There was something fulfilling about painting one’s namesake.
As backgrounds went, Sunset Shimmer had painted thousands of literal sunsets. With the view afforded by Canterlot High School’s roof, this one was shaping up to be one of her better ones.
Until a loud thump from the rooftop’s door interrupted her brush stroke.
“It’s open!” Sunset called.
The door thumped again, and the knob rattled for a response.
Sunset placed her brush down and crossed over to the door. When she opened it, she found Pinkie Pie stooped over, trying to turn the doorknob with her mouth.
“Thanh yuth,” Pinkie mumbled.
“Why are yo—“ Sunset started, before seeing Pinkie had her art easel underneath one arm, a grocery bag in the other, and a duffel across her back.
“Here, let me help,” Sunset amended as she took Pinkie’s bags from her. “What’s with all the stuff?”
Pinkie straightened and grinned at her. “I took a trip to the store to get some supplies for our picnic painting party. Today is super special!”
Sunset arched a brow. “But we’ve been painting together plenty of times before this.”
“Not on this rooftop! That makes it tippy top special!”
“Okay, I’ll give you that one.” Sunset chuckled and gestured towards her easel with the half painted sunset. “How about you set yourself up over there while I do the picnic. I already got a head start on mine.”
While Pinkie worked to set up her canvas and paints, Sunset opened the bag with the picnic items.
It was always amusing to see how Pinkie had a stereotypical idea of a picnic. There was the iconic red and white checked tablecloth, red cups, and an honest-to-goodness wicker basket. Which, like most things Pinkie, was dyed a bright pink and featured three balloons on the side. Sunset wondered if it was a custom job or if Pinkie herself wove it together at some point.
Inside the basket, she found two bottles of Sweet Apple Acre cider and a neatly wrapped pie tin. It was telling that the only store-bought thing in the basket were the napkins and cups. Pinkie must have gone home to personally bake the pie and get the bottles. The pie even still felt warm.
“Last time we painted together we had a Brushing Bash at the Park,” Sunset remarked.
“Yep!”
“And the time before that it was Classroom Carousing Composition.”
“Mmmhmm!”
“And the time before that was a Paint Splattering Shindig Soiree.”
“That one was one of my favorites!”
“Is there ever going to be a time when us going out isn’t also going to be a party?”
Pinkie shrugged. “Ooooh, when it stops being special. Maybe.”
Sunset couldn’t keep her grin away. “So, never, then?”
“Now you’re catching on.” Pinkie’s coy tone and smile had Sunset taking a second glance over. Pinkie was swirling her paintbrush deliberately through the yellow and pink paints. She winked when Sunset caught the motion.
“You know if you spent half as much time thinking of what you wanted to paint instead of ways of making me laugh, you’d be halfway done by now.” Sunset pointed out with a smile.
Pinkie sighed and turned back towards the canvas. “I knooow. But it’s so hard to think of something to draw.”
“Have some confidence in yourself,” encouraged Sunset as she stepped up beside Pinkie. “Your brushwork has gotten pretty good. Just go in and put some paint down.”
“Maybe I could paint a sunset,” said Pinkie, looking over to Sunset’s half-finished painting. She then turned to look over her shoulder. “Or a Sunset.”
“I don’t want you to copy off what I did. As for me, you’ve already done me before.”
Pinkie started giggling.
“You’ve already painted me before,” Sunset clarified with an eye roll. “You could try something inspirational. Something from the heart.”
Pinkie reached with the brush towards the canvas and then hesitated. She drew back, then moved the brush to a different spot before losing her nerve and pulling back again. Finally, she sighed and stuck the end of the brush in her mouth and gnawed on the stem like an oversized cigar. “Ugh… Can you give me a poke and tell me what to draw?”
“Give you a poke…?” Sunset squinted briefly, wondering if this was another one of Pinkie’s jokes.
“Yeah! Like at Everfree.”
“Oh… ohhhhh!” Sunset laughed. “That kind of poking. Sorry, Pinkie, taking a trip to a world of candy will spoil my appetite. I think you’re the only one my powers don’t work on. Or… work too much on. One of those two.”
