Little bells rang out as a door swung open. Hooves clicked and clacked across a wooden floor to a counter. A chime rang out through the sweet smelling air.
Silence.
“Coooomiiiiing!”
A crash echoed out of a room off to the right of the counter followed by a plume of pale dust, presumably flour, and a pink and white-splotched face poked out from around the corner.
“Be with ya in just a second,” the big-blue-eyed pony piped almost as sweetly as the confectioneries displayed throughout the shop. “I just need to put a cake in the oven! Have some candy while you wait!” she offered, pointing at a bowl of sweets sitting next to the cash register on the little counter.
A faint smile passed over the supposed patron’s face, her eyes drifting to the bowl of candy. After scanning its contents, the emerald green eyes rose to the wall behind the corner, landing on a little picture of what could conceivably be the owners of the little bakery. They then drifted to the room in full, sweeping over the décor of the homey pastry shop, before finding themselves locked with the bright, blue eyes of the pink pony from the kitchen.
“Hiya!” Pinkie squeaked, making her guest jump back slightly, glancing at the kitchen door in confusion. “What can I get for—OHMYGOODNESS!!” She leaned in closer to the green unicorn, making her frown and back into the counter. Pinkie narrowed her eyes, rubbing her chin, then her face lit up like the sun. “I WAS RIGHT! I’ve never seen you before! And that means you’re new which means you probably don’t have any friends in Ponyville yet which means I get to be your first!” Pinkie said quickly, now hopping around her customer with a big grin on her face.
“Uh, actuall—“
“OH!! That means I have to throw you a welcome party!” Pinkie stopped hopping, hovering in the air for a moment, then rushed back into the kitchen. “Oh, I’ll have to make a big cake and get some balloons ready and throw together some party favors—what’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?” she asked, poking her head around the corner again.
The green pony stared at her for a second, expecting her to shoot off again, but Pinkie remained in place, waiting for her input with a patient smile.
“I’m actually not new to Ponyville,” the green unicorn said quietly, raising a hoof. “I live just outside of town. On the road to Canterlot.”
Pinkie’s smile vanished, replaced by a look of confusion. “But I’ve never seen you before. You must live pretty far away, right?”
“No. I don’t really come into town a lot though,” she shrugged. “Today was sort of a special occasion, so—“
“What’s the occasion?” Pinkie asked cheerfully, suddenly inches away from the unicorn’s face.
“Um...it’s my birthday tomorrow, so I—“
Pinkie jumped back from her guest with a loud gasp, then shot back into the kitchen before reappearing in the main room with a basket full of envelopes.
“Don’t you worry your pretty little head!” she said, handing her one of the envelopes. “I’m always ready with emergency party invitations! You want me to hand ‘em out for you? I’ve got the best delivery route down pat.” Pinkie said proudly, already on her way to the door.
“N-No, that’s fine,” the green pony said quickly, stepping between Pinkie and the door. “I just wanted to get a small cake.”
Pinkie paused, staring at her guest with a blank expression, then giggled and waved the statement away.
“Oh, silly. You can’t have a party with a small cake! You have to get a big one or there won’t be enough for everyone!” she instructed, patting the unicorn patronizingly on the head. “Just let me handle it. Parties are my specialty!”
“No,” the unicorn started to explain, swatting Pinkie’s hoof away from her face. “I was getting a small cake for myself. I’d rather celebrate alone.”
Pinkie held her position, hoof raised and smile questioning, then slowly lowered her arm and let her face return to a neutral expression. The green unicorn watched her silently trying to figure out if she was joking or not for a few seconds before giving her a weak smile and turning to leave.
“I should’ve known better...” she said quietly, heading for the door.
Pinkie’s ears perked up. “Wait!” The unicorn stopped and looked back at her. “...I don’t know your name,” Pinkie said after a moment’s silence.
The unicorn gave her a once over, then turned back to the door and started to walk.
“Ganja.”
Pinkie frowned, running the name through her head, then looked up to say something else, but Ganja was gone. She rushed to the door, looking down the street, and saw her walk behind a house across the street.
“She’s fast,” Pinkie mused, sitting down on the front step. She cocked her head to one side, looking up at a random cloud, then frowned and turned her focus to the house across the street. “Ganja...I’m sure I’ve heard that name before...”
* * * * * *
Applejack heaved. The cart of apples behind her trudged forward at a snail’s pace. She let up the pressure, taking a few quick breaths, then dug her hind legs into the soft dirt and lifted her upper body off the ground, straining to pull her cargo out of the ruts several years worth of traffic had worn into the dirt just outside her property.
