"Rainybow Dashkapoot, you would drag the up-downward motion?"
"Of cantaloupe, Pinkie Cake." Rainbow Dash replied with a chuckle, digging through the tool box that sat at the foot of Pinkie Pie's ladder. Hammer in mouth, she took to the air, fluttering up to where Pinkie Pie sat at the very tippy-top.
"Tanks chew!" Pinkie Pie giggled back to her, hammering away happily, ladder swaying dangerously with each stroke.
"What in the world is going on around here?"
"Tye-Dye Spackle, what's the fuzz?" Pinkie Pie asked brightly, her smile faltering slightly when Twilight Sparkle turned her annoyance towards her.
"Not you too! No one's making any sense today!" Twilight Sparkle cried with a frustrated little hoof-stomp, causing Spike to bobble dangerously where he perched on her back. "First I go to check the mail, and my mailbox is stuffed with muffins! Then I go to the bakery, and instead of giving me a croissant, they give me my mail! And don't even ask what they gave me when I went to the Mayor's office."
"Worms?" Rainbow Dash asked with a wicked grin, earning a snort from Pinkie Pie.
"Caterpillars!" Spike offered helpfully from Twilight Sparkle's shoulder, peering around until the purple unicorn glared him back down.
"Every time I try to ask someone what's going on, they just spout more gibberish at me!" Twilight Sparkle protested, staring up at her friends in confused anguish. "I've looked through three different dialect guides, but nothing makes any sense! What's going on? And why is your banner upside down?" Her questioning took an even more confused turn as she tilted her head upside down to read the sign. "Glooj blthagua? What does that even mean?"
Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash exchanged a brief glance before Pinkie slid down her ladder, landing on the ground with a little bounce. "Okay, I'm tagging out! No penalties!" She said to Rainbow Dash, bringing one pink hoof up to tug a beaded necklace off of her neck.
"Five minutes!" Rainbow Dash nodded, and took to the air, landing on a puffy cloud not too far from the pair for a quick catnap. She, too, wore one of the chunky-beaded necklaces. Twilight Sparkle hadn't taken much notice of them before, but now that she thought about it, each one of the ponies she had spoken to that day had worn one.
"Okay, gotta make this fast!" Pinkie Pie said brightly, struggling not to bounce in place. She took a deep breath, then began to speak very, very quickly. "A long long time ago there used to be this official market-day where ponies from all around Equestria would go to Canterlot to trade and sell their goods but since no one used the same coins they would have to barter with each other instead. It was really hard to trade if you had something not many ponies wanted so they came up with a system where you could trade for beads because back then beads were made out of expensive jewels and metals kind of like using our coins today because they're made of gold right? Anyway the ponies all had a good time and made a lot of friends so they started to make it into a kind of party too and eventually Celestia made it into a real holiday and since it's in April and everypony talks silly she called it April Fool's Day! So now everyone wears a necklace and speaks nonsense to each other and try to make everypony laugh so you can get more beads and then you buy cake and toys and pretty things for your mane!"
"... pardon?" Twilight Sparkle asked, shaking her head a little from where her eyes had begun to drift sideways.
"What this silly filly is trying to say is that before Celestia instituted a proper system of minted coinage, ponies from around Equestria relied on trading shiny trinkets in lieu of making a direct trade of goods." Rarity explained in her usual cool, crisp manner as she approached the pair.
"You're not speaking gibberish!" Pinkie Pie gasped, eyes wide and tail positively twirling in thrilled horror.
Rarity rolled her eyes and gestured to her own, bare neck. "I am not partaking in this silly show of ridiculousness. A lady does not go about town spouting nonsense, pretending like she is a trader from some long-lost, far-flung, backwater country in order to win a few silly beads to buy trinkets with."
"How do you win beads?" Twilight Sparkle asked with a frown, glancing between the two ponies in confusion. The picture was becoming a little clearer, but the whole thing still didn't make much sense.
"If you catch someone not speakin' gibberish, you get to take one of their beads! And if you make someone laugh really hard, you're allowed to take a bead, too!" Pinkie Pie supplied brightly, ignoring the cool glare that Rarity was levelling at her. "And then at the end of the day, there's a biiiiiiig marketplace where everyone trades their beads! There's cakes and pies and scarves and hair clips and all sorts of fun things! The more beads you have, the more stuff you can buy!"
"An utterly childish pasttime." Rarity sniffed, tilting her head up elegantly in distaste.
