A one trick pony
[ultimate warning: this is very (very) random and quite mad because it's supposed to make sense. (and I personnally think it does)]
It’s the story of a mare…
We say that you don’t know how lucky you are to possess something until you’ve lost it. Ponies say that you don’t know how lucky you are to possess something until you’ve found it. It probably just means that ponies possess too much stuff.
Salt Kent was one of those who had just about everything she needed and twice as much that she didn’t need. She had inherited the family’s little pet shop in Ponyville as well as her name. She would always say that she was named Salt Kent because of a pun her wanted-to-be-a-comedian father tried to make, but that she never understood. But a name is a name and she liked hers as she liked her shop.
She was actually quite good with the pets, as her special talent was to take care of them, almost like Fluttershy. But, to be exact, her special talent was to make pets laugh and happy, which helped when it came to make them take a bath or stop messing with stuff.
Altogether, Salt was living a pretty good life. She was healthy, she had her own shop, discovered her special talent and, subsequently, had a lot of pets friends, as well as way enough pony friends.
But right now, she was sweating heavily as she was trying to write the sixth sentence of her new story.
Salt wasn’t a writer. She had never felt the need to write before. But it had changed two days ago when she discovered that Lyra was writing stories about the humans, as she was calling her mystical creatures, and that everypony liked it. She read it and it was good. Those humans creatures were just too cute and too clueless and so brave and tragic at the same time that she had felt like a rift opening in her heart and a new feeling filling it.
Nothing in her eyes was the way she had seen it before. The colors had changed, the sky was bigger, the sun brighter, the wind felt way more like a caress and the air was full of smells she had never smelled before.
For two days, her mind was full of those incredible creatures, living awesome adventures in their unbelievable world. For two days she had left Equestria, left all that she had ever known for a new and beautiful universe.
It was too much for the little pony to handle alone, so she had to find a way to express what she was feeling and how wonderful it all was. She had reminded about Lyra’s book and so she had decided to write down her mind.
And so, for the last four hours, she had been over that beginning of her story. But she couldn’t find the right word. It was always too much, or not enough and never nearly close to what she really wanted to say.
Suddenly, she heard a voice.
“Microphone.”
She looked up and saw a very well known pink pony in front of her.
“The word you’re looking for.” Said Pinkie Pie, “It’s microphone.”
Why did she even take time to test the word, she would never know, but it didn’t make any sense whatsoever. She was about to protest when Pinkie asked:
“Has it happened yet? Did I miss it?”
At first, Salt thought that Pinkie Pie was crazy, but the pink pony explained that her pinkie senses had warned her that something big was going to happen, so she had to come and be there. They both waited a little moment, but as nothing was happening, Pinkie said that she would come back later for the big thing happening. And just as she left, she added:
“Still, the word that you’re looking for, it does is microphone.”
And she vanished, as Salt tried once again to put microphone in her sentence about the sun shining and couldn’t make any sense out of it.
Suddenly, she realized it was time to open the shop and take care of her usual business. She looked at her parchment and quills, and then went to the shop downstairs, came back up again, went down and finally decided that the story was too important.
A choice is a choice
Salt didn’t want to work. Still, she had to find a way not to. That’s when she noticed an alligator, named Steve by the way, looking at her. “Why not?” thought Salt, just before going to the alligator and convincing him to take care of the shop while she was upstairs working on her story. The big animal nodded slightly, as only alligators know how to nod that way, and went behind the counter.
“Oh come on, you’ve got to smile!” told him Salt, showing him one of her most beautiful smile.
He nodded a second time and opened his mouth in what should have been a smile, revealing all of his sharp teeth.
“Perfect.” said Salt, without even looking.
And she went upstairs in a rush to take care of her story.
Writing was so hard. She tried just writing whatever was coming in mind and just force her way through the story, but she got so frustrated with how bad it was that she had to throw the parchment away and begin again with another one. Yes, writing was way harder than she thought it would be.
“Excuse me.” said a stallion’s voice behind her.
She turned her head to the pony and discovered Shining Armor and Princess Cadence with a baby pony in her hooves standing before her.
