Ahem, awhoom, ahoum, a who?
A Houyhnhnm homonym I. A Pony and Pie, no lie!
And a dillydance I do, on this fine morn in town, updown the avenindues of my innuendous ways, in crusscarrants of herds of Ponyville hooftrotters, all a travel in ravellous teeming streams of comfortuitous equanity, amid which I pronk-a-pie, dancing and leaping in salmonpink upstreaming through the Ponyflow!
As I turn the south corner, upturn the corners of mouths. I fight the glums and glumes and I am vectorious with infectious glee. I pass blimpaloons to sillicolts and boldfillies, fold paper darts and kites, sing ditties in spindizzies that loften the harpes and spiracues of fronds and neigh-burrs as I greet the hourdes in passenage and ungdulate amungem.
–Howdy? Very Dee indeed, thankee Berry! A tope of the marening to ye.
–How present to see you again, Turner! Many haply returns!
–What luck, a fresh bud for me? Aurora Rhodopli!
–Ho, Macintosh! Mac in Toffee? A fine candapple! Share in a cakecup, two bits!
So I prattlance a ringly round on streets run on lines laid down by G. Smith as she uptrod the road to market as a filly in years long by. Her courage echoes. Past dances perdure as I retrance their steps that show to me as hoofhints in fiery action. I see bits herenthere of what was distantdone to contect to the willandnow. None can see all; Discord tried once and got such a headcranch he had to oversleep. Thus tread I lighttley withen my meanings, going excerptly where I need to beam. Everything has the space intween, the gutter unmuttered, the shortest possileap parting the momuments that your eyes are too befunneled to see, but I a Pie can. I just try to sillip my way slithely into the justelly presized point between, and place a Pie right there. With so much space where I amn’t, how hard can it be?
Asudden, a doosiance disburbles my equulubrium, my ears swangle and tail swoops low to smack my bellyboobs and carmand my atension… Strangersense is ringling, brash, burnsome and balefully… Eeek! A new hydra at the skirthems of town. We’ll have to convoke a party. A war party. A call to alarums, harum skarums and dispersions! But convergence is called, as the Parensis of Friendship herself, doubtless alarted by mapclap, sounds the call to all on lavendwing above, and so we convenerate about her. From blue sky and amber fields come our strengths steadfast and true, from town our alabestest elegarity and precision, from Froggy Bottom our gelben patience and understanding, and I, I was just pying pankly about so I simply chose to be already there, as our Brightest Brain selects the battle plan.
For this beastie despite its multiferous headlings has little graimadder to knockle between them, and is a natural boring meaniepuss of lowest water, and lacking all conceipts of cordialations cannot be made to accede to Friendship, even when foired from the collossalest Rainbowitzer powered with all the kilophilos my chums and I can muster. Thus The Highly-Cerebral-Egg has rightly-as-reignly construded that strapping on the ole spiked iron hwarshoes is the best way of discompelling the infrequent Hydratic inscurgions. Cry avec and cut loose the Elephants of Harm! Fill it with Eire!
We find the Inhorifungurundulum by course of riverrun, acharge with multi-necked tilting to usward. Whydra? Could be miscarried crusade, extended snailhunt, foalish indiscrecense… but time to admonish later, with last thirty secs. for plainly-recited gold platitudes. But now we are in the thicavet and it is time to show what ponies are made of, not that we are tasty meatmorsels for rumbly monstummies, but that we have pointyshockyflappyhoofy bits that sting! Now Dashie hoofs up a cloud all darcoalish to fire flashzaps; Twi’s harn, redaglow, seizes serpenecks and winds full windsors; AyJay loops swirly hydreads and Rarity and Shy direct silk ropes to entangle maloferous monster tootsies. And I… I sing, a morale chorale, as well I can with just one of my many on the deck, until I entract the intentions of a cross sour head on a low stumpbilly neck.
The longfanged visage descends at me to deliver a buss from its pus-spotted puss, and I buck back hard to deliver a boop to its snottydroopysnoot! But gnarled and snarly its mouth curls wide and its slicky slucky stinkery tongue forks forth and tangles my tail, and keryanks! And just in that manner, like a Bonbon popped into Lyra’s chasmous maw, I am ingusted. Tongundulations surge me past pointy unsizers and mushticators to mouthback, where I scrample at the edge of the throat, clinging at all to stop the fall, carpe uvula! But a gulp unglues my grip and down the hitchless hatch I go! Gashlorp! Grullop! Gwrlumph! and a Hey Nom Nom Nommy! Aslipperslide down the ewslophagunk with a slurbglomgollumorfmurfglump to the deep dank dump of its smellybelly! ALP! An I live, deplorable!
