Pinkie has a dream that leads her to her childhood home. She arrives to find no one there but Maud, who informs her that they have a task their father has given them to complete. He has left an envelope with instructions..or rather, a riddle to solve. The face of the envelope says “For Maud and Pinkie”, then below that, “Luv Igneous/Da
“Igneous? Why don’t you call him Da? Or Dad? Or Father?” Pinkie asks.
“It’s fathers real name,” Maud says, “I always called him Igneous.”
“Oh, ok!” Pinkie says, “He’s always been Da to me.” Pinkie reads the note;
I can run, but never walk.
I have a mouth, but never talk.
I have a head, but never weep.
I have a bed, but never sleep.
What am I?
Pinkie is perplexed by this riddle, and decides that it’s a joke, which in turn prompts her to start searching the house for her father exclaiming, “I get it! I get it! You’re playing hide and seek! Now, wheeeeeere could you beeeeeeee?” She runs up to a closet, flings the door open and shouts triumphantly, “Found ya!” then seeing that the closet is empty, “awwwwww. That’s where he always hid.” She plops herself down on her rump and pouts with a typical perplexed-Pinkie look.
Then Maud chimes in, “A river.”
Pinkie is more confused than ever “Huh?”
Maud explains, “It’s a riddle. You have to find the hidden meaning. I can run, but never walk. I have a mouth, but never talk. I have a head, but never weep. I have a bed, but never sleep. It’s a river. That’s the answer to the riddle.”
Finally Pinkie gets it and exclaims “Awww. That’s clever! Great job, Maud!”
Now it’s Maud’s turn to look perplexed. “But I don’t get it..”
“What!?” Pinkie shouts incredulously, “You just said you got it, now you say you don’t got it..which is it?” She angles a skeptical eye at Maud.
As patient as ever, Maud explains to Pinkie, “I understand the riddle, but I don’t know what the answer is telling us.”
“Oh..hmmmm..” Pinkie furls her brow and thinks for a moment, then opens her eyes wide, “It’s Party Pony Creek!”
“I’m gonna need more information than that, Pinkie.” Maud says, showing a hint of impatience.
“Oh, I understand,” Pinkie says, “The summer that I got my cutie mark, you went off to study rocks at the rock school,”
“Azure Colt Academy,” Maud corrects.
“That’s what I said,” Pinkie counter-corrects, then before Maud can reply, “After you left, Da would take me to Canter-something Creek. I could never remember the name, so I renamed it Party Pony Creek!”
Then, poof! she’s out of the house and on her way to the creek, leaving Maud there who patiently begins counting, “One..Two..Three…”
Pinkie flashes back and grabs Maud by the hoof, “It’s this way. Just a hop, skip and a jump! Now move your little rump!” And she’s off with Maud in tow heading toward the creek.
At the creek, Pinkie and Maud are rustling around in bushes and turning over rocks looking for the next clue.
“This is a creek, NOT a river,” Maud protests as she looks under a large stone then starts studiously examining it.
“It has everything that the riddle said” Pinkie replies. “Da never took me to any rivers.”
“ Igneous never brought me to any creeks,” Maud says, “The rocks here are too…boring”
“So, what did you and Da do? Did he take you anywhere fun?” Pinkie sits down, now interested in this new side of her sister.
“No,” Maud says, “We would sit at the kitchen table and he would think up puzzles for me to solve. He said I had a knack for figuring things out.”
“Liiiiike...jigsaw puzzles?” Pinkie asks quizzically.
“No, more like mind puzzles,” Maud says, “There is a bear who travels south for an hour, then west for an hour, then north for an hour, and he ends up in the same place he started. What color is the bear?”
“How am I supposed to know!” Pinkie howls, “You never told me!”
Maud flashes an uncharacteristic half smile and gives Pinkie the answer, “The bear is white. It is an arctic bear that lives in the northernmost point of Equestria. Igneous always thought up the best puzzles for me to solve.” Her smile widens the slightest bit, then she’s back to her usual self, “So where is this clue that we’re looking for?”
Pinkie taps her chin with her hoof a few times and says “Oh, I know! I know! It’s probably in my Party Pony Creek Emergency Party Planning Kit! I have them hidden all over the place.” She leans in close to Maud and whispers in her ear, “Don’t tell anypony..It’s a secret!”
