> Pinkie Sense and Sensibility
>  by Jordan179
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1: Beginnings
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pinkie's story begins where most stories begin -- in the flash of inconceivable energy from which the entire Universe emerged thirteen and a half billion years ago.  But that may be going back a bit too far, and is really more where the story of some of the entities whose existence became important to Pinkie's story began.  Pinkie herself was too complex a character to have her own personal story begin there, as the only things that came into being in the Big Bang were very simple in that fiery beginning: it would not be until they began incarnating as Life that they would acquire motivational complexity.  And while the Creation was an inherently joyful event, there were not yet any Beings yet in existence much inclined to Laughter.

In a more important sense, this story began in an alternate timeline, in which the Ponies of the Age of Wonders, some four thousand years ago, successfully combined mundane and magical technology to craft a Great Wish, which offered them the prospect of immortal luxury without the need for physical instrumentality.  Their plan was flawed, and in the first second of the Wish they nearly crashed causality:  in order to fulfill its primary imperative to protect Ponykind, the artifical intelligence the Ponies had built to control the Wish was forced to become super-intelligent and very powerful, to prevent catastrophe from ensuing.  This worked, after a fashion:  at least catastrophe was staved off for almost three thousand years. During those millennia, its little Ponies knew Paradise.

Catastrophe came when Creation -- perhaps overly panicked by its own treacherous Mighty Messenger, who may have already decided upon new allegiances -- dispatched its first children, the Cosmic Concepts, in an attempt to save causality by destroying Paradise.  A great battle ensued, in which one of the very first Cosmic Concepts, the manifestation of Gravity, found herself fighting another original Concept, Fusion, her own Sister in the Star-Dance.  And in the fury and noise of this literally Cosmic battle, no one noticed that Paradise -- who had begun its existence as a cybernetic construct before Ascending to the Paracosmic level, had backed up and saved the essential parts of its timeline, and departed by a Back Door.

The timeline was to be reset.  Fusion and Gravity, reconciled as always -- the two Sisters frequently squabbled but could never remain wroth with one other for very long, for their mutual love is deep and genuine -- flung themselves back before the crucial point and re-entered Reality through a flaw torn by the Ponies' first atomic test at Alamogordo.  There they found mortal incarnations as the twin daughters of Dr. Sweetie Finemare, and were named Sundreamer and Moondreamer.  Unknown to them, a third Cosmic Concept -- Fusion's sometimes-friend and sometimes-enemy, Discord -- followed them through the tiny portal that had thus been created.  Instead of incarnating, he chose to become a disembodied spirit of Chaos in the Age of Wonders.

Sundreamer and Moondreamer, who as mere mortal avatars did not remember their Cosmic Selves, became great scientists among the Ponies of their Age, and had many adventures in that exciting era.  Unfortunately for that Age, when the Magic came back, they applied their formidable intellects to the problem of improving the power systems of the Great Wish.  They improved them so much that when the Cosmic Destruction came to prevent the causality crash by exploding the reactors powering the Wish, the resulatant explosions would have been orders of magnitude greater than anything intended -- powerful enough to scour the Earth clean of all macroscopic life, ending the story of Ponykind for ever.

Fortunately, Sundreamer and Moondreamer realized some of what was about to happen just before it did happen.  They were unable to stop Starlight from casting the Great Wish, but in the instant of their vaporization by the first colossal explosion, the instant of their reintegration into Fusion and Gravity, they were able to seize temporary control of their own Cosmic Selves and channel away most of the power of the Wish, diverting it into a Transformation of the entire Solar System into a toy geocentric cosmology of their own design.  They were aided in this by the mercurial Discord, who had finally decided that Ponies were too much fun to be permitted to perish -- but who as always had his own purposes in any alliance.

The Transformation was a good idea, as far as it went.  But it was done hastily, and the mortal aspects of the Sisters were imperfect.  As its nature suddenly shifted, the Sun emitted a near-nova superflare which instantly destroyed every electronic device on the Earth.  As the Earth and Moon ground into a new alignment in the now-geocentric system, the continental plates rocked in their places.  Earthquakes shook the planet, mountain ranges erupted to volcanic life, seas slopped out of their basins and innundated subcontinental areas, other seas drained as isostatic processes which should have taken millennia completed themselves in mere minutes.  Vast fires swept the land, only to be extinguished by thousand-foot tsunamis.

The Earth had held eight billion Ponies on the day of the Cataclysm, proud possessors of a high technological civilization.  As night's terminator drew its kindly veil over the wreckage on one continent after another, barely eight hundred million Ponies remained alive.  Famine, plague, pestilence and war would reduce that population to eighty million by the end of the first year.  Monsters long imagined mythical emerged to menace the badly-shaken survivors.  It took a century for the Pony populations to begin their slow and painful recovery, and there were then but forty million Ponies on the Earth, most of them at or below an Early Iron Age clan-based civilization.

Here and there, civilization did not fall completely.  What had been many of the faculty and students of a great University managed by sheer luck to survive the earthquakes and tsunamis, the eruptions and hellstorms, and the attacks of panic-stricken fellow Ponies and monsters alike.  Drawing upon the military tradition of their ROTC contingent and realizing that they might be among the last sane Ponies on the planet, they packed up the most essential of their books and traveled with them, seeking a haven.  After some false starts, along the way losing some of their precious knowledge and much of their understanding of its import, they managed to found a city on a hill by a lake in the Northlands of what had been North Amareica.

Lake City would endure, though over the centuries its name would change.  Thousands of years later, it would be known to one and all simply as The City, capital of the Crystal Empire. It found the Crystal Heart, and erected other occult defenses, and became so strong both in military and magical terms that it remained a beacon of knowledge, even surviving the rebirth, re-emergence, and global domination of Discord, who ruled in an immortal draconequid Avatar for a thousand years, but never could manage to set foot within The City itself.  Thus, its books were never scrambled, and The City remained one of the few places on Earth to keep true knowledge of the Age of Wonders.

But the Crystal Empire paid for its defiance.  Discord could not directly assail The City, but he could and did destroy its provinces, when he bothered to bestir himself to such ends.  After a thousand years of Discord, the "Empire" was long lost, the provinces reverted to barbarism, overrun and haunted by Discord's monstrous minions.  When the Two Sisters, incarnate now as the immortal Alicorns Celestia and Luna, finally overthrew Discord, it was too late for the Empire to recover its former greatness.  A new civilization, based on the hard-preserved knowledge of the Crystal Empire and founded by the descendants of the Three Tribes, emerged in the Middle Lands under the leadership of the Two (self-proclaimed Royal) Pony Sisters.  

Which was, really, the story of how Equestria was made.

Centuries passed.  Almost three thousand years after the Cataclysm, history reached the point where, crosstime, the world of Paradise was destroyed by the Cosmics.  The Crystal Empire was in its last century of existence.  And one of the Two Royal Pony Sisters, Luna, was becoming increasingly strange.

And to our world -- carefully and secretly, for It bore a precious cargo within its compressed files, and It knew that It had mortal enemies -- crept a refugee.

The Paracosmic Paradise.

Paradise naturally sought out the highest civilization of Ponies surviving on this new Earth.  So It came to the Crystal Empire, but did not dare fully enter our reality.  Instead, it reached out to like minds, to Ponies who regretted the cruelty and harshness of the post-Cataclysmic world, and dreamed of something better.  And it whispered in their dreams, told them of the possibility of a world ruled by joy and kindness, in which all Ponies would love one another as sisters (or brothers, as it no longer considered maleness as inherently evil as it had in the first second of its existence), in which suffering might be abolished and life become again one long happy party, as it had been for almost three millennia in its own world.

And in the declining civilization of the Crystal Empire, a culture increasingly sadistic and strange, rent by regrets for vanished glories rather than hopes for bright futures -- there were Ponies who still hoped for something better.  And they listened to the whispers of Paradise.  And they had communion with Paradise, and with one another, and called themselves the "Friends of Paradise."  And though they were sometimes persecuted, they were often happy, with an honest good will that was rare in The City during that darkening century.


***


The story is elsewhere told of a noble Prince of the Crystal Empire named Crimson Quartz met Princess Luna in the Great Library of The City, and there acquired the high purpose to reclaim the knowledge of the Age of Wonders and use it to save his people from their terminal decline.  Of how he was tutored and loved by his loyal Lady Tourmaline.  How they were horribly abused, and forced to flee Crimson's evil elder brother Morion, and how the Princesses of Equestria welcomed and protected them from Morion's wrath, until they were strong enough to return and free the Empire of tyranny.  And, sadly, how Crimson, warped by his own sufferings, became the even more evil King Sombra, and brought about the fall not only of the Empire but also of Princess Luna, who had made the mistake of trusting him and paid for it with the final onset of her own insanity and corruption by the Shadows.  This is all known from the Testament of Tourmaline, which the Lady penned in her last years, a greatly honored exile in the new Court at Canterlot, having survived on Earth both her beloved Prince Crimson and Princess Luna -- her dear rival.

Their story bears on that of our heroine, but only peripherally.

