//------------------------------//
// The Expected Solution 
// Story: Taken for Granite 
// by Cloudy Skies 
//------------------------------//

	The floorboards’ creaks lessened bit by bit, ending with the faint sound of Big Macintosh’s door closing on the floor above. Applejack bit onto the cloth and pulled it over the dining room’s final firefly lamp, lulling the luminous insects to sleep. Apple Bloom was fast asleep, and Granny Smith had long since gone to bed as well. All was quiet, and all was dark except for the single candle she carried. Nothing remained but to get her own flank bedwards, and it would be another day well spent with her family and friends. All she could ever have asked for.

Applejack put the candle down on the corner cupboard, her eyes drawn to the pictures lining the walls of the farmhouse’s largest single room. It was hard to make out details in the faint candlelight, but she knew them all by heart. When she looked past the fireplace to the large shadowed frame, she saw the painting of Sweet Apple Acres ten years and four barn-raisings ago without needing her eyes. To its right, past the front door, a grey-blue stallion and a curly-maned mare smiled down on her, and by the nook with the gramophone waited Granny Smith, Big Mac, Apple Bloom and Applejack herself. She closed her eyes and tried to hold on to that swell of contentment.

All I could ever want. She mouthed the words as she thought them, trying to focus. Thinking of her family always brought forth a smile and pleasant thoughts, but as of late, she’d caught herself wondering if maybe there was something else, something she was missing. Generations of Apples looked down on her from the walls, and lately she’d started wondering where she fit into all of it. If she fit into it at all. A moment’s contemplation begat another, and she missed the days when she fell asleep the second her head hit her pillow.

Nothing wrong with curiosity, Twilight would have insisted, but a tiny part of Applejack wondered if it was wrong of her. Family came first, always, but that mantra never silenced the thoughts completely. It was an insufficient conclusion, and tonight was no exception. This time, she was interrupted by a knock on the door.

For a moment, she thought she must have imagined it. Outside, the snow continued unabated. In fact, it seemed to be snowing more than ever before, great big flakes drifting down from on high, so large as to be visible even in the near complete darkness outside. The wind picked up as if on command just then, the entire house creaking to prove a point: It was the dark of night, and nopony had any business being outside now.

Applejack perked her ears, and the moment stretched along with the tension. A second gave way to another—or perhaps she’d stood stock still for a full minute. Just as she was about to reach for the candle and dismiss it all, another series of faint knocks sounded. Gentle, but most certainly not imagined. With no small amount of hesitation, Applejack trotted over to the front door and bit down on the knob, peering out through the small gap she allowed.

“Pinkie Pie?”

It was definitively a question. Though her snow-flecked mane and coat were as unmistakably pink as ever, Pinkie usually always came packaged with a happy grin. When Pinkie knocked on her door in the middle of the frozen night, Applejack still would have expected giggles and streamers. Instead, she got a pantomime of a smile and a moment of silence.

“It’s right powerful late for a social call,” Applejack whispered.

“Oh. Yeah. I guess it is kinda late,” Pinkie agreed, glancing up at the sky as if she only now noticed. She licked a snowflake off her snout and cleared her throat. “Do you have a minute? I mean, for talking, maybe? I—oh, I guess you’re heading to bed? Uh. Oopsie. I can come back tomorrow!”

Despite Pinkie’s words, she made no move to turn around, and the look in her eyes implored. Snow whirled around her, and she didn’t so much as blink or breathe. Applejack could have demanded an explanation to have her curiosity sated. She should have asked Pinkie to come back tomorrow to preserve her own sanity and sleep.

“Yeah, come on,” she said instead, slipping outside and past her friend, dragging the door shut behind her. Applejack noted the confused look on Pinkie’s face as she trudged past her. Pinkie looked from the closed door over to Applejack who led the way across the rapidly deepening snow of the farmyard.

“Family’s all asleep,” Applejack said, hoping it was loud enough to be heard over the wind without waking any of them. “Just follow me.”

And so she did. Pinkie didn’t say a word, and that certainly didn’t help calm Applejack’s nerves. She simply followed in her steps, breaking into a canter to match while they made for the barn across from the farmhouse. If Applejack’s hat hadn’t been back inside the house, it’d be blown across the Everfree from the blasts of wind. Even Pinkie’s curls were endangered until Applejack finally wedged a hoof in the barn door’s gap and pushed it open just enough to let the pair slip inside. She wasted no time in pulling the door shut again, plunging the world into darkness.

