One Saturday evening as the sun receded behind the horizon of Ponyville, the SugarCube Corner began bustling with life. A soft yellow light accompanied by the muffled upbeat sound of polka music and the mouthwatering aroma of fresh pastries leaked from every window of its sugary walls. Inside the lively bakery, a bubblegum-pink earth pony with a frizzy, cotton-candy mane pranced frantically around the room, dousing piping hot cupcakes with silky icing, pouring punch into several paper cups, hanging up streamers and breathing life into brightly colored balloons. Occasionally, she would peek out of the window excitedly to see if her long-anticipated guests had arrived. Finally, the slowly building excitement took complete control of the filly and she began bouncing and giggling with glee.
“Oooooh, I can hardly wait, Gummy!” she shouted to her pet alligator, aptly named for his lack of teeth. “In just a few minutes, my bestest, bestest friends in all of Ponyville, no, Equestria, no, wait- in the whole universe will be right here, dancing and laughing and having fun and laughing and eating cupcakes and laughing--” she stopped herself mid-sentence, jumped, and suspended herself about three inches off the ground while she loudly gasped. “Wait!” she yelped, a look of utter terror reflecting from behind her sugar rushed eyes. "I forgot the pillows and blankets! You can’t have a slumber party without pillows and blankets! How could anypony possibly sleep without a soft, fluffy pillow to lay down on or a fuzzy blanket to wrap themselves up in like a big pony sushi roll!?" Finishing her rant, Gummy's owner turned back to face him with a dutiful look in her eyes. "I’ll be right back, Gummy. You stay here and keep those big, buggy eyeballs on the door in case anypony gets here, got it?” With that, she rushed off down the hallway, leaving the tiny purple-eyed lizard by himself.
Gummy hardly had time to blink at the door before a veritable mountain of linen launched itself down the hallway. Every mattress, every pillow, every sheet, blanket and sleeping bag in the entire building was stripped from its rightful place and haphardly tossed out into the foyer. From somewhere amidst the sea of cotton the pink furry head of the blanket thief popped out with a whole pillow lodged in its mouth. With a loud and goofy “Pleh!!!” she spit out the comfy cargo and began rolling around the floor and laughing merrily. Clearly this was one very excited pony.
"Gummy!" Laying on her back, she called out to her mini-gator who had taken refuge from the blanket cannon under the couch. "Why aren't you watching the door, you lazy lizard?" She stared down her pet and chuckled. Giving Gummy an Eskimo kiss, the mare hoisted him up onto her back and trotted to the door. "C'mon, we'll wait for our friends together!"
As soon as the words left her mouth, the sound of the doorbell made her ears twitch and her electric blue eyes sparkle with the innocent cheer of a foal on Hearth's Warming morning. She rushed to the door in a blur and tore the door wide open, revealing a popular purple alicorn princess with a streak of pink running down her flat, grape-colored mane. "Hi, Pinkie!" Twilight greeted in her usual reserved yet cheerful tone of voice.
Pinkie Pie bounced up and down, excitement surging through her. “Twilight!” she shouted ecstatically, tugging her purple friend inside the door. “My favorite princess in the whole world and one of my bestest buddies, you finally got here! I've been so excited I could hardly breathe! But you know what? I knew you wouldn't be late, and I knew you wouldn't be too busy, because even the most important princess in Equestria would never miss out on a party with her only friends!”
Twilight laughed from the armpit of her abnormally overexcited friend as she absentmindedly tried freeing her mangled wings from the party pony's tight hug. “Wow, you are excited, aren't you?" She couldn't help but sound a little parent-like, after all somepony here had to be the adult. "I'm glad I could make it too, I even postponed an important event so I could- hold on, what was that you said about friends?"
Pinkie Pie wasn't listening. She was bouncing circles around Twilight, her pet alligator hanging onto her tail as he was slammed into the pillows under her hooves repeatedly. “I mean I know that you aren't really the outgoing type and sometimes I think you don't really like to have any fun at all because you're all bookery and teachery but I know you really, really well because we've been through a whole bunch together so I know I can always invite you over to play!”
Twilight gave Pinkie Pie an amused smile as the two made there way into the foyer, one walking, the other still bouncing. The alicorn stopped however when she happened upon the atrocious state of the house. If she thought her tree house was a fire hazard, this heaping landscape of laundry was a dastardly inferno waiting to happen. She shuddered at the thought of her own home looking like this.
"Good grief, Pinkie Pie what did you do to the place?" Twilight asked in bewilderment.
