“Weeeeee!” exclaimed Pinkie Pie, bouncing into Twilight’s house/public library/tree. “I just had the awesomest of awesome adventures with Applejack! Who knew studying genies could be so much fun!?!”
“It’s the study of generations, not genies.” Twilight didn’t even bother to look up from the book she was reading.
“Oh!” A sudden flash of realization appeared on the pink pony’s face and she froze in the air mid-bounce. “One sec.” She quickly retraced the path that she’d taken into the building bounce by bounce, making her way, backwards, out of the building.
“Weeeeee!” exclaimed Pinkie Pie, bouncing into Twilight’s house/public library/tree. “I just had the awesomest of awesome adventures with Applejack! Who knew studying generations could be so much fun!?!”
This second entrance was enough to draw Twilight’s attention away from her reading. It even earned a little bit of a giggle. “Oh, Pinkie, research can be very exciting! You never know when you’re going to discover something new, like your relation to the Apple family.”
“Oh! Oh! Have you learned anything else that amazingly fantastic since I left?”
“Well, no. I’ve mostly been copying text from these books into a format that’s a bit easier to sort through.” She pointed at a pile of books then a pile of freshly written scrolls. “Do you want to give me a hoof?”
“Duh!” Pinkie exclaimed. “Is that even a question? How could I refuse an offer to do more genealogy?”
Twilight chuckled at her friend’s unexpected enthusiasm for research. “Just grab one of those books and copy whatever familial relations you find inside onto a scroll, like this.” She used her magic to unfurl a scroll in front of Pinkie. It showed a diagram of a family tree, with pairs of ponies branching off into the names of their children, and then more branches came from the children, indicating the children’s children, and so forth.
Pinkie looked intently at the tree for a few moments, then blinked in surprise. “Wait. Vinyl Scratch and Octavia are sisters?”
Twilight shrugged. “That’s what it says in here.” She levitated a book entitled Musical Families of Canterlot.
“Huh. wouldn’t have guessed that.” Pinkie rubbed her chin for a second, thinking, but then her brain-train got derailed when Twilight called for her assistant.
“Spiiiike!” Her voice carried through the whole tree-house.
“Yeah?” Spike’s slightly quieter response came from a staircase adjoining another room.
“Could you bring a quill and some ink up here for Pinkie?”
“Sure thing!” And within seconds Twilight’s number one assistant arrived at the top of the staircase with two quills and an inkwell. “Here you go, Pinkie.” He smiled as he presented her with the supplies.
“Thanks!” she replied cheerfully.
“Do you want me to get you a book and some scrolls too?”
“Nah, I got it.”
“Alright then. See ya!” With that Spike made his way back downstairs, Twilight went back to reading while occasionally jotting down some notes, and Pinkie approached the large piles of books and scrolls. She lassoed a scroll with the tuft of hair that always hung out in front of her face, and then she turned her attention to the books. They all looked pretty dull and boring. All more or less the same color, and all with names like The Complete Ponyville Birth Records, The Descendents of Celestia, or Origins of the Pegasi. Those didn’t sound like books in which Pinkie was likely to find awesome new information about her friends being related to her.
She turned her attention away from the boring pile and instead cast her gaze about the library. She was soon drawn to a very colorful bookshelf labelled Children. “Hmm,” she thought to herself, “children are an important part of genealogy. I bet Twilight didn’t think of that.” So she picked a book from the shelf. The most colorful one she could find. Holding it in her mouth, she trotted back to her spot with the ink and quills and rolled out her scroll, ready to write. She set the book down and read the title.
“The Ugly Duckling,” it read.
“Oooh!” Pinkie’s eyes sparkled. “I never thought that genealogy could be about animals other than ponies!” She opened the book and began to read.
“Once upon a time, Mama Duck was sitting on her eggs, waiting for them to hatch.” That was all the first page said, but it was accompanied by a pretty drawing.
“Ah ha!” Pinkie exclaimed, grabbing her quill in her mouth and scribbling “Mama Duck” onto the scroll. She set the quill down and turned the page.
“When the eggs hatched, Mama Duck was very proud of all the beautiful baby ducklings.”
“Mmhmm...” Pinkie examined the picture on the page, counting five ducklings. She drew five lines coming from Mama Duck on the scroll. At the end of each line she wrote “Duckling”.