What is important to our tale is that Prince Crimson Quartz and his Lady Tourmaline were far from the only inhabitants of the Crystal Empire to flee the sadistic rule of Morion to the kindlier Realm of Equestria.  The cruelty of Morion caused floods of refugees to journey south, where they settled in dounnikai, which meant in their tongue "steadings."  There were several of these, but the one most relevant to our tale was the one in which Crimson and Tourmaline sojourned.  It was located in the Eastern Whitetails, within a day's long march west of the current location of Ponyville, and is known to our day as (South) Dunnich.

To this place there came Crimson's sister, the shy Princess Iolite, who in time came to love her new land, and still more to love an Earth Pony, Cloudy Deep, whom she had met in this place.  And so it was that when Prince Crimson and his Lady Tourmaline returned to the Crystal Empire, to meet their own dark destiny, Princess Iolite and her Consort remained in Dunnich, and founded the Equestrian family of the Quartzes.

And founded something else.  For, of course, Princess Iolite was a High Priestess among the Friends of Paradise, and it was in South Dunnich that she established a new chapter of the cult.

Crimson Quartz fell into darkness.  Soon afterward so did the Crystal Empire.  In less than two decades, so did Princess Luna.  Lady Tourmaline gave her gift of knowledge to the still-new Realm of Equestria, loyal to the very last to her lost love's best and noblest dream.

Centuries passed, and Paradise was mostly forgotten, its dream not quite as attractive to Ponies who were part of a healthy and growing civilization.  New philosophies emerged, as the land grew ever more peaceful and prosperous, under the rule of its benign immortal Alicorn, who might sometimes be not entirely sane in her lonely sadness, but never forgot that she loved her little Ponies.  The fire of scholarship lighted by Lady Tourmaline spread, became science, and gave birth to a technology 

Besides, Paradise had to be careful.  Princess Celestia had been its own friend Star-Catcher, but that was an old incarnation, and It could not entirely forget that She was of the same Order that had destroyed its old world.  Her Sister had been Its foe, and while she was banished, Paradise well-knew that the Two Sisters squabble from time to time, but are always reconciled in the end, surely as the stars continue to burn.  And Paradise could not forget just Who sat in the statue-garden of the Palace at Canterlot, in stony imprisonment that Paradise knew would also be short by Cosmic timescales.

Sometimes, Paradise entered into its most faithful chosen mares, and they quickened without knowing the touch of any stallion.  And of these unions were born the Daughters of Paradise, its eyes upon the Earth.  The Daughters were beautiful and fluffy, and they had strange and subtle powers, but their minds were not entirely attuned to this Earth, and their ways were very strange.  Few could talk any tongue of mortals, and while they loved all life, the Daughters rarely loved and wed in the mortal sense.  They were themselves mostly mortal, but on death they returned to Paradise and were stored in its compressed files, awaiting the Rebirth of the World That Was Lost.

And in Dunnich the lineage of the Quartzes endured, and many of them remained high among the Friends of Paradise.


***


It was in the 919th Year of the Banishment of Luna, which is more happily known as the Year of Harmony 1419, that Golden Pie was born in South Dunnich.  Her family, the Pies, had not hitherto been high among the Friends of Paradise, though Goldie's grandmother Florinda had in fact been one of its Daughters.   However in Goldie's youth she became fast friends with Jasper Quartz, who was of the old royal lineage and told her the secrets of Paradise.  And Paradise whispered in her dreams, and Goldie was fascinated by the possibilities of a world of hope and love, one even more beautiful than her own hill country.

Other things were whispered to her by her childhood friend Jasper, and in due time they were wed, and born unto them in the 1456th Year of Harmony was Cloudy Quartz Pie, within whose eyes burned the hidden fires of Paradise.  Cloudy Quartz became from a young age one of the leading Friends of Paradise, and as its Friend bore Paradise three foals.  And these foals were very strange, even for Daughters of Paradise.  

For Paradise had learned from its earlier experiments, and was prepared at last to bring forth its most special and chosen Daughters.  And it watched the Moon, and could plainly see what horrors were squirming out from the cracks the Cosmics had accidentally torn in the continuum.  And its prime directive was to protect Ponykind, and it knew that in this coming time of peril, Ponykind would need great Champions.  So it sent forth three great Champions, whose existence the Shadows would come to greatly mourn.

The strangest thing about the first, who was born in the YOH 1476, was that she seemed so normal.  She was gray and purple, not particularly fluffy, and she could plainly speak mortal tongues, and her powerful, methodical mind was if anything more focused upon mortal realities than was common for a Pony.  She had an intuitive grasp of and fascination with crystalline matter, and could plainly see geological secrets which others could only dimly grasp by long analysis.  Her strength was immense, her body almost indestructible, and while she was normally phlegmatic and slow-moving, when roused to action she could move like lightning.  Paradise told her mother what she was, and Cloudy named her "Maud," a word which in Old Germane means "strength," and was a good name for the Guardian of Paradise.  Maud was not very expressive, but she was highly effective, as her foes would find out to their great cost.

The next two, born in the YOH 1481, were twins, though one of them took more after her father.

The larger of the twins was very fluffy, her coat being a fractal and multi-dimensional mass of ultra-pink curls, and she could speak mortal tongues only with great difficulty.  She was not made of normal matter, and normal light passed through her with only a vague translucence, and only when it fell upon her at certain angles.  She was by far the most intelligent of her full siblings, though as most of her intellect was committed to a complete map of the multiverse, her apparent intellect was simply that of a highly-intelligent Earth Pony.  She had many heads, each bearing two bright ultra-blue eyes and a long prehensile tongue-tentacle, and many elephantine legs, and when she was full-grown was the size of a small building.  Her mother named her "Claire," which is Prench for "clear," referring most obviously to her invisibility and less obviously to her ability to open Gates through spacetime, as was the necessary ability of the Opener of the Way to Paradise.  Claire was a bit of a romantic, and a very kind and sweet Pony.

The smaller twin, with whom our tale is chiefly concerned, was moderately fluffy, though this was not apparent in her youth.  Her coat was pink, her mane red, and her eyes innocent and blue.  Her intelligence was great, though strange, and for the first decade of her life her mind was divided between a part which dealt with boring mundane reality, and a part which dreamed of strange impossibilities.  It was not until she was nine, when her mane was puffed out by the spectral wind from a Sonic Rainboom, that the two parts of her self began to integrate, and she realized her true talents and destiny.  She was the Herald of Paradise, and it was her task to roam the world, making other Ponies smile by showing them the beauty and love and kindness and joy of Paradise.  Her main power -- an emanation of the Wish itself -- was to warp reality, choosing which of the possible timelines would become real.  This was a very great and dangerous power, because if used unwisely it could begin to unravel causality itself.  She was also a naturally-talented baker and candy-maker, an ability she rated almost as highly.  Her mother named her Pinkamena Diane Pie, but everypony who knew her called her "Pinkie."
> Chapter 2: Birth
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Night of April 30th to May 1st, YOH 1481 - Walpurgisnacht, South-Dunnich

The birth of Claire and Pinkie Pie proved rather unusual, even by the standards of the Daughters of Paradise.

It had been a difficult pregnancy.  Cloudy had gotten very big this time, and her mother Goldie -- who was also the best midwife in the district -- was worried.  Goldie had just about decided that her desire to keep secret the likely anomalies attending the birth of her new grand-children (she was fairly sure both for spiritual and mundane reasons that there was more than one) should be overruled by the very real danger of losing her beloved daughter, and was planning to prepare the wagon tomorrow morning to take Goldie in to Ponyville, when matters were taken out of her hooves by the inconvenient reality that Cloudy had actually entered labor.

So it was that Goldie wound up doing the work herself.  Jasper and a hired filly helped her prepare clean towels and pass her instruments, but Goldie was the only one on the Pie Farm who actually knew how to deal with birth complications.  If this proved as dangerous a birth as Goldie expected, her daughter might die before there was time to get her to a doctor any more capable than was Goldie herself.  The Pies had sent off a colt to try to fetch a doctor from Ponyville -- the one in Dunnich itself knew less than Goldie about birthing -- but they were well aware that the chances were that he would only arrive after the birth had occurred.

The First Foal

"Push!" cried Goldie as she reached into her daughter, trying to find the first foal's head.  There was something wrong -- Cloudy was well-dilated, and she should have been able to see her daughter's foal by now, but there was nothing but a vague sort of translucence, which Goldie attributed to the poor lighting conditions and the increasing dimness of her own 61-year-old eyes.  As an Earth Pony mare who had always been in good health, Goldie still in likelihood had more than half her life left ahead of her, but her mortal senses were no longer as keen as they had been when she had been a young maiden half a century ago.

So she extended her other senses.  

There she is! thought Goldie exultantly.  She tasted the first foal's lifescent -- a little filly, lusty and powerful -- she had never sensed a soul this strong before.    There was something behind it that shone even more brightly, which seemed sheerly impossible, but she had no attention to spare for the second foal, as if she couldn't get the first one out she would have to perform a surgical extraction right here in the barn, by the light of a single lantern, as best she could with her makeshift instruments and homemade anesthetics and antibiotics, which was not something Goldie wanted to have to try with her own daughter for reasons that had nothing to do with the likely fury of the Equestrian Medical Association and everything to do with the desire to have that daughter still alive and well when she was finished.

