That day had promised to be a perfectly regular, average day, but things hadn’t turned out to be like that. Dainty Tunes had gotten up in the morning feeling woozy and slow as he always did, he’d gone off to work through the same path as he always did, and the only unusual thing is that he’d have the afternoon off that day. He had gone home, thinking he’d use the free time to make some new music or rehearse his existing ones, as he felt he was getting a bit rusty.
But that didn’t happen. Just as he sat before his piano, the urge to play wasn’t there. He didn’t have it. In fact, he didn’t have the urge to do anything. He was scared to admit it, but this was turning into a trend: whatever he thought he could do, he just didn’t do it. He’d spend his evenings in his house, doing a bunch of unproductive nothings, waiting for night to fall. He tried to think this was just a passing phase, but it kept getting worse.
Dainty went to the front window and rested an elbow on the frame, letting his head lean on his hoof. The day felt so merry and full of energy outside, and he could just go out there and enjoy it, if he wanted. But something made it look useless and futile, and he couldn’t understand why. There didn’t seem to be any rational reason for him to feel down or unmotivated, but whatever he felt like doing, it seemed pointless. In fact, his entire existence was pointless.
Maybe that was it. Maybe he was pointless. After all, why did he exist? Was there any reason? He knew he could make music, but there was no sign that Equestria needed his music. It was fine as it was. Actually, the whole world was fine as it was, regardless of him being there.
And what could he do about it? Stay home and sulk? Wouldn’t that just confirm the pointlessness of it all? Maybe it didn’t have to be that way.
One thought kept gently poking his brain, and he was beginning to pay attention to it: in moments like these, he could always eat something tasty.
Tasty… like a cupcake.
No, he couldn’t do that. That was the promise he had made: stay out of their way. He had to avoid them, otherwise everything could go bad. Very bad.
But that was the problem: it was getting unbearable to have to avoid anything and everything—and everypony—because something unimaginably bad could potentially happen. Besides, the Elements of Harmony knew what he was, so it’s not like everything would be doomed if he just had a talk with one of them. And if there was one pony he could probably have an honest, friendly talk with, it was the pony who had kidnapped him, tied him up in a cave and tried to get rid of him.
And yes, this made perfect sense in his head.
He trotted through Ponyville, always getting a jumpy sensation whenever he felt he was being observed; but he never was. The ponies didn’t notice anything unusual about him, so that was good. Still, he got more and more nervous as he approached the Sugarcube Corner, and the only thing that encouraged him to keep going was the promise of cupcakes.
And he finally made it, gently pushing the door and stepping inside. The smell was so good, so perfect, that it almost made him forget his bad feelings. Almost. As he glanced around the shop, everything seemed so perfectly in place that he kept remembering the feeling that the world was fine without him.
Mrs. Cake was busy putting some tasty-looking food on the counter, and didn’t seem to notice him as he approached it. There was no sign of Pinkie Pie.
“Um, hello?”
“Hello there, sir!” Mrs. Cake said with a bright smile. “Welcome to the Sugarcube Corner. Would you like to take a look around?”
“Yeah, sure,” he replied, looking over the cupcakes. They all looked wonderful, and he felt that, if only he could focus on them, his awkwardness wouldn’t bother him so much. “Are those… strawberry cupcakes?”
“They are! Freshly baked this morning!” Mrs. Cake said.
“They look beautiful. I think I’ll have… four of them,” Dainty said, not quite able to look at her face directly. “To go, please.”
“Four strawberry cupcakes to go, coming right out!” she confirmed.
As she proceeded to prepare his order, the kitchen door opened wide.
“We have a brand new batch in the oven, Mrs. Cake!” Pinkie Pie proclaimed. “And it’s time for my break now… Oh, hello there, Dainty Tunes! Glad to see you in our shop! Mmm, strawberry cupcakes!” she said, jumping towards him. “Excellent choice! Those are delicious… even if I say so myself.”
“I’m sure they are, Pinkie,” he said, as he got his package and paid for them. “Thank you, Mrs. Cake.”
“You’re welcome!” she replied. “Come back soon!”
“So, Dainty, how have you been?” Pinkie said with an unwavering smile on her face, as he put his cupcakes away in his saddlebag and took a few steps towards the door.