"You're just sore cuz last year you lost all your beads in the first fifteen minutes." Applejack chuckled as she trotted up to her friends, her own necklace nearly bursting with beads.
Rarity whirled, her perfectly coiffed mane trembling with an ill-disguised anger as she hissed. "I maintain that there was a mistake in the scoring system, and besides that, I was not properly informed as to when the competition would be beginning, and that it is impossible to properly score such a widespread-"
"Groogle flassix, everyone." Fluttershy said softly, ducking her head when the others turned to face her. "Oh, I'm sorry, are we not speaking in gibberish anymore?"
"We're taking a break to explain the rules to Twilight Sparkle!" Pinkie Pie chirped, bouncing up and down in place. "Wow, you sure are good at this, Fluttershy!"
"Oh, thank you very much, but I'm not that good, I just, um, I practice a lot, with the chipmunks and the other furry creatures." Fluttershy murmured, tucking one leg behind the other shyly. Even as she spoke, Angel trotted up behind her, paws filled with beads.
"But how do you get the beads to start with?" Twilight Sparkle interjected, struggling to follow the thread of conversation as it moved from pony to pony.
"That's easy sugarcube! Y'just take those caterpillars the mayor gave ya, and take 'em down to trade in the main square! They'll trade for most anything - they'll give ya some beads to start off with, and then ya just gotta get started on trying to out-gibber the other gibberers!" Applejack laughed, and the group joined her, even the miffed Rarity.
"Well, I suppose I could give this silly game one more attempt." Rarity sniffed, and turned to direct another dismissive comment to the pony beside her, only to see her friends trotting away, heading towards the main square. "Hey! Wait for me!"
But as the group trotted toward the main square, they ran into a wall of high-pitched, anxious sound. A group of ponies stood in a semicircle, muttering softly to each other, clearly concerned about the loud gibberish that was being yelled from somewhere in front of them.
"What's going on?" Twilight Sparkle demanded, but when the nearby ponies merely blinked at her in confusion, she began to push through the crowd, making her way to the source of the noise.
In the center of the uncomfortable semicircle stood the mailpony, Bubbly Hooves, better known by her nickname of Derpy Hooves. She was always a bit of an odd duck, to say the least, but she now stood in the center of the festival, whinnying as if her wings were on fire. "The pickle-boxes round! The pickle-boxes, doesn't see the yellow flag? Trickles tickles!"
"Hey, that's pretty funny, Bubbly!" Applejack called in a would-be bright voice, trying to calm down the obviously-distraught pegasus. "Yeah, trickles tickles! Purple flag rainbow?"
Bubbly turned to face Applejack, her wide, mis-aligned eyes focusing on her for a moment, before her brows knitted in frustration. "Nine! Eight seven six five four! For the tree!" She barked, wings flapping behind her in angry protest.
Applejack's smile faded as she edged back into the crowd, drawing close to Twilight Sparkle's side. "What's got her bit in a knot?"
"Let's just go enjoy the festival, shall we?" Rarity asked, a hint of annoyance entering her voice. "If she wants to ruin the fun for everyone else, that's fine for her, but her yelling is giving me a splitting headache!"
"I don't know, it doesn't seem like she would be yelling like this for no reason..." Twilight Sparkle began uncertainly, watching as Bubbly tried to approach several ponies in turn, only to have them scatter before her.
"She's probably upset that people are talking funny. She always talks funny, maybe it's confusing her?" Applejack offered with a little shrug, beginning to trot towards the bead-booth. "C'mon, Twilight! We gotta get your necklace started, or else you won't have any beads to spend at all!"
"She is a little strange, Twilight Sparkle. Maybe she'll calm down if we leave her alone." Fluttershy offered quietly, her ears flat from the near-constant litany of gibberish erupting in their nearby vicinity.
But even as her friends trotted ahead of her, Twilight Sparkle hesitated, her eyes following the grey pegasus as she anxiously wound her way through the square. Every group that Bubbly approached quickly scattered, regrouping once they'd trotted past her nonsensical anxiety.
"You guys go ahead," Twilight Sparkle called, unaware that she'd even begun to trot towards the wall-eyed pegasus until she was halfway across the square. Her friends' cries of protest faded into the background noise of the festival as she approached Bubbly Hooves. Spike held onto her coat a little tighter as they got closer to the yelling pony, whose wings now flapped so hard that they'd lost a feather or two.
