Cinnamon Bun was rolling around on the floor.
A grown mare, who owns a successful baking business in Canterlot, was spinning herself dizzy on her favorite living room rug, going from one side of the room to the other.
She has been rolling around on the floor for the better part of an hour.
This is not the first time she had done this.
She rolled around for half an hour earlier this morning until she felt hungry enough to justify making some food.
For the past two months nearly daily, she had performed this ritual of rolling around on the floor at one point in the day or another.
Some would consider the action unsanitary, most would call her foalish, a few would call her psychotic.
She called it a way to stave off boredom, which these days is quite important.
The entire house was immaculate, every dish clean, every surface dusted and scrubbed. Her bedsheets were changed just yesterday, and she moped the tile the day before.
The only thing not perfect was the rug she was currently utilizing, but that would be fixed as soon as it was no longer in use, and her mane from her current activity.
Nothing needed doing, thus her current state of rotation.
Suddenly, Cinnamon Bun rolled onto her belly. For a moment, the continuous cycle of time wasting was interrupted to check on the effectiveness of said time wasting.
Her eyes landed upon the mantle clock above her fireplace and told her that it would be another grueling hour until she normally made lunch. Cinnamon let out a defeated sigh, and began rolling again.
Most would think that one would get bored with the repetitiveness of spinning, and Cinnamon would be the first to tell them that they are totally one hundred percent right.
Spinning is the bane of her existence. She tried working out, but she quickly discovered that you can’t work out the entire day if you want to be able to have the will to get out of bed the next day.
She paid for that overexertion for a full week afterwards, and relegated to only working out for two hours in the morning.
She tried reading, but she was deluding herself if she thought that she would actually be able to get through the tombs that the librarian called ‘normal books’.
But it did distract her for a day before she realized that reading was somehow more boring than rolling on the carpet.
She did try to draw something, and that showed real promise. She spent an entire day in a fever-like rush, and ended up falling asleep upon its completion.
When she woke up the next day, she was awestruck that something of such quality could have come from such a mare as herself. She burned the artistic monstrosity before it could somehow replicate, and burned all of her supplies for good measure.
So she wasn’t going to draw again.
She tried writing, but that’s stupid. Stupid ponies write things, and she was not stupid so that idea was doomed from the start. Every time she thinks upon the fact that she stooped so low as to try and actually write something, she giggles a little.
Writing, what a joke.
Then she thought she could try and pick up an instrument. She always wanted to learn and this was the perfect time to do so. So on her weekly excursion to the market, she took a detour to a music shop to peek at some of the instruments.
The pure beauty of some of the violins, the allure of the trumpet, the grandeur of a piano, the BUCKING HUGE PRICE TAGS! She quickly hurried back home that day. She may have been a business owner, but that was extortion even to her.
She might look into if there is competitive rolling after this whole thing blew over, she was getting pretty good at it these days. She hasn’t needed to run to the bathroom from overdoing it in a week now.
But enough of these thoughts, they were distracting her from focusing. She was getting into a good rhythm, when the sound of somepony knocking on her door caused her to quickly flip to her hooves.
Cinnamon was immediately on edge. She was about to encounter the only thing which brought true dread to her heart these days, something that she tried to avoid at all costs. Terrible, awful, scarry, pony to pony contact.
Another set of knocks upon the door deepened the pit of dread in her stomach. The force and speed was indicative of somepony here for a serious reason.
With trembling hooves, she made her way to the door, and tentatively opened the door an inch.
“Y-yes?”
“Cinnamon? What the buck is going on? I have not seen you in months, and I hear that nopony has.”
She hesitantly opened the door some more, and was presented with the upset face of one of her longtime friends Iron Rose. Her face turned from annoyance to confusion upon seeing the state of her hair.
“There you are- what happened to your mane?”
“Uhhh… I was rolling around on my carpet?”
The pair of them stood there just staring at each other for a moment after that comment.
Rose finally broke from her stupor and slowly asked, as if talking to a foal “And why dear Cinnamon, were you rolling on the carpet?”
Cinnamon blushed a little “Erm, I was bored?”
Rose visibly twitched, before with a monumental amount of will, ignored the last four sentences exchanged between the two of them.
“Why have you locked yourself in your house?”
Now it was Cinnamon’s turn to be confused.
“The Pandemic? You know, the whole Covid-19 thing?”
Rose’s muzzle scrunched up, in a vain attempt to comprehend the words being spoken allowed.
“Cinnamon, they cured that whole thing in three days with magic. The whole virus has been completely eradicated. There was a grand total of two infections.”
Cinnamon could merely whisper out a small “Oh.”
“Please, for the love of Celestia, don’t tell me that you closed down your bakery for two months and lived secluded away from all other pony contact because of that.”
Cinnamon had the decency to look embarrassed.
“Cinnamon. Cinnamon. Oh sweet Celestia’s flanks sister! We are going out to eat right now, and there is nothing you can do to stop me from taking you.”
True to her word, Rose forced open the door and physically dragged Cinnamon out of her home.
Soon the pair was walking down one of the crowded streets of Canterlot. Rose still had a slightly irritated look on her face from the whole ordeal, and Cinnamon’s mane was still completely disheveled.
“Cinnamon?”
“Yes Rose?
“Have you been working out?”
“Yes.”
“I can tell.”
“Oh, uh, thanks.”
…
“Rose?”
“Yes Cinnamon?”
“Are there any competitive rolling leagues in Canterlot?”
Author's Note
My first shot at writing a short story. I was very bored and had the quarantine conundrum on my mind.
Feel free to point out any errors!
