Laurel and Laurel's Crafts Store
With an enthusiastic jerk of the neck, the golden-yellow earth pony turned the modest mouth-painted wooden sign hanging from the door from its purple “CLOSED” side to its sky-blue “OPEN” side. At long last, after years of planning, childhood dreams, and tedious amounts of paperwork, Laurel and Yanny’s store was open for business. Yanny, her bright blue partner, trotted from around the counter and gave her friend a hug in congratulations for a long journey finally coming to a fruitful end.
Though the store was open, the two saw fit to take inventory of their stock. Along with flowers that sat in decorated pots or were strewn along the edges of the windows, brushes, scrapbooks, papers, pencils, paints, all in every conceivable shade and color lined the shelves and cabinets of their new, modest little crafts store. It was perfect, and they were certain that today would be nothing less than a bountiful, profitable success.
Laurel took pride in the way her floral arrangements were laid out. When she was a filly living with her mother in Canterlot, her florist shop received their largest and most important order to date: two-hundred bushels of the brightest red roses fit only for the Grand Galloping Gala. It was quite a daunting request, but Laurel knew her mother would not disappoint Princess Celestia if she entrusted her with it. After months of watering, trimming, and grooming, the order was successfully completed, and little Laurel didn’t want to take any other path in life that her mother had not.
Yanny, on the other hand, could hardly wait to see the faces of rampant glee of each filly, mare, colt, and stallion as they picked the materials and tools for their latest humble masterpiece. Having grown up as Yarny in Manehattan, her younger brother’s speech impediment gave her a name that she could love herself and her brother with. The two bonded over drawing things with strings and yarn that they glued on paper, and their works were frequently hung on the walls of their school. After her brother passed away from a swift, cruel illness, she swore to create a place that would inspire others the way her brother did.
Meeting each other after graduating college, Laurel and Yanny realized and respected each others’ dreams and spent the next several years securing the capital to put their first down payment on a space they could call their very own. With some help from Laurel’s mother, a bit that she set aside from her payment for the Gala, they finally could get their store up and running, and with the sign announcing themselves open to the world outside, they would no longer have to wait. Their wishes had finally come true.
Yanny gasped as she saw her first customer, a jade-green pegasus mare with a short, curly hot-pink mane approach, the curiosity in her eyes promising at least an entrance. “Oh my gosh, Laurel! Our first customer!”
“Calm down, okay? Don’t want to scare her off, do we?” Straightening her acorn-top beret, Laurel approached the door as Yanny zipped back behind the counter.
Laurel reached for the door, though the pegasus was more then happy to pull it open for herself, already enamored with the charm their little store exuded.
“Well,” she said, “if this isn’t the cutest little store!”
“Thank you ma’am,” Laurel bowed her head slightly. “We’re very excited to have you here.”
That’s when she realized. “Oh, that’s right! You’re the two Earth ponies who just arrived here! Please, let me introduce myself! I’m Zip Cirrus.”
Laurel clasped the wrist of her hoof around Zip’s and shook it, smiling at how well this was all going. “Pleased to meet you. My name is Laurel, and this is my best friend and partner Yanny. At least, that’s what her friends call–”
“Wait, so her name is Laurel too?”
Yanny cocked her head in bemusement. “Uh, no? She said my name is Yanny.”
“That’s what she said. Laurel.”
She pressed her lips together, holding back everything inside of her that was keeping her from just exploding on this mare. “No, ma’am, she’s the only Laurel here. My name is Yanny. You know, Laurel and Yanny’s Crafts Store? Like it says right on the sign outside?”
Zip looked between the two ponies and then to the door, swooning a little in slight confusion. “I don’t understand. Which one of you is Yanny?”
“I am! She’s Laurel! I don’t know what’s making you hear Yanny as Laurel, but my name is Yanny.”
For all Yanny’s best efforts at civility, Zip curled her lip in slight disgust, her contempt bleeding through. “Is this some kind of prank?”
Laurel began looking distressed. “No ma’am, please! I’m telling you my name is Laurel, and she’s Yanny!”
Zip let out a long breath. Suddenly the joy of purchasing something was all but drained out of her. “You know what? This is getting way too weird for me, and I really don’t need this today. Maybe I’ll come back when you drop this charade of yours.”
Zip was already walking out the door as Laurel threw her arm out to her as the door slowly closed. “Zip, wait! There has to be a huge misunderstanding!”
Zip didn’t even look back as the door closed on her, their first possible customer now insulted by something she and her friend didn’t know they did.
“What just happened?” Laurel came close to tears as Yanny came back around the counter and rubbed her back consolingly.
“Forget her,” she scoffed. “She probably gets her kicks pulling elaborate jokes on new businesses. Probably a rite of passage for us, you know?”
“But… what kind of a joke is that? I clearly said Laurel and Yanny… didn’t I? I mean, you… you hear it too, don’t you?”
