Strictly speaking, the stallion who trotted into Sugarcube Corner on that cool early autumn morning didn't look like a vampony.
Yes, it was true that vamponies were generally described as having rather pale fur: whatever shade they would have possessed in life would become washed out, a near-ghost of the original hue. (By contrast, their manes were supposed to darken, and their upper lips poked slightly outwards because no pony mouth had been designed to contain carnivore teeth.) And this stallion did in fact have extremely pale fur, with just enough grey among the hairs to determine what the color was supposed to be. This was contrasted by a mane and tail so black as to give him the appearance of having been dipped in the nearest inkwell, followed by approximately two decades during which he couldn't possibly be bothered with washing any of it off. The time had added a thick coat of insulating grease, which both served to absorb the light and, since his tail drooped somewhat, also showed exactly where he'd been.
The stallion's upper lip did poke outwards slightly, but it was from the expression which had permanently carved itself into his face, a combination of boredom and disdain which didn't quite have a target to settle on yet. His eyes (an extremely washed-out sort of blue) didn't actually seem to be working, because if they had, he would have surely noticed all the ponies in the long morning breakfast line which he casually started to push through -- or rather, tried to, as the unicorn didn't have that much in the way of physical strength and so mostly wound up being yelled by the more sturdy earth ponies whom he kept taking sliding steps against.
He was not handsome, and moved with the total confidence that comes when a stallion not only isn't handsome, but has a total lack of compensating personality and has no awareness for any of it.
But Pinkie had already decided he didn't really look like a vampony, because vamponies didn't actually exist and besides, he'd just come in during the morning shift. Instead, she felt he looked like somepony who'd grown up on legends of vamponies, fallen in love with stories about vamponies, spent his entire life getting ready to become a vampony before finding out there were no vamponies, and so got to exist in a state of perpetual frustration added to a deep, paradoxical hatred of vegetables.
She'd never seen him before, of course. She would have remembered every detail about him, particularly the unforgettable smell.
Eventually, he reached the counter, leaving no more than two dozen angry ponies muttering in his wake. (Pinkie wasn't sure his ears were working either.)
He looked at her for a moment, or at least had his gaze rest in that vague general direction. She'd noticed that he tended to treat sight lines as something which ended on the wall behind the target.
"Can I help you, sir?" she chirped, because he was a Customer and there were certain things she had to do, even when she would have really rather been holding her breath.
"You," the pony said in a mostly-toneless manner which forced his Canterlot accent to do all the work, "are a baker."
So not only did he speak Equestrian, but the words weren't emerging backwards. Totally not a vampony. "Yes, I am. Welcome to Sugarcube Corner! Now I know this is your first time here, so if you're thinking about trying something new, I have all sorts of recommendations! For starters, semolina. We've been doing an excellent semolina lately! Or, if you wanted more of a snack --"
"-- toast," the stallion interrupted. "I require... toast."
"Well, sure," Pinkie very nearly faltered. "We can certainly toast something for you!"
His eyes moved over the wall behind her. They didn't seem to find it very interesting.
"I have heard of you," he passively said. "And now you have come to me. Drawn by destiny. Attraction. The gravitational pull that exists between two souls which are meant to know each other."
"...um..." Which felt oddly like an understatement. "...um -- actually, sir, you trotted in here..."
"You do not have a baker's mark," he stated. "Additionally, you are pink. You are a blaze of brightness in a dark world. You are light which pretends to bring comfort and only highlights how all is ultimately shadow and pain. All of these things are fully offensive. Also, you are slightly overweight. Nopony of taste would ever look upon the totality of these things and behold the art of toast lurking within. Except perhaps for your being overweight, because that means you eat a lot and some of that excess could be produced by toast."
Pinkie took a moment to mentally tally up the number of moons which had passed since she'd last kicked a customer out of the bakery and discovered she had another three weeks coming before the Cakes would grant her the next freebie.
"But I have heard of you," he tonelessly repeated. "And I require... toast."
