Chapter 22: Smile Though Your Heart is Aching
“Mr. and Mrs. Cake, I’d like you to meet my very new, very cool and very out-of-this-world-because-technically-he’s-not-from-our-world best friend, Harold DeMatt!!” Harold and the Cakes exchanged awkward glances as Pinkie Pie chortled out the introductions between the human and her employers.
“Harold DeMatt, I’d like you to meet my employers, Mr. Carrot Cake and Mrs. Cup Cake! I’ve been working for these two for many many years and they’ve been a second mommy and daddy to me!!” Pinkie pulled the two blushing Earth ponies close into a little huddle.
Harold felt a bit envious at that moment. He should’ve had a second mommy and daddy on Earth, away from his first so-called mom and dad.
Pinkie was ready to blow in excitement. “Oooooohhhhh, this is gonna be so much fun! We can get acquainted with each other, bake super delicious cakes, cookies, cupcakes, then Harold can watch me work....*GAAAAASSSSSSPPPPP!* Harold, how’d you like to help me bake!?”
“Actually, Pinkie, I’m not really--”
“Pinkie, dear, can we see you in the kitchen?”
Cup grabbed Pinkie’s poofy tail by the teeth and dragged her away into the kitchen, with the square-chinned stallion following close behind. The three Earth ponies left Harold standing alone in the room, wondering if he should’ve let Pinkie know that he was bad at baking ahead of time. But the absence of the Earth ponies gave him an opportune moment to capture the colorful interior decoration and the display cases filled with many sweet pastries in his head.
Drawing Pinkie Pie for later would be a cinch for him.
Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Cup and Carrot dragged Pinkie into the confines of the kitchen for an emergency meeting.
“Pinkie Pie, I never thought I’d say this, but your friend cannot work here!”
Pinkie Pie was taken aback by Cup’s order. “WHAAAATTT!? You’re saying no to Harold helping out with baking the cupcakes!? That’s just rude! Wait, is this because he’s a human!? Now that’s beyond rude!! It’s infinitely rude!! IT’S ETERNITY-LY RUDE!!” Pinkie was cut off by Carrot’s hoof to her mouth.
“You didn’t let her finish,” he replied.
Cup regained her composure from Pinkie’s outburst. “What I was gonna say, Pinkie, is that your friend Harold cannot work here because of how everypony would react to an alien working in Sugarcube Corner. You say he’s a good colt, and we believe you. We really do. But I’m not sure what that’ll do to business.”
“Besides..” Carrot pointed a hoof towards Harold, who looked through a rectangular gap he made with his hands and thumbs. It was as though he was capturing the shop in his like a camera. “Your friend doesn’t seem to be the baking-type pony, or whatever he calls himself.”
Pinkie’s face grew saddened. Her moistening pupils grew to the size of dinner plates.
“Can’t he just watch me bake?” she asked, pouting her quivering lips.
The Cakes rolled their eyes and inhaled through their teeth.
“I don’t know...” Carrot said.
Pinkie continued her sad, soulful face. “Please, Mr. and Mrs. Cake? Harold’s life was all doom and gloom, and that made me sad because he’s been so lonely and that made him so sad and so I got to thinking that he needs somepony to make him feel happy again.”
The Cakes looked at the human standing outside of the kitchen doors. He was viewing the shop through the rectangular gap he made with both of his hands. It was as if he was viewing the shop through a camera.
“Come on, Mr. and Mrs. Cake, can’t you give him an hour, two hours tops? If not for him, then for me?”
Once again, the Cakes looked at each other. They huddled into one of the corners of the kitchen, inaudible murmurs ringing from the couple. They looked back at Pinkie Pie, who kept her sad visage incredibly for seven minutes and the human observing the interior. In those short minutes of discussion and debate, Cup and Carrot sighed and trotted to their apprentice, weak smiles decorating their face with uncertainty.
Carrot built his courage to tell Pinkie their decision. “Alright, Pinkie. We’ll let him stay just this once.”
In one split second, Pinkie’s face turned from blue to pink.
“You will!? Great! Wait right here!”
Pinkie Pie zoomed out the kitchen, leaving the double doors swinging until they stopped. While Pinkie Pie was conversing with Harold in the store, the Cakes had a small conversing of their own.
“You really think this is such a good idea?” Carrot asked his wife.
