//------------------------------// // A Conspicuous Collection // Story: Taken for Granite // by Cloudy Skies //------------------------------// The ground made satisfying little crunching noises as they went, the three ponies’ hooves loud against loose soil frozen stiff and speckled with frost. Inkie and Blinkie waited for Applejack to catch up before directing them onto a cart-wide path cut straight through two large fields of rocks. A large barn loomed on the far side of the Pie family lands, made small by the distance. Neither Inkie nor Blinkie said anything much. “So. D’you water’em and all?” Applejack asked, glancing left, then right, then left again. All she could see were rocks. Jagged rocks, square-ish rocks, rocks that could be called round if you squinted and put your imagination to work, but rocks all the same. Inkie grinned. “They’re not really crops as you’d understand it. They’re not planted and they don’t need water, though rain does matter a bit. We just move them about on different types of soil. They’re gem-bearing rocks. We decide what we want and change the yield.” “Right. Some of those were words I got in my own dictionary, at least,” Applejack said. She offered Blinkie a glance, but the other sister said nothing, her eyes on the barn ahead. “Well, on the other hoof, I don’t think you could explain apple farming to me in a day,” Inkie said. “I guess not. That’d be a sad day for Apple family pride, if all we did could be packed into a few sentences. ‘Plant’em, buck’em, sell’em,’ it don’t quite hold up.” Applejack laughed. “Exactly! The short of it is that we roll them around, change the surroundings, and we get crystals or gemstones. Sure, most gems may be about as common as dirt, but certain types are worth farming for. Quartz, for example, fetches a great price.” “I’ll have to take your word for it.” Applejack grinned. “On account of I kinda have to. But hey, if you need to know what a bushel of apples goes for in Manehatten and Braidford, well, I’m your mare.” “What do apples go for in Braidford?” Applejack almost jumped when Blinkie spoke. The blue-grey mare’s voice was sharper than she’d expected. “Well, ah. At this time of year it’s all winter apples, and we don’t grow any, but regular apples are twelve bits by the bushel, ten if sold by the cartload,” Applejack said. Blinkie gave a single, short nod and trained her eyes straight ahead again. They were nearly upon the barn, and the rocks surrounding them had grown very large now, the late afternoon sun filtering between boulders easily five times their height. Applejack was about to make a comment, ask another question out of simple curiosity, but Inkie spoke first. “Thank you.” Applejack raised a brow. “For what, exactly? Last I checked I haven’t done much to earn thanks. Didn’t even get to help with dinner.” Inkie didn’t seem inclined to share a laugh over that. All she did was shake her head the tiniest bit, a smile spreading across her face. “For taking care of Pinkie Pie. For keeping her safe.” Blinkie was watching her, too. She simply nodded when Applejack looked to her. It would be an understatement to say it made Applejack uncomfortable. She never much liked the full-on spotlight unless she felt she’d earned it. “That ain’t exactly how it goes, most of the time. She’s the one taking care of us, I reckon.” Applejack grinned. While it was certainly true in its own right, she’d bet half her orchard that Pinkie would’ve undersold herself. She lowered her voice a tad for effect. “Matter of fact, last time we faced down a dragon at the Princesses’ request, she was the one who ran into its cave. Me? I just stood and watched.” The details didn’t matter much. A charge with flippers and balloon animals was a charge nevertheless. Inkie gave a whistle while Blinkie’s eyes were wide as dinner plates. Applejack shook her head and took a deep breath. “Still, sure, welcome and all that. I figured y’all didn’t bring me out here just to look at rocks.” “Pinkie did say you were the clever one,” Inkie said. Applejack laughed. It sounded loud, mocking and rude, but she couldn’t quite help it. She held up a hoof to forestall any protest. “Right, right, begging your pardon, but I ain’t never thought myself much of a thinker. She can’t have talked much about Twilight, then. She plays chess with Princess Luna herself sometimes for crying out loud.” Inkie