A long time ago right on the outskirts of the White Tail Woods, there was a small town that lay on a crossroad, called Meringue. Named after it's founder, Lime Meringue, who, as many of the other town residents, came to rest at the crossroads as part of a caravan. She realized that it was a huge intersection for ponies as they traveled through it to get to the various cities it connected.

The ponies built their shops first, after a while, they extended their shops to accommodate homes. After that, the town was formed. Lime was dubbed as it's founder, even after she refused. Though she came to accept the reliance of the other ponies and gave her guidance to the ponies that needed it.

She was still as business savvy as ever, though, and it shows through her guidance methods. She would be confronted with a problem and would always try to figure how it could be resolved with a pony making a profit. This kept all of the merchants content.

Eventually, more and more ponies started to move into the newly formed town. Even some that weren't merchants. Some claimed that the cities were too fast, others liked the scenery. A few liked to see all the new faces that came through the town.

One family, though, moved there as a teaching method for their son. Not everypony that got their cutie mark was able to provide for a community with their talent. So this Earth pony family moved in to try and help their son gain experience and potentially find a job so that later in his life, he could provide for himself and move out.

Now, this wasn't the only reason. The father, Golden Acre, a gold coated pony with a white mane and a cutie mark of a tiller, was an excellent sales pony with tilling and farming supplies. The mother, Sweet Treat, could make a pie that would turn a straight mane as curly as her own. She was a deep blue pony with a lively green mane and a cutie mark of her most famous pie. But their son, Dusty Daydream, was a rather lazy pony. He didn't particuarly find much interest in many things that other ponies did, and just sat around reading all day. With a coat as dull and brown as his personality and a grey mane to match his interests. His cutie mark was of a book that had two clouds on either side of it, he would rather not have to try anything as far as a job and would rather just do his own thing. That thing being nothing at all.

One day, a few years after living in this town, this small family had a wonderful surprise. Sweet Treat was pregnant! The word soon spread around the small merchant town and everypony was excited to meet the newest edition to their family. Even Dusty showed some excitement in his own way. Though be it a little too early, he started to gather all of his favorite books to get to his new sibling, hoping they would love to read as much as he did.

Then one night, having to travel south to the closest city with a large hospital, Las Pegasus, she was born. A little pony with a faint yellow coat and small patches of red for her mane a tail. When they finally returned to Meringue, the town rejoiced for their newest addition. This first baby pony to be introduced to their town. And of course, Sweet Treat and Golden Acre couldn't be more proud. Dusty was happy as well, soon he would have somepony to talk to about all of his books adventures and mysteries.

"So what are you going to name her?" Asked the Shoesmith's colt.

"Well, we don't want to be too hasty when naming her, so I think we'll wait a few months. For now, let's call her Joy1." Sweet Treat stated.2

After learning to crawl, Joy would always point to things and looking at anypony near her. She was very curious about everything around her. The other ponies learned quickly that when she would point at something and give a squeaked out, "UUUH!" she wanted to know what that thing was. But if nopony would explain said thing, she would cry until they took time out of their schedule to explain it. This in turn, made it easier she her to learn how to speak at only 5 months old.

Her first word was, "Trainset" referencing to her toy train model and it's associating tracks.What caught Sweet Treat the most off guard was Joy's articulation with her syllables. Though she was disappointed that her first word wasn't "Mama" or something along those lines, they still celebrated with pies around town.That's when Lime Meringue brought back the question of her name.

"Well," Sweet Treat started, looking to her husband with a tear in her eye, about to begin her young daughter's destiny with the mention of something that could be the most significant utterance that anypony could do for somepony else. "Since we have all looked after Joy, we know the one thing she does more than most babies do at all."

"Yeah! She's a curious little bugger!" A pony in the back of the congregation spat out, soon followed by a thunderous laughter among the crowd. "She 'asked' where I got the milk I sale and I had to tell her every single detail. I couldn't leave anything out! She wanted to know everything all the way up to the cows eating!" This made everypony laugh even more.

