“We’re here!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed as she crested the hill. She slid the basket off of her back and placed it safely on the grassy knoll just as her company trotted up alongside her.
Spitfire gave a low whistle, surveying the open hilltop. In front of her lay countless apple trees stretching nearly to the horizon, and she could almost make out a barn off in the distance. The town of Ponyville rested off to the left side, nestled between another hill and the scores of apple trees. “Wow, Pinkie, you were right; this place is perfect! Beautiful, sunny…” She brushed her mane out of her eyes pointedly. “...secluded.”
“I know, right? It’s probably the bestest place around for a Wonderbolt to get away from her legions of screaming fans for a while. I sometimes wonder what it would be like if I had fans! They’d probably be all like, ‘Oh Pinkie Pie, you’re the most super-duper party pony around! Would you sign my snout?’ and I’d be all, ‘That’s a weird place to write my name! It’d just wash off the next time you took a bath, silly!’”
“It does get tiresome, especially right after a show,” Spitfire said, happy that she still had the time to take a shower before meeting the pink pony who so intrigued her. She had met Pinkie Pie several times before, mostly alongside Rainbow Dash, who made a point to never miss a single show when the Wonderbolts were on this side of Equestria.
“Speaking of which, I’ve gotta ask,” she said. “How exactly did you smuggle a dancing bear and his rubber ball backstage at our Baltimare show? I was sure security was going to have a fit when they saw it!”
Pinkie snorted, remembering the night with a fond grin. “Well, I can’t give away all my secrets or else I wouldn’t be able to surprise anypony! Let’s just say that I’m friends with the Baltimare zoo keeper, and I made her a Pinkie promise that nothing would go wrong if she let me borrow him for a few hours.”
“I have to say, I’ve certainly never had a fan offer to bring me such a unique form of ‘post-show entertainment,’ as you called it.”
“I don’t think the security ponies were very happy though,” Pinkie replied, sticking her tongue out in consternation. “They kept saying, ‘Sweet mother of Celestia, that’s a freaking bear!’ Like I didn’t have complete control of the situation. Crazy, right?”
Spitfire nodded. After all, it was one of the reasons that she accepted Pinkie’s proposal at their most recent event in Canterlot with great pleasure. “So,” she said as she sat on the comfortable grass beneath her hooves. “What’s in the basket?”
“Oh, you’re gonna love this,” Pinkie replied, rummaging through the blanket. She pulled out a pie, still warm from the oven, and placed it between them. “Ta-da! My homemade cherry pie, complete with fresh cherries from Fillydelphia. I even brought the extra cherries along in case you didn’t like pie, but then I thought to myself, ‘Who doesn’t like pie?! Crazy ponies, that’s who!’ But I brought the bowl of cherries anyway just in case.” She lifted two plates and a metal bowl topped to the brim with the bright red fruit out of the basket.
“Oh,” Spitfire said, forcing every muscle in her face to not look disappointed. “Well, I was getting pretty hungry anyway.”
Pinkie cut a piece of pie for her guest and one for herself before flopping onto her back. “Y’know, I’ve never actually had another pony up on this hill with me. It’s nice to share it with a friend!”
“Really?” Spitfire asked as she accepted the slice of pie before joining her friend on her back. “Why’s that? Seems like a pretty good place for a picnic.”
“It is! But my friends and I like to picnic on a different hill, so I kept this one all to myself. It’s my little pretend-secret, ‘cause it’s not really a secret, but I’ve never told anyone and I always come up here by myself. It’s also the best place in Ponyville for cloud watching!”
Spitfire swallowed her bite of pie, relishing in the sweet taste as it graced her tongue. “Cloud watching? Like… just watching the clouds go by?”
“Yes indeedy!” Pinkie gobbled her slice of pie in a single bite, practically swallowing it whole. Spitfire just gawked before shaking her head with a smile. Some things just didn’t need to be explained. “And you find shapes in them and you point them out to your friends and you all laugh at the silly cloud! What, you’ve never gone cloud watching as a filly?”
“Not really,” she admitted, licking her lips of the next bite of pie. “I grew up in Cloudsdale, and we were usually flying above the clouds instead of watching them from below. Life of a pegasus, you know?”
“Well, now you can learn how to cloud watch like an earth pony! Here, like this,” Pinkie scooted closer to the mare until their ears brushed against one another and Spitfire gave an involuntary shiver at the contact. A pink hoof pointed skyward at one of the fluffy clouds passing by. “See that one there? I can totally see a cupcake!”
Spitfire squinted at the cloud, turned her head sideways, and even crossed her eyes, but she couldn’t quite see the comparison. “I don’t see it.”
“Sure you do, Spitty! Look,” Pinkie wrapped a hoof around her waist, pulling Spitfire as close as possible to get her at the same view point. “See the swirly clouds at the top? Totally the icing on the cupcake. And the clumpy, blocky clouds on the bottom, well, if you squint your eyes and kind of turn your head then it looks like the base. See?”