shrugged. “She looks up to all of you, you know. All of her friends. She talks about you all the time.” “They’re nice stories, too,” Blinkie said, making her words a challenge. Applejack didn’t protest. Her laughter petered out into an embarrassed chuckle, and she kept her trap shut even though she knew she should change the topic. It was getting dangerously close to gossip, this. Neither Inkie nor Blinkie said anything more until they stood in the shadow of the barn. It was large, far larger than the Apple family’s barn, painted grey instead of the red that all vegetable and fruit farmers had at some point agreed was the proper barn colour. Inkie stood back while Blinkie fiddled with the latch of a small door set on one of the larger pair of doors. It opened with the loud creak of protesting hinges. She thought she’d known exactly what to expect of a barn on a rock farm. What could it be beyond a large room with piles of rocks? Whatever she allowed for in her mind, this wasn’t it. The barn offered not a single lamp or lantern. Instead, pale, subtly multicoloured light filtered through crystals lining the very top of the ceiling. A narrow strip of glittering transparent minerals replaced the top support beam, spreading the dying sunlight to illuminate the entire room. It took serious effort to take her eyes off the roof and step fully inside the barn, but once she managed to put the odd light partially out of her mind, the rest of the interior at least made a passing try at matching her expectations. The building was split in two by a partial wall, the closer section made up of holding pens or bins of rocks and gems. Here, what Applejack couldn’t tell apart from gravel, there, a pen of large diamonds. Blinkie and Inkie exchanged smiles, presumably at Applejack’s reaction, but they didn’t stop. The two Pie sisters made a beeline for the other open section of the barn, and Applejack followed, wondering if they’d make the same faces as she were they to taste Granny Pie’s special triple-apple autumn pie. “She has a lot of stories about Twilight,” Inkie said. Applejack listened as they moved, as was all she could do. The second half of the barn held rows upon rows of sturdy shelves, like a barnyard grocer who dealt in rocks. Here, each shelf had different rocks and gems. “How she is the one who brought you all together and helped make you all such great friends. That she’s one of the brightest ponies in all of Equestria, that she always has a plan, and now, she’s a princess.” Admiration was plain in Inkie’s voice. “Not a word of that’s untrue,” Applejack chuckled. “She’s got more spells in that head of hers than anypony else, she tell you that?” A near perfect sphere of darker than black glittered with un-light, perched on a shelf right next to the biggest emerald Applejack had ever seen. “And Rainbow Dash,” Inkie continued “She sounds like the fastest and bravest pony in all of history, but, uh, I think Pinkie’s making some of that up.” “If you hear it from Rainbow Dash herself, it might be. If Pinkie told it, probably not. Guess you’re better at telling her jokes from her stories than me, though.” Applejack craned her neck trying to get an overview. While this section of the barn wasn’t terribly large, the sheer variety made her feel lost. The two sisters came to a halt before a long bench that lined the back wall of the barn, and it was about as good a spot to chat as any in the unheated barn, Applejack supposed. The bench was largely empty, and the rocks and gems weren’t on display one by one here, rather, they were clustered in three groupings. “What’s all this, then?” Inkie followed Applejack’s eyes to the bench. “Oh. Well, sometimes, when a rock doesn’t yield what we wanted, or just when we find something we like but can’t sell, we store them. Just like, well. I guess you don’t have a place where you store apples that catch your eye. Never mind.” Applejack laughed and shook her head along with her. “Don’t think that’s a match, no. That’s a rock farm thing, I guess. These yours?” she asked. This particular section of the bench held an array of shiny, sparkling gems and oddly shaped rocks, much like Fluttershy’s seashell collection. Inkie nodded. “Yeah. Blinkie’s are over there,” she said, indicating a spot further down the bench with meticulously arranged pieces, mostly rocks of varying lustre, few of them actual