I woke up to a strange sound...
...A new sound...
It sounded chaotic, unnerving even. Like the rivers that flowed by our house. Like the rivers that washed out the edges of many previously jagged rocks, smoothing them...
But the river wasn't that close to home...
Though I tried not to pick favorites in the silent rocks around me, in that moment, I wanted to be more like a river rock...
I trotted out of the house, and into the outhouse where the noise was coming from.
"Hey, Maud!" Pinkie ran over to me, grabbed my face, then turned and threw her arm over my whithers. With her other arm, she gestured to the myriad pastries and bowl of punch on the three neatly positioned tables. "You're late to the party!" She grinned...
The changes to the outhouse were interesting... But what was more interesting was Pinkie: my younger sister normally didn't wear her hair that poofy... Normally I liked straight hair, but for her, it seemed somehow fitting...
...The rest of my family seemed different too...
Inkie was spinning with a strange look on her face. The corners of her mouth were turned up and her teeth were barred. Her eyes also bent upwards somehow, resisting gravity...
Blinkie was wearing a similar grin, but her eyes felt... calmer. They still resisted gravity in the same way Inkie's did, but less so...
Blinkie stood on her hind legs, and punched the air like one would punch the ground.
Mom and dad were similar... but somehow different...
They danced in circles, holding hooves with each other...
They felt more like the fresh igneous rocks from young volcanoes as they tumbled together. Inkie, Blinkie, and I on the other hoof were like crystals grown over time... meticulously tended to in a dark, warm cave... This was a confusing comparison though: mom and dad were much older than us, while crystals took very long to form... Then again, how long did igneous rocks take to form?
"Uh..." Pinkie waved her hoof in front of my face, "Maud?"
Suddenly, Pinkie no longer had those upturned features on her face that confused me so much. Now she was wearing those wide eyes and those downturned lips she often wore...
But this time... it was different...
Her eyes were directed at me instead of the ground.
"Do you not like the party?" She asked.
...
I looked left and right. There were things I didn't understand... but then, I never did jump into a river before... I knew better than to jump into a real one.
Pinkie had changed the outhouse into an alien world, and my family changed with it. They were just as new and somewhat scary as the tables and pastries, but somehow this new world felt welcoming...
...Pinkie was the river. My family were pebbles carried in her flow, tumbling together and slowly losing their jagged edges... becoming smooth...
I was still beside the river. I was as jagged and unyielding as any boulder...
...But just this once, I would let the winds tumble me...
...Just this once, I would fall into the river...
The corners of my mouth turned up.
I felt my face rise by itself... slightly...
Pinkie tilted her head. I guess my expression wasn't like the rest of the family's...
But Pinkie asked me a question, and she expected an answer...
What was that word that Pinkie always mentioned? That word that she always used when talking about other ponies? That word I felt was much more fitting for rocks?
Ah... that word...
"I love it," I felt my face rise once more.
"You do?" She asked, and scrutinized my expression once more, as if she were examining a very small pebble... "You do!"
She threw her arms around me and squeezed...
But what was this feeling? It was similar to what I sometimes felt towards rocks, but it was also so different...
...I gasped.
It felt like when I found my first geode...
At first, I thought it was just a lighter rock. I thought that maybe it was sick, so I carried it around for a while, trying to nurse it back to health...
Eventually, I dropped it. I found that it wasn't a rock at all, but a geode...
I felt simultaneously betrayed and relieved: the thing before me was never a normal rock, and it was never sick...
...It was never an ordinary rock...
...And that was okay.
I remembered Pinkie always frowning at the ground... I used to think she was sick, but now she's opened up to us...
And now I know she was never sick.
Pinkie was never a rock, she was a river...
And that was okay.
...
I ran up to my sister and hugged her...
"Maud?" She asked. Her head was tilted, her face was turned. I recognized that expression; she was confused.
The flow around me stopped. My family all turned to look at me.
What was I thinking? I was a boulder, of course I would stop the flow of a river...
...But pinkie didn't stop.
"Aww," She smiled again and moved her head closer to me with wide, twinkling eyes. It was yet another expression I didn't know...
She lightly held my head with her hooves after departing from the hug, "You must really like it..."
One corner of her mouth turned up more than the other, "Well come on!" She grabbed my front hooves, "Let's party!"
I walked by the river again, further this time...
...Much further...
I kept on thinking about Pinkie... How did my jumping in affect her? How would it affect me?
...
There was a small pile of rocks by the edge of the river, further ahead...
...
I looked down at the pile below me...
Each rock had tumbled through the river for who knows how long until it was deposited here. Each rock had been smoothed to differing degrees...
But one of them seemed different: it was too smooth...
...It must have been in the river forever...
...
...It would have to have shrunk after such a long time; it had to have started out much larger...
...
I walked towards the rock that I suddenly felt I had much in common with...
...Had it started out as a boulder, like me?
...Did it dare to let the wind tumble it, to let the water buff it, like I did?
"Hello," I picked up the rock in my hoof and stared at it for a while...
"Boulder..."
...
...I didn't respond: it was a rock.
...But it was my rock...