Down here, deep in bellumbeast, it is dark and sickery and ickhory beyond descreption, soured with acrid dribbles of digestives and vaulted with ulcerous maimbranes, amid which I am so ensaddered to see the askelerated remainders of several forest craytures to which the Hydrum had taken its fangsy earlier. So saddened I that I cry for them even in the face of my impending ending by blending, my imminent dispinkering and rehydration. And I cry in such volumnity that I cry myself away, per se, and ere digested give up my ghost.
Whither thou, ghost? So ghost I, with furred spurrited sprites of raccoon and bear and river otter, which beasties had shared with me the gravebog of the hydra’s stummy, we all soar out and away across Illusian Fields. Looking back at the discrant seen of the bitter baddle I see that my dear chooms, distrayed but undanted, have fraughtled the Hydra to the darsty ground, by Jacquelasso and Twi’s-Brighty-Mighty-Lighty secured, and Dear Dynamo Dashie is hurling her mightenmane against the monster’s mausoleic middeln to force it to disgorge my corpus. But more I do not see, for shades of Hades bound are the craytures and me, and we pass into the dark underth togather at the Nethershores.
Now Hades is little like Tartarus, for those admittened here are such gentle souls that stones and Styx can never break, and truth bespoke it is a fair place to afterrest in many retrespectives. But I have promises to bake and friends to keep, and so I do not plan to tarradiddle long on the Blackwater Bank. For if the UnderLaurd catches a hint I am here, he’ll want me to stay foreverevereverandever and try to take me for pomegranted, and no homebody I, but a Pie with a body at home, just lacking a filling for my crust at prestime.
But I sing sanguine, as I have a scheme, for when a pone larves a life of madventures and ‘doring dares and baked awesomes and tightropely-plotted escapades, that pone needs to keep her bets well hedged in case of emergence dire. To turn Durance Vile to Endurance Viable, and gain gumption to gaggle the ghastlies, you pretread the dread-sodden ground, and… Quiz: what’s the usual salution to the hardest problems in Equestria? Make some friends, SillyMillie!
And as Idleon I, with animule escort, appreach the Styxdox, I am shurene and comfordant, for Charon and I have met afore and reached a meeting of the miens, and as I fare my way to the ferry and the cloaked ponsonage awaiting his toll, I bow for psake o’pomposity and spit out before him, not a copper obolus, but a cuppercake, freshwarmyum from my soulstove. His grimace acquires a curl at the tips, and his bright stareglare eyes tip me a wink.
I turn to take my leave of Lethe and am upshorted by soulful creyeturs wistfulling my way, which gives me not long to pause, for it is supersad that my bestest, bazom chums are missing me above, and I wish to reassurme to them and ease their keenings! But these my Shadebound compandres, and all the shourelocked rolmers lacking the fare to pass, they too are sad, and may be humbglum evermore unless they receive a stuperiffous Welcome to Hades party. And so I tarry just a’twhile, and from meangre scantlings ascrembled from shoredriftings and jetsam, I knock together a minispread of pleasure and fun, aidumented with cakage from my secret spaces and a spray of confruttage from my spiritual Partyretta. And so cheersome feels are spread among lost shoresouls, and Charon upends so far as to permit use of his ferry for playing at pirates. Aboom and avast ere I arroint, and splashing of cannolishot! (But always with the Pink slimbelly dodging the wettest splooshes, for Styxwater may also be mixwater, and unlike the Shadebound I am not ready to Lethe behind my recollects of the Livenworld.)
At party’s end, as Charon, well enbribed with copious cakercups, ferries them all to the farthest of all shores, I bywave across the waters to my new friends I will somedaway see again when my fineral has been funalized, and then I tack the track back, and point my solely soul to the wayhomehole.