gemstones. “And Pinkie’s are here.” She meant to leave it only at a glance and a polite word or two, but Applejack couldn’t help but feel drawn down towards what Inkie indicated as Pinkie’s collection. It only held five items. A gem cluster with more colours than Applejack could name, a clear, almost transparent gem, a smooth rose gem, a dark round orb, and a curious, bright pink gem that demanded Applejack’s attention. The last and pinkest of the gemstones was unpolished and raw, given only a vague heart shape, but its every surface shone. The collection seemed deliberate in the extreme, precise compared even to Blinkie’s well-ordered items. “That’s a curious set of gems, ain’t it?” Applejack asked, though she wasn’t sure who she was asking, exactly. Inkie licked her lips. She gave Applejack a long look. Perhaps she thought as Applejack did, that maybe they were intruding on Pinkie’s privacy, but where she hesitated, Blinkie did not. “She didn’t have a collection of her own, not until a few years ago. She wasn’t very interested in the idea of owning gems or rocks of her own, she said, but she changed her mind.” Blinkie shrugged. “She picked six gems off the shelves a while back, and that’s all she ever did.” Applejack nodded as though that told her something. She wanted to dismiss it as something silly, as something Pinkie Pie did exactly and only because she was Pinkie Pie, but she couldn’t even complete the thought before she knew it was false. She reached out for the multi-coloured crystal cluster, and though she never intended to touch it, she stopped short when Blinkie again spoke. “Shimmerbright. It looks like it’s a single, simple crystal, but it’s actually a complex fusing. It’s really rare, and mom wanted to sell it, but Pinkie wouldn’t let her. It’s brittle, sharp and hard to use properly.” Applejack shook her head. “Yeah. That’s Rainbow Dash alright.” Inkie blinked and tilted her head by way of question, but Applejack moved on to the next, and Blinkie was happy to oblige. Blinkie Pie picked up the clear crystal her sister had collected and held it up against the ceiling. What little light still filtered through the ceiling crystals seemed to home in on the crystal in Blinkie’s hoof, spreading brighter still. “This is an evershine diamond. It’s not an actual diamond, but it’s very valuable. It absorbs light, but spreads it again twice as bright.” Applejack tried to hide her smile. A diamond that generously gave of the light. She didn’t need that one spelled out to her, nor did she need a guide for the rose gem next to it, every bit as sparkly as diamond or a ruby, but without any sharp edges to it. “And this one?” “Rose forest opal,” Blinkie said, simply, as though that explained everything. “It has a soft colour, and it can be shaped without the use of tools if you know how,” Inkie said. “But it’s one of the hardest materials known to ponykind if you don’t.” Applejack nodded slowly. “Would you humor me with the last two? I’m takin’ a sudden interest in geology here.” “Gemology, actually. Most of this, anyway,” said Inkie. “The bright pink one is called mountainsheart. We don’t know a lot about those. They’re reflective or transparent depending on the angle.” “The last one’s a star orb,” Blinkie said. Applejack leaned closer as she spoke. She could’ve swore something moved deep inside the dusky sphere. “Those don’t form naturally,” Inkie added. “But we use them on the farm to cultivate other stones.” “Yeah. I get it,” Applejack said. It was clear that Pinkie had picked a gem to represent each of her friends, only it didn’t add up in the most literal of senses. “Thought you said she had six, though.” Applejack frowned, counting them again. They came up five no matter how she did it. Inkie shrugged and tapped her hoof on the ground, biting her lower lip. Clearly something else was on her mind than a missing rock. “When I said she talks about you...” She hesitated, trailing off. “Pretty sure you said that at least twice now, yep,” Applejack replied. “She makes it sound like you’re special.” Blinkie, this time. Every time she spoke, rare as though it was, there was an edge to her voice. Every statement was a question even when it wasn’t, a stare wrapped in words, though never quite unkind. It made Applejack feel twice as bad for failing to keep from snorting. “Beggin’ your pardon, I think I’m about as un-special