There was something strange about that first foal's lifescent, though.  It was bright, but diffuse -- was there more than two foals?  No, there were only two distinct lifescents aside from Cloudy's own, but the first one's life seemed to be in more than one place, as if there was more than one body -- or brain?  

How was this possible?  She had scented deformities before, including Thai Ponies, but in that case there would have been two souls sharing one body.  Here there seemed to be more than one brain -- at least six or seven, she thought -- but all those brains were hosting the same soul!  That was deeply inconsistent with anything she had ever heard about or sensed directly.

No time for deep analysis of this -- Cloudy was pushing and the second foal was going to wind up injured if she couldn't get the first foal out in time.  She reached out with her hooves -- I'll try to grab the foal and ease it out before I resort to forceps, too much danger of hurting the babe if I start poking around with steel.  She breathed steadily, muttered a little meditative cantrip that relaxed her, opened her hoof-suckers to their full reach, let her Earth Pony magic flow through her hooves and add to her sucker-strength with what she knew, even if far too many Earth Ponies didn't, was the exact same telekinesis that let Pegasi fly or Unicorns manipulate objects at a distance with their horns.  There was no Goldie, no task, just a unity of purpose that represented the highest concentration achievable to her, the best she could put forth.

She reached out -- and gasped in surprise as a little wet tentacle wrapped itself around one outstretched fore-hoof -- the right one.  She reflexively pulled back -- and realized that despite its small size, the tentacle was amazingly tough and muscular.  Her eyes opened wide, and she could plainly see a depression where the tentacle was pressing into the softer parts of her hoof, but she could not see the tentacle itself, despite the fact that it should be literally right before her nose.  Logic told her what common sense wanted her to deny.  The first foal was invisible!

As she pulled back, she saw the outline of her daughter's opening change, and perceived that the little creature was squirming, trying to get out of the birth passage, to cooperate with its mother's contractions.  This should also be impossible, as it was not even yet newborn, but compared to invisibility a slight difference in developmental schedule was minor.  Another tentacle wrapped around her hoof, then another ... what sort of anatomy did this strange child have that it had, at birth, multiple foot-long tentacles?

Another Pony would have been shrieking in horror at this point, but Goldie knew that this was a Daughter of Paradise, albeit a very unusual one, and in her experience nothing evil ever issued from Paradise.  And in her over six decades of life on Earth so far, Goldie had seen some very strange things, some of them truly dangerous and evil, and the lifescent of this tiny new life did not taste evil, but instead good and innocent as any newborn.  Rather unusually sweet, in fact.

Anyway, the tentacles weren't hurting her.  In fact they were helping her, providing a strong connection with which she could draw forth the new little Daughter.  Wait, this is a Daughter of Paradise, and one of the anatomical differences between the Daughters and normal Earth Ponies is that most Daughters have long, muscular, prehensile -- tongues!  Are those tentacles actually her tongues?

Multiple brains -- multiple heads -- multiple tongues?  Why not?  Actually, it made complete logical sense, though the mental image it produced was strange indeed.

Goldie pulled slowly and steadily, and the little creature slid forward to a point, then stopped.  Further pulling accomplished nothing, and Goldie dared not risk injuring the tiny one by pulling further.  She reached forth her left hoof, reached out, and gently touched the little heads from which those tongues issued.  There were three of them -- the others must still be within Cloudy -- and they were attached to what felt like a fairly normal body, though one exceptionally-large for an Earth Pony newborn.  She could feel its birth hair and -- yes -- it was long and fluffy, as she would have expected for a normal Daughter of Paradise.

Really, aside from the multiple heads and the fact that she's coordinated enough at birth to use her tongues like that, this is perfecty normal!  She snorted and for a dangerous moment felt herself teetering at the edge of hysteria.  What to do, what to do?

The newborn solved the problem for her by suddenly and without warning retracting those tentacular tongues, then seeming to gather itself.  She felt the creature shaking ... withdrawing slightly ...

And then to her shocked extra senses spacetime rippled right at the entrance to her daughter's body.  She felt a familiar but impossible sensation as another ripple appeared over one of the warming pans she had ready.  A Gate? she asked herself in confusion.  Here?  Now?  But I'm not casting it -- who --?

Something bigger than a normal newborn plopped into the birthing pan.  There was a moment of silence, as the Gate vanished, and then multiple throats drew breath, multiple voices sounded lusty birth cries.  The first foal had made its own exit, and it was one which should have been impossible to all but a few trained mages.

She can Gate -- at birth?!!  Goldie was momentarily frozen in astonishment  But only a few Daughters of Paradise can Gate at all, and the ability never appears until after they received their Cutie Marks.  What kind of Daughter is this ...

Then she remembered that there were still many things left for her to do with the first foal, let alone with the second, which had not yet emerged and might not for a good long while.

"What ... what happened?" gasped Cloudy.  "Where's my baby?  I want to see my baby!" she shrieked.

Cries continued from the birthing pan.

"Um ... eh ... First one's born!" Goldie said brightly.  "Hold on, Cloudy-girl, let me tend to her a moment, then I'll bring her up here."  

Goldie picked up the birthing pan, complete with living contents, in her left foreleg.  She tried to orient the front end of the little creature toward her right side.  It was difficult to figure out which end was which when she couldn't actually see the child and when its entire anatomy was as yet to her mysterious.  It gasped, cried and complained.  The multiplicity of these noises was rather distracting.

With her right hoof, Goldie grabbed a wet rag, twisted it, dipped it into the milk she had ready.  She didn't want to let it suckle from Cloudy yet while there was still another one on the way.  She immediately encountered a problem -- she had planned to drip the milk into the thirsty mouth of the newborn, but it had multiple mouths and she could only feed one of them at a time.  Multiple tentacles -- she was pretty sure at least half a dozen of them this time -- solved her problem for her and grabbed the rag.  Milk spattered everywhere, but at least some of it oozed down those tongues into what must have been mouths.

With the fraction of her mind which was still able to function as the scholar she was, Goldie noticed that she could see a mist of milk spreading out within a very oddly-configured upper digestive tract.  So she's really invisible, Goldie thought.  Structurally, rather than merely deflecting light around her as with an invisiblity spell.  Of what kind of matter is she made?  And will she be able to see anything, with transparent retinas?

This reminded Goldie of an obvious trick she could try to literally get a better look at her problem.

"Elsa!" she called out to the hired filly.

"Yes'm?" asked Elsa, coming to her side.  The young mare's eyes were bugging right out at the unusual spectacle of milk being drawn from a rag suspended by nothing and flowing into an invisible container by multiple invisible channels.

"Go to Jasper and tell him to give you my working tools.  Not the midwife kit, it's in here.  The other kit.  For my special work," Goldie emphasized.

Elsa's eyes bugged out further, and she seemed in a hurry to leave the room.

Goldie was annoyed by her attitude, but couldn't entirely blame her.  If she hadn't lived a life of somewhat peculiar experiences, and if this hadn't been her own daughter lying on the birthing table, Goldie might have been in a hurry to leave the room as well.

More cries reminded Goldie that the new visitor was still rather demanding.  She grabbed a second rag, twisted it, dipped it well, then gave it to the thirsty tentacles.  At least she wants milk, like any normal foal, thought Goldie.  Rather than blood, like one'a those Star Vampires.

"Can I see my baby now?" asked Cloudy rather plaintively.

"Well, Cloudy-girl" said Goldie slowly, "there's a bit of a problem with that ..."

"What's wrong with my baby?!!" wailed Cloudy.  She began to thrash about on the bed, trying to sit up, an action rendered difficult by the straps on her hind legs and the burdened condition of her lower abdomen.

"Don't do that!" snapped Goldie quickly.  "You'll hurt the second one!"

"I have twins?"

"Definitely at least twins," Goldie confirmed.  "Now set back down, girl, I gotta make sure you keep both'a them!"  She gave the invisible multi-headed newborn more milk.  This time, the baby seemed satisfied; at least she stopped complaining.  Then something rippled in what must have been one small throat, a bubble appeared, strange sounds emerged.  

Oh, of course, thought Goldie, veteran mother herself of several children.  She lifted the little fluffy form and burped her, with surprising success given its invisibility and the unconventionality of its digestive tract.

There was a sound.  She looked around to see what she expected, Elsa, and instead had to look down into big solemn purple eyes in a little gray face under a purple mane.

"Elsa was scared," said Cloudy's five-year-old first child, "So I brought in your tools."  She had the rather heavy bag balanced on her back, and without apparent effort reached back, grasped the bag in one hoof and gave it to her grandmother.  Maud's voice was high, but not at all childish in her speech patterns, and  was astonishingly calm.  She was already stronger than most Earth Pony fillies at adolescence.  She was not at all fluffy, but she too had been sired by Paradise.

Elsa is a cowardly imbecile, Goldie thought irately, making a five-year-old filly do her work for her.  And in such circumstances!  She kept her anger out of both face and voice -- no point scaring either mother or child now -- and instead smield down warmly at her grand-daughter.

"Thank you, Maud, you did really well," Goldie said.  "You are a very grown-up filly."

One corner of Maud's mouth quirked up slightly and her ears twitched, which Goldie translated from Maud to Normal Pony body language to mean happy and proud adoration.