"Do you like it?" Pinkie bristled with pride. "I call it, Pinkie Pie's Pillow Party Pandemonium Explodium! Yeee!!" She hopped backwards onto the sea of fluff and tossed Gummy into the air before aggressively flailing and rolling about in the blankets like a caffeinated jitterbug, emerging once again tangled up in a blanket burka that ineffectively veiled her ear to ear grin. Twilight burst into laughter at the sight. It was always a treat to see the pure inexhaustible exuberance that wound Pinkie's gears kick into overdrive. It was times like these she found it hard to believe that this pony could ever be anything but happy.
“Twilight! What should we do first? Eat cupcakes? Play a game? Dance? Eat cupcakes? OH, how about we--"
ding-dong!
"Cupcakes are ready!" Pinkie shouted, speeding towards the oven. Twilight shook her head as she watched her friend's perplexed expression at the lack of cupcakes in the appliance.
"Pinkie Pie, that was the doorb--" naturally, before Twilight could even finish her sentence, Pinkie Pie was already opening the door, letting in the next three guests of the night. The first to walk in was a snow-white unicorn wearing pale blue eye shadow on her closed eyelids. Her nose was in the air, letting diligently curled locks of purple hair run down her back. A sky-blue pegasus with a shaggy mane striped with each color of the rainbow closely followed.
“Sorry we’re late, Pinkie,” the latter said in a scratchy voice holding behind it more irritation than genuine apology. “We would've been here sooner if somepony hadn't taken so long figuring out what to wear!” She looked at the unicorn accusingly, who gasped dramatically.
“Oh, that’s okay, Rainbow Dash--” Pinkie started, but the unicorn interrupted her.
“Well, excuse me for wanting to look nice,” she snapped. “Some ponies just never understand the importance of proper attire.”
“Uh, Rarity?” a new and thickly-accented voice belonging to an orange pony who shared Pinkie's lack of wings and magic piped up. "We don’t even wear clothes most of the time. I'm pretty sure Pinkie Pie couldn't care less about your tire.”
"Attire" Rarity corrected, rolling her eyes. "I swear, with how many words I introduce to your vocabulary daily you and Rainbow Dash must have been the most difficult students to handle."
"Not really," Rainbow Dash said. "I wasn't in class most of the time."
"Of course you weren't."
"Cupcakes!" Pinkie Pie interjected with a plate full of what were presumably pastries entirely drowned by blue frosting that slowly dripped off the edge of the saucer and onto the floor. "As the newest citizens of the Pinkie Pie Party Society you must each take one cupcake and vow never to argue, frown, grunt, growl, scowl, bicker, quarrel, debate, debacle, belittle, badger or burp. Well, burping's funny, you can burp."
"And debacle isn't a verb," Twilight added.
Rainbow Dash landed and took a cupcake from the plate Pinkie was holding. "I can already tell tonight's gonna be fun," she said with a laugh. "Aw, you guys already wrecked the place?"
"It looks so cozy," Rarity giggled at the mess, silently thankful it wasn't her own. Indeed, the whole house did look very cozy. Chairs and couches were draped
Amidst the spontaneous ruckus, Twilight, who had decided to begin placing cupcakes on plates for everypony with Fluttershy until the rest of their friends decided to pipe down a bit, noticed something amiss from the corner of her eye. Tracking the disturbance with her meticulous gaze, her glance came upon a book on the floor. A book. On the floor. How anypony could cope with themselves in an unorganized house was beyond Twilight. She trotted over to the misplaced keeper of knowledge and picked it up with her trademark levitation spell. Getting a closer look at it, she was hit with a strange sense of unease. Its tattered leather cover was a dark gray so devoid of color that it seemed to drain the vividness from everything around it, and even though she wasn't physically holding the book, it seemed to have a peculiar weight to it, as if it were weighing down on her very mind.
“H-hey, Pinkie Pie,” muttered Twilight, still not breaking her trance from the book. “What’s this? I've... I've never seen anything like it in my library...”
Being interrupted from her musical, the bubblegum mare and her friends looked over to the purple unicorn. As soon as Pinkie saw the levitating book in front of the unicorn, a certain air about her seemed to change. Her sky-blue eyes dilated to the size of pinpricks, the corners of her mouth turned upside-down and her whole body seemed to radiate utter dread. It was as if the pink in her spirit was snuffed out like a candle on a six-year old filly's birthday. She leapt frantically out of her chair and scattered towards it, tripping on the record player and stopping the music on her way. She seized the book out of the air and clutched it tightly to her chest. By now, Pinkie Pie had the full attention of Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy and Twilight, who were all staring at her in shock.