“I’m not sure myself,” Cake said back. “But if Pinkie is fine with this, then maybe we should be too.”
The doors flipped open. The Cakes saw an amusing display of Harold being pushed into the kitchen by Pinkie Pie. The human’s heels were dragged into the wooden floor as he wore a plain expression upon his face. As part of Pinkie Pie’s subconscious ability to bend the laws of physics, she somehow reduced the traction on his shoes, making it easier for her to push Harold like he was a hockey puck sliding on a waxed floor.
“Ooooh, this is so exciting! We’re gonna have the bestest time getting to know each other! I just know it!” Pinkie pulled the Cakes in for another embrace, adding more muscle and one human in the mix. Pinkie’s grip was starting to take its toll on everyone else’s lungs. “We get to have cookies, hear about our lives, draw pictures...”
“Uhh...Pinkie?” Cup squeaked.
“Harold can watch me bake, we can play with Pound and Pumpkin...”
“Pinkie?” asked the blue-faced orange stallion.
“Ooh! We can sing a song! Okay, let’s see...what song should I sing? Oh! I know!” Pinkie cleared her throat and proceeded to sing, unaware that her friends were drifting into unconsciousness from asphyxiation.
“My name is Pinkie Pie (Pinkie!)
And I am here to say (I can’t breathe!)
I'm gonna make you smile and I will brighten up your day!
It doesn't matter now (My consciousness is fading!)
If you are sad or blue (I think I see the light!)
‘Cause cheering up my friends is just what Pinkie’s here to do!”
“PINKIE!”
The giggling pony stopped her singing and looked at the human with a joyful smile.
“Yes?”
“Your...choking us...to death,” Harold said with his voice raspy from lack of breath.
With an “oops” from Pinkie, she firmly released her employers and the boy. Weakened from asphyxiation, the Cakes and Harold collapsed to the ground, coughing out the compressed carbon dioxide and breathing in the clean, fresh oxygen. A full minute was required for the choke hold victims to struggle themselves up on their legs. When the trio came to, they looked at Pinkie with a deadpanned look.
And she reflected the look with a sheepish smile.
“Sorry,” Pinkie muttered.
Harold gripped the counter behind them and leaned back, heaving out a relieved sigh. The Cakes were scolding their employee for nearly choking them to death and took away her corn cakes for the night.
Or so Harold heard.
He didn’t know, he was getting the room to stop spinning around him. He covered his sore eyes to simmer the pain down by a little. From the cracks of his fingers, he saw the Cakes trot out of the kitchen, giving Pinkie angry gazes out of the corner of their eyes. The latter pony still wore her smile, although she was not enjoying the moment.
Harold lowered his hand showed Pinkie his deadpan look.
Pinkie still wore her smile on her face.
“Sooooo, how about I show you how to make cupcakes?”
Harold heaved a stressed sigh.
There was no getting through a pony who joked and smiled like there was no problem a minute ago. Of course, how could he with those big eyes, that innocent smile and her head cocked to the left?
“Sure, I guess.”
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Harold’s prized bicycle stood at the outside wall of Sugarcube Corner. The bike was all alone in the pony populated town, cold, vulnerable and helpless. It was nearly in plain sight and easy for somepony with the nerve to either steal it...or worse.
Unfortunately, the bike would suffer the latter.
Creeping behind the back of the shop were two sinister looking unicorn mares. One was a pink unicorn mare, with a purple mane and tail with one streak of lavender running through. Her Cutie Mark were three gemstones. The other unicorn wore a white coat and sported a pink, curly mane and tail. Her Cutie Mark depicted three stars.
The unicorns had about them tools, carried in a sickly green magical aura. These tools would become the end of Harold’s bicycle as they knew it.
“Ready?” the white unicorn asked her horned associate.
“Ready.”
The mares levitated a hammer, some wrenches and a screwdriver. They crept up to the two-wheeled vehicle, now about to meet a painful end. If the bicycle had a sentient mind, it would’ve screamed for Harold’s help.
=====================================================================
“Okay, so let me recap this a bit slowly.”
Harold was given a singing lesson by Pinkie about making cupcakes. She was singing the Cupcake Song so fast, she could’ve had a career as an auctioneer instead of a happy singing baker and party planner. The human rubbed his temples as he tried to remember what Pinkie sung to him in step-by-step mode.