“Applejack?” Pinkie asked, her voice nearly drowned out by the creaks and groans of the barn’s walls.

“Just hang on a minute, sugarcube,” Applejack said, squinting into the darkness. Ever so slowly, she could begin to make out the contours of walls and support beams. She quested along one wall with a hoof until she heard the expected rattle. Applejack bit onto the box of matches and worked a single matchstick free. With practiced ease she lit one up whilst grabbing the nearby lantern. Seconds later, she put the glowing lantern on the floor, dispelling the darkness.

The newly raised barn hadn’t been purposed for winter yet, and with the snow hitting early, they hadn’t had time to find out what to do with it when it wasn’t needed for apple storage. As it was, it had four solid walls with a good roof on top, containing precious little other than empty apple buckets and crates. The apple cart used for market and a few rogue piles of hay completed the picture. More than any of this, the barn contained a pink pony who filled the place to the brim with unasked and unanswered questions.

“So,” Applejack said, sitting down on her haunches. “That’s us, here.”

A smile crossed Pinkie’s face at that, a transient little thing that said “thank you,” far removed from her usual everpresent grin. If Applejack didn’t know Pinkie Pie, she’d have said Pinkie Pie was nervous, but the idea fit as well as artichokes in an apple pie. All the same, the lantern’s flickering light illuminated a still silent Pinkie Pie who struggled to meet her eyes.

“I missed my train,” Pinkie said, fidgeting with her tail. Her voice was small and pitiful, like a foal admitting the greatest of wrongs, full of regret.

“We figured, on account of the heaps of snow and no trains runnin’ and all,” Applejack replied. The barn floor was a little harder than even she liked, so she got up and trotted over the remains of a hay pile. With her tush planted on something softer, she patted the ground at her side and offered Pinkie Pie a gentle smile. The farmpony could tell a coming storm a mile away, but there was no sense in running out to meet it. Applejack waited while Pinkie Pie moved to sit at her side.

Pinkie made a sound somewhere between a huff and an indignant squeak. With her pitch, it was impossible to tell, but still the mare clutched her own bushy tail in her forelegs where she sat. “You don’t understand. I didn’t just miss the train, I also didn’t-buy-a-ticket today, and I’m not gonna buy a ticket tomorrow either.”

Applejack nodded slowly. “Right. You wanna run this by me from the start? I can’t read minds.”

Pinkie brightened at that, letting out a little giggle. “Well duh, if you could read minds, you would know the recipe to my super secret ponyville party prandial, and then I’d have to lock you up in my cellar—or, well, the Cakes’ cellar, and it wouldn’t work because you’d be in the way every time they picked up another pack of flour, and—”

“Pinkie? It’s gettin’ real late.” Applejack let out an audible sigh, and the cheer disappeared from Pinkie’s face in an instant. Pinkie Pie had looked like herself for a few seconds while speaking, but already there was no trace of it. The moment Applejack raised her voice, Pinkie sunk down to the ground, quiet again. It was obvious nothing more would be forthcoming without a bit of prodding.

“Why did you miss your train? Did something happen to put you off heading to see your folks?” Applejack leaned in a little closer and made her voice soft. “You’re usually real happy around Hearth’s Warming Eve when you’re going to see your sisters for the holidays. What’s wrong?”

“I think maybe a teensy weensy part of me is a little bit happy that I missed the train,” Pinkie said. It wasn’t much of an answer, but it confirmed beyond all doubt that something was in fact very wrong. Pinkie’s voice sounded odd not just for the sulk that crept into it, but also because it was quiet all of a sudden, nearly just a whisper. “My little last-week-of-fall visits, they aren’t like Hearth’s Warming at all. That’s all about presents and singing and being happy, even if dad is a terrible dancer. And singer. And he’s not very good at happy either, but he tries!”

Applejack nodded, slow and patient as she could. “Alright, then what—”

“It’s around this time that Granny Pie passed away, many years ago, back when I was an itty bitty pony so small, I had to climb on two chairs to get to the rock candy jar.” Pinkie locked eyes with Applejack for a second, then sighed, lowering her muzzle until lay flat against her chest.

“Ah,” was all Applejack could think to say. She rolled her jaw, searching for something, for anything to say, but nothing came to her. She silently cursed her brain, so woefully unprepared for anything like this. Pinkie stared at her with a smile that looked entirely out of place on a face so much more used to extremes.

