One of two things is happening right now. Either the doctors have found a cure, and we’re all laughing and happy and there’s a super fun “yay-you’re-not-going-to-die-from-that-plague-you-started-party” going on, and I’m reading this out loud. Or I’m dead, and you’re probably asking, “Why did this mare, who was almost-but-not-quite Pinkie Pie leave me this letter in her will?”
Back on my world, I was Pinkie Pie. The for real, actual, not-a-mirror-clone, Element of Laughter, Pinkie Pie. Here, in your Equestria I’m just a silly green mare with a straight mane who dropped in out of a clear blue sky telling really weird, impossible stories. It’s awkward, because we were really super close friends, and I know you. Back home, when home was a thing, because it’s not anymore, because I can’t go home because home never really happened, but back home I admired you. But you don't know me here, you know Pinky Pie, and I'm not her anymore. I'm Mint Surprise Pastel. Loyalty was never my element. No, I was laughter, and like a laugh I drifted on the wind. When a new path opened in front of me, I bounced down that path with a giggle and a smile and I never looked back, because what I left behind would have broken my heart.
When I met met the human, he was nearly starved to death and terrified beyond reason. He would eat out of the dumpster behind Sugar Cube Corner and scurry and hide any time a pony came close enough to see him. I watched him for a long time, days, weeks, who knows? Life was but a dream and time works funny in dreams. Humans were falling into Equestria almost weekly at that point, and I knew enough to know this wasn’t normal human behavior. I always baked extra sweets, and even healthy sweet potato muffins, and onion croissants. And then I'd very carefully place them on top of the garbage, wrapped so they'd stay clean so he’d always have something tasty and nutritious to eat.
Even so, when I saw him watching me place the food, he still hid. So I went and talked to Fluttershy, and she told me the difference between wild and feral animals. You see, a wild animal like a bear or a timberwolf, never trusted anypony, so trust is something new to it. You have to teach it that it’s okay to trust you, but really it doesn’t have any reason not to. A feral animal is an animal that used to be tame. It thought it could trust ponies, but it was betrayed and hurt by bad ponies. It won’t ever come to you on it’s own, because bad ponies have taught it that trusting ponies hurts. So I had to catch him.
So I set a trap. And I stopped leaving food where he could just find it and I only left it in the trap, It took a few days but he did get hungry enough eventually, just like Fluttershy said. And when I finally caught him, I did just what she told me to do. I let him go and put food back in the trap. We danced that little dance for days, maybe weeks, until finally he didn’t run. He just broke down and cried. And I couldn’t help myself, I just hugged and snuggled him as hard as I could. On a related note, the cracked ribs healed up nicely, mine that is. It turns out that feral humans really don’t appreciate ambush hugs. Who knew? Humans are stronger than they look, by the way. Not earth pony strong, mind you, but still way stronger than they look.
He looked so guilty after he threw me off. He could tell he had hurt me, and he felt really super bad about it. He almost ran off again right then and there, and if he had I don’t think he would have ever come back. He was even more afraid of hurting us than he was afraid of us hurting him. And he was terrified of us hurting him. Somehow though I talked him down. He said his name was Ki, but nobody pronounced it right. He also said he was no one. And then he said that Celestia was hunting him, and that if she caught him she would throw him in a changeling pod and he would have to live in another dream until he died, or until ponies killed him, and then the words would make him start all over again. I didn’t understand. None of it made sense at the time. If I had known…
I took him in and hid him in my Pinkie Cave. I couldn’t let the Cakes know, at least not at first. He was too wild still… too unstable. I knew he would never hurt Pound and Pumpkin, and he would didn’t want to hurt ponies. But he thought we wanted to hurt him. And he was scared, and he was cornered, and he was… he was dangerous. He hurt me without even meaning to, because he thought I was attacking him. And the Cakes didn’t know he wouldn’t hurt their foals, and if they tried to defend Pound and Pumpkin… he was dangerous. So that’s why I kept him in the Pinkie cave at first.
Over the course of the next indeterminate time span we got to know each other. He knew all kinds of things about Equestria already, but that’s kinda normal for most humans. There were also gaps you could drive a cart through. And some things he thought he knew didn’t seem to make any sense to me. In a lot of ways it was like he really had spent a whole lot of time in a completely different Equestria, or perhaps a series of whole different Equestrias. But that was silly, of course, because there was only one Equestria, and it was the whole world, and it could never go away and just not be there waiting for me to… I’m sorry. It’s hard sometimes thinking about that, but it’s not time for that part of the story yet.
I don’t remember when or why, but we started calling each other by our middle names at some point. I was Diane, and he was Charlie, and this was very important because it meant that we were both being super serious, and we should really each listen to the words the other was saying. Special words became really important. He didn’t trust ponies. He didn’t trust anyone really, but especially ponies. I needed special words that always meant exactly one thing, regardless of any context. I needed words that were safe, that we both knew would always mean the same thing, and would always be taken seriously.
The safe words became our secret language. By the time he was ready to see Ponyville, and Ponyville was ready to see him, we weren’t Ki and Pinkie Pie anymore, we were Charlie and Diane. Our games seemed silly, almost nonsensical to the ponies around us. What was so funny, or so naughty, about a party with muffins and pancakes? Twilight thought I was keeping Charlie as some kind of exotic pet, she said as much. The Cakes thought he was stalking me, and they were plenty mad that I had brought him in without telling them. They never really trusted him around the foals. Which was a shame. He was good with foals. They were the only ponies he ever really trusted, and I think they were the only ponies that ever really understood him, too.
I spent a lot of my spare time with Charlie, playing super fun donut games. And no, “donut” is not any kind of naughty codeword. I’m not sure why, but ponies always immediately go there when it comes to “donuts”. We had code-words for that too, but donuts were innocent. COMPLETELY INNOCENT! Honestly just because a food has a hole… But I digress…
He started to trust me. It took a lot of time, and a lot of special codewords, and believe you me when you eat as many sweet baked goods as we did it made meals super-awkward. But he believed in me. And I wish I had believed in him. Celestia’s great white flank, why didn’t I believe him? He told me. He Pinkie Promised. He even Bagel Swore that he was telling me the truth. But I believed… I wanted to believe… that it was all some trick of his beautiful, broken mind. I should have listened. He was my friend and he told me all his secrets, and I told him all my secrets and I should have believed him. But he said the whole world, all of it was just a dream. It was all a dream and he wasn’t allowed to wake up. And he said that one day Celestia would find him and it would all come crashing down and in the end he’d never wake up because he knew he was really just floating in a changeling pod. What was I supposed to believe. He was talking about the world. The whole wide world. My world.