Pinkie glanced to the left, where Mrs. Cake was assisting somepony sane. Long years of silent communication easily let her recognize the look coming back, which read as 'It probably gets him out of the bakery and if he does anything stupid, I'll go for his back legs: you take the horn.'
"What kind of toast?" Pinkie ventured with something which could have passed for nobility in a much dimmer light.
His horn ignited with a color which was actually rather hard to describe, mostly because it was so boring that looking at it long enough to figure out what it was made her want to fall asleep. His left saddlebag flipped open, and a thickly-folded piece of paper emerged before starting to unfurl.
It kept unfurling.
(This took a while. The muttering from the ponies stuck behind him in line was starting to intensify, although the sound lost something when it came from the unicorns who were using their magic for pinching their own nostrils shut.)
"This," he said, and one of the many pictures was surrounded by yawn-inducing glow. "You will make me toast of this shade."
Pinkie looked at the chart. At the fifty sample pieces of photographed toast, which ranged from Still Technically Bread to Charcoal With Crust. There were also a few brief stops at Ran Out Of Grip Meter While Trying To Get Past Both Level Four And The Toilet, Reset The Game, For The Love Of Celestia Will Somepony Please Hit Reset! Plus there was a piece which had probably been teleported, and everypony knew you weren't supposed to teleport bread. That one had been forcibly pinned to the photography studio's floor, mostly to make it stop biting back.
Fortunately, that last one hadn't been his choice of highlight. He'd picked something which was -- well, technically, it was known as a Scrape. It was what happened when you didn't pay any attention to the toaster at all, maybe you'd gotten stuck with another customer, and only just remembered there was bread in there a split-second before the smoke would have gone up. It was darkness surrounded by crusty armor -- but in theory, if a pony was willing to use their teeth as scrapers and spend about thirty minutes grinding their way down while occasionally pausing to spit out ash, there might be a single workable crumb near the absolute center.
"You want that?" It was usually bad form to question a customer's taste, but it was also hard work to save somepony from choking.
"I," the stallion said, "require... toast."
"Is there any particular kind of bread you'd like me to use? Maybe a rye, or a white -- honestly, once it gets to that color, it's not going to matter much, but just for starting --"
"I," the stallion said, "require... toast."
Pinkie thought about the way words came off his tongue. It was something like being in the presence of a cross-eyed parrot, only with the speaker possessing somewhat less understanding of what they were saying.
"Toast coming up!" she desperately chirped and then turned away from him to start the preparation. In theory, this should have given her a degree of protection from the smell, but it had spread rather quickly. (She'd heard tales about vamponies being able to turn themselves into gas clouds, but hadn't considered that the process would wind up still leaving a pony in the center.) Since the customer... customer? -- customer had stated no preference, she went with the time-honored baker's standard of Whatever We're Overstocked On Is What I Sort Of Sincerely Recommend, which in this case meant pumpernickel.
She used the toaster. Then she very carefully overused it, feeling both as if it was some level of breach for a baker's ethics and that it was totally worth it to get him out of their shop.
"Butter?" she tried, not quite looking back. "Jelly? We have all kinds of jelly, except not Zap Apple right now because that's at least --"
"I," the stallion said, "require..."
Pinkie, the thin plate now balanced on her snout, spun to keep that last word from emerging and so nearly whipped the whole thing into the chart: the skid thankfully stopped at the edge of the counter. "Your toast, sir! You can pay Mr. Cake. He's the one over there. With the hat. Who's a stallion. And also a mister, which I guess is sort of implied? Enjoy!"
It was all the words she could manage on one breath, and she clamped down against the urge to take another.
The stallion levitated the toast. He placed it next to the picture on the huge chart, critically peered at a place somewhere on the other side of it, which put his scrutiny in the bagel cabinet. After a few seconds during which Pinkie's skin began to shade her fur slightly towards the blue, he levitated it a little more and then bit down.