“We have found that young foal before your door.” continued Shining Armor, “But he seems to be of a magical origin. In fact, he is surrounded by a very powerful magical spell. We wanted to know if you knew anything about him or why he was in front of your shop? Is he yours?”
Salt looked at the foal. He was kind of cute. In fact, he was really cute. So cute that it gave her an idea for the beginning of her story.
“Never seen him in my life. Sorry, I’ve got no idea. Good luck to both of you and congratulation.” Salt told the couple, in a hurry to write the idea she just had and forgetting the foal didn’t belong to neither Shining Armor nor Cadence.
Both the captain of the royal guard and the princess of the crystal empire left the shop and Salt was able to stay focused on her story.
But after a while, she got stuck again.
“Toast.” Said Pinkie’s voice. “Now it’s toast.”
Salt looked up once again and replied:
“How would toast be in any way related with a liberation party?”
“Well, you can’t have a party without toast, duh!” answered Pinkie, just before she added: “By the way, you seem to have an alligator taking care of your shop. That’s great. But nonetheless, has it happened yet?”
“No, whatever is supposed to happen hasn’t happened. Now, please, I want to work.”
Pinkie followed her wish, but not without adding that toast was definitely the word she needed. Because toast were yummy.
Salt sighed and went back to her story.
Just open your eyes… or better not.
“Miss Kent?” asked a little filly’s voice.
There are times when you don’t have any patience for whoever disturbs you. Even if it’s a little filly. Sometimes, above all when it’s a little filly.
Salt tried her best to not look very upset and asked what the young pony wanted.
“I would like a pet to play with and cuddle. Do you have one for me?”
The little filly quickly added:
“I asked the alligator, but he showed me his teeth and I thought that he was going to eat me, so I ran upstairs and I found you… Can you help me?”
Salt couldn’t help but sigh. However, she decided to take care of the matter to make sure it would be handled quickly. She went downstairs, followed by the filly, and took her to the first pet she saw. It was still an egg, but that was perfect for a filly. The animal would grow at the same time as she would. Perfect enough.
She told the filly to take the egg, see the rest with her employee – and she pointed to the alligator that was asleep on the counter – and then went upstairs without thinking that selling a velociraptor’s egg to a filly was that much of a problem. In fact, it had even given her an idea for her story.
But as she was going to finally come back to her story, she heard the door open once more and, to see what was going to disturb her from her work once again, she looked at the newcomer.
It was kind of a bigger pony than the others, with a white coat, a horn, wings and a floating stellar mane. The princess had a suitcase with her.
“This will do.” said Celestia. “Are you the owner of this place?” she asked Salt.
In normal times, the mare would have been incredibly shocked and honored to see the royal princess visiting her shop and, even more, addressing her directly. But this wasn’t a normal time. She had a story to write and so much to accomplish by doing it. So she just answered:
“Yes, I am, why?”
“I’m going to live in your basement for a while, I’m retiring. You don’t see any problem with that I hope? I’ll pay you.” said Celestia.
“Just do as you want, I’ve got important things to do right now.” answered Salt, just before going back to her story and forgetting about her basement and the princess.
She was at a key point in the development of her scenario. The three principal characters were in a struggle as they were bullying a little foal. But she was feeling like the chapter was missing something.
“A collaborative effort!” shouted Pinkie Pie in joy, “That’s the words it needs!”
“Pinkie Pie!” answered Salt, pretty frustrated, “I can’t say that bullying is a collaborative effort. I mean, it can be, but it isn’t, well, maybe it is, but it would be just bad. Come on!”
“Well.” answered Pinkie Pie. “It’s not my fault. Maybe you shouldn’t be writing about bullying, and then you could add a collaborative effort in it, right?”
Salt sighed. She didn’t have any word to reply to that level of nonsense.
“Well, still.” continued Pinkie Pie, “I was just checking if it had happen already. But I guess it hasn’t. I’ll be back in the basement with the princess. We are eating cake with a panther and a gorilla. I didn’t know panthers liked cake, did you?”
