do some natural selection with a mallet every once and a while."

"Four hundred thirty million years? But...we can't just hang around here that long." Apple Bloom protested.

"In fact, you have no choice." Galatea pointed out, "There's not really anywhere to go back to, is there?"

"But, I left my Dinky with Carrot Top, she's going to be awfully mad if I leave her to babysit for all those millions of years." Derpy's ears flopped and she dropped to her haunches at the prospect of a displeased Carrot Top. Maybe she'll understand?

Apple Bloom was despondent, she'd destroyed the world and would pay with millions of years trapped in it's underpinnings. She'd go mad for certain if she was trapped here that long. It would be worse for Derpy, it seemed she still didn't get the implications and it wasn't even her fault. A thought bubbled to the surface, and she almost let it evaporate away, but ended up asking anyway, "This place looks the same, how'd you even know what happened?"

"They sent me a report." Galatea indicated the scroll on the table, "Aside from that I could see the whole thing coming down out the window, see?"

Though she pointed to the window, Apple Bloom at first refused to look, saying that she didn't need to see it again, she'd been right in the middle of it.

"You really should look out there and see how mad the aspects of fate are." Piggy chastised her, but with a knowing grin, "They're out there trying to scrounge up all the leftover bits to see if there's anything they can salvage."

Piggy gestured again and raised an eyebrow, he didn't look mad and Apple Bloom didn't understand it, so she went to the window and looked out. Where she'd expected three angry titans and an empty sky she found the giants and the tapestry, standing and hung just as they previously had been, "You...you've just been buckin' with me, haven't you?"

The artist and her assistant both broke down in hysterical laughter. Piggy, at length, explained, "I told you in the first place, it's largely symbolic. You mortals, ooh, boy, give you a pair of scissors and some misguided notion that you can change the past and just watch you lot hack away at the very firmaments on which you stand."

Galatea tittered, "Better than the ones who look ahead at the future and make a paradox. They're the worst because they've got to untangle those themselves and they take forever! Not that we've had the dubious pleasure of mortal company ourselves before, but some of the best stories I've heard around here deal with just this occurrence, and you certainly didn't disappoint."

"So this has happened before and none of that was real?" A cold anger rising in the yellow filly. She scooped up the scroll from the table which told of her exploits with more underlines and exclamation points than is proper for a serious report on a world ending cataclysm. The fact that she'd done it in the vague hope of saving her parents wasn't even taken seriously and it ended with the line, 'What a maroon!' and she dashed the scroll against the floor and stomped on it.

"Well...it's what really would have happened if it were real, so be glad it wasn't." The artist scolded between her ebbing laughter.

"So hunting for my cutiemark was all..."

"Oh, no, now symbolic or not, your cutiemark is real, make no mistake about that. It's all very..." She rolled her hoof in the air, looking for a word.

"Capricious? Arbitrary?" Piggy suggested.

"I was looking for something that means just that in, perhaps, a less pejorative sense. Something that implies an underlying grace to the whole thing, ineffable or something, I don't know. I do hope you managed to retrieve it?" Galatea held out her hooves greedily. Apple Bloom retrieved the gossamer thing from her pocket, fluffed it lightly and presented it for inspection. Some fault must have been found with it as both Piggy and Galatea fell to prodding it and muttering over it.

"You tore it. Looks like you just pulled it loose from one end instead of snipping it loose like I told you to. It's going to take forever just to patch it back up to the way it was." The artist flattened out the fibers, smoothing them with a hoof and forcing it to slowly revert to the form of a ripped canvas the color of Apple Bloom's flank. In the center lay the cutiemark Apple Bloom had sought to conceal, a trio of flowers laid over a crossed wrench and claw hammer, "What's wrong with it anyway? Aside from the damage you've done, it looks like a perfectly good cutiemark to me. To tell you the plain truth, I'm underwhelmed after all the buildup. I expected a steaming pile of horseapples, or that one like the unicorn proctologist had, you remember that one Piggy? I'll admit that one was a bit tongue in cheek...or horn in cheeks, as the case may be. That one, though, is downright mundane. How'd you get it?"

"Well...See there's been a problem with the bees this year. Winter wrap up was late, so the flowers were to and we had to get the apple trees goin', which is hard when there ain't enough bees around to do the pollinatin'. Well we were all set to do it by hoof, one flower at a time, when I come up with this idea on how to build somethin' to pollinate a whole tree's worth of flowers all at once. See, it shakes the tree enough to get the pollen into the air, then sucks it up while it blows pollen it collected from the other trees back out in a little tornado." Apple Bloom's eyes lit up as she started explaining, "I realized that all I needed was to tent the tree like a fumigator and draw a vacuum with a ducted fan that'd pull the loose pollen into a cyclonic filter, then a simple venturi to draw the pollen from the other trees into the exhaust stream and spray it back out and...and...you don't care about none of this do you?"