“Of course, I do! Why would I suddenly start mishearing our names like that?” Suddenly, she stopped herself as three fillies the town knew well as Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo galloped at their store. “Oh, Laurel, look alive! This one should be easy!”
With a couple pats on the shoulder, Yanny returned to her register, and the three fillies burst into the store, spreading out like cockroaches as they looked to find what they were looking for. Laurel approached Apple Bloom as she looked at a mason jar with shiny new scissors placed inside them.
“Is there anything I can help you with?” The yellow filly turned to face her, smiling at the warm inviting face that looked down on her.
“Yeah, you mind telling us where we can find glitter glue?”
“It’s over in the other side of the store,” Yanny called, pointing her hoof to the right.
“Nice. Thank you!” Scootaloo dashed over there first, Sweetie Belle trotting to follow in a much more relaxed manner.
Laurel nodded, the awful fresh memory of Zip already fading into the back of her mind. “If you need anything, I’m Laurel.”
Apple Bloom smirked, tickled. “What kind of name is Yanny?”
A nauseous chill formed around the edge of Laurel’s face as it spread out to her upper stomach, her eyes and mouth tightening in fear. With it the only thing she could focus on, she galloped to Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo, her sudden appearance making Scootaloo drop her jar of glitter glue.
Laurel was quick to catch it and hand it back to the pegasus filly. “Girls, what word do you hear me saying? Laurel or Yanny?”
As Yanny left her counter once more to see to her friend, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle looked to each other before speaking to her at the same time.
“You just said Yanny twice.”
“You just said Laurel twice.”
The two foals then looked to each other with a mild sense of betrayal as Yanny’s face twisted into a similar state of horror and bewilderment as her friend’s.
“But she clearly said Yanny!” Scootaloo argued.
“No, she said Laurel!” Sweetie Belle spat.
“Those two words don’t even sound the same!”
“I know the difference between ‘Yanny’ and ‘Laurel,’ and I guarantee you she didn’t say the first one!”
“Girls!” Everyone turned around to see Apple Bloom approaching them, beginning to look as deathly confused as the two shopkeepers. “What’s gotten into ‘ya?”
“Apple Bloom!” Both fillies dropped their glitter glue for Laurel to cactch again as they stood up to her with their hooves nearly touching hers.
“When the lady was talking to you,” Sweetie Belle pestered, “did she say Laurel or Yanny?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Apple Bloom felt cornered. “Yanny just told me to call her by her name if I needed anything.”
“No,” Yanny corrected with a bang of her hoof to her chest, “I’m Yanny, and this is Laurel!”
“Wait…” Apple Bloom looked like she began to understand. “You’re both named Yanny?”
“Yes!” Scootaloo pumped her right arm in as Sweetie Belle loudly groaned.
“What in Celestia’s name is happening?!” Laurel screamed.
“Guys, are you seriously deaf? She just said both of their names are Laurel!”
“She just heard Yanny!” Indignantly, Scootaloo crossed her arms. “That’s two to one. I win!”
“No, you’re all wrong!” Yanny seethed. “We’re not both named Laurel or Yanny! What is with the ponies in this town?”
The three fillies continued their vehement bickering as they walked out from the store.
“Wait!” Laurel shoved the jars of glue into Yanny’s chest as she chased after them. “Don’t you want to buy your glue?”
Neither of them could hear her over their tireless insistences, and as their arguing showed no signs of stopping or quieting down, Laurel sunk into a seated position as her next possible business was thwarted by this unbelievable phenomenon.
Yanny bared her teeth as her friend failed to fight back her sobs. “Okay, that does it!”
After placing the glue on the counter, she galloped to the door and bucked it open, shocking a nearby blue unicorn stallion with a medium-length white mane into stopping in his tracks.
“You!” The stallion anxiously glanced about, hoping that she was screaming at anyone other than him. “My name is Yanny, right?”
“I… I guess so?”
“Say it! Say my name!”
“Yanny! You… you’re Yanny!”
“Awesome!” She then picked Laurel up by her armpits and held her out for him to see. “Now, say hi to my friend Laurel!”
“I, uh… Nice to meet you… um, you mean you’re both named–”
“AAAAAAAHHHH!” Yanny threw Laurel back inside and slammed the door closed, leaving the stallion to run for his very baffled life.
Laurel, with the flurry of emotions she felt, couldn’t withhold a small yelp as Yanny threw herself on top of her, her screams turning to cries.
“Why didn’t we just take that space in Manehattan like you said!” she yelled. “Laurel, I’m sorry for bringing us here!”
“I’m sorry too!” Laurel hugged her friend tight.
“Uh, excuse me?”