He scraped. It was a long, slow process which in no way sounded like hooves moving across a chalkboard because when compared to the noise he did produce, Hooves Moving Across A Chalkboard could have been sold by Lyra as the composer's next top-of-the-charts hit, at least after the lyrics added something about kissing.
Pinkie looked at the black char which was building up on fully-exposed, non-pointed teeth, and momentarily vowed to never think about kissing again.
"It is... toast," he said, and one of his eyebrows widened in shock. (Pinkie stared, because she'd had no idea eyebrows could do that.) "Goodbye."
"Goodbye!" Pinkie gasped. "And thank for you coming to --"
"-- for now."
He slowly trotted over to Mr. Cake, not bothering to refold the chart on the way. More muttering ponies cleared a path, and then he talked to the bakery's proprietor. The talk seemed to be going on far too long for a simple payment, especially when Pinkie didn't see any bits being transferred. And then for no reason she could think of, Mrs. Cake got called over, and it left her scrambling to serve everypony when she was the only one left doing so. At one point, she got a glimpse of something white and flat coming out of the stallion's saddlebags, but she knew the Cakes rarely took personal vouchers for anything and paying for a single piece of toast with a letter of credit was just silly.
Finally, he made his way out, still without having folded the chart. It knocked into a mare who was just entering the bakery, and she nearly fell over. The sound of half-frenzied cursing seemed to get the stallion's attention.
"It is all right," he said. "Mares often swoon in my presence, for I am me, and in being me, you swoon."
Pinkie mentally apologized to the parrot.
The door closed and she dove for the master fan control, nearly sending several puff pastries into full flight. The smell began to disperse, although not until the fan blades had chopped it down to the point where it was too weak to fight back.
"What happened?" Pinkie quickly asked as she used the next break in traffic to make her way to the payment area, where the Cakes were doing some very intensive reading. "Did he forget to bring money?" She wasn't going to glance at the tip jar: the departure was the tip.
"He brought a prepaid voucher," Mr. Cake informed her.
"For a piece of toast?" Pinkie asked, and felt insulted on behalf of her town, for that was the payment option of a pony who felt their bits would be stolen by the locals.
"No, actually..." Mrs. Cake said. "He gave us a -- contract."
"A contract," Pinkie repeated. The word didn't make any more sense the second time, which meant the stallion had probably vocalized it four extra.
"Yes," Mr. Cake said. "He wants you to make toast for him. Three more times. And he had a prepaid voucher for that, plus a contract. Which was written on rice paper. Well -- risotto paper."
He reluctantly looked down. Pinkie followed his gaze.
"I may have to sprinkle water on that," Mr. Cake said. "Or it'll fall apart when the rice dries out. But the voucher's real. Or he's a great counterfeiter. Which, looking at the contract, doesn't seem possible -- the bank." That in a tone of light stun. "I'm going to the bank right now. Just in case it isn't real. And especially in case it is."
He hastily bit down on a gold-decorated page, vaulted the counter, scrambled for the door.
Pinkie was now staring at Mrs. Cake, who was actually taking it rather well.
"A contract."
"Yes, Pinkie."
"He wants me... to make toast for him. Three more times."
"Yes. Whenever he asks for it. Wherever he asks for it. Under contract. We signed for you."
The stare intensified. The results were unchanged.
"You... what?"
"Well," Mrs. Cake passively said, "we tried to explain that we couldn't legally do that. That you're an adult and that if you don't sign for yourself, nothing can be enforced. He didn't really seem to be listening. So we signed it for you. And Pinkie... it's a very big voucher. So the way I see it, if the voucher is fake, there's no harm done. But if it's real, we split the money five ways. Five, because we need to add something into that college fund for the twins. And then you do as much as you feel like doing, up to three more times. As soon as you want to stop, you stop. And if something happens where he demands his money back --" she softly smiled, and her volume dropped "-- we just stop moisturizing the rice and then we stand in front of a judge saying 'What contract?' So really, either he's a harmless loon or we just paid for three semesters of textbooks. Where's the harm?"
Pinkie took a deep breath, which let her know there were a few surviving enemy forces trying to do all the damage they could before expiring.