"Hey, Bubbly Hooves, what's wrong? Why are you yelling?" Twilight Sparkle asked a little loudly, trying to be heard over Bubbly's yelling. "I said, WHY ARE YOU YELLING?" She yelled the second time, realizing a moment too late that Bubbly had gone quiet.
"Loud yellow, loud yellow." Bubbly Hooves murmured, frowning at Twilight Sparkle slightly, as if in confusion.
"Sorry. I said, why are you yelling? What's wrong?" Twilight Sparkle asked a second time, tilting her head at the worried grey pony. Although it had been loud, Bubbly's yelling had not sounded angry; it had sounded more anxious, to Twilight Sparkle's ear, and maybe a little frustrated. Probably because everyone ignored her, she reasoned.
"Open foal! Open foal!" Bubbly Hooves said quickly, her wall-eyed gaze scanning Twilight Sparkle's face anxiously, searching for some sign of understanding.
"Open … foal?" Twilight Sparkle responded slowly, uncomprehending. "Wait, do you mean April Fool? Like the April Fool's Day Festival?"
"Open foal!" Bubbly Hooves whinnied, her voice rising to a fever pitch, and she whirled sharply, taking off at a gallop. "Open foal!"
Twilight Sparkle watched her gallop away, hesitating. Her friends were busily partaking in the festival behind her, sampling all of the sweets and buying pretty trinkets for their manes.
"Ohhh," Spike whispered, voice heavy with longing, "they have little gemstone barrettes. Those look delicious!"
Twilight Sparkle stared after them, just for a moment, before she took off after Bubbly Hooves.
The trail lead her on a winding path through back alleys and side streets in the middle of town. Every time she thought she was catching up to Bubbly, the grey pony would make a sudden turn and disappear from sight again. They galloped until the sounds of the festival behind them had faded into nothingness, and the only sound that followed them was that of their own hooves clopping against the cobblestones.
And just as suddenly as she'd started, Bubbly Hooves stopped, standing stock-still in the middle of a small village square. It was very similar to the one they'd left behind, but this one was not decorated for the festival, and was eerily-quiet in the fading light of the early evening. It was probably just because there were no ponies around, but it felt uncomfortably empty to Twilight Sparkle, as if something bad was just waiting to happen.
"Spooky." Spike whispered into her ear, wrapping his arms and legs around her neck fearfully. She would have told him to get off if she hadn't been so nervous herself.
"Open foal! Open foal!" Bubbly Hooves insisted, turning back to speak to Twilight Sparkle insistently, pointing her nose towards a fountain that stood near one corner of the square.
Suddenly, Twilight Sparkle remembered where she was. This square was the one where she had battled the Ursa Minor; she would never forget this place, probably for as long as she lived, and she certainly wouldn't forget the statue of a pony that stood over the fountain. It was right next to where Trixie had parked her cart-slash-stage-slash-trailer, before the Ursa smashed it. She'd never taken much notice of the piece of stonework, but it seemed Bubbly Hooves had.
"Open foal? Yet, yet, open foal?" Bubbly Hooves insisted, her voice now low and fast, desperate to make Twilight Sparkle understand. "Upside-down tulip hips, garnish?"
"Open - foal? What does the statue have to do with April Fool's?" Twilight asked hesitantly, anxious to keep Bubbly from yelling again.
Bubbly Hooves frowned at Twilight Sparkle, her eyes glaring off in two different directions, before she turned back to consider the statue for a moment. Just as Twilight Sparkle was going to venture another soft suggestion, Bubbly Hooves whirled, her yellow mane swishing around her.
"Open - foal." Bubbly Hooves said slowly, as if imparting some great tidbit of wisdom. She began to dance brightly, only ever going a few steps in either direction, before she suddenly froze in place. She held the position for a moment, then paused, looking at Twilight Sparkle insistently. "Open foal, yet? Open foal!" She pointed to the stone pony insistently, then returned to her strange, occasionally-freezing-in-place dance.
"What the heck is she going on about, Twilight?" Spike whispered, his tiny claws tightening in her mane.
The pair watched Bubbly Hooves dance aimlessly for several seconds before something clicked in Twilight Sparkle's mind. Perhaps it was the repetition of the same phrase, 'open foal,' or perhaps it was the way that Bubbly Hooves struck the exact same pose every time she stopped dancing. She would expect her to stop in a different place each time, not pause like that with her legs both lifted in the air...
