Near silence filled the room, the scratching of a quill on parchment being all that could be heard. Near darkness filled the room, several candles adorning the desk, illuminating the sheet, and the purple pony sitting in front of it. Near stillness filled the room, nary a motion to be felt, save for the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed evenly, slowly, calmly.
SLAM!
"TWIIILIIIIIGHT!" hollered a familiar voice, through the now wide open door.
SNAP!
"...oh shoot, my quill," Twilight mumbled, having accidentally driven it a little too hard into the desk. Her heart raced as she breathed deeply, coming down from the startle of Pinkie Pie's intrusion. "Twilight, Twilight," Pinkie continued, backing inside, pulling something along with her, reaching out with her other foreleg to flick on every light as she passed through the portal. "Twilight, you will never believe what I thought about while I was thinking on my thinking chair, in my thinking room," Pinkie blabbered. As she continued her slow trot backwards into the room, her haul came into view, rolling through the door in front of Pinkie... and rolling... and rolling...
"Well, I-,"
"I was thinking to myself after you had that big talk with us about your super duper alicorn powers! And I thought, 'Gosh! Twilight is going to have hundreds, or thousands, or maybe a gazillion birthdays!' Even though gazillion isn't a real number. But maybe it will be, sometime before your gazillionth birthday, and they have to invent a new number to count that high. It's so far off in the future, I can't even imagine what kinds of numbers will be invented!"
Twilight felt her heart drop a little in her chest at the unexpected and sudden reminder of a subject which the mare in front of her had only days earlier referred to as a 'total bummer moment', reciprocated, of course, by Rainbow Dash. Unaware of Twilight's small moment of emotion, Pinkie continued her slow backwards pace, a seemingly never ending trail of connected compartments being carted carefully around copious corners.
"But even though you're going to have more birthdays than a pony knows what to do with, I'm probably only gonna have a hundred more, at best. And that means that you're going to have WHO KNOWS how many birthdays without GENUINE PINKIE PIE BAKING?!"
The carts Pinkie toted were filled front to back with dozens - no, hundreds of cakes, of all types. Chocolate cake, butter cake, pumpkin cake (the food, not the filly), sponge cake, cheese cake, and more!
"So I thought for a long time, and I hatched the most brilliant plan to ever fly out of this little pink noggin," she emphasized it with a hoof knock against aforementioned noggin, "If I can't be around to make you cakes for all of your birthdays..."
The last of the carts snaked their way into the room. Now, countless carts weaved around the room, all carrying some sort of cake-adjacent confectionery.
Suddenly, Pinkie was right in Twilight's face, her grin as wide and infectious as ever.
"...then I've got to prepare a buffer!"
Twilight stared back at her, both ponies motionless. Pinkie's face was warm and happy. Twilight's was, for a moment, wide-eyed and stunned.
But even she was not immune to Pinkie's grin.
"*snrk*. P... Pinkie," Twilight managed, through a barely suppressed smile.
"Yes, Twilight?"
"Do you... How, uh. Won't the cakes all... go bad? I mean, before I can eat them on the birthday each one is meant for."
Pinkie erupted with a loud gasp. "OH, RIGHT! I didn't finish my story!"
Twilight pushed her giggle into her hoof, not wanting to interrupt.
"So, I kept sitting in my thinking chair! Because, DUH, of course the cakes would go bad. 'This is NIGH UNSOLVABLE!' I shouted!"
She paused for a moment.
"Well, no. I didn't shout it, because it was awfully late, and I didn't want to wake up Mr. and Mrs. Cake, or the twins. But I said it with SO much gusto, you'd have THOUGHT I was shouting if you heard it! It was like this," and she continued, putting on a voice which Twilight likened to what Pinkie might sound like if she swallowed a frog before whisper-shouting, "This is nigh unsolvable!"
She began pacing around the room as she resumed her animated recollection. At this point, Twilight was struggling to not laugh out loud, resorting to pressing her mouth against the side of one of her forelegs.