Pinkie pouted, which made the brush in her mouth waggle and send a few droplets of purple paint flying.
Sunset shook her head. Pinkie always seemed to stall when she had to do something for herself instead of someone else.
Gently, Sunset reached and took the brush out of Pinkie’s mouth and placed it in her hand. While holding Pinkie’s wrist, Sunset guided her to the canvas. “You’re the most creative person I know, and you have plenty of imagination inside you.”
Pinkie leaned her head back against Sunset’s and let the brush be led to the canvas, though when the brush was an inch away, she bit her lower lip, and her hand trembled.
“Close your eyes,” Sunset instructed.
“Huh? I’ll totally make a mistake then!”
“Nothing is ever perfect from the first stroke. What matters is how it comes out altogether at the end. Close your eyes and think about something inspiring. I want you to think on that more than the brush or anything else.”
Pinkie nodded and screwed her eyes tightly shut to the point of being comically over-exaggerated.
Sunset leaned in and kissed Pinkie’s nose.
“H-Hey! No fair!” Pinkie complained with her eyes closed.
“You looked too cute like that. But you need to remember to relax, too.”
That brought a huff out of Pinkie, but she soon followed through. With Sunset’s hand gently keeping her on target, she touched the brush to the canvas and painted a circle.
Pinkie opened her eyes and stared at the circle. After a beat, she moved to refresh her brush with a different shade and painted a new streak of color, slowly gaining enough confidence that Sunset didn’t have to hold her hand anymore.
“Think of something?” Sunset asked.
“Yeah, sorta,” Pinkie said, distracted as she began to work at a rapid-fire pace to set the rest of the canvas up.
Sunset kept quiet. It was something she noticed times before that once Pinkie was in motion she was like a determined machine.
Eventually, Pinkie finished filling in the sky and rapidly swapped to browns for the lower half of the canvas. Her pace slowed once the underpainting was set, and she turned to fill in the fine details. She spoke up. “It’s something I saw from when I was growing up. You ever have something, so super-duper stupendous happen to you?”
Sunset blinked, then let out a laugh. “Actually, yes, Pinkie. Though I’m a special case. I’m a reformed villain from a magical ponyland. For me, having friends is pretty amazing.” She grinned. “And knowing you is probably the most super-duper stupendous part of that.”
As far as Sunset knew, Pinkie was immune to blushing. The compliment, however, was enough to have Pinkie pause her brushstroke and mirror Sunset’s grin. “Now lookie who is bringing the sweets.”
“I try,” Sunset said and returned to her own easel. She picked up her palette and resumed painting the sunset she’d started before. “Though you probably want a more artsy answer.”
“I like talking. If I think too much about something, then I stop doing it. It’s why I can’t bake anything without Gummy around.”
Briefly, Sunset had the mental image of Pinkie in a constant conversation with her plushie. Sunset would have thought it weird if Pinkie’s sister Maud didn’t do the same thing with her pet rock.
Well, Sunset would have thought it weirder, in any case.
“Sure, if talking helps, what do you want to talk about?”
While rubbing her chin with one hand, Pinkie reached with the other to her poofy hair and dug in with her fingers. Sunset watched out the corner of her eye, waiting for some miraculous sleight of hand. It disappointed her when it seemed that Pinkie was merely scratching her head.
“How aaaaaabout... why we are on a rooftop this time? You come up here a lot by yourself, but this is the first time we’ve been up here. Is this a secret fun place to paint?” Pinkie finally asked.
“Hmm… that’s a little tricky to explain.” Sunset began outlining some of the surrounding buildings on her canvas. Instead of painting them in the red brick, she mixed in white and gold to layer in fantasy over the real-life models. “When I was growing up, I lived in Canterlot.”
“You’ve said! You were like Twilight! Err... Princess Twilight.”
“Not exactly, I wasn’t a princess. Just a student of one. They built Canterlot on the side of a mountain and it has some of the tallest towers.”
“Hee. If you painted anypony from up high, they’d be more than little. They’d be tiiiiiny.”