Salt didn’t know, but didn’t care either, so she gave Pinkie a “I don’t care” look and let her leave. She waited a little after Pinkie had left, but nothing came, so she finally decided to keep on writing.
“A collaborative effort!” shouted Pinkie, “I tell you, look it up, it’s just amazing!”
And she left, leaving Salt fulminating against her.
Nothing’s happening in Equestria…
Salt heard the dog asking her to take him for a walk.
“Come on.” was telling her the dog, “I wanna walk. Let’s go for a walk, I like to walk, and run, I like to run too. Let’s go run.”
The pony had not the slightest desire to go walk. She wanted to finish her story. It had been hard, but she could feel the end coming and she thought it was going to be awesome. So she quickly tried to find a way to evade her responsibility and found it when she saw the rhinoceros sleeping in a corner of her room.
“Sam!” shouted Salt to wake the rhino up, “Take the leash and go take Philistin for a walk would you?”
The rhino began to refuse, as he thought that a rhino walking a dog in a Pony village would be just too silly. But Salt insisted and he finally accepted for the greatest joy of the dog. The word “leash” gave Salt an idea to continue her story.
She was going to write it down when she heard a lot of ponies shout from the street. She went for a glance, just to make sure it wasn’t any business of hers and saw a full battalion of bat ponies who were surrounding her little pet shop, led by Luna herself. And in front of her door were Celestia and a whole battalion of pegasus soldiers.
Salt didn’t even take the time to understand that they were threatening each other of beginning a civil war to establish the future of pony kind and something about somepony taking too long under the shower every morning.
Salt couldn’t care less. That was outside, and she was inside. And before her was her story. And even with all the care she had given to it, she still felt like it was missing, well, something. And she damned herself for having thought about it, just before Pinkie Pie showed up very slowly and silently from under her bed.
Salt looked at her, sighed, but as Pinkie wasn’t talking, she asked:
“What will it be now? “Orange”, so I could make a rhyme with it?”
“Oh no.” said Pinkie Pie. “I just came to see if it had happened yet, but I guess it’s still too soon. Well, I’ll wait whatever how long it takes. It’s going to be big and I wouldn’t like to miss it.”
Salt asked if she could go back to writing and Pinkie Pie confirmed it:
“Yes.” said the pink pony, “It’s all alright. And don’t worry, they’ve made peace. They weren’t going to fight before such an important event for all ponies!”
“Who?” asked Salt, without even listening to a possible answer.
Pinkie Pie left, but added just before that:
“Oh, and you could have a use for App. I don’t know what it means, but it sounds awesome. You should use it.”
“Sure thing.” answered Salt, not even noticing that Pinkie was already gone.
The story was almost finished. She was at the final chapter and each word she was writing felt like a burden. Nothing was fitting together, the whole story was just a big mess of words that didn’t sound like anything beautiful at all.
Salt almost cried. She could see, between the lines she had written, all the efforts she had put into it, and that it still wasn’t enough, far from it. Her story was pathetic, she was pathetic, it had just been a whole waste of time.
She collapsed in tears in her bed. She knew that she was no writer and she had never asked for that much. But she had thought that she could at least create something remotely close to the wonderful pictures and ideas and the whole worlds she had been seeing in her mind for the past days. She had just wanted to share a little of that with some other ponies, maybe just her friends, even just one friend.
She just thought she should give up. She wrote a “the end” to finish her story and decided to go to bed.
It just takes the right words
Salt woke up in the middle of the night. It was a sound in her head. Some sort of music that was calling for her. It was like a thousands of different songs played all at the same time in some sort of harmony. And led by the songs, she took her story, her quill, and began correcting it in some sort of trance.
Those were all of the right words. Not pony words, she had never heard them before, but they sounded beautiful and right. There was no doubt anymore, no pain, she had just to hear the sound of the music and write the words as she was hearing them.
Suddenly, the music stopped and so did her writing. The story was finished. And it was perfect. Even more perfect that she could have thought it would be.
She began reading it out loud and opened the portal.
…
It was a completely new universe, filled with things she had never seen before. But she could understand that she was in a room, probably a house or an apartment of some sort. And not in Equestria anymore.
