Brushing her teeth, she finds something missing in her mind, like there's a hole in it. It’s at the tip of her tongue, like Twenty Questions but with herself. It promises to be lots of fun, though not as fun as asking the town about it.
What is it, though? Her parents certainly did it.
The last thing they did together took place in a tumbling carriage, where a landslide crashed them by Mount Amplexus. All they could do was shield her.
When they found her, their forehooves had been wrapped around her for so long, quite a long, long, long time.
What Ma and Pa said about her famous ancestor was that Pinkie Pie, the holy Element of Laughter, was born in a cave she mined by herself. Pinkie then left the cave and knew her mission in life, which was putting smiles on everypony's faces.
“Mama, I wanna make ponies smile just like Pinkie!” Party Piece said to her mother so long ago. She'd just outgrown her comfy little cradle.
Her hooves and wheels hit the road, carrying a carriage through her hometown, Oroseira. It's sparse and dry, but rocks and caves are everywhere, and that's where most of her neighbors harvest rocks at. Sometimes, the rocks are shiny and can sell for lots of money.
Before she leaves, she spies a couple through a cottage window. Their little foal cries out, and his tears hit her in the heart, but here comes his mother to the rescue! A few pats, some milk in a bottle, and this baby laughs while his dad tickles him.
Piece pauses to see what she’s waited for every time she leaves home to light up another village with balloons and confetti. Past the window, she watches a nudge, a nuzzle, then it's straight to a kiss.
After watching such fresh love, she shares a parting glance with the dad, Mr. Librarian, she calls him. Through the window, there's no smile on his face, though. First time it's been that way in years, maybe in forever.
The griffon holdout of Galerie is always arranged by an excited outsider who now waits by its pearly gates and its dangerous crags of nests against very high and windy rooftops. “You’ve come to make with the happy magics?!” screams Gabbie.
Piece unlocks her wagon and unleashes a rainbow of streamers and pastries. A party pony must always go big. That's how creatures get swept away by good food, good drinks, and good times all the time.
Frowns turn upside down on those beaks, but an egg hatching pricks her in the head somewhere. It's something mental, like how the sound of cracks makers her ears go tingly. Lots of hooves and claws shake each other, thanking her for the surprise birthday party, but all that warmth is gone. Her eyes feast on the newborn's parents nestling him, plucking at his head of feathers, swaddled in no clothes but in something much more natural.
Her heart throbs. She mumbles it to herself. She tries, but it's at the tip of her tongue. The game's a-hoof again. What's happening before her, she can't describe.
Her hooves grab the closest griff to shout out everything but the tip of her tongue, always escaping her.
Mud flings over her head while she hurries her belongings into the wagon. The dandy gentlegriff must’ve not been used to the sudden neck-handling, but her parents did it, and Pinkie did it a few forevers ago, too.
The bad business in Galerie is over, hopefully. Next up is a little pony town that’s just a little bigger. She learned some fancy words on architecture there before like high-rise, balcony, and courtyard. They aren't rich rich, but they have bigger houses, so that counts, and bigger houses meant more ponies in a crowd. Piece has always loved a crowd.
On her wagon, she cranks the levers, pushes the buttons, says the secret password, and her party machine's back up like nothing. She dances on a busy avenue where carriages plow through the asphalt, and everyone's looking at her. There must be some lucky birthday pony in the audience.
“Hey, you!” some slick-maned fellow shouts from the crowd, twirling a curly evil mustache and mean black tattoos.
Party notices her smile going all wobbly. A heckler's never been up her alley. Mom and Dad warned her about it. “Uh, yeah, mister? Would you like a… a group… uh? A… wait a minute, a bear…?”
“Group? Bear? Oh… you want that, don’t you?’
She blinks. If the whole circle of partygoers clumps in on her, stretch their hooves out to her, and crush her, that's it.
“Y-yes, mister stallion! I-I’m here to spread ch-cheer, just like Pinkie! I mean… I c-come here every day?! You forgot about me already?”
“Oh, we know you, but word spreads fast ‘round here.” A mighty baseball bat’s taken out of his mane. “Always thought you were a little touchy, honestly. Guess I know why, now… you are obsessed, sick in the brain.”
