BOING. BOING. BOING.
Pinkie Pie merrily skipped through the town of Ponyville on her way to the marketplace for some ingredients. Mr. and Mrs. Cake were running low on a few baking supplies, and a very large order came in earlier that day. Pinkie was supposed to have the day off from work, but she didn't mind doing a favor for her employers. Besides, she loved getting to see some of her favorite ponies running the shops and stands, and it was such a beautiful day to do so; there was only one single cloud in the sky.
Pinkie's first stop was at a stall managed by a familiar (but hey, in this town, who wasn't) orange-maned pony. "Good morning, Golden!" Pinkie Pie said to her. "How's the carrot selling business today?"
Golden Harvest sighed and responded without looking at the party pony. "Good morning, Pinkie. Not too many ponies shopping today, actually." The olive-colored mare rearranged a few boxes full of long, orange vegetables. "I'm not expecting a huge profit before sundown."
"Really?" inquired Pinkie Pie. She scooped up a bushel of carrots and inspected them carefully. "Because what I'm looking at here is at least—" Pinkie shoved the roots into Golden's face. "—Ten carats!"
Golden Harvest looked blankly at the produce in Pinkie's hoof, and then back to the pink mare.
"...Get it?" said Pinkie Pie as she withdrew her hoof from Golden's muzzle. "Because they're... carrots..."
The salespony sighed again. "Pinkie, I'm sorry, but I'm not really in the mood for jokes today," Golden admitted. She turned around to adjust some of her wares. "If you want those carrots I can take twelve bits for the lot, but otherwise I don't really have time for a chat."
"But I thought you said—" Pinkie Pie shook her head. "Never mind. Okay, twelve bits then." The party pony dipped her muzzle into a saddlebag and withdrew the coins in her teeth. As she dropped them on Golden's counter, an idea came to her. Pinkie grabbed two carrots and shoved them up into her mouth. "Golden, look!" Golden Harvest turned back around to see Pinkie Pie miming have two overly large teeth, complete with crude sound effects.
Golden looked cross. "My carrots are not toys, Pinkie Pie," she scolded. Golden then noticed the bits on the counter. "I suppose you can do what you want with them," she said, "but I hope you don't plan on feeding them to other ponies now, for their sake."
Pinkie Pie's grin drooped and the vegetables in her mouth plopped back onto the counter. "I was just trying to get you to smile," Pinkie said, abashed.
The carrot vendor shook her head. "Don't you have other things to do today?" she asked.
"Oh, I'm in no rush!" said Pinkie with a wide smile. Golden Harvest glared at her. Pinkie swallowed before continuing, "But I guess I can go ahead and move to the next item on the Cake's list." She finished with a timid laugh. Golden's expression didn't change.
"Okay," Pinkie said with a sigh. She somberly placed her produce into her saddlebag, and the vendor turned her back yet again. "Hope the rest of the day goes better, Carrot Top."
Golden Harvest gave a small nod, but otherwise gave no sign of hearing Pinkie's farewell, or her playful nickname.
"She's just having a rough day," Pinkie said to herself as she trotted over to the next stall. "I'm sure she has a lot on her mind trying to sell carrots all the time. I'll have to come back later with my socks puppets. Those always cheer her up."
The next vendor Pinkie approached had sacks full of Equestria's best sugar, meaning that the stallion running the stand was no stranger to the pink mare. They even developed their own little game, and playing was one of Pinkie Pie's favorite moments in a shopping trip.
"Hiya, Moe!" she called to a strong-looking stallion handling some crates. She then dipped over backwards onto his counter and cooed, "Lay some sugar on me."
The sugar vendor snorted and turned to address his customer. "Pinkie Pie," Moe Lasses started with a gruff voice, "do you always have to inject puns into every conversation we have?"
Pinkie flipped herself back over and sat on her haunches, hurt. "I have been leaning on them a bit today," she admitted. "I thought you liked our game though?"
The stallion inflated and scowled, but upon looking at her innocent face, he lost his steam and scratched his neck. "I'm sorry, Pinkie. Yes, most days I do enjoy our chats, but today... today I'm just not feeling it." He sighed and apologized a second time. Moe shook his head before regaining his composure. "Anyways... what can I do you for?"
Pinkie hesitantly re-approached the counter. "Um... I need three of your large bags today, Moe."
