In the hours since Sunny disappeared, so had the sun. The southerly-driven cloud cover indicated that a storm was due for Ponyville. These would likely not deploy until evening, and their early arrival just served as a traditional form of warning for the necessities of the weather cycle. Anypony who cared had a time limit to get home and avoid the quick but heavy downpour prescribed to nourish the land.

Still in sight of Berry's place, Colgate bounded in the general direction of Golden Oak Library, whistling conspicuously. She considered, in her merry state, whether it might be better to swing by the arcade for a while. Good way to pass the time while Berry hatches this crazy scheme of hers.

Wait--wouldn't it be better to meet with Berry first, to get all the details again?

Colgate paused for a couple seconds in astonishment, then resumed her silly hop, steered a bit more toward the center of town. Maybe she didn't really know what Berry was even up to. Or even she herself.

A quarter mile from home, Berry was clearly plodding over to Sweet Apple Acres. There simply wasn't any other thing of interest between these two points on the northwest and southwest edges of town. She frequently stopped, eyed around, and sniffed the air--but no Boogeymare was to be found.

The garden shop was having trouble with their new hires: for every customer leaving the place with a wheelbarrow of goods and a smile, another grumbled over a wilted potted plant or a leaky bag of soil.

The quill and sofa place saw a few quill-buyers--including Spike, Twilight's dragon assistant; but it seemed no one would bother buying furniture on such a damp day.

The Ponyville Café wasn't exactly percolating at the moment, either. Even though ponies knew quite well about when the rain would appear, that burning ball the clouds now concealed had an unmistakable effect on moods--and thus also on a good number of providers of non-essential goods and services.

On the northern edge of downtown, a hint of the mare in blue topaz peeked over the light crowd in the open market. She was not headed to the arcade just beyond it--in fact, she seemed to be heading away from it. Perhaps she decided against it at the last minute.

So she considered her options some more. If not the arcade...why not check out the market? One could spend hours just picking over all the fresh produce and deals on knick-knacks you never knew you needed. Might even get a good deal on some munchies you could bring home. At least until Berry comes back.

Her concentration was broken by the appearance of none other than Berry herself, walking toward her from the market crowd. This was utterly impossible.

Colgate eyed her carefully, then grinned and piped up. "Ah, so which one are you?"

A mellow and unassuming Berry replied, "Oh, Colgate! You're the only one who never mistakes us for ole Punchie when we come to town. Berry Jam here. Say, you got plans?"

One of Berry's identical sisters, rarely seen in Ponyville, just had to drop by on this day.

"Well..." Where do you have to be today? Say it! "Oh, maybe you'd like to help me go flower shopping? I need to go to the library today too, but there's a housewarming party I have later on and I wanted to get a gift. What about you?"

Somewhere in the hills east of the Golden Oak Library, Carrot Top's new and allegedly complete home lay. Somewhere in the nooks and valleys abounding the verdant landscape, a concealed grass-covered door opened to an underground hovel. Somewhere. Somewhere...

Inside of that somewhere, flat square stones formed a simple yet elegant flooring solution for a great earthen dome. The sloping walls bore wall-scrolls of various artworks--mostly Eastern--as well as snippets of writing passages from old social and political figures. Clopfucius seemed to be well-represented among the literature. One piece of stylized artwork depicted a possible comic-book character--a burgundy mare with puffed straight auburn mane, braided in back, and with a hot/cold water spigot for a cutie mark. The ceiling bore a fine mesh, apparently meant to catch any clumps of dirt that loosened from the--well, the hill. Half-finished pages of hoofwriting littered the desk to the entrance's left; on the right, a few pillows were situated about a blanket bearing a modest tea set. Overall, the home was properly furnished except that a simple pile of hay formed the bed, there was no clear bathroom solution, and the chute that might serve as a fireplace seemed quite unfinished. What an odd place to live.

Sweet Apple Acres, and Ponyville's founding family, were situated across town from that hut. The Apples were invested in one more day of labor to feed Ponyville and the nation; no Berry mingled with them, however. The only trace of foreignness here was a small piece of paper, held fast by a rock, a hundred paces north of the farmstead's outer fence. The paper read: "Nice try stalker."