"Didn't you think that was all a little... well -- weird?"
Mrs. Cake tilted her head slightly to the right. Confusion took over the rounded features.
"No."
"No?"
And in the lightly concussed voice of a mare whose priorities had never fully recovered from a years-past, near-terminal resorting, "Pinkie... we live with you."
Two moons passed. The voucher had been cashed after two minutes and Mr. Cake had divided the results into five separate accounts, which were not to be touched until everything finished, one way or another. Pinkie spent a week half-cowering behind the counter while watching the bakery's front door, then had another two when she was just really busy in the back all the time, and then found herself volunteering for diaper duty. A lot. But nothing happened, and then kept right on happening because it seemed to enjoy doing that.
But the stallion didn't return and in time, Pinkie relaxed. It was possible that she'd never see him again. She was living in light dread of a stallion who might have tried to board the train and found himself boarding the tracks in front of the departing one. She was just being silly. And so life returned to normal, right up until the night when she partially rolled over in her sleep and kicked the bread off her mattress.
Pinkie's senses were finely attuned to the sound of bread landing on the floor, and so she immediately woke up. Her body automatically twisted, got her standing up in preparation for the leap down, and left her facing the washed-out eyes, which was an awfully cruel thing for a body to do in the middle of the night when somepony had just broken into her attic and climbed onto her bed to stare at her or, given who was doing the staring, at the cookery catalogs under her bed.
The scream was instinctive. "LUNA!"
The stallion ignored this.
"I," he said, "require... toast."
"LUNA! I'm calling in that favor you owe me! Right now! My dream, my waking up! No talking about my issues! No facing my fears! I one-sixth brought you back and I one hundred percent want to get out of this right now!"
"I," the stallion said, "also require the removal of a small alligator from my hind left ankle."
Pinkie glanced at the indicated area, where Gummy was loyally, protectively, and rather futilely clamped.
"Ponies often call out the names of Princesses when they see me," the stallion passively stated. "Perhaps they are looking for somepony they can mistakenly thank for my presence. It may be that they are simply thinking of the most immediate level below me. I cannot tell. I require..."
"I know!" Pinkie half-spat. "I was dreaming of it for weeks and she was all like, issues, issues, you have to work out your own issues, and I was all like, but toast! Gummy, let go now. Because I'm not dreaming and that means you have to let go."
The little alligator gave her the briefest of questioning looks.
"I know I'm not dreaming because in all the other ones where you came to save me, you would have just burped up the grease."
There was a scaly shrug, and then her toothless companion dropped to mattress level and shuffled off towards the pillows.
"You talk to animals," the stallion said.
"No. I talk to my pet. The one who talks to animals is --" and hesitated, because there were some things which Fluttershy really didn't need dropping by at the cottage.
"Does your inner goddess give you such power?"
In total confusion, "My what?"
"It gives you many powers," he said.
"I'm pretty sure I don't have one of those. Sometimes I get a rumbly tummy when I haven't eaten in a while. Oh, and there's these tiny ponies who show up on my shoulders when I'm trying to make an important decision. Only they're not ponies. They're breezies. I think there's something about the sweat of ponies concentrating which they can't stay away from."
"The power to refuse change. The power to avert basic expectations and crush dreams. The power to make toast. I require..."
"How did you even get in here?" Whereupon inverted déjà vu kicked her in the face. "Oh, so that's what everypony else must feel like when they say it to me! Oh, I'm going to be apologizing to so many ponies..."
"I require..."
"JUST OPEN THE CHART!"
He did, and his tastes had changed from Scrape to Coal. It was hard to do Coal on purpose, especially if you didn't want to set off the fire alarm. Of course, there were things harder than making Coal. Like eating it. Eating Coal let you find what was in that center. It wouldn't be a diamond, but it usually ran around the same level of hardness and did a similar amount of damage to your mouth.