“Safe with me,” Maud replies as Pinkie heads down to a tree near the creek. Pinkie peers around suspiciously to make sure no one sees her secret stash, then reaches up and yanks down one of the trees branches. After a small click, a compartment in the tree opens and she begins rooting through it as streamers, balloons and various other trinkets fall out, and finally produces another envelope. She reads the front out loud, “For Pinkie and Maud, Luv Igneous/Da” She opens it and reads the note inside to Maud:
I am all about, but cannot be seen.
I can be captured, but never held.
I have no throat, but can be heard.
What am I?
Maud walks to the creek and sits down by Pinkie to think. A breeze ruffles the leaves around them, then the leaves flutter off toward the trail. It’s too much for Pinkie, and she bounds off after them, leaving Maud there by the creek. As Maud watches Pinkie chasing the leaves, she understands the riddle.
“It’s the wind.” She says, too softy for Pinkie to hear. She stands up and calls to Pinkie, “It’s the wind!” That gets Pinkie’s attention and she trots over to Maud.
“The wind?” She says, then to herself, “Da’s secret spot?”
“Secret spot?” Maud asks.
“It’s this way,” Pinkie says motioning down the trail. “It’s a bit of a walk. Lets get going and I’ll tell you about it on the way." As they travel Pinkie fills in the story of Da’s secret spot between bouts of bounding from side to side of the trail, smelling flowers, and chasing squirrels or anything else that caught her attention.
“So, Da would go off on long walks after you left, and one time I followed him. Oh, lookie here!” off to smell a flower “I thought he was going to Party Pony Creek, but he didn’t stop there. He just kept right on walking, and I thought to myself ‘where could he be going?’, so I followed him some more. Hey!” off to chase a butterfly.
At long last, they reach a great cavern with steep sloping walls going down to a distant valley floor, and rocky peaks beyond, reaching up to poke through the clouds. Pinkie is just then concluding her story, “So, I had fallen way behind Da cause there was this awesome little patch of wildflowers. When I finally could see him again, he was standing here, looking down into the canyon. I ran as fast as I could, so I could get here and surprise him, but when I got here, he was gone.”
Maud takes a moment to digest all of this information, then looks down at the valley floor, “How did he get down there?” She asks.
“Not down there,” Pinkie says, nudging Mauds head up toward the peaks on the other side of the canyon. “Up there. There were no clouds that day, and when I got here, there was Da, waaaaaay up there.”
Maud is puzzled, “But, how?”
Pinkie trots over to a tree and picks a single leaf, then trots back to the canyon and throws in. The leaf floats lazily toward the valley floor, then whoosh! It’s whisked up past them toward the peaks.
“I am all about, but can not be seen,” Pinkie intones, quoting the riddle.
“But, how?” Maud asks again.
“I considered lots of options for how I might get up there. Trampoline? Not so much. Hang glider? Well, lets just say it left without me. Then it hit me,” Pinkie reaches into the nearest bush and pulls out a very large bunch of, “Balloons!”
Maud has only a second to consider this before Pinkie has hitched them to the balloons and pushes them off over the canyon. They start to slowly float toward the valley floor, then Pinkie says “You may want to hold on tight,” and whoosh!, the wind catches them and they are buoyed up toward the peaks. No sooner had they reached the top, than pinkie lets go of the balloons and they come down on a plateau at the mountain’s peak. Behind them is the canyon, and the valley below. In front of them there are steep walls on all sides leading down to a small round lake surrounded by the mountain walls.
“Now, here’s the funny part,” Pinkie says, “When I finally got up here, Da was gone again! I looked, and I looked, but no Da, no where. I finally gave up looking for him, only to find that he was already home when I got there. I asked and asked where he had gone after he was here, but all he would say was ‘All in good time, Pinkie. All in good time’”
Maud again takes time to take in all of this new information, then comes to the only conclusion she can think of, “Lets start looking for the next clue. I don’t suppose you have an emergency party supply thingy here?”
“No,” Pinkie sighs, “I never came back here until today.”