In truth, Spitfire still didn’t see the cupcake. She was about to say so, but it struck her that maybe this game wasn’t all about being right, and was about just goofing off with friends. She grinned and nodded her head. “I can see it now! Oh, how about that one up there,” she said, moving her own hoof to point at a thin, high cloud floating by. “I can see a feather in that one.”
“Oh yeah!” Pinkie giggled as she grabbed a hoofful of cherries from the bowl. “I see the shaft right in the middle, and those wispy bits there are the barbs. See, you’ve got the hang of this already!”
“Huh,” Spitfire said as she reached for some cherries for herself. “I’m surprised you know the parts of a feather. Not many non-pegasi bother to learn about them.”
“I like to learn all about all types of ponies. Back when I was growing up on a rock farm, we didn’t have a lot to do in our downtime, so when my sisters and I weren’t playing together, I would read some books about each type of pony.” She smiled, dropping a cherry into her mouth with a wistful sigh while the rest fell around her. “It’s part of what helped me make so many friends, since I know some things that might be good for one kind of pony but bad for another. And if I couldn’t make friends, then I wouldn’t be here enjoying this day with you!”
“Hey Pinkie, answer me something. You said that this hill is the best in Ponyville for cloud watching, right?” She turned on her side to face Pinkie.
“Yeah, it’s got the best view of the sky and it’s not blocked by the apple trees at all!”
“So why do you keep it a secret? I mean, cloud watching seems like the kind of thing you’d do with your friends. Why not have your picnics up here, where they can enjoy it as well?”
Pinkie stayed silent for a moment, letting the wind whistle and fill the space between them. “Sometimes… I like to be on my own. Don’t get me wrong, I love my friends so, so, so much, but I also need a place to be alone with my thoughts for a while.” She rolled over to face Spitfire. “Sometimes I get a little too excited about things and ponies don’t like it when that happens. So I’ll come out here if I need a place to be alone for a while where I can’t bother anypony by being too crazy.”
“I think I understand.” Spitfire gave a warm smile of her own, resting her head on one of her hooves. “You’re something else, Pinkie Pie, but I gotta admit that this has been a pretty good day for me too.”
They lay for a while in that spot, quietly enjoying the bond shared between them, before continuing their game as the clouds went by. Spitfire even managed to stump Pinkie when she swore she saw a cloud that looked like an exact replica of Princess Celestia. As the sun hung lower in the sky, she stretched her hooves with a satisfied sigh. “You know, Pinkie, I’m glad you invited me out here today. It’s been nice to take a break from the Wonderbolts for a bit and just take some time to relax.”
“Mm-hmm!” Pinkie hummed, chewing on a cherry that she had just popped into her mouth.
“Although…” Spitfire sat up slowly, turning to face the pink mare. She owed it to her new friend to at least be honest. A embarrassed chuckle made its way past her lips as Pinkie focused her attention on her. “I suppose it’d be lying if I said today was entirely what I expected.”
“Oh?” Pinkie rolled onto her hooves, shaking a few loose cherries out of her mane. “Were you expecting a party? My reputation probably precedes me, since I throw the awesomest parties in all of Equestria!”
“Well, not exactly. See, it may have been partially my fault for being exhausted after the show, but the way you asked me out caused my mind to go… places.”
“Huh, that’s funny. I don’t even remember what I said! Was it like a super funny joke or something? I bet I would have laughed at it if I could hear it again!”
“You came up to me with the brightest smile on your face, looked me right in the eyes, and asked me, quote, ‘Do you want to come eat my cherry pie?’”
“Oh.”
A silence fell over the duo, broken only by the sounds of Pinkie’s jaw as she ate another cherry. A look of realization flashed across Pinkie’s face.
“OH.”
“Yeah,” Spitfire said as she chuckled again. “And when it was clear that I had misinterpreted, I thought it would be crude to bring it up again.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it, Spitty,” Pinkie declared as she wrapped the mare in a tight hug. “Mistakes happen, and this one is more funny than disastrous! Like this one time, I sent out invitations for a costume party, only I had forgotten to write the word costume on the invitation! Thankfully, it was on Nightmare Night, so a bunch of ponies showed up in costumes anyway, but lots of ponies didn’t and I felt super bad for making them feel left out!”
They shared a laugh along with their hug before Pinkie released her. As they wrapped up the remains of the pie and filled the basket once more, Pinkie spoke up again. “Besides, I guess I told a little fib too. I mean, I don’t ask ponies out on dates unless I really like them, and maybe I was expecting some sugar at the end too!”
“So… I’m confused. This was a date all along?”
“You tell me, Spitty.” Pinkie Pie stuck her tongue out at that, and resting right in the center was a perfectly tied cherry stem.
A distinct pomf from behind Spitfire told her what her mind already knew: she liked what she saw. She bent low with a teasing, predatory smirk on her face. “Oh, come here, you!” She tackled the pink pony to the ground with a flying leap, mashing their lips together as she let the soft grass that had held them all day break their fall. As the sun dipped low behind the mountains, playful giggles and moans danced on the breeze, and two ponies enjoyed the company of their own private party.