No dillydance suits my escape; it is a dourdle of grimmy grimey slimey mishmesh through which I must thread, for as cupcakes must always taste deluscious, and medications must taste gagruss enough to call for a cupcake chaser, a reroute from Hades must be frighted with pearils. Through dreadulance I shall not enhobble with names I pink my way faerfully, on full duesy alertness for ordures of Tartar source, or brays from the Fae realms, all of which may mistract or sidetempt me or trick me into retropeeking. But I am skelled at passing intertweens as I affirmentioned, and I make of my innersoulf a bubble, a baulb of cheersome giggles, and so, swirled and chirled and turmled as I may be, yet I rise, roise, roister my way back from the shady layers to waird the wards, to yeastily yearn, to swell with japes of joy and touch the houter hair again. Surf is up! And like a cork from a grand green isle, up I pop in Ponyville again…
To see nowt but night, an dark, and nowhere starlights! Luna’s dimshed the whole sky! She must not feel like twining or shinkling either. With her evening mourning me, I tread the streets over lines where G. Smith trotted home with bits in her bag long agos ago (her canter endures), sensing the layout of where I am laid out and walking without thinking as a horse will, and find myself anearing my dear Sugarcube home. But there my harpbeat quavers and my spectrical eyes flood until the world quivers, for the whole town is there, every last harse from teenyfoaly to cronepone, all spalling out from S. Cube Coroner into the streets, and they are all here and wailping together and all I see around me huddlong in grief are ponies I know, allaeveryponathum my friends, and my tears would gutterush down the streets did I have my body back yet. It makes me so sad, straighthair sad, which is good because now I can tell sad me, you see? This is how they will truefeel when you really do go, and happme and sadme burst out wailing together in my own of each other’s arms, for none other can touch me yet. So unscene and unherd I keen with them until I am all sadappy, for soon I will rescore their harpes and upcurl their pieholes again. I pass ghostly through their grieving flanks and enter the Cake’s side parlor where those dearest and nearest see me here, rest.
Inside, there is a press o’ pones, and tables piled with refraichments, for the Cakes have outpulled the stops and the Apples have unstopped the casks and the Davenports have surplied the fainting cushions and all around have brought at least a plate for the only Ponyvillewide party I have ever had the misfort to inaugulate in this manner. At a podulum, Twilight is sobbing in the midriff of her eulogizing which is elevendy pages long so she must be so upset and Dash and AyJay vie to outcider all the insiders and Shy and the Family Pie share commisery and withers to cry on as Rares retales a story to Starlight and Spike which is half smiles and half sobs, all around Maud of mood unmoved, though to me her grief is plaintsome chiseled in her stolithography.
I ancroach the bier, where lies my poor soullack incorporation, reclubbered from the Hydra’s haggis, probably by aid of Zecora’s Heremetics. I hope my poor bloody body buddy emerged from the less holesome end. It looks well enough, besconced in this supernaleato coffin, inlétaglioed with my fannyballoons. My mane is mainly matted and astuck with points of combteeth and brushbrist, whichby I surmuse that Rarity’d tried to tame my tangle, and with all the terreffort I put into manecare (and all the random tchotchkes I put into it) I cast her no blushame for giving it up as a capital Jay-ob. Pretty darned perfect for a Pinkawake.
My ghost eyes roll over my me, seeking the seemliest point of reentry, and at the distral end I seem to see the finale of be, where I see… ice cream, my only emperor, strowburypink in a bowl at the table near my rear, and I perceive a kween jape, a once-in-alarftime prankapow, and I wait until Dashie is making her way past for another mug, and give her glazeyed puss a little hint of a Boo, and she falls backward onto the table and flips the bowl of creamice up over my restful head as I dive swiftly back in and reambulate the old pumps and unbink the foires. All aiyes follow the floight of the swobbly frostly bowl as it sails over me and they garsp with arror at the inceptulant dissplutcheon of my recumbering remains!
But lightenup quick I extrunge my neck with jaws agawp for to wrap my slurpentine tongue around the berrychilliyum, and down it goes into my gullop with a smarfglarfglobberglump! And so I a-wake for friends forsaken, and shake my head as they quake at my surprising arising. I stand bowlhatted, whole, lips creamcold, and the old ticker recounts the seconds of my life and laughter as it didafore, and their stunneled faces widen with smiles and enlight with joys and laughcry with grieforgone as I spring in dillydance again among them and sing out:
–My love to you all, and did you think I was dead?
And Whack! Hurrah! Thence, there was lots of fun at Pinkamena’s Wake!
