Rarity shuffled into the bakery and squinted one eye at the odd filly standing on the counter, well overhead. On the counter!
She’d even forgotten to tap the snow off her boots—her mommy had bought them, but as her famous chef uncle always said, “Ordinary things are for ordinary ponies.” That of course referred to cooking anything straight out of the box, and Rarity had relished even the simple elegance of adding a nice garnish to a plate of eggs. She didn’t cook that often, as the stove required adult supervision. Honestly, Rarity was far more mature than all those other hyperactive foals in her class, so why wouldn’t she—?
Why did her mind always wander? Anyway, she tapped the snow off the store-bought boots she’d sufficiently adorned with glitter and gems, and she shot another squint at that counter-borne filly.
“What are you doing up there?” Rarity said.
The filly had a great big powder puff of a mane, which jostled about while she giggled as if Rarity had just told her the funniest joke ever.
“I’m waiting on customers!”
“You… you work here? And you think it’s a good idea to stand on a surface used for food?”
She immediately hopped behind the counter and disappeared from view. “Uh-huh! Back here, I can’t see the customers, and they might stand around thinking nopony was here, and then I’d do a whole lot more waiting.”
Yes, but that wasn’t really—
Rarity sighed. She hadn’t seen this filly in school before. Did her mommy teach her at home? Still, strange to leave her in charge of a showroom when she clearly had a deficient concept of hygiene, and—
“Hello? Are you still there?”
Ugh, why was it so hard to keep focused? “Yes, darling. My mommy—ahem—my mother sent me to get our usual Hearth’s Warming dessert. She assured me Mrs. Cake would have it ready.”
Such a clatter and a racket from behind the counter! Would that be a clacket? Or a ratter… No, that sounded too close to some kind of vermin. How ghastly! But then a rather nerve-rattling sound of skin sliding across glass, and a grunt.
“Hang on… almost…” The strange filly’s mane sprouted into view again like some discolored broccoli, and then she lay panting on the countertop once more. “I’m sorry, but—” she stuck her tongue out of the side of her mouth and appeared to be working through a script, then her face suddenly brightened “—Mrs. Cake had to step out for a moment. She will have your custom order as soon as she returns, but in the meantime, can I interest you in anything else?”
“I’m afraid not, dear. That was my only purpose in coming here.”
“Oh…”
Her hair straightened out a tad, her eyes looked a little mad, she seemed to feel kind of bad—
Rarity shook her head, always going off on tangents like that. It liked to make up quick songs at the most inconvenient times. “You really work here?” Rarity said. “I haven’t seen you before.”
“My name’s Pinkie Pie!” she laughed out in reply, and… and apparently the rhymes weren’t going to stop. “I just started today! My mom’s friends with Mrs. Cake, and they thought I should spend some time here, what with my new cutie mark and all!”
Balloons. A trio of them, in two different colors. Yes, why did cutie marks tend to have things in threes? Bad news comes in threes, as ponies say, but how often did a cutie mark constitute bad news? Yes, Rarity, get a hold of your brain again.
“What do the balloons mean?”
Pinkie stood there all stiff-legged with her chin raised. “I throw parties.”
“I see.”
And Pinkie leaned in as if sharing a precious secret. “Y’know, a party is when—”
“I know what a party is.”
From the stuttering, stammering, stupefied face Pinkie made, Rarity might have been the most hideous ghoul ever to blight Equestria. “Y-you mean… I didn’t invent them?” A quick glance at her cutie mark no doubt revealed it hadn’t vacated her flank.
“No, but… you must have your own spin on them, yes? A special talent wouldn’t grant you the gift of the ordinary, I dare say. What’s your unique flavor? A super soiree, a birthday bash, a fabulous fete, a…” Yes, yes, the song in her head led dead ahead to the appropriate appellation! “A Pinkie Party!”
A long gasp sounded, and no sooner had Rarity blinked than big blue eyes blazed before her. “I love it! Can I use that?”
