Through A Glass Pinkly

by Mitch H

Rating: everyone
Tags: Pinkie Pie, Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 1369

The mirror reflects the Pinkies she sees. That's what she does. That's all she does.

There's something that waits in every bedroom, every hallway mirror, every bit of glass, every silvered or polished metal surface. Something that looks back at Pinkie when she looks at her self in the mirror.

And this, too, is Pinkie Pie, and she's just so happy you're here.

(An entry in the twenty-third Quills and Sofas speedwriting competition. Prompt: 'Mirror, Mirror' from The Big Friendly Giant OST)

Published 2019-12-02 13:20:01 UTC
Last updated 2019-12-02 13:20:01 UTC

The Ponk Gazes Also Into You

Mirror Pinkie looked out into the world, as her eyes briefly met those of her pony other-self, and wondered if she had ever been anything other than this. The pink pony-muzzle turned away from Mirror Pinkie, and the warm well-furnished room full of pretty clutter and soft clothes faded away.

It was always like that with the ponies. They were so energetic, so spring-heeled sprightly, so busy. Pony Pinkies rarely had time to look in mirrored surfaces, or primp, or admire their pretty faces. Mirror Pinkie was nomirror to say so, but she rather thought that her pony selves were the prettiest and happiest of creatures.

A lair quickly appeared in front of Mirror Pinkie, and it was time to be a spider again. A pretty pink orb-spider, all long spindly legs and pedipalps and hunger. But still, as all eight of her mirror-eyes met the material eyes of a spider-Pinkie, Mirror Pinkie knew that it was still her. Her other self, who spun cotton-candy webs to lure juicy flies, and sang to her sweet victims one last happy song. It was a good thing, to make death something friendly and fierce and sweet!

Even if there was nothing else good about a thing's death, you as their killers ought, as a matter of course, give them something for the substance and sweet juice their untimely ends gave you!

The spider-self's gaze lingered long, and patiently, as the mirror Pinkie and her spider self thoughtfully combed the hairs on their carpaces. Spiders always had time for self-care. Ambush predators were like that. All patience and waiting and self-sufficiency.

Finally, the web trembled with the day's catch, and Spider Pinkie darted off to claim her ‘guest', and Mirror Pinkie was free to look out of other worlds' silvered surfaces, looking to catch the gaze of something more mammalian, warmer, less… well, there were Pinkies and Pinkies. And to be absolutely honest, sometimes Mirror Pinkie wanted a pulse and hot sugar-shocked blood warming the faces she reflected.

Ah, a human Pinkie. Those often spent no more time looking in their mirrors than their pony alter egos. Why was this one…?

Her eyes shifted a bit in the reflection, and Mirror Pinkie saw the friend holding up her reflected limbs, tugging on some strange, elaborate cloth concoction on real-Pinkie's long gangly limbs. Humans were sometimes, Mirror Pinkie thought, something like a compromise between bouncy furry ponies, and long smooth predatory spiders. Some of the warmth, and some of the ruthlessness, and some of something else, something that was only the feeling that you got with bipedal apes.

She didn't really know, to be honest. She was just a reflection of Pinkies, not a true Pinkie.

It was nice, putting on clothes with the human Pinkie and her friend, Rarity. Playing the clothes-horse for a long afternoon hour, before the real Pinkie grew fretful and distracted with the inevitable blood-sugar crash.

To be Pinkie, was to be always feeding the furnace. Whether you were spider-Pinkie, or pony-PInkie, or ape-Pinkie, your Pinkieness must be stoked like a train engine. A little engine that knew no rest, that was the fleshy - or chitinous! - wage of being a real Pinkie.

When the world appeared once more beyond the silvered surface, Mirror Pinkie looked into mirrored surfaces reflecting her own face back at her. Smooth faceted insectile eyes - another spider-Pinkie? But no, the myriad little eyes of arachnid Pinkiedom never properly reflected the mirror back at her like this. And these were the simple two-eyed set of the humans and the ponies and so many other thinking Pinkies, sapient Pinkies.

