Sugarcube Corner was empty of everypony except its resident party mare occupying its kitchen. Utensils and ingredients were all over the place, creating a nasty mess. A lot of scrolls and pieces of paper caked in...cake batter, were strewn on the tables and floors as though the place had been ripped apart. Pinkie paced around, pulling out a dozen standard cupcakes from the oven and covering them with different icing recipes. Every taste was followed up by a 'no'. The pink pony swept the cupcakes down her gullet and tapped the counter several times with her forelegs, making flour bounce around.
"No! These are all bad! They're not good enough for Ponyville's Super Duper Ultra Mega anniversary!" The party pony froze. "Uh...ebony? Blue ruby?" She pressed a hoof into her muzzle and stayed there, thinking. "No! I need to focus!" She paced about the kitchen and stumbled over a rolling pin, causing her to roll outside. "Ow!" she complained.
Sitting in the dirt under the sunny sky, Pinkie had an epiphany. She remembered going to Cloudsdale with her friends. The clouds were so soft and fluffy! She needed to figure out how to make them naturally, so no factory. The pink pony sat upright and started gettin' the ol' cogs in her head grindin'. She needed to take a balloon and float to the top. ALL the way to the top. The toppity top that ever topped! There she would find the cleanest, purest clouds to take samples from to make the best icing and whipped cream. The perfect idea! NOTHING COULD GO WRONG!
Pinkie hurried back into Sugarcube Corner and pulled out an air balloon and basket and placed some glass jars into her mane. She was ready to depart! Not one to let something like a deflated balloon get her down, the party pony unfurled it onto the ground, much to the gathering curiosity of the passers-by. The yellow cloth awaited to inflate and take its cargo aloft. The pink pony stepped in the basket, held the base of the hot-air balloon up, licked her lips, and then screamed as loud as she could, startling the ponies near her. Her vehicle instantly inflated and was ready to take off.
"To the clouds!" Pinkie shouted.
The balasts were detached and up she went. She almost hit several pegasi on her way up, apologizing for the mistake but not having the time to explain herself. The clouds everypony could see from the ground weren't good enough. Even she knew that, so the pink pony went ever higher in the sky until she was surrounded by white cotton from every direction.
"Hmmm." Pinkie tasted the clouds here and shivered. "Too bitter and cold. Higher I go!"
The next level of clouds was in a raging storm, but Pinkie had the fortunate luck of being within its eye. She looked around, seeing the black clouds illuminated by the lightning coursing within them like a pack of timberwolves. Even the howling winds reminded Pinkie of those strange creatures.
"Hmm hmm. What piece should I grab, and where from?" Pinkie wondered. She sneezed when she looked in the direction of a thundercloud with a glowing yellow section. "There!" The balloon drifted towards the pony's target, allowing her to swipe a piece when she was finally in range. "Alrighty! Taste teeest!" Pinkie sang. She took a bite and was immediately electrocuted. She coughed when the electricity had been fully expended and shook the cloud off of her hoof. "Ew. Too spicy." She looked up and frowned. "How much higher?"
The pony pulled up her sleeves and ascended ever higher. This time she was in a white, freezing space. Luckily, she came prepared and pulled out some warm clothes from her tail.
"Toasty," she mused to herself.
Frost was already starting to form on the balloon and its basket, but it seemed prepared to stay in the air no matter what. The pink pony was witness to a sparkling wasteland of cotton mountains that were freezing to the touch. Pinkie was hesitant to grab a piece, but she stoked her confidence and reached out to take a piece.
"Aaaah! Brain freeze!" the pony shouted after taking a taste. She was about to throw the could but held herself when an idea crossed her mind. She looked from side to side, suspicious of any potential watchers and slowly took a jar out of her head, placed the cloud in it, then rehid the jar. "I'll save that one for some super duper ice cream," she whispered to herself.
Without losing her expression, the mare slowly ascended once again and broke through the white clouds. This time, however, it took her several minutes to get through the white masses, and when she emerged, there was nothing left above her head. Instead, she was greeted by an infinite, waving sea of white beneath her, and the infinite space above. Beautiful lights and colors converged into what Twilight called a 'nebula' to the left of Pinkie's vision. Several shooting stars came and went almost at the same time whenever Pinkie blinked, and several stars of varying brightness, color, and intensity kept her sky still as bright and as illuminated as Celestia's immense star in the distance.
