Pinkie Pie Delivers (a very important message)
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Pinkie Pie Delivers (a very important message)
Jeffrey C. Wells
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Uneasy lies the head that wears a tiara.
One can tell from the hypothetical begonias all around me precisely how uneasy the tiara-wearing head lies tonight. The foliage here in the garden of my mind, the private sanctuary I achieve only through deep meditation, is understandably quite responsive to my emotional state; on any normal day, when I am filled to bursting with the strength and love of my little pony subjects, this place is a glory of serene color and heady floral perfume. And the flowers are not alone. Everything that surrounds my ego here is likewise a mirror image of it. On a good day, the blue pool at the center of my mental grove shimmers with reflected sunlight, the marble columns surrounding it gleam with pale strength, and the bright brass fixtures of the nearby sundial (set always to an eternal noon, no matter how dark or light the sky) shine until they are positively fulgent.
That is how the garden of my mind appears on a good day. Tonight, well.
It would be premature to call the foliage "wilted", as my mind is certainly nowhere near that state. But the leaves that surrounded me this night were a solemn green, with a dull, waxy look to them. The gnomon of the sundial cast a hazy shadow, the columns seemed to lurk and brood, and the pool was still and dark and tasted of the salt of the millions of tears I have shed into it over the course of my long life.
I am a princess. Allow me my brief melodramas.
Tonight had been such a good idea, in theory. The expanding social gulf between the upper-crust ponies of Canterlot Town and the farm ponies of the verdant fields below has long been a concern of mine; it is a state of affairs that is not at all improved by the quite literal gulf that separates my mountain capital from the valley floor. So, declares Celestia the Uniter, let us have more social events that mingle the two peoples. Let us have grand galas in the pavilions of small towns like Ponyville, where Very Important Ponies can mingle with the hoi palloi on their own ground, and let us similarly invite the laborers into our fancy ballrooms with open forehooves. We are all one people; let us demonstrate it. And let us begin this new era of cooperation and commingling with a great feast in Canterlot, and oh, my, won't it be lovely?
Suffice it to say, my undimmed idealism – bless it – always gets the best of me, and the less said of the social debacle my feast became, the better. Even with all the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony in attendance as a glaring reminder that five-sixths of the greatest heroes in all the land are small-town ponies at heart, there was little that could be done to disguise the sniffy contempt of the gentry; and while the common-folk I had invited were appropriately grateful for my largesse, it was clear that they were uncomfortable. It had actually taken a reminder from Applejack, the Bearer of Honesty herself, for me to realize that one day spent in Canterlot mingling was one entire day of farm chores lost, a deficiency that could only be made up with even harder work the next day, and the next. When all else seemed to be failing, I did make an attempt to break the ice with some characteristic light practical humor, an attempt which flew as well as a lead airship might. In the aftermath and in the privacy of my salon, I was chastised by my advisors, not for the first time, for "conduct unbecoming a princess".
And there comes a moment in situations like this where you look down at your fussy little unicorn ministers, feeling great and white and majestic as you tower over them by fully once again their own height, the corona of your polychromatic mane flowing in currents of life and magic that run wild and free through invisible realms that they will never comprehend. And you begin to realize how many hundreds of little political ponies have gone to dust before the ones that now stand before you, and how many hundreds will follow in their hoofsteps, and you suddenly want to take their faces gently in the glow of your magic, stare them straight in the eye, and declare that you are Princess Celestia, Beloved of the Eternal Sun, and that anything, anything you choose to do is conduct that becomes a princess, Q.E.D., and you feel the heat rising in your breast, and a particle of your mind wonders if this is what Luna felt like a thousand years ago, and the thought of your wayward sister opens all the old wounds again, the stupid and unhelpful ruminations on how things might have been different had you only seen the warning signs earlier and not lost a thousand years of history together in the blink of an eye…
…and then you quickly and politely excuse yourself to your meditation chamber, because at the end of that path lay madness. The soul needs rest as much as the body does, and my soul was bone-tired tonight, weighed down with a spiraling coil of memories and regrets and a life full of thousands upon thousands of missteps that could never be set right.
I hung my head over the still pool of my thoughts, the tip of my alicorn brushing the surface of the salty water and spreading ripples across its surface, as I dwelt on the pain and the sorrow of a millennium of—
"Hi! I'm Pinkie Pie!"
My head jerked up, my horn flicking drops of psychological water everywhere.
There was a pink pony standing in the garden of my mind, beaming brightly at me.
I blinked at her.