“Consider it yours.”
“Really?” Pinkie leapt straight up, making a curious springy sound. “I can just have it? That’s so nice of you!”
What would Rarity do with it anyway? “In the spirit of the season—it’s no problem.”
“Ohhhhhhh, that’s right!” Pinkie erupted. Her mane once more fluffed, the curly locks puffed, and she whirled and twirled, the music unfurled, her chest all swelled for a soooong—
Rarity coughed. No, Pinkie merely stood there, though perhaps slightly out of contact with the ground. “I’m sorry, dear. I let my imagination run away at times.”
“Why would you want to keep that pent up?” Pinkie answered. “I just let my head have its own way, and look at all the wonderful stuff it gets me into!”
No doubt. “Still. What was it you were saying?”
Pinkie rolled her eyes to the side. “Oh! Um… No, not that. A panda’s not actually a bear. Um…” Hm, they did seem to be cut from the same cloth. “Align the parameters. Three, two, one—Hearth’s Warming!” She stared back as if the statement were self-explanatory.
“What about Hearth’s Warming?” Rarity said.
“I should throw a party for it. I’ve never done Hearth’s Warming before.”
“Really?” Rarity had never heard of a place that didn’t celebrate it. Just where did this filly come from?
“Well, I mean I haven’t thrown a Hearth’s Warming party before. Can I try one out on you?”
“I really was out for just the one errand…”
“Please?” Pinkie’s grin showed far more teeth than a pony should have.
And Rarity deflated like a poofy dress without a bustle. “Very well.”
A little blast of confetti shot out of an empty paper towel tube. “Woo hoo!” Then that awful squeaking again as Pinkie slid down the inclined front of the display cases.
Good thing Rarity had no pressing engagements today. So she allowed Pinkie to corral her to a corner table. That mane, so delightfully curled—a broad-brimmed hat would sit on it nicely without swallowing her whole (speaking of which, she’d just downed an entire cupcake from the tray she carried over), no, hats, hats, she needed to stay focused, topsy turvy, traipsing tableward to taste-test tiny treats.
“Do you like it?” Pinkie asked.
Rarity had to blink and look up. Yes, she’d taken a bite from the cupcake. A memory of flavor lingered. “Yes.” Streamers, bunting, balloons. Where had they all come from? Music, too.
For some reason, Pinkie frowned. It clashed with the whole idea of her, at least what little idea Rarity had formulated so far. “You don’t like it,” she said flatly.
“That’s not it. The cupcake tasted very good, thank you.”
“But the party?”
Rarity rubbed a hoof to her cheek. This poor dear just needed a little help. “For one thing, well… quite literally, it’s for one. We’d have more fun with more friends.”
“Yeaaaah, I kinda figured. But rounding up a lot of ponies for a test party is pretty tough. I can’t help that right now. What else?”
With another blink, Rarity looked around. Streamers in polka dots, confetti in blue and pink—no, this wouldn’t do. “The music, the decor, it should all take a seasonal flair, don’t you think? Hearth’s Warming carols, red and green ornaments, wreaths, a tree.”
“A theme party?” Pinkie’s eyes absolutely lit up, like fire opals catching the sky-borne conflagration of an intense sunset. “I hadn’t considered that before! I’m new at this. Sorry.”
“Not at all, darling. Everypony has to start somewhere. Honestly, I have the same issue.”
Pinkie glanced down at Rarity’s flank. “Diamonds? Do you make jewelry or something?”
“Yes, I… well maybe?” The weight of a cutie mark had seemed to serve its own end. Just making those costumes for the school play, but she hadn’t thought about a specific meaning. It had gotten the music going in her head, though. Crinoline stitches, comfortable britches, some buttons up top, and a sapphire to pop. Flannel pajamas and earrings like grandma’s, a silken scarf streaming and silver boots gleaming! A thousand more things her creations could be, and one day the bigwigs would certainly see!