Exactly like the statue behind her.
"Spike." Twilight Sparkle whispered, the entire world seeming to go very, very still around her. "She thinks the statue is real."
"Well, of course it's real, it's standing right there on top of the fountain!" Spike said stoutly, watching as Bubbly Hooves' dance slowly came to a halt, watching them talk.
"No, not that kind of real - real real. She thinks it's a real pony." Twilight Sparkle breathed, her heart beating loudly in her ears, too noisy in the quiet square.
"Open foal! Open foal!" Bubbly Hooves whinnied triumphantly, galloping up to Twilight Sparkle and Spike, turning a cartwheel around them.
"A real pony? That's ridiculous! It's just a statue!"
"No wonder she was so anxious - she thought a real pony was locked in there, and no one would help her get them out." Twilight Sparkle murmured, eyes still rather wide as she stared at the statue, unblinking.
"But why would she get so upset about it today? She couldn't have noticed it just now, she's been to this square hundreds of times, delivering mail!" Spike protested, watching the grey pegasus a little uneasily as she cantered around them in happy circles, chattering away in her happy gibberish voice.
"But no one's ever tried to talk to her in gibberish before, have they? She's not even been here as long as I have; this is her first April Fool's Day Festival, too." Twilight Sparkle replied softly, brows knitting together with each joyous cry that Bubbly gave.
"Well, how are you going to tell her that you can't make the pony in the fountain real?" Spike asked hesitantly, his eyes moving slowly from the happily-chattering Bubbly Hooves up to Twilight Sparkle's much darker, unhappy expression.
"I don't know."
As if sensing her dismay, Bubbly Hooves came to a halt, her joyous cantering slowing to a walk before stopping quietly in front of the pair. Her wall-eyed gaze moved to each being in turn, her ears flicking back and forth in uncertainty. "Open foal." She said, once, before her eyes locked on Twilight Sparkle's, betraying far more concern that Twilight Sparkle had ever thought her capable of.
Before Twilight Sparkle could offer up any sort of explanation, a sudden, radiant beam of light overtook the square, and for a moment, it was as if the sun had moved in reverse. The square was suddenly bathed in the afternoon glow of the sun, heady and bright, as Princess Celestia appeared from behind one of the tall buildings that overlooked the square.
"Princess Celestia!" Twilight Sparkle cried, relieved and surprised, as she dropped into a sudden bow. Bubbly Hooves, for her part, gave a salute as she slid into a sitting position, which Princess Celestia seemed to accept just as readily as the bow.
"Hello, Twilight Sparkle. I went to oversee the April Fool's Day Festival, but your friends told me you had run off with Bubbly Hooves." Princess Celestia smiled benevolently, her eyes moving from her student to the mailpony. "Why aren't you enjoying the festival with your friends?"
"Oh, Princess Celestia, I don't know what to do." Twilight Sparkle abandoned all scholarly pretense, her ears flat as she explained to the princess. "Bubbly Hooves, she's confused - she thinks this statue is a real pony, and she wants me to try and free them, but it's just a statue, and I don't know how to tell her that."
"Open foal!" Bubbly Hooves repeated, without any real insistence, mostly because she had recognized her name among the otherwise nonsensical gibberish that Twilight Sparkle spoke.
As the rest of the townsponies filtered into the square, trailing after the sun-like haze that hung around their ruler, Princess Celestia crossed over to the fountain, examining it carefully. She circled it with an agonizing slowness that left Twilight Sparkle nearly dancing from hoof to hoof, far too impatient to wait.
"Can you tell her that it's not real?" Twilight Sparkle asked the instant the Princess' head began to lift, unable to wait any longer. "She doesn't speak like the rest of us do, she won't understand if I tell her that it's not real."
"Oh, but it is real."
"Not real like, it's made of real stone, I mean like -"
"Like a real pony?" Princess Celestia smiled gently, watching as Twilight Sparkle ducked her head in embarrassment at having interrupted the princess. "But that is what it is."
"How is that possible?" Spike asked suddenly, his small face swiveling back and forth as he looked from the statue, to Princess Celestia, to Bubbly Hooves, to the equally shocked Twilight Sparkle.
"For the same reason that the Market Day Festival ended." Princess Celestia said smoothly, turning to face Twilight Sparkle. "You have not heard of it? No, I suppose you wouldn't have; it was many hundreds of years ago, I forget sometimes how short pony lifespans are."
