“I caaaaan’t dooo thiiiis, Raaariiityyy.”
With an unceremonious thunk, Pinkie Pie dropped her head and entire upper torso onto the table, completely erasing any visual proof that a textbook rested in the space her body now occupied. To accentuate her helpless complaint, Pinkie let out a heavy breath leading into a short whine.
She hated studying in the library.
It was too quiet. And though an MP3 player and earbuds usually were enough to keep the inattentive college student decently focused, she also had a habit of drumming her pencils too loudly against her study surface and had many times before been asked to relocate to another area on campus. Even with friends around to study with, they had to be careful not to speak too loudly – and constantly vigilant to make sure Pinkie didn’t get too loud.
But Rarity needed the silence, and Pinkie had promised they could study together for their upcoming first exam in English class.
“Can’t do what, Pinkie?” Rarity asked, pulling her own textbook back and away from the mess of pink curls invading the table. “I was sure to reserve a study room for us so that you could drum away to your heart’s content. I assure you, it’s become white noise to me.”
“Not thaaat,” Pinkie replied in an exaggerated moan, slowly lifting herself up off the table. She pulled her hair out of her face and made an attempt to pull it back into its former (er, slightly) tamer state, but to little avail. “I think my blood sugar is low.”
“Didn’t we just each lunch before walking here for that very reason?” Rarity rested the end of her pen against her lip and raised an eyebrow at Pinkie.
“Y—e—s?” Pinkie asked slowly, offering her friend a sheepish smile. “But I’m not hungry, silly! I’m low on sugar. And I’m antsy. And I totally cannot get comfortable in here. These chairs are the worst! Ugh!”
Breathing a heavy sigh, Rarity shook her head. She reached over to straighten out a crease in Pinkie’s textbook caused by the dramatic upper-body-dropping, running her hand lightly across the page before pulling the cover over top it.
“How about this,” Rarity started, pulling her hand back to reach into her bag. She unlatched her wallet and pulled out a few bills, handing them to Pinkie. “Go get yourself a sugar fix, and bring me a bag of vanilla wafer cookies back. But don’t let the librarians see you with the food this time; I can’t afford a second strike with them. Heavens are they vicious!”
Pinkie grinned, taking the money out of Rarity’s hand and nearly leaping up out of her seat and dashing out across the library – until she caught the glance of a student librarian, prompting her to slow considerably until she had cleared the building entirely.
When Pinkie reached the cafeteria, she found the atmosphere to be much more to her liking; with the dining area all a-buzz with chattering students, music drifting from the overhead speaker system, and the shuffling of plastic trays in the food line, the cafeteria was most often Pinkie’s preferred study locale – though the clamour and din was unfavourable to her friends.
Pinkie had no need for a tray or standing in line for an order off the grill, and so she bypassed the line and went straight for the dessert case, eyeing a particularly appealing slice of chocolate cake. She’d also need, of course, the bag of vanilla wafer cookies for Rarity (and also a granola bar, because she knew Rarity liked those), a chocolate bar for later, a bag of fruit snacks, strawberry milk—
Pinkie’s hand stopped mid-reach, inches away from the dessert case door. Not for it already being wide open, and not for changing her mind (because she definitely hadn’t), but for the fact a cute girl stood spinning the cake stand around to find her desired treat.
Like, a super cute girl.
And not just any super cute girl; a super cute girl that Pinkie had seen around campus many times, but never had the opportunity to meet – which was totally unusual for her. She always made considerable efforts to befriend everyone in her classes, and as many people around her as possible, and yet somehow, this one particular super cute girl continuously eluded her.
Of course, Pinkie would have waited patiently for anyone else to have finished choosing anyway, should they have been there first, but she found her gaze lured away from the enticing sweets and toward the blue-haired girl. There was always something about her that stopped Pinkie dead in her tracks, and it wasn’t just her cute demeanour – Pinkie knew a lot of cute people, many counted among her closest of friends – or the charming smile she’d been fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of a few times, or even the way the girl hummed sweetly to herself as she walked, just loud enough that Pinkie could hear.
There was just something.
And whatever that something was had Pinkie’s gaze trailing after the girl, even after she had retrieved her desired confectionery and turned to leave.
Wait. Staring was rude. Stop staring.
With some difficulty, Pinkie tore her eyes away from the mystery girl, waited for someone else to have a turn in the dessert case, and finally grabbed her slice of cake, thoughts running around wildly in her head. Okay, so staring was rude, but it wasn’t rude if she stopped the girl to strike up a conversation with her, right? Of course not, she did that with everyone she met! Why would she even question that? Pinkie grabbed a bottle of strawberry milk and turned to the candy shelves. She had no reason to overthink it now.
Piling her sweets onto the register counter and fishing around in her bag for money, Pinkie glanced out toward the dining area of the cafeteria and felt something inside of her burst like a helium balloon full of confetti. Confetti that promptly rained down over her and adorn her hair like a sprinkle-topped cupcake. Not only was the cute mystery girl still nearby, she had paid for her things right before Pinkie had. She could still catch her!
