The bell above the door sounded off and Starlight Glimmer set her crossword puzzle aside. Since she still hadn’t come up with any great slogans yet, she instead flashed her pearly whites and faced the door.
Only to find nobody there.
“Hello?” she asked
A pregnant pause followed.
Starlight went to drop off her stool, but before she did a small voice made itself known.
“Hi… I’m… I’m here about a cutie mark.”
Leaning far over the counter, Starlight discovered a light orange filly with a mint green tail and mane. The little pony busied herself staring at her hooves.
Like a screaming teakettle, Starlight gushed and immediately used her horn to lift the filly up onto the counter. “Aren’t you just the cutest little thing.”
The filly glanced from her belly to her hooves. “I dunno. I guess so.”
“I’m Starlight Glimmer. What’s your name?”
“Cherry Berry.”
“What a beautiful name.” Starlight looked over the filly’s shoulder. “Are you here all by yourself?”
Cherry nodded. “It’s sort of an emergency.”
Starlight placed a reassuring hoof on her shoulder. “Anything you say stays between us. So don’t worry about—”
“Boat! I need a boat!” Cherry Berry yelled out of nowhere, seemingly surprising herself as well as Starlight. “And I need one before it’s too late!”
“A boat?” Starlight raised a brow. “That seems like an awful big Hearth’s Warming Eve present for a filly.”
“I mean I need a boat cutie mark. Do you have one? Please say you have one!”
The filly’s bottom lip trembled, and Starlight had to ponder for a moment on whether or not she had any boat or boat-related cutie marks in stock. But before she’d admit anything to the agitated filly currently perched on her counter…
“Why do you need that particular cutie mark so badly? I’m sure you’ll be getting a real cutie mark any day now.”
“But what happens if it’s not a boat? If it’s something else, than that means that Aquamarine might not—” She ended her sentence short by clamping a hoof over her mouth.
“Who’s Aquamarine?”
Cherry Berry went back to staring at her hooves. “I dunno. Just this colt at school that I want to talk to me. He really likes boats. Or anything that floats on water. And he already has his cutie mark. It’s a sailboat.”
“I see,” Starlight said, nodding. “So you think if you get a cutie mark of a boat, this Aquamarine will come talk to you?”
Cherry Berry nodded energetically. “Of course! Imagine it: I’d come to school with my new cutie mark! It’s this crazy, giant boat crashing through the waves! Aquamarine sees my cutie mark and slowly… during the course of the day… as the hours slowly tick by… his love for boats becomes too much and he’s forced to be my friend!” She rubbed her hooves together like some miniature evil genius. “And then twelve and a half years later we get married and serve pizza instead of wedding cake!”
Starlight was leaning back on her stool, a hoof held over her chest as if to shield her heart. “That’s so flipping adorable. I swear I could just eat you up right here.”
Cherry gasped at that. “Wait! You’re a cannonball?”
“A cannonball?” Starlight rubbed at her barely prominent belly. “Well, I might have gained a few pounds since moving to Ponyville.”
“By eating ponies, I bet!” Cherry chirped.
“Oh! You meant cannibal.”
“That’s what I said: cannonball.”
Starlight slowed her speech a bit. “Cannibal. Start by saying can.”
“Can,” Cherry echoed back.
“Can-a.”
“Can-a.”
“Can-a-bull.”
“Can-a-duh.”
Starlight shook her head gravely. “No, no, Cherry Berry. We don’t talk about that place anymore. Not after… you know. One more time, please?”
“Can-a-bull,” Cherry finished with a nod. “Did I do good?”
Starlight smiled. “Very good. But back to the matter at hoof. So this Aquamarine likes boats. Do you like boats?”
Cherry shrugged. “I dunno. I guess they’re all right.”
“Well, what do you like?”
A small smile found the filly’s lips as she pondered that. “I like reading a lot. And dancing. And picnics without egg salad. And I really like visiting my auntie’s farm and picking berries to bake into pies.” Cherry blushed again. “And of course I like eating the pies we bake.”
Starlight could only shake her head in disbelief. “I swear, Cherry Berry. You do one more adorable little thing in front of me and I’ll be forced to adopt you—following your parents’ sudden and mysterious disappearance, of course.”
Again, the filly gasped. “You’d kill my mommy and daddy? But I thought you weren’t a great big meanie anymore?”
“Who said anything about murder?” Starlight said gingerly. “I said mysterious disappearance, remember? That means I got away with it.” She chuckled to herself. “But moving on… why is it so important that you impress this particular colt?”
“Because there’re so few of them around!” Cherry answered her, as if it was the most obvious thing ever. “Haven’t you ever noticed how few colts live in Ponyville? There’s only like two in my entire class! Of fourteen! So I have to make sure he notices me right away! Because I’m still not too sure if I want to be a laser beam or not…”
Starlight grimaced. “A laser beam?”
“You know. A laser beam! Like how my auntie’s a laser beam and she lives on her farm with her marefriend who’s also a laser beam.”
“Oh! A lesbian. Now I get it. Although laser beam sounds so much cooler upon reflection.” She ruffled the filly’s mane for a moment. “But let me ask you this: would you be okay with having a boat as your cutie mark?”
Again, Cherry Berry turned to her hooves. “I’m sure I’d get used to it.”
“And have you actually talked with this Aquamarine before?”
“Not… exactly.” Cherry’s shoulders slumped as her voice softened. “I get really nervous sometimes. That’s why I need to get a cutie mark of a boat so he’ll talk to me first.”
Starlight lowered her head until their eyelevel matched. “Listen, I might not know everything there is to know about relationships, but what I can tell you is that relationships are a two part system. Sure, this Aquamarine fellow might be happy talking about boats for the rest of his days, but would you? And who’s to say he wouldn’t enjoy some of the stuff that you enjoy doing? I don’t think I’ve ever met a pony that didn’t like fresh baked pie.”
That last part seemed to do the trick, as Cherry Berry glanced up again. “You think Aquamarine would like picking berries at my Auntie’s farm with me?”
“Well, you’d have to ask him first.”
“But it’s scary being the first one to talk!”
“But aren’t the best things in life hard to get?” Starlight asked. “And you know the best thing about first introductions?”
“What?”
“You only have to do them once.”
Ten minutes later (after they shared a good half-pot of tea together and plotted exactly how she’d introduce herself to Aquamarine), Cherry Berry left Starlight’s shop just as blank-flanked as she’d entered. Only this time she kept her head held up a bit higher than before.
Starlight then finished that day’s work by marking in her calendar twelve and a half years into the future. She’d been invited to a wedding, you see.
And more than anything she didn’t want to miss out on the pizza instead of cake.