Sunset rolled her eyes. “The littlest, tiniest ponies, yes. But it wasn’t always for the view I painted for. You see, in Equestria, the sun is moved by a princess… okay, that probably sounds weird to you.”
“Nah,” Pinkie cheerfully disagreed. “Every world has its own thing. They don’t even push across the sky in Sugarland or spin the world around.”
That gave Sunset pause before she snickered. “Oh yeah? How does it work in there?”
“The Empress Twizzler replaces it with a gumdrop at night,” Pinkie replied matter-of-fact.
Sunset snorted her laugh. Knowing Pinkie, she probably could write an entire story about her imagination. ’If Sugarland is all in her head that is...’
“Was it the Princess you were drawing?” Pinkie prodded as she lingered her brush over the canvas. She was slowing down again.
“Not her… not exactly. I was probably going to always be painting sunsets on account of my name. It became a daily hobby. Eventually, I noticed these little differences: a tint in the surrounding clouds or sparkles around the corona. Sometimes during motion, you can catch a ripple along the surface. You can probably guess what I saw.”
“Wow!” Pinkie exclaimed and looked up from her canvas towards the sky. “You’re saying sunset shimmers are for real?”
Quickly reaching over, Sunset held a hand in front of Pinkie’s eyes to protect her sight. “Please don’t, Pinkie! It doesn’t happen here. Also, this sun is way harsher so don’t stare… in general.”
“Aww! I wanna see the thing you’re named after… still, it sounds really neat that Celestia made every sunset different.”
“Funny enough, it’s not something everypony can see. It made me wonder why she did it at all if so few would even notice. Afterwards, I realized that this was something the princess added to her work. Probably more for herself than anypony else.”
Sunset smiled at the memory. “One day she was being extra creative, and it felt like how you and I are right now. Each of us working on some feeling of inspiration at the same time. I never showed anypony my art before then, but the next day I brought it to her after class.”
Pinkie nodded as she listened, her brush returning to the canvas at a rapid pace. “Did she like it?”
“It surprised her. In a weird way, even if she was painting for all of Equestria with her sunsets, I was one of the few who saw this hidden thing. I think it touched her to know that somepony was looking after all. She had a laugh at how obvious it was when she remembered my name.”
“Huh, I thought she was your teacher. How’d she forget?”
“Well, it’s her school, but she really only teaches a few classes in it. I maybe only saw her once a week with a group of others. Also it’s kind of a thing with unicorns to be named after light and star stuff.”
Sunset grinned. “But to actually see all the glimmers, shimmers and sparkles? Turns out only potentially talented magic users can see that. She hoof picked me then as a personal student, and I gained my mark. It was the happiest day of my life, all because of a painting.”
Pinkie gasped, and she looked over to Sunset with sparkling eyes. “That’s why you like art?! You painted a sunset and all that happened?”
“I know it’s pretty predictable,” Sunset said while she spun her brush in her fingers. “A girl named Sunset painted a sunset and got a sunset.”
“So what! That’s a super fun story. I’m totally going to get brush-shaped candles on your next cake.” Pinkie hummed and painted faster than ever, her own creativity boosted. “Maybe palettes for plates. Rarity probably has a bunch of berets somewhere we can wear for hats.” She giggled. “Yanno, I always figured it was music over art with you. This changes everything! I got so many ideas and—”
As Pinkie continued on with her stream-of-conscious planning, Sunset marveled at how easy it was to talk to Pinkie about her previous life. Anyone else would have had dozens of questions or been skeptical. Pinkie, though, could get excited about… well, just about anything mundane or magical.
“Heh, it’s alright, Pinkie. You don’t need to make me a big party over something that happened years and years ago,” Sunset said, interrupting Pinkie’s nonstop talking somewhere between using smocks for aprons and candy-flavored crayons.
Pinkie wagged a finger. “Birthdays happened years and years ago, and everybody celebrates those.” She pointed the finger at Sunset, and her expression turned coy. “Anniversaries, too.”