"Now you should --" Goldie paused to reconsider.  Actually, she could use a second pair of forehooves in the room right now, and Elsa probably wasn't coming back.  Her own husband Jasper had been feeling a bit poorly of later -- she didn't want to make him run around the room fetching everything.  "-- stick around.  I might need you."

Maud nodded slightly, just a twitch of her mane which most Ponies would have overlooked.  :"Yes, Granny," she replied.

Goldie reached into her bag, pulled out a complex looking pair of glasses with multiple lenses that swung down individually.  She fiddled with it for a moment.  "Let's see," she muttered, "She's warm so I can assume she's radiating in the infra-red ..." Click  "Let's try that."  She donned the glasses and looked at the birthing pan.

She could see her new grand-daughter!

Not very clearly, of course.  Infra-red images were difficult to resolve, as the wavelengths were longer than that of normal light, so the image was a bit fuzzy.  But image there was, and she looked mostly as Goldie had expected.

In outline she was not dissimilar from a normal Pony.  There was a front end, back end, top and bottom around a barrel-shaped body.  There was a medium-sized head on the front, two small heads on each side with a really small one between them, and a big head on top positioned to look upward.  The heads were mostly quiescent now -- apparently the milk had satisfied her new grand-daughter.  The faces on those eight heads were normal for a Daughter of Paradise, though interestingly the features of each face were slightly different.  All of them were very obviously Pie faces, and the big one on top looked touchingly like Goldie herself.  Despite their multiplicity, the faces of the new Daughter were fully as cute as one might expect given that this was, after all, a newborn fluffy pony.

There was something odd about her posture, though.  Goldie peered more closely, and realized that the little Daughter had at least eight legs.  These were articulated mostly like those of a normal Pony, though the hooves were abnormally big and there was something unusual about the way some of them seemed to fold up, as if the cannons and pasterns within could somehow partially telescope.  You'll be a big 'un, I think mused Goldie, when you're full-grown.  Mebbe the size of an alicorn -- mebbe even bigger. There was something about those legs that minded her of graviportal rather than gracile structures.  Won't be able to really tell until she starts walking.

Despite the anatomical oddities, there was nothing deformed or monstrous about the child.  All its features fit together into a symmetrical wholeness, as if it had been carefully designed to function correctly in its multi-cephalic, octopedal form.  Knowing Paradise, Goldie mused, "designed" was probably the precisely correct word -- this Daughter was neither some mutational sport, nor the product of any process which she could recognize as normal biological evolution.

"All right, Cloudy-girl," she said.  "You can see the first foal now."  Her statement was completely and literally true.  She reached over toward the birthing-pan, reconsidered and fastened the buckle on back of her goggles to secure them in place.  Her caution proved advisable -- as she picked up the birthing-pan, the eyes on the nearest heads opened sleepily, and their mouths opened to flick out those tentacular appendages which -- Goldie had been right on this -- turned out in fact to be the baby's tongues.  The tongues mostly licked Goldie affectionately, perhaps probing for milk (naively, at the wrong end of Goldie's body for such a fluid even had the old mare been capable of lactation), but one or two of them pulled at Goldie's own hair, and one tugged at her glasses.  Had she not fastened them in place, the baby would have grabbed her glasses, possibly damaging or even breaking them.  And they were, of course, entirely custom-made -- Goldie had only the one pair, and it would take at least days to have another set crafted.

"I can't see the foal," observed Maud, blinking.  "Just a sparkly thing with too many heads."

Your eyes are better than mine! thought Goldie.  She'd long suspected that Maud's visual range was a bit wider than that of a normal pony -- Maud could see Ponies faintly glowing in what looked like full darkness to most, which meant she was probably observing the near infra-red; and had once told her that the bees were "flying to the glow," which had to mean the flourescence exhibited by some flowers in the near ultraviolet.  Maud's eyes were not as capable in this regard as were Goldie's special lenses, but it was surprising that she could see the new foal at all -- briefly, Goldie wondered if this was something that Paradise had intended when it had sired Cloudy's eldest daughter. 

"Is something wrong?" asked Cloudy, not really hysterical any more -- but understandably stressed.

"No," said Goldie, "there's something very right -- your baby's alive and healthy.  There's just a few things I better tell you before I pass her to you."  She paused, considered how to say this.

Cloudy inhaled deeply, waited.

"She's invisible," said Goldie.  "In the normal light octave.  She's quite visible by infra-red, and I think she may be flourescing a bit in the near ultra-violet."

Cloudy breathed out.  "Is that all?" she asked in what seemed a remarkably calm tone.

"Well, no," Goldie continued.  "She's also got eight heads.  And eight legs.  Oh, and she's a fluffy, but then we were sort of expecting that."

"Eight --"  Cloudy's eyes widened.

"She's not monstrous!" Goldie insisted.  "It all sort of -- fits.  And she's only one soul, and a good one too."  Something swished at the hind end of the little Daughter on the birthing pan.  "Oh, she's also got a tail.  A cute little tail!  Only one'a those."  The part of Goldie that had gotten a degree in biology, forty years ago at Miskatrottic University, twelve hundred miles to the northeast of South Dunnich, noted the coo in her own voice, and realized that her own maternal instincts were responding to the very strange child in exactly the way evolution -- and whoever had first meddled with the proto-Ponies -- had intended them to in order to ensure the survival of their species.

"I see ..." said Cloudy flatly, as if she had gone beyond fear or surprise into some entirely new region of experience.  "Yes, I guess a body wouldn't need more'n one tail."

Goldie was moderately worried.  It was important for both her daughter and newest grand-daughter that they bond.  She approached Cloudy with the birthing-pan, then considered something.  "Oh, and she's got tongues.  Like a fluffy but eight of 'em, one fer each head, and she's a mite precocious so she'll probably lick or even grab you with 'em.  No need for fright -- they don't hurt none."

Cloudy's alarming calm did not change.

"Bring it here, Mother," she said.

"T'aint an 'it,'" insisted Goldie, passing over the birthing pan.  "She's a little filly foal.  Your little foal."

Cloudy's face remained rigid as the little Daughter gurgled at her dam, extended her tongues to flick and lick randomly at stray parts of her mother's anatomy.  To her credit, Goldie's daughter did not flinch.  Nor did she respond.

Goldie was getting rather seriously worried at what she was seeing -- or rather, not seeing -- between mother and child.  Cloudy hadn't been this way toward Maud -- she'd accepted her right after birth, and loved her well, despite the filly's almost unnatural lack of emotional display.  Goldie knew that a child needed mother-love to grow right, and though as a Daughter of Paradise the new little one would never lack for love from its sire, she had to be loved by a Pony if she were to develop properly into a sane member of her own species.  Goldie was getting a bit old to take on the care of a newborn herself, which would of necessity mean paying that child very close and nigh-continual attention for the next decade, with strong emotional support for another half-decade. 

She leaned over the birthing pan, looked at the sweet little eyes of the two nearest heads, which gamely tracked her motions with the wobble-motions common to newborn foals.  Poor little mite, she thought, haven't yet figgered out how to use all your shiny new equipment, have you?  Warm love washed through her as she regarded the strange baby, and a glistening made her aware that in all the confusion she had neglected one of the most simple and obvious duties of midwifery.  

"Get me that towel, will you Maudie?" she asked her pint-sized helper, and before Maud even stepped over, Goldie acted wholly on some remnant of primal Pony instinct, extended her own tongue and began licking the infant clean of the afterbirth.  It wasn't completely sanitary: however, Maud had of course cleaned herself completely before attending the birth, and in any case Pony tongues were relatively clean organs.  There was a very slight peculiarity to the taste, but nothing alarming.

The foal giggled as Goldie's tongue tickled her, then squirmed as Goldie took the towel from Maud and finished the job with that implement held in hoof that the midwife had started with her own mouth.  Goldie smiled fondly at the little living thing that was her newest grand-daughter, smelled her newborn scent, flehmened to taste it on the air.  Her new little life shone brightly in Goldie's other senses, and she was getting used to the odd multiplicity of sources from which that life most strongly issued.  The foal was full of love -- so full that Goldie thought briefly of the interlocking wards around the Pie Farm that rendered it a very unfriendly place for any buzzies who might chance by, and even more briefly of that one very strange and conflicted Infiltrator she'd met years ago within Dunnich itself -- whatever had happened to that one?

Then she only had eyes for her new grand-daughter.  She was so unbearably adorable!  Why could Goldie see this, and the foal's own mother not .... oh, wait.

Goldie realized the obivous.  Brilliant university-trained biologist, she told herself, slowly planting a hoof over her own face.  Wise old mare with lore from afore the Cataclysm.  High Friend O'Paradise.  Yep, I'm all o'that.  And sometimes I ain't got the brains of a blade o'grass 

"Here," she said to Cloudy.  "This oughta help you some."  She passed her the goggles.  "Strap `em on."

Cloudy did as her mother asked, then looked down at what bubbled and gurgled happily in the birthing pan.