Pinkie jumped down from the bed and began to stomp her way towards the ramp and kitchen. Then she remembered the twins were sleeping and slowed down. Then she remembered that there was a strange stallion in the house with sleeping twins, galloped at full speed until she reached the nursery, kicked down the door, took ten minutes to put them back to sleep again after kicking down the door quite naturally woke them up screaming, and finally huffily marched the stallion into the kitchen at manepoint, which meant she was basically pushing him with her head while knowing she'd be spending the rest of the night taking sixteen baths and the last of the transferred grease still wouldn't come out.
"You do not have a baking mark," the stallion said as she shoved him onto a bench. "You are too bright. Too soft. You bring darkness without understanding the damage you do. Nopony could ever love you. But of course you know this. Nopony ever could, or should, for only I can give you what you need."
"I," Pinkie hissed as she turned the heat on the toaster up ever-higher, "have friends. I have a family. Lots of ponies love me."
"You think they love you," tumbled the words. "But have you made toast for them?"
"YES!"
"Then they do not," he said. "One day you will know that. One day all will know. The darkness will make itself known to you. No butter. No jelly. No cream cheese. Cream cheese is a darkness where even I do not venture."
She slammed the plate down in front of him before angrily sitting on the floor, staring at him as he ate. That was the good news, she supposed: that he was eating. He didn't talk when he was eating, although he did make the occasional odd cracking noise. That was probably just his teeth.
"It is... toast," he finally said. "The contract is partially fulfilled. There will be two more times. I leave."
He got up, headed for the exit -- turned back.
"When I appear in your dreams," he asked, "what shade is the toast? Does it crackle when it leaves the toaster? Does it weep? Has it ever screamed?"
"GET OUT!"
She scrubbed for hours. It didn't matter. She was a baker with a dirty toast mane. That was all he saw her as. But then, he was stupid.
Two more times. Two more times. Two times... oops, that was three scrubs. Time to rinse!
It was winter now: the single coldest part of the season. It was also her half-day, and it had been good to get out of the bakery. She was getting tired of feeling her eyes twitch towards the door. Besides, now that she had finally finished apologizing to everypony, she actually had some free time -- and so she'd decided to do one of the things which had always been able to make her relax.
Skating wasn't quite as easy when she was bundled up so tightly: layered leg warmers impeded her joints and kept her from attempting some of the more joyous leaps and bounds. So instead, she simply propelled herself across the frozen lake, reveling in the sensation of living that the cold wind brought when it skimmed across her face, or what little of her face it could reach past the hood and carefully-wrapped scarf.
There was a comfort in ice, especially when the lake's coating was so thick and cold. It had no chance of cracking beneath her. It glistened beautifully in the sun. It offered the chance to drift in long lines of near-flight and let her thoughts trail away behind her. And on top of all that, she was the only pony there.
Pinkie was very much a pony who was often happiest in groups. With her friends surrounding her, with partygoers checking in with her, thanking her. When she was surrounded by family. But there were times when she needed to be by herself, such as when she was sleeping or if she glanced at the bakery door when someone with an almost-that-dark mane walked in, in which case she occasionally took some private time in the bathroom until the urge to charge went away.
Ice on the lake, snow around it. A day which felt as if winter would never wrap-up, and she wasn't sure she wanted it to. For in this cold, ponies stayed inside. There was less work at the bakery, lighter traffic on and above the streets. There was no --
"I require..."
Her scream didn't shatter the ice, but things vibrated for a while.
"Why are you on the lake?" the stallion said from the snow-coated shore of the lake, as the boring glow of his horn threatened to put the drifts to sleep. "You should be in the bakery, even though you are not a baker, because you do not have a baker's --"
"-- it's my half-day! I get time off! I leave the bakery whenever I have to! Sometimes I leave Ponyville, or Equestria, or --" and her imagination presented a mission during which the Bearers would be struggling to overcome deadly forces, muster every bit of concentration, magic, and hope they still had, send it flying forward in the form of a rainbow, and have it impact the Hardtack picture on the unfolded chart.