Sunset opened her mouth, then closed it. “You got me there. Though you’re the only one who’s heard that story. It’d confuse anyone else why we’d be dressing up as artists. As for our anniversary, no, I still haven’t decided on what kind of party I want for that.”
Pinkie’s eyes lidded and her lip quirked in a barely repressed smile. “Fine. Don’t pick. It’ll make the surprise all the better.”
Sunset stuck her tongue out. Only Pinkie could make a party sound like a threat. Her attention turned towards Pinkie’s easel. “Anyway, lets look at your painting. You let me ramble forever.”
After a long moment of staring at Pinkie’s canvas, Sunset asked, “Is it a flying donut?”
Pinkie blinked. “What? No! It’s a rainbow, see!”
“It looks like a donut. With multicolored sprinkles and frosting on the edge.”
Pinkie frowned at Sunset, then looked back at the painting and tilted her head. In the moment of silence, there was a small gurgle of a rumbling belly.
“Okay… maybe it looks a liiitttle like a donut.” Pinkie admitted. She put the brush cross-wise in her mouth and reached into her hair. This time she produced a small candy from somewhere from the curly mass. She unwrapped the candy and stopped as she was stuck with the wrapper in one hand, candy in the other, and brush in her mouth.
Sunset solved this logistics log-jam by taking the brush from Pinkie’s mouth and placing it on the easel’s holder. “Tell me about this donut-that’s-suppose-to-be-a-rainbow. How did it inspire you?”
“Mmm,” Pinkie replied as she chewed on the candy. She bunched up the wrapper before giving it a toss over her shoulder where it burst into a small shower of magical sparks. “When I was growing up on the farm, we didn’t have much to do. No talking, no smiling. Just get up, do work, go back, eat and sleep.”
Having met Pinkie’s family, Sunset could easily believe that. The Pies’ home didn’t even have a TV, and Pinkie’s parents were the sort to quietly enjoy books by the fireplace. “Couldn’t sneak off to the town for a little fun?” asked Sunset.
Pinkie shook her head. “It was too far! Besides, when you grow up like that you don’t even think anything is missing.”
Sunset took another look at Pinkie’s painting. The multi-colored donut in the sky was above a monochromatic grey land dotted with barns and farmhouses. “Did you get the inspiration to try baking?” Sunset guessed, thinking in the abstract.
“Nanna Pie already taught me how to bake. What the rainbow taught me was that there was more to the world than the routine. That something incredible and super-dippity could come out of nowhere and make your day special. But my sisters, Ma, and Pa didn’t have a chance to see it! I knew I couldn’t wait for a rainbow to come again, so I got to work setting something up in the old silo. Betcha can guess what it was!”
Sunset laughed and put the clues together. “A party. You threw them a surprise party!” She paused, struck by the memory of Pinkie’s father and his stern expression, stern demeanor and somehow stern hat... not to mention the perpetually scowling Limestone and Marble, whose shyness was worse than Fluttershy’s. “How did your family take it? I hope they weren’t put off.”
Pinkie’s eyes twinkled. “They weren’t! They all burst into laughter, smiles and joined in song and dancing!”
“What, even Limestone?”
“Especially Limestone!”
“All that from a rainbow? Now I can see why you love that movie with the wizard so much. I always thought it was for the lollipop guild.”
Thus prompted, Pinkie reached into her hair and drew out a lollipop. “That movie’s great! But it was the rainbow that gave me the idea to bring a smile to everyone I met. After that, I couldn’t stay at home every day keeping to the same thing. Not when there is still someone someplace who is waiting like I was for their biggest surprise ever.” She put the lollipop in her mouth and grinned around it.
Sunset looked back at the pair of paintings. “That’s a pretty sweet story. Heh, it looks like we both painted the same theme. We both saw something in the sky and it…” She trailed off, her eyes returning to Pinkie’s painting. Something about it nagged at Sunset.
It wasn’t the style. She had gotten used to the big swings and changes in Pinkie’s methods and types. She suspected that Pinkie didn’t even need a brush half the time. Right now it looked like Pinkie had gone for an impressionist style, flashy blobs of color made with quick strokes.