"Oooo. Space!" Pinkie reveled. "I wonder if the stars are edible." She rubbed her chin with her mane. "Didn't I see something about edible planets in a black-and-white comic book somewhere?" She smiled and shrugged it off. "Oh well."
The basket dropped on its own and landed on the strange cloudy surface, surprising its occupant. Hesitant, she chucked a small stone that had taken a trip with her in the basket and watched it roll on the cloudy surface without falling through.
"Bombs away!" the mare shouted as she leapt out of the basket.
Pinkie ended up faceplanting into the clouds then sinking ever-so-slightly into the 'soft' mass. She shook her head and looked down at the white fluff. This was it. The final chance to have the perfect icing and whipped cream recipes. The pony buried her face into the clouds and ripped out a chunk to chew. Her face brightened up and her eyes sparkled with every chew, but...but. Always a 'but'. It was really, really soft and fluffy, almost like there was no weight to the cloud...but it was lacking something.
"Oh, come on," the pony lamented. She took another scoop and looked at it. "If I can't find anything else, then this could work," she thought aloud. "There has to be a better bunch of fluffy clouds..." She sneezed again.
Right there. A few hoof steps from where she lied down, was a small tube-like cloud floating above the infinite white sea. It was a purer white than anything the mare had ever seen. That had to be it! Excited, she galloped towards the tube, but she wasn't making any distance. She pushed herself harder and harder, but still she couldn't get closer to the tube.
"What's going on?!" she complained loudly.
"It can talk?" a voice boomed from everywhere and nowhere at once. "I didn't know shapes capable of speech."
"Who was that?" Pinkie asked aloud. "Are you the one keeping me from that cloud there?" she asked. The pony reached out and tried to stretch herself to the tube but to no avail. "No fair! I almost had it!"
"And why do you seek to take from me my most prized creation?"
"Oh? It's a prized possession? Ha ha, oops." Pinkie smiled sheepishly. "I didn't want to take it all. I just wanted to take a piece."
"Yes. That's all of it."
Pinkie noticed some vague, ever-warping, semi-transparent shape slowly filling her vision no matter which way she looked and even when she closed her eyes.
"A piece isn't all of it. It's just a small amount. I didn't want all of it!" Pinkie insisted. "That'd be mean!"
The shape was like a series of tubes that only seemed connected to something within the corner of Pinkie's vision, but whenever she looked at that 'central mass', it turned into more tubes. Plus, its words seemed to scrape at her insides, which was quite lucky for Pinkie Pie since her insides were itching her something fierce and she couldn't reach them.
"I don't understand. A strange amalgam of moving shapes wants to take my making, but doesn't want to take it?"
"I didn't say that, you silly sausages!"
"Sausages?" the entity repeated.
Pinkie winced and rubbed her eyes. "You're so blurry. Hold on." She dug into her mane and pulled out a pair of glasses that she quickly put on. She blinked several times then smiled and looked at the entity. It was silent. "What's the matter?"
"You changed your shape? How?" It seemed perturbed that Pinkie was now staring at it without displaying any discomfort.
"I just put on glasses," Pinkie said matter-of-factly "Helps me to see better."
The mass shifted. "I don't know this 'see'." The sea itself snapped in several spots and then returned to its prior shape. "What do you want that you encroach here? That you enter this place: My home."
"I came so I could learn how to make the lightest and fluffiest icing and whipped cream for my pastries!"
The entity shifted in Pinkie's vision before responding. "You make skies and clouds as well?"
The pink pony rocked in place. "Nooooooo. Paaaastries." She gasped. "Are you a sky god?!"
"Gods? I have heard of such things," the mass said. "I can perceive them clearly, but I am not one, and neither are you, moving shapes."
Several clouds and a bunch of 'sky' came from the mass and disappeared beneath the white sea.
"Woah! You are a sky god!"