“Umm, uh...” stuttered Pinkie. “This... this is just, um, a-an old... cookbook! Yeah! Suuuper duper old, so, hah, b-better go put it someplace safe.” She chuckled nervously and turned around, swiftly walking down the hallway into one of the unoccupied bedrooms. The others looked at each other trying to put together everything that just happened.
“What’s up with her?” Rainbow Dash said with a hint of concern buried under her ‘cool-girl’ act.
“Oh, no. It was probably my fault,” whispered Fluttershy in distress. “I hope I didn't hurt her too much. D-do you think she’ll still want to be my friend?”
“It wasn’t yer fault, sugar-cube,” Applejack said gently. “She’s just being… Pinkie. We best just leave ‘er alone fer now.”
“Applejack’s right, girls,” Twilight said confidently. “She’ll be back to herself again as soon as she comes out of that room and before you know it it’ll be like it never happened.”
As if on queue, Pinkie burst out of the room still looking a bit shaky, but smiling once again. “It's party time!!!!” she yelled, and turned the music back on.
Rarity hadn't moved. Amidst the dancing, talking and eating ponies, the white unicorn just sat staring intently at the door, wondering what in the world that marvelous book could possibly contain to be able to transform her giddy party friend into a nervous wreck. It certainly was no cookbook, anypony could see that. Or, maybe it was a cookbook with some very juicy secrets. All the same, what’s worth hiding is worth digging up, and that’s exactly what the curiosity-infected pony intended to do. A mischievous, albeit ladylike grin crawled across Rarity’s face as she sipped some punch from a glass. Soon enough, she would be basking in the vast riches of her sunniest friend’s darkest secrets without anypony there to stop her.
Not All Is The Way It Should Be
Violet shadows danced delicately around Rarity's lurking form as Luna's pale evanescent lights created silver pools across the floor of the SugarCube corner and down its singular hall by the stairs, as if guiding the white unicorn to her destination. Fueled by the sheer snooping thrill the fashionista knew all too well, Rarity hastily glanced around the room to make absolute sure that her peers were all fast asleep. The transformation that the Corner's living room had gone through overnight could best be compared to a train wreck; cups, plates, cupcake wrappers and the bodies of exhausted ponies littered the floor like the aftermath of some lethal party bomb. Except of course for Pinkie Pie: she slept soundly on the kitchen counter face-first in an empty punch bowl. Rarity couldn't help but stifle a small giggle at the sight of her pink friend's eccentric enthusiasm, and made a mental note to not let anypony leave the establishment the following day before getting the place tidied up.
Not being able to contain her excitement much longer, the fashionista tip-hoofed her way to the moonlit door as fast and stealthily as she could. Then, filling to the brim with anticipation, she pointed her horn at the brass doorknob and cast her telepathy spell, surrounding it with a light blue aura that caused it to turn at her will. A soon as the door swung open, Rarity leaped inside and shut it behind her, giggling like a school filly. Digging around in places she knew she shouldn't had always filled her with uncontainable glee. Now, Rarity was by no means a cruel pony, and she would never even think of committing such a heinous crime as blackmailing her best friend. A proper lady does not involve herself in such filthy acts. However, that didn't stop her from feeling incredibly curious about Pinkie Pie's behavior towards that mysterious book and found herself drawn into discovering the secrets it must hold.
After all, Rarity thought to herself. It looked as if she was terribly troubled. If I found out just what the problem was, I could talk to her about whatever was causing her such grief. Yes, that's it! Why, we could even have a little face-to-face therapy session over a cup of tea! Oh, Rarity, you really have outdone yourself!
No sooner had Rarity begun searching the dark room for the book than were her eyes greeted with a bright purple light filling the room. When she looked up, she saw she was face-to-face with a certain librarian who wore a very smug look on her face.
"Looking for something?" Twilight Sparkle said.
"Uhm, uhh," Rarity stammered, looking for an excuse. Honestly, what was it with this librarian and getting into ponies' business? "L-looking for something? Why, how absurd, Twilight! T-the only thing I'm looking for is... is... um... the bathroom! Yes, that's it! I am looking for the bathroom!"
"Please, Rarity, even Applejack can lie better than that." Twilight retorted, rolling her eyes.
"Is that so, Ms. Smartypants?" Rarity huffed. "Then, what, pray tell, are you doing in here?"
Not missing a beat, Twilight simply said, "waiting for you to come in here looking for that book so I can stop you." Rarity's eye twitched.
"But Twiliiiiight" Rarity whined, kneeling over and looking at her friend with the best puppy-dog eyes she could muster.