~Fin~
Author's Note
As promised, here is a partial annotation of Pinkamena’s Wake. I may add to this document if readers so request. If you want to approach the story as a puzzle, here lie potential spoilers.
Annotations
Ahem, awhoom, ahoum, a who?
A Houyhnhnm homonym I. A Pony and Pie, no lie!
And a dillydance I do, on this fine morn in town, updown the avenindues of my innuendous ways, in crusscarrants of herds of Ponyville hooftrotters, all a travel in ravellous teeming streams of comfortuitous equanity, amid which I pronk-a-pie, dancing and leaping in salmonpink upstreaming through the Ponyflow!
The Houyhnhnm are a race of sapient horses in Gulliver’s Travels. Pinkie seems to be saying that she is like them in outer appearances, but perhaps not below the surface…
dillydance: This just popped into my head without conscious construction. I see elements of silly, dilly-dally and dalliance.
pronk: To leap straight up.
As I turn the south corner, upturn the corners of mouths. I fight the glums and glumes and I am vectorious with infectious glee. I pass blimpaloons to sillicolts and boldfillies, fold paper darts and kites, sing ditties in spindizzies that loften the harpes and spiracues of fronds and neigh-burrs as I greet the hourdes in passenage and ungdulate amungem.
vectorious: portmanteau of victorious and vector, as in communicator of an infectious condition (here, laughter).
ungdulate: undulate + ungulate, a term for hoofed mammals.
–Howdy? Very Dee indeed, thankee Berry! A tope of the marening to ye.
–How present to see you again, Turner! Many haply returns!
–What luck, a fresh bud for me? Aurora Rhodopli!
Aurora Rhodopli: Refers to Aurora Rhododactylos, “Dawn with rosy fingers,” a Homeric reference to red rays in the sky at sunrise. Rhodopli roughly means Rosy-hooves.
–Ho, Macintosh! Mac in Toffee? A fine candapple! Share in a cakecup, two bits!
So I prattlance a ringly round on streets run on lines laid down by G. Smith as she uptrod the road to market as a filly in years long by. Her courage echoes. Past dances perdure as I retrance their steps that show to me as hoofhints in fiery action. I see bits herenthere of what was distantdone to contect to the willandnow. None can see all; Discord tried once and got such a headcranch he had to oversleep. Thus tread I lighttley withen my meanings, going excerptly where I need to beam. Everything has the space intween, the gutter unmuttered, the shortest possileap parting the momuments that your eyes are too befunneled to see, but I a Pie can. I just try to sillip my way slithely into the justelly presized point between, and place a Pie right there. With so much space where I amn’t, how hard can it be?
her courage echoes: a reference to the HCE theme in FW, where the initials of the main character, Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, appear at points in the work. Past Dances Perdure encodes the initials of the protagonist of this work.
amn’t: a more grammatically correct, though less euphonious, version of ain’t.
Asudden, a doosiance disburbles my equulubrium, my ears swangle and tail swoops low to smack my bellyboobs and carmand my atension… Strangersense is ringling, brash, burnsome and balefully… Eeek! A new hydra at the skirthems of town. We’ll have to convoke a party. A war party. A call to alarums, harum skarums and dispersions! But convergence is called, as the Parensis of Friendship herself, doubtless alarted by mapclap, sounds the call to all on lavendwing above, and so we convenerate about her. From blue sky and amber fields come our strengths steadfast and true, from town our alabestest elegarity and precision, from Froggy Bottom our gelben patience and understanding, and I, I was just pying pankly about so I simply chose to be already there, as our Brightest Brain selects the battle plan.
A call to alarums… A call to arms + Alarums and excursions, a Shakespearian stage direction indicating that the actors should portray readying for battle, + Harum Skarum, impetuous, reckless. See also Alarums and Diversions, a James Thurber title.