Not far into town from the farm, the sun peeked through the clouds for a moment, illuminating an acre-sized patch of ground that happened to include the domicile of Ditzy Doo and daughter Dinky. A locked door separated its lifeless interior from the outside world. Of course, they were both busy with work and school at the moment.

Inside the flower shop, along with the standard racks and shelves and the wares upon them, flyers adorned the walls to announce the Ponyville Pet Charity Concert. Idly gawking at one of these flyers stood one Berry--though it could not be discerned at first glance which Berry this was.

The other observed Berry popped out of the shopping crowd, and she gave her sister a tap on the shoulder. Berry #1 spun around and promptly gave her a hug.

"Oh, awesome, girl! What a...um, I think Cole would call it a 'coinky-dink'! Oh, have I got plans for you today...if you're not too busy, anyway."

"Just in town for some of the nicer corn and radishes they grow here. Your lady actually had me come in here and pick up some zinnias for a housewarming party. Just told me to wait here."

The apparent Berry Punch pumped her forehooves in excitement and let out a quiet shout. "Aww yes! She is the best. I thought she wasn't gonna work with me on this at all. Something gone right in this shit-tabulous day for once..."

Befuddled, the apparent Berry Jam raised one eyebrow in anticipation of an explanation.

Closer to her ear, hushed to the crowd but not totally inaudible: "We have a stalker problem. A very very sneaky stalker. Maybe just me. Or Cole. Or Carrot Top--you remember her, right? Well, whatever--we're gonna give this guy the run-around." The smirk that followed had a sneakiness of its own.

"The run-around..." she echoed. Then out loud came the reply: "So he'll turn himself in and apologize?" The pause was worth a thousand words. Punch fidgeted slightly while Jam lowered her lids, grinning just a skosh, almost condescending. "You are a nutcase, Punchie. Whatever made you think that'd work?"

Now everyone could hear this bizarre conversation if they'd wanted to. "Hey, this is serious business here! I got proof someone's messing with us! What would you want me to do? I can't catch what I can't see, Jams. So you tell me what you'd do."

"What, like, bait him? I don't even know what this guy wants. I just found out last night. He could be after anything. But whatever it is, nothing's missing in my stuff. So it's gotta be one of us, I think."

They looked at each other a bit while Jam considered the matter. Fluttering her eyes, she suggested: "Well, there's one bait I know that works... masterfully for most guys."

Berry Punch studied her twin carefully, scanning her face for a clue. Something slowly clicked in her mind. Then her eyes upturned. Her cheeks tightened, then puffed. And she let out a laugh--first a chortle but then building, eventually loud enough to disrupt the whole store, falling clean backwards, rolling around a bit on the floor.

After her sister settled, Jam clarified with knowing mirth: "Well, if you're sure it's a guy, anyway."

A good few faces from the shopping mass now glared disapprovingly or disgustedly at the Berries. Punch glared back at them briefly, then got back up and dusted herself off.

"Alright. I got an idea. You just wait for Cole to get back and, um...just go wherever she tells you. And try to be like me a bit. You can tell them real quiet-like who you are, but otherwise make sure to slip a few 'shit's and 'damn's in to keep this psycho from suspecting anything. Think you can do that?"

Punch broke into a crazed grin. Jam called the grin with her own--one of tepid enthusiasm, familiar to her sister's ways.

With a stab at eloquence: "Are you aware of my collection of potent potables? I'll let you have your pick next time I see you at my place."

Berry Jam gave real pause at this; her head shot straight up. She pondered the possibilities.

A smack upon the head from the punchy one. "Buck you, I know you don't even like scotch. But basically anything else, yeah."

Jam shrugged, rolled her eyes, and smiled faintly at her crazy sister. And then Punch winked and vanished without another word.

Minutes later, a couple hundred paces out from the flower shop, another scene was wrapping up.

"If anyone's gonna get us out of this mess, it's her, alright? You and I both know Berry's lost it, and it's gonna take some...special thinking to get out of this without me getting a black eye and you getting black eye number two." And she'd surely make you regret last night, too.