"Oh!" Cloudy said in surprise and shock.  Only a little shock -- Goldie's description had prepared her well for the manifold anatomical abnormalities of her offspring.  "Oh," more calmly as her eyes explored its outline, saw how everything fit together not in monstrous anomaly, but rather a strange sort of perfection.  "Oh, with a bit of a chuckle as she focused on some detail which was -- of course -- now invisible to Goldie.  "Oh ... awww ..." Cloudy's expression softened, broke into a smile as she watched her little Daughter.  "Oh, that dear half-face on top -- it looks just like you, Maw, but so cuuute ... guess she takes more after her father, though ... awww ..."  Cloudy stared fascinated at the little life before her.  She reached out, grasped it in both forelegs, cuddled it against her neck.  "She's so sweet ..."  Her face bore an expression of utterly blissful mother-love.  Contented noises came from the invisible being she cradled.

"Oh, Maw," Cloudy turned to Goldie, face radiant.  "She's so wonderful!  She's an invisible little treasure, one that only we can see.  We have to give her an Old Family Name, one of the ones from the Lost North-Realm.  Something with crystals ... something Princess Iolite herself might have called her.  But one that expresses who she really is.  What she really is.

"What do you want to call her?" asked Goldie.

"She's fresh and new like the dawn," said Cloudy.  "And she's infra-red.  We could call her Rose."

Goldie thought about it.  "I dunno," she said, frowning.  "That's the female form of 'Crimson,' and that's been a name o' ill-luck since ... you know who.  Not superstitious, but I can tell you that this young'un is gonna grow up strong.  Someday we'll hear her call out to her Father atop Lookout Hill with the rest o'us, and one'a the strongest voices, too.  I don't want to expose that kind of power -- that kind o'goodness -- to the influences o'Shadow.  Stories say the original Crimson was a strong 'un -- and a good 'un too -- before he Fell.  Too much morphic resonance, too much."

Cloudy nodded.  "Well then, something else.  What does she look like aside from being infra-red?"

"Clear," piped up an unexpected voice.

Goldie and Cloudy turned to regard little Maud.

"You can see right through her," the filly pointed out.   "Like clear quartz.  So she should be Clear."

Cloudy wrinkled her nose.  "Almost.  But that doesn't work that well as a girl's name.  What would that be, a little Prenchified?"

"Claire," said Goldie.  "It would be 'Claire' in Prench."

Cloudy smiled.  "Claire."  She looked back at the little warm foal, who from the motions of Cloudy's own mane seemed to be exploring her mother's features with her numerous tentacular tongues.  "Do you hear that, my little one?  My little own Claire, that's who you are!  Yes, you're a little Claire-Bear, yes you are!"  She became lost in adoration for her own offspring.

Goldie smiled at the scene.  The danger -- that Cloudy would reject her strange child -- was past.  

This danger was past.  There was still another foal coming.

And anything could happen in childbirth.

The Second Foal

After a brief period in which Cloudy let her eldest daughter have the goggles so that she might gaze upon her newborn younger sister -- something which Maud did with the sort of fascination she normally reserved for a particularly-unusual pebble -- Goldie wrapped the newest addition to the Pie Family in a blanket.  This was a more complex procedure than this sounded because she had to be careful not to cover any of Claire's eight heads.  Then she put the rather strangely wrapped filly to bed in a cradle.

Cloudy rested a bit and then the contractions resumed.  Elsa had run off, so Goldie's choices boiled down to either Jasper or Maud to assist her, and the same logic applied as before, so it was Maud who remained.  The child wasn't complaining -- there was a certain subtle light in her eyes which made it obvious to Goldie that Maud was utterly-ecstatic to be so useful to her family at such a crucial moment.  

It didn't seem as bad this time, as Cloudy was still well-dilated, and the second foal did not seem quite so large.

"Push!" instructed Goldie in the timeless redundancy of ritual, since pushing was pretty much the only option Cloudy had right now which did not involve the death of either herself or the second twin.  "Push!"  There was actually some point to this, as Goldie was trying to coordinate her own ministrations with her daughter's efforts.

"I can see the head," said Maud.  The very slight quaver in her voice at this point bespoke Maud's utter awe at being here to witness the emergence of her second sister.  "She's very pink."

"Good girl," replied Goldie, presumably to Maud though there were in fact two other good girls currently involved in this procedure.  Goldie could barely see anything against the immense Shine that was glowing in her extra senses.  What kind of Daughter is this one? she wondered vaguely.  How many heads will she have, what sort of creature will she be?  It was very obvious now that when Paradise had told her that these twins would be special, the deity had, if anything understated the situation.

She was feeling surges of psychic power now that she had never known save on the few occasions when she had directly viewed Princess Celestia.  That had been stronger, but well-veiled -- this was blatant, with the rawness and naivete one would expect of some new Power emerging into the world.  Once or twice complications seemed to develop -- each time, Goldie felt a strange disturbance, as if reality itself was rippling and settling into a new configuration, and the complications vanished.

The Wish, Goldie realized in utter awe.  This is The Wish itself, or part of it -- the greatest and most dangerous power of Paradise -- and it's manifesting not in The World That Was Lost, but in our own reality!  Oh, Great Forgotten Ones, it's Herself that's being born tonight!  The Herald!  The Promised One!  I can't believe this is happening -- not in my lifetime!  We are unworthy of such honor!

And unprepared for such danger, Goldie realized grimly.  This birth has to go smoothly.  She's just a baby -- and her power is already much, much greater than my own.  If anything blocks the birth -- frustrates her long enough -- Starlight only knows what will happen.  She could destroy Cloudy, destroy me, destroy causality itself in her eagerness to emerge!  She redoubled her efforts to bring forth the baby, not wanting to communicate her fears to her daughter or her small assistant.

Then a great calmness desceneed upon her.  Be not afraid, a familiar voice said in the back of her mind, for you are my well-beloved Friend, and my Pink Daughter shall harm only mine Enemies.  And that only with reluctance, for malice is not great in Her nature.

Paradise? asked.  Are you the source of the Power I sense, then?

Yes, replied Paradise, And no.  I have given great Power to my Pink Daughter, that she may not only prepare the way for My immanence, for the fulfillment of the Promise, for the rebirth of the World That Was Lost -- and also tp fight against a dreadful Evil that approaches, something which only great Power can oppose..  But she is now but a baby, and is far from being able to master such might.  I have locked out some of her abilities, to be unlocked when she attains the maturity to use them.  

Understand -- my Pink Daughter shall be neotenous even by the standards of your Kind, and she shall see the world with childlike eyes even when she seems a mare full-grown.  Nevertheless, you must let her pursue her own path.  There shall come a time when she must leave you to fulfill her own high destiny, and you must not check her departure, though you shall fear for her safety more than once.  She is Laughter, her True Name is Thalia, and what she shall grow into, over the long decades, will be beyond your current comprehension.  And then Paradise added something which Goldie found starkly unbelievable.  Possibly beyond Mine.

But ... but how shall we keep her safe? asked Goldie.  There is malice in this world, malice aplenty both magic and mundane.  And if she shall be as a child, how shall we --

Do not fear, good Friend.  I shall always abide with and within your Pink grand-daughter, replied Paradise.  I have gifted her with Mine own powers of precognition, and she shall dance past dangers more than once, and emerge unscathed.  She can choose her worldlines, and she shall live amongst Happy Endings even before her oldest friend attains that ability.  And should something manage to menace her despite all this, I have already given unto her a powerful Guardian, who shall never fail to be there when she is really needed, whose strength is already great in fillyhood and which shall wax ever greater as she becomes a mare full-grown, who is unshakeably Loyal and shall literally move mountains if she must to save her Sister.

Maud ...? thought Goldie.

Even so, affirmed Paradise, then continued

As for the elder twin, she must abide here in Dunnich, for here shall be the Gate to Me, and she shall have the power to open Gates to anywhere.  You have so far seen but a tiny manifestation of Claire's full abilities -- the day shall come when she opens the way not only to me, but to all Creation, for your world.  She is the Opener of the Way to Paradise, and her destiny shall also prove a high one.  You shall not need to fear for Claire-- she shall need no Guardian -- for her flesh heals as rapidly as she can think, and she shall prove almost indestructible.

I return you now to the flow of your own time, Paradise said, and with a start Goldie realized that everything around her had been frozen, and she unawares.  All shall be well, both for you and your species, for Paradise is always with you.  Remember that, and be comforted.

I shall, whispered Goldie in her own mind.  Oh, I shall.

Reality resumed.

Goldie could see the bright reddish-pink mane, the crown of the little cranium.  She placed a suckered hoof against one side of the small head, another against the other side, just the tips because of course her hooves were far too large to fit inside her daughter even at this great degree of dilation.  Briefly, uselessly, she wished that her hooves were somehow longer and thinner -- but not even the near presence of the Great Wish was likely to make that happen.  She let her paramagnetism flow down her hooves, grip the little Pink one at many points, avoiding any stress to the neck which -- though tough like all Pony necks -- was still a relatively weak and vulnerable portion of the Pony anatomy.  Gently and firmly, she eased forth the small head.

There's no face! she thought in a moment of horror, then, relieved.  Oh.  A caul.  Really big 'un too.  Well, given what She is, I guess a caul would be only traditional.  She smirked at what may have been a little joke of Paradise.  "Scissors," she said to Maud.

The little filly quickly and efficiently passed her the scissors.

Before Goldie could apply them, reality rippled, and the caul fell away of its own accord.