They search for the clue, but it is no where to be found. Finally, as the sun sets behind them, sun beams break through the peaks to light up a wall on opposite cliff. There, they see warmly glowing words:
You can have me but cannot hold me,
Gain me and quickly lose me.
If treated with care I can be great,
And if betrayed I will break.
What am I?
“I don’t understand” Maud says, reading the words on the wall.
“You can get it, just think about it for a while” Pinkie says confidently.
“No, I already know the answer. It’s the first riddle Igneous ever taught me. He knows that I know this one. The others were..new. This one isn’t.”
“Then he must still know something about this riddle that you don’t know,” Pinkie says thoughtfully, “What’s the answer?”
Maud repeats the riddle slowly, “You can have me, but not hold me; Gain me, but quickly lose me. If treated with care I can be great, and if betrayed I will break.” She looks at Pinkie, “The answer is ‘Trust’”
Pinkie looks at the riddle, still glowing on the wall, then down to the lake, then back to Maud. Then she is shook by a full body shiver and says “Uh oh. Twitchy, twitch twitch.”
“Twitchy...twitch?” Maud says doubtfully.
Pinkie shivers again, then looks down at the lake below. “It’s a leap of faith,” she says, then looks to Maud, “Sooooo, do you trust me?”
“Of course I do, but I--” No sooner are the words out, than Pinkie thrusts Maud out off of the plateau and over the lake. Maud looks, mildly startled for a moment, then gives Pinkie a quick salute before beginning her fall toward the lake. Pinkie bounces up to the edge, and with a flourish of hooves and tail, she dives off after Maud.
Below, on the lake sits a rowboat. In it are two ponies with fishing rods held out over the water. The air is silent and the water is calm until Splash! Maud hits the water on the right side of the boat. Both ponies look cautiously over the edge of the little boat, then they hear “Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” Splash! as Pinkie hits the water on the left side of the boat. The fishing ponies give each other a concerned look, then shrug their shoulders and go back to fishing.
The momentum of their fall keeps Pinkie and Maud going straight down through the water until they are funneled into a tubular cave, which leads them off to the side and under the mountain, then straight up out of the water, through the air and onto a ledge in a cave inside the mountain. Crystals of every color glow within the cave. They look in wonder at the cave they are in, and are startled when they hear a voice from behind them.
“Right on time!” The girls turn around to see Igneous standing there with a big smile.
Pinkie bounds up to him and says, “That was fun, Da!” and kisses him on the cheek.
Igneous motions for them to come over and sit with him. “I have been concerned about you and Pinkie,” he says to Maud.
“Why?” Asks Maud.
“Maud, you are the oldest,” he says, looking at Maud, then shifting his gaze to Pinkie, “And you are the youngest. You are also as different as any two ponies I’ve ever known. I could see that your differences could be something that might drive you apart. I wanted to show you that your differences need not do that. They can bring you together.”
Maud is staring at her father thoughtfully. After a moment, she says “You knew that I needed to solve the riddles.” Then she looks to Pinkie, who says “And I needed to take the leap of faith. You knew we couldn’t do it on our own, but together we did it.”
“Yes,” Igneous confirms. “You see, your good friends are the family that you choose in life. But your family is the friends that life chooses for you. Sometimes the bonds in a family need to be discovered, just like a riddle needs to be solved. A riddle is confusing until you know the answer, then the answer can’t be missed. You foals have been the greatest gift of my life, and for years, I have pondered how I might bring my two daughters, who were furthest apart, closer together. My time here in Equestria has come to an end. As I leave, the gift I give to you, is each other.
“You’re leaving?” Maud asks, looking concerned.
“Vacation?” Pinkie asks,
Igneous, “No.”
Pinkie, “Business trip?”
Igneous, “No.”
Pinkie, “You’re going someplace that we can’t follow you, at least not yet. We will see you again, but not for a looooong time. This place you’re going is somewhere you can’t return from, right?”
Igneous and Maud share a confused glance and then he answers Pinkie, “Uh, that’s exactly right”
“But…why are you going?” Pinkie asks, now concerned too.
“It’s not my decision to make. When it is time for me to leave this world, I must go. I have no regrets. My time here has been my greatest adventure. Another adventure awaits me, but your adventures here are just beginning.”