Oh! Mirror Pinkie had heard of this race before! This was a changeling! Look at her smooth black chitin, so un-Pinkie-like! And the strange green ruff on her head - that was new. Even the smooth mirrored globular eyes - not exactly faceted, but something in between faceted and compound and simple mammalian - fascinating!

Did this Pinkie feel like a real Pinkie? How could it be possible, a Pinkie from a race that fed on love, and left sadness, emptiness, hollowness behind her? It was un-Pinkie! A betrayal of the Pinkie essence!

But she was reflecting this strange half-bug, half-pony self. She didn't do that to things that weren't Pinkie. If the two of them were looking at each other, they were each other!

That was the inescapable rule, the law, the necessary essential core of Mirror Pinkie.

And with a pink flash, the changeling in the world beyond the mirror changed.

Well, that's why they call us changelings, Mirror Pinkie thought buggishly, the thinking patterns of the hive-denizen coloring her reflected thoughts. Her silvered surface dutifully mutated with the reality in front of it, warping into a big pink griffon, blinking its raptor eyes back at the cat-bird who sat staring into the mirror.

Then another flash, and Mirror Pinkie barely kept the gaze of her tangible self, the big pink-furred minotaur cow leaning cramped in the suddenly tiny-seeming hive antechamber into which the mirror was set. The changeable insect's bovine mouth yawned wide in an apparent bellow.

Mirror Pinkie didn't hear what her changeling-self said, or yelled, or bellowed. She never heard herself speak. Never heard the songs herselves sang, never exchanged words with the living her beyond the silver.

She was a reflection, not a person. And if her mirrored surfaces reflected sound, as well as sight, well, she would never know, would she?

To be honest, Mirror Pinkie regretted the lack of taste and smell, more than the hearing thing. Pinkieness was about song and chatter, of course, but the core and heart was sweetness, and taste, and smell, and the food.

Mirror Pinkie regretted the food most of all. It was so nice when her selves looked into mirrored surfaces in the kitchen, and she could smell and taste vicariously in the cooking and the baking of the day, in blink-sized bites of the working day.

And now Mirror Pinkie was the base changeling her again. Apparently her buggy self had completed her transformation katas for the day. Mirror Pinkie regretted this, too. It had been interesting, playing catch, or chase, with a self that mirrored the world almost as much as the silvered occasional-pony, occasional-spider, occasional-everything her virtual self.

But the bug-pony turned away at last, and it was back into the darkness once again.

Sometimes in the darkness, the thing which would become the mirror thought. What she thought with, the Pinkie-thing had no idea. What it thought with the things she thought with, were almost as uncertain and ineffable. Who was she, when she wasn't anypony at all? Somehow, in the spaces in between glances, she thought she really was a pony. Pony Pinkie was the part of Pinkie which was most inherently Pinkie, most fully, most clearly, most essentially. She wasn't sure why this was true. Her moments with her pony selves were so brief. Perhaps it was because Pony Pinkie was so confident in her essential Pinkieness that she didn't feel the need to look into Mirror-Pinkie to remind herself that she was still Pinkie?

These were the thoughts that the Pinkie thing behind the mirrors thought when she wasn't looking back into the eyes of a real Pinkie. These thoughts carried only imperfectly into the life of the Mirror Pinkie, who was no more the thing behind the mirrors than the Mirror Pinkie was the Pinkies beyond the mirror.

Thankfully, a real Pinkie almost always looked into a mirror before the Pinkie-thing could start to dwell on the question of what exactly she was when she wasn't looking at herself.

But then, another Pinkie's eyes fell upon a reflective surface, and the thing which wasn't Pinkie went away, and Mirror Pinkie lived again.

Author's Note

Second fruit of my dalliance with the Sofa and Quills Speedwriting group, contest #23, Music Contest with "Mirror Mirror" from the Big Friendly Giant OST, 12/1/2019.

Posted mostly as-is, minimally edited. Thanks to Shrink Laureate and the general Company for looking it over. Shrink, I may come back to this in time, but that time isn't today. :pinkiehappy: