Colours painting the skies
“No icing.. no sprinkles.. no… NO STRAWBERRIES??” Pinkie gasped, dramatically holding her hoofs to her mouth in utter disbelief. She had been stuck with one idea for a no-sugar order that might come up in the future. She shook her head slowly, staring at the messily scribbled words she used to write very eloquently in crayon - red crayon, the most important colour for the most important conversations. Even if it was just to herself, her plushies, and her brown seedy looking crafting paper.
Truth be told, Pinkie had been handling the idea of a sugar free recipe for various amounts of exotic bakes she had discovered from countless adventures with her best friends, but it was well into the night and her head felt like there was a ball of wood.. no, steel, knocking against the inside trying desperately to stop her from thinking so much. Only after a dreadfully painful bonk in her head, that she figured was the ball playing ping pong as another way of getting her attention, did she decide to sit back and sigh.
“Mrs. Loveheart, my therapist, told me not to stress during the late hours of night..” Pinkie trailed off, feeling slight sadness seep into her thoughts poisonously. She shook her head quickly with determination, and smiled sadly. “How abouuuut..” she quickly swiped away the bake ideas in bright attention grabbing red that had her focus for so long, and looked down at the equally as grimely and seemingly sandy crafting paper below.
There was a reason for her choosing the most inhabitable papers for drawing, with crayons nonetheless! She had gathered them from the attic next to her room (which also happened to sort of be apart of the attic) instead of the activities she had planned with her friends - if they had come, that is.
This wasn’t alike many of the nights she spent awake, this time she was alone for most of it. Though of course, her friends all had their various good reasons why they couldn’t make it to the sleepover she had planned. Twilight was a princess now, like a really important one. A crown and everything, big fluffy gowns she was permitted to wear for show, and many more responsibilities than she ever bared at the library, and so, being an important figure, she hardly could attend any sleepovers, unless that is, Pinkie packed a big bag of stuffed things and snacks to take to the castle, even despite Twilight's protests. And Rarity hardly wanted to stay up the long hours that Pinkie couldn’t help doing so. She needed her beauty sleep, whatever that meant. She just knew it was very important to her. And Fluttershy wasn’t so keen on going out during darker nights. Mostly due to Pinkie's careless spooky scary stories that she bellowed during one of their nights together. Big mistake. The yellow mare wasn’t keen on sleepovers for two weeks afterwards, even at her very much well-lit cottage.
So, Pinkie reassured them it was okay with a nod and one of her big toothy smiles, and trotted home as the setting sun basked the village with its golden warmth. But despite the warmth, she was sad, of course, knowing that her newly found staying-up-ness was hers to deal with and hers mostly alone.
She looked across the room from where she sat, towards the large panelled window that had been let to stay open. The night was still and dark, and the pegasi had clearly done a beautiful job with sweeping up the large fluffy clouds to reveal the skies deep dark blue and purple colours that she so deeply appreciated. After all, she had to get well acquainted with each stroke of purple and each bash of blue, seeming to blend with a sort of splash.
She had been made to stay up past most times ponies would be fast and deeply asleep by now, snuggling into their blankets, sighing after a hard days work, by her silly brain that refused sleep no matter what she did. Teas of all kinds from the local homegrown breweries, spells even wouldn’t keep her sleeping for long, and no countless amounts of calming meditations helped her fall asleep in the late hours of the night - she supposed she had to properly befriend the night sky and it’s various stars very closely, and she often did look at it from her little window that shined contently next to her bed.
She often wondered.. if Celestia carried the sun high into the sky before daybreak with such strength of a hundred ponies.. my goodness what a wonderful thing!- oh, and of course Luna who pushed the moon and decorated the night sky with pretty erratic stars, so ponies could find their way home - if they had done such amazing things as that, then .. well, who painted the sky's brilliant colours? Who made the clouds beautifully pink? Pinkie's favourite colour, naturally. Who painted each stroke of blue into the deep canvas of the sky that was no doubt blank before. If not the most powerful of pony royalty? Would twilight soon be delegated to such a job? Pinkie ripped a corner of her current crafting paper, and stuck a light purple crayon into her mouth, messily and almost illiterately scribbling “ask Twilight if she’ll paint the sky” across it, almost losing space, ending the sentence with a pretty little star, to act as a sign of representation of Twilight.
Then, without warning, she was soon run with thoughts and theories of what it could be like to paint the sky every night. The ones that comforted her so when she felt a ping of loneliness, or sadness that dared to turn her night of excitement into one of contemplation. Oh what would painting the sky be like? What would it be like to fly high up above and make it something to marvel? Something even pony's who are led astray, look up to for guidance?