"But of course, Pinkie Pie can't let a party problem go unsolved. That's crazy talk! That'd be like... if you saw a history book in the shelf for... something not history, and you just went like, 'eh, whatever', and walked away! Oh, fiction! That's a, a shelf that isn't history, right?" she asked, giggling at her own goof-up.
Through her own smile, Twilight nodded. "Yes, yeah. You're right, of course." Pinkie nodded sagely, still pacing around the room, making her way back over to Twilight.
"So, I kept thinking. And, boy lemme tell ya', I'm one of the greatest thinkers there is, I think. Nopony thinks like me! That's how I figured it was only a matter of time until I puzzled it out. And, before I knew it, I had cracked the conundrum!"
She sped all the rest of the way over to where Twilight sat. Twilight remained still on her seat as Pinkie began invading her personal space. She lifted up Twilight's wings. "You got a lot of cool stuff out of this whole alicorn business! The wings, of course," she spoke, inviting more little giggles out of Twilight, who murmured, "Pinkie, ticklish. It's ticklish under the wings."
"Right, right," she said as she let go of the feathered limbs. "And you're part Earth Pony now, too," she said, lifting up one of Twilight's front hooves. "Even though a lot of ponies don't really notice that part, it's still mega important to who you are, now!"
"Of course!" Twilight pulled that same front hoof up to her face. "I'm still trying to get in touch with that part of me, but it's only a matter of time," Twilight spoke with pride, warmed by Pinkie's thoughtful words.
"Uh-huh! But even though you're basically a power-pony made real..." An embarrassed blush tinged Twilight's cheeks, who saw grounds to refute the bold claim, but opted to keep silent. Pinkie Pie placed one of her own forehooves against Twilight's chest. "...I bet you still feel like a unicorn at heart!" She pulled her hoof away, babbling faster than before. "And I don't mean that in a rude, 'you aren't a real alicorn' way. Just in a, 'you're still new to this whole princess business, and you've gotta grow into your skin' sort of way."
Twilight could only nod dumbly in between Pinkie's pauses for breath.
"So, because I was sitting in my thinking chair, I kept thinking. 'She's been a unicorn her whoooole life before she became a princess.' I asked myself, 'What's something a unicorn is really good at?' And, of course, this was a difficult question to answer. But I pondered! And then I stopped pondering, because I was sitting in my thinking chair, not my pondering chair. I keep that one back at the rock farm!"
Twilight nodded in recognition. "I actually do remember that, funnily enough. Marble seemed to like to spend a lot of time in that chair."
Pinkie nodded ferociously. "She's a ponderer, that one!"
She turned around, facing away from Twilight. "So, I dove at this question from all angles. Obtuse, acute... I even tried parallel angles! But, it wasn't until I approached it from the RIGHT angle, that the answer became clear to me. Unicorns..."
Pinkie spun around with vigor, a party hat suddenly adorning her forehead, imitating her horned friend.
"...are really good at magic!!"
A beat of silence.
"Y... yup. They suuure are," Twilight snarked, though her face and body language betrayed her amusement.
Pinkie pouted. "I feel like you aren't appreciating the gravity of this revelation."
"No, no... It's, it's profound. It is profound," Twilight reassured, waving her hooves placatively, before continuing, "I just, uhm. Are you saying I should... use a spell to preserve the cakes?"
Pinkie Pie plastered a wide smile on her face as her head blurred up and down in a rapid nod.
"Okay." She paused, passing a glance over to the wealth of sugary goodness compacted into the room. A ghost of a grimace passed over her features. "Only one problem."
Pinkie let out a sigh of relief. "Only one?! I solved like, a hundred problems coming up with this plan! You're like, the master problem solver. We're practically done here already."
As she said that, her entire body began to vibrate. She attempted to say through the shaking, "W-wo-oa-ah!! T-th-ha-at-t's a d-do-oo-oz-zy i-if I-I'v-ve e-ev-ve-er f-fe-el-lt o-on-ne!"
Twilight snickered. "Well, this problem is a pretty big doozy! Pinkie, I don't know the first thing about food preservation! More importantly, I don't think food preservation techniques, magical or otherwise, allow a food to last for hundreds of years - at best, it can improve the shelf life of a product for... what, a few months?"