as it gets, but that’s mighty kind of her.” “We got a letter early last week,” Inkie said. “From Pinkie. Well, she sent one to each of us, but we were both in Clopenhagen, so.” Applejack scuffed the ground. Again that terrible indecision, that feeling she shouldn’t be hearing this, but she made no move to silence Inkie. “She always sends these letters at random. She didn’t tell us you’d saved Equestria by visiting the Crystal Kingdom before she came home for Hearth’s Warming later that year, but she sent us a letter the same day she realised that toffee tasted even better than she remembered from last week.” Inkie giggled and shook her head. “That’s Pinkie Pie.” “Last week, she sent a letter saying she’d had a wonderful early winter holiday picnic, and that you had told her that the two of you might not be so different after all. That you had something in common. It, uh. Well. It must have made her very happy.” Applejack’s cheeks tingled. She wished she had her hat. “Yeah. Did say that,” she murmured. Being reminded of that stung. “Don’t think for a second I regret it or take it back, just didn’t think it meant that much to her considerin’ as how she barely seemed to be listening. You drag me out here just to tell me that?” She regretted the edge in her voice immediately, she just didn’t know if she had the energy to try to explain this all to ponies she barely knew. She fully expected glares in response, silent threats and the don’t you dare’s of protective family, stares the likes of which she fully intended to give anypony who ever tried to ask Apple Bloom out. She got no such thing. No anger at all. Even Blinkie Pie looked a little taken aback, and Inkie averted her eyes with a muttered “Sorry.” Feeling like a full-fledged villain, Applejack sighed and reached for—Celestia darn it, she really, really missed her hat. “Sorry,” Applejack said, hanging her head. “That came out all wrong, and I’m right thankful for all your hospitality.” “That’s okay,” Inkie said. “We should probably head back to the house, though.” Applejack nodded and tried to wipe the frown from her face. “Yeah. Thanks for the tour, really. Just a bit tired. Long day.” Inkie smiled, and that helped a little. Blinkie led the three out of the barn, setting them on the path back to the farmhouse. Applejack followed the two Pie sisters inside and closed the door behind her. She may not have minded the cold much, but the crackling of the living room’s hearth and the still lingering smell of dinner were nevertheless welcome—as was seeing Pinkie again. Evidently, they’d interrupted something. Pinkie stood by her parents, the three silent now when the others entered. Pinkie broke away, the most colourful member of the Pie family beaming and bouncing over to wrap Applejack in a hug as though they’d been apart for years. Applejack returned the hug, giggling all the while without knowing why. “Whoa there, hey again, I guess!” “Did you like it? Did you like the farm? Or the barn? Did you get to see all the rocks?” Pinkie asked, finally letting go. “There are so many!” “Sure were a lot of rocks, yep. And a bunch’a sparkly gems too! Bet Rarity would love this place,” Applejack said. “Aw, I tried telling her that lots of times, too! She’d love all our shinies.” “We mostly sell to larger companies,” Inkie said. “They’re not really ornamental.” “I know,” Pinkie said. “But ‘ornamental’ means pretty, right? And our gems are totally the prettyliciousest gems ever! Just because they not all symmetrical and all those other things Rarity cares too much about doesn’t mean she couldn’t stick it on a hat and make it totally neat-o!” Applejack grinned. “Well, if she can make a hat that’s made of fruit, then why not?” Pinkie nodded vigorously, following Inkie, Blinkie and her parents through the kitchen and towards the living room with Applejack in tow. “Exactly! Wait. What? She’s finally made a banana hat like I asked?” “Uh. No, not exactly, but don’t you remember that fancy hat she gave you for your last birthday? The one with apples and oranges and everything?” “That was a hat? Um. Oops?” Applejack rolled her eyes. “So you ate it.” “Well, no. I don’t eat everything I’m given, silly,” Pinkie said, sounding rather indignant. “I planted it!” “You do know the fruits were plastic, right?” Applejack asked. Pinkie Pie shook her head, clearly entirely pleased with this fact, hopping