"Hey, could you two keep it down? I'm trying to get some shut eye." The two unicorns both turned their heads to the door, seeing their blue pegasus friend with her wings extended in agitation and some serious bed-head. Rarity rushed over to Rainbow Dash.
"Rainbow, Twilight won't let me read that book Pinkie Pie had earlier!" The white unicorn said in a tattle-tale voice, pouting.
Trying to free her fore hooves from Rarity's grasp, Rainbow Dash struggled to realize what her pouting friend was talking about. "Book?" She said. "You mean the one Pinkie didn't want us to pay attention to?"
"Yes, that one!" Rarity exclaimed. The mention of the book brought back that moment just hours ago when Pinkie Pie tried desperately to hide the dark tome from view, and began a small seed of curiosity in the cyan pegasus. There was something about watching one of her best friends take such a worrying change that rubbed Rainbow the wrong way. And now that she was a lot more into books than she was before and even considered herself a decent reader, she began to feel a strange urge, not unlike Rarity's, to dig up that book and give it a good, thorough inspection so as to sniff out any dangers it held to Pinkie Pie's well-being.
So, needless to say, as Rainbow Dash stood before the two now-arguing unicorns with their horns aglow and spotted the book sitting peacefully on the bed, she dove on instinct like Daring Do and an ancient artifact, grabbing it by the spine and clutching to her chest before Twilight could take it from her. It was then that the unicorn in question as well as Rarity both turned their heads to the pegasus, one wearing an expression of giddiness, and the other one rage. Twilight hopped on the bed, ready to pry the book out of her friend's forelegs, when yet another voice drifted in from the door.
"What in tarnation is goin' on in here?" The three ponies looked over at a frizzy-maned Applejack, her signature Stetson lopsided and her sleep-deprived eyes resting on heavy, droopy bags.
"Rainbow Dash was just about to read us a story!" Rarity said gleefully, looking at Twilight with smug pride. Before the increasingly flustered purple unicorn could object, Applejack hopped up on the bed and examined the black book in her friend's grasp. Instantly the farm pony recognized it and fell under the same spell of curiosity the previous two ponies had. She sat back on her haunches and recalled Pinkie Pie's little "episode".
"What about that little book do ya reckon could'a caused that high-strung pony to go into a mini-meltdown like that?" Applejack wondered aloud, staring in a trance at the object. She, like the others could tell something was off, like one tiny feather out of place on a bird's wing, small enough to not be seen, yet misplaced enough to disturb the creature on which it lay. The seed of curiosity seemed to have started growing, and all four ponies soon found themselves drawn into Pinkie's book. Even Twilight Sparkle found herself begin to have second thoughts, her sense of privacy starting to melt away as the book's details became more prominent than anything else in the room. The silence that had taken over the room washed over the ponies so quickly it sent chills down each of their spines. The whole universe began to revolve around that book, and the mares found themselves embracing every detail of it with their hypnotized gaze. The room began to spin, everything else in existence began to shatter and dissipate, leaving nothing in existence but those mares and that book, that book that was so dangerously mysterious, so ominously close to each of them that its opening was just hoof's reach away from--
"Umm, girls?" In an instant, a pegasus, an earth pony, and two unicorns were violently zapped out of a strange dimension of hypnotic curiosity and shot into the real world by the softest voice in existence. Fluttershy, whose mane was uncharacteristically frizzy stood at the door with a worried expression. "Um, I was just wondering, w-why did you guys leave me ou--"
"Oh, for Celestia's sake!" Twilight exclaimed, leaping off the bed, tackling the butter-yellow pegasus and carrying her to the bed. With a twitch from her eye and a glow from her horn, she shut the door and looked down at her friends. All she wanted was to protect little Pinkie's privacy; if she didn't want anypony reading a book, then who were they do go and read it behind her back? But did things like this ever work out for Twilight? No. It was always "oh, don't worry about it, Twi! We can do something really stupid and get ourselves into a big amount of trouble, then you can save our flanks and write a note to the Princess about learning things the hard way instead of taking some bucking advice!"
"T-Twilight?" Fluttershy squeaked. "Are you okay? What's going on?"
"Exactly what everypony wants!" Twilight snapped, waving her forelegs in the air dramatically. "Make yourselves comfortable ladies, we're going to read Pinkie's private book, and then we're going to go to sleep like good fillies and maybe, just maybe, I won't have to write any letters until tomorrow!" The lavender unicorn swiped the book from Rainbow Dash's hoofs and placed it on her lap with a very unnerving smile plastered on her face. It was then that the ponies learned a valuable lesson, one that Spike had learned long ago: don't get on Twilight's nerves at two in the morning, especially when it involves a book. Nevertheless, the ponies climbed up onto the mattress silently, waiting patiently for Twilight to begin reading. Except, of course, for Fluttershy, who still had no idea what was going on.