And as the cashier continued to punch in the prices of Pinkie’s assortment of goodies, Pinkie continued to keep an eye on the blue-haired girl, tapping her fingers against the counter in a manner that bordered on impatient. The girl stopped in the middle of the walkway, then stepped forward quickly when someone pushed past her. She turned around, back to the utensil station where she had just grabbed a plastic fork, and hurriedly opened her slice of cake. Was she in a rush? The girl glanced up, looked around— and as she did so, lost her grip on the cake and barely had time to react before it hit the floor.
The look of utter dismay on her face was enough to make Pinkie’s mouth drop open.
“Ahem. That’ll be 7.34.”
Pinkie turned her head to the cashier, then to the girl – now leaning down to clean up the mess, dismally – and back to the cashier again before she exclaimed loudly, “Wait!”
Loudly enough that the cashier, the students around her, and the blue-haired-cerise-eyed girl all stopped to look up at her.
In the ensuing quiet, Pinkie pushed her way back to the dessert case, grabbed another slice of cake, and rushed it back to the register. By now the noise volume had risen again, and the other students carried on dismissively as Pinkie paid for her things, pulled them into her arms, and quickly made her way over to the poor, dessert-less girl.
“Here!” she said with a wide smile, handing the strawberries-and-cream cake slice to the girl, who lifted her head to look up at Pinkie quizzically – again. It was a good thing Pinkie was reaching for the napkins and kneeling down anyway, because the look made her want to melt into a sticky pool of sweetness like a scoop of ice cream in the summer sun. “And, um, let me help you!”
The girl blinked once. “Are you sure? You have a lot of—”
“No problem!” Pinkie said eagerly, smile turning to a grin. Juggling everything in one arm wasn’t so hard, but unfortunately, using one hand to scoop up bits of splattered cake was.
“Um,” the girl said with some hesitation. “Maybe if you . . . put some stuff on the table or your bag?”
“Ohhhhhh. Right. Yeah.” Pinkie giggled. She turned a moment to carefully structure her items inside of her bag, taking care to pack strategically so that the cookies and chocolate and cake would be safe from suffering a similar fate as the cake on the ground, and when she turned back to the girl, she was greeted with another smile – and when she returned it, she was granted a giggle in kind.
There was that ice cream-melting warmth again, but somehow more intensely.
“You’re like a ray of sunshine or something,” Pinkie blurted out.
Oops.
“What?” the girl asked.
“What?” Pinkie instinctively answered—asked?—back.
For a moment, the girl’s smile vanished, replaced instead by a look of confusion—and the usually-foreign sensation of awkwardness began to creep up at the fringe of Pinkie’s nerves—until the smile returned, accompanied by an even sunnier giggle than before. With a breath that relieved her of the lesser pleasant butterflies fluttering around in her stomach (some, of course, simply refused to leave in the girl’s presence), Pinkie finished cleaning up the larger pieces of the spilt cake, and the girl followed after her in wiping the floor free of the smeared whipped cream.
When Pinkie turned back to face her again, she found the two of them perfectly juxtaposed for Pinkie to offer her hand in helping the girl up – and so she did, pulling her to her feet with one hand and taking the dirty napkin from her with the other, ecstatic to finally have her face-to-face.
Well, face-to-face minus the task of cleaning up smashed confectioneries.
“Um, thanks for helping me clean that up,” the girl said, slowly taking her hand from Pinkie’s grasp and running it through her ponytail. “And for the cake. You like, totally didn’t even have to.”
Pinkie shook her head, tossing the napkin into the nearby trash bin. “I wanted to! You looked so sad, and . . . well, it’s a lot nicer to see people smile!” Especially ice cream-melting sunshine-y smiles. “Oh! I’m Pinkie Pie, by the way.”
“Sonata Dusk,” the girl—Sonata replied. Pinkie took a moment to repeat the name to herself mentally – and perhaps in the quietest of whispers – and as she did so, Sonata seemed to be meditating on a thought of her own, continuing before Pinkie had the chance to respond. “So like, I guess if I’m like a ‘ray of sunshine,’ it’s one of those really bright and direct ones that totally blind you as the sun’s going down, right?”
Sonata grinned and Pinkie felt her heart jump.
“Totally! The best kind!” she agreed, laughing a bit harder than the statement perhaps warranted, though not at all forcibly or fakely; she just couldn’t help it. Sonata was cute, sunny, melodic, and had a sense of humour? Though it was true Pinkie often really wanted to befriend even the most random of strangers, Pinkie found herself really, really wanting to befriend Sonata – and she had already accomplished step one. Now step two would be to ask for—
“I gotta get going, but I’ll see you around,” Sonata said, snapping Pinkie from her thoughts. “I’m like, never gonna hear the end of it if I don’t meet my friends on time. Bye!”
And without even the tiniest chance for Pinkie to get another word in, Sonata waved at her and all but dashed out of the cafeteria.
And right then and there, Pinkie was more determined than she’d ever been to be sure she did, in fact, see someone around.
But first, she had some treats to eat and studying to do with Rarity.