"Hey, just chill! She's not usually like that. She's just under a lot of stress lately. And uh, Carrot, why do we have to involve a bunch of other innocent ponies? Could you maybe, just maybe be overreacting because of how you're feeling about Berr--"

"Whoa..." Colgate's determination failed for the first time as Carrot faced her, panting and grimacing before her. She stood loosely, shaken. Then after a moment she frowned, almost seeming to pout. Staring straight ahead, her voice flat and faltering and glum: "Fine. Lead the way..."

The clouds had thickened and darkened the sky. One born and raised in a scene like this might be forgiven to not know the sun existed at all.

Colgate, Carrot, and the "fake" Berry all trotted steadily toward another downtown destination. Carrot indeed led the way, proud and defiant; Colgate pressed on behind her, downtrodden. Berry Jam just tagged along without much concern.

Colgate chuckled at that. "I'm afraid that your impression needs...it needs some work."

Colgate froze on the spot, straightening up. As Jam moved to pass her, Colgate cut her off with an outstretched forehoof and beheld her with distaste. "Are you really going to talk like that around me?"

Worried, with darting eyes: "Whoa, uh, no. I didn't realize that was still...touchy."

Through clenched teeth: "He ditched her and left her with nothing! If there's one thing in this world that makes my blood boil, it's what that wretch put her through!"

"I've heard it straight from the horse's mouth! I don't care about your rumors, or whatever the folks of this town have to say about us."

Carrot yelled impatiently from some thirty paces ahead. "Hey! C'mon, move it--we don't have all day!"

But this Berry only had eyes for Colgate--warbling and shrunken in pupil. "I...I never said a word."

Colgate stared harshly for a few more seconds. Then, with a gruff pat on the shoulder: "Good. We have a housewarming party to get to after this. Let's stay cool for now."

But that thought could hardly describe this trio, now in sight of their goal--and in this day's light, it was a dreadfully cheery thing to behold.

One can hardly describe Sugar Cube Corner without mentioning Pinkie Pie. Despite the bakery/confectionery being owned and run by a separate family, that family's assistant and pseudo-adoptee had singlehoofedly transformed its atmosphere into something more like a playhouse. The Cakes had not permitted any changes to the fanciful gingerbread-house mockup. But Pinkie's notion of inviting the more daring of customers to make professional-quality baked goods for little more than cost made for an unexpected attraction--one that bolstered the shop's commercial reach beyond those with a sweet tooth to schools, corporate picnics, youth groups, rehabilitation clinics, and other niche interests. The small-time daycare service that naturally followed only further enhanced the boisterous air of the place. Even at the front desk, the Cakes had learned to adopt a more whimsical approach to business to keep in the spirit of the Element of Laughter and her (or its?) fans.

The missus of the establishment sashayed in from the kitchen. A saturated pastel blue mare with a decadent raspberry-swirl mane, she bore a fore-apron with frills and glitter shaped into smiling faces--as well as a wide-eyed, vaguely discomforting smile of her own. On a forehoof she carried a tray with tiny bowls of some treat smothered with chocolate sauce and crumbled toppings. Her inherent nervousness increased as the three strode to the counter; she seemed to wait too long to initiate conversation.

Jam, having followed Carrot's cue from earlier and being the only visitor of pleasant disposition at the moment, started: "If I'm not mistaken, we're here for a date with Pie."

Mrs. Cake's toasty-orange husband suddenly poked his head in from the workplace. "Oh ho, but don't dates go in the pie?"

Colgate coolly (not in the sense of the word invoked earlier) followed: "I can't presume to know what all goes in the Pie we seek. But she should be working here today, am I right?"

"Just about every day, dawn to dusk! And it's not like we wouldn't give her a day off, either!" Mrs. Cake eyed, not idly, at the crasher of her conversation; he grimaced, glanced back, and disappeared back to duty.

Carrot Top, the initiator of all this and the only one yet to speak, did so. "Well, this is business. We'll pay you for your time if Pinkie can have a moment with us."

Mrs. Cake took a note of concern at the tone of this discussion. "This sounds...quite serious. But then..." Then, with a flourish of florid facial features and a deft hindhoof spin to match, barely disturbing the held tray: "Maybe we'd like a little sample of today's special while I go find her?"

Jam handled this one. "Oh yeah, sure!" She then briefly smiled at the others, possibly at the notion that something good for her was coming from all this nonsense after all.

So Mrs. Cake set the tray on a front-end table and briskly tucked into the kitchen.

Carrot suddenly wrinkled her nose--apparently at one of her own thoughts, not at the offer of a treat. That treat was enjoyed calmly at the table along with the others. If it had been made of pure cheer-inducing magic, though, the spell didn't work on her.

Colgate seemed to have a finer taste for matters and noted, "Huh, chocolate-graham cracker orange parfait? Can't say I ever would've thought of that." She gained at least a shade of merriment from the experience.

Jam grinned back at her once more, wearing a little chocolate sauce on her chin. Colgate immediately spotted it and made a wiping motion in her direction. After Jam took care of it, Colgate faintly smiled and snorted. Perhaps the resemblance to her old Punch helped that along.

Then, that voice. "Well, orange you glad I did?" This was a voice accustomed to tearing down walls of recalcitrance, lifting through mires of doldrums, and pirouetting through walks of shame--and its owner seemed oblivious to its power. Was it a charade for some deeper act, or was she really just a freak of nature?

The voice's owner emerged at some impossible speed from behind the wall, about the swinging door to the front end, and right across the table from the presently bewildered trio. "Orange You Glad? Pretty good name, huh?"

The others briefly beheld Pinkie Pie. Even if they'd been long-time acquaintances, they would've had a good excuse to take pause at the moment: Her pink-on-pink frame was bedecked in some huge frou-frou neck collar, a yellow/chocolate puffy-legged petticoat, a beribboned bun pastry on her rump, and a wide-brimmed hat bearing an enormous dollop of pudding.

She'd noticed the attention and just stood there beaming and basking in it for some seconds. Then she gently set aside the tray and uneaten samples, abruptly ended her smile, pounced on the table, and stood on hind hooves with a forehoof across the chest. She cast her eyes toward some great unseen yonder and pronounced with weapons-grade bombast: "Ask not what you can do for Chancellor Puddinghead--ask what Chancellor Puddinghead can do for you!" Then she was instantly on the ground again. After a beat: "I think that's how it goes, anyway." And she let forth an adorable squee.

"Oh right, hehe! Guess you don't usually get in the Pinkie groove! But it's time to turn that aaallll around today! Mrs. Cake said we might have a possible...um..." She stretched in a most exaggerated fashion to Colgate's ear. With a ridiculously loud and strained whisper: "We might have a Code Blue."

"How much do I owe you for 15 minutes of your time?" Carrot purposely avoided engaging in whatever was going on here.

"Wellllll...hold on a second, let me work this out." One second later, she had already left and returned with a full-size chalkboard. One could not even guess as to the chalkboard's source. She got to work, scribbling wildly and crafting diagrams that didn't seem remotely relevant to cost estimation. "Metric-to-imperial conversion...carry the four...multiply by the eigenvalues of each combination of the non-transposed elements..." She whipped around. "AHA! That will be three smiles."

She then leaned back at Colgate, whispering loudly once more: "I'm actually on my normal break. I'm totally gonna rob these ponies blind!" This immediately elicited the first third of the payment/bribe as the blue mare giggled.

Pinkie then turned with an accelerating, dramatic glance at Berry Jam. Her leering eye bespoke a mystery in need of solution. "Hmmm... Hey! You're not the same Berry I know! 'Cause you'd be telling me to cut manure or something like that!"

"Smart as a licorice whip, Miss Pie!" Jam jumped headlong into Pinkie's game. "Or sharp as a rock-candy tack, maybe?"

"Ohhh, that reminds me! ...Oh, but nevermind, that's in a few moons. So, how was theeeeeeee"--Pinkie pumped her forehooves wide in the air, standing and shouting--"Choco-Orange-Cracker Chilled Surprise!?"

"Orange You Glad I didn't say that name again?" Pinkie tittered and even snorted at her own juvenile joke. Carrot only bristled slightly.

Pinkie returned to her newest task, adjusting her over-sized hat carefully as if to seem intellectual while pondering this mysterious Berry head-on.

Just as Pinkie was about to speak, Jam slyly interrupted, "Actually, I'll buy one right now."

Pinkie leaned back to Colgate with the useless whisper: "Ohh, she's goooood." She quickly conducted this business with Jam and fetched her a healthy-sized bowl, which Jam wasted no time in devouring.

Aside from this, Colgate's contrast in mood with Carrot had become sufficient to bring the former to put an arm around the latter and squeeze gently. "Come on...you said she could help and--honestly!--there's only one pony here I see needing any help right now. Cheer up a bit, huh?" Carrot did her best impression of Carrot not being embraced or loved by anyone.

Pinkie suddenly scrunched her face and pouted. "I. Sense. A plot! You guys don't want me to know who this not-Berry Punch is...do you!? This sham of a mare! This charlatan of a tippler! This doppelganger of a fine wine maker!"

Here came smile number two, from a muzzle coated even more with chocolate than before. "Jeez, it's Jam! Berry Jam! Thought you knew about us. We're twins! Or two of a kind, anyway. There's seven of us in all. But hey...let's just say it was a crazy foalhood."

Pinkie was taken aback, eyes wide and pupils shrunk and ears up and mouth in a little O. Berry smiled further, having one-upped a master in craziness. "Yeah, they banned that magical birth control faster than a Lunar War fan club." What!?

"So...we might have two or three minutes left after introductions are over at this rate." Carrot yawned, perhaps only for dramatic effect. "Let's just get down to business. I'm not sure whether the real Berry Punch is losing it, or the Tooth Fairy got sidetracked at her place, or maybe Colgate and I just had too much to drink last night. But something's not right."

You've always got to blame the booze, don't you?, she considered after the fact.

"Umm..." Carrot continued. "Well, Ms. Punch could stand to get punched back into reality. But then, maybe she's right, too! We're looking for ideas, at least to get to the point of making a plan that's really secure and not insane or stupid." She suddenly facehoofed, realizing her self-possessed and sharply-dressed choice of adviser might not have been the greatest pick for that task. "Okay, we're just looking for ideas. Any ideas at all."

Colgate, more the authority on all matters Berry, took the stage from here. "She's run off to..." She groaned. "Sweet Celestia...entrap this supposed invisible stalker of hers. I mean, of ours. I say 'hers' because, well, the only things I know for sure are there's a piece of a strange pony's tooth in her house and Carrot and I have been acting... Well, okay, I've been acting more random than usual lately. Sorry, I'm running a bit low on sleep today. But that's probably unrelated."

Pinkie tilted her head to one side, comically confused. Softly, she inquired, "But that doesn't explain anything. What kind of bait is she using?"

Forget it. She wouldn't know what that is if a pair of diddlers paradiddled on her bratty little head.

Her ears perked up(!?) and she caught the message. "Oohhh! Wow, that's an extra-naughty trap! And you wanna...uh, know how I can help?" She looked away from the three coyly, blushing.

Carrot interrupted this terrible train of thought. "No, no, no! We need to know what to do tonight at my housewarming par--" She immediately caught herself.

Too late. "You? You, Miss Grumpy-Lumpy-Dumpy Pants, are having a party tonight?? Hold the press! Stop the music! Delay shipment and belay that order, captain! Forget Code Blue, we're going Code Pink!! ...Hehe, oh wait, I never told you!" She leaned in to "whisper" to Miss Grumpy-Lumpy-Dumpy Pants. "Code Blue is where there's someone grumpy on the floor."

"I get it." Carrot's whisper was not quite as comical, but it did break her genuinely grumpy composure a bit. She dwelled on Pinkie's underhoofed tactics of titillation and recoiled with--

Pinkie's left eye fluttered, and her right horehoof twitched. Her spine shivered, and the back of her poofy curly mane split in two for a second before rejoining.

Then she gasped, colossal and noisome and attention-grabbing (as if that last string of events wasn't). "You guys! I think your problem is...right here, right now! There's an alien controlling your mind!!"

Carrot's funk evaporated as she stared at Berry, awestruck. "Are you...serious?"

Colgate and Berry Jam were utterly incredulous now. Colgate mildly addressed her friend. "Okay, seriously. You're both starting to weird me out. Why would you suddenly listen to her about this--this load of horse apples?"

Carrot continued staring at the somewhat panicked Pinkie. "Because she's right. By goodness, she's right. She's right all the time. I follow her hunches to get leads on stories. You think I didn't have what you're going through when she first Pinkie Sensed in front of me? This is...this is..." She trotted over to face Colgate, then bracing her friend's head with both of her forehooves. "I have to go now!" She abandoned the shop and the ones she'd dragged there, almost without another thought. Just inches from the door, she rendered a brief, forced, yet polite smile toward Pinkie--and then she was out of sight.

Pinkie and the other two would have a lot of questions needing answers--more than fifteen minutes could oblige. But this story had other places to go.

Inside Berry's shack, not a creature stirred and not a sound was made--at least, not a sound from above ground.

Approaching the door, one could make out a most dramatic sound. One familiar with its typical place of origin would immediately catch interest. This was the sound of a mare in the throes of passion. Even if it may have been overplayed, the rough rhythmic stroking of primal energies against the voice box could've won out over any siren's call.

Not much could be seen in the cellar from the door's entrance. A dust or something more arcane blotted vision--but there was indeed a light somewhere beyond the haze.

On the first step, one would find no booby traps--no tripwires, no sharp objects, no adhesives, no intention of the step to give way and break a leg.

And the third step. Beyond the depth of the floor, one could make out the high ceiling and location of the light source. And around some pillars--behold! A hoof twitched wildly, on a table directly under the light.

And the fourth. The hoof had a leg, and across from it lay another hoof. These shook vigorously, obscured by this strange air that felt tangible and somehow tasted purple. Now gasps could be heard between the upturning moans and cries.

And the fifth. Could she really be doing this--prone and vulnerable and distracted--without any defense against a stalker? How much did she value her life?

A sound from outside the cellar--not its door, but another door. And many hoofbeats.

The owner of the hooves beneath snapped forward, took a moment to clean herself, and made for higher ground. Seconds later, that cellar door was closed and locked again, all while she nodded and greeted the three kids present.

Any nerves Berry had regarding the situation were skillfully concealed. "Hey guys!"

"Were you cleaning the cobwebs again?" asked the grape-maned lightest blue unicornlet Dandelion, her unassuming heavy nasal voice carrying a psalm of sweetness.

"Oh...I couldn't have said it better myself!" Berry beamed gently at her and the others. "We have to keep those spiders at bay!" She seemed to really stick that word, as if to send a message to some nopony not present.

Then the kids moved on and assumed their usual after-school duties of romping on beanbags, heading out to climb trees, and occasionally getting griped at by Mama to get on the homework. Little Planter didn't get chores assigned to him anyway, but the others seemed relieved not to have to worry about them for the day. Mama was relieved too--or at least she put on this air, sitting on the piano bench leaning against the piano, hoof pressed against her face, staring blankly over the house--wondering, quietly wondering what became of Sunny. She seemed quite divorced of the other concerns from earlier. Perhaps she'd given up chasing the wind for the time being.

The door flew open, and in stepped a saucy young mini-mare. Her foremane bore sultry bangs; behind them, twin pigtails flopped, shiny and gold bound in brighter gold and purple. Her sky-blue face carried much makeup--perhaps too much of that same purple below and beside the eyes; above the eyes hung dashes of pale green. A saturated strawberry streak coated her lips. The matching subdued strawberry blush meshed with bright orange sherbet, giving her cheeks a two-toned celestial glow. Sunny had tasted the rainbow of amateur fashion.

The dissonance of Sunny's nature and appearance was decorated by nature itself: just as she and Berry were eyeing each other from afar, the first distant boom of outside thunder rolled in. Then she closed the door and focused on the bedroom, trotting toward it.

