//------------------------------//
// Epilogue 
// Story: Rocks and Other Breakable Things 
// by KiroTalon 
//------------------------------//

"Sooo? What do you think?"

Twilight didn't immediately respond to Pinkie's question. She had finished the poem several minutes ago, and had been sitting in silence trying to process it ever since. The pick. The rocks. Surely...but no, that's crazy...isn't it?

"Twilight?" She glanced up to see Pinkie looking down at her with concern. "You okay?"

"Yeah! Yeah, I'm...fine." Twilight forced a smile onto her face. "You said you haven't read this at all, right?"

Pinkie shook her head. "Nope. Just let it flow from the pencil!" She grinned. "Why, is it good? Should I read it?"

"No, no!" Twilight said a touch too loudly. Pinkie stared at her in surprise. "I mean," she corrected herself more quietly, "no, you don't need to read it. It's...alright.  Not great, but...you don't need to read it again.  I mean, it made you happy again, right?  There's no need to read about what made you sad in the first place if you're not sad anymore, is there?"

Pinkie pondered this while staring at the ceiling.  "I guess not. It wasn't bad, though  was it?"

"No, it wasn't bad, in fact...do you mind if I keep it?" Twilight asked hesitantly.

Pinkie raised an eyebrow at her.  "Keep it? Why?"

"So I can read it again...you know, if I want to." Twilight tried to smile again, painfully aware of how disingenuous the expression felt on her face.

Pinkie shrugged.  "Okie dokie lokie!" she quipped before bouncing back towards the door. "Thanks again for the advice, Twilight! I'll see you tomorrow!"

"Yeah, no problem," Twilight said absently, looking back at the scrawl on the paper again, furrowing her brow. "See you."

The door shut behind Pinkie, leaving Twilight alone with her thoughts. They're just rocks, right? It's a poem about the rock farm. Hard work. Breaking rocks. Nothing else.

"Of course not," Twilight told herself, forcing a smile. Pinkie was full of surprises, no doubt about it, but she doubted symbolic subtext was something she was particularly good at.  Then again... 

She shook her head one last time before floating the page over to the trash can. It was just a silly poem. An exercise in free association. No sense in pulling meaning out of gibberish. A second thought crossed her mind and she floated the poem out of the trash can and instead slid it into one of the larger, more tedious tomes on her library shelf, hoping to insure Spike wouldn't happen across it accidentally.  With another shake of her head, she smiled again and made her way up to the second floor of the library, intent on going to bed before her imagination gave her anything else to worry about.

Just a poem about rocks and picks and nothing else.

Nothing else at all.

Right?