A road of earth and rock formed beneath her hooves as she trotted between the houses she had built. While at first she had to put in deliberate effort to make physical objects using the stars’ power, now it seemed like wherever she walked the stars would gather around her and create surroundings by themselves. While she was slightly apprehensive that she seemed to have almost no control over what was being built, she had to admit it was all rather convenient.
(She also had to admit she was feeling a little grumpy that the engineering course she vaguely remembered taking once had turned out to be completely useless.)
After a moment of thought, she decided to walk to a gingerbread house that had recently popped out of nowhere near her treehouse. The house smelled of sweetness and sugar and hyperactivity. Some of the walls and supports were still missing from the house (the stars didn’t build things all at once, apparently) but that didn’t prevent it from appearing extravagant and welcoming.
She supposed, from the tables and chairs and the ovens and rolling pins, that this gingerbread house was meant to be a bakery. This was where, theoretically, food would be baked that she could buy and eat.
Yum. Food.
She had previously tried to make food the same way she made everything else—thinking about it until it popped into existence. Unfortunately, for some reason the food she made with this method didn’t feel… satisfying. After eating, it didn’t feel like she had eaten anything.
She really wanted some real food.
It was strange, really. She was pretty sure she didn’t need to eat. She couldn’t remember the last time she ate, but she definitely hadn’t in at least the last month or so. And who knows how much time she spent in the nothing.
(Not to imply, of course, there was such thing as time in nothing.)
Now that she thought about it, how could she know that she’d been here for a month? It wasn’t as if the sun moved here. It seemed to like the twilight hour.
Eh, whatever. The point was that she didn’t need to eat, and there was no food here, but she was hungry.
Joy. Life really had a way of being annoying sometimes.
Then again, in this bakery… there was flour here, and sugar, and baking soda, and probably other stuff in the back rooms… she could bake something for herself, couldn’t she?
Then again (again), this was a bakery… she wasn’t very good at baking… shouldn’t there be bakers here to do that for her?
Huh, that was actually a very good idea! A baker is kind of like an object, and she’d gotten pretty good at summoning objects.
She focused.
A batch of stars gathered around a spot in front of her, bright and somehow clearly visible even through the floor of the bakery. After a few seconds of arbitrary swirling, they all leapt from the glassy ground at once and merged together into the shape of a pony made of pure light. A few seconds later, the light dimmed and the pink-furred and pink-maned pony underneath became visible.
Huh. That wasn’t very dramatic. You’d think that creating life would at least take a bit longer than a few seconds. Where was the energy? The fanfare? The fireworks?
The pink-furred and pink-maned pony had fully dimmed now, the starlight out of her system. The pony slowly opened her eyes, revealing bright blue irises that looked curiously out at the world around her. The pony looked a bit confused.
…For about two seconds, before a massive grin appeared on her face and she leaped into the air in excitement, seemingly defying gravity by hovering there as explosions of light and color filled all sight, streamers and balloons and the sound of blaring trumpets all announcing the pink pony’s presence.
Oh. There’s the fanfare.
The pink pony landed and started hopping on the spot as the streamers and sparkles previously launched into the air began to succumb to gravity and make a mess of the floor. “Hi, Twilight! Great to see you!” said the excitable pink pony, beaming brighter than the stars. “I guess you’re not my friend anymore because you don’t remember me and that’s sad, but I’m always good at making new friends even if it’s really the same friend twice!”
She stared. This was… not what she expected. “Um… who are you?” she said slowly, her voice slightly gruff from disuse. It had been a while since she’d talked to somebody besides herself. She had to admit it was rather nice.
The bubbly pink pony slapped her forehoof to her head and giggled. “Oh, I am a silly filly! I already forgot that you forgot! My name’s Pinkie Pie!” She removed her hoof from her forehead and stuck it out in greeting.
The pink-furred and pink-maned pony is named Pinkie. Of course. Why did I even have to ask?
Having nothing better to do, she stuck out her own forehoof in return greeting to the pink pony, only to regret it a moment later when she found herself tackled to the ground in a bone-crushing hug.
Apparently in Pinkie-speak, a sticking a forehoof out is not invitation for a hoofshake, but rather an invitation for a glomp. She would have to remember that.
“Oh, Twilight! We’ve missed you so much!” Pinkie bubbled in joy. “I was going throw a party for you whenever you came back, but you never did! Why’d you do that? It’s so boring here!” Pinkie got up and waved her hooves around in random directions, attempting to point to everywhere at once. “There are no other ponies here! No one to play with, nothing to do! The sun doesn’t even move—you should get to work on that,” she added sagely.
She huffed in annoyance. “I do just fine here, thanks,” she said defensively, but the pink pony was already ignoring her and instead focusing on a little patch of bakery floor that hadn’t been properly built yet, and so still had a view of the starry glass below.