“Sorry,” she managed at length. She winced at the pointless, stupid word. She could tell Pinkie Pie wasn’t looking for consolation. If that had been her goal, she’d have gone to see Fluttershy or Rarity—anypony else, just about. “If you don’t mind me saying, I don’t see what I can do. I’ll sit here and listen, don’t doubt that for a second. I ain’t going nowhere, but, well.” She rubbed one of her knees. Making nice words had never been Applejack’s forté anyway, and when in doubt, you stuck to what you knew.

“How do you do it?” Pinkie asked. She pouted and scuffed the ground, made it sound almost like an accusation.

Applejack arched a brow. “Beg pardon?”

Pinkie scratched at one of her knees, shifting where she sat. “I don’t want to go home to mom and dad and be sad with them. They just want to sit still and think sad and grey thoughts, but I don’t want to be sad at all!” she said, throwing both forehooves up in the air. “I woke up yesterday and saw the snow and I was happy because I’d miss my train. I thought this time, I could stay in Ponyville and be happy instead, but it’s not working!”

“I tried. I tried so hard, but I can’t stop thinking about it. I miss her. Granny Pie was the super-duper bestest pony ever, and I love everything she taught me. The songs, the dances—” Pinkie paused, her momentum failing and her ears splayed. Applejack reached out for her almost on instinct, to hug or touch, but Pinkie wouldn’t let her. Pinkie pressed on, voice hoarse now, and it was impossible to tell if she was sad, frustrated, or both.

“When I started thinking about it, I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to mope and get everypony else down, so I stayed in my room, but then I didn’t have anything to do except think about it even more.” She sighed. “I made Pumpkin and Pound Cake sad because I didn’t sing our special goodnight-song, and then I started thinking maybe I’m making mom and dad sad if I don’t go home, too, and that’s stupid and unfair!”

Applejack nodded once again, very slowly. “Right, and you came to me—”

“Because, you know,” Pinkie said, cutting her off for the second time. The pink mare bit her lower lip, then her upper lip. Her gaze dropped until she was staring at Applejack’s forehooves. “Your mom and dad’s gone. How do you do it? How aren’t you sad all the time?”

The barn gave a long, desultory creak and the lamp flickered while Applejack thought. What few playthings the light had were made to dance. Shadows of empty crates, support beams and the barn’s sole two occupants shivered and were cast every which way. Pinkie Pie sunk further down on the ground until she lay almost completely flat. She opened her mouth, and Applejack knew the word that budded. She didn’t let Pinkie get that far, reaching out to place a hoof on her friend’s muzzle before she could apologise.

“In a word? Family,” Applejack said. “You said yourself you ain’t used to being sad, and that it’s just ‘round this time of year, right?” She paused and waited for Pinkie to nod. “We all have our own way of dealing with things when they come about, and my family’s mine.” She felt a smile tug on her lips as five smiling faces worked their way to the forefront of her mind. “Friends, too. Family and friends. I ain’t no doctor, but far as I can tell, there’s only one thing that’s always wrong when you’re feeling down.”

Pinkie pulled back from Applejack’s hoof, ears perked. Her eyes glittered with hunger and need. The gravity of the expectation might have made a more self-conscious mare nervous.

“Bein’ alone,” Applejack said.

“That. Yeah,” Pinkie Pie said. She deflated a bit, glancing off to the side as if she just remembered something, trying and failing to smile. “I know that. I mean, I knew that, but I guess I forgot that ponies do all kinds of stupid crazy stuff when they get lonely. I just didn’t want to leave my room, and then I really didn’t want to leave my room.” She swallowed and ground her muzzle against dirt floor.

“You got more friends than just about anypony else, and you got at least one more family than most. You just won’t see that if you’re starin’ at your own snout from under your bed alone,” Applejack said, shifting to sit a little closer and putting a foreleg around Pinkie’s withers. It was more than a little awkward, but Pinkie didn’t protest. “I reckon goin’ home to see your folks is just what you need.”

“No,” Pinkie said. She rolled over on her back, tilting her head up until her muzzle pointed at the rafters, her cheeks puffed in a pout outclassing anything Apple Bloom could muster even when faced with the toughest of chores. Applejack huffed and rolled her eyes.

