//------------------------------//
// The Next Wonderful Thing 
// Story: Lost & Found 
// by False Door 
//------------------------------//

“Oh, I love this shrug,” crooned Rarity, pivoting playfully in the three panel mirror. “I'm going to wear this right now. I'm so glad all the city’s big box stores carry inclusive sizes in their inventory; that was a good law, Rarity.” She turned to her other reflection. “Why thank you, Rarity,” she giggled.
She spun back around to face the department store clothier and a bewildered Twilight.
“I'll take this one with me. Please send the rest to the castle, good sir.”
“As you wish, princess,” nodded the sharp looking salespony.
She looked back at Twilight who’d just been tailing her patiently after only browsing through a couple of clothing articles.
“I'm sorry, Twilight, I know this isn't really your forte. It's just so difficult to resist when I walk by and see all the new window displays. We should do something we both enjoy.”
“Oh it's fine,” laughed Twilight. “We've already had an amazing day together. I loved the play and everything about the restaurant was wonderful.”
“Well, why don't I pay and then we can go walk around the park before heading back to the castle. They should have an outdoor market happening right now. They always have something for everyone.”
Rarity went to the register and made her purchases. The two alicorns left Bridledale’s and wandered leisurely down the sidewalk just happy to be in the moment and absorb the bustling heartbeat of Manehattan.
The entrance to the park had a big banner stretched overhead for the event. The smooth brick path inside was lined with dozens of pop-up shops of all kinds selling arts and crafts, food, toys and clothes. It was like a fair without the rides.
“No matter how many times I come to these, it always reminds me of the old Ponyville market,” began Rarity. “Do you remember that place?”
“I do,” smiled Twilight, slowly recalling that everyday facet of her old hometown from lifetimes ago.
Rarity quickly became ensnared by a booth selling homemade hats and scarves and soon came away with a woolen hat that complemented her shrug sweater. Twilight bought a fruit smoothie using her other self’s bits. They drifted along, drawing stares with their celebrity. Ponies whispered or greeted them with nervous excitement which only stoked Rarity's vivaciousness.
They came to the park’s centerpiece, a big fountain enclosed by a circular path that split off in three other directions all flanked with even more crowded shops.
“Oh, there's the artist’s row,” Rarity pointed excitedly. “Care to take a look?”
“Sure, that sounds fun.”
“I do love art,” continued Rarity. “But I especially love how out on the street, you see a lot more avantgard mediums than you do in the museums or even the galleries. This is where the risk-takers are.”
Twilight liked art too but not as much as Rarity and she wasn't learned enough on the subject to sound like a dealer or a museum tour guide the way her companion likely could.
They passed hoofmade decorative ceramics and art glass pieces. There were walls of oil paintings and black and white photos.
Twilight paused to look at a panoramic photograph of a misty valley with a single tree that was just tall enough to poke through the top of the fog.
The two came upon a sizable gap in the crowd where an almost abandoned art stall stood. A bored looking stallion sat at a table amongst a little labyrinth of pegboard walls adorned with some quite peculiar looking paintings.
They stopped to see a larger than life rendering of a can of beans, a birthday cake that had been mostly eaten and a pony that looked like he was made entirely of every color of flower.
Twilight squinted, mystified. “I've seen weird abstract and surreal art before but I've never seen someone just straight up paint a can of beans.”
Rarity chortled, pointing at an oil painting portrait of a dignified house cat dressed sharply in business attire.
“Look at this. It reminds me of Sequin. I could never get him to model a three piece suit for me like this.”
The stallion at the counter looked up and gasped in horror at recognizing the two visitors. “Oh, P- Princess Rarity! I am so sorry. He lurched to his hooves in a panic and began taking down paintings. “I- I was just leaving. Nothing to see here.”
Twilight and Rarity exchanged befuddled glances.
“Wait, what are you doing?” asked Rarity.
“I'm just removing this offensive eyesore from your presence.”
“I wasn't offended and even if I was, I'm not going to run anypony out of town simply because I don't like their art.”
He paused to look back at her. “Well, I know, it's just, I'm still embarrassed because you’re so fashionable and classy and my art is… not.”
“Fashionable is a construct and taste in art is subjective. Your paintings might not be conventionally beautiful but I feel something when I look at them and isn't that the whole point?”
The stallion sighed and carefully rehung his paintings before returning to the table. “Uh… I'm Kitschy Craft.” He held out his hoof to shake with both of them, eyes on the ground.
“So I take it you're not moving a lot of paintings then?” asked Rarity.