“Oh, uh, I’ve been… fine,” he said, his voice revealing the exact opposite.
“Are you sure?” Pinkie said, her voice dramatic and poignant. “It looks like there’s something bothering you.”
“Uh, actually…” He scratched his head, looking at the floor. “I guess there is.”
“What if we go outside and you have a Pinkie talk with Pinkie Pie?” she said. “I’m on my break right now.”
His heart skipped a beat. As much as he had imagined he would maybe get to do this, he was shocked to realise it was about to happen, let alone that she was the one suggesting it.
“Uh, yeah, it would be nice.”
“So, come on, spit it out, Dainty!” she said as soon as they made it around the side of the building. “What’s on your mind?”
“Well… I don’t know how I can put it,” he started, “but the truth is… Okay, Pinkie, you know who I am. You know what I am, and what I represent in this world. But the thing is, I have no idea why I’m here. I don’t know why I even exist. For all I care, I was put here as a joke, and that’s it.” His gaze fell to the ground. “And that’s what I am. I’m a joke. Nothing more than that: I’m just a joke.”
“But I like jokes!” she said, almost without thinking. “Jokes are great! They make ponies laugh and feel happy!”
“Oh, but that’s the good kind of joke,” he replied. “I’m a bad joke, Pinkie.”
She put a hoof to her chin. “Well, I guess bad jokes exist,” she pondered. “But I don’t think that’s what you are, Dainty! You’re more than that.”
“Am I?” he said, glancing up at her for a moment. “I mean, I feel like this world is perfectly fine without me. It was going well, everypony was doing well, and my presence here… I mean, what difference does it make? If I just, you know, completely disappeared, nopony would care. And I feel like I could just as well do that. Disappear. In an instant, poof, I’d be gone, and everything would be fine.”
She gave him a suspicious, sideways glance. “Well, maybe there’s something in you that makes you feel that way, but I know you don’t want to disappear. You wanna know how?”
He looked up at her, without saying a word.
“You bought cupcakes!”
Dainty had been aware of how Pinkie Pie’s thoughts could become a sequence of non sequiturs, but he had never thought he’d have to confront that. His reaction was to just stare at her, expecting her to go on. But she didn’t.
“Yes… and?”
“Well, don’t you see?” she said, inching closer to him. “If you really wanted to disappear, you’d have just gone ahead and done that, but no, you didn’t! Instead, you thought to yourself, ‘hmm, what I actually wanna do is buy cupcakes right now!’, and you came here and did that!” Her phrases were fast and accompanied by carefully choreographed gestures and poses, and somehow everything made perfect sense to him.
“So,” she went on, “what you actually want is to enjoy your life here, and whatever’s making you feel like you wanna disappear is just there to bother you, but you can make it not bother you! And of course our cupcakes are an excellent way to prevent bad feelings from bothering you, and that’s why Sugarcube Corner will always be here to serve you. The customer always comes first!”
Dainty paused, feeling he’d need five times as much time as it took her to say all that in order to process it all. But he knew she was right, to some extent: there still was, inside him, a flicker of desire to live and do something good for himself, but he feared that it could be fading away.
“I guess you’re right,” he said. By now, he was already embarrassed that Pinkie was dedicating so much time and attention to him, especially when he felt he could end up sucking away all her energy and enthusiasm; even though that was probably impossible. “But I can’t survive on cupcakes, you know… as much as I wish I could,” he said with an unconvincing chuckle. “I just wish… I just wish I could feel that my life was worth anything. At times, I swear, I just… think I’m entirely worthless.”
He looked up at her, trying to keep his composure. “And you know this is not just a self-esteem thing. You know what I am. It’s not like in those days when one of your friends is feeling bad about something that happened and started to feel, I dunno, useless and worthless or something. It’s not like that, because they belong in this world. You belong in this world, and Equestria just would not be the same place if you and your friends weren’t here. You help define what makes this world so wonderful, and, well, I don’t. I’ve just been thrown here by someone who thought it would be fun for a while, and now, I’m just pointless.”
He couldn’t help but notice her expression as she heard him, her eyes fixed on him, her ears perked up, clearly understanding every word he said, but looking back at him as if it were obvious that he was missing something. It looked like she already had all the answers, and he only didn’t have them as well because he hadn’t looked very well.