"It's not that we don't care, we just don't understand the..." Piggy started.

"Not a bit." The artist interrupted, "But it seems to me that the mark is quite apt. Your talent is for designing agricultural machinery, clearly, so what's your problem? You acted like whatever that mark was managed to be the worst possible thing."

"Look at the flowers." Apple Blossom indicated the white blossoms on the torn canvas, but nopony could tell what she was pointing at, they just looked like flowers, "That ain't an apple blossom!"

"So what is it? With a name like yours it'd be a lark if it was a pear flower." Piggy chortled.

"Oh, it's way worse than that. If anypony ever saw that I'd be laughed off the farm and never be able to live it down." She grimaced at the marble floor and scuffed a hoof acrost it, "I might just as well try to be a real rock farmer with rock candy on my flank as to farm apples with that...thing as a cutiemark. See that tube of petals stickin' out around the stamen? Apple blooms don't have that and it took me a while to remember just what it was meant to be. It's a kumquat, a goldern kumquat bloom is what it is!"

Galatea had gotten down one of her books, a well worn volume dedicated exclusively to arboreal forms. She hoofed through it and stopped at the apple blossom, then flipped to the page on kumquats, flipping from one to the other and glancing at the canvas in between, "They're close enough that nopony would know the difference but you. Even so, maybe you're destined to take on a different crop?"

"Lady, are you nuts? My whole family's apple farmers, expert apple farmers. Every one of them old enough to eat an apple is gonna' know that that's not an apple bloom and once it gets out everypony's just going to know me as that filly with the kumquat cutiemark. When the next reunion rolls around it'll be just about time for me to take a real role on the farm, but I'll never be anything more than a second stringer with this dang thing to make me look ignorant. Foalish. Kumquats are the red maned step foal of the ol' fruit industry. I'll be a pariah. Admit it. You goofed."

"I think you're exaggerating. It's certainly close enough to get the point across."

"Close only counts in horseshoes and harmony and I can't be having my whole life ruint because you can't tell apples from kumquats." The little filly was worked up to the point that she was jabbing the artist in the chest with sharp hooves. She was more than a little cowed, though not prepared in the slightest to concede the point.

She rolled her eyes derisively, "You're overreacting, but...Look, you went to all the trouble...and now I'm going to have to patch up the canvas anyway...so I guess I can touch it up a bit, if it means that much to you, that is."

"It does."

"Fine, fine. It'll take a while though. I've got to reuse the canvas and a seamless patch takes a while. You'll probably be the last of your classmates to get a cutiemark."

"I...I don't care about that anymore. I just need it fixed. I can't be the laughingstock of the whole Apple family. I just can't." She hid her face in her shoulder and shuddered at the thought of it, then with a sudden realization she peeled back her coveralls, looked back and was thrilled for once to find her flank quite blank, as it had been since the debacle with the tapestry of fate. She grinned, and spun in place for a full revolution, trying to come closer than was physically possible to her own rump to verify the absence. Then she turned to the grey pegasus who'd tagged along good naturedly this whole time, "Now that we've settled that, Derpy, didja find out what your cutiemark means?"

Derpy hung her head, "No, I was pretty close but everything went to pieces and I had to catch Piggy. I guess I'll just never know."

"Oh, I'm so sorry about that Derpy, I didn't mean to...Shoot. If I'd'a just acted more sensible we'd both have what we wanted and been done with all this. Now how we gonna' figure it out now?"

Derpy's eyes brightened and her smile returned, "Don't worry about it, Apple Bloom, I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually. Until then I can just keep chugging along, and one good thing about having so many jobs, I get to meet lots of nice ponies I'd never have met any other way."

Piggy rolled his eyes, "Look, we could waste a lot of time, go back up there and run around some more, but I'm going to go out on a limb and make an educated guess that your mark isn't a vocational one at all. It's about perseverance. Bubbles always rise to the top. Some of them may pop along the way, and it may even seem like you can hold them down, but invariably they'll find a way to break out, just like that smile...yadda yadda. Ad astra per aspera and all that."

"Awww...I like that." Cooed Derpy, "It makes it sound like my special talent is having bad luck but finding a way of being happy."

"When you say it like that it sounds like a pretty crummy talent." Apple Bloom scowled.

"It's better than having good luck and being unhappy anyway. I already know too many ponies like that." Derpy countered and Apple Bloom had to concede the point, "But...I still don't know what job I'm supposed to do."

"Well...I don't know about the cutiemark end of it, but how 'bout mailmare?" Apple Bloom speculated, "You did alright as a package delivery mare so long as you didn't have to haul heavy stuff and you'd get to talk to near everypony in town that way."

"Also it's a government job. I've heard it's almost impossible to get fired from those." Piggy mentioned, which implied he knew more about Derpy than Apple Bloom had suspected.

"The mailpony we've got now is half blind and keeps mixin' up the deliveries. He means to retire pretty soon. I could get my sister to put in a good word for you, I think. Big Macintosh, too."