“Horse apples this thing’s heavy...” she grunted as the cart began to move forward into a new set of ruts. The tracks she was endeavoring to move the wheels of her cart into ran almost perpendicular to the ones in the main road and lead straight down Sweetapple Acres to the barn and farmhouse at its heart. This was the dreaded part of every home trip with a load of unsold apples; the front gate.
“Come on, Applejack. Just a little farther,” she coached herself, twisting the cart in its tracks and pulling it over the ridge between the main road and that of her home. “Hooves...don’t fail me now,” she panted.
The cart rose slightly as it went over the patch of unpacked dirt, then dropped with a thud into the ruts that would lead it home. Applejack gasped as the cart set itself right, smiling to herself, and looked back at it as she tried pulling it forward. To her relief, the wheels turned easily now that they were not being pulled sideways, and she nodded proudly at her achievement, turning back to the road home.
“Hey Applejack—“
“AH!!”
Applejack jumped, bumping the cart backwards, and knocked a few apples off the top of the pile as she realized it was only Pinkie that had snuck up on her.
“Tarnation, Pinkie Pie, ya can’t just sneak up on me like that,” Applejack chided, starting to unhook herself from her harness to pick up the fallen apples.
“Sorry,” Pinkie giggled, walking around her to pick them up in her stead. “I just have a question for you.”
Applejack sighed, watching over her shoulder as Pinkie tossed the fallen apples back on top of the cart. “What’s on yer mind?”
“I had a kind of strange pony come into Sugarcube Corner a few minutes ago,” Pinkie explained, going around to the other side of the cart and picking up the last apple. “Do you know anypony named Ganja?”
Applejack blinked, apparently surprised, then frowned. “Ganja came into Sugarcube Corner?”
“So you know her?” Pinkie asked, hopping back in front of the cart to Applejack.
“Not personally, no,” Applejack shook her head, “But I wouldn’t want to. She’s no good, Pinkie Pie; just a lazy old...what’cha-ma-call-it.”
Pinkie frowned, tilting her head. “What d’ya mean?”
Applejack opened her mouth, then glanced off to her side. “...Well, the way Granny Smith explained it ta me, she’s one of them ponies that just doesn’t do anything.”
“Well she has to do something, silly” Pinkie smiled. “Otherwise she wouldn’t do anything! Only rocks don’t do anything.”
Applejack frowned and scratched her ear. “Well...ya got me there...But she doesn’t work.”
Pinkie cocked an eyebrow. “So? There are plenty of ponies that stay at home. They can’t both be out of the house all day or it’ll get all cold and neglected.”
Applejack shook her head. “But she ain’t married or anything! She don’t even have a foal to take care of. That’s just irresponsible; not workin’ when there ain’t nothin’ stopping ya.”
Pinkie frowned, sitting down. “...She doesn’t have anyone?”
Applejack blinked. “Uh...well, when you look at it like that...” she thought for a minute, then shook her head. “I’m sure if she were a proper, workin’ mare, she’d have a husband by now. She’s older than me, from what I hear. Ain’t no excuse if I’m workin’ and she ain’t.”
Pinkie rubbed her chin, jutting out her bottom lip in thought. “It is...odd...that she wouldn’t have a job. Even I work at Sugarcube Corner when the Cakes are off on delivery or...whatever it is they do when they’re not at the shop...” she trailed off, rolling a hoof. “But that doesn’t mean she’s a bad pony, does it? Twilight doesn’t really have a job, does she?”
Applejack crossed a leg over the other, tilting her head. “Well I’d sort of just thought of Twilight as the new librarian, to be honest,” she shrugged. “And even if she ain’t, she’s still technically Celestia’s protégé or...whatever she calls it. It ain’t a problem not workin’ if yer still in school. School’s important,” she said, righting herself and starting to walk. “Heck, if Applebloom weren’t in school, I’d have her helpin’ me pull this here car—...well, maybe not that, but I’d be sure she had somethin’ to do.”
Pinkie watched Applejack pull her cart down the road, tapping her chin as she let her eyes drift once again to the sky in her thought, then blinked as a brightly colored blur swept through the air overhead. Pinkie smiled, hopping to her feet, and took off after the airborne object.
* * * * * *
“Yeah, I know ‘er. Or...knew ‘er. We don’t really hang out together anymore.”