Berry's vaguely troubled face washed away with the motion. She swiftly put on a new air, gleaming at her glammed-up daughter, then turned to the piano to perform a quick up-down glide. "Well how about that? You really are growing up!"

Sunny appeared indifferent, or maybe bitter, as she continued her wordless stride to the bedroom.

"Oh, come on now. Don't make me bring out the big guns!" She cracked her front fetlocks and raised her forehooves dramatically toward the ebony and ivory. But Sunny showed no reaction.

"And it's not 'You Are My Sunshine', either." Berry took a moment to recall how this one went--but by the time she was ready to play, Sunny was out of reach of sight and sound, in the bedroom.

As the door shut, Berry's cheery air dropped. She quietly intoned to an empty music rack: "Well, can't say I didn't give it my best shot."

With Dandelion and Sparks playing outside, the preschool-aged Planter was her only audience. The beady-eyed orange-red colt cantered up to watch her as she sang (strikingly against her soulful vocal character) and played the somber, creeping, morbidly upbeat ballad:

Tell me, has the nightmare come true?
If so, then there is...nothing left of you
and although you are welcome where I live
there is no more room in my heart left for you
you can't forgive

When will I, oh when will I, ever know the answer why
I wonder when does our real life begin?
How do I, oh how do I ask the fates and no more cry
I wonder if I ever will fit in...

There must have been a part of Sunny that still resisted the revelation from when the tumblers of truth turned that day. The doorknob did not turn--it had still been open a crack. But she was still there, then against the door--only out of sight after all.

Berry played a second refrain, and she observed carefully. She noticed the door crack.

On the third refrain of chorus, Sunny joined in, barely intelligible through the door and the convulsions of sorrow. She couldn't match Berry's wider vocal range, but it didn't really matter anyway.

After an empty-feeling transition, Berry played a fourth refrain, not singing along this time. Sunny tried to keep going on her own but just collapsed utterly, her petite body splaying to push the door against the frame but still not fully shutting it.

Berry played it out, decelerating to a close. Planter held his head upright, rather proud of his understanding. He then pronounced it: "That was sad."

Planter struggled for some seconds to recall something beyond his comprehension. Berry turned to face and smile at him, trying not to gaze too seriously at her little mark of pride. After he gave up: "Can you play the Smile Song now?"

Berry's expression increased at this, her eyes moistening. She practically breathed in contented reply, "You got it..."

She returned to the piano and played the Smile Song for the five-hundredth time, fresh as if it were the first, but with the experience that permitted a honky-tonk rendition--something with a more relaxed swing and dance and with a walking-pace question/answer style, like "Walkin' to New Horseleans". She belted out the lyrics deep from the diaphragm, nearly shaking the walls with volume.

Sunny had recomposed herself and waited just beyond the door to burst out. When the song ended, she began.

SLAM. "This isn't about the rain, or the sunshine, or your feelings! It's not even about my feelings! You're ruining my whole life, Mom! I can't even go to the café if all I'm gonna do there is get ridiculed and made fun of...because of you!"

Berry sharpened her brow at this accusation but maintained her mode of cheery matron and singer. "And why did you sing alo--"

"You don't even get a say anymore! You've ruined my life already! There's nothing you can do about it now!! Wanna lock me in the room forever!? The door's right blinking here!" She flailed at the door by which she remained, standing wide in its frame and breathing hard.

Berry eyed young Planter, a party who had no business in this. Planter, who was too young to go out on his own to play, especially in the impending rain. Planter, who had no place to hide from calamity in the house of forgotten troubles.

Then she gritted her teeth, hopped off the piano chair, and leveled with her eldest. She trotted heavily toward her, her expression grim and disturbed but lacking rage--eyes still moist with earlier joy but regard still pointed and uncaring. Sunny was fighting sobs that streaked pieces of make-up rainbows down her cheeks--then after a few more of Berry's paces, she braced a hoof over her face for fear of something terrible from Mom. But Mom just marched on.

On arrival, she spoke, thick with disgust and disregard: "Why can't we have drama in the house of Berry?"

