Young Applejack shuffled over the grass, trying not to meet any pony’s eye as she passed cottage after cottage. Every now and then, the hat slipped down her face, and she had to stop and push it back up.
It was a wedding cake of a hat. Shadowing not only her face, but her shoulders and the small of her tiny back, the brim of the hat glowed fiercely white like a plate made of the purest china. Some frilly edge hung over her eyebrows, as dainty as a doily, and above that was the black and white mounting swirl of fabric where the designer had gone crazy with the textile icing. A feather plume arced over the lot like a poised fork, and all that the peak needed was a message and two little figurines joined in holy matrimony.
A few passersby glanced at her, but she headed straight for the spire of the bakery. The gingerbread house below it overflowed with chocolate browns and strawberry pinks and fondant white goodness. Part of her was astonished it hadn’t melted under the midday sun. Merely to look at it was to find herself drooling uncontrollably, and she wiped her mouth on the back of her hoof.
“OK,” she said, trying to flex her muscles. “Easy peasy. Jus’ walk in, chin up. Hand it over. Say it. Then go. This ain’t – erm, I mean, this is not hard. OK… OK…”
She took a step forwards, but then paused on the first step. One ear quivered. Despite the faintest tickling of the noise, she was sure there was a beat to it. Boombox music?
“What the hay? I mean,” she said hastily, “what is that strange sound?”
The silhouette of a filly jumped across the glass to the right of the bakery’s front door. When she stared at it, confetti was thrown into the air, a balloon bounced off the glass, and several voices rose up in a wave of laughs. Squint though she might, however, the tint of the glass made it hard to pick out colours or anything beyond the dark outlines. Pouting, she pushed her way inside.
As soon as the door had opened, the noise rose up and hammered on her ears. Blues, reds, greens, and pinks bounced around – some confetti caught on her eyelashes, but she blew it off at once – and fillies rushed through the lot, chasing each other or dancing with kicks and jumps through the field of balloons. Her mind shut down against the race of colours and movements and noise.
“A… party?” she said.
“Halloooo!” As if on cue, the filly Pinkie Pie cartwheeled into the space before her, the manic smile stretching the skin around her cheeks. An iridescent cone landed on her head at a jaunty angle. “Woo, look at you! That’s a chapeau I gotta get to know!”
With a grimace, Applejack raised a leg to shield her eyes; Pinkie was right up to her face, almost nose-to-nose. “What’s goin’ on? What’s goin’ on?”
Opposite her, Pinkie chortled. Her mane was even wilder than usual, sprinkled as it was with confetti and splattered with bits of cookie dough and melting ice cream chunks. Her face was soaked from nose to ears, and as Applejack lowered her foreleg a smidgen, she noticed the bucket in the corner where a filly was dunking for apples that bobbed on the surface.
Around them, schoolmates she recognized only by sight were throwing themselves at each other. There was a pegasus filly with goofy eyes, trying to balance on a balloon. Beyond her was a brown earth colt playing peek-a-boo with the gramophone. On the counter, a unicorn filly struggled to walk on her rear legs, wobbling with her forelimbs spread wide like welcome arms.
Pinkie followed her gaze and squeaked with delight, and Applejack jumped when one pink limb landed over her own withers. “Check it out! That’s Derpy! She’s a riot with a diet, let me tell you! I made her favourite blueberry-banana-coconut-triple-chocolate-jam-filled-cream-topped mega-muffin, and she ate it all up! And that one? He calls himself the Doctor. He says he’s gonna invent a time machine. Ooh, I hope he finishes it soon; imagine a party you could go back to again and again and again and again and again” – Applejack jumped when Pinkie gasped right in her ear, and it sounded like the pink filly was sucking in all the air in the room – “Lyra’s the one doin’ the terrifying tightrope trial of terror! When she grows up, she’s gonna find a handsome prince and make sweet music under his bedroom window all night long. Oh, so romantic!”
Despite herself, Applejack gaped in horror. How could she possibly know their names already? No, scratch that; how could she know so much about them already? She’d only arrived yesterday morning, and there must be every colt and filly under this ceiling right now. Applejack had been born here, and she barely remembered what her classmates looked like.
Quickly, she shook her head. This was not important. Removing her hat delicately with both hooves, she backed away from Pinkie’s embrace and tried – and utterly failed – to look her in the eye. She swallowed. There was fighting, but the words would come out. They had to.
“Uh, listen,” she said, and she grimaced at a spasm of pride that tried to cut her off at the voice box. “About yesterday. Ah… uh, I wasn’t quite myself yesterday, and uh –”
“WOW!” Pinkie bounced on the spot. “You changed you voice! You changed your voice! Do it again! Do it again!”
“Look, Ah’m tryin’ to be serious – I mean, I’m trying to be serious. Oh, shucks. I mean, oh fiddlesticks. I want you to have this.” Scarcely had the last word left her mouth when she thrust the hat before her like a talisman. Her cheeks were burning again, this time helped by the sheer lived-in weight of the packed bakery. When she breathed in, the air smelled as though it had passed through every pair of lungs in the place.