Sunset blinked. The big ring of rainbow took up most of the picture, with a farm in the background. On the farm were typical farm things one saw in paintings. Having a herd of horses was normal for a rural landscape.
But the proportions were off. They weren’t horses... Pinkie had painted ponies. Equestrian ponies. One of them even had a hat on.
“How do you know wh—“ Sunset started and froze.
In the painting was a small pink filly leaping in excitement with a trio of very familiar balloons on her flank.
Slowly, Sunset turned her head to stare at the girl next to her. “Pinkie?” It was all she could manage; she felt as if the rooftop was falling away.
Pinkie watched her with bright eyes, lips turned up in a small smile around the stem of her lollipop. She let the question hang in the air before very deliberately taking the lollipop out. “Surprise!”
“Pinkie Pie. You’re Pinkie Pie.”
“Yep!”
“I mean… you… where… where is my Pinkie?”
“I’m right here, silly!”
“No… augh…. Okay. Are you human or are you a pony?”
Pinkie looked down at her hands and wiggled her fingers. “Yes?” she said with some uncertainty.
Sunset whimpered and grabbed at handfuls of her own hair. “Pinkie, please be serious. I’m having an existential crisis here!”
Pinkie raised a brow. “Why?”
“What do you mean ‘why'? You’re a pony! From Equestria!”
“What’s the problem with that?”
Sunset lifted a finger, mouth open and ready to tell Pinkie why it was very important that a pony from Equestria was running around Canterlot High as a human.
A moment passed, then another, with Sunset still in the same pose as she waited for that Very Important Reason to make itself obvious.
Pinkie giggled at Sunset’s stiff posture. “Careful, you might catch a birdie like that.”
Sunset snapped her mouth shut and crossed her arms. “Okay. Maybe it won’t blow up the multiverse or anything. But still… I want Pinkie. My Pinkie.”
“Like I said. I’m right here!” Pinkie’s perpetually sunny expression wavered. “At least… I hope I still am?”
The tone gave Sunset pause; she’d seen a hundred different ways Pinkie could be excited and happy. This was the first thing that sounded to Sunset like genuine worry. Even Pinkie’s hair looked like it was drooping slightly.
“Umm… how long have you been here?” Sunset asked carefully.
“Since the Friendship Games?”
“Since the Friendship Games?!” Sunset exclaimed and fell back to sputtering. “H-How?”
Pinkie twiddled her forefingers together. “Well... first we’d switch every other day. Then it was every other week. Then sometimes every other month until… umm… now it’s whenever, but not for a while...”
Sunset rubbed at her temples. “The Friendship Games were nearly two years ago.”
Pinkie winced, and her hair looked straighter than ever. “Y-Yeah…”
A laugh came out of Sunset. It was short, ‘hahs’ of breath that had a maniacal quality behind it. Her eye started twitching.
“Erm… Sunset…? Are you mad? Like Angry-Mad or Crazy-Mad?” Pinkie asked.
“Three hundred and forty-seven.”
“Huh?”
“Three hundred and forty-seven. It’s how many days we’ve been going out together. I remember it because you mark every week with a party and every day you do your best make it unique and special.”
Pinkie blinked rapidly. “Soooooo, you aren’t Mad-Crazy or Mad-Angry?” she asked, with hope returning to her voice and color to her hair.
Sunset pulled Pinkie close for a hug and ruffled the flattened out hair. “Mad about you, maybe.”
“Hee!” Pinkie exclaimed and hugged Sunset back. All at once her hair puffed out to its original state and engulfed Sunset’s hand to the wrist.
Sunset wandered her fingers through the pink depths until she found a neck to stroke. “Still, why did it take you so long to tell me? I kind of feel silly that I’ve spent so much time telling you stuff you already knew about Equestria.”
Pinkie kept up her hug and leaned her head on Sunset’s shoulder. “I didn’t think it mattered… besides, you had so much fun Sunsplaining that I didn’t want to ruin it for you.”