Berry cast off that half-worn frowning mask, then let the other hoof drop. "You tell me. It's your house too now."

That caught Sunny completely off guard, and she dropped her bracing forehoof. The crying stopped, though the sobbing spasms took longer to cease.

The house's longer-standing co-owner dropped to a completely normal conversational tone. "You win. I can't boss you around anymore. And since you still legally have to live here, it's the only way to say it that makes any sense. So why don't you tell me why you think it is?"

They now each sat in careful consideration of one another, each on either side of the bedroom/punishment-room door. Sunny's slackened face indicated she was so deep in thought that she might not even speak again that day.

"I can't punish somepony who knows what she's doing is right. I can only make her suffer." Berry grabbed the door handle. " 'Here, let me lock away my daughter because I don't like the way she thinks!' Or maybe it's because she didn't do her laundry. Or she didn't treat me with respect. No... It's not just respect. It's order. You need to know your place in the bigger picture, and I've kept you in line. But you don't need that from me anymore. You got the world to worry about, and I shouldn't stand in your way. So I wanna hear it from you now--hear your version. Why can't we be honest?"

Sunny choked three times on her own spasming throat in an effort to speak. Berry sought to soften the solemness by adding: "And it's alright, it's your first try. You can always go change it later. Just, please...try to give a reason."

And then the mare of many colors burst into tears anew, shouting her flurry of thoughts rapid-fire. "We can be honest! We don't have to care anymore! We can be ourselves! We don't need to have secrets! We can just be Mom and Sunny and nopony will care, and it'll be alright! And nopony else will care! And all those evil ponies who hate my life, who hate your life, they just go away! It makes no sense, why do they keep saying those things? Everyone should want to be happy! They all should let us be! I don't want them anymore! But I want to live my life! I just want to live my li-hi-hi-hiiife!" Sunny's life spread out on the floor, two or three drops of liquid mascara wreckage at a time. The torrents came heavy, they came loud, they came when nopony that size should even have been able to deliver them. But Sunny held a lot of rain, and her internal clouds carried it all out for this moment.

At some point in this, Planter had come over to them, standing beside the door frame. His thoughts moved independently of his eyes, the latter of which were transfixed on his big sister dissolving in the doorway.

Sunny had been too lost in herself to notice him approach, but the question appeared to catch her attention--or it would have if the paroxysm of violent cries allowed her even to raise her head high enough to regard him for more than a second.

Berry shaped the situation to her view. "My youngest is doing just fine living his life. But those evil ponies out there are gonna get to him one day too." She ruffled his lime-green mane, a slick and loosely-curled mirror of her own. "And what would you do to them--lock them away? I don't think you could fit them all in the Ghastly Gorge, honey. That just ain't how it works.

"If it were just you and me, I'd be honest with you, soon as I thought it wouldn't break you. And we should be lucky"--she pulled up close to whisper the next two words--"damn lucky that ponies have the decency to not hunt us down, to not wreck us everywhere, to threaten to take you away from me or make my life one big chore just because they don't like my history or my way of doing things. I can't even imagine...it wouldn't be my Equestria, let me tell you that."

Sunny expressed a bit of confusion at this diversion, raising her head and quieting--and her internal spasms of despondency continuing without trained purpose.

"What I'm saying is, be thankful for what you got. And, um...what was the bigger point?" Berry tried her brain.

"Ah yes, thank you, Planter. The bigger point is that you get to make dinner tonight. This is your first night as co-owner of the house. If it don't actually need me to do it, you can do it. And I have somewhere to be tonight..."

Sunny glared at her mother through her shaking sorrow, expecting her to weasel out of an explanation once more.

Berry glanced around, then sneered sympathetically at Sunny. "Oh, okay, you want it straight?" She clopped her forehooves over Planter's ears. "The girl you saw in my bed this morning? That's Carrot. The three of us grownups are going to go get bucked up at her new place. And if anypony else follows me there..." She inhaled sharply and her eyes flared madly. "They'll wish they'd never been born."

This Is Your Story!

by Mahayro

Chapter Six