Rock farming is about patience. That’s its most basic rule; the core fact about rocks that any farmer will agree on. Cloudy Quartz considers this impressive, as, underneath all the conformity of the ponies around her, there’s very little common ground. No pun intended. It’s a community knit tightly enough to crack and break, as it so often does.

But patience is something everyone in Rockville agrees upon. They’ve been growing rocks since Holder Cobblestone first cracked ground here, and they’ll probably be growing rocks long after everypony she knows is frolicking in Elysium, if tradition holds. And tradition always holds, no matter how much she chafes at it.

Cloudsdale flies by once a month, dropping off the scheduled weather and taking away old clouds for recycling. The pegasi who run by always seem a little confused at the prospect of farming rocks, as if the weather being made in a factory is acceptable but growing minerals is just a step too far. But Rockville takes the ribbing with a stoic smugness; at the end of the harvest, it’s the unicorns in Canterlot that’ll be buying Rockville gemstones for their jewelry, and it’s the pegasi who will be shipping in Rockville’s crystals to power their magical machines.

It’s all so dumb to Cloudy. Quiet, pointless posturing over superiority, because nopony in Rockville would ever admit how beautiful the fluffy white city looks as it floats overhead. Because everypony has their little candlelit mantelpiece dedicated to Princess Celestia in their house, but nopony would dare set even one hoof in Canterlot with all those stuffy unicorns.

She hates it here sometimes. Not always, but enough to where she and Igneous have thought about simply leaving. The rock trade is always thriving, and they live simply enough that there are enough bits where they could simply pack up and head somewhere else. Rocks take patience, but they aren’t picky.

But it’s wrong to leave their families, tradition or not. Her mother, Celestia bless her, would deal with it with the smile she’s always had. Grandma Pie didn’t leave, even if Cloudy fears that it’ll kill her one day. Rockville would move on if they left. Rockville wouldn’t get better if they left. And it can be better, she knows this. There’s good and there’s kindness here, even among all the small minded drabness that clings to the average rock farmer like gypsum dust.

It’s just going to take some patience to get there. She knows she won’t be the one to see it happen. She hopes her daughters might, but it’s wrong to put those hopes on them, especially when she knows that they deserve better than this town and the ponies in it.

She’s taking the girls through town to trade their excess shale, ignoring the occasional glance as best she can, when Old Mare Milkweed says it under her breath, just loud enough for her to hear as she passes by. The old nag complains that some ponies should stop at just one foal, especially if they’re all going to be as broken as the first one.

Broken.

It’s a word that makes her blood boil, and only a lifetime of experience in Rockville keeps her from bucking the other pony to the ground. From the look Limestone shoots her, the kind that could restart an extinct volcano, she’s not the only one who heard it.

Broken.

It’s a useful label in Rockville. It’s a word that casts a big wide net and dredges up all the little ponies in the social sea and ships them back to whoever they think is responsible. Broken because a child is too loud or too quiet or too excited or not excited enough. Broken because their mother doesn’t flatten them into the average rock farmer with dull colors and dull dreams. As if what the ponies around her want is what her daughters need, as if they don’t fit into the little slots of the town because they’re broken, not because everything else is inflexible and traditional.

Broken.

All the grumbling ponies in Rockville would say you deal with it yourself. That a mother’s job is to learn how to fix her broken children, one strike of the pickaxe at a time. That’s what a good mother does, that’s what a good mother is traditionally supposed to do.

Supposed to would see Grandma Pie locked in a dark room and never talked about. Tradition would mean she’d be the family invalid, the family shame, an open secret that would mean her mother would never have gotten to share all those bright colors of hers with a town, a world, a daughter, that sorely needed it, even if, in the end, none of them appreciated it at the time.

Supposed to would mean she’d learn all the wrong lessons, trading what her daughters needed for what worked for her, what would give her peace of mind and peace and quiet. Because, for all the talk of tradition and the quiet pretension and pride of rock farming being about doing things the hard way, Rockville was always remarkably quick to take the easy way out. Rocks weren’t ponies after all; rocks were predictable and did what they were supposed to do.

She tells Igneous about her plans, and he gives that quiet nod he always gave, his version of enthusiastic support. She wouldn’t be doing this if he wasn’t here. He’s got his own quiet tells, his own private emotional language that she’s long become fluent in. With him, that was the first time she learned there were ways to show love and give love other than what tradition said there were. Sometimes, she wonders how many ponies used to whisper about him being broken too.