A voice says “It is time.”
A soft glow in a corner of the cave grows until they can make out the shape of a white alicorn walking toward them. Maud and Pinkie stare at her, amazed while their father bows his head respectfully and says, “Princess Theia,”
As Theia comes closer, Pinkie notices the mark on her flank is filled with stars and worlds, linked with glowing lines. Theia looks to Pinkie and Maud, then back to their father. “There isn’t usually an audience,” she says in a kindly and soft voice.
“I had one last order of business to take care of, highness.” Igneous says as he gives Pinkie and Maud a wink.
“You are ready, then?” Theia asks with a smile.
“Does it matter?” Igneous responds with a smile.
Theia laughs, and spreads her wings wide as her horn begins to glow and a portal opens up in front of them. “Then lets be on our way, Igneous.”
With a final wave, Igneous and Theia disappear through the portal. The portal closes and Pinkie and Maud are left with the glow of the crystals in the cave.
“I’m going to miss him,” Maud says digging at the ground with her hoof.
“Yeah, me too,” Pinkie replies, “I don’t know where to go from here.”
She looks at Maud sadly. Then Maud surprises Pinkie with a smile and says, “I’ll bet Da left a clue around here somewhere,”
Pinkie beams, and says “Up for an adventure, Maud?”
“Lead on, Pinkie,” Maud says as Pinkie bounds off looking for the next clue.
The End
Author's Note
This story is dedicated to those who have left this world and to those who remain to ensure they are not forgotten.
Feel free to share this if you deem it worthy of a share, but please give attribution to the author (D.L. Steele, that’s me)
Finally, a big thank you to Lauren Faust for creating these characters and the world they inhabit, and to the writers, animators, voice actors, and those behind the scenes who work to keep new episodes coming. It was fun playing for a while in their world.
D.L. Steele
***
Ok, so I made a couple edits and corrections to this story. Many thanks to my editor (that would be my wife, Lisa), who pointed out the continuity problems with Pinkie not knowing her fathers real name (duh!), and my habit of spelling Maud's name inconsistently.
This story idea came to me like most do; while driving in my car to/from work. The impetus for this story comes from a single scene in an episode from season 1 of The Walking Dead. It is a scene where two sisters are fishing in a lake on a small boat. They come to realize that their father taught them different ways to fish, and wonder if it was seeds that their father had laid in an effort to bring them together in spite of their big age difference. It is the reason for the lake in the story and the two ponies fishing..just a hat tip to the source of this idea.
So how does a post-apocalyptic zombie series inspire a story to be told in Equestria? I'm not exactly sure how this occurred to me. There was no 'Ah-ha!' moment. I was just driving home from work with the radio off and the next thing I know I'm thinking about the sisters in the boat on the walking dead, and somehow that merged into a seed for a story about Maud, Pinkie and Igneous. As I fleshed out the specifics of the story, I realized that the occurrence of death in Equestria is something that has been alluded to in the form of there being generations of ponies, some of whom are no longer in this world. Then there is the conspicuous (to me) lack of a Grandpa Smith to go with Granny Smith.
Of course, the idea of a zombie pony noshing on one to end their existence in Equestria would have been going too far, so I thought there could be another way for this transition to occur. Since the rules in Equestria are much different than our world, I tried to find a way that this could fit in with the world. There are alicorns who raise the sun and moon, and pegasi tend to the weather, so I figured magic would be an ideal way for it to happen and an alicorn would be a good fit for the one who would move these ponies to their new world. In trying to find a name for this character, I thought I would go to Greek mythology since it would fit in nicely with the other inhabitants of this world who are obviously derived from there. Theia just seemed to be a good match for this character.
I did consider a lot of different ways I could go with this story idea including having my other favorite pony (Applejack) in the story at one point and all of the mane six being in the last scene with Celestia being the alicorn who moves ponies on to the next world. I thought Celestia is already busy enough, so it would probably be best to come up with a new character who does this job and I thought that it would be more effective to center the story around Maud and Pinkie because this story, after all, is about them.
So that's it. This took about a week to go from idea to finished story, and it was a lot of fun to write.