It was the sudden attention everypony was giving Twilight, the silent yet excited anticipation for a good read that finally prompted her to open up the book to the first page. The librarian was greeted with the familiar smell of an ancient and timeless book, and was somehow humbled to be in its presence, as if she was dealing with some immortal cosmic deity. The now-exposed yellowed parchment below her was blank, except for the words "To my granddaughter Pinkamena Diane Pie. Happy birthday my angel." scribbled across it. Below those sentences, Twilight noticed some symbols resembling hieroglyphic-like text. Deciding that none of this was terribly significant, the unicorn turned to the next page and was greeted, once again, with hoof writing, this time filling the entire page.
Deciding not to dwell in her own curiosity for too much longer, Twilight cleared her throat and began to read.
~~~
May 3rd, e/c61347
My name is Pinkamena Diane Pie. Today is my birthday and I turn four years old and that means I am a mare.
~~~
Twilight shot a glance at Rarity, who raised her hooves innocently. "I had no idea it was a diary, I swear!" The white unicorn stated. The librarian didn't respond; she was barely awake as it was and didn't have the energy to argue anymore. So reluctantly, she read on, her friends engrossed in whatever was in filly Pinkie Pie's head that she wanted to keep hidden.
~~~
May 4th e/c61347
I wrote everything in here the way Granny Pie told me to and she still tells me I'm doing it wrong. She tells me I'm supposed to write all of what I'm feeling inside this book, but she knows we can't do that. Number 22, section 53dl states that rock farmers cannot record any information at all, we can only read or write to study the laws. But Granny is taking me to her room and making me write every day, until I "understand its importance", she says.
May 5th e/c61347
I live in on the outskirts of Delamare as a rock farmer just like all earth ponies. On some rock farms ponies break big rocks and send them to rock farms like the one my family and I work at, where we sort them up into piles for the Authorities to take away. We aren't allowed to look at Authorities, so we can't watch them take the piles away.
May 6th e/c61347
"You still aren't grasping the concept, girl!" My grandmother scolded me after reading the short passages I've been writing.
"You said to write about me and I did!" I countered. We were standing in her bedroom away from the rest of our family where Granny had been making me write for the past couple of days. "I've written everything there is to know about me, so I'm done!"
"You haven't written the first thing about who you are, Pinkamena!" She snapped.
"Who I am? Nopony can answer that!" I said, being to become more and more enraged. "We can say what are name is, what we do, what we like, how we feel or how old we are, but how the hay am I supposed to say who I am? I'm just a pony! We're all just ponies, workers with no need for identity forced into labor till we rot!" When I was done shouting, the room went silent. My Granny Pie just stood there looking at me with what looked like a mixture of pride, surprise and a bit of fear. I had no idea what had just gone through me, it was like a spark lit off in my head, illuminating some knowledge that I wasn't aware I had, and then died just as fast as it had appeared. I did know one thing however:
"I... I didn't like that," I whispered, trying to retreat out of the room, but my granny grabbed me before I could escape.
"This, Pinkamena, this is why I gave you that diary. You have something that few earth ponies I have ever seen possess: spirit. Emotion. Drive. You look around you today and something tells you that not all is the way it should be. You notice imperfection in what is claimed to be perfect. Every swarm of parasprites we're forced to drive off of out farm, every rock we're forced to collect and sort through, every blind we close in order to avert our gaze from the Authorities rubs you the wrong way somewhere in your head, and you have yet to find it and think with it."
I just looked at my granny in fear. "But that's the part that scares me the most."
"Fear stands in the way of everything worth fighting for, Pinkamena. The day will come where you will have to face your emotions, including fear. Tonight, you will write our conversation word for word here in this diary so you won't forget your hidden passion, and each day, no matter where you may end up, you will write in here more about what you discover about yourself and Delamare. Things are going to change, Pinkamena, for you and for everypony else. It's your destiny, your inevitable journey."
So, here I am, in my room, using only the light of the moon to write what I was told to. I don't know what to think or feel about anything my granny said earlier. I thought this diary was a birthday gift, but apparently it's much much more. Apparently my granny knows a lot more about me than I do. And apparently, fear is a good thing. But that's the one thing I'm okay with right now, because if there's anything I'm feeling now, it's fear.