"Three?" Moe asked. "You usually get by on one a month. Must be some order the Cakes got."
"You could say that, yeah," Pinkie Pie told him. She began fiddling in her pouch. "Is it still ten bits a bag?"
"Ordinarily, but I feel bad about getting riled up at you like that," Moe told her. He sighed before adding, "Hows-about today I charge you nine a bag as an apology?"
"Gee, thanks, Moe!" Pinkie Pie tossed a few bits back into her bag and the rest onto the counter between them. "I was really hoping so save some bits today! I want to try to find something extra special for the Cakes!"
"Yeah." Moe slid the coins into a pouch that he kept under the counter. "Yeah..."
The stallion turned back around to his crates without saying a word to Pinkie Pie. She craned her neck to try to see what he was doing, but, as far as she could tell, it wasn't anything special. "Okay then," she called to him slowly, "I guess I'll see you around...?"
Moe gave her one last 'yeah'. Pinkie opened her mouth to ask if something was bothering him, but then she caught sight of another pony across the way. That stallion also looked glum. So did the flower pony. And the gardener. And the mayor and the mailmare and the barber. In fact, there wasn't a single smiling pony in sight anywhere.
"What's going on?" said Pinkie Pie to no one. "Why is everypony so gloomy today?"
"You wouldn't happen to have any... books on the subject, would you, dear?"
"Rarity... it's a library."
"I know, Twilight, but I—"
The non-chaotic conversation taking place between Twilight Sparkle and Rarity came to a halt due to a large amount of chaos in the form of their friend Pinkie Pie. The crazed mare — complete with crazed mane — burst into Twilight's library as though the fate of the world depended on it. Or, at the very least, Pinkie Pie's world.
"Twilight!" the pink mare shouted as she rushed to her studious friend and grabbed her by the cheeks, "Have you been outside today?!"
"Um..." Twilight looked between the friend holding her face hostage and Rarity, who could only return a nonplussed shrug. "Yes?"
"And what did you see?!" demanded Pinkie.
"Uh..."
"TRICK QUESTION!" Pinkie Pie dropped her purple friend onto the library floor. "It's what you didn't see!"
"Pinkie Pie," began Rarity with a few tentative steps forward, "what on earth are you—"
"The smiles, Rarity!" said Pinkie in response to the interrupted question. "Not a single pony is smiling today!"
Rarity and Twilight looked to one another before Twilight carefully chose her response. "Pinkie, it's not exactly alarming that no pony in town—"
"It is extremely alarming, Twilight!" Pinkie yelled. This time she grabbed Rarity's cheeks and pressed the fashionista's deep blue eyes into her own much lighter ones. "Look into my eyes!" shouted Pinkie, perhaps redundantly. "ALAAAAAAAAARMED!"
"Pinkie Pie, darling," Rarity said, sterner than when she last spoke. She placed a hoof between them and gave herself some space. "If a pony doesn't feel the need to smile, then she has every right to—"
Pinkie Pie groaned and rolled onto her back. "You're not getting it!" she exclaimed to her friends. She rolled back up, her mane now twice as frenzied after coming into contact with the ground. "I make ponies smile! It's what I do! And all day I haven't been able to do that once!"
Rarity shot Twilight a worried expression, but this time instead of meeting the look, Twilight sighed and placed a hoof on her face. "Pinkie Pie... No pony is trying to rain on your parade. Sometimes a pony is sad—"
Twilight had no time to prepare for how quickly Pinkie Pie made herself inches from her face. "Say that again," the party mare whispered.
"'Sometimes a pony is sad'?" Twilight offered, confused.
"I meant the other thing," said Pinkie, waving the first statement out of the air.
"'No pony is trying to rain on your parade'?"
"YES!"
Pinkie Pie stepped back before proceeding to zoom around the library, books falling off of shelves in her wake.
Rarity turned to Twilight and asked, "Is she... alright?"
"I'm better than alright!" cried Pinkie as she slammed an older book onto a nearby table, causing both Twilight and Rarity to jump. Curious, the two mares cautiously stepped over to their pink friend to see what she found.
"Pinkie... that's a book on fairy tales," Twilight noted.
"Yup!" confirmed Pinkie as she flipped through the book's pages. "You talking about rain gave me an idea!" When she stopped on the page she wanted, Pinkie twisted her book around to show it to her friends. "The whole town's had a spell cast on it!"