For this beastie despite its multiferous headlings has little graimadder to knockle between them, and is a natural boring meaniepuss of lowest water, and lacking all conceipts of cordialations cannot be made to accede to Friendship, even when foired from the collossalest Rainbowitzer powered with all the kilophilos my chums and I can muster. Thus The Highly-Cerebral-Egg has rightly-as-reignly construded that strapping on the ole spiked iron hwarshoes is the best way of discompelling the infrequent Hydratic inscurgions. Cry avec and cut loose the Elephants of Harm! Fill it with Eire!
kilophilos: kilo, thousand, + philos, Love/Friendship. An attempt to quantify Rainbow Power. One milliphilon is probably the amount of energy it takes Pinkie to welcome a new friend to Ponyville.
inscurgions: incursions + scourge
We find the Inhorifungurundulum by course of riverrun, acharge with multi-necked tilting to usward. Whydra? Could be miscarried crusade, extended snailhunt, foalish indiscrecense… but time to admonish later, with last thirty secs. for plainly-recited gold platitudes. But now we are in the thicavet and it is time to show what ponies are made of, not that we are tasty meatmorsels for rumbly monstummies, but that we have pointyshockyflappyhoofy bits that sting! Now Dashie hoofs up a cloud all darcoalish to fire flashzaps; Twi’s harn, redaglow, seizes serpenecks and winds full windsors; AyJay loops swirly hydreads and Rarity and Shy direct silk ropes to entangle maloferous monster tootsies. And I… I sing, a morale chorale, as well I can with just one of my many on the deck, until I entract the intentions of a cross sour head on a low stumpbilly neck.
riverrun: First word of FW (or perhaps the center?)
Whydra?: “Why is the Hydra here?” compacted into one word, because I could.
Full Windsor: A kind of knot for a necktie.
The longfanged visage descends at me to deliver a buss from its pus-spotted puss, and I buck back hard to deliver a boop to its snottydroopysnoot! But gnarled and snarly its mouth curls wide and its slicky slucky stinkery tongue forks forth and tangles my tail, and keryanks! And just in that manner, like a Bonbon popped into Lyra’s chasmous maw, I am ingusted. Tongundulations surge me past pointy unsizers and mushticators to mouthback, where I scrample at the edge of the throat, clinging at all to stop the fall, carpe uvula! But a gulp unglues my grip and down the hitchless hatch I go! Gashlorp! Grullop! Gwrlumph! and a Hey Nom Nom Nommy! Aslipperslide down the ewslophagunk with a slurbglomgollumorfmurfglump to the deep dank dump of its smellybelly! ALP! An I live, deplorable!
unsizers and mushticators: incisors and masticators.
carpe uvula!: seize the uvula (that dangly bit at the back of your throat).
ALP! Anna Livia Plurabelle is another FW character. She is referenced here by acronym and punny words.
Down here, deep in bellumbeast, it is dark and sickery and ickhory beyond descreption, soured with acrid dribbles of digestives and vaulted with ulcerous maimbranes, amid which I am so ensaddered to see the askelerated remainders of several forest craytures to which the Hydrum had taken its fangsy earlier. So saddened I that I cry for them even in the face of my impending ending by blending, my imminent dispinkering and rehydration. And I cry in such volumnity that I cry myself away, per se, and ere digested give up my ghost.
Whither thou, ghost? So ghost I, with furred spurrited sprites of raccoon and bear and river otter, which beasties had shared with me the gravebog of the hydra’s stummy, we all soar out and away across Illusian Fields. Looking back at the discrant seen of the bitter baddle I see that my dear chooms, distrayed but undanted, have fraughtled the Hydra to the darsty ground, by Jacquelasso and Twi’s-Brighty-Mighty-Lighty secured, and Dear Dynamo Dashie is hurling her mightenmane against the monster’s mausoleic middeln to force it to disgorge my corpus. But more I do not see, for shades of Hades bound are the craytures and me, and we pass into the dark underth togather at the Nethershores.
Whither thou goest… The Bible, Ruth 1:16
Now Hades is little like Tartarus, for those admittened here are such gentle souls that stones and Styx can never break, and truth bespoke it is a fair place to afterrest in many retrespectives. But I have promises to bake and friends to keep, and so I do not plan to tarradiddle long on the Blackwater Bank. For if the UnderLaurd catches a hint I am here, he’ll want me to stay foreverevereverandever and try to take me for pomegranted, and no homebody I, but a Pie with a body at home, just lacking a filling for my crust at prestime.
pomegranted: Pinkie is referring to the legend of Persephone, Goddess of Spring, who ate three pomegranate seeds while kidnapped by Hades and who thus ever after had to spend a third of the year in the underworld, with her absence from Earth causing fall/winter.