"Because you're a super-smart princess with a super-duper long memory, I bet you knew that already," continued Pinkie Pie. "Plus, you just saw me this afternoon. But reminders never hurt!" Pinkie Pie began bouncing a circle around my recumbent form. "By the way, I'm Pinkie Pie!"
"Yes," I said, a bit thrown, trying to process her presence here in the bastion of my will. "Of course I know who you are."
"Like I said, I figured!" said Pinkie Pie. She stopped bouncing. "Hey, is it true that in an imaginary dreamscape you can eat whatever you want and not get full?"
"I… I don't know," I said. "I don't eat here."
Pinkie Pie snicker-snorted. "That's silly!" she said. "You have an imaginary world in your head where you can eat whatever you want, and you don't use it to eat? If I had an imaginary world in my head I'd use it to eat all the time! Of course, I kind of do have an imaginary world in my head, and I kind of do use it to eat all the time, but it's all made out of felt shapes, and felt doesn't even come close to this kind of realism." Pinkie Pie began rummaging through the foliage nearby. "So how does your head work? Do you just imagine a muffin and a muffin appears?"
"I imagine it's a bit more complicated than that," I said, squinting at her.
"Whee-hoo!" cried Pinkie Pie, emerging from the bushes with an admittedly delightful-looking blueberry muffin, all golden-brown and topped with crystallized sugar. "It's not more complicated than that at all! I just imagined a muffin bush, and, boom, there it was!" She stuffed the entire confection into her mouth. "An' ifth good!" she said, spitting crumbs onto the pristine greensward of the grove. "Tastes mufth better than felt muffins do!"
"This is very interesting," I said, cocking my head at the vision. "Historically, it's always been a portent of great significance when other living creatures appear to me in my meditations. And you are the Bearer of Laughter; that's quite a symbolic load. So what does it mean that I'm seeing a vision of you here?"
Pinkie Pie swallowed the remnants of her muffin, licking crumbs from her lips. "'Scuse me?" she said.
"All creatures that appear in my mind are perforce parts of it," I explained to the pink pony, reasoning it out. "As a vision of Laughter, you must be the part of me that enjoys humor. So am I to use humor as my touchstone to resolve the situation between the farmers and the nobles? It didn't go so well earlier, but I could try again. Or am I cautioning myself against dropping into a cycle of mournful self-pity?"
"Why are you asking me?" said the pink pony. "I'm not a portent, I'm Pinkie Pie! Remember?"
"Yes," I said, the faintest microscopic hint of impatience entering my voice. "I understand that you're taking the form of the Bearer of Laughter to speak with me. I'm merely trying to figure out your significance."
"I don't have any significance!" exclaimed Pinkie Pie. "I'm Pinkie Pie! And I came here 'cause I've got a really really really super-important message to deliver!"
"I'm sorry, wait," I said. "You're not a vision of Pinkie Pie? You're… actually Pinkie Pie?"
"Yep!" she exclaimed.
"This is my mind," I said, shaking my head. "It is an inviolate sanctuary."
"I absolutely agree," said Pinkie Pie, peering around. "It's not violet at all. More sort of greeny-gray-ish." Then she noticed the pool of tears at the center of the grove. "Oo!" she squealed, her eyes bright. "You've got a pool in your head! How awesome is that?" Pinkie Pie charged into the bushes and re-emerged wearing a bathing suit and holding a hoof-load of water wings and beach balls and inflatable toys, one of which was shaped like a duck, which she promptly tossed into the waters of my regret. A second later, she followed them with a heroic belly-flop which soaked both me and the greenery that surrounded me. "Marco!" she cried, batting a beach ball into the air with her forehooves.
"I'm… not understanding how this is possible," I said, rising to my hooves, beginning to feel a bit flummoxed by this whole situation.
"Polo!" cried Pinkie, batting the ball into the air again from the opposite end of the pool, somehow managing to carry on both halves of the ball-toss game by herself. "Yeah," she said, glancing over at me. "I get that a lot. Oh well! Marco!"
"I see," I said, feeling the unfamiliar gnaw of a conversation slipping rapidly out of my control. "Er… before you get too involved in your game, you mentioned you had an important message?"
"Oo! Yes!" she cried, zipping out of the pool fast enough to leave her bathing suit behind. "I almost forgot, what with the pool party and everything! I wanted to come here to the brain of the most powerful creature in all Equestria 'cause I really need a big honkin' amp for this message. It's got a long, long way to travel. Are you ready for it?"
"Am… I?" I said, now completely swept away.