atop one of the two small sofas that dominated the centre of the living room. Sue sat in a chair by the fireplace a small ways off, and Clyde rummaged around in a cabinet, eventually producing a small pipe which he lit once he found his own chair. The three Pie sisters crowded around the living room table, and Pinkie patted the spot next to her. “C’mon! It’s your turn to share! Come tell us about apple farming!” Applejack clambered atop the sofa and planted herself next to Pinkie, frowning at her. “Farming apples? Pinkie, you’ve helped out with no less than two applebuck seasons now. You know how I work.” “Duh! Blinkie wants to know! And I bet mom and dad and Inkie would love to hear about it too.” Pinkie smiled wide and looked to her family for support, receiving some encouraging noises and nods. “And besides, I’d love to hear it again!” “Right,” Applejack said, clearing her throat. It was only fair given she’d been given a crash course in rock farming herself. “Well, season begins ‘round winter’s end.” Applejack could talk for hours on end about the farm and her family, but rarely was she given a chance or a reason to do so. Whenever she paused, wondering if there was any point in going into detail about one thing or other, she’d be egged on. “How do you make it? From scratch?” asked Inkie when Applejack mentioned Cider. “I love this part!” Pinkie would declare when Applejack strayed onto the topic of apple harvests, and Blinkie leaned forward when zap apples entered the conversation. Pinkie’s parents weren’t entirely quiet either, curious about the tools and the methods used. What seemed a simple enough deal in Applejack’s mind ate away at the hours until the hearth’s fire grew dim, and one by one they went to bed until it was just Applejack, Pinkie Pie and Blinkie Pie left. It’d been up to Applejack to suggest maybe bed would be a good idea, because none of the others were about to. Pinkie Pie’s room was dark when they slipped inside, the moon only the barest of slivers outside. “Wait, aw, shoot. I think Inkie borrowed my lamp. We don’t have a light!” Pinkie said. “We’re just going to sleep. Ain’t like that matters much,” Applejack said, stifling a yawn with the back of a foreleg. “Not even a single round of, wait, give me a minute. Oh! I know! Poker! No, wait, Battleclouds!” Pinkie’s hooves clopped against the floorboards as she bounced up and down, but Applejack could barely see her at all. “Pinkie, I’m plum tuckered. So long as we can find your bed in here somewhere, I’m happy.” Applejack chuckled. “Right. Bed. Hm.” Applejack stood very still, listening to Pinkie’s hoofsteps. Four steps forward, and then a dead stop. “You’re about to tell me you don’t remember where your bed is, ain’t you.” “No, no, wait. I think—” Hoofsteps, a loud smack, and then a muted thud. Applejack’s sight slowly adjusted to the near complete darkness, and now she could barely make out the shape of a pony sitting on her rump in front of something large. “Found it,” Pinkie said, her voice nasal. “Owie.” “You hurt?” “Nope! You can laugh if you want to,” Pinkie giggled. “Thought never crossed my mind,” Applejack said, settling for a grin. She could make out the contours of the room now. It was a small room, not much bigger than Applejack’s own back at Sweet Apple Acres, but it was cluttered. Though she couldn’t quite see what all the things were, the floor wasn’t entirely bare, and numerous items lined the shelves around the place. It wasn’t a guest room Pinkie happened to use when she was home—it was very much Pinkie’s own place. Applejack climbed onto the bed and slipped in under the blanket. The mattress shook when Pinkie made her own entrance by hopping in. Exactly how she did it, Applejack couldn’t tell, but she somehow ended up under the blanket as well. The bed was definitely too small for two ponies, and possibly too large for one. Applejack shifted a bit away from the edge to keep from falling out, only to bump into Pinkie. “Pardon,” she muttered. “S’okay!” A rustle of fabric, and then silence. Applejack twisted her head around to glance behind her to confirm what she already knew; Pinkie lay facing her, eyes open. Applejack flopped over onto her other side, staring back without saying a word. It was cramped enough that their snouts almost touched, and the coat of Pinkie’s chest tickled hers. She didn’t know what she looked