"Hey, Pinkie?"
Pinkie poked her head out of the kitchen. "What's up, my fine, frolicking young friend?"
"I was wondering about some weird words in our language," Apple Bloom said. "Twilight gave me a super-fancy word for what I was looking for, but even in all them books, she couldn't find the actual answers."
"Ooh! I LOVE super-fancy words! What is it?"
"Ect-- et-- et-y-mol-o-gy," Apple Bloom pronounced carefully.
"Ooh! What's it mean?"
"It's somethin' like a story about how a word came to be. Why you call something the word you call it."
"You came to the right place, then! I love telling stories! Come on into the kitchen, I'm baking and we might be a while."
She pulled up a chair for Apple Bloom, then grabbed a bowl of chocolatey batter and began to stir. "So! Spill it! What word are you wondering about?"
"Well, it's a couple o' words, actually. The first thing I was wondering about was 'foot'. Y'know, the unit of measurement. Why do they call it a foot?"
Pinkie Pie froze, the spoon stopping in the middle of a round across the batter.
"Pinkie? Everything okay?"
She blinked a few times, took a deep breath, and turned towards Apple Bloom, grinning once more. "Of course! It was just such an old story that I had to pause for a minute to remember!"
Apple Bloom squinted a little. There was clearly something Pinkie wasn't telling her, but Pinkie had the right to keep a secret if she chose. "All right," she said. "So, what's the story?"
Pinkie dropped a teaspoon of vanilla into the batter and resumed stirring. "Weeeeeeeeellllllllll, a long time ago when ponies threw a big party, they called it a 'fete', that's F-E-T-E not F-E-E-T, and that fete was always a very specific size. When they decided to create a system of measurement, they used the fete, but it was wayyy too big to be very useful! So then they divided it into lots of little pieces, I think it was two hundred, and they called those feet, plural, because it was only a lot of them that made up a full fete. The word fete, F-E-T-E, is actually still around, but most ponies call it a feh-tay now." She took a deep breath and poured the batter into a big pan.
"But why is just one a 'foot'?"
"Well, duh! Because it couldn't be 'feet' because that was already the plural!" Pinkie opened the oven and slid the pan inside.
"But why foot specifically?"
"Nopony knows for sure, but I think it sounds a lot better than faat or fiit or fuut, don't you agree?"
"I... I guess so."
"Of course you do!" Pinkie Pie pulled out another bowl and darted around the room, pulling out ingredients for the frosting: milk, powdered sugar, butter, and so on. "Now, you said there were multiple words you were wondering about?"
"Yeah, um... what's hand?"
"Huh? Where'd you even hear that word?"
"You know, ponies say 'hand me that' or 'give me a hand'. Or we say things are 'handy'. That sounds related, doesn't it?"
"Right." She paused for a moment, thinking. "Well, a long time ago, there was a party pony kind of like me. You know how I say things like 'okey-dokey-lokey'? She would say 'handy-dandy', just creating a random word to rhyme with dandy."
"I thought dandy was the made-up word there!" Apple Bloom protested.
"Nopey-dopey! Dandy is an old-type word that means something is fancy. I bet Rarity says it sometimes. It's also old slang for somepony who's really fancy and always obsessing about how they look, but not even Rarity uses it that way anymore, and that doesn't have anything to do with our story!"
"Woah, woah, hold on." Pinkie paused, and Apple Bloom took a few seconds to process her previous words. "Okay, I think I got it. Go ahead."
"Well, anyway, nopony seemed to understand that 'handy' was a nonsense word, so they asked her what it meant. Can you believe it?" Pinkie waved the whisk around, splattering icing all over the kitchen. "You can't just ask a party pony what a nonsense word they made up means! Imagine if someone asked me what 'dokie' or 'lokie' meant! As if I had any idea!"
Apple Bloom, who had ducked behind the cover of the counter, poked her head out. "You done?"
Pinkie returned the whisk to the bowl. "Yep. Anyway, instead of telling them that it was a word that didn't mean anything, she said it meant something that was easy and convenient. So if something was handy-dandy, it was convenient and looked nice. Well, I think she was hoping that they'd forget all about the whole thing, only they didn't. They started using 'handy' all the time, and then they shortened it to 'hand' and used it in other contexts. If somepony hands something to you, it's convenient, because you don't have to get up, you see? And if someone gives you a hand, they're helping you out, which is also convenient!" A timer rang, and she used an oven mitt to pull out the pan. "Was there anything else?" she asked, as she poked it with a toothpick to check if it was done. The toothpick came back out without any traces of cake on it, and she nodded with satisfaction.