Pinkie had tried really hard while sitting behind her small table, to show in a from of attempted art what it could be like for a pony to have a special talent for painting the skies, and her craft paper, as rigid unmovable and tough as it was, happily accepted her crayons colours like it was thirsty for what she pressed against it. Possibly due to how hard she moved the crayons onto it. So she grabbed a few more in her mouth, taking the chance of sudden passion and she scribbled and scribbled and closed her eyes to scribble some more, but with *feeling* - and suddenly she opened them wide, spit the crayons out with a POP! And noticed how scattered the colours on the paper all seemed next to one another. Not like the skies that seemed very deliberate. But something confusing. She looked towards the window once more.. no, the skies weren’t like this at all! Some talented pony must be really special!
When the thought and practice started to bore Pinkie, and her muzzle started to pain after many attempts to recreate a talent she just didn’t have, she dropped the five crayons she carefully stuck between her teeths, and rested her chin on the table, looking around her room with a hopeful expression. She had drawings she’d done of her friends messily taped to the wall. She smiled at the pony-stick figure of Rarity, her .. somewhat pony shaped head sticking up high in the air as if she had smelt something delicious. Flowers maybe? Gemstones and crystals? Can Rarity smell *gems*? Pinkie took out another paper from under the one that was so brutally scribbled on, and wrote down, in dark purple, “ask Rarity if she can smell gemstones” with a few misspellings here and there. She focused her wide blue eyes back onto the drawing again. Rarity had an array of gold and purple flowers next to her, one skilfully drawn in front of her hoof. Pinkie smiled, at that time she had just learned how to draw things on the foreground before focusing on the background.
Pinkie, again losing interest on that one drawing, started looking at her own hoofs for possible entertainment. Slight scuffs of crayon painting them, and a bit of powder from the sugar she had stuck her hoofs in before going upstairs, trying really hard in the darkened kitchen to both see in the blackened state she was in, and not wake up the Cake's with the sugar paper's constant shuffling due to a pony's needy wants for sugar. Maaaybe not the best before bed, she thought.
She decided with a hop onto her hoofs, that a shower would do her perfectly well! And perhaps, the slightly aged lavender she had gotten from Daisy Day many nights prior, would get her mind into just the right mood for dreaming, sleeping, and resting well before a new morning.
She opened the slightly permanently ajar door to her own personal bathroom. It was made so out of what used to be the Cake's closet - specifically Mrs. Cake's honey reserves. It still smelt like sweet, sticky, and slightly damp treats. And the slight scruff and chipped wooden floor tiles have proven the closet very old. Pinkie, per usual, trotted in with small steps, it was relatively easy to control her steps, though her brain had a very hard time falling asleep, her body always seemed to be far ahead of it in terms of tiredness than her brain could catch up with such an idea. And slow was it.
She turned the faucet on with a quick turn of the nozzle - it needed a bit of a pull before the water very aggressively splurged out with a few sprays going in all directions before it finally settled downwards. It was warm, but not too warm.
She checked the cabinet that hid itself on the bottom half of the sink, but frowned when she didn’t find any bubble wash. Pinkie frantically looked around for a piece of paper and a crayon conveniently placed that she could write on. She shrugged with a sad smile, and slipped into the warm waters, resting her head against the wooden panels of the back tub, that were swollen with many uses of water and years of neglected cleanings.
The washroom was certainly dark. But that’s nothing the Cake's, nor Pinkie Pie could fix. She had tried to tape flimsy paper stars and flowers onto the walls of the bathroom in many bright colours, to give the stuffy cramped and dark space a bit of *flare*. But they soon too got sprayed with the unforgiving water faucet and soon limped downwards. Pinkie was definitely the most colourful thing in the bathroom currently, such a thought making her stifle a giggle.
She slowly slipped underneath the water, letting it completely wet her mane, and pretending for just a moment that she was a diving expert of most prestige, and that, she wasn’t even slightly afraid of deeper waters than touchable ground. She was a brave sea pony princess discovering new lands to connect to her kingdom. Bringing great sea wisdom and stories of her people and their countless celebrations and seashell collections. She imagined herself meeting a seapony knight, handsome as he was, from a differing kingdom, connecting with him to form relations, as any good seapony princess (soon to be queen) would do, of course: “Ah! Did you know Sir Seapony, that I’m not *just* a beautiful sea pony princess! But also* a party planner and an incredible baker?” She realised half of these words were said underneath the water, opened her eyes in shock, and dived up quickly as it flushed into her nose, and she came up with such great force that most of the water splashed right out of the tub and onto the floor. But she scarcely had time to worry about *that*, as she was also coughing and spittling out water onto the floor as well. “..Gee..” she coughed out after a long series of spurts. Eyes red, and chest heaving.