“WHAT?!” Yanny spun around and found herself face to face with Twilight Sparkle, whose eyes were wide and her frown stretched out ear to ear. “Oh, oh…”
Both ponies got up off the ground on wobbling legs; to yell at a random passerby was one thing, but to bite the head off the Princess of Friendship? They may as well hope for a successful business in the Badlands.
“Princess Twilight Sparkle!” Laurel whimpered. “Forgive me, we’ve been having the most terrible day!”
“It sounds like it.” The casual sympathy in her voice gave Laurel and Yanny a little more strength to stand straighter. “What’s been going on?”
“We’ve been open for just a few minutes,” Yanny explained, “and each pony who’s come in can’t stop saying we have the same name.”
“I’m… not sure I understand.”
“Okay, then tell me.” Twilight faced Laurel with undivided attention. “What name do you hear when I say ‘Laurel?’”
Twilight nodded, the understanding quickly coming to her. “So when either of you says either ‘Laurel’ or ‘Yanny,’ ponies will either only hear ‘Laurel’ or only hear ‘Yanny,’ right?”
The two ponies looked to each other. They knew she was bright, but to see it so up close and personal…
“That… I guess so,” Laurel replied. “But why? Why would they do that?”
Twilight let out a rough sigh of tired familiarity. “Discord! Come out, the jig is up!”
On cue, a hardcover watercoloring book fell from one of the shelves and opened itself up halfway until Discord’s black-and-white image appeared. Laurel and Yanny watched with morbid fascination as Discord’s color returned to its body on its own as the illustration moved before their very eyes.
“Oh, it’s all fun and games until Princess Starbutt rears her nerdy, humorless head!” Grabbing the edges of the page, Discord pulled himself out from the book, his body forming from the paper that morphed around his form like a gel before his more intricate features, such as his fur and scales defined themselves.
Twilight frowned, a complete contrast to the sheer amazement Laurel and Yanny felt. “Ladies, this is Discord. Please forgive him, he loves to pull all sorts of mean tricks on new storeowners in Ponyville.”
Discord scoffed in gross offense. “Mean?! That was one of my greatest pranks yet!”
“Discord!”
“Oh, alright! Fine!” With a snap of his left talon, both ponies let out a belch that produced a colorful, little bubble from their mouths before they both popped.
With the matter settled, Twilight approached the two. “Now, let me grant you a proper Ponyville greeting. Can I ask for your names now?”
“I’m… Laurel.” She couldn’t help but feel hesitant.
“I’m… Yanny?” So did she.
“Nice to meet you, Yanny.” Twilight then looked to Laurel. “You too, Laurel.”
The two breathed a sigh of relief; now business can resume as normal.
“I’ll be sure to find those ponies that came in and explain everything,” Twilight promised. “In the meantime, keep up the good work. This place looks lovely.”
“Thank you so much, Princess!” Laurel almost bowed her head to the floor.
Twilight giggled; treatment as royalty from newcomers would not be something she’d get used to, but not necessarily tire of. “Please, call me Twilight. Discord, come on, let’s leave them to it.”
“Ugh, yes mom!” He prepared to follow her out before shooting a glance back to the store owners, only to find the two jars left on the counter. “Hold on! Is that glitter glue?”
“Uh, yeah?” Yanny replied.
“Oh good, I’m fresh out at home!” In two consecutive flashes of light, he appeared from the storefront to before the counter. “How much for both?”
“Hold your horses, pal!” Yanny ran around to the register and readied herself for her first official sale from her tormentor. “It’s four bits!”
“Four bits? Last week it was three!”
“We weren’t even open–” Yanny just shut her mouth. There was no point fighting with something as powerful and omniscient as he. “Alright. For you, three bits.”
“Yes!” With a snap of his lions paw, four coins appeared between the fingers before he slammed them on the counter. “Here we are, four bits.”
Yanny couldn’t even tell anymore. “But I just said three!”
“Oh, come on, you guys don’t allow tips anymore? That’s fine, keep the change.”
Yanny wordlessly put the money in the register. His sense of humor was just something she’d have to get used to if she was to keep her sanity intact.
“Come again soon!” Laurel instinctually said, something Yanny couldn’t not grimace over.
“Careful,” Discord coyly responded with a wag of his talon, “I may hold you to that!”
Perhaps some pleasantries would end the transaction on a better note. “What do you plan to do with that?” Yanny asked. “Do you plan to draw something with it, or…”
“Draw? Pfft, no! Glitter glue is one of my favorite things to snack on while I watch Netflix!”
“Wait… Net–”
“Toodles!” With a flash, Discord was out of sight to watch Netflix… whatever the heck that even was.
“So, he’s going to eat glue…” As Laurel stood in the same spot, she turned back to Yanny. “Why is that somehow the thing that makes the most sense about him?”
Yanny couldn’t provide an answer, but she laughed in full agreement with her, and Laurel joined her. Today wouldn’t be the best, but they couldn’t say it wasn’t boring.