It’s the final push she needs, it’s what got all of them onto the train to Canterlot, out to the kind of doctor that wouldn’t be welcome in Rockville, because a child psychiatrist was new and, thus, wasn’t allowed and wasn’t talked about.

She’s doing this for her girls. Not because they’re broken (and they never will be) but because each of her daughters is incredible in their own way. Incredible enough to deserve every advantage she can bring them, incredible enough to have a mother who will be there in any way she can, and will learn to be there in every way she can’t right be now.

It takes more than one trip, but they’re rock farmers; patience is what they’re used to. She’ll deal with the whispers whenever she boards the train, as ponies from Rockville traditionally don’t travel this much. They can go kick rocks, and they will. She’s not doing this for them, after all.

She comes away from her trips with names of things, complex new labels that ponies with years of study under their fancy belts have put on behaviors that Rockville liked to lock away. She’s not offended when the doctor puts out phrases that end in things like “disorders” or “abnormal”. That’s how it is for unicorns. Complex words for complex needs.

However, she does get offended when they inform her there’s not a cure to “these kinds of things”, and replies coldly that her daughters aren’t sick and she’s not looking for a panacea or some magic spell. She notices the way Igneous tenses up at that statement, too, the small squeeze he gives her hoof as they sit under the buzz of electric lights in this white room.

The magma that is their anger cools when the doctor gives them a sincere smile, telling them that what they’re doing is already the best possible step forward. They’re sent back to Rockville with packets and sheets of text, lists after lists for each of the fillies. The doctor emphasizes they’re not instructions, just what to expect. What is best for them, what helps. It’s not a magic solution, and, in some ways, she’s grateful for that. What comes next is on her, and she does what she’s always done for her daughters: pour her heart into everything about them.

Maud reminds her of an optical illusion, the kind where the picture of a pony’s face is either a young or old mare depending on how you look at it. Most ponies will only ever see a girl who never emotes, whose voice remains at the same level and cadence always, and they’ll be lost.

Cloudy won’t be ashamed to admit that it took her too long to learn the difference between expression and possession. That’s why they went to Canterlot, and why she’ll be forever grateful for the doctors. There’s a filly under the deadpan stare, and she can be happy, she can be sad, or angry. She learns that a slight twitch of the mouth to Maud is howling laughter to another pony, she learns to watch for the sparkle in her eyes or the slightest drooping of her ears, and the illusion suddenly changes, the veil suddenly lifts. It makes her heart soar.

Maud wants to make it easy, and takes the direct and smartest route she can think of: She just tells ponies what she’s feeling. She’s honest, honest enough that it makes Rockville (which loves to claim it is honest) uncomfortable and earns her dirty looks all too often. Because this town is like that, because this town would rather give their ire to a teenage filly so caring and genuine that she’s willing to wear her heart on her sleeve in the only way she knows how. And that makes them uncomfortable, because they prefer to do things the old fashioned way, and stew behind the various quiet emotions (usually resentment) that they’ve forced themselves to bottle up. A girl as smart and sweet and honest as Maud is clearly just broken.

And she is smart. Cloudy isn’t even aware of how smart she is until a traveling geologist comes to town; one of the few learned ponies who won’t get dirty looks in Rockville. He’s on a stage showing off all the amazing things one can do with amazing rocks to the polite enthusiasm of the townsfolk.

And then Maud gets up on stage. Cloudy doesn’t even notice her sneaking away, and then she’s upon the rocks with a clarity and precision that makes even the scholar’s mouth hang open in awe. She’s correcting him, bringing out samples from her bags and soon the crowd disperses out of disinterest, leaving two ponies talking, only one visibly enthusiastic about it.

Maud has the slightest of smiles on her face as they walk home that night. She says it was the greatest day of her life, and Cloudy’s never seen her this happy.

Soon, letters start arriving at the farm. Distant scholars from distant universities, wanting to talk to her, wanting to correspond with her. She writes them back about rocks, always about rocks, and sometimes there are diagrams and sketches that make Cloudy’s head dizzy.

Letters soon become recommendations, which soon become offers, and then full scholarships. They find themselves boarding more trains, touring more places as important looking ponies in caps tour important looking buildings and tell Maud of wonderful futures and nurturing programs and more. As sad as the idea of Maud leaving the farm is, Cloudy couldn’t be happier. More than a few of those important ponies they meet act so much like Maud, and Maud herself even says she’d like to be friends with them, if she accepts.

Friends. Friends aren’t something Maud has in Rockville.

