It was a dark and stormy night, full of portents. It was a dark and stormy night full of portents in somepony else’s story. In Pinkie Pie’s it was bright and sunny, the birds were chirping in the trees, the frogs were croaking from the lilies of the stream and the only portents to speak of belonged to the Crusaders: they invited her camping all the time and those tents never had any money in.
Pinkie Pie stuck her shovel in the soft earth and leaned against it. She wiped her brow of sweat and grinned at the hole she had dug.
It was a fine hole, which she could give herself the credit for. It was a fine hole especially because it could not be mistaken for anything else. It wasn’t a hole to be overlooked, at least, it was a hole that could be looked over, then fell into, which brought a pony to the same result except it didn’t, on account of now being in the hole which they wouldn’t had to have had been if they’d just seen it to begin with, instead of over looking it and, on account of that, now below-looking it.
Pinkie Pie smiled and sweat prickled her face. It was a hot day and she had worked hard. Her moment of congratulatory appreciation appreciated to her satisfaction, she went for the stiff and heavy body of her sister Maud Pie, which she had left in the nearby stream.
Pinkie’s hooves splashed in the refreshing water as she went to fetch her. “You are... so... heavy!” Pinkie Pie cried as she wrested the cold shape of her sister to her back, the weight of it making her stagger side to side, the antics of pony and sister annoying birds and frogs alike.
With a grunt of struggle she managed to heft her sister down onto the precipice, where Maud fell with a thud.
There was a moment where she thought to say something, but spent that moment of thinking to say something thinking of saying something instead of saying it, so nothing was said. By the time she might have said anything she wasn’t thinking of saying anything anymore and had followed the happy fizzing trail of her thoughts somewhere else quite entirely.
“Well, in you go!” was what she did end up saying, huffing as she pushed Maud over the brink. Maud slid about halfway, scraping up a little embankment of really wholesome dirt that held her up from going further. So down followed Pinkie, her wet hooves turning muddy, and pushed again at Maud, causing inadvertently her to tip over and roll the rest of the way down, coming to rest on her side.
“Oops. Sorry, Maud,” she said with a blush, but then she shought - it looks like she’s listening to the earth, now. Besides, Pinkie’s hooves were muddy now, and she didn’t want to dirty Maud with them trying to set her upright.
So Pinkie Pie grabbed her shovel and started tossing soil over her instead. Inspiration struck, so she pushed several smooth stones down in with Maud, and threw hooffuls of pebbles at her also.
A little while later, with the hole’s wholeness nearly returned to non-holesome wholeness, making it very little of a hole anymore, Twilight Sparkle and Fluttershy came walking up the path. Fluttershy had a pitcher of iced tea with ice in also.
Twilight whistled, like Applejack sometimes did when sizing up a job. The hole was gone, but the evidence was there, a patch of freshly turned earth. Twilight pouted. “I could have helped.”
Fluttershy poured an iced tea with ice - the cubes clinked very pleasantly into the glass - and Pinkie Pie took it, draining most of it off in a thirsty guzzling only to immediately pester ‘shy for more, which she clamoured for with her still-muddy hooves. “I know, but I wanted to do it.”
Twilight nodded. She hummed and hawed an agreeable sound that might or might not actually have been agreement. She levitated the shovel and gave it a few experimental swishes in the air. “I’m sure Maud appreciates the help. I’m also sure she doesn’t want you throwing your back out to do that.”
“She doesn’t weigh that much,” Pinkie said, a touch defensively.
“We weighed Maud this morning,” said Fluttershy, an even slighter touch chastisingly. “It’s written down. In her little book.”
Perhaps feeling she’d come on strong, Fluttershy softened the blow of words: “It looks like a nice hole you dug for her. I’m just certain she’s happy with it.”
“It’s a fine hole.” Twilight nodded. “Or I imagine it was, anyway.”
“It was a fine hole,” Pinkie Pie asserted.
They looked at the bare ground a moment. There was again the thought to say something, but everypony thought about saying something instead of saying something until the moment passed. Twilight planted the shovel right in the center. She took a sign out which she had been carrying under her wing and affixed it on the shovel. It read:
By Request of Princess Twilight Sparkle,
Please Do Not Disturb this patch of ground.
Your respect is appreciated.
T. Sparkle.
The signature was a lovely and elegant cursive of which Pinkie Pie had long since been able to forge with nigh-on perfect accuracy, which she never ever did because it was immoral and illegal and too good to pass up on for the odd prank or two or three.
“Thanks for that, Twilight,” said Pinkie Pie, her hoof groping idly for the remaining iced tea, its ice having since become less so in the sunshine. “Maud always does like things to be official.”
“It’s the least I could do.”
They turned away, to head back towards Fluttershy’s cottage. Pinkie nursed the last dregs of tea. “And thank you, Fluttershy. If you hadn’t got that cockatrice to help, Maud’s dream would never have come true. She’s going to write the best geology thesis when we dig her up next month.”
Author's Note
This was written before I knew about Maud's Rocktorate, and I'm very pleased that it fits in so well with that. I hope you have enjoyed the story, and thank you for reading.