“Listen, I don’t have answers beyond what I’d do myself here. Might be your family needs you too, ever stop to think about that? I ain’t the one to come talk to if you’re looking for somepony to nod their empty head at whatever you say, to lie and say I think it’s fine.” She frowned, looking for more words to throw at her, but Pinkie beat her to it.

“I love my mom and dad, but all they want is to sit in their chairs and talk about Granny Pie, like—like they’re sad, like it’s a bad thing Granny Pie ever lived at all. Mom and dad are gonna be sad, and that makes Inkie and Blinkie sad too, and it’s all so silly. Stupid.” Pinkie let one of her forelegs flop to the ground and then the other, staring up at the ceiling. All traces of her childish countenance was gone.

Applejack poked the inside of her cheek with her tongue. She tried to make her voice as kind and gentle as could be. “Sorry, but I still don’t get it. What’s wrong with paying your respects? I thought you loved your granny.”

Pinkie sprang up on all fours in the blink, leaning forward to grind her snout against Applejack’s. “I do! I did! That’s why I don’t want to be sad about it! Granny Pie was a happy awesome pony who loved absolutely everypony, and that’s who I want to be, too!” Applejack took an involuntary step backwards. Never before had she seen Pinkie this intense. “I don’t know how to be sad,” Pinkie said. “I don’t want to be sad, and I hate it!”

“I—alright, right, and I get that, but still—” Applejack began, putting a hoof to Pinkie’s chest to buy a few precious smidgemeters of personal space before she said what she knew was right. “Sometimes, you gotta put the needs of others ahead of your own. Nopony wants to be sad, but this is your family we’re talkin’ about. You ain’t doing this for yourself, you’re doing it in Granny Pie’s memory.”

“No! I mean, yes, but—” Pinkie tried, her face scrunched up in consternation.

Applejack let her hoof drop. “Like I said, if you’re looking for somepony to tell you you should do what you want, it ain’t me. Sugarcube? I’m your friend, but I ain’t gonna lie to make you feel better. Don’t think even you’d really want that.”

“You don’t understand!” Pinkie ground her teeth and sat down with a thud, scratching her forehead like she had an itch in her brain. “I’m not trying to be not-sad for myself, it’s for her!”

Applejack blinked once, and then twice more for good measure. “Right. Now I just plain ain’t following, sorry.”

Pinkie nibbled her bottom lip, tapping the ground as she thought. “Okay. Um. It’s like—wait, no, it’s not like I’m trying to make a muffin made entirely of sugar because I like sugar. It’s totally like I got this recipe for a lovely pistachio muffin, and I just know I can make it better if I change the recipe a little!” She took a deep breath and let it out again, her ears flat against her head as her eyes sought Applejack’s. “I don’t want you to tell me things you think are dumb, but don’t you ever feel you should do something, even if somepony tells you you’re wrong? Haven’t you ever wanted something to be different?”

While she’d caught only half of Pinkie’s little rambling rant, the very last sentence came through loud and clear. That final word lingered. Different. Pinkie Pie’s question patiently waited for an answer, and Applejack’s first impulse was to shake her head, to say “no,” but she couldn’t in clean conscience do that. Not when she kept coming back to that question herself. Not when Pinkie had interrupted her contemplating exactly that. Even if she could lie and say her thoughts and actions always aligned, the sheer need in Pinkie’s eyes silenced her.

Pinkie usually asked for her friends’ approval after she had done something. She invited ponies to parties after the decorations were set, and she was the most unabashedly shameless pony in all of Equestria. If there was ever a pony without a care in the world, it was she. In fact, Applejack often wondered if she was a pony at all, rather tempted to think of her as a force of nature, as capricious as free weather.

Only, she knew it was a half-truth. She’d been right in that Pinkie missing market had meant something, and now again she knew that Pinkie hadn’t made up her mind before she asked Applejack’s opinion. She’d come to her, and she needed her. Confusing as it was, it was real. Even if Applejack couldn’t quite determine why Pinkie’s words struck a chord with her, she could have that crisis later. For now, Pinkie Pie deserved more than a mindless lecture on the importance of family. Bright blue eyes calmly regarded her, the lanternlight reflecting a sheen of wet.

“Pretendin’ I understand and agree,” Applejack said, each word measured. “What do you think is right? If you don’t want to head home, and assuming that you ain’t planning a new breed of muffin, what in the wide world of Equestria are you even suggesting?”

“A party!” Pinkie said, simple as that.

