//------------------------------// // Little House on the Quarry // Story: By and by // by Bysen //------------------------------// Did you know that a pony’s adult name and birth name aren’t always the same? When a pony gets their Cutie Mark they change their name to suite their special talent more accurately. Not all ponies do this however, liking their original name, or in rare cases already having a relevant name. A prime example would be Pinkie herself whose name is still similar but changed none the less to fit her. ~ ~ It was a beautiful day! The sky was grey and overcast, the air was dead-still causing the eerie leafless tree to not move an inch, and the road she was skipping down was rocky and uneven. But everyday day was beautiful when you had a smile for an umbrella. Although since it wasn’t raining the smile was actually some other kind of metaphor that made more sense. A young pink filly named Pinkamena Diane Pie was returning to her home on the rock farm. It had been a week since she’d gotten her Cutie Mark of her special talent for throwing parties. Or maybe it was her talent to make ponies smile. Or maybe it was just balloons. Either way those went hoof in hoof. Both her older sisters still didn’t have their Cutie Marks so she was going to throw them a party with lots of balloons to make them smile. See, hoof in hoof! Pinkamena, or as she called herself now Pinkie Pie, or sometimes just Pinkie, was returning from the nearby little village of Steadsted. Walking home, no skipping home... bouncing home? Heading home in some form or another, Pinkie was following the path humming some tune to herself as she went. They had eggs, flour and a good variety of fruits back at the farm so all she needed was milk and sugar to bake a cake, but she’d also bought a few other things. Not confetti or the like as it could all be made out of paper and she already had that at home too. What she’d bought were gifts for her sisters. A my-first-instrument set and a practice first aid kit. She was ABSOLUTELY sure that Inkamena and Blinkamena, or Inkie and Blinkie as she’d started calling them since she’d started calling herself Pinkie, would love them. Her eldest sister would make a great musician and the middle sister would make a super-dee-duper doctor one day! She continued home everything was normal. Until she saw something that wasn’t normal. Out of the corner of her eye, above the tree line that bordered the road, there was a something grey. And it wasn’t just the grey clouds that perpetually lined the sky. It was smoke. And where there’s smoke, there’s fire. The ground was littered with the dried leaves fallen from the trees. A fire in this forest would spread far and fast. Her party could wait, she had to warn her family and do what they could to protect the farm. She dropped the bag she was carrying and began galloping home as fast as she could. Pinkie burst through the front gates yelling “Forest fire! Forest fire! There’s a forest fire!” and got an immediate response from her father Clyde. He was a rather old stallion for having such young kids. Fact was, he was stallion of the cloth until very late in his life and kept most of those tenants, even still wearing his collar. He had a grey mane like two of the three of his daughters. Although his used to be pink back in his youth. While that mane was mostly covered by his rather large hat, his grey sideburns still showed his age. Her eldest sister Blinkie who was just old enough to remember the last fire that had devastated their precious rocks when she was barely able to talk called out “Get some buckets and soak the ground around the fences!” acting fast and wanting to avoid losing as much of their land as possible. At least they had some time to prepare this time. And now that the three sisters were old enough to lend a hoof, that helped too. “Get all the animals out of the pens and into the open! We can round them up later but their no good if they’re cooked!” she always worried over the animal health and well-being. Who knows, if they have enough time they could save the entire farm! And sure enough, they had enough time to prepare everything. The ground all along the fences were soaked to the point of mud, they had twenty full buckets lined up and ready, with a system to quickly refill them from the well. They’d even managed to move most of the bigger, more valuable rocks towards the house and the cheaper or more fire resistant rocks towards the direction the fire was coming from. But ultimately… it made no difference. No matter how much you prepare for a fire, there’s not much you can do when it never even comes. They’d stayed at the fences waiting for the first sign it was getting close for hours. Before long, the sky began to darken as night fell and still there was no sign of it anywhere. Clyde knew his daughter wouldn’t lie so the fire had to be out there; maybe it had just gone in the opposite direction. He climbed to the top of the rock silo and took a look out over the whole forest. Nothing. The sky was dark and cloudy, with no moon light, if there was fire anywhere nearby its orange glow would be impossible to miss. He yelled from the top of the structure “Everypony. We’re safe. There’s no fire!” as he began to climb down. He was exhausted when he got down. His wife, Bonnie, waited for him at the bottom of the ladder “It’s been a long day…” he sighed and let her help him towards the house. He was old and the farm work was hard on him most days. And today had been incredibly stressful. He knew Pinkie Pie hadn’t lied, she’d just been mistaken. And while Inkie seemed to be over the roof that there was no fire, Clyde was rather annoyed. Truth be told, the farm wasn’t doing too well. If there had been a fire and they’d lost any amount of their rocks… they would’ve been in a very bad situation. A rock farm can only exist where there’s rock to farmed after all and the rock here were starting to dry up. Both figuratively and literally. The large amount of water in the ground here slowly pushed rocks to the surface while the land still remained solid, if not a little squishy at times. However, what kept this spot in particular filled with rock was a large iron rich magnetic lodestone the house was built on. Most of the rocks had already been mined though, or harvested; whichever you wanted to call it, over the last number of decades the Pie family had owned the land and they’d been getting less and less rising up each year. Sure there were other lode-stones around here, not even that far, maybe ten or twenty Kilometres away. But you had to find them. They were moderately rare. And none big enough to build another house on top of. If he had been forth planning and started looking for a new spot nine years ago when the rocks had first started to slow in numbers maybe they would’ve found one. But each year he just let it slip by, thinking next year would be better. Once he had finally started looking though, just earlier this year, he’d grown old. He’d had the hopes that his children would carry on working this farm but that hope had faded when his youngest daughter, and first to do so, had gotten her Cutie Mark in something other than geology. And if his older daughter’s hadn’t gotten theirs yet having something to do with his line of work, they wouldn’t. The farm would end with him. It was a dying farm anyway. It was a sad wasteland they lived in anyway. Even if the trees were alive, they didn’t look it. The water in the ground and the high heat always made it cloudy and dark… but there was so much light added to his life now. Pinkie’s personality had changed overnight. Before she had been a dull and gloomy as both the land and her sisters. Now… now she was, well Pinkie. But Pinkie wasn’t the same daughter they had named Pinkamena. It made it all the sadder that he had to punish her for this. As he and his wife headed towards the house, he could see Pinkie looked puzzled. “I know I saw fire. Well, I saw smoke and there can’t be smoke without fire.” she questioned. “I’m sure you thought to saw smoke.” he said. His voice sounding raspy and tired out. As well as sounding more condescending than he had intended. “You’re grounded for a week.” he finished bluntly. “But dad I…” “That’s father!” Clyde scolded. “Listen, I like this ‘new you’, but this is too much! I know you didn’t mean to make this mistake but you still made it! This was good practice, but… it scared me. It scared your mother and your sister’s too.” “But, but that’s more than twice what you’ve ever given to any of us!” Pinkie replied, having never been grounded for more then a few days. “What you did is twice as serious.” “But I…” “No more buts!” Clyde yelled, silencing his daughter. “Now… let’s go inside. We’ll have a late dinner then it’s off to bed for today. You have school in the morning.” Clyde finished as he turned and started for his little house on the quarry. “Yes father.” Pinkie sighed as she lowered her head and whispered to herself “I was just trying to help…”