Before her was a human. A female human, or a male human with a very long and curly mane. Both Salt and the human looked at each other for some time, with a mixed feeling of fear, curiosity and strangely, a whole lot of deep kindness.
“Excuse me.” asked the human person very slowly, like you do in a dream, “I don’t want to seem rude, but I’ve absolutely got to ask: are you by any chance a pony?”
“Yes. I’m Salt Kent.” said the pony, feeling just as awkward herself.
“Oh my god she talks.” said the human in a breath.
“I’m really sorry to impose myself like that.” said Salt, “I just finished writing a story and just as I was reading it, I… well, I guess I was transported here.”
The human seemed to be very interested in the fact that the pony was interested in writing and after she and Salt were able to overcome the shock of their meeting, they began discussing about writing stories and art in general. The human explained to Salt how some humans were actually very fond of ponies, and Salt explained to the human how some ponies were very fond of humans, even though she never thought they would actually be real, as thought the human too about ponies.
And altogether, it happened to be a very fun night that both of them spent together. But when the morning came, Salt figured that she should better try to go back home.
“How are you going to do that?” asked the human.
“Well, it only takes the right words.”
And she said some that she had heard in the music before. The portal opened once again before her and she saluted her new human friend.
“Goodbye.” said the human with some emotion, “I hope you’ll come back someday. It has been interesting. Very strange, but definitely interesting.”
Salt agreed and said that she would probably come back one day, but couldn’t promise, as magic is a very capricious thing.
“Goodbye Tabitha.” she added, before passing through the portal a second time.
And the beat goes on
It was also the morning when Salt came back into her house. And in front of her was Pinkie Pie, looking at her with a big smile.
“Wow” said the pink pony, “I almost thought you would never come back. I had to take care of things for almost two months here. By the way, I learned that it’s great to cuddle a velociraptor, I think ponies are getting used to being helped by an alligator and I think you’re back just in time for the rhinoceros and the dog’s wedding.”
As she was falling back into reality, Salt could only sum up all of her feeling in one word:
“What !?!”
“And you?” asked Pinkie Pie, “How was your trip. For that matter, where did you go? Did you go in a jungle full of snake to free them from the slavery of diamonds in lava burning temples?”
Salt began to explain what had happened since the last time they had seen each other, about the music in the night, the words and her little journey in the human world. And strangely, she felt relieved. She was thinking that her story really had been the great success she had hoped for.
“I agree.” said Pinkie Pie, “That was a great story. Really weird, but great. What will the next one be about? Will it be even better?”
“The next one?” asked Salt in horror. “I just wrote a story that literally opened a portal into the human world and allowed me to speak with one of them, and you expect me to write another one?”
“Well, duh… Life is still going on you know.” answered Pinkie Pie. “And you can’t let her go on alone, because she would feel lonely and that would be sad. We should throw life a big party!”
Salt wasn’t listening anymore. She felt stupid. The urge to write had taken the best of her. She was no writer, she never had really wanted to become one. She looked around and saw what a mess her shop had become. She had a lot of work in front of her to turn everything back in order again. But that was, after all, her special talent, to take care of the animals. Well, sort of.
But for the moment, she just wanted to go and walk under the sun. She saw how beautiful it was that day and wouldn’t miss it for anything in all of Equestria. She proposed to Pinkie Pie to come along, but she refused:
“I can’t.” said Pinkie Pie, “I’ve waited two months for it to happen and it will happen very soon now. I told you I didn’t want to miss it.”
Salt tried to understand, but finally gave up. She had had a writing obsession, she had opened a portal to another world using only words, discussed with a creature that wasn’t even supposed to exist in the first place and come back home again. It was way more emotions than she thought she could ever have in her whole life, and even two life one after the other.
So she decided to let Pinkie Pie wait for whatever could still happen, deciding that she could allow herself to miss it.
And she went outside for a walk to enjoy the sunny day.
…
And it happened, just as Pinkie Pie had predicted it. In that very day Ponyville was blessed with a visit from Queen Faust herself.
And Salt Kent missed it.
But as it was a very sunny and joyful day, she didn’t really care.
THE END