She supposed it would be more ironic to end the world with a direct not-the-enemy hit on Prance Dream, but that was imagination for you.
"-- I'm skating," she not-so-smoothly switched protests. "On my half-day! This is my time to skate, like it's my time to sleep, and --"
"-- time is that in which disappointment can occur," the stallion rambled. "I could be disappointed, if the oldest disappointment did not consume all. That you are here. On the ice. Did you think I could not find you? That I would not venture out? Ice is very cold and no place to be. I can track your skate marks. I can come to you. I will come to you, for even ice knows what I am and the agony I endure. I require... toast, and mere ice shall not prevent my pain."
He placed a single greasy hoof onto the ice. Pinkie, with a skater's instincts, immediately moved three body lengths to the left.
After a while, once the spiraling, spread-griffoned body had forced its head out of the massive new snow pile which had fallen on it after going into the treetrunk head first, she did a little pirouette and watched to see what else it would do.
"I require attention," the stallion said after spitting out the last of the pine needles, which was also the point at which his stench had melted the snow away from his neck. "And also toast."
"If I make this," Pinkie asked, keeping her distance, "will you go home?"
"Home is where disappointment lives." He appeared to consider the implications of that. "So I will go there." Without a single pause, "That clothing makes you look fat. Or have you gained weight under thin layers?"
"...where," Pinkie slowly said, "is the chart?"
"Saddlebags."
"Bread?"
"Saddlebags."
"A toaster?"
"Deep in the past. Where the pain is, the eternal toaster within all of us which blocks out all light and hope, demanding that we live our lives making others share our agony. Also, saddlebags."
"There's one time left on the contract," Pinkie reminded him. "One time. I've read it. A lot. Which is starting to be really hard to do, because we've been sprinkling it with water for moons and it's hard to scrape away the mold without ruining the ink. You only get one time after this. And then I never want to see you again. Or sell to you. Or watch Gummy eat you in my dreams." She thought about that. "Because Angel should get a turn. He's never eaten anypony and I think he'd really enjoy it. Does vampony blood freeze in the cold because your body can't keep it warm?"
"What is a vampony?"
"Maybe Angel could be a vambunny," Pinkie considered. "So he wouldn't eat you. He'd drink you. But he'd probably just go around biting cherries and turning them white when he sucked all the juice out." And blinked. "Wait."
"I require..."
But she ignored him as she desperately took notes with the only tool she had. And once the idea had been skate-etched into the ice, she unearthed the stallion (mostly through kicking, and while not being particularly careful about her aim), then checked the chart. The portable toaster was just barely capable of reaching the level of heat necessary to create Obsidian Nightmare, and she waited for the requisite ten minutes before putting her plan to gallop for the hospital on standby.
"One time remains," the stallion said after the coughing stopped. "One time. And then the decision is yours." He forced himself to his hooves, still gagging, and began to trot away. Stopped, glanced back.
"I have decided. You look unlovable. And also fat."
At the start of spring, there was a mission. It lasted for five days and ended with them facing a rebel dragon in his lair, one even bigger than the red they'd confronted on the mountain. They'd dodged a fire blast, Pinkie had rolled out of the way just in time, the move had left her facing the impacted area, it had occurred to her that the shade of black created by the flame was exactly like Obsidian Nightmare and for all intents and purposes, that was when the mission ended.
Well, technically, it ended fifteen seconds later. It took another five minutes before the collective efforts of all her friends pulled her away from the unconscious dragon.
There was rain scheduled on that warm day in the second moon of spring, the sort of gentle patter which ponies would occasionally trot around in for the fun of it. Nopony cared about the soaking of their fur on days when it felt as if the very sky was attempting to give them liquid kisses. Pinkie was staring out the bakery's front windows, watching acceptance fall from the air and wondering if, on such a slow day for business and with no current desire to put in any work on her children's book, the Cakes would let her take the twins (currently tumbling around behind the counter) outside so they could learn what it felt like to have the world love them.
It meant she was looking in the right direction when the air carriage touched down.