The next page said, “But there was one egg that did not hatch, and Mama Duck was very worried.”
A look of fear appeared on Pinkie’s face as she wrote “Egg” at the end of another line under Mama Duck. What if the egg didn’t hatch? That would be terrible! She anxiously turned the page to find out what happened next.
“But soon enough, the egg began to crack,” it said. Whew! “And when it opened, Mama Duck saw the ugliest duckling she had ever laid eyes on!”
What was wrong with the duckling? How come it was so ugly? Before she read on, Pinkie crossed out “Egg” in the family tree and wrote “Ugly Duckling” in its place. Then she turned the page.
“Mama Duck, disgusted by the ugly duckling, said, ‘Come, children. This duckling is not one of ours.’ And she took the rest of her children far away from the ugly duckling.”
Tears began to form in Pinkie’s eyes. How could Mama Duck just abandon a baby duckling like that? But she fought through her tears. Tears didn’t belong in genealogy. Only sciency stuff like scrolls and books and diagrams belonged in genealogy. So with a heavy heart, she crossed out the line between “Mama Duck” and “Ugly Duckling”. Dreading what was to come, she turned the page.
“So the ugly duckling wandered, calling out, ‘Mama! Mama!’ But no answer came.”
That poor, poor duck! She managed, with a shaking hoof, to draw a new line upwards from “Ugly Duckling”, ending it with a “?” where the parent should be. Unable to fight the tears back any more, Pinkie hurriedly turned the page, hoping against hope that the ugly duckling would find its mama. But what she saw horrified her. There were no more pages! She’d read the whole thing! That was the end!!!
“THIS IS TERRIBLE!” She screamed, startling Twilight enough to make her drop her quill. Pinkie began nervously running in place, breathing heavily. Her eyes rolled wildly, looking for an escape route. They settled on the staircase, and Pinkie practically flew out of the room, appearing as nothing more than a streak of pink.
After a few moments, Twilight heard a confused Spike call from downstairs. “Um, what was that about?”
“I have no idea,” she called back, just as confused as Spike was. She levitated the book Pinkie had been reading, along with the scroll she’d been using, towards herself. She glanced at the diagram on the scroll, then flipped through the book. “Oh no.” She facehoofed. Keeping the book with her, she trotted downstairs, passing Spike on the way out. “Put this in the Damaged Book Closet, please. It seems the last few pages have fallen out. And now,” she sighed, “I have to go find Pinkie. I think she’s just left on a wild duck chase.”
* * *
“Fluttershy! This is an emergency!” Pinkie’s face materialized in front of her so suddenly that Fluttershy sprang out of her chair and fell to the floor with her wings clamped to her sides. She didn’t know how Pinkie had gotten into her cottage, because she would have seen the door open, but she didn’t even have time to think about it before Pinkie started yelling again. “Have you seen any ugly ducklings nearby?”
“Any ugly… ducklings?” Fluttershy’s mixture of shock and confusion made it very difficult for her to respond at all, let alone actually comprehend what Pinkie was talking about.
“Yes! It would look sorta like a regular duckling, but waaaaaaay uglier!”
“Uh… no.”
“Okayletmeknowifyoufindone!” Pinkie shouted as she vanished over the horizon as a pink stripe.
After a few minutes, Fluttershy managed to calm herself down and started to prepare a nice cup of tea. Suddenly she heard a knock at her door. She went to answer, hoping that it would shed some light on Pinkie’s mysterious visit. Much to her relief, she found that it was Twilight waiting on her doorstep.
“Hello, Fluttershy,” her visitor smiled. “Has Pinkie been here recently?”
“Yes, just a few minutes ago. Is something wrong?”
“Nothing serious. May I come in?”
“Oh, certainly!” Fluttershy blushed, stepping aside to let Twilight into her cottage. “I was just making some tea. Would you like some?”
The unicorn considered it for a second. “Actually, tea sounds lovely.”
“Alright, it’ll be ready in a minute. Just take a seat at the table.” Fluttershy disappeared into the kitchen and soon emerged with a steaming tea tray. She poured a cup for Twilight and herself.
“Thank you! Now, would you mind describing Pinkie’s visit?”
“Not at all. She just showed up out of nowhere and asked me if I’d seen any ugly ducklings. When I told her I hadn’t, she was gone as quick as she came. She seemed pretty upset about something.” She gently blew on her tea to cool it off.