"A spell?" Twilight asked incredulously. "Pinkie, I told you, this is a book on fairy tales, not one about magic."
"Well, technically it's more like the opposite of a spell, I guess," Pinkie admitted. "And I'm not looking to cast a spell. I want to reverse one!"
"Pinkie Pie," Rarity began, looking up from the book, "there is no spell on the town."
"Opposite of a spell," Pinkie insisted. "A... a... an oppospell!"
"Pinkie," Twilight said, her tone getting more severe.
"You're not even reading it!" chastised Pinkie Pie. She flipped the book back around to face her. "It's a story my Nana Pinkie once told me." She peered down onto the book's pages. "'The Legend of the Joyflower'," she read.
"Pinkie Pie, you cannot be serious right now," chided Twilight.
Two pink hooves pounded on the library table. "Why does no pony think I can be serious?" Pinkie asked earnestly. She took a deep breath and removed her hooves from the table's surface. Twilight and Rarity were silent. Pinkie Pie sighed before saying, "Look, in the story there is a raincloud. One day the raincloud takes all of a town's happiness away, because it's the only thing he can use to water his friend, the Joyflower. The Joyflower grows at the top of the highest mountain, where other rainclouds can't get to."
Twilight looked angry and Rarity worried, but neither one interrupted the story.
Pinkie continued, "One young colt in the town notices how unhappy all of his friends and family had become, so he goes to find the raincloud and try to get their happiness back. He goes on a very long and very dangerous journey, but he eventually reaches the top of the mountain where the raincloud has already watered the Joyflower."
Pinkie Pie stopped reading in order to turn the book around yet again, and pointed to the story's lone illustration: a small stallion standing next to an incredibly ornate blossom. "When the colt explains what happened to his home town," Pinkie told her friends, "the flower feels bad for being the reason no pony there is happy anymore. He tells the colt to dig him up, and promises that if he is taken back to the town, then all of the townsfolk will be happy again."
The pink mare put her front hooves on the table once more and leaned into her two friends. "And you know what?" she asked them. "It works."
Twilight sighed and rubbed a temple. "Pinkie, it's just a story. What proof do you even have that this flower exists?"
Pinkie glared at Twilight and said nothing. Instead, she flipped a single page in the voluminous text. The story right before the one on the Joyflower was titled 'The Legend of the Mirror Pool'.
Rarity gulped and looked to her purple friend. "Twilight, I don't think there's going to be any convincing her that the flower doesn't exist."
Twilight did not break her eye contact with Pinkie, matching the pink mare's intense stare with her own. "Pinkie," Twilight said with heated breath, "the flower isn't real. I know what you're thinking, but you can't leave town to try to find this thing."
"I can so!" retorted Pinkie Pie. She broke her staring contest with Twilight to close the book and return it to its shelf. "The book says that no pony in the colt's town wanted to do anything anymore! The Cakes don't want to go shopping, Carrot Top doesn't want to talk," Pinkie Pie stopped while looking at the book on its shelf. After a beat, she picked it up again and placed it just before the volume that used to be on its left. "Moe Lasses doesn't want to play our game... And neither of you want to join me on this quest."
"Pinkie Pie," Twilight began slowly, "neither of us are trying to be pessimistic here, but—"
"Well that's FINE!" shrieked Pinkie, taking her friends aback. She started pacing across the room. "The colt went on his journey alone, and I can do the same!"
Rarity chimed in, "Pinkie, darling, you don't even know where you're going!"
Pinkie Pie stopped pacing in front of a map of Equestria. "Oh yes I do," she replied. She smacked a hoof on a region to the extreme north. "Mount Neverquest. Equestria's tallest mountain. Just like in the story."
Twilight shook her head. "That mountain is impossible to climb!" she yelled. "Pinkie, you can't go!"
"That attitude is exactly why I'm the one who's going!" Pinkie snapped. She marched to the library's front door and opened it. "And I don't need you or your FOUL LANGUAGE!" With that, the library door slammed shut behind her, leaving Twilight and Rarity alone with what they just witnessed.
Twilight's expression was a mixture of anger, hurt, and confusion. "Foul...?"
"'Pessimistic', darling," Rarity answered for her. "I think—" she sighed and looked to the front door. "I do hope she'll be alright..."