"If you have to ask, you probably are!" said Pinkie. "At least, that's what I always say. All right, Princess, hold on to your hooves, because here I go with the message…"
Pinkie took an impossibly, nigh-catastrophically, deep breath. Then, she rose to her hind legs, threw her forehooves wide and raised her voice to the dark and empty sky of my mind. And this is what she said, in a voice that rocked the grove and echoed for minutes against the unforgiving stone of my distant mountains:
"HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ANDREA LIBMAN!"
Aha, I thought.
Gradually the echoes faded. "So that's it?" I said, eventually. "That's the message?"
"Yep!" said Pinkie Pie. "Everypony's my friend, and I remember everything about my friends, and that means that I know everypony's birthday! Even ponies who aren't ponies! Andrea's a special not-pony, in like eight different ways. I can't throw her a party like I want to because she lives in a whole 'nother world, but I just can't let July 19th pass without at least trying to send her a message! I tried mailing a card to her using Derpy-mail, but you know how that goes." Pinkie rolled her eyes. "That pegasus needs to be about twenty percent more accurate. At least."
"It's not July 19th yet," I noted. "We're still about a week away."
"I know!" said Pinkie. "But you don't mail a card for somepony's birthday on the day of! Messages take time to get where they're going!"
"I see," I said. "So who is 'Andrea Libman'?"
"She does my voice!" said Pinkie Pie, grinning hugely.
"Don't… you do your voice?"
"No, silly," said Pinkie Pie. "Not here, on the cartoon! She's my voice actor! And she does a terrific job and she's super funny and talented and people line up for like three hours just for an autograph from her because they love what she does that much! Oo, and she does Fluttershy too, and that just cracks me up, because, can you imagine? Me and quiet little Fluttershy having the same voice? Hysterical!"
"Well," I said, "I'm glad to be of assistance, in my way, even if I don't entirely understand who you're talking about, or how I'm helping. I do hope your message gets to this 'Andrea', somehow."
"Eh," said Pinkie Pie. "I hope it does too, but I'm not going to get too disappointed. This is a pretty experimental new advance in birthday greeting technology, and there's bound to be kinks." She shrugged. "I gotta try, at least! All the voiceover actors are great, but Andrea is my favorite! In fact, she's my favorite human of all!"
"Anything else I can do to help?"
"Nope!" said Pinkie Pie. "We're done here. You've been super, Princess. Thanks for letting me play in your brain-pool!"
"You're quite welcome," I said, smiling composedly at her.
There came a grim sort of pause. A quite unexpected one, I should add.
Pinkie frowned at me, deeply.
"What's wrong?" I asked, blinking at her.
Pinkie marched over to my position. "What kind of smile was that?" she demanded.
"Sorry?"
"No offense, Princess," said Pinkie Pie, "but that was a terrible smile! Here I come bouncing into your head delivering all sorts of funny random nonsense, and when I finally, finally get a smile, it doesn't even hit your eyes?"
"It's just how I smile," I said.
Pinkie Pie was unmoved. She clucked her tongue at me and put on a mechanic's cap. "I dunno," she said. "Seems to me that smile you got there is seriously out of alignment, Princess. But you're in luck! 'Cause in honor of my friend Andrea's birthday, I'm having a special on smile repair. Let's see if we can't fix that baby up with a little high-energy prop comedy!"
"I don't know if that's—"
Pinkie Pie removed the mechanic's cap and put on a giant hat that resembled Canterlot Mountain, complete with a miniature Canterlot clinging to one side. "Look!" she cried. "It's a funny hat that looks like Canterlot!"
"That's very amusing, Pinkie Pie."
"You haven't seen amusing until you see the toy train that goes with it!" She placed a little wind-up toy train on the miniature railroad tracks that encircled the mountain. "Woo-oo-oo!" she cried. "It's the miniature Friendship Express, on its way to Canterlot for Hearth's Warming Eve!"
I looked at her as the tiny train chugged around the perimeter of her giant hat time and time again, making slow spirals up toward the Canterlot model. It was… ridiculous. Absolutely without warning, and for the second time today, warmth rose in my breast. But it wasn't the heat of irritation, of pique. It was something else entirely…
Pinkie Pie looked at me, expectantly, grinning wide and white. Here, said a tiny rational quarter of my mind, was the Bearer of the Element of Laughter at the height of her powers. This was a young mare with her hoof on the pulse of amusement.
"We're getting there," said Pinkie Pie, eyeing me closely. "But I think we need something more than a silly hat with a silly train running around it over and over again. We need something even sillier. We need…"
"…Yes?"