“All I have to do is take a cup of flour and add it to the mix, right?”
Pinkie “mm-hmmed” the human. She poured the cup of flour into the mixing bowl
“Then you take a little something sweet, not too sour and a bit of salt, just a pinch.”
Pinkie dropped a batch of delicious sweets into the mix. Chocolate pieces, jelly beans, lollipops, candy corn, you name it. Harold’s mouth was already watering just by looking at all of the candy.
Pinkie continued the explained version of her song.
“Baking these treat is such a cinch. Now add a teaspoon of vanilla.”
The pony slammed on the handle of the teaspoon full of vanilla that landed perfectly into the batter. Three more identical spoons full of vanilla were flung right into the bowl.
“Add a little more, and you count to four and you never get your fill of...”
“Oh boy, here we go,” Harold thought, rolling his eyes.
“Cupcakes! So sweet and tasty!
Cupcakes! Don’t be too hasty!
Cupcakes! Cupcakes, cupcakes, CUPCAKES!”
Pinkie appeared out of nowhere at every angle as she finished the last of her song, giggling after she finished her last note. Harold raised a confused eyebrow.
“Pinkie, how do you do that?”
Pinkie looked at her new friend curiously. She tilted her head to the left and gave him a plain expression.
“Do what?”
“That...that thing. That thing where you just popped out of nowhere...a-a-and that thing you did at Canterlot Castle.” Harold rubbed his head. “Now what is the saying in my world? Breaking the laws of physics?”
Pinkie Pie perked up.
“Oh that! Hehehehe, that. I’ve always been doing that ever since I first smiled! I don’t know how, but I’ve learned to master it over the past 10 years! Hehehehe!”
“Umm, okay, I don’t think that answered my question, but what about those little body movements you made in the field?” Pinkie cocked her head again. Harold sighed again. “You know, your hooves wobbling, your hair sticking out on edge, you know what I’m saying?”
“Oh, that’s my Pinkie Sense! And if I hadn’t told you about my Pinkie Sense before...”
“No you have not,” he said blankly.
“Fair enough. Harold, one; Pinkie zero.”
“When did we start keeping score?”
Harold walked into the kitchen while Pinkie Pie started explaining the basics of her so-called Pinkie Sense.
“Aaaaanyway, the way my Pinkie Sense is quite simple. I get all of these tiny nickly feelings all over the body and they all mean different things. Like when my tail is twitching, it means something’s about to fall. If my ears are flopping, that means somepony just got mud splattered all over.”
“Okaaaay,” Harold replied flatly. “So does your Pinkie Sense allow you to break all laws of physics?”
“Hahahahaha, oh silly-willy, my Pinkie Sense doesn’t do that. I can break all of the universal laws of physics without the use of my Pinkie Sense.” The pink pony stretched her hooves outwards to her sides. Her left hoof stretched outwards, suddenly reappearing to clap the right hoof, jumping Harold backwards.
Pinkie smiled proudly.
“See? Hehehehehee!”
Harold rubbed his temples as he tried to contemplate the pink pony’s unknown ability.
“Okay? Is your Pinkie Sense what got you to trust me in the first place?”
“Of course, they were different little feelings and I call them combos. Remember when my hind legs wobbled and my mane stood on edge? That means anypony I first meet can be trusted!”
Harold mindlessly bumped into the refrigerator. A pan standing at the edge on top of the fridge started tilting downward. Then, all of a sudden, Pinkie jumped in the air. She felt a vibration in her cotton-candy tail.
“TWITCHY TAIL! TWITCHY TAIL!!”
“Huh?”
CLANG!!
The pan Harold knocked over landed on his head. He gripped his head, feeling a bump already forming on his scalp. He felt ridiculous. He felt like he was living a Saturday morning Looney Tunes cartoon.
Not that it mattered. He felt he was in a cartoony world.
“You alright, Harold!?” Pinkie asked concerned.
Harold grunted in pain. His hurt moaning turned into a giggling fit.
“I’m fine, Pinkie. I don’t think mistakes like these are very common on Earth.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Pinkie’s lips wriggled. She dropped to floor, hooves spread out to her sides and laughed. The giggling coming from this hyperactive little pony was quick, high-pitched...also kind of cute. The laughter felt like a contagion spreading airborne to another host. Harold found his lips wriggling and started chuckling alongside the pony, falling flat on his back.