“Ooh, pretty.” Lying on the hardwood floor of the bakery, the pink pony watched the dancing stars for a few moments, and then dipped a hoof in and started twirling the stars experimentally. The inky glass rippled and parted from Pinkie’s touch as if she had sunk her hoof below the surface of a lake.
Her jaw dropped. “H-how are you doing that?!”
Pinkie looked up, a look of genuine confusion on her face. “Doing what?”
“Doing that!” she exclaimed as she stomped the ground Pinkie had dipped her hoof into for herself, the glass responding with the expected solid chink.
Pinkie looked down at her own hoof, then looked up at the pony before her. A few moments passed, and then the look of dawning comprehension crossed her face. Which was then immediately followed by a grin and a look of deviousness. “I don’t understand why you think this is weird,” Pinkie said sweetly, twirling her hoof through the glass lake. “Shouldn’t I be asking you how you’re able to walk on water?”
Her eye twitched dangerously.
Pinkie giggled into her hoof. “I’m just kidding, Twilight. Um, I think the glass is solid for you because… well, do you remember when you thought ‘horizon’ that time, way back?”
She cocked her head.
“Well… I never thought ‘horizon’!” Pinkie exclaimed with a grin, as if that explained everything.
What a weird girl.
Pinkie suddenly brightened and started bouncing on the spot. “Ooh! I just had an amazingly awesometastic idea! We’re never going to get to have your ‘Welcome Back!’ party if you never come back, so why don’t we all come to you and have the party here instead?” The party pony got down on her knees and lifted her forehooves together in a mockery of prayer. “Please, Twilight? Can we can we can we?”
She reflexively took a couple hoofsteps back at the pink pony’s outburst. “Uh… who’s ‘we’, exactly?”
“You and me and our friends, of course!”
“And how do you suppose ‘our’ friends will be able to get here?”
Pinkie actually looked stumped at this for a moment. But only a moment. “Well, you’re just going to have to make them, obviously! Like you made me!”
A pause.
“No,” she said stubbornly.
Pinkie’s smiling face morphed into an exaggerated pout. “C’mon, Twilight? Why not?”
“Because I’m already starting to regret making you. I don’t need any more company.”
Her pouting face morphed into a thoughtful one, and then subsequently morphed into a sly grin. “Do you know what’s usually at parties, Twilight? Y’know, besides streamers and balloons and dancing and games and fun things like that? Food. All parties have food! That what you wanted from me in the first place, right?”
“Well…”
“But not just any kind of food!” Pinkie continued before she could be interrupted. “For this party, I wanna bake a big, enormous apple pie for dessert, but Sugarcube Corner doesn’t have any apples. And I’m not going to make any of the rest of the food unless I can bake my apple pie, so I want you to get some apples for me! And none of that fake stuff you imagine up, I want real apples.”
She stared at the party pony in annoyance and suspicion. “This is going to send me on a wild goose chase, and you’re doing it on purpose, aren’t you?”
Pinkie grinned. “Yup!”
“…So, if I know that, why should I listen to a word you say?”
Another grin. “Because ponies will do anything for food when they’re hungry, and also because your life has been boring enough recently that you’re willing to humor me for sheer curiosity’s sake!”
She glared at the pink pony in annoyance and exasperation, not admitting to herself the little part of her mind that agreed wholeheartedly with what Pinkie had just said.
“If you wanna find apples, you should follow the dirt path that leads out of town! You’re sure to find apples there!” Pinkie babbled on.
With a huff, she turned away from the pink pony and toward the door, not bothering to say goodbye and not wanting to admit the first thing she’d do upon leaving would be finding that dirt path. As she reached the door, she noticed out of the corner of her eye that Pinkie was intently staring at her flank for some reason.
“Where’s your cutie mark?” the pony asked, rubbing her chin.
Her cutie mark? She looked down, but found that it was still impossible to focus on that area of her body. “I don’t have one,” she stated simply.
“Yes you do! Well… um, you used to, at least…”
She looked back at the pink pony. “Oh, really? What was it?”
“Your cutie mark represented magic! It was, like, it was some big pink star and it was surrounded by a bunch of smaller whi—” Pinkie abruptly stopped talking mid-sentence. The pink pony looked at the bare, slightly unfocused flank before her, then look down at the inky glass below her, then look back up…
Pinkie started giggling. “Oh, I get it! Gwha! I’m so silly sometimes! Keep on goin’, Twi. Applejack’s a waitin’!”
Disturbed, she quickly left the bakery as the party pony within fell to the ground and started laughing hysterically.
The dirt path was easy to find. The path lead out of town, directly away from the eternally-twilit sun, causing long shadows to form on the ground before her.
Now that she reflected, she felt kinda bad for acting so unfriendly toward Pinkie Pie. For as undeniably… strange her encounter with the girl was, she had to admit…
…
What did she have to admit?
She didn’t have to admit anything! What was she thinking? Pinkie’s bribery was annoying, and she should feel annoyed!
Yeah, that worked. She nodded her head in satisfaction.