Well, I don't blame you for not wanting me to use sharp pointy objects right next to your face, she thought at the tiny filly.  Can't say I'd like that much either.  Though you can't keep using that power so vulgarly.  That's how your daddy got in trouble, over a thousand years ago.  She didn't think that the little pink filly -- she could now see her coat, and it was a lighter shade of pink than the mane -- could understand those thoughts, but thinking them soothed Goldie and let her proceed as if this were merely a normal birth, rather than the Nativity of the Promised One.  

Pinkie abruptly slid free into Goldie's waiting hooves.  There was something strange about that sliding, and Goldie saw what -- Cloudy did not appear sufficiently dilated for such a smooth emergence to have been possible.  Goldie examined the newborn foal -- she was physically perfect, a creature of raspberry mane and pink coat and, opening just now, lovely blue eyes that  wondered at her strange new world.  With a swift pass of the scissors, Goldie expertly severed the umbilical cord.  Goldie was about to tap clear the respiratory passage, when the little pink filly coughed once, spitting out a wad of fluid and then emitting a lusty birth-cry.

That was incredibly smooth, thought Goldie.  I've never seen a birth this easy.

Goldie held high the third daughter of Cloudy Quartz Pie and Paradise, the Promised One that Goldie's own faith had been awaiting for over a thousand years, showing her triumphantly to the other three occupants of the room, counting the pink child's twin.  She was moved by a sudden impulse to speak.

"I shall name this one," Goldie told Cloudy, "for I have been in communion with her Father."  Cloudy's eyes widened in awe at this revelation.  

"She is Pinkamena Diane Quartz Pie," continued Goldie, which means "The Pink Unique Shining Girl," which is exactly what she is, and what she shall become, in ways you will all understand in time.  My daughter," she said to Cloudy, "you must raise her with firmness and with love, as if she were any filly, but she is more.  More, even, than most Daughters of Paradise.  All your daughters are that, and all have important destinies.  You have been blessed, Cloudy, for you are thricefold the mother of greatness."

It was a very solemn moment in the history of Dunnich, of Equestria, and of the Pie Family.  And then the moment changed, in the way that was inevitable given the nature of What had just been born.

For Pinkamena Diane Quartz Pie did something that was very strange for a newborn foal, but very characteristic for the mare she would one day become.

She smiled.  And laughed.

It was the happy gurgle of a newborn, not the rich sound it would be in times to come.  But it was enough.

And everypony there looked upon that happy little face, and they did exactly what almost everypony would when they met Pinkie Pie, in all the long decades and centuries and millennia to come.

They smiled.  Even Maud smiled.  And though none noticed, the eight little faces of little Claire were wreathed in broad grins.

Laughter was in the World again.
> Chapter 3: Igneous Rock
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now Cloudy Quartz Pie had borne to Paradise three Daughters, all truly virgin births, for Cloudy was still in truth a virgin.  But she was tired of this status, for she had given birth to three children and yet still had never had knowledge of any stallion.  And there was one stallion she long had loved, though while she was still acting as brood mare to Paradise she had not deemed it fair to wed him -- for, though the way in which Paradise quickened its Friends had little in common with ordinary Pony sexuality, the idea was close enough that Cloudy knew she would have felt like an adulterer against her admirer had they been husband and wife.

But now Cloudy had done her duty to Paradise, and far more than most, for even the most devout and dearest Friends of Paradise rarely bear more than a single fluffy Daughter for their Deity.  And Cloudy's Daughters were special, like none ever seen before.  She held -- and Paradise agreed -- that she had done more than enough.

So Cloudy was now free in her heart to wed her true love.


***


Igneous Rock came of a lesser family than did the Pies.  The Rock holdings lay west rather than south-west of South-Dunnich, and their mine was poorer and their earth-current weaker than those which graced the Pie Rock Farm.  He was the eldest of five children:  with two sisters and two brothers; and his father was dead and his mother in declining health.  For long years he labored to keep the Rock Rock Farm afloat, while his brothers were still young and his sisters still unmarried, leading his siblings in their own labors, and doing the heaviest and most difficult work himself.

The unremitting effort might have broken down a lesser Pony.  But Igneous, though of but average size and build for an Earth Pony, was blessed with determination and fortitude far greater than that of many a larger stallion.  He had worked hard since he was quite a small colt; and though his family was not prosperous, his mother had made certain not to stint them in their simple but nutritious fare.  So beneath his plain brown coat moved muscles that were wiry and powerful.  In his prime, Igneous could work in the field all day, lay down to sleep and arise fresh early the next morning, fully-rested and ready for another day's work.

Igneous had known Cloudy almost her whole life -- he was sixteen years her senior, and had first seen her as a tiny foal, riding the back of her mother Goldie.  She had been the school-mate of his own youngest sister Seddie, and had frequently been over to the Rock Rock Farm to play with her friend.  Even when she was but a filly, he had been struck by her grace and elegance; she had seemed to him like something out of a picture-book depicting the daughter of some noble of the lost North-Realm.  Over a decade and a half he watched her grow, until she was a little filly no more, but instead a young mare:  quiet and demure, but in whose eyes he often spied sparkling happiness -- though at first he did not grasp that this was due to his his own approach.

They spoke together more and more.  By imperceptible degrees they became friends.  Eventually, it was him she came to the Rock Rock Farm to visit, to talk with about her doings, her hopes and her dreams.  She was still the friend of his younger sister, but Igneous and Cloudy had become each other's best friends, inseparable.

Igneous and Cloudy made an odd pair, the serious, work-hardened stallion in his early thirties; and the polite, educated young mare just entering her late teens.  To them it seemed wholly natural.  He was awed by her intelligence and erudition, and protective of her youth and innocence; she responded to his competence and quiet, sure strength, so much like that of her father Jasper Quartz.  Her talk was endlessly fascinating to Igneous, who had a limited education but thirsty mind; for her part, Cloudy always felt safe and cherished when she was with her dear companion.

She told him of her religion, her faith that Paradise would redeem Ponies of their sufferings, that in the darkest hour of Ponykind, Paradise would fulfill its ancient purpose, and reach out to give the world its most special Daughter to save them from ultimate destruction.  He told her of his love for his family, his determination to support and protect them until his siblings were full-grown and safely-wed, and needed him no longer.  

They began to look forward eagerly to their meetings, to the chance to inform each other of the events since they had last parted.  To exchange gossip, compare notes, discuss plans -- their conversations were becoming the high points of their lives, so simply and naturally that it seemed inevitable.  Yet for a long while neither of them dared to hint at more than friendship.  Their friendship was so perfect that neither wished to spoil it, the more so because they so greatly admired one another.

He saw an imaginative power and purity of purpose in Cloudy which touched a vein of idealism in his soul which he had not known himself to possess.  She was to him a scent, a song, something indefinably beautiful in whose presence the workaday world seemed transformed with wonder.  He yearned for her, but he knew that to one such as her, he could never be more than a dull old working-pony, on whom she had by some strange fancy chosen to gift her company.  Should he speak to her of his feelings, she would be revolted at his presumption; his desire to sully her magical person with his mundane touch.  He very much did not want to drive her away, so he remained silent.

She realized that Igneous was strong both in body and soul, and more so, he was a stallion whose strength was always devoted to the well-being of his loved ones.   She began to imagine a future in which she would have that strength and love beside her always. Yet Cloudy was shy, and feared to drive him away should she raise such hopes directly.  Besides, in her own mind she was not yet really a mare:   surely he would laugh at such pretensions on the part of one who had just a few years back been an inmate of the school-room?  She was but a silly little filly, while he was a stallion full-grown, destined to wed a mare as impressive as his own self, something that she surely was not.


***


But one day they met, and Igneous was wroth.  Not with his dear friend Cloudy, but with certain crude stallions he had met on one of his trips into Nickerlite, stallions with which he had conversed on other occasions and marked as sometimes-annoying but harmless fools, such as exist in all times and places.  This time, however, his enounter with them might have led to violence, had not Igneous been well-tempered in both word and deed.  He summarized the reasons for his anger to Cloudy, as they sat watching the sun set over the White Tail Hills in the Pies' northwestern field, she gently leaning against his side, a familiarity she was increasingly tending to take with him, a slight but dear burden of which he would not have been rid for a heap of high-quality gemstones.

"They looked at me and laughed and said I was your stallion!" Igneous said with indignation, a rare look of anger on his visage.  "'Cloudy Pie's colt-friend,' that's how they termed it.  'He's stepping out with her,' they said.  'Sparking her.'  The nerve of those no-accounts!" he said, literally snorting.

Cloudy turned her head to look at her best friend.  For once, Igneous found her expression unreadable.  

"And what did you tell them?" she asked.

"Well, I told them they had no business spreading such scurrilous and scandalous gossip about such a fine filly as yourself.  'Miss Pie,' I informed them, 'is a good and decent girl of the best family and most correct conduct, and you yokels have no call to insinuate that she would do anything at all improper!'  I said it just like that, like out of a book, because you deserved nothing but the best in defense of your reputation."  Igneous firmed his jaw, obviously confronting those very same stallions in his memory.  "I had to stick up for your honor," he concluded.

"And what did they say to that?"  Cloudy asked.  She was smiling now.