"Wait for it," said Pinkie Pie. "What we need is… a Princess Celestia action figure!" She produced one out of absolutely nowhere and held it in my face. "See?" she said. "If you squeeze the cutie marks on her flanks between your hooves, her wings flap!"
Pinkie Pie demonstrated the gesture. The miniature plastic me waggled its wings and squeaked, and the warmth in my breast suddenly turned into a simmering heat.
"Wow!" observed Pinkie Pie, looking at the action figure. "Listen to that squeak! She really sounds exhausted! I guess it gets tiring having ponies squeeze your flanks all the time to make your wings flap. And it takes a lot of wing-flaps to get to the top of Canterlot Mountain. The Princess Celestia action figure better hitch a ride on the Friendship Express to get to the top!" She reached up and plunked the comparatively huge action figure on top of the train's engine. "Oh no!" cried Pinkie. "There's been a terrible miscalculation! Princess Celestia is not to H0 scale!"
The simmer turned to a boil.
"Aaah!" cried Pinkie Pie. "The Friendship Express is being attacked by a giant Princess Celestia! Even gianter than she normally is!"
I snorted, unable to contain it any longer, and Pinkie's mien positively glowed in response. Somehow, despite the fact that she was rather shorter than me and the fact that I that do not recall lowering my head, she was suddenly staring me square in the eye, beaming at me as bright as my beloved Sun.
"Yes…" she said, coaxingly. "Yes… almost there…"
I couldn't help it. I burst out into a full and glorious laugh at the sheer undiluted ridiculousness of the hat and the action figure and the Bearer of the Element of Laughter smiling right in my face, wider than I believe I'd ever seen anypony smile. It flowed out of me like bubbles, brightening the sky of my grove, restoring the luster of the surrounding leaves and causing bright pink flowers to bloom on every reasonable surface and some unreasonable ones, including several which took root in Pinkie's mane itself.
Pinkie quivered in reply and then leapt a yard into the air. "Yes!" she cried, pumping one hoof in triumph. "Absolutely, one hundred percent, nailed! And that's how you fix a broken smile, Princess!"
"Thank you, Pinkie," I said, gasping for breath. "You didn't have to do that, but thank you."
"You're welcome!" declared Pinkie. "And I know I didn't have to do it. I did it because everpony's my friend, including celestial princess ponies, and I love to see my friends smile!" She gave me one last beaming grin, as if to tide me over until next time, and then turned and began rummaging in the bushes again. "Okay, so now that's done!" she said. "I think I'ma head out. Twilight and Luna and me are throwing a super-terrific after-feast party at Fancy Pants's place! We're getting all the farmers and the least-snooty nobleponies we can find together and we're gonna dance until the cows come home, and then when they get there we're going to dance with them, too! You should totally come check it out when you get done meditating!"
"I just might," I said. "It's wonderful that you seem to be rather casually bringing my people together better than I was able to. Do you have any secret tips for dealing with scorn and misunderstanding between ponies?"
Pinkie Pie shrugged. "Haters gonna hate," she said.
"I see," I said. "I'm not sure that's our final and complete solution."
"Trust me, Princess," said Pinkie, confidently. "Tonight, it'll do."
I thought about it.
"It just might, at that," I mused.
Pinkie did not respond, occupied as she was in rustling through the foliage at the edge of the glade. Eventually she emerged with a bushel-basket of blueberry muffins, presumably from the nearby muffin-bush. "Gonna see if I can schlep any of these out with me," she said. "I bet the party ponies will love 'em. See you later, Princess!"
"Yes," I said. "See you. And thank you again."
Pinkie grinned at me one last time and then dove into the bushes and was gone.
I stared after her for a while. Then I walked sedately over to the foliage she had disappeared into, rummaged around in it for a moment with my telekinesis, and eventually emerged with a fresh-picked blueberry muffin. I broke it in two and gave one half a little munch. It was, hypothetically, exactly as good as described.
I then raised my eyes to the clear and noon-bright sky.
"Sorry to feign ignorance, Nicole. It's not always good to let them know everything that I know. And by the way, happy birthday to you, too."
I smiled, I hoped, at her. "In two hundred and eighteen days," I finished. "Give or take a few."
My obligations momentarily complete, I settled down amidst the bright green and pink of my meditation glade, inhaling the sweetness of the flowers and observing the light as it glittered upon the surface of the pool, no longer made of the salty tears of regret but instead the fresh, clean water of rebirth and new beginnings. It was a glorious spectacle that was interrupted only occasionally by the sight of an inflatable duck.
Things, I thought to myself, as the duck floated past, were going to be all right.
