//------------------------------//
// The Accountant's Tale 
// Story: The Canterlot Tales 
// by CTVulpin 
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	“I nominate Maggie,” Harlequin said, beating out Trixie to be the first to speak up.
“Huh?”  the grey earth pony asked, surprised, “Why me?”
Harlequin smirked and leaned back in his seat.  “So we can get the most boring story out of the way.”
“Boring?” Maggie seethed, “You don’t even know what my story is going to be about yet!  How dare you call it ‘boring’ already?”
“You’re an accountant,” Harlequin explained airily, “You probably got your cutie mark in the middle of a math lesson or something, and I can’t imagine you had many exciting adventures before attaching yourself to us in the middle of that Discordian nastiness in Ponyville.”
“Ha,” Maggie laughed challengingly, “If you knew anything about my family you’d be singing a different tune Harlequin.  Now hold your tongue and open your ears, because I’m about to educate you.”





I was born and raised on a rock farm by parents who subscribed to some… atypical values.  The fact that we toiled day in and day out rolling rocks around seemingly barren fields wasn’t even the oddest part of it.  Mother and Father both came from a tradition of giving foals oddly non-indicative names.  My oldest sister was a near aversion: Pinkamena Diane Pie, better known nowadays as Pinkie Pie, the Element of Laughter.  I suppose she was destined to be a mold-breaker from the start.  My full name is Margaret Pie, and the youngest of us is Susan Fidelity Pie.  We were each treated the same, given the same mane-styles, and never given a chance to leave the farm.  We didn’t know any better, but it was a dismal and colorless existence only occasionally broken up by visits by close relatives, and smiles were all but nonexistent.  I’ve heard Pinkamena exaggerate just how joyless it all was, but from her perspective I suppose it’s understandable.  It was a strictly routine lifestyle, until the day the clouds were blown away and the sky seemed to be split by a rainbow.  The sight changed Pinkamena’s life – and mane – in an instant, and so the family stories tend to link that day solely to her.  The suddenness and novelty of that rainbow had an effect on all of us that day, but it wasn’t until the next day when we awoke to find Pinkamena in the rock silo with a cake, music, and colorful decorations set out for a party that it really hit home for us: change was possible, and it was fun.
After Pinkamena got her cutie mark, things lightened up considerably on the farm.  She was an unstoppable force of positive energy on a crusade to keep the joy of her first rainbow alive, and my parents had the wisdom to admit there was nothing on Equestria that would stop her.  Not that there were any drastic changes to daily life; rock farming is legitimate business and it still needed to get done, but we weren’t pressured as much to take part at all hours.  Pinkamena was given time and space to give proper attention to her parties, and Susan and I were given freedom to explore, on the chance that we’d take after our sister and discover talents unrelated to the farm.  Our parents were as pleased as punch when Susan discovered she did indeed have an interest in the development and refinement of rocks, gems, and assorted other mineral goods.  As for me...  Well, that is my tale.
I’ve never understood why we couldn’t devote a corner of our property to growing actual food, but apparently farmed rocks and “ordinary” crops don’t mix.  That left our farm entirely dependent on regular trips to the nearest town, Petrihoof, to buy food from the market.  My sisters and I were shocked when we learned that our pantry at home wasn’t magically able to produce grains, flowers, and vegetables out of thin air once a week, and our parents were just as embarrassed to realize we’d been living with that fantasy for our whole lives until the day after Pinkamena emptied the pantry for a party and Market Day had to occur two days early.  Once we learned the truth, at least one of us wound up accompanying Father or Mother to market every week.  The trip there and back took up nearly a whole day even without having to walk at a young filly’s pace, so we had to work extra hard to earn the privilege.  
Normally only one of us would get to go to the market, but one week all three of us fillies happened to earn the privilege at roughly the same time and Pinkamina refused to let the opportunity for an all-family trip to town pass by.  Every second our family of five spent on the road that day was filled with Pinkie’s rambling list of activities she was planning on the spot, right up until she reached the edge of Petrihoof and some bright idea struck her out of the blue.  With a gasp, she sped off and vanished into the Market Day crowds, leaving our ears ringing with relieved silence for a few seconds.
“Shouldn’t we go after her or something?” Susan asked at last.