“Well… no. I never have. Ponies only seem to want beautiful paintings and I don't really do that.”
“There’s so much more to beauty than aesthetics,” she replied  thoughtfully. “Everything is beautiful in some way if you stop and think about it for long enough.”
“Well you might understand that but I’m afraid that most don't share that insight. My paintings surprise ponies or even make them laugh. They might enjoy looking but no one wants to buy one and hang it in their house because it looks weird and it's not pretty.”
Rarity put a hoof to her chin. “Hmm… You’re a good artist, technically speaking; why don't you just try painting other subject matter if you can't find buyers for what you're doing now?”
“I have but it just feels so draining and the paintings always come out lackluster because they don't inspire me like what comes to me naturally.”
“I see… Well, even though your work may lack a certain broad appeal, that doesn't mean it isn't beautiful in its own right or that you can't get paid for making it. I think your main issue is that you just haven't connected with your target consumer.”
“I've been doing this professionally for five years,” he moaned. “My target consumer is still my parents.”
“Believe it or not, there is a whole pool of eccentric, affluent ponies out there looking for an offbeat original art trophy, ponies you'd never cross paths with at a street fair.”
“But… you're here,” he pointed out bluntly.
“I am,” she shrugged. “But I go out of my way to make the whole city my playground.”
Kitschy frowned with doubt. “Well, how would I ever get exposure with those ponies? Sounds like they live in a world out of my reach.”
“I have one idea,” she offered boastfully. “I'm going to buy that cat painting. When visitors see your work displayed prominently in the castle of a fabulous, trendsetting influencer like myself, they'll have no choice but to stop and give it the artistic consideration it deserves. In the same way that our mere presence here seems to have increased traffic to your booth.”
Kitschy looked around, noticing more ponies browsing his work at that moment than at any other time he could remember.
“No pony will be able to resist asking me about my new cat painting. There will probably be a rash of decorating articles on it.”
“I can't believe you'd hang that in your castle. It would clash with the whole vibe.”
Rarity Waved a hoof dismissively. “Oh, no, not if you do it right. Anything can look good in the right setting. It will be fun to redecorate a room around it. You are probably right that most probably wouldn't want your art hanging in their domicile but that's because most wouldn't know how to integrate it into a living space. So maybe your paintings would work well at certain venues, restaurants, clubs. A new children's hospital just opened in the city and I bet the foals there would appreciate the bold absurdity of a fish in a tophat or a golden lawn flamingo.”
Rarity gasped. “I just had a brilliant idea. Do you have more paintings elsewhere?”
“Yes?” he answered slowly.
“Fabulous. I can just buy them and donate them to the hospital. Foals would love them.”
His eyes bulged. “You're going to buy all of my paintings?”
“Well, not necessarily. Just the ones that I think would look good in a children's hospital. Do you have a business card?” - - -







“I figured out his name and things still went pretty well considering,” muttered Twilight to herself as she scratched her pen across the parchment. “Can't wait to talk to you again in a couple of days.”
She put a piece of tape on the little paper and opened up her closet where she had moved the enchanted mirror for safety. She pulled off the cover and checked for any new notes. Then she taped her own to the glass and covered it back up.
Twilight teleported from her other self’s bedroom to the meeting room to rejoin Noteworthy.
“Princess,” he greeted amiably. “I noticed you haven't opened up the rest of your birthday presents yet. Would you like help with that?”
Twilight screwed up her face. “Uh, no. I'll get around to it eventually. I'm just wanting to stay focused and productive while I'm still in work mode.”
“Understood,” he nodded, flipping the first page on his floating clipboard. “So that roundtable is coming together. We've already got seven names expressing interest.”
“Excellent,” she celebrated. “I feel like we're on a good path here.” - - -







Twilight scanned down the line of old book spines, noting every title seemed to be on fossils, caves, rocks and minerals. She was expecting this kind of content in the non fiction section but here the trend continues with fictional stories about spelunking, earthquakes, volcanoes and other geological adventures.
“Well? isn't it amazing?” squealed Pinkie Pie. “With the new add-on this place is practically the Canterlot Archives!” She swept a forehoof across the interior of the Rockville Public Library which was now about half the size of Twilight's bedroom.
“It sure is,” smiled Twilight affably. “But do they have anything here not about rocks?”
“They sure do! They have a whole section, something for everyone!” She pointed across the room to a single dusty cubicle with about ten books in it. The sign above read ‘non rock.’