But I sing sanguine, as I have a scheme, for when a pone larves a life of madventures and ‘doring dares and baked awesomes and tightropely-plotted escapades, that pone needs to keep her bets well hedged in case of emergence dire. To turn Durance Vile to Endurance Viable, and gain gumption to gaggle the ghastlies, you pretread the dread-sodden ground, and… Quiz: what’s the usual salution to the hardest problems in Equestria? Make some friends, SillyMillie!
And as Idleon I, with animule escort, appreach the Styxdox, I am shurene and comfordant, for Charon and I have met afore and reached a meeting of the miens, and as I fare my way to the ferry and the cloaked ponsonage awaiting his toll, I bow for psake o’pomposity and spit out before him, not a copper obolus, but a cuppercake, freshwarmyum from my soulstove. His grimace acquires a curl at the tips, and his bright stareglare eyes tip me a wink.
Idleon: Pun of eidolon, a spirit form.
psake o’pomposity: A psychopomp is a personage who escorts newlydead souls into the afterlife. Charon is one example. He would charge a copper coin (obol) to ferry a soul across the river Styx and into Hades. This underlies the custom of putting coins on the eyes or in the mouth of a dead person to enable them to pay the toll.
obolus: obol + bolus, a lump of food in the mouth.
I turn to take my leave of Lethe and am upshorted by soulful creyeturs wistfulling my way, which gives me not long to pause, for it is supersad that my bestest, bazom chums are missing me above, and I wish to reassurme to them and ease their keenings! But these my Shadebound compandres, and all the shourelocked rolmers lacking the fare to pass, they too are sad, and may be humbglum evermore unless they receive a stuperiffous Welcome to Hades party. And so I tarry just a’twhile, and from meangre scantlings ascrembled from shoredriftings and jetsam, I knock together a minispread of pleasure and fun, aidumented with cakage from my secret spaces and a spray of confruttage from my spiritual Partyretta. And so cheersome feels are spread among lost shoresouls, and Charon upends so far as to permit use of his ferry for playing at pirates. Aboom and avast ere I arroint, and splashing of cannolishot! (But always with the Pink slimbelly dodging the wettest splooshes, for Styxwater may also be mixwater, and unlike the Shadebound I am not ready to Lethe behind my recollects of the Livenworld.)
Partyretta: Beretta is a noted manufacturer of firearms, including pistols. Pinkie apparently lacks access to her Party Cannon at present.
lost shoresouls: Souls that lacked the means to pay Charon his fare were doomed to wander the earthly shores of the Styx, sometimes reappearing to the living as ghosts.
Lethe behind my recollects… The river Lethe caused souls who drank from it to forget their past lives, permitting them to seek reincarnation.
At party’s end, as Charon, well enbribed with copious cakercups, ferries them all to the farthest of all shores, I bywave across the waters to my new friends I will somedaway see again when my fineral has been funalized, and then I tack the track back, and point my solely soul to the wayhomehole.
No dillydance suits my escape; it is a dourdle of grimmy grimey slimey mishmesh through which I must thread, for as cupcakes must always taste deluscious, and medications must taste gagruss enough to call for a cupcake chaser, a reroute from Hades must be frighted with pearils. Through dreadulance I shall not enhobble with names I pink my way faerfully, on full duesy alertness for ordures of Tartar source, or brays from the Fae realms, all of which may mistract or sidetempt me or trick me into retropeeking. But I am skelled at passing intertweens as I affirmentioned, and I make of my innersoulf a bubble, a baulb of cheersome giggles, and so, swirled and chirled and turmled as I may be, yet I rise, roise, roister my way back from the shady layers to waird the wards, to yeastily yearn, to swell with japes of joy and touch the houter hair again. Surf is up! And like a cork from a grand green isle, up I pop in Ponyville again…
cork from a grand green isle: Cork, Ireland, once home to James Joyce’s father.