“Sunsplaining!” Sunset cried, indignant until she thought back on it. Admittedly, she had enjoyed the fact that Pinkie could seemingly remember every little detail of Equestria life and get her pony-in-human-world jokes without the punchline being explained. As Sunset searched her memory, she couldn’t remember a moment when Pinkie had actually lied. Usually, she just let Sunset talk.
“You can still explain stuff, if you wanna,” Pinkie offered with a smile.
Sunset drew her hand back from Pinkie’s hair and something tumbled out with it. After she saw that it was a tootsie-roll, Sunset dropped it back into Pinkie’s curls, where it vanished under the poofy waves. “That’s okay. I can get used to the radical idea that I fell in love with a pony from another world. It explains a lot, actually.”
Pinkie giggled again.
“I do have a few questions, though.” Sunset disentangled herself from Pinkie and walked over to the picnic basket. She sat and fetched one of the cider bottles from it.
“Uh-oh. Questions,” Pinkie said warily as she joined Sunset near the basket.
“I’m not going to yell at you, I just want to figure a few things out. Me running away from Equestria through the mirror was full of drama and unhappiness. I want to know why you're here on Earth in the first place and not Equestria.”
Pinkie smiled. “Cheese Sandwich.”
Sunset blinked at this non-sequitur and looked towards the picnic basket. “Umm. I think you only packed a pie and cider.”
“No, silly! Cheese Sandwich is a pony.”
“Uh… tasty name?”
“Yeah! He’s a pony who travels up and down Equestria making parties wherever somepony needs one.”
Sunset laughed. “So he’s a traveling version of you?”
Pinkie nodded and puffed her chest out proudly. “It was one of my parties that got him going in the first place. After he left, I thought of how great it would be to travel far and wide spreading parties and smiles just like him. Though I couldn’t leave Ponyville and he was already doing the traveling party thing.”
“Couldn’t you have just gone in like… the opposite direction? Equestria’s a big place.”
Pinkie shook her head vigorously. “No way! I didn’t want any chance of me stepping on his hooves, not again.” She waggled a hand. “I didn’t need to anyway, because Twilight moved the mirror over and opened it up full time. There was a whole world full of people who I could bring the magic of parties to, and I wouldn’t even have to leave Ponyville! Double funsies!”
“And thus you had so many new worlds to conquer, eh? Though I see a wrinkle in your plan. This place already had a Pinkie Pie.”
Pinkie stuck her tongue out then sighed. “Yeah, and she’s been doing a pretty good job. She had all sorts of gadgets, but I knew about magic. So it was fun to trade places and figure out how we could come up with ways of making parties doubly deluxe in that way.”
“You know, me and Princess Twilight have gone back and forth with this idea of trying to tell everyman or everypony about the portal, and we always end up saying how it’s too dangerous. Even just a little magic over here corrupts everything, and I shudder at the idea of a gun in Equestria. I don’t think we ever considered the idea of having a… party exchange program.”
Pinkie lifted her own cider bottle and pried off the bottlecap with her hair. “It’s okay. You can’t think of everything.”
Sunset took a drink from her bottle and savored the taste with a swish before swallowing. “Well, I get why you came over, but why did you stay?”
“‘Cuz there is one thing here that isn’t in Equestria.”
Sunset startled and looked over. Pinkie was still smiling, but it wasn’t one of her beaming smiles. It was more reserved. Shy almost.
“Pinkie, you’ve been keeping yourself over here for me?” Sunset said, feeling a strange mix of both guilt and flattery. “I’m nopony special to be keeping you away from everypony you love and care about. I’m not worth giving up so mu—”
“What kind of party pony would I be if I let the only pony living in the whole wide human world go without one for her birthday? Or Hearth’s Warming? Or Hearts and Hooves?” Pinkie shook her head violently, expression uncharacteristically fierce. “You were so lonely for company, and all you had was a book to write in! You're special! Y-You appreciate my parties. You never get tired of talking to me and… and even when you explain stuff it’s because you want to talk to me even more. You always remember a date, and yo-you’ve never ever broke a Pinkie promise—”
Pinkie’s speech had started to break up and choke with emotion. All in an effort to empathize how special Sunset was to her.
