Go in. Find Pinkie Pie. Ask whether any cases of depression had passed her notice. Walk out again.
It was the perfect plan. After all, Pinkie was not hard to find; just go to the nearest available party. Roseluck knew exactly where she’d seen Goldengrape ushering the guests. Pinkie knew everyone, and if she didn’t then she’d certainly know someone else they could ask. Possibly several someone else’s: she’d have a list.
Lastly, anyone as obsessed as Pinkie – over smiling and singing at random – was bound to notice if somepony was going around with mopey, or possibly mopé, faces. Heck, she probably knew about Daisy’s depression before even the Flower Trio did, and they’d watched it happen.
So now Roseluck was sitting in another room, enduring another party, and listening to Doc give another lecture on what precisely he was going to do.
“Should really be doing my own original research and asking everyone in town. Systematically and statistically. But since we don’t have time –”
“I know, Doc.”
“Won’t be a picosecond.”
Dully, she replied, “A scientific impossibility.”
“True, true, though I suppose if we’re being pedantic it is actually impossible not to be not a picosecond, but to be a far more plausible scale of time instead –”
“Doc!” she snapped.
“Sorry. Got carried away. Won’t be a picossssssssIIII’ll be right back.”
Dully – just as dully as before – she watched him scurry over to Pinkie Pie, who was clearing a space in the middle of the dance floor with moves that should’ve counted as assault and unnecessary force, except that even the sternest of ponies picked themselves off the floor afterwards and laughed and copied her.
I wish I could have that much fun, she thought. The beat of the bass speakers pulsed through her like an externally applied heartbeat, yet every time she inched towards the dance floor, her mind screamed with outrage and she stayed where she was.
Sitting at this table. Watching Doc. Watching Goldengrape approach Doc: apparently, Goldengrape had managed to secure Pinkie as dance partner, and judging from his sweat-shining face was privately regretting it. All three of them vanished into an unheard conversation while the music beat Roseluck’s mind down over and over and over…
“NONE!” she barely heard Goldengrape shout. Pinkie shook her head and launched into a drowned speech. Only fragments of her voice’s tone penetrated the thick wall of beatbox.
Roseluck was emptied of everything, even envy. There was just an endless supply of party, and Pinkie, and Goldengrape, and smiles, and laughter, and it was just there. Just… Just nothing, as loud and psychedelically blinding as possible… her mind wandering…
Where did the other ponies get their stamina? she thought, and her voice echoed through her misty mind.
Well, obviously, Pinkie and Goldengrape are earth ponies, and earth ponies can keep on trucking long after everyone else had pulled into a roadside restaurant on the freeway of life.
She grimaced.
Although that said, not all us earth ponies can do it, either. Oh no. Not the likes of me. Not us flower ponies. Not the like of ME, huh?
There were all sorts, Doc had said once, going back millennia to when earth ponies had to diversify to please the other tribes. Rock ponies that worked on rock farms and could carve their initials into solid granite. Soil ponies with gifts for growing specific foodstuffs. Foodmaster ponies for cooking treats. Drink driver ponies for beverages. And, somewhere near the bottom, flower ponies, as pretty and as delicate as the flowers themselves, and surviving mostly because they’d given the nobles and the warriors something to look at.
There was the distant sound of laughter, and the scent, for a moment, of open meadows. Rustling under the breeze.
Nothing substantial, she thought bitterly, and the echoes ran around her mind. Just prettiness. Prettiness. Prettiness.
Oh, how she wanted to bite something.
Roseluck blinked the sleep out of her eyes and sighed. “Somewhere near the bottom”. Of course, that was in the bad old days. They were much more open-minded now…
She yawned. Close by, Doc was loudly explaining to the other two that he believed it was purely a medical matter, and if there were no abnormalities… blah blah blah… though since there were no cases or symptoms of disease which could plausibly lead to hypersomnia… blah blah blah…
Through eyes struggling to stay open – the music was bashing her consciousness to bits – she saw Goldengrape’s smile droop. No one had mentioned any names yet, but he wasn’t totally out of the loop. He must know what “hypersomnia” meant. In context.