She scrubbed her hair slowly to forget her silliness and then sat back into the bathtub with a heavy low sigh of content. And once the adrenaline had worn off, with lidded lovely eyes, she took a long whiff of the array of smells in her small cramped bathroom. Rosemary, mint, strawberry and honey, birthday cake, and a *pumpkin seasonal blend*.
Autumn is upon them for sure. And she’d be invited to shop with Fluttershy and Rarity to get various different pumpkin products that flooded the canterlot market's with a buzz of silly excitement - she was sure excited, though the leaves have yet to be shaken onto the ground by the earth ponies. Something else she couldn’t wait to experience. She looked around to find a piece of paper. The thoughts of “get more bubble wash” nudging at her head, before she shook the thought off.
Pinkie soon hopped out the bath and lightly shook her fur, grabbing a fluffy scraggly pink towel hanging from the planked walls, and trotted out, feeling her lungs burn from her silly little incident moments earlier.
Back in her room, she trotted towards her rug and sat down, her way of drying herself off. She decided to hum her thoughts and excitements for the rest of the night, still not feeling a drop of sleepiness poking at her brain. Not yet.
She leaned against her bed, and felt the familiar softness of her favourite wear in the world. Socks. It had seemed like she was the only pony who genuinely appreciated them. Her friends thought of them as varying levels of itchy and pointless, as they already have fur. But Pinkie delighted in the feeling of soft fabrics coloured blues and pinks decorating her legs. She squealed with happiness from rubbing them together and fell onto her back, staring at her ceiling. Pretty pretty ceiling, so simple. The only thing she left bare in her room, so she could fill the blank spaces with her own imagination.
She then, with even more sporadic behaviour than she usually portrayed, dragged the pile of plushies on her bedside that seemed to hug her right back, and greedily grabbed a few of them specifically into her hoofs joyfully. Jellycat, a company that Fluttershy had recommended she try for Pumpkin and PoundCake, that she no doubt (and slightly, admittedly, ashamedly) took pleasure in herself. In fact, she thought, the cake twins hadn’t even took notice of the high quality HorseLand produced stuffed toys, instead opting to play with their ragged dolls that Pinkie had sewn them very shoddily many years before they were even announced. She giggled, hugging the pink velveteen bashful bunny close to her chest. “And it’s okay!” She squeaked. “I appreciate you!” She felt like if the rabbit could talk, she’d say something along the lines of *jingle jingle jingle*. Which Pinkie would happily translate as “I’m a bunny!! Did you know?”
Pinkie Pie had gathered so many things for her late night anti sleepy time activities. Somethings that should encourage her sleepiness, but only proved to excite and motivate her mind further, she often wondered what if she had such a plain and scantily decorated room, that she would quickly fall asleep from the sheer boredom of having nothing, nothing to look at, or play with, or think about. But of course, soon the thoughts were dismissed, as she had spent many nights before in Rainbow's room, and it had been so plain, of nothing to entertain her but the clouded floors that she played with from time to time trying to fall asleep, that she was forced to imagine more things than she would’ve in her own bedroom.
She let go of the bashful bunny, setting it next to the bed where he belongs, and looked at her shopping bag, full of clothes and trinkets she had compulsively bought during her last pay. One item in particular spiked her interest so to say.. a tail, of purple, with green spikes stuck out. She imagined it wagging. She imagined her friend Spike running about, trying to supportively spend the entire night with her, but ultimately falling asleep amongst the plushed animals, while Pinkie sat next to the window.
She crawled near the bag, and tugged out the tail. It wasn’t Spike, but it was something that made her happy nonetheless! It was a Dragon themed pyjama set. She laughed, knowing full well it was supposed to be in the likeness of her Spike, but due to legal reasons, was simply called Dragon Themed Sleepies. She held it in her mouth, and shook it until it unfolded itself to its full glory. She nodded with a smile.
It fit perfectly. Even the tail was definitely washable with enough effort. And it had, for some silly reason, pegasus wings instead of dragon..! She giggled, imagining that many unicorns hadn’t really seen a dragon before, not a winged one anyway. Though Spike was very well known throughout the land for his countless acts of heroism.
Pinkie roared ever so slightly, before embarrassment flushed her cheeks red, and she laughed quietly to herself. She plopped down onto her bottom, and noticed something. She scooted closer to her bed, onto her slightly wet rug, and grabbed her bunny, sticking it into her pyjama top. Reaching backwards for a blanket, she rested her head against the front of the bed, and huffed. Closing her eyes, letting her thoughts slow, clinging to the feeling of true self acceptance and a warm heart, in the dead of night.
