Sugarcube Corner. The sweet treats, the frosted things. Little nibbles, baked with love.
What a change.
I came to Equestria in the scorching part of the summer. My name isn't too important. Equestria is a lot bigger than one little turnip.
I don't remember a lot but I know I was laying on the small stack, enjoying the chill, when I was chosen. A soft hand grabbed me by the bulb and spun me around. Next thing I know, I'm hiding in the shade of a spinach sack, a knob of carrots are leaning on my bulb, and my stalk is pushing flush up into a thick, lean beef roast.
That really got my fructose up, I'll tell you.
Well, like everyone else, I took my ride in the hot minivan with dignity. It's a long, harsh road we all must travel someday. When we reached the end of the line, I was sorted into the crisper, and I thought that was that. A decent life for a turnip. I had no regrets.
Time isn't cruel, not really. She's just conflicted, and she does the best she can with what we give her. And that means, from time to time, old roots like me need to move over to make way for the younger generation.
Someone had other plans for me, it seems.
I had cleared my mind and accepted my fate, and I was enjoying the darkness and silence. In the silence of your mind you can always find peace. That's important to remember when times are dangerous and everything seems out of your control.
Suddenly the light broke in on me, and the noise started. I was grabbed by a small pair of hands and hoisted up, up and out of my chilly hospice. I thought my time had come at last. It was only when I saw a child's face attached to the small pair of hands that I realized something had gone wrong.
No sooner had I begun to puzzle out what was happening, than I was hurled stalk-first into a porcelain bowl filled with shallow water. My bulb was bruised, and thinking became difficult. Then I heard a ferocious roar, and the still water began to crash violently all around. In the clamor and wake I was swept away, down a very cramped and darkened hole.
The smell made me wrinkle my leaves.
I felt myself falling for a long time. I can't say how long. The oppressive darkness and chaotic torrents of water seemed to blur even time and space. I suppose when you're caught in such a vortex, swimming in the eye of death itself, most anything can happen.
At long last, however, I saw the light at the end of the tunnel.
I fell straight down into the light, which seemed blindingly harsh, and found a soft landing. A pillow, on a bed. In a bedroom. From the looks of it, a girl's bedroom.
I looked beside me, and found the girl.
She was pink, with swirling little curls of hair tossed chaotically into a happy mess, each little cyclone a reflection, a microcosm of the harrowing road I had just traveled. She laid on her back, spread eagle, snoring aggressively despite the sunlight and breeze which poured in from the open window.
Also, she was a pony.
There I laid, silent on her pillow, and watched as she slept. I couldn't exactly do anything else. I just kept watching her, and wondering where I was.
As I remained in wonder, a noise erupted in my mind, and echoed around before coalescing into speech.
You're in Equestria now. Welcome!
Someone was speaking to me. I wondered who it was.
It's me, silly! Pinkie Pie!"
I looked again. The pony girl was now standing up on her bed, facing me and smiling.
No one had ever spoken to me before. This was new.
First time for everything, right? C'mon, Mr. Turnip, let's get you a nice bath! You must have had a long flight...
The words struck me oddly, and I felt unsettled. I had a dark premonition that everything was about to become much stranger before it returned to normal.
Sugarcube Corner. What a change.
Some time had passed, and I had gotten a grip on the names of things around there. The girl was Pinkie Pie, the owners were Mr. and Mrs. Cake, the alligator was Gummy, and the regular customers were Mayor Mare and Princess Celestia.
I was enjoying my new life, and instead of preparing to die, I was making plans for the future. I was even learning to love.
That is, until everything went to hell.
One morning Pinkie Pie stumbled out of bed. She had a shadowy demeanor, one that I had never yet seen darken her face.
"Donut..." she mumbled, in a scarcely coherent gibber. "Do...nut."
In a seeming sleepwalk, she picked me up and stuck me on her back. Then she hobbled across her bedroom and down the stairs. I felt eccentric shocks pulse through me as her hooves hit the floor, and I worried tremendously.
"Donut!" Pinkie yelled, as she jumped up without warning, nearly bucking me off.
I began to think. I wondered whether there was anything I could do to snap Pinkie out of the unfortunate daze in which she seemed to be trapped.
But alas, I was still just a turnip. There was nothing.
Pinkie wandered downstairs, straight to the cabinet at Sugarcube Corner where the day-old donuts were stored. I watched, with an inexplicable sense of apprehension, as she reached her hoof out toward a sprinkled, strawberry-glazed one. Closer and ever closer her outstretched hoof inched toward the fateful donut, while I sat helpless on her back, a silent witness to everything.
If I could have stopped the act somehow, if I could only have screamed for help, by God, I would have!
But the contact was made. And Pinkie Pie—that poor lost girl, my only friend, whom I recall nightly in the fog of sleep—Pinkie Pie retrieved that donut, and pulled it toward her mouth, and bit down on it.
And she ate the whole thing.
Once Pinkie ate that donut, her eyes snapped open, as if a sudden vision had gripped her whole being, She sat down, throwing me off her back, and spun on her butt, hugging her knees, rocking back and forth like a big-screen depiction of a mental patient.
"Mom..." she whimpered, the tears flowing from her eyes. "Dad..."
Looking back, I like to think that, at that point in the morning, she was fighting against those forces which would eventually engulf her.
She was a strong-souled girl, and she would never have given in while she still had a choice. Her heart was too full of love, especially love for her family. But I think she knew she would lose the battle, and she was crying for the tragedy of what she was about to do.
"Why..."
It was then that Pinkie's eyes changed. What before had been a pure-hearted, wide-eyed stare into tragedy took on a more menacing aspect. An aspect of resolve; of pride; of anger; terrible to say, even an aspect of vengeance.
When I saw her eyes, I began thinking furiously. She had always been able to read my thoughts before. I was hoping that, just maybe, she would hear my thoughts and that one of them could snap her out of her state.
Pinkie's head jerked and tossed. "WHY!?" came the staccato bursts of voice, pregnant with emotion. "WHYYY!?"
I sat silently in my place, and did nothing. Just a useless turnip.
"MOMMY! DADDY!! WHY DID YOU NEVER FEED ME ANY DONUTS!?!!?"
A static hiss spread through the world, as the dimensions of space and time wavered. In and out went the lifeline of the universe, the signal of physical laws exerting themselves to compensate for the delay. The implicit reciprocity incipient, eggnog, like kaiser a relic forsooth distortion corrected barometer tessellation refracted extrusion directed forensic anomalous incisor—
Pinkie and I floated from outside of the universe. We were larger than everything that had ever existed.
Pinkie, I thought. Shriveled old turnip that I am, I've never seen anything like this.
There the universe lay before our eyes, a tiny, shimmering cosmic egg.
Don't worry, Mr. Turnip, I heard Pinkie's voice tell me. I'm going to fix everything.
Then, we'll be all alone together.
Vividly I recall the horror, the adrenaline of the moment. Pinkie knew, and I knew that she knew, and she knew that I knew... But, with a single decisive blow, it all came to a swift end.
Pinkie, possessed by the latent rage within her, the rage created by her parents never feeding her a donut, pulled back and let loose. And in that single punch, she punched the entire universe out of existence.
And I alone have escaped to tell thee.