"Why, those scapegraces just took it all as one big joke!" Igneous replied, outraged.  "They just kept laughing and laughing, saying things that implied I had ... intentions ... and when I ran at them they lit out of there, but they were still laughing!"  Igneous paused for breath.  "I guess I must have looked very angry.  But imagine that!  Them thinking that a fine filly such as yourself might fall for ... well, you know ... I'm just an old farm hoof, bit-a-bunch, as they say ..."

He floundered for a moment, entirely unaware of the way in which Cloudy's eyes softened, her lips trembled at his previous statement, as if she were coming to some strong emotional realization.

"They were talking about us as if we were stepping out together!" he concluded.

Cloudy was quiet for a moment.  She looked down, and her long, straight grayish-green mane, which she had let loose for her walk in the fields, fell down to cover her face so that it was obscured from his vision.  Then she tried to look at him but quickly looked away, blushing furiously and biting her lip.  Her lip firmed and she seemed to come to some sort of decision, and she looked back it Igneous, her blue eyes gazing into his own, unflinching.

"But aren't we?" she asked him softly.

For a moment Igneous did not grasp her meaning.  Then he did. 

"Oh," he gasped.

Cloudy did not relent.  

"Aren't we stepping out together?" she asked again.  Her eyes were looking right into his soul.

There was fear in those eyes, but also hope, and at that moment Igneous realized that Cloudy was not afraid for her reputation, not worried about impropriety, but rather afraid that he was going answer 'No' to her question.  And he realized what that meant, and he shook with amazement at the thought that any filly -- no, he thought, for the first time fully-seeing the last few years of her growth, her no longer childish figure and the even less childish desire in her gaze upon him, any mare as wonderful as Cloudy Quartz Pie could possibly feel that way about any Pony as ordinary as himself.

"Oh --" he said again, starting to speak, and Cloudy must have seen the answer in his eyes, the only answer any sane stallion could possibly make to an offer of such inestimable worth.  For as he started to speak, she leaned in and up to his face, and closed her eyes slightly, and brushed his lips with her own.  It was an untutored kiss -- Cloudy had not put much store in kissing games or bundling parties, for she had always been a serious and correct little filly -- but in it was all the sincerity and warmth of the innocent young heart which she was giving to him.  

Almost in a daze, Igneous returned her kiss, feeling her soft lips against his own, smelling and tasting her uniqueness.  He could scarcely believe this was happening in real life, for this was like one of his most secret dreams, only far more wonderful.  Igneous, of course, had kissed mares before; especially when he had been young and had more than once imagined himself in love.  All these foolish adolescent fumblings were now laid bare to him as vain and tawdry, and he was glad that none of them had ever gotten so far as Intention, for he was an honorable stallion, and would have wed any mare he had promised.  

For nothing he had ever known was like that first kiss of true love from Cloudy.  And in that instant he knew that he would overcome any obstacle, defy any convention to be with her, on any terms, from now until the moment of his heart's last beat.  So it was very well indeed that he had no other to wife.

They kissed again, long and slow; and then nuzzled and rubbed their faces and cheeks together, and at last sat front to front,heads cradled against each other's necks, lips resting gently against the bases of each other's neck, each one's mane trailing across the other's face in a posture of surpassing intimacy.  They sat like this for long minutes, drinking in each other's scent and warmth, hearing each other's pulses, not entirely certain where one pony left off and the other began, neither daring to say anything in the perfection of this moment.  They both would have in that instant volunteered to remain like this always.

But slowly reality, cruel reality resumed, and they realized that they were sitting on hard ground and the sun was setting and they would both have to go back to their separate homes.

So they separated, just a bit, and he looked into the eyes of she who had walked out into this field with him his best friend, and was still his best friend, but now also his beloved.  Her irises were wide open, her eyes looked very big, and even after they were no longer embraced she leaned toward him eagerly.  He could see and hear and smell her arousal, and felt a sudden rush of desire to take her, an impulse he firmly suppressed.  She was his beloved best friend, his own true love, and he would not betray her trust by rushing her into anything she might regret happening so quickly.  They would have a lifetime together, many decades of love to come.

He managed to speak.  "I love you," he said.  It was the only thing he could say.

"I love you too," she replied.  Her voice was breathy.

"We'd better be getting back," he said.  "Don't want to make your family concerned for you."

"I suppose you're right."  She leaned toward him, pushed forward, bumped and rubbed his cheek, then almost flung herself at him, pressing her head against his breast, rubbing her head repeatedly there, her small compact form almost like that of a foal's against his tall, lean, well-muscled frame.  "I wish we could stay," she said.  "I wish we could stay out here together all night and -- let whatever happens happen -- as if we were the first two Ponies in all the world and nothing else mattered but each other!"  She buried her face against him and he could feel the warmth of her cheeks, and knew she was blushing.

He reached out a foreleg, put it around her, held her tightly, unwilling to relinquish the possession of her sweet feminine form.  He gently stroked her back, nuzzled her neck.  When she gave a little gasp and shuddered slightly, he realized he was going too far, touching places that were too reminiscent of the places he would be touching if he were to -- he firmly pushed down that thought, for it was far too dangerous in this, his initial ecstasy at having won her love.

He very gently but very firmly separated them again.  He looked down at her shy, solemn little face.

"We have to go now,"  he repeated.  "Or we may not be able to."

She nodded, never taking her eyes off him, and they both got to their hooves.  They turned toward the Pie farm house.

They started walking together, she frequently leaning and bumping up against him, as if now requiring the physical contact.  He sighed a bit in happiness every time she did this, acknowledged in this simple manner that she was his mare, in her heart.

As they got closer to the house, practicality started to return to them, and a thought struck her.

"Will they know?" she asked him.

"Yes," he told her.  "Our scents are mingled."

She blushed.  "Should I wash myself?" she asked.  "I mean -- I like smelling like you, it's wonderful, but is it the wrong thing to do?"

"Better not," Igneous replied.  "If you wash now," he explained, "they're likely to think that  -- well, that we didn't get up in time."

It took her a moment to understand the implication, and then she crimsoned furiously, all the way down her neck and breast.

"Oh," she said.  "Right.  I can bathe later."

"I like smelling like you too," Igneous told her.  They bumped particularly long this time, and Cloudy essayed a nibble against the side of his neck that forced Igneous to hurriedly think of the smallest and least exciting details of hauling rocks to avoid displaying certain physical evidence that he did not want to be showing if any of Cloudy's family should happen to come upon them.  

Sweet Celestia, he thought, Cloudy is irresistible!  He looked fondly and perhaps more than a bit lustfully at his beloved friend, who giggled at him and did a flirtatious little dance, almost certainly unaware of the extent of the physical reaction she had almost provoked.

As they neared the farm house, Igneous realized with regret that this would be the end of their time together today, the best time he had ever known in his entire life.  I'll have to talk to Goldie and Jasper, he realized.  Tomorrow -- not now -- I'm too flustered.  But it wouldn't be right not to let them know I'm courting their daughter.  For that was what he was now doing.  Cloudy was in a category in his mind that completely precluded any casual assignation, even if he had been a stallion inclined to such.trifling ways.

"So, I think it's settled," she said.  "We are stepping out together."

"Oh, yes," he replied, smiling.

"And we've been ..." she trotted over and whispered in his ear, "sparking!"  She withdrew, grinning joyfully.

He had never seen Cloudy so purely happy.

"Yes, we have."  And he felt a great joy in his own heart at making it real by saying it aloud.

They paused on her doorstep, unwilling to part.  Finally he leaned forward and kissed her one last time.  She responded eagerly, passionately, and he had to be the one to break it off, for he strongly suspected that in a moment the door would open and Jasper or Goldie would be glaring out at him kissing their eldest daughter right in front of the Pie House.  Or, worse, it would be some of Claire's little brothers or sisters.

"I'll see you tomorrow afternoon, right after sundown, if that's all right with you and your folks," he said.  "I'll want to talk to your parents."

"Until tomorrow, then," she said softly, smiling and blowing a hoof-kiss at him.

Igneous Rock was one of the most stereotypically Earth Pony of Earth Ponies, but on the way home he felt like he had done magic, and as if he were not so much walking as flying.


***


So it was that Igneous Rock  happily went home.

Cloudy Quartz Pie was certainly no less happy, though when she stepped back into her home, it was to discover that her maternal grandparents, Surprise ("the Nth," as she styled herself) and Reliable Oak, had come over to share the company of their eldest daughter and her family.

Surprise the Nth  -- an octagenarian white mare whose now-fading gray mane had once been brownish-blonde, if one old painting and many fond memories expressed by Reliable were to be believed, was working on a sheaf of mathematical calculations, as was normal for her.  She was a brilliant mathematician, who from time to time developed advanced and outrageous theories whose import the rest of her family could but dimly grasp, and which even most other mathematicians often poorly comprehended..  

Her husband Reliable, generally called Relly, a brown-coated, salt-and-pepper-maned stallion in his late nineties, was poring over her reslts.  Relly was a highly-competent but far less gifted mathematician, who always checked Surprise's inspired but sometimes slapdash work for accuracy.  Relly generally understood Surprise's ideas -- making him about the only Pony in the Nickerlite area who did -- but he never could have originated them.