"Really? You think I'd be a good mailmare?" Derpy reared up in excitement, "That sound like a great job for me!"

Derpy resolved to look into it as soon as she got back and after saying their polite thank yous and goodbyes, Piggy led them back to the spot where they'd arrived and they passed back through the dimly pulsing portal.

Pinky Pie and Carrot Top, both being bakers, were hotly debating the merits of non-stick enchantments versus traditional sprays and greases when their two friends reappeared. Apple Bloom was looking to Derpy, "What was it I said again? Don't give up, it gets easier once you get one end loose, and don'tcha go snooping around? Something like that? I wish I woulda gone and told myself something useful, like don't trust them crazy artists not to be pulling pranks on me."

Derpy simply nodded.

"How's the cutiemark?" Pinkie chirped, craning her neck to see Apple Bloom's freshly blankened flank.

"It's in the shop." Apple Bloom said wryly, "I expect once I get it back that it should be okay."

"Oh, and I decided I'm going to be a mailmare!" Derpy enthusiastically stated. Unsurprisingly, Pinkie Pie knew the postmaster and offered to help her in this endeavor, which the klutzy pegasus gratefully accepted.

Apple Bloom said her farewells to Pinkie Pie and Carrot Top, promising to tell them about her quest when she had more time, but for now, she needed to get home. First she stopped and gave Derpy a heartfelt hug and a nuzzle, "Thanks for all your help, Derpy. I couldn't have done it without'cha."

On the way back to Sweet Apple Acres a pair of fillies caught up with her, "What's with that hideous outfit? Those overalls make you look like even more of a bumpkin loser than usual."

"Now Diamond Tiara," Silver Spoon mocked, "She's probably just gotten to be so embarrassed by her big, blank flank that she had to cover it up."

"Do you think her family's so poor that she couldn't have afforded something more stylish, or do you think she just doesn't have any fashion sense?" Diamond Tiara asked.

"I don't know." Silver Spoon derisively laughed, "Probably both."

Apple Bloom's nostrils flared and her eyes narrowed. She gave every indication that she was about to lash out until the recent knowledge about Diamond Tiara asserted itself, cooling her rage like quenching steel. She realized that, although Silver Spoon was still fair game, she likely had a story every bit as rough as Diamond Tiara's. Bullies are made, not born, and like most problems in Equestria a liberal application of friendship was what was called for.

Apple Bloom removed the coveralls, folded them neatly and slung them on her back as the two bullies watched. She took a deep breath, "Look, Diamond Tiara, just 'cuz you've got a beauty queen crown on your flank...well that don't mean that that's all you can ever be." Diamond Tiara started to speak, but her voice hitched when Apple Bloom's words struck home, "It's just a start, and you can do so much more, be more, and you ain't stuck here if you don't wanna be. Just don't give up and settle for less 'cuz you think that's what you've been saddled with."

"What are you even talking about you lamebrained..." Silver Spoon started, but was interrupted by her friend.

"What do you know?" She shot back and then said sarcastically, "It's not like I'm overburdened with other marketable skills, you know? Barnyard Bargains owns me, and a smiling face for Daddy's ads is all I'll ever be and all I'll ever need. I'm practically set for life."

"Maybe, but you've still got time to learn and do whatever you want to, something that might actually make you happy instead of having to play the big fish in this little pond. I expect that even your pa wants more for you than that." Apple Bloom turned to the other little filly, "You too, Silver Spoon. I expect there's more to you than just bein' spoilt and took care of like a bird in a cage. I'll have to talk to Scoots and Sweetiebelle about it, but maybe we could expand our charter and add lookin' for y'all's true callin's to our search if'n you want."

"You...you'd do that for us, after the way we've treated you all this time?" Diamond Tiara stuttered. Whether it was the unexpected baring of her soul or the joyous revelation that followed, she was on the verge of tears.

"Well sure." Apple Bloom smiled gently, "Shoot, I've known since I was just a little thing what I wanted to do with my life. It's only fair that I lend a hoof and help y'all find something that'll make you happy too. Truth is, it's goin' to be a bit of a letdown when I finally do get my cutiemark on account of there'll be no surprise to it, but it really is what I want to do and my destiny besides. Y'all should definitely join up, we've got all kinds of ideas we ain't tried yet, and maybe one of 'em will suit you."

"We...we'll think about it." Diamond Tiara bowed and started off with Silver Spoon, then turned back for a moment, "Either way, thanks Apple Bloom. You're a good mare."

You can't fight fate, sure enough, but sometimes you can cheat your way around it, just a bit.

Author's Note

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed it!
Also, I hope no one's too disappointed I didn't have something more extreme for her cutie mark, but I kind of thought that the "cutiemark crusaders get inappropriate cutiemarks" schtick was played out, so...
That.
If you liked it, thumbs up it and tell your friends.
Thanks again.