“No,” Father said calmly, “She knows her away around pretty well by now, and she’ll be back when she realizes she doesn’t have her spending money yet.  Help us set up girls, and then you can run along as well.”  We made our way deeper into the market to my family’s usual location for setting up shop.  Mother and Father were each hauling a cart full of rocks of various sizes.  Mother’s cart was designed to fold out into a simple stall from which we’d attempt to sell curiously shaped or patterned rocks to tourists and collectors.  It was a decent source of income, but our real business resided in Father’s cart that day.  His rocks were to be delivered to the local masonry and construction companies to be cut or broken down for use as building materials or decorative facades.  We set up the stand, with no sign of Pinkamina returning, and Father was about to pull out mine and Susan’s allowance when an explosion of cake batter laced with confetti went off down the road.  “Uh oh,” Father said with grim worry as he ran off to investigate.  Susan and I followed, somehow knowing that our sister was going to be at the center of the commotion.  Sure enough, we found her in the midst of the batter-caked wreckage of a storefront and what she later told us was a “party wagon,” something she’d been working on with her allowance and spare time over her last couple of market trips.  She had been testing it, but had misjudged something or another, resulting in the explosion.  Nopony was hurt, but the owner of the store Pinkamina had damaged was understandably angry.
I’ll spare you the details of the long, heated discussion that followed between Father and the store owner, who expected more than a simple apology from Pinkamina, and jump ahead to the agreement they reached.  My pink, carefree, whimsical sister would have to try and repay as much of a thousand-bit debt – really only a fraction of the cost to repair the storefront, but she was just a filly – by the end of the day and work off whatever was left over back home at the farm.  Pinkamina didn’t seem pleased with the prospect, but she put on a brave face and set to the task with as much gusto as she could muster.  She made it about halfway down the block before realized she had absolutely no idea what she was going to do.
“A thousand bits!” she exclaimed when I caught up to her, willing to offer my help, “How am I going to get a thousand bits Maggie?  It’s like… a thousand!  I’ve only got twenty, no, wait…”  She reached into her bag and counted her money.  “That’s right, Father didn’t give me my allowance!  What do I do?”
“Well, one usually makes money by selling things,” I answered.
“But I don’t have anything to sell,” Pinkamina said, “I could put on a party, but you don’t sell parties; you give them.”
“Sell rocks,” Susan said as she joined our brainstorming session, “It is the family business after all.”
“Rocks are so… boring though,” Pinkamina complained, sticking out her tongue, “If I’m going to find something sell, it’s gotta be fun and interesting.”  We all sat down and thought for several minutes, and then I got an idea.  Instructing my sisters to wait for me, I galloped off and spent my allowance on a set of paints and brushes, and on my way back I gathered up as many hoof-sized rocks as I could find lying around in corners and under bushes.  When I got back to Pinkamina and Susan, I laid the rocks out, picked one out, and painted a cute face on it.
“Behold,” I said, holding out my creation, “a ‘pet’ rock.  It’s the perfect companion; it’ll listen to you when you need to talk but nopony’s around, it can keep the pages of the book you’re reading from flipping over in the wind, and all sort of things you can imagine.”
“That’s a great idea Maggie!” Susan exclaimed.  Pinkamina looked dubiously at the rock I’d painted.
“You can paint them to look like whatever you want,” I said, trying to sweeten the deal.
“Well, all right, I’ll give it try I guess,” Pinkamina said at last.  We divided the rocks between us and got to work painting them.  Pinkamina slowly warmed to the task, and by the time we’d finished – and used up almost the paint – she was literally bouncing with the anticipation of sharing and selling the lot.  We loaded the rocks into her bag and she took off in search of young ponies to charm the bits off of.
Things were relatively quiet for about an hour and a half, maybe two hours as Susan and I browsed around the market until Pinkamina found us again.  I could tell at a glance that she’d found success, since her bag looked empty, and she was grinning from ear to ear.  “Maggie, Maggie, it worked!” she proclaimed happily as she wove between the ponies going about their own business in order to reach us.  “Look, look,” she said, digging into her bag to pull out a hoofful of bits, “I made almost thirty bits!”
“Only thirty?” I asked, “How many did you sell?”
“All of them,” Pinkamina said proudly.
“For how much?” I pressed, although I had pretty good idea of the answer already.
“One bit a piece,” Pinkamina reported.  Susan and I both face-hoofed.  “What?” our sister asked, confused, “They were just rocks.  They weren’t even farmed rocks; I know you just picked them up off the ground Maggie.”
“Pinkamina,” I moaned, “How are you ever going to make a thousand bits if you’re selling each rock for only one?  I bet you didn’t even consider how much the paint we put on them cost.”
“So… should it have been two bits?”
“Exactly,” I drawled sarcastically, “No.  Well, you might as well kiss your trips to the market goodbye Pinkamina.  You’ll probably be doing chores until you’re twenty.”
“Can’t we just make more and sell them at a higher price?” Susan suggested.
I shook my head.  “Pinkamina’s already sold thirty pet rocks for a bit apiece.  Everypony who wants one will expect to pay the same price, and it’ll take at least fifteen bits to buy more paint to make new ones…”
Pinkamina’s ears drooped and she started to tear up.  “I’m sorry Maggie,” she said with a slight sniffle, “You came up with the idea, and I blew it.”