“But, Dainty! If you’re still here, it’s because whoever put you here thinks you’re worth it,” she said, her voice never losing momentum, not even for a syllable. “They care about you! That means you’re worth it! And nopony here thinks you’re worthless. In fact, the only pony who thinks you’re worthless is…
“Well, actually,” she said, looking at the sky as she reflected. “It’s not as if you think you’re worthless. It’s like something in your head keeps whispering in your ear all the time that you’re worthless, even though you aren’t, because of course you aren’t, but that voice tries to bring you down because that’s what it does! It’s the ‘bring down’ voice, and it wants to bring you down, because it’s the only thing it knows how to do, because it’s not you, it’s never going to be you, so it has to try to bring you down! Isn’t that how it feels?”
“Well, you might be right,” he said, knowing she was completely right.
“And you know what you can do about that voice in your head?” she says, the air heavy with dramatic tension.
“What?”
“You can laugh at it!” she replied, bouncing happily off the ground a few times.
“Oh, Pinkie, I can’t do that,” he said. “I mean, you’re the Element of Laughter, of course you can laugh in the face of fear, because that’s the power you have. But I don’t have it…”
She held an awkward, impossible pose in the air for a moment. “Hey, wait a minute there! That’s not right!” she said, falling to the ground and standing up straight. “I’m not the Element of Laughter because only I have the power. It’s kinda the opposite! I’m here to remind that everypony has that power, and they just have to find it inside themselves, just like I do! Now, I’m not saying it will be easy, alright?” Her face was just a few inches away from his nose as she said that, her gaze penetrating his eyes. “It’s not like you’ll go, ‘oh, I’ll just laugh now! Problem solved!’ It can be tricky and it can take time, but you can do it, just like everypony can, because you’re a pony who can. And whenever you feel I can do something to help you do that, I’ll be right there.”
Dainty thought about those words for a moment, and suddenly began to sob.
“Hey, did I make you feel sad?” she said, a little insecure.
“No, no, I’m not sad,” he said, drying his eyes. “I just… I honestly can’t believe you’re… saying those things to me that way, because… only a friend would do that.”
“Well, my friend, what did you expect?” Pinkie said. “That’s what I’m here for!”
“Thank you, Pinkie,” Dainty said, trying to calm himself down. “Really, thank you, I just… thank you.”
“You’re welcome, you’re welcome and you’re welcome!” she said, managing to get a giggle out of him. “Now, I just have one last little thing to ask you, if you don’t mind! Can I ask you?”
He shrugged. “Yes, of course, sure.”
“How did you lose your accent?” she said.
Dainty stopped for a moment, with his brow furrowed, his mind racing. “Wait… I did?”
“Well, there’s still a teensy weensy bit of an accent in there when I really pay attention,” she said, “but it’s not as thick as it used to be!”
“I swear I never noticed that,” he replied, “but, uh, I guess that’s… good?”
“Maybe! It’s not like it’s a bad thing to have an accent,” she said, “but maybe you’re really becoming a part of this world, and that’s good.”
“I suppose it is, Pinkie,” he said, with a smile. “That… would be really nice.”
“It’s true, my dainty friend Dainty! Now, I wish I could talk more,” she went on, her voice getting oddly hushed and fast, “but my break ended a few minutes ago and I totally should’ve gone back to work by now, but!! Make sure you remember everything I said, don’t be too hard on yourself, and most importantly: enjoy your cupcakes! And I really gotta go now. Bye!”
And, with a sudden ricochet sound, she darted back into the building. He stood there, in silence, just thinking about what just happened. He had always been scared of interfering in anything and anypony’s life, yet not only had he just had a conversation with Pinkie Pie, but he felt like this was just meant to happen. After all, what Pinkie did was nothing unusual for her. That was her nature. That’s why he admired her, and that’s why he had felt the urge to look for her. So, in the end, there was nothing out of the ordinary in any of that. And this was shocking to him.
After he dried his eyes, he raised his face, made sure the cupcakes were still in his saddlebag, and remembered Pinkie talking about the voice in his head. He could almost hear it as if it were someone else’s voice, and his only reaction was to laugh for a brief moment.
“Yeah… I guess I can do that, after all.”
And then he went on his way home, whistling a tune to himself.