"I didn't even know a baby could even comprehend things like horse shoes," The cobbler pegusus interjected, "But she wouldn't quit until I explained everything!"

Golden and Sweet, after having a hearty chuckle of their own, gave each other a decided look and then back to the crowd.

"Her name will be, Query Quill." Golden Acre stated.

Three years later. Query Quill was admitted into a Las Pegasus school where her questions that were too tough for the town of Meringue could be answered. She loved to learn and the school house was only a few miles away from her home, so wasn't too much trouble to get her there.

At four years old, she got her cutie mark. She was playing with the other fillies when a young unicorn in the sandbox was sculpting a sand house. Making sure to pay attention to the finer details, the little windows, the structural base boards and support beams, and the little sand ponies that were happy to see their new sand house when he suddenly started to float up a little bit into the air and with a flash of light, an image of a hammer and lumber appeared on his flank. With this occurrence, that grabbed all the other little ponies attention, everypony stopped what they were doing and ran over to him to congratulate him.

This, of course, brought a lot of questions to Query's mind. Later that evening, when she was having dinner. She told her parents about what had happened at school.

"Well, good for him!" Golden started, "It sounds like he'll become a fine architect."

"Yes, but-" Query started, but was cut off by her mother.

"Oh! That's so exciting, I haven't been to anypony's Cute-Ceanera since Dusty got his cutie mark! I can't wait to meet his parents! I have to get baking!"

"But... I was wondering-"

"Wow she gets excited over somepony else's special talent, yet she doesn't like where mine led me." Dusty interjected, once again cutting Query off.

"Dusty Daydream! That's no way to talk to your mother!" Golden barked.

"Well I didn't want to be so spacey but apparently even destiny agrees that I'm good for nothing!"

"Heeeey!" Query yelled, halting the argument and bringing all the focus back to her self.

She looked angrily between the three with standing up on her chair with her hooves on the table to feint authority and trying to make herself look taller, but it was a moot effort. Golden Acre sighed and sat back in his chair. Dusty did as well, but in a more rebellious manner turning his head away from his father and draping his arm over the back of the chair.

The youngest pony then sat back down and huffed angrily. "Yelling is not done at dinner. Dusty. I think you're cool and you really like to read and dad tries to get you to do things you don't like." She said. "And daddy, you are really hard working, but I don't think everyone is going to be exactly the same. Now both of you say sorry!"

The two colts huffed and looked to each other, giving their apologies before returning to their food.

"Good. Now." She took a bite, and between chews, she asked, "What is a cutie mark?"

This made the other three stop and look at her, dropping whichever utensil they were using to eat with as their youngest family member floated up into the air slowly and with a flash of light, she received her cutie mark. A picture of a book with a large question mark popping off of the cover of it appeared on her flank, then she landed softly back on her chair.

The silence and bewilderment, though for only a for a few seconds, seemed to last an eternity as she looked around at the excited, yet surprised looks that her family was giving her.

Then it was all broken when her mother suddenly yelled at the top of her lungs, "My daughter got her cutie mark!" which inevitably drew the attention of their neighbors and passerbys.

Author's Note

1 Headcanon of mine that actually comes after 2 is that they pick out temporary names for their baby ponies if they don't have a name already lined out. These names would be short, simple names for ponies to easily remember and easy to forget later on after their true name has been picked.

2 Honestly a huge headcanon for me is that when a pony has a baby, they would wait until they can see how that pony behaves before naming them. Unless that baby is already planed for something in the family's future Like Pumpkin and Pound Cake or they follow a theme like Apple Bloom. Dusty Daydream wasn't named until he was 4 months old because he would always space out while eating or playing with his toys. Sweet Treat wasn't named until her parents found her stealing candy from their secret candy stash when she was 10 months old. For the 25th time.