“I merely found some gems,” Rarity continued. “My horn insisted upon it. Then I used them to adorn some costumes for a minor theater production.” She licked a morsel of icing off her lip. “Very good cupcakes, by the way.”
While Rarity had been distracted, Pinkie must have reloaded her confetti tube, because another cascade rained down. “Yay!” Pinkie shouted, then regarded the tube with wrinkled brow. “I’ll need something a lot more powerful. Anyway… red and green ornaments? Wreaths? For Hearth’s Warming?”
“Yes. What do you normally do?”
“Rocks. Rock dolls, rock soup, rock hunt.”
A well-hidden smiley-smirk itched at Rarity’s nose. “Might I venture a guess that you grew up on a rock farm?”
Pinkie had the decency to gasp. “How did you know!? Do you have Pinkie Sense?”
“Since I don’t know what that is, I couldn’t say.”
With a conspiratorial smile, Pinkie giggled, and she waved a hoof toward the ceiling. “The first thing you feel with Pinkie Sense is that you have Pinkie Sense, so you must not—oh, look! Mrs. Cake is back!”
And the bell on the door ding-jingled its one-note tune, a high-pitched melody in the key of delicious. “Hello, Rarity! Here to pick up your cake?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Rarity replied, and boots and belts and bracelets thrummed through her thoughts. They wouldn’t sit still, though, and why had they before? While she talked to Pinkie?
Naturally Pinkie chimed in right then. Did Pinkie Sense have anything to do with it?
“Mrs. Cake, can I help Rarity take her cake home? She was telling me all about how to throw a proper Hearth’s Warming party.” Pinkie jumped up and down, and Rarity could swear it made a sound.
“Of course,” Mrs. Cake said with a big grin. “A well-versed party planner would be a valuable member of my staff.”
So shortly thereafter, Rarity found herself humming a tune while balancing a cake box on her back, and Pinkie pronked playfully astern. She even bounced a ball as they trotted, but when they passed the old hollow tree near Mr. Breezy’s shop, Pinkie stashed it in a knothole. “Never know when you might need a ball in an emergency,” she remarked. “It’s good to have a few ready.”
No emergency uses for a ball immediately occurred to Rarity, but Pinkie seemed to operate on a different plane. So they continued on, Rarity casting glances behind her all the way, but the strange filly kept veering around, firmly focused on a shiny object one moment, then raptly riveted on a drifting cloud the next. What kind of clothes might suit such silly sinuous weaving about? And the song started up again.
Pretty pink puffs on a dress of brocade, ribbons and bows and a… gumdrop (why that?), polka dots, stripes, and some ruffles displayed, top it all off with a candy-box hat.
To bounce and to flounce and to pounce all day long, some stout sturdy stitching would make it all strong.
Her hooves had delivered her body to her doorstep quite on automatic. But there she stood, the cake in her charge none the worse for her failure to pay it due mind. She deposited it on the kitchen table and leaned back out the door. “Please, come in. My room is just upstairs,” she said, but Pinkie remained springing through the snowdrifts a moment longer.
“Oh,” Pinkie said, finally coming to rest just off the porch, “can I come in?”
“Please do.”
They made it upstairs without further distraction, and then Pinkie plunked down in the middle of the floor. She stared expectantly. After five seconds—or maybe ten? About the time it took for her sewing machine to grumble two dozen times with just a little pressure on the hoof pedal. “You were going to teach me about parties?” Pinkie finally asked.
“Certainly, darling. Though we’ve already covered the basics: color, decoration, music. I’m not sure what else you need.”
“More ponies, you said.” Pinkie leaned even closer.
Rarity shrugged one shoulder. “We should start small. But I didn’t say merely more ponies. More friends.”
Quickly cocking her head, Pinkie frowned. “Yeah, you did say that. But…” Her voice came out barely as a squeak, and she looked around as if somepony might overhear. “What are those?”