“Wh-what?! N-no… th-that’s not what I am! I'm not sick! I'm healthy in the brain! I… I’m just…”
“Telegrams, girl! Heard of 'em? The griffons spilled out everything you said.” Bap… bap… bap, so the bat bounces on his back. “Your Mom and Dad got the short end of the stick, didn’t they? No wonder you’re so clingy. Nothing too special ‘bout it, honestly…”
"I just want to spread joy and cheer here! Just like Pinkie!" But it's time to get out, pack up everything.
“You've got serious mommy issues, kid. 'Sides, history books never said Pinkie racked up hospital bills with a—"
Away from the angry mob of sticks, stones, and arrows, Piece has only the vast plains before her, littered with abandoned mud huts where long-dead ponies once huddled together from predators.
The act wasn’t murder, but being stuck with what he called "IV drip" and "comas…" at least the other half can still move, he said. How nice for the troublemaker to tell her that.
She gallops back home, back to the beginning of these troubles.
A tiny army cuts off her way back in. Pitchforks, torches, and unicorn knock-off spells. Her Earth pony strength can smash through the equine roadblock, but they'll still run after her and ask her serious questions and give her serious time in jail.
Lying on the ground, she licks the dirt, how humble she is, facing down their stone and iron helmets. “There’s something wrong! I’m forgetting something! C-can you tell me… wh-what I did?! I know I did it to you… every one one of you, s-so you could…”
“Dear Party Piece, the town of Galerie has informed us of your offense!” yells the chief guard, his face hidden by a mask. “We didn’t know you could stoop so low!”
“It was a-an accident! I… I wanted to know what it feels like again—“
“To hurt someone?! You gave them the scare of their lives! We c-can’t let you endanger those creatures with… with your grabs! And they said you were doing it to all of us?! Are you mad?!”
“They’re not just grabs!”
But the masked soldiers form an impossible roadblock against her. A skip, hop, or jump won't do if spears can poke her out of the sky.
“Out of the way, out of the way!” yells Mr. Librarian from behind.
After an argument with the soldiers that Mr. Librarian won, Piece finds herself in his underground bunker, lit up by candles and an oil lamp, all in a semi-circle on his desk that bears the weight of his navy-blue forelegs shuffling dictionaries and history scrolls around.
“Everyone’s noticed it but everyone's also not noticed it, Party Piece. Given your history, you’d be the only one to know something’s missing and what that something is.” His glasses reflect teary eyes back at her. “This is mental or spiritual, maybe even a curse.”
“A… a c-curse?!" She spins around to air her thoughts out, searching for some missing—"But Ma and Pa! I still remember them! Do you remember wh-what they did wh-when the whole village found me?”
“I certainly do,” he says, fixing his glasses, “but only because the records say so, which is strange. I can certainly remember the landslide, seeing your caved-in carriage 'cause I was there… s-sorry Party, I…”
I know I’m shoveling up some hard memories. Sorry about your mother and father. She can at least read those words in his silent muzzle.
“But that’s the thing, Piece. I can recall everything… b-but, I swear I know… look, just see for yourself!”
He shoves a scroll up to her face. It reeks of old-paper smell, and it’s marked with crudely colored illustrations of her parents. The data, he says, tells of her adoption into Oroseira and how she would be foster-cared by everyone. Some "incident report" also talks about her adoption.
Along Sourdough Path, by Mount Amplexus’s cliffs, 500 meters away from its peak, a landslide occurred. Party Piece’s biological parents, Chalk Cheese & Calcite Trigon, were killed in the disaster. Party Piece survivedthanks to her being encased in a ~~~ by both her parents, preventing the debris from crushing the foal.
On the rocky road up to the top of Mount Amplexus, she knows her mission, which is to destroy the artifact Mr. Librarian pointed out from some hidden legend. A few stories claimed it had a mere "disruption-type" spell, while others wrote how it stood at a point where a dozen ley lines met each other, "making some changed to localized reality," whatever that means.
Still, whatever it is, the thing must go, and with Mr. Librarian by her side, her world will be saved. She barely escaped the town with him while everyone was throwing rocks at the both of them, screaming something about her surprise love-chokes. All that won't change her mission.
Passing by the death of the two most joyful ponies in the world will never change her mission. Her vision drowning in tears and water will not have her budge.