The two giggled in unison, for a moment or two. They they looked at each other, somehow provoking them to laugh once more.
This was a strange feeling for Harold, but it also felt good. Rare were the moments he shared a good laugh, especially the ones he shared with Lana during his time on Earth. He looked at Pinkie Pie once more, lost in her world blissful giggling. Harold had a sort of epiphany at the moment he looked at her. This pony may not take a lot of things seriously, but she giggled and yukked like there was no problem in the world.
To Harold, Pinkie was the joyful side he never once grew.
CRASH!! BAM, BAM, BAM!! CLING!! CLING!!
A mixture of noises outside silenced all moments of laughter. Harold and Pinkie’s moment of fun came to a screeching halt. They sat up with a jolt and looked outside the window. There, they saw a hammer, wrenches and a screwdriver levitated in thin air.
That’s when it hit the human.
“Oh, crap!! My bike!!”
Harold got to his feet and strode out the door. He went around the corner of the sweet shop. What he saw in front of him caused his breath to cease and his knees to collapse onto the dirt. Pinkie and the Cakes soon followed after the human. They were shocked and appalled by what Harold saw.
They saw what used to be his bike, now a sad pile of metal and junk. The metal frame was severely bent out of shape. The tires were slashed and deflated. Nuts and screws were scattered all over the area. The chain was broken and destroyed.
Harold gripped his head in anguish.
Someone destroyed a prized possession of his.
Reginald gave him this bike for his 13th birthday.
Now it was nothing but a scrap heap.
The poor human was reduced to tears, thereby angering Pinkie Pie.
“WHAT!? How dare somepony come over here and destroy somepony else’s property!! Alright, whoever you are, come out and show yourself!! I’m gonna ban you from ever setting hoof in Sugarcube Corner forEEVVVEEERRR!!”
What everypony didn’t realize was hiding in a couple of rain barrels were the unicorns responsible for the destruction of Harold’s only means of transportation. Their eyes gleam a sinister green light as they transformed into a couple of Ponyville ponies and secretly joined in the crowd of ponies witnessing this spectacle.
Harold balled up his fist and smashed it into the dirt.
“This is all my fault,” he said sadly.
“No it’s not, Harold,” Pinkie said, snorting afterwards. “It’s whoever smashed that doohickey of yours’s fault! When I get my hooves of her, she’s getting a ride via my Party Cannon!”
“No, Pinkie, it is my fault,” Harold replied. “Reginald gave this bike to me when I turned 13. In all this excitement, I left my bike all alone out here and I completely forgot to take it inside.” Harold’s eyes began to once again, leak tears. “And now someone comes along, callously smashes it and...and...NOW IT’S WRECKED! TOTALED! DESTROYED!”
Some of the ponies trotted away from the scene, whether the feeling was pity, sorriness or cynicism. Harold pounded the ground as he shouted the state of which his bike was in. He covered his face in his hands and started weeping.
“Reginald. I’m so sorry,” he muttered.
Then from the upper level of the bakery, another noise sounded upstairs. The noise snapped everyone’s gaze to the second floor window. It was a noise that Harold hadn’t heard since he was a little kid: The sound was the crying of one...no, two babies in a single room.
The three Earth ponies started to panic.
“Oh dear, Pound and Pumpkin must’ve woken up to that noise!” Cup shouted.
“Pinkie! You know what to do!” Carrot exclaimed.
Pinkie gave her employer a soldier’s salute. She rushed to the kitchen cupboard and dragged a whole bag of flour behind her before she hightailed it upstairs. The bag hit Harold, spinning him around rapidly before he fell on his behind all dazed and once again dizzy. Past his dizziness, he could hear quick hoofsteps into the room with the two crying babies.
“What does Pinkie need the bag of flour for?” Harold asked the Cakes.
“Oh, Pound and Pumpkin enjoy seeing Pinkie Pie get hurt in funny ways, like getting flour all over her or landing her flank on something pointy.” Carrot looked at Harold with shrunken pupils. “That makes sense, right?”
“I guess,” Harold said. “I enjoy seeing slapstick from time to time.”
The baby foals’ cries grew louder upstairs.