Pinkie was wide-eyed. She tilted her head and leaned forwards. “Fancy pants,” she breathed. “That’s a fancy pants hat. I’ve never seen one that big and white and so… so rich-looking! Where did you – uh –” The nervous chuckle did nothing; if anything, the pink face turned paler. “Holy moly! That hat has class!”
“I bought it in Manehattan,” Applejack said to the brim, not daring to look up. Although the hat was nowhere near the weight class of a bucket of apples, nevertheless her forelimbs were shaking. She strained to hold it as far away from her as possible. “It’s a gift. To make up for what I did yesterday. That was simply rude of me. And I’d like to say s… I must say I’m s… I’m sorrorrorror… I’m sorr…”
But her pride, forcing its way into her larynx, finally crushed her throat, and she fell silent, pleading helplessly through her stare as though the hat could look back at her.
To her astonishment, Pinkie burst out laughing. It really was a burst; each gale blasted out through the gates of her lips and gave the air a winding jab. Any pony nearby found themselves battered and bruised under the onslaught of belly laughs. At least, Applejack did.
“Oh, AJ, AJ, AJ!” Pinkie gave a snort trying to hold a laugh in. A hoof patted Applejack on the crook of her forelimb. “You don’t have to say sorry for something like that. I could tell you were busy. It’s OK. It didn’t mean a thing. Oh, you are so silly, though!”
“But… but… you were sadder than a rabbit in an empty carrot field… and you jus’ went away, dincha?”
Pinkie fell suddenly silent. “Come on, I’ll show you something. Ever been in the kitchens? It’s awesome!”
For a moment, Applejack resisted the tug on her forelimb. “What? What d’you mean?”
“Relax, silly. It’s OK. I’m allowed, and so are you. You’re my special friend today. Ooh, ooh, you can be my VIP. That’s a Very Important Pony. Come on, come on!”
It’s amazin’, thought Applejack as she found herself dragged through the maelstrom of screams, beats, and rainbow balloons. She walks an’ talks like she owns every good thin’ her blue eye falls on. The last time Ah felt like this was when there were that whirlpool thing in the lake. An’ she’s got a grip like a true apple-buckin’ pony.
Just in case, Applejack checked the cutie mark beside her, but it only showed three balloons, and she was even more astonished. Her hat on her free hoof was getting scuffed as it hit the floor, and she tried to fight the pull of Pinkie to put it back on her own head. They passed the beatbox that was thumping the world around it, and when Applejack emerged from the drowning beats, she found herself on the other side of two batwing doors. Pinkie let go of her.
“Welcome!” intoned Pinkie Pie. “Welcome to the inner sanctum of Sugarcube Corner!”
Applejack rammed her hat back on, looked up, and gasped. Between the armies of cupboards, under the shadow of the looming stove, and above the flour-stained floor, the two bakers Carrot Cake and Cup Cake shot from one task to another. She blinked; Carrot Cake smoothed out a ball of pale mix with a rolling pin. She blinked again; Cup Cake's head was backing out of the oven, a tray of steaming pies gripped under her oven mouth-gloves. Applejack wiped her eyes and found both of them orbiting a massive tower of cakes, hooves blurring as icing, sprinkles, and whipped cream were conjured out of thin air to decorate the delicacies. She barely noticed Pinkie nudging her in the side.
“Well?” said the smug squeak-of-a-voice right next to her. “Whaddaya think?”
Applejack had never been inside the kitchen before. There were legends about the place, all told by the foals who had never been allowed inside. Some said the treats were delivered whole from the clouds in a descending beam of light. Some said there were impossible machines and gigantic clanking things that worked day and night to create perfection from scratch. Some said the Cakes were hiding an alchemy set, and that one day they would invent a treat that no mortal pony could ever stop eating. And here it was, the Secret. Elbow grease.
“It’s…” she breathed, “it’s beautiful.”
“And I,” boomed Pinkie, “get to work in it, forever and ever, always and always!”
When Applejack turned to look, Pinkie was behind a nearby counter, an oversized apron on her front and trailing across the floor. She wore the toque blanche on her head as though it were a crown. Before her, her hooves kneaded a thick wad of flavoured pink dough, and Applejack noticed with approval how the filly’s forelimbs moulded it with a firm twist of the elbow.
For the first time in her life, a foalish fancy crept up to her mind and pounced. “May Ah… May I try it?”
“Like you have to ask! Sure! Jump right in! It’s fun!”
Applejack chuckled as she hopped up and started pounding at the mix. Beside her, Pinkie carried on kneading and even pushed back, and soon they began to synchronize, pushing where one slackened and slackening where one pushed, and it was a while before Applejack realized she’d gotten flour on her lovely hat.