Rainbow Dash shrugged, rolling over on the cloud she’d elected to make her temporary bed to look down at Pinkie Pie. “Why the sudden interest?”
“She came by Sugarcube Corner earlier,” Pinkie explained again. “I’d never seen her before, but she said she lives right outside of town.”
“Yeah, I can see her house from here,” Dash confirmed, looking up at the horizon and shielding her eyes with a hoof.
“Applejack said she’s a bad pony because she doesn’t have a job, but she seemed nice enough when she was in the shop,” Pinkie said confusedly. “What is she like?”
Dash put a hoof to her chin, thinking. “Well...the biggest thing about her, what made us lose track of each other? She’s a little too slow for my liking,” Dash shrugged. “She’s got no sense of speed at all. Her favorite thing to do is sit around and listen to weird music.”
“What kind of music?”
Dash frowned. “I don’t know, I never listened to it. She’s boring, is her problem. Not a care in the world. But me? I like living in the fast lane! We just weren’t cut out for each other.”
Pinkie simply nodded, seeing there was nothing but truth behind that statement, then looked over her shoulder at the rest of their small town, trying to decide who she could ask next.
“Hey, uh...she didn’t say anything about me, did she?”
Pinkie blinked and looked up until she was upside-down, meeting eyes with Rainbow Dash. “Huh?”
“Ah...nothing,” Dash waved a hoof in front of her face. “She uh...n-never mind.”
Pinkie frowned as Rainbow Dash took off, heading back toward her cloud house, then continued tilting her head until she was staring straight at Carousel Boutique. Her frown vanished in an instant, replaced with a wide smile, and she began merrily hopping her way over to her friend’s shop.
* * * * * *
“Ah, hold still, dear...there. No, I haven’t heard of her before. What does she look like?”
Pinkie pursed her lips as she recalled the details of her visitor of earlier. “Well...she was green—“
“Green??” Rarity gasped. “Oh, that poor dear! I simply couldn’t imagine being such an awful color. Turn a little, please,” she said, turning back to Fluttershy’s dress on autopilot. “What else? Oh, don’t tell me her mane was green too? Though it’d look a bit silly if it wasn’t. Not a lot of options for color coordination...”
“Oh! Rarity, you poked me,” Fluttershy almost whispered, shying away from the white coated unicorn.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Rarity cooed, patting Fluttershy’s wing a little more babyishly than she’d meant. “Anyway, I’ve never seen ‘Ganja’, but I’m glad I haven’t! I don’t even know what I’d do with myself if I ran into somepony in need of so much work. I mean, green? Honestly!”
“Where did you say she lives?” Fluttershy asked quietly, flinching slightly as Rarity brought a needle closer to tighten up her hem.
“Just outside of town, on the road to Canterlot,” Pinkie pointed. “Rainbow Dash said she could see her house from down the street, so—“
“Oh my,” Fluttershy cut in, “Did she have a cutie mark shaped like a leaf?”
Pinkie blinked, trying to think back to the event, then cocked her head to the side as she remembered seeing the leaf in question on Ganja’s flank.
“Yeah, she did,” Pinkie nodded. “Have you seen her around?”
“Oh no! Some of my bird friends have seen her out by her house before,” Fluttershy explained. “She has a garden in her back yard with plants that have that leaf growing on them.”
Pinkie straightened up. “So she’s a gardener, then? Applejack said she didn’t have a job.”
“Doesn’t have a job??” Rarity cut in before Fluttershy could answer. “The nerve of that pony! How can she not have a job?” She blinked and stepped back after realizing how aggressive she seemed. “I mean...unless...she’s too young?” she offered meekly. “Too old? Stay at home mother?”
“She’s a little older than Applejack,” Pinkie said slowly, frowning, “and she’s not married, but—“
“She’s not a gardener either,” Fluttershy interrupted. “My bird friends say she hardly ever leaves her house!”
“The nerve!” Rarity stated again, sure of herself this time. “Why not?”
“I don’t know,” Fluttershy admitted, “But when she does go outside...she smokes!!”
Both Rarity and Pinkie gasped, followed shortly by a gag from Rarity, who quickly ran to the window to open it.
“Ugh! I can’t stand ponies that wander around with those...things hanging out of their mouths! That stench drives away customers for days!!”
Pinkie scrunched her nose up thinking of the smell of a cigar, but paused, tilting her head.
“Wait a minute,” she thought aloud. “I didn’t smell any smoke on her...”