The gilded conveyance (which had been fitted with a small fabric roof) was being towed by four pegasi. None of them were wearing any degree of armor, and the chariot's insignia didn't match that of the palace. Furthermore, the passenger area was empty.
"They must be getting a snack before making a pickup," Mr. Cake decided. "Probably bringing Mr. Rich in."
"He never uses anything that gaudy when he has to rush," Mrs. Cake countered. "He's fine with wood."
The lead pegasus detached himself from the harness, trotted towards the front doors.
"Well, maybe they were out of wood at the air carriage service," Mr. Cake offered. He gave the twins a pointed look. "Wood is very... poplar."
They blinked, then went back to tumbling.
"I think dad jokes have to wait until they understand Equestrian a little more," Pinkie suggested as the doors opened. "Hello! What can we help you with today?"
The pegasus looked at her and even before he spoke, she knew. She felt the impact as the fourth horseshoe dropped.
"He requires... toast."
Pinkie looked at the twins.
"You two," she frustratedly said to the foals, who ignored her. "You two had better not drop out!"
She didn't glance at the adult Cakes before she left. She simply gathered a few supplies, things she thought she might need, and packed them into her saddlebags before boarding the carriage.
The pegasi flapped, and carried her to the final meeting.
It had been obvious from the start that they were heading into Canterlot: after all, that was where the stallion's accent was from, even if the pony himself might have been the only-ever recipient of weekend furloughs from Tartarus. So there was no surprise as she watched the city grow larger on the locally-dry horizon, and there wasn't even any mild shock when she realized the carriage was heading for one of the high-income districts: she was capable of multiplying the number in her new account by five.
The red carpet, however, nearly kicked her for a loop.
The pegasi unhitched themselves, then dipped into a low bow as she stepped off the carriage. Pinkie slowly trotted past them, moving down the plush trail towards what was very nearly a castle onto itself. Looking at the ornate decorations, the quality of the splashing fountains, the statuary in the expansive yard.
They were very nice fountains and statues. They also happened to be of toasters.
(The decorations were mostly simulated toast. It wasn't a good idea to spend too much time looking at the topiary. The topiary looked like it was actually popping up.)
The stallion was waiting in front of the door. It would have been nice to say he'd cleaned himself up for the occasion, and that wish was added to the list of all the other completely untrue things which would have been nice to say.
"How do you want to start this?" Pinkie irritably challenged him as she trotted up, her pace gradually accelerating. "Something about my fur? How about my not having a baker's mark, that's always a good place to get going! Oh, and then there's my weight, which I'm perfectly happy with, so I really don't care about how anypony else feels! And I just left two babies who love me --"
"-- I require..."
"WHAT YOU REQUIRE IS A --"
"...you to come inside. I require..."
"-- GOOD SWIFT --"
"...apology."
Which stopped her for a second. But only that.
"I am not going to apologize," Pinkie furiously declared, her shaking rage vibrating the full saddlebags. "For anything."
"No," the stallion said. "I require apology. Apology... to you. And perhaps toast."
She froze.
"Come inside," the stallion said. He turned, opened the huge front doors for her. And, not entirely sure why she was doing it, Pinkie followed.
She'd been expecting -- well, toast. Marble pieces, on familiarly-shaped plinths Paintings which were smaller versions of the chart, rendered in oils or, more suitably, grease. Instead, the interior of the residence came across as fairly normal. There were decorations, of course, but it was just like most old-money homes: ancient knick-knacks, little statues which fit into exacting alcoves. The paintings were mostly portraits of ponies.
Pinkie looked around at all of it as she trotted through the poorly-lit house, memorizing the path in.
The stallion paused in front of a wall.
"Look up," he said. Pinkie risked it.
There was a painting there, which came across as being a fairly recent addition. It was another portrait, that of a slightly overweight mare with exceptionally bright fur and mane hues.
"I look at this," the stallion said, his words still toneless, emerging as if pushed more than vocalized, peering at a place roughly two rooms back. "Often. Once a day or more. Before breakfast. If I wake up for a late snack. I think about her. What she did to me."