“Come on, it’s just up here! I couldn’t believe they got this close to that talisman!”
Rock-climbing was another thing her parents praised Pinkie about, something along those lines. At least, Piece can jump from one stranded piece of rock to another without falling, pulling Mr. Librarian along when he's huffing and puffing from the workouts he never got. He steeped himself in his many pages, of course.
Up one final ledge, high above the crazy world, the wind beats itself against her whipped manes. Finally up here, she takes a peek into a shallow cave.
Fallen from its pedestal by a couple ancient bones, there's the shiny talisman, with gems under a tiny statue of a screaming head. It isn't glowing or spinning or doing any special magic thing, though.
So what, do we break it?
It goes unsaid, but Mr. Librarian’s nod has read her mind.
The path to victory is trod. She steps over the bones, their eerie skulls doing nothing but being dead. Just go! Leave before the rocks get to you too! You can do this.
Her ears perk.
Other vibrations reach her through the ground she touches, the language and song of the earth reaching out to her about… disturbances, still another word she learned from the good Librarian. Out-of-shape hooves, up a few hops, and now she's right behind the both of them.
A third pony approaches.
“Throw, what are you doing?!”
Mr. Librarian gets muzzle to muzzle with Mrs. Librarian. “Cerulean! Wh-why… why’d you bring Grist Mill?!”
On top of Mrs. Librarian's mane sits their foal, Grist, far away from his safe little home. “And leave my baby behind to the riot that our town’s become?! Oh… and you, Miss Party Piece! You're a coward!”
Party picks up fast the talisman. Another look at Mrs. Librarian tells her she's no monster. Her mane is like soft ocean waves, making way for a stream of a foal’s begging sobs.
“I can explain!” shouts Party, holding the artifact high in the air, lungs coughing up for breath. “It’s… I w-want t-to… h… what do you do with your foal?! What do parents do with their foals?!”
“Huh? What? Nurture them, yes?!”
Grist’s cry kills her ears. Mrs. Librarian winces, buckles down.
“Ceru, please!" Piece can barely hear Mr. Librarian, going down on his own knees to do his own begging. "Have you noticed…? We c-can’t l-love like we used to! None of us can… because of that cursed thing!” His eyes are bugged out, red and mixed with tears. “Party Piece, you have to destroy it now! It’s the only way we can figure it out and save everyone!”
“Why, Throw, I oughta’—!”
Clank!
The fight lasts forever. Breaking the metal treasure open, then breaking it into pieces.
She tries to dust herself from the curse. She wraps her forelegs around Mr. and Mrs. Librarian, nuzzling them both, nuzzling them harder, rubbing their heads against each other, trying to feel them against hope, warmth unending.
It hasn’t returned.
She foams as she spells it out. She can’t spell it, paralyzing herself without pain, breaking down, almost falling off a cliff. Being without the ground is a beautiful terror, so she hangs on to the ledge, her hoof stuck, unable to trace the letters out to her eyes.
Mr. and Mrs. Librarian have a shouting match for the ages, Mrs. Librarian blaming the filly for everything wrong, tormenting everyone for her own selfish gain, but Mr. Librarian is without words.
She sees him commit it, shows his love to her while he rages at the little statue.
Their eyes blank out. Their eyes are destroyed.
Party Piece, we’ll be going to your tenth-times-removed cousins in Oroseira! There’s some rocks and mountains and mines… but I’m sure, with Pinkie in your blood, you’ll cheer them up just fine! Cupcakes, muffins, some good music and dancing… and ~~~~! ~~~~ are always good, you know?
How far they’ve fallen, she doesn’t know. The clouds still fly above, but their bodies fall beneath the noon sun's shadow of a cliff.
Up the ledge, back on solid stone, her heart shatters.
A foal is left behind on cold stone.
A million hushes and pleas to make him stop crying don't work.
She smells smoke from a mile away. To the left, a great plume of smoke rises from her home.
There’s a mane here to caress, and his bulblike eyes only make her coo more at him. Nothing’s going to be alright, but she holds him close, holds him tight even as her mind threatens to break, as her nose threatens to bleed, and as her heart skips a beat and dances without a rhythm, burning out in some heavenly ballroom, away from a place where her parents’ last deed can never be said.
She wraps, comforts, embraces the newly born orphan in a
