//------------------------------//
// Cutie Pie (Rainbow Dash x Marble Pie) 
// Story: The Wheel of Ships 
// by Luminous Comet 
//------------------------------//

"...and this is my little, itty-bitty baby sister, Marble!"

Rainbow snapped out of her drifting thoughts. She didn't even remember how this had started, her and Pinkie pouring over a scrapbook of her family. And she tuned out for most of it, but now she was wide awake. That picture, which Pinkie was pointing to with her hoof, that young mare, it caught her attention.

"And that's all my family on the farm. But, ooh, I think I still have pictures of my cousins somewhere!"

"Uh, Pinkie, wait!" Rainbow had stood up and put her hoof on Pinkie's shoulder, like she could physically stop her thoughts from wandering. "Um, heh, why don't you tell me more about your sisters? I'm kinda curious now. Why don't you start with, uh, I dunno, let's say, Marble."

It was a horrible attempt at sounding casual about it, but Pinkie was too excited to notice. She plopped down next to her again and started looking for as many pictures of her little sister as she could find as she just released a flood of words.

"Oh, I love Marble, she is so cute! She kind of doesn't like to talk in front of strangers, oh, she doesn't even like talking out loud to any of us most of the time, but she's so smart, and even though the work on the farm is hard on her, she never gives up and" Pinkie gasped loudly and jumped up again. "ooh, I have to show you the necklace she made me, she is so good with her hooves! I'm so proud of my baby sister!"

As Pinkie started rummaging through her things, Rainbow's mind focused in on those last two words. "Hey, uh... you say 'baby sister', so... how old is Marble?"

"Oh, she's two years and four months younger than me! So she's--" She gasped again. "Ohmygosh, that means she's almost as little as you!"

"Ugh, come on..." She acted annoyed, but that information was actually a relief. It would have been really awkward if she'd been too young for her. "And, um, does she... have a boyfriend?"

"Huh?" Pinkie pulled her head from the storage box she had been rooting around in, a bundle of streamers caught on her ear. "Why would you wanna know that?"

"Oh, heh, Maud has a boyfriend, right?" she quickly said, somehow managing to pull on information she hadn't actually been listening for earlier, "So I guess it was on my mind."

"Hmm." Pinkie narrowed her eyes and leaned in closer to her. "Nope. She's still single."

"Cool! I mean... yeah, cool." Rainbow fanned her wings a little, trying to mask her traitorous body language by pretending to just stretch them.

"Dashie..." Pinkie came crawling out of the box, moving closer again. For a moment, Rainbow was reminded of a horror movie, a filly with a log mane crawling out of a well. A movie that totally did not keep her up two nights in a row. "Why did you ask that?"

"Hey, I told you, it was kinda on my mind." She started taking steps back as Pinkie didn't stop advancing. "You know Twilight always says, uh... asking questions to engage the... presentation?"

Pinkie raised an eyebrow, but stopped her advance. "Oki-doki," she said slowly, before her smile returned and she hopped back to her boxes. "She's pretty shy, anyway, and all of us are pretty protective, especially Limestone."

Rainbow Dash sighed in relief, though now she had the image of three massive boulders in her mind, standing between her and this cute mare. Well, two boulders and a roll of sugar floss.

"So, do you think she likes mares?" she stupidly asked next.