for. She had no idea what she hoped to find in those eyes that shone a bright blue in what little moonlight found its way inside the room. Or perhaps she knew exactly what she hoped to find—she just also knew she’d made her decision. It didn’t matter. “You look like you’re thinking,” Pinkie whispered. “Tryin’ not to.” Pinkie Pie said nothing to that. She only blinked, once, but for that brief moment her eyes were closed, the world was a darker place. “Thought things’d be different, I guess,” Applejack said. “It’s terribly nice meeting your family, and they’re all great folk, but I thought it’d all be, well, less normal. Less regular flavor apple pie, more zap apple turnover, you know?” No reply this time either, one eye narrowed, the other’s brow raised. “You’re Pinkie Pie,” Applejack said, touching a hoof to hers. “You’re supposed to drive everypony at least a little bit crazy.” She chuckled, a thing of breath more than sound that made the mattress shake. She could almost hear Pinkie’s smile in return. “You make that sound like a nice thing, like cocoa powder or caramel, and we really need to stop talking about food because now I’m getting hungry.” Pinkie giggled. “Anyway, I used to! I just learned that they didn’t like me throwing three parties every day, so I stopped that, but they know that I’m me, too, so they don’t try to stop me from making a big deal out of their birthdays, either. It’s just like how I try to be a little less surprising around Fluttershy, and I don’t wake Rainbow Dash up by showing up in her bedroom any more!” Applejack smirked. “Yet still you managed to tear down my barn late as three months ago.” “Hey, that wasn’t me! Or, well, it wasn’t me-me. Okay, it was some me’s, but it still doesn’t count!” Applejack smiled into the darkness. “Right. Let’s go with that.” “Do you want me to change?” Pinkie asked, dropping down to a whisper again. “Am I too loud, sometimes? Or maybe I don’t sing enough? Sometimes, I can go an hour without a song, and I’m wondering if that’s too much.” The last question came with more than a little hope in Pinkie’s voice, but Applejack couldn’t quite laugh along with her words. Where Pinkie was content to giggle and tilt her head, waiting for an answer and no doubt hoping for a chuckle out of her, all Applejack felt was the weight of those words. “Thought ain’t crossed my mind,” Applejack said. She held Pinkie’s gaze until the pink mare turned black in the shadow of night stopped laughing. She didn’t blink until she heard a faint rustle and saw the small movement of a nod. “Okie-dokie. Thanks,” Pinkie said. Applejack rolled onto her back as best as she could and stared up at the ceiling. “Don’t see who could ever ask for that and call themselves a friend. Makes me think of Fluttershy, I guess. We all wish she could be a bit more assertive at times, don’t we? I remember that was a rallying cry that one summer, like we were all out to fix her ‘cause somepony got it in their head that they wanted to help.” Applejack snorted. “Yeah. That didn’t really work out. Guess maybe she now remembers she’s got a backbone a bit more often, but way I figure it, we did that all because we love her, and we wanted her to be happy, but it was wrong. You just can’t ask ponies to change who they are. Don’t expect you’d ask me to stop being me, whatever makes me Applejack. And you’re Pinkie Pie, for better or for worse.” For better or for worse. Pinkie was herself, whether she fit into what Applejack’s future held as more than a friend or not. Only, watching Pinkie with her family tonight, she’d made the whole deal with being different seem a lot less frightening than before. You still couldn’t add pepper to porridge just because they shared a letter, though, and much as she wanted to, she wasn’t about to take that risk. Applejack frowned. She’d just delivered a speech and a half, and Pinkie hadn’t interrupted even once. “And you’re asleep,” Applejack concluded, turning to face her again. Pinkie Pie’s breath came with complete regularity, now. She reached over to tuck Pinkie in proper, watching Pinkie’s chest rise and fall until her own eyes started to droop. “Mostly for the better anyway, I’m coming to think.” Applejack took a deep breath and closed her eyes, trying her best to fall asleep despite the way Pinkie’s flank bumped against hers, despite the sugary sweet smell of Pinkie’s breath.