I sighed and gave her a light hug.  “Now wait a minute,” I said, “Let me think.  I might be able to fix this, at least a little bit.  We’ll make sure you’re only a chore slave until you’re fifteen, at the latest.”  She giggled and returned the hug briefly before stepping back to give me room to think.  I paced around, thinking hard but coming up with nothing for several minutes.  As my frustration began to reach its peak, the source of my eventual epiphany approached in the form of two unicorn colts, one who was carrying one of the pet rocks in his magic.
“Pardon me,” the other one addressed Pinkamina, “Are you the one selling the painted rocks?  I want to buy one.”
“Uh, sorry,” my sister said gloomily, “I’m all out.”
At that moment, inspiration hit me like a lightning bolt.  “We can offer you something better though,” I announced, “If you’ll bear with us for a few minutes while we get our supplies together, you can make your very own, personalized pet rock for the low cost of… seven bits.”
“Seven?” the colt exclaimed, pointing to his brother’s rock, “He only had to pay one bit for his!”
“True,” I admitted, “but his rock wasn’t custom-painted.  Besides, we do have to cover the cost of the paints my sister is about to go buy.”  I hoofed Pinkamina’s pouch of bits to Susan, who took the hint and galloped off to the art store.  I glanced around and saw other fillies and colts locating us and starting to approach in a crowd, led by friends and siblings who had bought the first batch of rocks.  “Demand is going to rise soon as well,” I said to the indignant colt in front of me, “but, I suppose we could go as low as three bits to buy a rock and rent the brush to paint it with a single color, and five bits for multiple colors.  What do you say?”
“I could just pick up any old rock and get my own paints,” the colt retorted.
“You’d buy a whole fifteen-bit paint set to paint a single rock?” I asked, giving him a flat look.  He took a step back, glanced at his brother, and then the two withdrew to discuss in private before finally coming back and dropping five bits at my feet.  “I’ll make sure you’ll get the first turn,” I said, scooping up the money and stashing it away.  I turned to Pinkamina and said, “Make sure he gets to be the first to paint a rock.  I’ll handle the crowd.”
“Okie dokie!” Pinkamina acknowledged with her typical cheer as I stepped forth to intercept the incoming colts and fillies and give them my sales pitch.  By the time Susan returned with the paint, we had a line long enough to start impeding traffic, and so we relocated to a point just outside town where we could find properly sized stones with ease.  Susan and Pinkamina oversaw the distribution of rocks, paint, and brushes while I stood at the end of the line collecting money, enticing ponies to come take part, and having the time of my life.
Far too soon, the sun began sinking toward the horizon and the market stands started to close up as the merchants prepared to head back to their homes.  Mother and Father came to get the three of us just as we sent off our last satisfied customer and began to clean up.  Father went to Pinkamina and gave her an expectant look.  She in turn looked at me and I trotted over, my bags jingling with coins.  “How much did we make?” she asked.
“I… haven’t actually counted yet,” I admitted sheepishly, and then dumped out the bags, resulting in a pile of bits that left both our parents looking surprised.  They helped me and Pinkamina sort and count them, and we found the total came to over two hundred bits.
“Aw, it’s not enough,” Pinkamina said with a pout.
“Yes,” Father said, “but it’s far more than I expected you to get, even with help.”  He gave me a searching look that turned into an approving smile as I dug at the ground in embarrassment.  “I’ll tell you what Pinkamina,” he said, “You do this well at the next market day and we’ll forget the rest of your debt.”
“Really?”  Pinkamina squealed happily, “Thank you thank you thank you!”  She hopped around in circles and then grabbed me up in a huge hug.  “And thank you so much Maggie!  Wanna help me out next week?”
“Gladly,” I said, “Today was the most… invigorating market day ever.”  I hugged my sister back, and as I did so I felt a tingle on my flank.  Glancing at it, I saw my cutie mark appearing in blaze of sparkles.  My family instantly started congratulating me, but none was so ecstatic as Pinkamina.  After all, she had a valid excuse to hold a big party now.





“And so there you have it,” Maggie concluded, relaxing her posture and taking notice of the food that had been delivered to the table while she spoke, “What do you say now Harlequin?”  Harlequin leaned his head back and let out an exaggerated snore, and Maggie leveled a death glare at him.
“I thought it was nice,” Cabbage Patch murmured, “Giving your sister so much help, it was… sweet.”
“Thank you Cabbage,” Maggie said warmly.
“Am I to believe that you got your cutie mark by inventing the concept of pet rocks?” Harlequin asked, throwing off his pretense of bored sleep.
“Hardly,” Maggie said, rolling her eyes, “I’m sure the idea’s occurred to ponies all over Equestria and beyond through every age of time, wherever there were lots of small rocks and particularly bored children.  Besides, that little enterprise of ours only lasted three weeks before Pinkamina lost interest and moved on to something else.  So,” she picked up a carrot in her teeth, “who should go next?”