Poor Goldengrape, thought Roseluck.
What do you really know? Everyone knew Daisy was sleeping more and more, but they just put it down to being saddy-waddy. Maybe she didn’t tell you because she didn’t want you to stop smiling.
Way to go, Doc.
Way to go, Roseluck, letting Doc talk to the poor stallion in the first place.
Oh, I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I was so certain, when I saw that reading… and something’s eating Daisy…
But Doc’s not worried. Anyway, it can’t be true, can it? Maybe the equipment’s faulty. Maybe we’re just running off into a panic again. Who knows how reliable that reading was?
Mustn’t panic. Must not panic! I’m the bravest of the bunch, remember?
Oh me. It’s just too much. Too, too much.
She closed her eyes, the music now numbing her utterly. Perhaps she was stressing out. That “nur nur nur” taunted her thoughts all over again. In her drowsiness, Roseluck wondered if this was what Daisy put up with every day.
They’d been so happy, once upon a time.
Unbidden, she dreamed.
Roseluck dreamed of the field again, pinks and yellows and greens and reds swaying under a gentle breeze, the laughter of distant foals caressing her ears, the rich smells massaging her poor, overworked nose as it breathed memories and became fresh with joys.
Around her, red roses poked through the petals. Part of her insisted there hadn’t been any roses that day, but the rest of her shrugged. The roses were fine. They were roses. The rose was the quintessential flower, as far as she was concerned.
There was Young Lily, who poked her head up. There was Young Roseluck, who leaped out and pounced on her friend. And there, smiling and laughing, was Young Daisy, who once more ran rings around them while they clambered around and over each other.
Dimly, Roseluck knew she should be awake at the party. Hard to feel compelled when she was hearing that sweet, gentle laugh, one more time.
She frowned.
Her ear twitched.
It was hard to say what had changed. Just that, without a change in the wind or a change in the scents of the meadow or even a change in the crash of playing foals over the flowers, everything had flipped in her mind to sudden dread.
Her heart beat faster, louder than any beatbox.
Then she heard it; something swished.
Roseluck’s insides turned to ice.
She looked behind her.
And saw a shadow.
Coming closer.
Billowing.
Floating.
Poised.
For the moment, it hung several metres away like a predatory cape. Midnight darkness swallowed and destroyed the dazzling summer’s day around itself until even the faintest of its stars twinkled deep within. It had no face, it had no head, it didn’t even have any limbs, and yet keen interest poisoned the world nearby and Roseluck knew, deep down where the ancient instincts huddled together and shivered, that the only reason she wasn’t smothered yet was because it was radiating… it was feeling…
…uncertain.
She stared at it. Yet there it was – she sensed it – a drop of fresh water amid burning acid. The thing was as unsure as a new student, or a new intern at a hospital full of rushing doctors and beeping confusion. It knew it had to do something. It just wasn’t clear what.
Around her, the roses changed.
Roseluck slowly looked up. Stalks towered over her. Blood red – oh why did she think blood red? – tilted downwards. Petals parted.
The maws of a particularly large one drooled. Growling closed in.
Deep within the blankets of terror and shock and confusion and a horrible, horrible pain at seeing the precious rose look ready to eat her alive, Roseluck’s hysterical mind wondered how a plant could growl.
There was a roar. The shadow charged.
One moment, it had simply hung uncertainly in space. The next moment, it was snaking through the air, swelling, filling up her entire face –
Roseluck screamed and threw herself backwards just as the black tip –
Snap!
…vanished.
Where it had been inches from her muzzle, the shadow was now replaced by the closed jaws of the giant rose flower, which straightened up and hunched its stem and swallowed. A notable bulge ran from the petals down to the roots, and then vanished.
Gently, the giant rose flower patted Roseluck on the head before straightening up again.
Eventually, still breathing heavily, Roseluck licked her lips and said, “What…?”
And her shocked memory answered: The Tantabus.