"Am I?" the entity pondered in confusion. "You want clouds? This is what you said."
Pinkie nodded. "Yes! To make icing and whipped cream!"
There was a pause, and the pink pony felt reality fold in on itself briefly. "I don't know that," the entity said.
This prompted its guest to gasp in horror. "What?! You've never heard of icing? What about cupcakes? Cakes in general? Marbled cakes? Macarons? Chocolate bread?"
"Is it related to my ' '?" the entity asked.
"Your what?"
"My ' '," it repeated.
The pony shrugged. "I dunno," she said. "But I'm guessing not since it isn't a food."
Reality folded again. "Food? Something you absorb? Allows for more ' '?"
"No, silly," Pinkie laughed. "Haven't you ever celebrated your birthday?"
"Birthday?" the entity repeated.
Pinkie was going to burst. "You don't know what a birthday is?" She took the thing's silence as a confirmation. "It's when you...Um..." The pink pony tried to find the best words. "It's when you become aware. When there's everything around."
"I have always been. No knowledge of anything before," the voice said.
"Then we need to catch up with everything you haven't celebrated!" Pinkie started bouncing up and down. "There's Hearts & Hooves! Birthday! Hearthswarming! Welcoming! So many you've missed!"
"Experience? For ' ' and \/," the entity said. It paused a moment, and Pinkie felt reality shiver. "I can give you a cloud. Not as good, but if it fits your needs. Many can come," it said. It paused again and noticed Pinkie still not flinching at its presence.
"Oh boy! Let's go then!" Pinkie shouted. She hurried over to her balloon and struggled to get over the basket ledge. "Come on in! We can go down this way!"
Pinkie wasn't sure, but she had a feeling that the sky god was approaching her. The world spun as she felt herself falling...upwards?
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaoh, there's Ponyville," she said calmly. "How'd you know?" she asked the entity.
"Know?" it repeated.
the pink pony put a hindleg on the edge of the basket while they descended towards Sugarcube Corner and raised a foreleg. "Let's make that perfect icing!"
Ponyville was filled with celebrations and a ton of ponies next to the town hall. The pink pony was so excited to see that everypony kept coming back for more. She was gleaming with excitement and bouncing in place. There were gaming zones where most of the foals were located under the watchful eye of their parents, and a food stands zone where Pinkie and the Cakes were located. There was a constant flow of customers, and more kept coming back for more of Pinkie's new pastries.
"Pinkie, I have no idea how you managed to pull it off, but I think you've made the best pastry cream ever," Mrs. Cake complimented. "Never tasted something so light yet so filling at the same time."
Mr. Cake chuckled. "And to think you got this from tasting clouds."
Pinkie narrowed her eyes and patted her mane. "Yeah, and I got another secret to work with," she said.
"But uh...we're glad that you made new friends," Mr. Cake continued. He and his wife turned away and shielded their faces with their hooves. "But did you have to bring that...thing with you?"
Pinkie looked towards the sky god and all the pastries that it 'held' aloft. It was far from the food stands, but still somehow 'right next' to Pinkie Pie. Its mere existence messed with the senses. Several ponies were screaming hysterically and some had buried their faces in the dirt. One devoured a cake sloppily then galloped and jumped through a window to get away from the 'blurry mass'.
"There is no sky! It's just an infinity of fingers and toes scraping against a tapestry over and over again!" another shouted through a bout of vague 'sanity'.
"Pshaw. He's not doing anything," Pinkie said dismissively. "Isn't that right, Sky God?" she called out.
A brief glance by the Cakes showed them that the 'thing' hadn't moved, but Pinkie Pie shaped her mane into a thumbs up.
"How does she even know how to do that with her hair?" Mr. Cake asked his wife. "She doesn't even have conditioner."
"Shut up and keep selling the cakes. There's that one pony who keeps buying more, devouring them, then running around Ponyville," Mrs. Cake growled.
"Is he going to be okay at least?"
Mrs. Cake sighed. "I hope so, and I hope we'll be okay."
Mr. Cake let his face drop onto the table. "I should have stayed in bed."
"Me too," his wife agreed.