"No, those were the only two."
Pinkie turned the cake pan over and tapped on it with her hoof, causing the cake to fall out onto a cooling rack. "Okay! See you around, Apple Bloom! Your birthday's in just a few days, after all!"
Apple Bloom grinned. "Thanks, Pinkie!"
"No problem!" Pinkie was already icing the cake as Apple Bloom turned and galloped out.
She put the finishing touches on the cake, looked around to make sure there was nopony around, and then pulled a lever, dropping into her hidden Party Vault. Once inside, she trotted across it to the furthest, darkest corner, where she pulled a different lever. This one, however, only opened a small compartment, from which she withdrew an old and faded book. Her memory flashed back to the day she'd first seen it.
"Pinkie? What are you doing here?
"Oh, hi there, Princess Celestia! Did you know that door is locked? I thought that was super weird, since this is supposed to be a library and all, and everypony should be able to get to books inside a library! So I came in through the window, and I was gonna unlock the door for everypony else, but then these books looked so interesting that I got distracted and forgot all about it!"
"Pinkie Pie, this wing of the library is closed to the public."
"Ohhh! That explains why it was locked! But why? These are just books about mythical creatures. Although... they're all really old... and all about humans specifically... and all of them talk as if humans are real... and..."
Her gasp could be heard throughout the entire library. "OHMYGOSHOHMYGOSHOHMYGOSH!" she shouted. "This is huge! I can't wait to tell Twilight, and Lyra, and..." She trailed off uncertainly. "Princess? If there used to be real humans, why aren't there anymore?"
Princess Celestia knelt down, so that she was at eye level with Pinkie. "Pinkie Pie, you cannot tell anypony about this room. Understood?"
Pinkie sighed. "Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye," she recited dutifully. "But why not?"
"The answer to that is tied up with the reason the humans are gone. If you wish, I will tell the story. But it is a sad one."
Pinkie looked at the ground. "I hate sad stories... but I think I need to know."
"Very well. Long ago, it is true, there were humans. They lived in harmony with ponies, and worked together. Humans created some incredible tools that we still use--though they're often difficult to manage, without hands." She smiled a little, but it soon faded. "Nopony was ever sure exactly what happened. They might have been afraid of us, or jealous, or perhaps they believed we were inferior. Whatever the reason... they decided to attack."
Pinkie gasped and covered her mouth with one hoof. The princess continued.
"Using science and magic together, they created horrific weapons. One of them landed in a small and peaceful forest. Before our very eyes it was twisted and mutated, until it became what you know as the Everfree Forest. Once we saw what they could do, we knew we couldn't wait. We brought all our forces against theirs, and while our armies fought, Luna and I combated the powerful magic of their weapons. No matter how hard we pressed them, the humans refused to surrender, and in the end... there were none left."
Pinkie's eyes watered with tears, and so did those of the princess. "I still don't understand why we can't tell anypony about them," she said softly.
"Think, my little pony. If they are remembered, so will be the way they met their end. They'd be remembered only as the species so desperate for war they drove themselves to extinction. Even if it is true, do they deserve such a legacy?"
Pinkie Pie paused. "No," she finally said, in a very small voice. "No, they don't. But all the same... it's sad to think of them being totally forgotten by everypony except you and Luna. If you don't mind... can I take this book home? I promise I'll hide it well. I just want to remember them. I don't want them to be forgotten."
Celestia smiled, a smile that was both sad and warm. "Yes," she said. "Yes you may."
Pinkie's eyes welled with tears again as she looked down at the book. "Why did you have to make war?" she asked the illustrated human on the cover, but of course there was no answer. Sniffling a little, she wiped her tears and placed it back in the secret compartment. She had made a Pinkie Promise, and she knew she would never break it. But it still hurt every time she thought about the fact that the only ponies who would ever remember the humans were Celestia and Luna... and her.
Author's Note
I swear this was originally going to be a goofy and lighthearted fanfic. Even the plot twist of Pinkie going into her party vault to look at the book was planned to be humorous, but through the strange process ideas go through in people's heads, it changed into something else. This also wasn't going to be my actual headcanon for this stuff, but... that changed too. I hope you all enjoyed.