Pinkie shrugged. “They're not very popular around here but we have them.” Then she whispered, “I think they're just the books that outsiders forget on the trains. Anyway, that's the newest new thing since you last visited. Wanna go to Dead Tree Ridge now?”
“Sure,” chimed Twilight, feigning excitement over whatever that was.
“Alright- oh, first I have to get something.” Pinkie frolicked over to the water cooler by the front desk where she popped a cup out of the dispenser and began filling it.
Twilight’s eyes scanned the desk area. On the wall was a birthday calendar on a whiteboard that was crowded enough to be a collection of every Rockville citizen's birthday for the month. Another calendar beside it was a schedule of local events with something significant happening every weekend like a holiday or a contest.
“Alright, let's go,” said Pinkie, floating her full water cup. She vanished in a flash of pink magic.
“Uh…” Twilight glanced around awkwardly, clueless about what to do. Pinkie had teleported outside… somewhere. Before she could decide whether or not it was a good idea to ask the librarian for directions to Dead Tree Ridge, Pinkie reappeared.
“Come on, silly filly. Did you forget what we were doing?”
Thankfully this time Pinkie took her too when she went. They appeared on a barren, rocky crest looking down over the little town and into the valley. Looking this way, the featureless horizon stretched on before them forever, underscoring just how far away they were from anything.
Twilight walked to the edge and sighed. This seemed like a strange and kind of underwhelming way to round out her whirlwind tour of Alternate Equestria. The fact that Rockville had its own princess castle was nothing short of ludicrous in her mind. It might as well have a professional hoofball stadium or a four year college while it’s at it.
Pinkie's home was a more humble structure than Rarity's skyscraper penthouse or Fluttershy's refurbished castle in the forest. It was the equivalent of living in the court house or the town hall of a normal small town. That was perfectly fine because like Rarity had mentioned, it integrated well. It would be a bit obscene to live in a gigantic opulent castle looming over Rockville like the mountains themselves.
The town had grown significantly over a thousand years. It wasn’t by any means large, about the size of old Ponyville now but it was still an impressive change. In the world she came from, Rockville had died centuries ago. There was nothing out here but dust storms and the rotting skeleton of a ghost town. It was well known for being an abandoned wasteland.
Although it seemed silly in concept, it was hard to deny that Pinkie's presence in the middle of nowhere arguably facilitated the single starkest difference between these two realities, small as it was. But something really bothered Twilight. Hundreds of years on end ruling this little dusty and lonely place but Pinkie's attitude was miraculously unflappable. She still possessed boundless energy and the naivety of a foal who'd never been hurt before.
“What's the water for?” murmured Twilight.
“My friend,” smiled Pinkie, prancing along the edge of the ridge.
She watched curiously as the pink alicorn paused to carefully dump the water on the ground.
“Look, Twilight, it's going to Bloom!”
Twilight wandered over to see a little scraggly plant with a pale blue bud, standing in a mud puddle. It was the only other lifeform in sight besides the two ponies gazing upon it.
“I've been giving this little plant a cup of water every day for two months. It was really yellow at first but then new green parts started to grow and now there's a little flower growing on it.” She grinned at her exuberantly.
Twilight smiled weakly and shook her head. “How do you do it, Pinkie?”
“Well, I usually use my own mug but today-”
“No, I mean how do you just… find the will to keep going when you rule over such a bleak, isolated place? How does it not break your spirit?”
“Oh… That… It's just like a game. When things are hard and you feel like curling into a little ball in a dark corner, you gotta find something to keep you going.”
“Like what?”
Pinkie pointed out over the valley. “You gotta look at the horizon and get excited about the next wonderful thing and if you don't see anything out there, then you make something to get excited about and that something can be anything. A new holliday, a board game with friends, finishing a painting, eating a slice of chocolate cake, eating an entire chocolate cake, eating three entire chocolate cakes. If you don't have anything to look forward to, that's when you lose hope.”
Twilight looked down at the little plant again. “Okay… but why keep putting time and energy into this plant that's all the way out here in the middle of the dust where no one's even going to see it?”
Pinkie shrugged. “I saw it. You saw it. Isn't it kind of inspiring to see a flower growing all the way out here? It already struggled to grow this far despite its environment, why not help it along? Maybe it'll make seeds and grow more plants but even if it doesn't and it just withers away in the end, it was still fun while it lasted. It's the little moments like these that make being alive worthwhile, y’know?”
Twilight looked back at the little town and wondered if it was a mistake not to personally intervene in its demise or if she could have saved it at all.