She’s brilliant. Far too brilliant for this town, far too different for this town. When she makes her decision, when she packs Boulder away and steps onto the train to go off to be the youngest pony accepted into the most prestigious university for the first time, Cloudy feels relieved. This town needs to be educated, but Maud isn’t the one to do it. She shouldn’t be.

Bit by bit, Limestone calms down. She’ll always be angry, and deep down Cloudy admits that she probably has a right to be angry. There’s a lot in Rockville to be angry about, if you scratch at the surface. But it’s no longer the kind of white hot impotent anger that could destroy her. She’s no longer hurting herself, she’s no longer hurting the ponies around her, not if they don’t deserve it.

Limestone is hardworking, diligent. She’s strong and as born to rock farming as Holder himself, and that’s good. She doesn't just excel at it, she’s passionate about it and everything that surrounds it, learning to pour that fire inside of her outwards. She takes home blue ribbons at every event at the town fair, shaping shale and cracking ore at a level that humbles the full grown stallions with twenty years of experience she’s competing against.

And she’s confrontational, and that’s even better than working hard. She’s become indispensable to the work around town and she knows it. Cloudy can hear her all the way at the edge of town, a filly just a year over her cutie mark, giving Old Mare Milkweed an earful when that gossiping old nag pays her half the bits she promised for helping trim her amethysts. She sticks up for herself and for her sisters. Maud comes home with a slight frown on her face one day, Shelf Stock having screamed at her for taking too long to order. One look at her big sister’s complete anguish, and Limestone marches out to the general store with a scowl, nostrils steaming.

Cloudy doesn’t know what she said to him, but the next day the stallion comes by to apologize personally.

The town could use more ponies like Limestone, but it’s not going to fix it. Rockville’s dealt with firecrackers before, and stone is a patient element. It’ll wait her out, then it’ll go back to what it was, and what’s supposed to be will still be there. She’s not going to be the one to change this town.

Marble takes after her father, and the silences they share together are comforting. They’re alike, and Cloudy hopes that one day she’ll find a stallion that’s patient and caring enough to sit down and learn how to speak the language of silence for her. She can talk, of course, with a small voice like a crystal chime. Rockville would claim that she’s wise, that she only talks when she has something to say, and even that compliment, well meaning as it was, makes Cloudy sometimes wish she had Limestone’s courage to confront them.

Because her daughter has things to say, because she knows there are so many times when she wants to say something but can’t because it hurts. And it hurts Cloudy because both of them know that all the quiet ponies around them are like that by choice, because they don’t realize how valuable speech is when it’s always available whenever they want it.

So she and Igneous help their daughter. They learn what she can say that doesn’t hurt, and where words do hurt, they find other ways, ways that even other ponies in Rockville can understand.

But it’s not just words that make up Marble. She’s kind, she is so very, very, very kind (and sometimes Cloudy fears that she’s only like that because she thinks she hasto be), but so timid and so very, very, very shy. So Cloudy teaches her to stand her ground, because the world, not just Rockville, can be very, very, very cruel to someone who is very, very, very shy and very, very, very kind. But she’ll stand up for herself, in ways that matter. Bit by bit, she’ll learn to say “no” even when she can’t say anything.

And finally there’s Pinkie. There’s always Pinkie, a blazing contrast to Marble’s grey. She’d be a family anomaly if she wasn’t born as colorful as her grandma was. She’s still an anomaly to the rest of the town anyway. The same town that will whisper behind her back (and never to her face, not when they know Limestone’s on the hunt), stare at her just a little bit longer than they should. All that pink means something, Cloudy knows. But where Maud is stoic, Limestone confrontational, and Marble shy, Pinkie is just sad. Sad even without the whispers of Rockville and sad even when they visit Grandma Pie, the only other mare she knows of that can get Pinkie to come out of her shell. She’s sad as if she’s confused and can’t figure something out, always walking around with an expression that says she’s lost and the place she’s looking for can’t be found on any map.

The doctor had even given her some advice, after taking her aside. The best thing to do was to give her things that would stimulate her, they said. On that advice, they had purchased a children’s box of paints, giving it to their second youngest daughter and not knowing what to expect. It was the first time she can ever remember when her daughter’s eyes lit up, a small smile (the first one she can remember ever seeing from Pinkie) gracing her face as she took them and trotted off.