Pinkie Pie continued shaking.
"This plan, it's... really sweet! And I mean that both in the emotional and literal sense. You baked a lot of sweet things for me. But," she nipped a front hoof nervously, cheerful demeanor slipping away, "I can't help but think this might have just been a big waste of time and food. That being said, though, I-"
"A TIME SPELL!!!"
Pinkie stopped shaking. Twilight stopped talking.
"FREEZE THE CAKE IN TIME!!!"
Twilight's jaw dropped. Pinkie's face beamed.
"Holy cow, I wasn't even sitting in my thinking chair for that one! Twilight, use some kinda time-stasis-thingy! You don't have to preserve the cake for centuries... you just need to make sure the centuries don't even happen to the cake!"
Twilight reset her jaw, and stared up at the ceiling in earnest contemplation. "That's... hmm. It... well, geez, that's not a bad idea. For a Pinkie who wasn't even sitting in her thinking chair."
Pinkie Pie bounced joyfully in place.
"But, such a long-lasting time stretch spell with a massive scaling factor like that would take a tremendous amount of prep-work and energy to cast. I'd probably have to get help from Starlight, and... maybe the other princesses, too. It seems like an awfully trivial use of everypony's time, just for some cake..."
Pinkie blew a raspberry. "Nuts to that. Trivial?" Unexpectedly, her voice grew soft. A quality so rarely heard from the sugar-filled pony, it drew undivided attention. Twilight focused on her intently as she spoke, "Twilight, I... geez, okay. Let me real talk for a sec."
A deep breath.
"You're gonna live a long time, and I'm not. But this is a way that I can give you a little piece of me, to stick around for a long time."
Pinkie turned from Twilight, an unusually bittersweet look stealing her usual earnest smile away. She seemed to be staring nowhere in particular.
"Every year, you can take one out, and you can remember the times we shared together. You can... you can enjoy a gift I made for you. One of my very best friends in the whole world. We can be together, in a small way."
A moment passed.
Then, the scraping of a stool shoved aside, hoofsteps, and one body colliding into another in a fierce embrace.
"Oh, Pinkie... you big sap," Twilight warbled. "That's... that's a perfectly good reason to do it, I think. Of course I'll do it." She sniffed. "Of course."
Pinkie leaned into the hug, hiccuping as she wrapped her forelegs around her friend.
"Thank you, Twilight."
"Of course."
Commotion filled the room, as boxes were moved to and fro, and sweets were carried delicately through the air on various colours of magic. As murmurs of conversation and 'oops'es and 'thank you's echoed off the walls. As some of the most magically adept ponies known to the world worked together on a terrific project of math and magic and cake. It was easy to get one of the princesses to agree, at least.
Of course, a certain purple pony always had something to say.
"Pinkie, I know the answer, but I want to hear it from your mouth. Why are there..." a moment passed as she estimated with her magic, "...about fifteen pounds of birthday cake candles in this box?"
"That's a superrific question, Twilight! You see, I was sitting on my thinking chair-,"
"In your thinking room?"
"No, in my bathroom. Yes, my thinking room! Don't interrupt!"
"Sorry."
Scattered laughter echoed throughout the room from all the different ponies.
"So, I thought... what if Twilight turns 500, but there's only 499 birthday cake candles left in the whole world? It's so super far off in the future, maybe they stopped making them! Maybe the ingredients for birthday cake candles were all destroyed! Then, nopony would know how old you were any more!"
"Because I couldn't put enough birthday cake candles on my birthday cake, I suppose."
"What'd I say about interrupting?!"
"Sorry."
"Anyways, I wanted to make sure that no matter what, you would always be able to put enough candles on your cakes. Because cakes without candles makes k's! And you can't eat k's. You can only spell words with them. Far as I know, at least."
"Right. But five hundred candles seems like a lot for a single cake. Couldn't we just use those little numeral candles? Like... I could just put a five candle, and two zero candles."
"SACRILEGE! PINKIE PIE WILL NOT ACCEPT NUMERALS ON HER CAKES!"
Author's Note
Twilight sure says "of course" a lot, doesn't she?
Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed it.