“You don’t know what a friend is?”
Pinkie would only stare at the floor between her front hooves.
“But you said your mother was friends with Mrs. Cake.”
“Yeah. She says that.”
Rarity had to twist her nose a tad. “You don’t have any friends?” No response. “For whom have you thrown parties before?”
Immediately, Pinkie’s face animated again, and she giggled like a waterfall full of hugs. “My family!”
“And you love them?”
She hopped up like a big pink frog. “My mommy and daddy, my sisters Maud and Limestone, and my twin sister Marble! Sometimes even Granny Pie or Nana Pinkie come visit, and I throw them one, too!” A party horn sounded—Rarity didn’t care to speculate from where the noise originated—and another shower of confetti sprinkled over her.
“But you don’t have anypony else you love, just because you enjoy spending time with them?” Rarity had never visited a rock farm, but none of the other kinds of farms around seemed so isolated.
Yet Pinkie shook her head. “I didn’t meet anypony else until Mom sent me to live with Mrs. Cake.”
Hm. How to explain it? “You see, a friend is somepony you love, not because you have to, but because you choose to. Not that love is obligatory for family, of course. Some families can be quite horrid to each other. But circumstance forces families together. When you find somepony who doesn’t have to be around you, but that you both want to associate with each other, then you have friendship.”
“Really?” Pinkie tapped a hoof to her bottom lip. “I’ve had fun with you! Can we be friends?”
With such a strange filly? That would certainly make life interesting. Probably far preferable to having a little sister, who would get into everything. Perhaps she should drop the sly inquiries about whether Mommy and Daddy—er, Mother and Father—planned on expanding their own family. “Yes, of course, dear.”
“Woo hoo!” Pinkie somehow produced a kazoo and a plate of cupcakes from her mane. “Music, food, decorations—” she nodded at the confetti still dotting Rarity’s hair “—ooh, no, gotta redo that!” Another party horn blast, and this time red and green confetti settled all over Rarity’s work table.
But nothing would stop Pinkie. “Games, fun, we need to have fun”—she reached out, stretching Rarity’s mouth into a grin—“why are we not having fun!?”
“I-it doesn’t work that way.”
Pinkie’s mane collapsed, and she trembled. “Why not?”
How does fun happen? And why didn’t Pinkie know? She sure seemed to have gotten her cutie mark for it, after all. Except, well… Pinkie wasn’t having any fun.
“Have you considered,” Rarity started, “that you should lead by example?” Pinkie only tilted her head. “You’ve gotten so caught up in procedure. You’re worried about everypony else having fun, but shouldn’t you? I guess what I’m saying is that… you’re the expert. If you want everypony else to laugh… shouldn’t you laugh first?”
Pinkie’s head jolted. Her eyes roved about the room. And one more thought occurred to Rarity: “Surely you’ve heard the expression ‘she who laughs last laughs best.’ So if you save the last laugh for your friends, you want the best for them, right?”
One corner of Pinkie’s mouth curled. Then her mane curled. Then she tooted away on her kazoo and danced, an infectious giggle bubbling up from her throat all the while. She’d even started up Rarity’s record player. “What’s brown and sticky?” she said.
“Yuck.” Rarity bit her tongue. “That sounds like icky mud.”
“No, silly! It’s a stick!”
One little chortle burst from Rarity’s chest. Then a snort. A rather unladylike snort, but of all the ridiculous…
“There it is!” cried Pinkie. “How about a game of Pin the Tail on the Pony?”
“Ooh, my favorite game!” Rarity said. Pinkie sure had a knack for this! She tried a cupcake—just as tasty as the one from earlier—then a blindfold darkened her vision to a lovely velvet black, spin, spin… she tottered a tad and tip-hoofed tipsily toward tacking a tail on. A quick stab, and she pulled the blindfold aside. Ah, drat, she’d aimed too high. But a good effort nonetheless.
