//------------------------------//
// Two 
// Story: Dat's Our Ragamuffin! 
// by PresentPerfect 
//------------------------------//

Dat's Our Ragamuffin!
by Present Perfect

Two

A long, viscous trail of green snot ran from Maud's left nostril to the pile of tissues on the table.  She had long since given up trying to actually throw them in the wastebasket, just ever so slightly out of reach down and to her left.  She was making the most of her will to get them to clean themselves up, but her telekinesis wasn't working any better than her throwing arm.

Her whole body felt like a mud puddle.  And mud puddles were not good at throwing or telekinesis.  That had to be the explanation.

"Gee, Maud," said her directly younger sister.  "I sure hope this 'Feel Better Maud' cake makes you feel better!"

Pinkie was clad in a batter-stained apron.  Her hair was tied up in twin pom-poms, also inexplicably stained with batter.  She whirled about the kitchen with a metal mixing bowl, in which she was gamely whisking more of said batter.

"I always bake when I'm feeling bad, and it usually cheers me right up!  But I also tend to get snot in everything, and Mr. and Mrs. Cake told me that's a health hazard, so that's why I didn't offer to let you help out.  I hope you're not upset!"

Maud snuffled.  "Dat's ogay."  Gingerly, she prodded the pile of wadded tissues until one of them inched toward the edge of the table.  Maybe it would get the hint and go for a little jog.

"Oooh!"

Pinkie put her face uncomfortably close to Maud's.  Maud would have jumped backward to save her sister from potential infection, but she was simply too mud to be able to.

"Whatcha got there?"

Sitting beneath the tissues, which Pinkie had somehow been able to see through, was a chunk of rock half the size of Maud's fist.  It was mottled brown and grey, with a smooth end and a rough end, and otherwise completely nondescript.

"Id's a rogk."

"Ohhhh!" Pinkie nodded, and some batter dropped from her hair onto the table with a soft plip.  "What kiiiind of rock?"

That was the question, was it not?  Something about the rock's smooth brown surface tugged at the back of Maud's head, but she was, quite frankly, too sick to figure it out.  She had tried sniffing the rock, though breathing alone made her nose ache from all the blowing.  She had poked at the rock, even though the lightest touch to her disease-sensitized skin felt like fire.  She had even licked the rock, for all that she herself had to admit that was super-gross.

"I dunno." Maud sniffed again.  "By Baud Sense isn'd worging righd now."

"Poor Maud!"

Maud had to give her sister credit: she knew just how much sympathy to put into an exclamation to bridge the boundary between pitying and sincere.

"I'm sure this get well cake will be just the ticket to get you well again!  And then you'll be able to identify all the rocks you could ever want!  Super-promise!"

A cough wrenched its way out of Maud's chest, scraping along her throat.  She sighed and laid her head on the table.  "Thangs, Pingie."

Pinkie went back to mixing and humming.  Maud closed her eyes.

All the women in her family had had the Sense, for as far back as she knew.  Hers and Limestone's were tied inexorably to rock-related things.  Pinkie's let her forecast disasters.  Marble's... was best left unmentioned.  There was a reason the girl was so quiet.

The Sense was inexplicable.  It was finicky.  Its origins were a mystery and its effects unpredictable.

But somehow, some tiny portion of her Maud Sense must have still been able to soldier through the haze of cold and flu.  Even with her eyes closed, she knew someone had just picked up the rock.

A part of her didn't care.  Just falling asleep here, bent in half over the kitchen table, was her true destiny.

She peeled her eyes a crack.  What she saw startled them fully open.

An orange-skinned boy with a blond crew cut was holding the rock between his teeth.  It looked like he had just tried to bite into it.  Instantly, Maud knew that, whatever kind of rock it was, it was assuredly higher on the hardness scale than bone.

"Dat's real coprolite, dat is!" he proclaimed.

Pinkie shrieked and dropped her bowl.  Batter flew everywhere.

"Wow!" she cried, turning around, her hair frizzed out of its poms and into a unified globe.  "You just totally snuck up on me without setting off my Pinkie Sense and that's really really creepy!"

Maud only had eyes for the boy.  Her heart fluttered in her chest, pumping blood throughout her veins.  It had never been some disease keeping her Sense in check; it simply wasn't a rock at all!  Stymied by poop again.

"Oi'm Ragamuffin, Oi am!" shouted the boy.  He tossed the rock in one hand, caught it, and set it back on the table.  Then, shoving his hands in his pressed white pants pockets, he strolled out the back door.

"Ha ha," said Pinkie, a crazed smile on her face.  "It's really great meeting you, creepy stealth boy, never come back, okay?"

She retrieved her bowl.  Maud ignored the rock.

"I like him," she said.

Their older sister came charging out from elsewhere in the house.  She tore through the kitchen without so much as a by-your-shut-it and made for the back door, shouting, "Stop chewing on Holder's Boulder!"

Neither Maud nor Pinkie felt the need to comment.  You couldn't explain Pie Sense.