“Now what is going up there?” Carrot called up from the kitchen.
From the floor up above, everyone heard Pinkie rush to the staircase.
“Oohhhhhh! Mr. Cake, Mrs. Cake! Come quick, come quick!”
The Cakes and Harold rushed to the staircase, knowing full well that this was an emergency. Pinkie appeared to be covered in flour from head to hoof, leaving a trail of fine white powder.
“Pinkie, what happened? Why are the babies still crying!?” Cup asked anxiously.
“I-I don’t know! I tried everything to calm them down! I covered myself in flour, I slipped and fell on the jacks, I even tried singing a song but I can’t get them to stop crying!” Pinkie squished her ears to her head. “Oh, Celestia, make them stop!”
Cup and Carrot cantered upstairs to comfort their children.
Harold followed after, curious as to see how the married couple calmed their foals down. On the third step, Harold and Pinkie exchanged looks with each other. There was about a hundred witty things he should say about the flour-covered pony but he couldn’t decide on which.
Then Pinkie sneezed.
A cloud of white dust shot from her nostrils onto the wood of the staircase.
“Gesundheit,” said Harold.
“Thank you.”
The human teen ventured upstairs into a room where the foals were kept in their room. To his astonishment and confusion, the foals were fraternal twins, one a small pegasus colt, the other a unicorn filly. He could see the parents hold them in their hooves, cradling them and shushing them, reassuring that everything was alright.
But the foals kept crying.
The Cakes were losing the battle.
“I don’t understand, why can’t they stop crying!?” Cup shouted over the crying.
“I don’t know honeybun!” Carrot replied loudly “They don’t seem hungry or have a dirty diaper!”
“Is there something anypony can do!?”
Harold let out a small cough. It successfully snagged the attention of the two Earth ponies.
“Ummm...if it’s not to much to ask, maybe I could--”
“NO!!”
Harold reeled back from the Cakes’ simultaneous outburst. He knew the two were stressed out by the foals’ crying but they didn’t have to snap at him like that. He wondered if he couldn’t be of any help to everypony around him. Probably because he was different.
Harold began walking back downstairs, his crestfallen head lowered in hurt. He clutched his locket at his chest again. Like his bicycle outside, Harold felt like a wreck.
“Wait!!” Harold looked back at the Earth ponies. Their forehooves were extended towards him, clutching the screaming foals in their gentle grasp. Harold looked in the couple’s eyes. They were red, burning, and wide, all signs that the Cakes were on the brink of insanity.
“Please do what you have to do!!” Carrot said. “We can’t get them to calm down!!”
“Uhhhh....”
“Please!!”
At Cup’s screeching request, Harold gingerly grabbed the foals and cringed. The wailing of the foals was so loud, their yelling rung loudly into his ears, creating an aria of pain in sensitive ears. He opened his eye and got a look at the baby ponies.
Their eyes were watering. Their scared expression called out for someone to deliver them sanctuary from a dark nightmare. Harold couldn’t put his finger on it, but he felt a warm and soothing sensation from seeing these babies cry.
He felt like he knew what it was like for Lana to care for him as a baby.
And he knew the perfect song to calm the little ponies.
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Harold slowly lifted his eyelids up. He found himself lying in his bed, feeling a strange, encasing sensation on his right arm. He looked over and gasped.
A cast.
There was a medical cast on his arm.
Then it hit Harold. He remembered what happened before he lost all consciousness. He was tied up by his jacket on a flagpole by Drake Singer and his two drooling hound dogs, Al Keith and Roger Hayes. Everybody was there. They were laughing at him, pointing at him. Pictures were taken and sent on the Internet.
And Lana was there. She fought off Drake ang his goons.
But then he fell. He fell like his pockets were filled with lead.
Lana tried saving him, but she nearly failed to do so.
Harold felt a surge of pain in the arm so great that he passed out by the magnitude of the hurt. Now he woke up to a cast wrapped around his arm. Harold tried moving it and cringed. Not only was his arm broken, but now he couldn’t even move it.
KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK.
Harold shot his attention to his bedroom door. A tall, elderly man with a big pointed mustache and a small gray goatee stood by the door, opening it for the young lady who walked in with a sad face.
“He’s awake now, Miss Lana,” the man said with an olden British voice. “You can only visit him today for ten minutes, but after that, he has to sleep for the rest of the day.”