To see nowt but night, an dark, and nowhere starlights! Luna’s dimshed the whole sky! She must not feel like twining or shinkling either. With her evening mourning me, I tread the streets over lines where G. Smith trotted home with bits in her bag long agos ago (her canter endures), sensing the layout of where I am laid out and walking without thinking as a horse will, and find myself anearing my dear Sugarcube home. But there my harpbeat quavers and my spectrical eyes flood until the world quivers, for the whole town is there, every last harse from teenyfoaly to cronepone, all spalling out from S. Cube Coroner into the streets, and they are all here and wailping together and all I see around me huddlong in grief are ponies I know, allaeveryponathum my friends, and my tears would gutterush down the streets did I have my body back yet. It makes me so sad, straighthair sad, which is good because now I can tell sad me, you see? This is how they will truefeel when you really do go, and happme and sadme burst out wailing together in my own of each other’s arms, for none other can touch me yet. So unscene and unherd I keen with them until I am all sadappy, for soon I will rescore their harpes and upcurl their pieholes again. I pass ghostly through their grieving flanks and enter the Cake’s side parlor where those dearest and nearest see me here, rest.
an dark and nowhere starlights: From the first page of Algis Budry’s novel of identity, duplication, paranoia and defiance of death, Rogue Moon.
Inside, there is a press o’ pones, and tables piled with refraichments, for the Cakes have outpulled the stops and the Apples have unstopped the casks and the Davenports have surplied the fainting cushions and all around have brought at least a plate for the only Ponyvillewide party I have ever had the misfort to inaugulate in this manner. At a podulum, Twilight is sobbing in the midriff of her eulogizing which is elevendy pages long so she must be so upset and Dash and AyJay vie to outcider all the insiders and Shy and the Family Pie share commisery and withers to cry on as Rares retales a story to Starlight and Spike which is half smiles and half sobs, all around Maud of mood unmoved, though to me her grief is plaintsome chiseled in her stolithography.
I ancroach the bier, where lies my poor soullack incorporation, reclubbered from the Hydra’s haggis, probably by aid of Zecora’s Heremetics. I hope my poor bloody body buddy emerged from the less holesome end. It looks well enough, besconced in this supernaleato coffin, inlétaglioed with my fannyballoons. My mane is mainly matted and astuck with points of combteeth and brushbrist, whichby I surmuse that Rarity’d tried to tame my tangle, and with all the terreffort I put into manecare (and all the random tchotchkes I put into it) I cast her no blushame for giving it up as a capital Jay-ob. Pretty darned perfect for a Pinkawake.
Heremetics: Hermetic (relating to a particular tradition of Magic) + emetic, a medicine designed to induce vomiting.
inlétaglioed: In Watership Down, by Richard Adams, Inlé is the rabbit version of the afterlife. Intaglio refers to engraving an image, often for use as a printing plate.
supernaleato: super-neato [pinkeism] + supernal [celestial]
surmuse: surmise + muse
My ghost eyes roll over my me, seeking the seemliest point of reentry, and at the distral end I seem to see the finale of be, where I see… ice cream, my only emperor, strowburypink in a bowl at the table near my rear, and I perceive a kween jape, a once-in-alarftime prankapow, and I wait until Dashie is making her way past for another mug, and give her glazeyed puss a little hint of a Boo, and she falls backward onto the table and flips the bowl of creamice up over my restful head as I dive swiftly back in and reambulate the old pumps and unbink the foires. All aiyes follow the floight of the swobbly frostly bowl as it sails over me and they garsp with arror at the inceptulant dissplutcheon of my recumbering remains!
see the finale of be: Reference to The Emperor of Ice-Cream by Wallace Stevens, which is also about a wake.
reambulate: reanimate + amble
Note: The last few paragraphs loosely follow the original ballad, Finnegan’s Wake, on which Joyce based his novel. In the ballad, a hod-carrier named Finnegan is struck on the skull and presumed dead. At his wake, a fight erupts and liquor is splashed on him, at which he wakes up and curses everyone for thinking he was dead. I originally had Pinkie being splashed all over with ice cream, but Morning Sun suggested that she gulp it down instead, and I have adopted this excellent suggestion.
But lightenup quick I extrunge my neck with jaws agawp for to wrap my slurpentine tongue around the berrychilliyum, and down it goes into my gullop with a smarfglarfglobberglump! And so I a-wake for friends forsaken, and shake my head as they quake at my surprising arising. I stand bowlhatted, whole, lips creamcold, and the old ticker recounts the seconds of my life and laughter as it didafore, and their stunneled faces widen with smiles and enlight with joys and laughcry with grieforgone as I spring in dillydance again among them and sing out:
–My love to you all, and did you think I was dead?
And Whack! Hurrah! Thence, there was lots of fun at Pinkamena’s Wake!
~Fin~
Finis. Again?