"What's the Market Day Festival?" Twilight Sparkle ventured softly, edging a little closer to the Princess.
"It was what the April Fool's Day Festival was called, before there was any reason to call it that. The April Fool's Festival, after all, is a remembrance of the original Market Day Festival, when ponies would gather from all realms of Equestria to trade. Not trinkets, of course, but items of real worth, gold and silver, glass beads from before most ponies knew how to make them." She explained gently, and as she spoke, the crowd of ponies moved closer, drinking in her melodious voice eagerly.
"Why did the Market Day Festival end?" Twilight Sparkle asked, a little afraid of the answer. It must have been bad, if it had turned the pony on the fountain into a statue.
"Cockatrices." Princess Celestia said simply, and a shudder ran through the older ponies in the crowd. She continued to explain for the many young faces that stared up at her in confusion, uncomprehending. "The beasts are able to turn any living being into stone merely by looking into their eyes, and during certain years, their populations can grow disastrously large. One of these population booms occurred during some of the most popular years of the Market Day Festival." She explained sadly, her eyes returning to Twilight Sparkle's.
"So some ponies got turned into stone, and everyone was too scared to go out to the Festival anymore." Twilight Sparkle murmured, the pieces slowly coming into place. "But this pony, surely someone would have missed her. Wouldn't they have tried to help her?"
"They would, if she had any family in this town." Princess Celestia explained gently, turning her long, elegant neck towards the statue once more. "Her mode of dress is similar to that of a pony from the realm of Gibber, I believe; it has long since been absorbed into its larger cousin, Treelop. If she never returned home, her family would not have been able to risk looking for her, and the Ponyvillians likely assumed she was the work of a particularly skilled stonecutter."
"So they just stuck her on a fountain?" Rainbow Dash asked sharply, her voice flat with disbelief. When the Princess turned her curious, surprised gaze upon her, Rainbow Dash ducked her head in embarrassment.
"I suppose they must have." Princess Celestia replied evenly, moving towards the statue.
Bubbly Hooves followed her anxiously, her wings opening and folding with each step. When the princess turned to look down at her, she spoke simply, her voice quiet and pleading. "Open foal."
"As you wish, little mailpony." Princess Celestia said soothingly, and with a graceful dip of her long, arched neck, she touched her horn to the stone pony's body.
For a moment, nothing seemed to happen, and Twilight Sparkle almost feared that the Princess had no way of helping the trapped Gibberian. The crowd around her seemed to hold their breath, waiting for something to happen, when the first tiny crack appeared. The crowd's collective gasp seemed to deepen the crack, sending it spreading and fracturing over the stone pony's sanded surface. She was soon covered in many spiderweb-like cracks, and as Twilight Sparkle watched, small chunks of stone began to fall away, landing in the fountain below her.
Without any huge, dramatic flashes, or even a heavenly choir to sing her to freedom, the pony stepped into the sunlight, blinking. The stone shell collapsed behind her, leaving nothing more than a pile of rubble on top of an otherwise lovely (but now pony-less) fountain.
"Welcome back, Gibberian." Princess Celestia spoke to her gently, one wing coming up to catch her when she nearly fell off of the fountain in surprise. Carefully, she lowered the pony to the ground, waiting for her to finish wobbling before withdrawing her wing.
The yellow pony looked up at her, then at the surrounding crowd, and asked simply, "Wherefor whydown upsie-daisy?"
"Upsie-daisy in triplicate!" Bubbly Hooves cried joyfully, and pranced over to the yellow pony.
As the pair chattered away happily, Princess Celestia turned her attention to her student, a gentle smile on her face. "Twilight Sparkle, have you learned anything special about friendship today?"
"I think I have, Your Highness." Twilight Sparkle smiled back at her, trying to speak over the happy pair who now galloped around the fountain at a breakneck pace. "It can be hard to be a good friend, especially when you have to go against what everypony else is doing. But if your friend really needs you, you need to be there to support them, no matter what!"
"An excellent report, my student!" Princess Celestia beamed, and turned, her wings spreading. "Shall we return to the festival?"
A cry went up through the crowd, and the gathering of ponies moved as one, crying out happily in gibberish as they surged through the streets of Ponyville. Although it was not the last April Fool's Day Festival Twilight Sparkle would ever attend, it was certainly the most exciting.