“I understand. Thank you, Reginald,” Lana said.
Reginald closed the door behind him. Lana turned to her little brother lying in bed, her delicate blue eyes glistening in moisture. She ran up to him ad hugged him, burying her face into his neck.
“Oh, Harold, thank God you’re alright,” Lana cried muffled by her face buried into his neck.
“Big sis? Wha...what happened?” Harold asked.
“When you passed out from your broken arm, I called Reginald up and we carried you in here.” Lana retracted her face, her face saddened, but her smile indicated relief. “I was so worried about you that I couldn't stop panicking...but now you're okay.”
“H-How long was I out?”
“About a day and a half. Luckily, Reginald was there to help stop the bleeding.”
Harold looked at his sister, shocked and worried.
“B-B-Bl-Bleeding?”
Lana sighed reluctantly. “When you broke your arm, you had a compound fracture. Your arm bone was sticking out of your forearm and...Oh, God it was so disgusting, I...” Lana gagged a little. “Reginald had to deal with the fracture by himself. He fixed it good, but then he told me to tell you...” Lana trailed off and looked away, indicating that she afraid to share with him, the bad news.
Harold sat up in his bed.
"Tell me what?"
Lana sighed again.
“You won’t be able to use that arm for another two weeks.”
Harold’s eyes widened.
“TWO WEEKS!?”
Lana nodded. “I know this is a big a shock to you, Harold, believe me. But with how bad the shape of your arm was in, Reginald told me that you can’t use it for another two weeks until the tissue and the muscles are all healed up.”
Harold started to stammer and stutter with his words. With all of this shock of not being able to use his favorite arm, he started to cry. The feeling of humiliation added onto his crying. The worst part of it all was, he could never draw with that arm out of commission for two whole weeks.
“But none of that matters now," Lana said with relief and joy. "What matters is that you’re okay.”
Lana wrapped her arms around Harold for another embrace. She rocked him gently as she hushed the boy and combed his hair with her hands. Harold choked on his sobs and he muttered something that sent a jolt into his sister’s spine.
“I don’t want to go to school anymore.”
Lana gasped a little and pulled back from her brother.
“Wh-What?"
Harold clenched his fist as he repeated his statement.
"I said I don't want to go to school anymore."
"Why not?”
“WHAT DO YOU THINK I MEAN BY WHY NOT!? I MEAN I CAN’T GO BACK TO SCHOOL ANYMORE, NOT AFTER WHAT THEY DID TO ME!!” Harold felt himself crying out from his painful feeling of humiliation. Lana inched back upon having Harold snap back at her. “I’VE BEEN HUMILIATED, LAUGHED AT, POINTED AT!! NOW MY PICTURES ARE GOING ALL OVER THE INTERNET AS WE SPEAK!! NOW EVERYONE IN THE WORLD’S GOING TO LAUGH AT ME!! I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE, LANA, I JUST...I...I...”
Harold gasped in an intake of oxygen.
“I JUST WISH I WAS NEVER BORN!!”
Lana covered her mouth in shock. This was severely saddening to hear come out of her brother, wanting to wish he never existed at all. Being gentle and all, Lana took Harold’s hands off of his face and held them in hers.
“Harold? Look at me, young man.”
And he did so, his sorrowful eyes meeting her concerned eyes.
“Don’t you ever, EVER say anything like that again, okay? Don’t EVER wish you weren’t born or alive, okay?” Lana hugged Harold once more. Warm, salty tears rolled down his neck to the collar of his shirt. “You’re the only reason why my life has a purpose, little brother. If I lost you in any way possible, I just can’t imagine what I would do without you.”
Harold sniffed and wiped a tear from his eye.
“Really? You mean it?”
Lana smiled at him.
“Of course. I thought I was going to be alone in this sick country until I heard your first baby screams come from mom and dad’s bedroom.” Lana held her brother’s hands together in hers. “You’ve got a future planned in front of you, Harold. I don’t want you to ever throw your future away.”
Once more, the brother-and-sister team pulled each other in for a hug. As the two squeezed each other in this embrace, all of the sadness and pain lifted from Harold’s broken spirit.
“I’m sorry, Lana. I never should have said that.”
“It’s okay, Harold. I’m sorry I never stopped you from hurting your arm.”