“Ah, it is exactly as I predicted,” Twilight muttered to herself. “I figured she’d come to you first because you’re the most experienced with animals.” A curious look from Fluttershy urged her to go on. “You see, Pinkie was helping me with my genealogical research. Well, at least I thought she was helping me. It turns out she was reading The Ugly Duckling, thinking that it was a factual story. I assume you’re familiar with it?” the yellow mare nodded. “The copy she was reading ended at the point where the titular duckling was looking for its real mother. So now Pinkie believes there is an orphaned duckling somewhere out there in desperate need of a family.”
“Oh, I see.” Fluttershy had lost interest in her tea and was now only concerned for her friend’s safety. “You don’t think she would’ve gone looking in the...” she shivered, despite the warm temperature of the room, “Everfree Forest? Do you?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Twilight took a sip of her tea. “I imagine that she’ll just be running all over Ponyville, questioning everypony about whether or not they’ve seen an ugly duckling wandering around. I don’t think she’s in any real--”
“You guys!” An overjoyous Pinkie Pie exploded into the room. “I found him!”
Pinkie’s friends were dumbfounded, from both the surprise of Pinkie’s arrival and from noticing what it was, exactly, that she had found.
“I found the ugly duckling!” she cried again, expecting her friends to be more excited than they were currently acting. After a few seconds’ awkward silence, Twilight was the first to respond.
“Pinkie. That ‘duckling’. Well, it’s... uh...” She turned to Fluttershy in a silent plea for help.
“It’s… it’s… nice,” the shy pegasus squeaked.
Getting over her initial shock, Twilight pulled herself together. “It’s a floatie.”
Pinkie smiled innocently. “Well duuuuuh!” She held up her yellow inflatable duck innertube. “It’s a floatie that’s supposed to look like a duck, and since ducks aren’t normally shaped like donuts this is clearly a very ugly duck. And do you know what the best part is? Since it’s my floatie, that means I must be its mama!”
“So… you think you’re the ugly duckling’s mama?”
“Um, I don’t know how else you could possibly interpret the situation,” Pinkie sassed. To prove her point, she pulled a scroll out of her mane. It was the scroll she’d had in the library, only now the “?” in the family tree had been replaced by “Pinkie Pie (that’s me!)”.
“But Pinkie!” Twilight protested, starting to get annoyed. “The Ugly Duckling is a fictional story, written for children. It’s supposed to teach them that being different isn’t always a bad thing!”
To this, Pinkie seemed a little confused. “Really? That’s not what I got at all.”
Exasperated, Twilight groaned, “The copy you read was missing some pages. In the end of the story, you find out that the duckling was actually a swan all along. He finds his real parents and grows up to be one of the most beautiful animals found in nature.”
“You’re saying the ugly duckling’s parents were swans?” Pinkie was crestfallen.
“Yes,” the unicorn said, thankful that she seemed to finally be getting through to her friend.
“So… that means...” Pinkie pulled an inkwell and quill from her mane, then hesitantly drew two more lines above “Ugly Duckling” on her diagram, then wrote “Swan” at the end of both.
She looked at the diagram. Then she looked at it some more. Slowly… ever so slowly… her face went blank and her eyes drifted away from the scroll. She turned, placed the inflatable duck upon her head, and walked out the door without saying a word.
* * *
To this day, Twilight and Fluttershy swear that they literally heard something snap inside Pinkie’s brain that day. Nopony will ever know for sure what happened in that funny little head of hers, but almost everypony in Equestria has heard of her at some point. Within a year, Pinkie Pie became Ponyville’s number one tourist attraction, with ponies coming from far and wide just to find out for themselves if the stories were true.
You see, for some reason they find it hard to believe that there actually exists a pony living in a pond who perpetually wears an inflatable duck innertube on her head, and that if you try to speak to her, all she’ll ever say in reply is:
“Honk! I’m a swan!”
But I assure you; It’s absolutely true.
The End.
Author's Note
I wrote this for the Equestria Daily Writer's Training Ground #003. The prompt was that Pinkie Pie was helping Twilight study genealogy when she discovered another surprising familial connection.
I mean, I guess my story does technically follow that prompt, but I don't think it's really what they were hoping for.
Anyway, enjoy! (If you can)