There was no pain in the stallion's voice, because that would have required something to be there. But the greasy tail was being held even lower than usual.
"She said I was perfect," he continued. "The best colt. The most handsome. And she baked for me every day. But she couldn't bake, because she didn't have the mark. She was bright and soft and happy. And every day, she gave me the rightmost picture on the bottom row. She said it was because she loved me. And that if I did not eat all of it, then I did not love her back. So I ate it. Every day, until the pain came."
Pinkie took a slow breath.
"...I'm -- I'm sorry," she told him.
"I heard about you," he continued as if she'd said nothing at all. "A baker without a baker's mark. Bright and soft. So I came to you, because you would make... toast. I require... toast, for toast is pain and disappointment, which is all life is. And you made toast as she did. As I knew you would."
He paused. Pinkie waited.
"But after the snow," he went on, "I thought... that I had given you no choice. That I had made you act as she did. That there are other pieces of toast on the chart. Better ones. And still I always go to the dark, for I know nothing else. I gave you no choice or chance."
And for the first time, he looked directly at her.
"What kind of toast might you make me, if I had simply asked you to decide for yourself?"
"Something better," she sincerely admitted. "Something made with... love."
He appeared to consider that, and then his hoof poked at a decoration on the wall. The little nodule of wood slid inwards, and a secret door cracked open below the portrait.
"Come with me," he said. "Make toast with me."
He went into the dark hollow. She allowed him to get about two body lengths ahead before she followed and as she stepped into the hidden room, the lights came on. It would have been hard for them not to come on, given that most of the ceiling was composed of glowing red lighting strips. It went nicely with the matching floor.
Pinkie looked up, and felt her face being coated by the red lights. Checked the back, where she had a hind hoof propping the door open. Then, and only then, did she look forward, and found the stallion, whose greasy tail was already staining a path into the sheets as he climbed onto the bed. The bed which was positioned exactly in the center of all the red glow, with a mattress which was shaped like only one thing in the world.
There was a plinth on the right of the bed. It held an ancient toaster, one where the temperature control had clearly burnt out years before. It was engraved with the word MOTHER.
"Come," the stallion repeated as he arranged himself on the pillow. "Make sweet toast with me."
Pinkie gently smiled.
"Can you give me... just a few seconds?" she shyly asked. "It's a little different, when it's being made like this. I just have to, you know... get ready. Get all my equipment out and arrange it in the way you truly need. Will you give me a second?"
He nodded. Pinkie removed her left saddlebag, placing it within the little gap between door and frame. The right one was slowly, subtly shimmied off. Nimble teeth nipped at the lid, then gently extracted the loaf.
Her tail swayed as she approached the bed, a single slice balanced precisely on her snout. Climbed onto the mattress, one hoof at a time.
"Ready?" she asked him.
"I require... toast," he said.
She smiled, nodded, reared back on her hind legs, pressed the fore against the sides of the nearest object, and brought MOTHER down on top of his head.
The stallion slowly limped into the fix-it shop, boringly-hued field carefully carrying the burden ahead of him: a toaster with a skull-and-horn shaped dent in it. The pegasus silently watched him enter, waiting for her customer to speak as her flight feathers twitched into the shape of a well-known ward against vamponies.
"You have a device mechanic's mark," he said in a manner which would have been insulting to parrots, looking through her tool wall as his stench corroded some of the hanging pieces. "But you have exactly the wrong body. Your mane is too coppery and your wings only call attention to where a horn should have been. Also, you have inner curves on each side of your snout, which marks you as having a Roamer muzzle. So you are completely unsuitable to your profession, your very existence is fully offensive, and nopony will ever love you, which is exactly what you deserve. I require... repair."
Eventually, Ratchette decided to keep the grease, just in case she needed any extra lubricants. The rest of his moaning form, being rather more useless, was simply deposited in the nearest trash bin. And in time, somepony wrote a book about it.
Most of the actual details were lost.