Harold sadly looked at his arm again. He had a bunch of plans in the future in store for him, and all of it required his trusty right arm.
“But, what am I gonna do without using my arm?”
Lana gave her brother a heavenly smile. “Don’t worry. We’ll come up with something else for you tomorrow. I promise.”
Harold smiled.
The doorknob at his door turned slowly, revealing Reginald standing at the door. He cleared his throat, indicating that Lana’s visiting time was over. Lana got up to walk out of the door when Harold asked her something.
“Lana?”
“Hmm?”
“Before you go, could you...maybe sing me that song that you’re so good at singing?”
Lana looked at Reginald for the answer. The elderly butler looked at her for a moment, then nodded once. The long-haired girl turned back smiling and kneeled down at the side of Harold’s bed. She brushed his hair gingerly as she began to sing her song.
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Harold sat himself down on the floor. He cradled the two little foals in his arms and proceeded to sing the one song that helped him sleep through restless nights and the darkest nightmares.
Now this song was passed down to two crying baby ponies.
“Smile though your heart is aching
Smile even though its breaking
When there are clouds in the sky, you'll get by
If you smile through your fear and sorrow
Smile and maybe tomorrow
You’ll see the sun come shining through, for you.”
The unbearable wailing of the scared foals simmered down as they heard this unknown melody sooth their fears and their worries. They opened their eyes to an unknown creature singing sweetly into their ears as he continued his song.
“Light up your face with gladness
Hide every trace of sadness
Although a tear may be ever so near
That's the time you must keep on trying
Smile, what's the use of crying?
You'll find that life is still worthwhile
if you just smile.”
The little pony babies started to giggle. Harold’s heart melted at the sight and the sounds of the laughing foals, bubbling over with happiness and smiling to the young human’s muse. A tear fell from his smiling cheek as he finished his song.
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“That's the time you must keep on trying
Smile, what's the use of crying?
You'll find that life is still worthwhile
if you just smile.”
Lana looked down to her little brother, sleeping peacefully underneath his warm silk covers. A smile was found on his face as his guardian bent down and kissed him on the forehead.
“Good night, little brother. Sweet dreams.”
Lana walked out of the room, closing the bedroom door behind her by a crack. Harold turned in his sleep, hugging the pillow to his face. As he drifted off into a peaceful slumber, seven words rang out from his mouth, unaware that Lana was listening in.
“Good night, big sis. I love you.”
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The foals yawned.
They buried their heads in Harold’s jacket and drifted back into their deep sleep.
The Cakes and Pinkie looked in amaze and awe as they witnessed how the human calmed two little foals with only just one song. Pinkie Pie bounced up to the human cradling little Pound and Pumpkin in his arms.
“Awwwww, look at them. They’re sleeping like a baby. Well, figuratively speaking of course,” Pinkie chortled, earning a gentle “sssshhhh” from Harold. The Cakes trotted up to Harold and took their babies from his arms and placed them together in the crib. The little pegasus sucked on his hoof.
Harold smiled sadly.
He felt his heart warm just by looking at the foals resting with each other in the same crib. He now knew what it was like for Lana to raise him as a baby.
Harold walked downstairs with Pinkie happily bouncing after him.
“Wow, that was amazing, Harold! I heard you were a great artist from Fluttershy, but I never imagined you were so great with kids! What’s your secret!? Did you foalsit for the other foals on Earth!? Did you take lessons of raising a foal!? No, wait, wait, wait! You learned from your sister, haven’t you!?”
Harold stopped at the last step and turned to Pinkie in bewilderment.
“How’d you know about that!?”
Pinkie cocked her head to the right and leaned onto Harold’s T-shirt.
“My Pinkie Sense told me soooooo,” she said in a singsong voice, pulling her head back.
Harold stood at the edge of the steps, looking on as Pinkie Pie bounded back to the kitchen, humming her tune as the doors squeaked back and forth. He wondered how Pinkie guessed it was Lana who taught him this song from heart.
Maybe it was Pinkie Sense?
Maybe it was mare’s tuition.
Either way, she somehow knew of “Smile.”
And smile he did when he walked back into the kitchen, grabbing his sketchbook and his art supplies he left on the counter. He put on a little Pink Floyd action and started to draw a circle on a fresh page of paper.