For her part, Pinkie laughed and cheered her on: “That was close!”
Rarity couldn’t help giggling as well, and then it struck her. Well, two things, in rapid succession. Which to deal with first?
“Do you see, Pinkie? We are having fun! What’s the difference from before?” A little gleam crept into her eye, or so she hoped.
But Pinkie squinted back. “I don’t know. But you’re right—this is a lot more fun!”
“Precisely! You’re laughing and having fun, too. The first duty of a good party host is to enjoy herself as much as anypony else does.”
“You’re right! I am laughing! And it feels right. How do you know so much about parties? Maybe you should have gotten the party cutie mark.” A little puffiness faded from her mane.
“Nonsense. My career aspirations—”
“You’re what, ten?”
“Ahem. My career aspirations will lead me into higher social circles, and it would behoove me to know such things. On a rudimentary level, of course. But just because I have a familiarity with some of the ins and outs doesn’t mean that I have a mastery of the subject. You knew just what game to suggest, you are… the ‘life of the party,’ as they say. Not everypony can do that.” A sharp nod added the final punctuation.
Ah, but the other matter. “Hearth’s Warming parties can also feature gifts. It depends on who attends and the practicality of it all, but I love the idea of gifts.” The same thoughts as before swirled about her, and the music started in her head again.
A scarf or some boots in a nice shade of pink. Not shiny, more something in matte, don’t you think? A plush hat (or wool?) and some earmuffs as well, accessories—yes!—like a tinkly sleighbell! A white canvas belt and a clutch made of felt, some rouge on her face, and a light lilac lace looks like lingering liveliness, languoring loveliness, long lonely life lasting—
When had Rarity shut her eyes? And her ears and her mouth and her heart? She panted and panted until she noticed the tapping on her shoulder.
“You okay?”
“Y-yes.” It always happened like this. But what could she do? “I just… I feel the need to create, then the possibilities start twirling around, start swirling in sound—”
Another tap on her shoulder. “How did it happen the first time? Tell me again.”
“I…” Well, yes, how did the story go? “I had assumed responsibility for the costumes in a school play, and while fretting over what to do, my horn decided to find some very fetching gems that would look simply fabulous, so I decorated those costumes like nopony’s business, and voila! Cutie mark.”
“But… why did you do it?” Pinkie asked, her forehead wrinkling.
“The patterns, they come together, and I can see it in my head. I need to make them, to bring them to life, so that they—so that—so that I can—” Something didn’t make sense.
“I needed to make the party so that the party could exist.” Pinkie wore such a soft smile. “That was it: my talent. So I had to do it, just because. And the song in my head wouldn’t stop. You get that too, don’t you?”
“How did you—?”
A chuckle immediately rang out. “Pinkie Sense. That big party feeling could send my head reeling and make me feel badly to throw parties madly and… you know how I got it under control?”
Now she really had Rarity’s attention. “Please, tell me.”
“I remembered that I don’t throw the party for its own sake. I throw it for ponies.”
A scarf or some boots in a nice shade of pink. No, a scarf or—
A scarf. A scarf for Pinkie Pie.
Rarity smiled. She had just the fabric, perfect for Hearth’s Warming, with a peppermint candy pattern. Keep the pony in mind, and her creations had purpose. And wasn’t that the point? To give a pony something to make them smile, to give a pony something, to give.
She rather liked the sound of that.
At her sewing table, Rarity quickly stitched together that warm candy-covered fleece, then attached a fringe at both ends. She tossed it around Pinkie’s neck, looped it into a loose tie, and stood back to observe. Yes, at her next burst of creativity, Rarity would have to keep in mind the ponies she intended to wear them. Not only did that allow her to remain focused, but it felt… good. Like a vital part of her.
Pinkie ran a hoof along the fuzzy fabric. “Ooh! I guess we are friends.”
“Yes,” Rarity said, wrapping Pinkie in a hug. “Most definitely.”