She hopes it works. She hopes that that small splash of color is what was missing in her little pink pony’s life; that it’s finally what makes her happy. Pinkie deserves that, because it’s Pinkie that is the foundation for everyone else. It’s Pinkie who tells her what Maud is feeling with perfect clarity even when her oldest daughter’s emotions are obscured far beyond what she can read. It’s Pinkie that can calm down Limestone with just a simple touch. It’s Pinkie that is Marble’s voice when talking becomes too overwhelming.

And it’s Pinkie that she can’t ever help. It’s Pinkie that she doesn’t know how to help. It’s Pinkie screaming in the night, high pitched sobs that make her gallop down to the hall to the twins’ room.

There’s paint everywhere. She’s no judge of colors, her daughter being the only source of saturation in her life for a long time, but the way these blend together and streak across the floor feels… wrong. It’s a canvas of increasing desperate frustration and its artist is sitting in the center of it, covered in furious splotches and bawling her eyes out, her twin sister standing off to the side in silent panic.

Cloudy doesn’t hesitate; she’s crossing the floor, not caring about the paint that gets on her hooves or coat, and scooping up Pinkie in the tightest hug she can muster, her tears joining with her daughters. It’s important that she knows someone is there to feel sad with her, if nothing else.

“I can’t make it work!” the filly cries finally. “I can’t— I can’t find the colors. None of the colors work together and no matter what I do they just keep blending together and I’m making it worse and worse and it doesn’t make sense! And it doesn’t make— It doesn’t make sense because… because I don’t make sense!”

Cloudy’s heart sinks, her daughter just cries harder.

“I’m the wrong color when everypony else isn’t, I can’t do anything I’m supposed to when everypony else can. I’m just… I’m just broken.”

And then her heart shatters.

“Oh, oh dear no,” Cloudy whispers. “That’s not how it is. It’s going to be okay if—”

“It’s not! I’m going to get my cutie mark and it’s just going to be a broken jumble of stupid things like me and everyone’s going to know I’m just the broken pony who can’t do anything!”

“You are not broken,” insists Cloudy.

“I am broken!” the filly repeats, voice cracking as she chokes back another sob. “I don’t belong! I’m just a useless stupid pink out of place… rock!”

Cloudy climbs out of that pit of despair, looking around to see anything in the room that might help, or might explain things. There’s not often a lot to explain with Pinkie, but she’ll try all the same. Squinting, as it’s hard to see without her spectacles, she sees a small shape in the corner, thrown aside in distress. It’s smooth and round; part of the twin’s collection, now knocked around.

It’s also the slightest shade of pink. A rare shell of color in their drab little town, and probably why her daughter chose to enshrine it.

“Like this rock?” her mother asks quietly. Pinkie just shuts her eyes and nods, tears turning her muzzle dark pink. Cloudy picks it up, pressing it into the filly’s hooves even as she whimpers. Her mother is gentle, but still insistent that she holds the rock.

“This,” the mare says gently, “is a very special kind of rock, Pinkamena. Do you know why that is?”

Pinkie opens her eyes slightly, giving another sniffle but staying quiet.

“Normally when it was ripe enough, it’d open on its own. Still, this one is just far enough along that there’s no shame in giving it a little… help.”

With a well placed tap, the rock cracks perfectly in half. One got a lot of practice doing that on a rock farm. She showed the two halves to her daughter, who gasped.

Inside the rock is a glittering array of crystals, every color one could think of recreated in miniature mineral form; a rainbow yolk of a geological egg.

“If you are this rock, Pinkamena Diane Pie, then you are a growing geode,” she gives the filly the gentlest smile she can, hugging her close and rocking her as best she can. “You’ve so much color and beauty to give this world, I know you do. It’ll just take patience. Patience, and time.”

“Until I’m ripe?” Pinkie squeaks, understanding the metaphor perfectly.

“Until you’re ripe,” Cloudy kisses her head, continuing to rock her gently. It helps, Celestia be blessed, it helps as much as she can help, and by the time she’s bathed her daughter and tucked her back into bed, she’s fast asleep, breathing calm and deep.

It just takes patience. Patience, time, and a bit of help.

It’s a cloudy afternoon and a day out from Cloudsdale’s monthly delivery when it finally happens. When it all finally clicks, when they don’t have to be patient any longer.

She and Igneous are making lunch, and as she’s warming the rock broth - there’s an explosion. A shockwave of something rattles the windows and doors. It chases the clouds away, and in the distance she can hear a dog barking.

“Pegasi are testing a new batch of thunder, it sounds like,” muses her husband. “A shockwave like that will crack some of the western crop early.”

“Oh dear, will it be alright?”