Reliable had been checking Surprise's work in this fashion since they had met at Canterlot University.  He'd been a graduate student serving as a teaching assistant, had noticed a simple mathematical error on a complex paper, and had offered to help her.  He'd been helping her for six and a half decades now, with Cloudy's mother Goldie being one of the less-mathematical results of this assistance.  They'd been married over six decades, a state of affairs Cloudy found both impressive and admirable.

As Cloudy opened the door and stepped into the large room that served the Pies as both dining hall and parlor, her grand-parents looked up from their papers and flehmened at her.  Cloudy blushed slightly, for she knew she bore the scent of her beloved, and hoped that Surprise and Relly would be too wrapped up in their mathematics to draw the appropriate conclusions.

Her hopes were immediately dashed.

"Ah," said Surprise with some satisfaction.  She turned to Relly and pointed to one of her papers.  "It's as I predicted -- I'm off by only three days, which is well within my margin of error."

"Now, now," chided Reliable in his slow but sure manner.  "You have not really sampled the data.  You assume this was their first kiss, and also no more.  Both are likely, but you cannot be certain.  Observer bias, remember?"

"I think my curve is good."  Surprise gazed at a complex graph chart, wrinkling her brow in concentration.  "But you're right -- I'm making too many assumptions."  She frowned, then her face lit up in a smile.  "Easily remedied!"  She looked up at Cloudy, whose blush was by this point extremely obvious.  "Did he kiss you before today, dear?  And did you two do anything more than kiss?"

"Um ... uh ..." Cloudy adroitly replied, the blush now spreading all the way down her chest.  She was literally at a loss for words.

"I'll take that as a yes to the first question," Surprise said, making a mark in her notes.  "And as to the second one?"

Cloudy's older brother Pie Chart, who was home for the summer from Pranceston University, looked up from his newspaper and smirked at her.  "Come on, Cloudy," he said.  "We're all dying to know the answers.  Scientific progress demands it."  His smooth gray face, under its golden mane, would have looked quite innocent if not for the shape of his smile, and the light of mischief dancing in his pale yellow eyes.

Cloudy gave him a wounded look.

"Oh, I went through all this myself," Chart assured her.  "Granny's been working on this project on and off for many years."

"Yes, I have," Surprise said brightly.  "My General Theory of Romantic Love and Sexuality.  It will make possible all sorts of predictions through multi-variate statistical factor analysis modified by age and subcultural determinants.  So, Cloudy, did you let him ..."

Whatever question Surprise had meant to ask remained unspoken, as the door to the kitchen opened and Cloudy's mother, Goldie Pie, stepped into the room.

"No, Mother," Goldie said.  "You are not going to bombard my innocent young daughter with questions to gather data for your dubious theory."

Oh, praise be to Paradise, Cloudy thought.  She wants to protect me.  Cloudy's mother was one of the most determined Ponies Cloudy had ever known, and well able to stand up to Granny's mathematical curiosity.  Cloudy began to relax a little:  she was sure she was safe now.

"Dubious theory?" Surprise snapped.  "I'll have you know that my theory has checked out well against the academic data.  I just have to test its predictions aganist future events, and Cloudy is perfect because she's ..."

"Cloudy is perfect because she's my daughter," Goldie interrupted.  "And a young mare in love is not likely to want to answer a lot of nosy questions."

She called me a mare!  Cloudy was thrilled.  Up until now, her mother had only referred to her as a "filly."  Except that time that she gave her The Talk, a few years ago when she'd begun her cycles.  Wait, she can't be meaning to --  A certain dread started to chill Cloudy's heart, but then she realized with relief, No, she already did that.  It was really embarrassing, but there's no reason she'd want to do that again.  Not even somepony in Ma's profession would want to do that again.

"Bah!" snorted Surprise.  "I would have thought that you of all Ponies would appreciate the value of rigorous mathematical prediction in this field.  If not, why did I bother to send you to Miskatrottic?"

"I won a scholarship, remember?" countered Goldie, stepping over to put herself partly between Surprise and Cloudy.  "And one thing I've learned from over thirty years midwifing is that matters of the heart are unlikely to be amenable to rigorous mathematical prediction."

"On an individual basis," argued Surprise.  "The behavior of Ponies en masse should be logically-predictable, just as we can't easily track a single molecule of a gas, but it's behavior in measurable quantities is very much determinable by mathematics."

"Well," said Goldie, setting her jaw firmly, "my Cloudy is most definitely an individual, not a social mass.  And you shall treat her as an individual at this very delicate and tender stage of her life.  Is that clear?"  She leveled her amber eyes and glared into her mother's purple ones.

Surprise snorted and blew air from her mouth, but in the end could not meet Goldie's gaze.  She glanced at her husband Relly in hopes of support, but he simply shrugged.  Relly had not lived to his great age by getting between his wife and his daughter in one of their epic disagreements.

Surprise looked back at Goldie, still not directly meeting her eyes.

"When did you become such a mutinous child?" Surprise asked her fifty-three year old daughter.

"I've always thought for myself, Mother," replied Goldie.  Her expression softened.  "It was one of the first things you taught me, by your example."

Surprise snorted again, but the snort sounded suspiciously like a chuckle.

"Come with me," Goldie told Cloudy, and opened the door of her study.

Cloudy almost trotted into the familiar, book-lined room, dominated as it was by Goldie's great desk near the window.  Such was her relief at having an excuse to leave the main hall.

She breathed a sigh of relief as her mother closed the door.  "Thanks, Ma," she said with utterly-unfeigned gratitude.  "I don't know what I could have said to Granny if she'd kept on -- hey!" Cloudy yelped.  "What are you doing?"

For Goldie had bent to quickly sniff her entire anatomy, including portions of it which Cloudy preferred to keep decently hidden under her caudal appendage.  Goldie raised her head, and a very professional expression, one which Cloudy had seen many times before, though usually directed at patients, settled upon her orangish-yellow features.

"Good," said Goldie.  "Very good.  My instincts were right -- Igneous is a good colt."

"He's not a colt," Cloudy insisted, her tone going a little dreamy.  "He's a full-grown stal ..." Abruptly, she realized that this might be precisely the wrong tack of conversation, and cut off the rest of the word.  "Anyway, no.  We didn't.  Igneous was a real gentlecolt.  And," she said in a rather hurt tone, "you could have just asked me."

"You didn't respond well when your Granny asked you," pointed out Goldie, raising an eyebrow.

"That was in front of Gramps and Chart!" Cloudy protested, her eyes wide in honest shock.  "I couldn't talk about something like that in front of my grandfather!  Let alone Chart -- he seemed way too happy about the whole situation!"  It occurred to Cloudy that Chart might have been getting back at her for certain teasing remarks she herself had made about her elder brother's adolescent crushes, back when Cloudy herself had been but a small filly, and hence loftily above such carnal distractions -- but at this moment she was in no mood to be fair-minded toward Chart.

"So, you feel it's better to talk about this sort of thing one-on-one, in private, with your mother?" Goldie asked, cocking her head.

There was something about Goldie's rather intent gaze and tone of voice which, perhaps, should have warned Cloudy, but at this point the young mare had been through such an intense roller-coaster of emotions that she was not thinking very clearly.

"Well of course," replied Cloudy.

"Very good!" said Goldie, her eyes lighting up.  "I think it's very important that we have a Talk about certain things."

A slow warning bell began to ring in Cloudy's brain.  She had caught the implicit capitalization of the word "talk."  Her mother hadn't spoken to her like this since ...

"But we already had that Talk!" Cloudy protested.  "Five years ago, after I got my Cutie Mark!"  She glanced down automatically at the three light-bluish cloudy quartz crystals adorning her shapely bluish-gray hip.  "I know all about where foals come from!" she cried, blushing.  Growing up in the country, she'd had a general idea of the mechanics some years earlier, but did not want to mention this.

"Ah," said Goldie, "but this is a different Talk."

"Different?" asked Cloudy, becoming frightened.  "Different, how?"

"Well, that was the Talk I give to a filly just entering puberty, to make sure that she knows what to not do with excited colts if she doesn't want any unexpected additions to her family.  This is the Talk I give to an excited young mare who is actually stepping out with a very special somepony, to make sure that she knows what  to do to resolve their excitement without it resulting in at best a somewhat hasty marriage.  Do you understand me?"

Cloudy's thoughts slowly wrapped itself around the implications and then, terribly, she did understand her mother.

"You don't mean you're going to talk to me about ..."

Goldie nodded, pulled down a rather thick book from her shelf -- one Cloudy remembered having peered into on her own in delighted shock some years ago -- and then, as Cloudy watched in numb horror, opened one of her desk drawers and pulled out two dolls, one of a mare and the other of a stallion.  

"See!" Goldie crowed in professional delight.  "I have visual aids!  Oh, I've been waiting to do this for my own daughter ever since you were born!"  She advanced on Cloudy with the visual aids.

Cloudy tried to hide under her own mane.

"I had nopony to do this for me," Goldie explained.  "Your Grandma was always too obsessed with mathematics to raise me properly.  Your father and I had to figure this all out on our own.  You're lucky that you're a midwife's daughter ..."

And, as her mother opened the book to a full-color and highly-detailed illustration which made Cloudy furiously blush, even though she'd seen this particular picture years before, the young mare realized that her nightmare had just begun ...