“Right.” Applejack briefly toyed with the idea of heading back to the bed. Of course she wouldn’t, she’d never abandon her friend, but it took effort to force herself to sit still and keep her trap shut. The second she thought she was approaching an understanding with Pinkie, the pink mare had went off on another one of her flights of fancy, everything dissolving into a mess of irresponsible fun.

Or had it? Perhaps Pinkie expected exactly this reaction. There had been a conspicuous lack of streamers to go with the announcement of a party. Pinkie clopped her forehooves together nervously.

“Not like that. Okay, I don’t actually know if you think what I think you’re thinking, but I think it’s what Granny Pie would have wanted.”

“Your gran would want you to have a party,” Applejack repeated.

“Yeah!” Pinkie said, nodding away happily. “She always thought ponies needed to laugh more, and she used to say that ponies should always celebrate things, even things that we don’t usually celebrate like going shopping—” she paused for breath, words coming faster and faster and the smile on her face, tentative at first, broadened. “—but also things that ponies mourn, because everything that’s sad usually has a happy side to it too, so maybe we shouldn’t be all sad because she’s gone, but we should be happy she lived! Well, that, and you said that being all alone and lonely and everything is bad. Parties are the least lonely things ever!”

“Like a forest fire.” The words tumbled from Applejack’s mouth.

Pinkie Pie blinked. “I think those are pretty lonely, actually. That’s a terrible idea for a celebration!”

“No, no,” Applejack chuckled. “I mean, there’s an upside to everything, like you say. Sure. I ain’t no stranger to that. Forest fires leave the ground fertile for new plants, but most ponies never realise. They just think it’s terrible that a whole bunch of trees burnt down.”

“Oh! Oh, that makes a lot more sense,” Pinkie giggled, and when Applejack joined in, she found she couldn’t stop. It was entirely inappropriate, but the smile wouldn’t be kept from her face. Ponies passing away was something serious that warranted no mirth, but seeing how Pinkie lit up when she talked about her Granny, it was hard not to join in the sheer joy. The wind was all but forgotten, and the lantern was the smaller light source in the barn compared to Pinkie.

“Does that mean you don’t think it’s a terrible idea?” Pinkie said, rubbing at her eyes with the nook of a leg.

Applejack shook her head slowly, the laughter petering out.

“Does that also mean you’ll help?” Pinkie asked.

“Uh, help with what, exactly?”

“Setting up the party! Duh!”

Applejack smiled and sighed through her nose. She reached out to hug Pinkie Pie and bury her head in her mane. “I ain’t gonna pretend to understand half of what goes on in your head, but of course I’ll help.”

Pinkie Pie squeezed back harder than Applejack had thought the soft mare capable of, and unless her ears betrayed her, Applejack thought she heard a sniffle. When Pinkie broke the hug, there was no trace of sadness.

“Thanks!” Pinkie said. “Oh. Right! Can we please not tell everypony?”

Applejack raised a brow. “Tell everypony what? Ain’t we gonna have to let ponies know there is a party to have a party, or is this some kind of new type of party I ain’t heard about?”

Pinkie’s eyes lit up as though she considered it for the briefest of moments, but she shook her head violently. “No! I mean, not yet. I just don’t want to go around telling everypony that we’re celebrating Granny Pie, so I thought I’d just pretend we’re having a party to celebrate something else, like—ooh, we could celebrate the early winter!”

Applejack nodded. It was no doubt another bout of logic that added up perfectly in Pinkie Pie’s head, and in her head alone. She should’ve asked, spared another ‘why,’ but it seemed altogether unimportant in the face of Pinkie Pie smiling again. Smiling like she ought to always do.

“Right. I ain’t gonna say a word.”

Pinkie bounced over to hug her again, nuzzling the back of her neck. “Thank you. You’re the best!”

Applejack gave her a light squeeze, a grin, and a push on the rump. “Ain’t no problem at all. Now go get your butt to bed!” Pinkie Pie nodded her assent and bounded towards the barn’s doors, pushing them apart. Snow whirled past her, and then she was gone.

Applejack sat in the lantern’s glow for another minute, realising that if any lie had been spoken tonight, it had been hers. Perhaps she did understand at least a tiny bit of what went on in Pinkie’s head. When first they’d met, and for years after, she thought Pinkie Pie was impossible to understand, a constant mystery. Now, she wasn’t quite sure. The Pinkie who left the barn this night had been back to her regular grinning self, but at the same time, she was so very different, relatable and almost real.