Sunset felt the rise of involuntary tears in her own eyes. Humans hardly cried as much as ponies, but she didn’t care about that now. She pulled Pinkie into a hug and squeezed her tight.
For a while, they held each other, until their tension faded, and they grew comfortable in each other's arms.
“Thank you,” Sunset murmured.
Pinkie idly nuzzled Sunset's neck, relaxing in the affection. "Mmm?”
“For loving a stupid filly like me who doesn’t have the sense to live in a world that’s easy for you.”
“You’re not stu— mmff…” Pinkie’s protest was cut by Sunset’s kiss. She giggled after they broke. “Umm… do you want some pie?”
“Pie or pie?” Sunset asked with a grin. “I think I could go for either.”
Pinkie’s eyes twinkled brightly. “Yeah, but only one of them is getting colder instead of warmer.”
“It’s a competition on which is sweeter though.”
When Sunset unwrapped the pie tin, she found it still warm and slightly steaming. It reminded Sunset of her earlier thought.
“Pinkie, you baked this fresh, didn’t you?”
“Mmhmm!”
“But you’d have to take a bus across town if you were baking this at home. It’s from Equestria?”
Pinkie grinned. “It’s not so bad. The pedestal is right there, and Twilight’s castle is like five minutes away from Sugarcube Corner.”
Sunset sighed. “So… you’ve been bringing me food from there?”
“I thought you’d like a taste of home once in awhile,” Pinkie admitted.
Sunset carefully placed the pie down and turned towards Pinkie.
“That’s… okay right?” Pinkie said, confused at Sunset’s change in demeanor.
“It’s probably the most anyone’s ever thought about me,” Sunset replied as she brushed her own hair back to expose her neck. “I think it proves that I am going to have to put in more of an effort if I’m going to keep up. You’ve gone and made this non-stop party train an important part of your life. The very least I can do is ride it with you.” She reached over and petted along Pinkie’s cheek.
Harmony magic glowed in Sunset’s palm, and Pinkie leaned against Sunset’s hand, smiling. Even as the sun was in its final descent, the world around them became bright and colorful. Happy music filled the air from the Walking Star’s radio as he ambled his giant self by the rooftop’s edge. The other Sugarland residents clapped and cheered, and when Sunset peeked skyward, the Empress gave her a thumbs up with a candy hand.
When Sunset kissed Pinkie, she was sweetest thing in Sugarland.
Sunset frantically glanced between the bowls of flour as sweat matted down the bangs around her lit horn. Nothing in the School for Gifted Unicorns could have prepared her for this particular brand of chaos: having to keep her eyes and magical concentration on three eggbeaters whirling away while she used hooves to push a rolling pin and mouth to stir a spoon.
“Sunset! The oven!” Pinkie cried.
Startled, Sunset looked up to see smoke billowing out of the stove. Galloping out from behind the table, she ended up stumbling at the corner and skidded on all four hooves. On reflex she teleported to help close the distance but her momentum had her flying towards the fiery oven.
Three balloons and a wall of pink filled her vision then, and Sunset came to a sudden stop when her muzzle crashed into Pinkie's cushy flank.
The party earth pony didn’t budge from the impact, and simply put her hoof out to help Sunset up. “You alright?”
“Yeah, just out of practice...” Sunset didn’t ask how Pinkie moved faster than her teleport. She’d stopped asking those kinds of questions.
“Practice makes perfect. Twenty-one more to go!” Pinkie smooched Sunset on the nose before promptly resuming work on her five concurrent cakes on her side of the table.
Sunset noted that Pinkie had already managed to turn the stove off and save whatever was burning in it, too. It made her feel exceptionally slow when she returned to her simultaneous mixing. A glance at the itinerary showed it filled with duplicates of names for both Ponyville and C.H.S.
“This ride isn’t ever going to end, is it?” Sunset remarked.
Pinkie perked up and flashed a smile. “You wanna get off?”
There was a tickle of that old competitive spirit, the same one that had once made Sunset Celestia’s best student. She picked up the fallen chef’s hat and put it on with a determined smile. “No.”
