'Like a Rolling Stone'
Hi.
My name's Pinkamina, but it wasn't my name to begin with. The first Pinkamina was an old rock farmer who's dead now. I'm named after her. I don't really like it, because it doesn't really belong to me. It's better than Diane, which is my other name -- that also belongs to some even older and even deader Pie who farmed rocks.
All Pies are rock farmers. I'm a Pie, so that means when I grow up, I'll be a rock farmer too. I don't really like that, either, but maybe it's a thing that changes when you get older. I used to hate beans and now they're okay, I guess. Maybe when I grow up being a rock farmer will be okay.
It's not okay now, though. Maud keeps trying to tell me how interesting and cool rocks are, how they tell a story about how the ground moved around for thousands and thousands of years, but to me that's not a very interesting story. It's like being late to something that's actually fun, and then everypony there tells you just how fun everything was just before you got there and it's a shame you missed it all. If rocks moved around on their own where I could see, at a speed I could see, with their strata and tectonic plates and other rock things, they might be interesting and cool, but to me they're just rocks.
Well, most of the time rocks are just rocks. I have two groups of rocks with me that are a little more than rocks right now. One is in a little line. Those are my friend rocks. They all have names -- there's Granite, Shale, Pumice, Boulder, Ignimbrite, and Sharon -- and things they like and don't like and want to do with their rock lives. I know they're not really like that, that Shale isn't secretly afraid of the little spiders that show up in the barn sometimes or that Sharon wants to climb up to the top of the tallest mountain in Equestria one day, but it's fun to pretend. I pretend a lot of things.
The other group of rocks is in a pile. They're all flat and smooth and I'm skipping them across the lake one at a time.
I like the lake. It doesn't have a name and it's surrounded by more rocks, but I still like it. It's always calm and flat, except on days when there's a breeze which is almost never. Then I come in with a pile of skipping rocks or maybe just my hoof and I make ripples in the water. I like to watch them spread out over the pond, all the way over to the far side. I sometimes like to drop rocks into the pond and watch my reflection go all strange and different. I like to pretend that, while I can't really see how my face looks, I'm an older Pinkamina who doesn't mind rock farming so much.
Like I said, I like to pretend a lot.
I skip a stone across the lake and it goes tic-tic-tic-plop. Then I hear a voice behind me.
"I thought I would find you here."
That's my big sister Maud. She's also named after some old dead rock farmer. Her name is good for her, though. She likes rocks. She loves rocks, maybe. She's a bit like a rock, the same way you have to read rocks like a very very slow story to understand all of what they want to tell you. It's sometimes very hard to tell just what Maud is thinking or feeling, but you can if you try. I always try. It's a fun game, and I'm pretty good at it.
Maud sits next to me and looks at my groups of rocks. First she looks at the skipping rocks, then the friend rocks, then the skipping rocks again. Then she picks one up and looks at me. I nod, because she's just asked me if these are the rocks she's allowed to toss into the lake and not the rocks I'll get upset over losing. She skips it and it goes tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic and disappears. I try to skip a rock and it goes splunk.
"Am I going to like rocks?" I ask.
Maud turns her head to look at me. Her staring means I should explain some more.
"When I'm a rock farmer."
She turns back to look at the far side of the lake. It's a long time before she says anything, and I almost think she's not going to answer.
"You're not going to be a rock farmer," she tells me.
"But I have to be." And I do. Because I'm a Pie. And all Pies are rock farmers. Always have been, always will be.
"No you don't," Maud says. "You don't care about rocks the way our parents do, or how I do. You make up stories about them and turn them into anything that isn't a rock. You just don't like rocks, Pinkamina."
One time, my dad told me rock farmers were a special breed of farmer, that growing things that weren't alive made them different from all other types of farmers. I wish Pies were any other kind of farmer. You don't have to pretend so hard with things that are alive if you want them to be your friend. It would be easy to have a friend that was a chicken, or a tree. Other farmers have those on their farms.
I feel my face start to get all warm and everything I can see gets blurry. I could be a rock farmer if I knew I'd like the rocks, eventually. When I grow up. But I don't want to be one if how I feel about rocks will never change.
Maud touches my shoulder. She doesn't do that much on her own, but she does always hug back when I hug her first.
"Hey." Her voice is calm. It's nice to listen to. It's hard to be sad or angry anything when Maud talks. "You don't have to cry. And you don't have to be a rock farmer. You can be anything you want to. You don't have to be something you'd hate."
I look at my reflection in the pond. I sniff.
"I don't want to not be a Pie."
"Why would you stop being a Pie?"
"Because all Pies are rock farmers." She should know that. She likes rocks and rock farming way more than I ever will.
"Then you'll be the first Pie that isn't."
She waits until I look up at her before she says anything more.
"That's going to be a big deal," she says.
"This is a thing that I'll only get to do when I'm older, isn't it?" I ask.
"Yes," Maud says, but the way she says it makes it sound like something that's certainly going to happen no matter what instead of something far away that could happen but probably won't. Like I said, it's hard to be sad when Maud talks.
We both look at the still water of the pond. The ripples from the rocks we skipped stopped a long time ago.
Maud looks at my group of friend rocks. She studies each one. She looks like she's really concentrating. Then she points to one.
"Who is this?" she asks.
She doesn't play along with my make-believe rock friends. Ever. She tells me what kinds of rock they are and how old they might be and what made them what they are, but she doesn't play along. Until now.
"That's Boulder," I say.
"Tell me about Boulder."
"He's the youngest in his family. It's a big family, too. He's small now, but one day he'll grow up bigger, and then he'll roll all over Equestria and travel." I skip over the names of Boulder's seven brothers and twenty-three cousins. I'm not sure Maud would want to hear them all. She's patient, but she's not that patient.
Maud looks at Boulder for a long time. Then she looks at me.
"Can I keep him?" she asks.
I'm confused. "Like a pet?"
"Yes."
"I... guess."
Maud picks Boulder up and studies him closely.
"But you have to take good care of him! And play games with him, and... and be a good friend to him."
"I will, Pinkamina."
Then Maud does something I never thought I would see her do -- she talks to Boulder.
"Come on, Boulder," she says, "do you want me to show you around the rock farm?"
I follow Maud back to the farm, at a distance. She talks to Boulder all the way. She tells him things about how rocks are shaped on the farm, what each rock is good for, how we sell them and make more. She doesn't look back at me, but I know she knows I'm there.
I think I understand. I would never like rocks. Maud would never pretend. But she's pretending now. So maybe I can like rocks, at least a little. Or pretend to. Until I'm old enough to not need to be a rock farmer. It might make being on the rock farm not so bad. Okay, even.
I smile a little smile that nopony else sees. She's the best older sister ever.