He sticks his tongue out, tasting the salt in the air. “They should be fine, a geode ripened a day early is still colorful enough for Ponyville. I’ll talk with Stock and see if we could possibly ship them out before—”

Whatever he’s going to say is interrupted by the slamming of a door. Both ponies jump, looking down at a cloudy pink poof of pony that’s standing on the threshold.

“P-Pinkie?” her mother asks.

It IS her daughter, but her usual hairstyle is replaced with a wild mass of fluffy beyond anything she’s seen in years, and her eyes are abuzz with energy and her face awash with awe, as if that recent shockwave was the presence of Princess Celestia herself. She reminds Cloudy of Grandma Pie; the hair, mostly.

“Pinkamena?” She asks again, but before she can get an explanation, Pinkie blasts off, faster than she’s ever seen her daughter move, rushing past her parents deeper into the house, before she reappears with some of the art supplies they’ve bought, moving to head back out into the field.

But she pauses at the doorway, turning back towards her mother with those wide eyes. There’s something else behind them now, not just sadness and that lost look she’s always had. Now she looks excited, inspired. And a tiny bit afraid.

“C-can I have the day off?” Pinkie asks her parents quietly. “It’s… It’s important.”

Cloudy looks to Igneous, whose eyes are wide. He gives a simple nod that carries a lot of implications with it. This feels like the threshold of something big, bigger than any rocks that need to be moved. It needs to be encouraged.

“Work can wait, Pinkamena,” she replies kindly.

The filly squeals, peeling away from her parents and out into the yard on her unknown quest. It takes a couple of seconds before Cloudy realizes it’s a squeal of joy. It’s a sound she’s never heard Pinkie make, and her heart swells with hope when that fact hits her.

The next day, music comes from the old shale silo. Silos don’t make music. Rockville doesn’t make music, because traditionally rocks are farmed in silence. Or at least they’re supposed to be.

She and Igneous exchange a look, still unwilling to let go of that hope in her heart as they open the door and gaze dumbfounded at the sight before them.

The silo’s been transformed. There’s color and food and music and lights, and there’s so much of it she can barely comprehend it all. And there’s Pinkie at the center of it all. Eyes wide, hair puffed in a way that feels right, facing all of them with a look of happy pride.

“Do you like it? It’s called a party!” the filly declares.

The rest of the family just stare, dumbfounded, save for her mother. Cloudy is looking at her, in shock at the filly before her.

Pinkie is smiling. Pinkie is beaming. Pinkamena Diane Pie has a look of enthusiasm that’s almost infectious, and she looks like she was always meant to have that look.

But when Pinkie sees her mother’s wobbling chin and wet eyes; she confuses it for something else. She starts to tear up, the cotton candy that is her mane starting to deflate. Cloudy won’t let that happen, even if she can’t cry tears of joy. She returns her daughter’s enormous smile with one of her own.

She knows what a party is, but she would never deprive Pinkie of this, ever. Even if the punch is too sweet for her, even if she’s not much of a dancer, and she’s familiar with balloons (they are Grandma Pie’s favorite, after all), she lets herself have the time of her life. She lets the laughter and the music and the sheer happiness of it all consume her, watching a little bouncing pink filly in the middle, giggling with the kind of delight she hoped for.

Her daughter is happy. Her daughter is happy and it’s more than she could have ever wished for. When the glow of Pinkie’s cutie mark twinkles in, she’s not surprised, though her heart feels like it’s bursting with relief.

Pinkie is the one to fix the town. Cloudy might eschew tradition, but even she believes in destiny. Her once sad little foal is joy, joy that you can’t resist and joy that seeps into every crack and soul in Rockville, filling it with gold like cracks in a broken bowl.

When Pinkie knows Old Mare Milkweed’s birthday somehow, they all watch the cranky hag weeping as she's given the first cake she’s had baked for her since her husband passed away some thirty years ago. Shelf Stock’s granddaughter gets her cutie mark soon after, and Pinkie’s conjured streamers to line the streets. She can’t be stopped and the town doesn’t want her to, her happiness as infectious as her smile.

For once, there’s music playing in Rockville. For once, her grandmother walks down the street, pink granddaughter in tow as they swap stories of various happy nonsense, waving hello to the happy townsfolk who wave back.

For once, Cloudy sees the good that she hoped Rockville can have, and she finally doesn’t regret the decision to stay.

Igneous is right beside her, a wide grin on his face.

Author's Note

Accidentally wrote this at 2AM.

Thanks to the Discord and Trolleytrainer for the proofread.