“A rock? That is my destiny? What is your problem, horn? I followed you all the way out here for a *rock*?” Rarity glowered at the rock, but its stony face withstood her most powerful glare without even a crack in its façade. She gave a little whine of frustration, and shouted, “Dumb rock!”
She somehow made it back to Ponyville in time to see the play. Everypony said the costumes she’d made were ‘nice’, but she could tell polite disinterest as well as the next pony. “I guess I wasn’t cut out to be a fashionista,” she said to her mother, who did her best to cheer her up with some burnt toast and a sugary smile.
“It’s okay, dear. I’m sure you’ll find your special talent soon enough.”
Her father had a thoughtful look.“You know, if your destiny is a rock, maybe you could try apprenticing at the old rock farm on the edge of town.” He flexed a forehoof to show off his muscles, such as they were. “Back when I was on the team, Coach had us all do a stint there as part of our strength training – they’re always looking for help.”
Rarity didn’t like the sound of that. “I don’t want muscles! I want to be *fabulous*!”
“And I didn’t want to get tied down with an old ball and chain – until I met your mother. The moment I saw her, I knew that she was my destiny.” Her parents looked at each other with a horrifying degree of affection. “If you try to fight your destiny, you’ll never find what’ll really makes you happy.”
So she went to the farm, to find true happiness. Instead, she found a grey field worked by grey ponies under a grey, overcast sky. There was no talking, there was no smiling, there were only rocks. Rocks, and dirt, and dust, that worked their way into her coat and mane until she was just as grey as the others, drudging drearily from day to day of endless, pointless labor, rotating the rocks slowly from the center of the farm to the edge, where they were smashed into gravel.
The only bright spot in this dreary, grey existence was the filly Rarity bunked with at night: the vibrantly pink, perplexing Pinkamena. Rarity would watch Pinkie work in the fields alongside her and the rest of Pinkie’s family – she could hardly be missed, as the only real color for miles around – and she never seemed to do anything special, but somehow, at the day’s end, Pinkie’s rocks would be sorted carefully into piles by color. Or arranged into smiley faces, or pictures of birds and flowers, or in one case a huge maze covering the whole of the eastern field, even the parts she hadn’t laid a hoof on that day.
“That’s just Pinkie being Pinkie,” was one sister’s disinterested response.
“How do you *do* that?” Rarity asked Pinkamena one night, as they crawled into bed at the end of the day.
“Do what, Rarity?” Pinkamena replied quietly, feigning innocence.
“That thing, with the rocks, and the maze –“ Rarity pressed. “I rolled half those rocks myself!”
“Maybe if you rolled *all* your rocks, you wouldn’t have to wonder,” Pinkie said.
Rarity was quiet for a few seconds – it was true, she wasn’t strong enough to move the really big ones. But neither was Pinkamena! “Now you’re just teasing me. That isn’t very nice.”
Pinkie giggled. “Tell me more about Canterlot,” she asked, always a surefire way to change the subject. Rarity knew it was a dodge, but how could she resist? It was *Canterlot*!
“You’re falling asleep again, Rarity,” Pinkie said, waking her from her daydream. Rarity blinked the sleep out of her eyes, and her horn glowed as she levitated the teacup up to her mouth. “You looked like you were having a nice dream. Was I in it? Was I?”
“Part of it,” Rarity said. “I was just thinking about the old days, back when we used to rotate all the rocks, even though most of them weren’t good for anything but gravel.” Nowadays, with Rarity’s gem-finding spell, they could tell which rocks were budding geodes and not waste so much time on the duds. To say it had improved the family’s fortunes was the understatement of the millennium; it had brought them out of poverty into something resembling the fabulous life that Rarity had always wanted. “You used to make strange patterns in the fields – I never found out how you did that.”
Pinkie Pie chuckled. “Oh! I remember that,” she said. “That was one of my best pranks. The exploding-balloon prank was more fun at the time, but I was grounded for *weeks*.” With a broken leg, she didn’t need to add, since Rarity had been the one to pull her slightly singed tail out of line of fire while it was still attached to her body. “I never got in trouble for moving rocks around.”
“Hmm,” Rarity said, taking another sip of tea. “So however *did* you manage it?”
“Oh, I could tell you that, but I think there’s a better question you should be asking,” Pinkamena said, glancing at the window.
“Oh?” Rarity didn’t even try to resist. If there was anything Pinkie was good at, it was changing the subject.
Pinkie stood up and looked out at the night sky. “Why isn’t the sun up? Dawn was ten minutes ago.”
“WELL,” Rarity said, a bit of disgust entering her voice, “it probably has something to do with them holding the official celebration in…” she gave an exaggerated shudder, “Ponyville. How many years in a row have they been late with Spring?”