“That’s because it’s not regular smoke!” Fluttershy said quickly, flitting closer to Pinkie. “It’s from those plants she grows in her garden! It’s some kind of...weird smoke! It makes the poor little birds all woozy and dizzy and sick!”
Pinkie winced. “Are you sure? If anything, she smelled kind of like rosemary—“
“Well Whatever she smelled like,” Rarity interrupted, “I for one appreciate that she keeps that smell off to herself!” Rarity threw her head to one side with a huff, then turned back to her modeling station and picked up several different pins with her magic. “Fluttershy, could you come back over here?”
Fluttershy blushed and fluttered back over to the raised platform to allow Rarity to make more adjustments to the dress, then looked back at Pinkie Pie.
“Go ask Twilight about that plant. I think it might be dangerous for the birdies...”
Pinkie perked up and turned her head to a window, looking out toward the top of the tree that housed the town library. “Yeah...”
* * * * * *
A faint purple glow enveloped the spine of a book as it slid out of its place on the shelf, gliding through the air to settle in front of a pair of inquisitive purple eyes.
“And you say it had seven extensions from its stem?” the purple unicorn asked almost to herself, opening the book with her magic and flipping through its various pages.
“Mm-hm. It looked like a fan. Or a palm tree,” Pinkie recalled.
Twilight’s eyes ran through a number of lines of text on a page she’d paused on before a smirk lit up her face. “Oh ho, well, it’s certainly not a palm tree,” she said with a bemused smile, floating the book over to her friend to read.
Pinkie brought the book down to the floor and sat down in front of it, letting her bright blue eyes scan the page for several seconds before a frown creased her brow.
“What’s this word mean?” she asked, pointing at a spot on the page.
Twilight leaned over to look at the word in question. “Euphoria. It’s a state of extreme relaxation or calmness.”
Pinkie read through the sentence again, then frowned once more and straightened her back. “Well that doesn’t sound so bad,” she mused.
Twilight lifted the book again and turned it to face her. “It really isn’t. I remember...well, don’t tell the others about this,” Twilight began, replacing the book on its shelf, “But I actually did try it once back in Canterlot.”
Pinkie gaped, staring at Twilight with bulging eyes for several seconds before finding her voice. “Twilight! You *smoked*??”
Twilight blushed, turning back to a spell book on a lectern. “It was just once,” she reiterated, flipping to a random page. “It’s not like I made it a habit. And besides,” she said, looking back at her friend, “It’s not like a cigar. It doesn’t smell bad or make you sick or anything. It’s even used in several different kinds of medicine. Zecora has a stock of it in her hut.”
Pinkie cocked an eyebrow. “But then...why is everyone so mad at Ganja for smoking it?”
Twilight shrugged. “My guess is that they don’t really understand what it is or what effects it has on the body.” She paused for a moment. “Or it could be the simple principle of disapproving of smoking in general...”
Pinkie wrinkled her nose at the thought. “I can understand the sentiment,” she murmured, glancing to her side. “That doesn’t really seem fair though. We used to think mean things about Zecora, and she turned out to be really nice! I’ll bet Ganja’s just as nice as she is. She’s probably too shy to assert herself though. She said she wanted to be alone on her birthday!”
Twilight shrugged, turning back to her book. “Well maybe she just wanted to be alone. It’s not like everypony likes big parties, Pinkie. I, for example, usually just like to settle down with a nice book, even if there’s a party going on somewhere.”
“But you usually do come to my parties.”
“I go to your parties, Pinkie,” Twilight agreed. “I’d much rather party with a small group of friends than with a big group of strangers.” She blinked. “Y’know, I’ll bet that’s what bothered her about your invitation. It doesn’t seem like she has many friends in town, so she wants to be alone so she doesn’t have to try and be nice to a room full of strangers.”
Pinkie pouted, turning to look out a window in the direction of Ganja’s home. “That’s so sad...She doesn’t even have a cake now...”
“...Why don’t you go bring her one?” Twilight offered. “It may help her come out of her shell a little. If not, at least she’ll have the cake,” she chuckled.
Pinkie Pie jumped to her feet with grin. “You’re right! I should take a cake over to her! I bet she’ll love it!” she piped happily. “Thanks Twilight!” she called over her shoulder as she hopped out the door.
“Sure thing, Pinkie,” the purple unicorn shouted after her before turning back to her book.
* * * * * *
(Story Under Construction)
