Another Slice of Pie

by The Fool

Chapter III

By night, the glow of the crystals through the hole in the sky gave the impression of a green, alien moon. None of the four ponies paid it much mind, least of all Pinkie; she was the only one who saw Blinkie disappear into the treeline. Curiosity, and something else, urged her to follow her, leaving Inkie and Skyline alone by the fire.

She found her by a stream, watching the false moonlight dance along the rushing water. Moss and algae clung to the rocks where other plants refused to grow.

"Hey, Pinkie," Blinkie said, without looking up.

"Hey," Pinkie said, with rather less enthusiasm than usual. This was one of those rare occasions when her irrepressibly cheerful demeanor gave way to something else, when the happy, smiling face she always wore felt out of place. That's not to say that it wasn't genuine―nopony had a more genuine smile than Pinkie―but rather that everypony, even Pinkie, had regrets.

She lay beside Blinkie and watched the stream. Until then, they had pretended to be all right for the sake of their companions, but it was an act. How could it be anything else when so many things were still left unsaid?

After awhile, Blinkie looked to her, and when Pinkie looked back, she said, "I missed you, Pinkie."

There were no tears in Blinkie's eyes. There was no subtle nuance to her seemingly blank expression to betray the depth of feeling that stood behind her simple statement. There didn't need to be.

Tears welling in her eyes, Pinkie embraced her. She cried openly. If you had to cry, she thought, it was the only way.

Blinkie returned the embrace in a way that seemed to say, "It's good to see you again too." In words, she asked, "Why didn't you write?"

"I did," Pinkie said.

Blinkie deduced that their parents must have intercepted the letters―knowing Pinkie, there would have been a multitude―but said nothing. Nothing needed to be said. Words would only detract from the moment. Instead, she closed her eyes, moved her forelegs up from Pinkie's back to Pinkie's neck, and hummed. It was a tune they both knew. Mother had hummed it many times while rocking one or the other back to sleep after a nightmare.

Meanwhile, Inkie and Skyline were taking advantage of their alone time. Inkie dodged telling her story the same way Blinkie would, but Skyline's was enough for the both of them. They talked about their special talents, and by extension, their hopes for the future. What they found was not so dissimilar as a scholar and a rock farmer might expect.

The warmth Pinkie and Blinkie shared warded off the cold, but the wind was persistent. Blinkie had stopped humming, because Pinkie had stopped crying, but neither of them felt like returning to camp just yet.

Pinkie nuzzled Blinkie's cheek and asked, "How have things been? You know, since I... left. I hope it hasn't been too rough."

Blinkie told her in brief. It wasn't a very good story, and she knew it. There was conflict, yes, but no mystery, no suspense. Just rocks, really. To change the subject, she asked, "To what have you been up all this time?"

Pinkie giggled. Her sister would always lapse into grammatical correctness when she was really thinking about what she was saying. It was one of the things that made her her. She was glad it was one of the things that hadn't changed. With a heart much lighter than it'd been before, she told her about her job at Sugarcube Corner with Mr. and Mrs. Cake; the incredible friends she'd made in Twilight, Rainbow, and the others; and all the adventures they'd undertaken together. Every single one.

Pinkie had casual acquaintances as far as the Crystal Empire, but there were only a hoofful of ponies who counted her among their friends. That hoofful of ponies meant more to her than family. Unlike family, they chose her.

Through it all, Blinkie never lost interest. This was, in fact, for what she'd been waiting. If Pinkie was comfortable enough to babble incessantly to her, she knew they were still friends. Admittedly, Pinkie did that around a lot of ponies. The difference was that Pinkie knew Blinkie was actually listening.

***

Sunlight filtered through the trees. Blinkie blearily raised her head and yawned. When she opened her eyes, she was back at camp. The sound of rushing water over mossy rocks was a distant memory. The crisp morning air nipped at her coat, but something warm and furry pressed against her side and kept it at bay. Looking down, she saw Pinkie laying next to her in the grass, as ponies often did in the days of the herds. Her face was so serene, so content. The last thing Blinkie wanted to do was disturb her, but something wasn't right.

She scanned the clearing.

Inkie must have gotten up early and went in search of food. Despite Blinkie's efforts, she still had a murky understanding of what was and wasn't safe to eat. Belladonna berries were easily identified―and really quite pretty―but plenty of other poisonous plants looked just like edible ones.

Skyline slept alone, but the grass beside him bore the outline of a mare.

Blinkie smiled. They made a cute couple, all the cuter for their insistence on denying their mutual interest. They weren't fooling anypony, least of all each other.

A hint of movement among the trees caught her eyes. Movement in itself wasn't too unusual. It was a forest, after all, and despite its best efforts, the wildlife hadn't escaped her notice. At one point when she'd strayed away from the main group, she'd caught a group of squirrels playing some kind of improvised card game with leaves and acorns. One of them wore a green sun visor and smoked a rolled-up leaf.

This movement was different. It didn't want to be heard, but the absence of sound was as conspicuous as the snap of a twig or the crunch of leaves would have been.

Blinkie had never seen a wolf. All she saw now was a tuft of grayish fur and the slow, deliberate movement of a paw, but certain things were ingrained in the brains of all prey animals. The smell was one of them. It smelled of wrongness.

Then she saw its eyes―too small, too close, and with an intensity entirely too much like her own―but they didn't see her. They saw Skyline.

Blinkie cried, "Skyline!"

Skyline awoke.

The wolf leaped.

Skyline's body took over before his mind could register what was happening. It scrambled to its hooves and tried to run. It didn't get far.

The wolf clamped its jaws around his hind leg, pulling him to the ground with the unmistakable snap of bone being bent in ways nature never intended.

Skyline screamed. Black spots filled his vision.

The wolf pinned him to the ground with sinewy legs and black claws. Its eyes zeroed in on his neck.

Skyline shut his eyes.

Blinkie watched, muscles frozen.

Pinkie lunged and bowled the wolf over onto its back. It tried to snap at her, and she pummeled its face with her forelegs.

Skyline tried to crawl away, dragging his hind legs limply behind him.

Inkie arrived on the scene and dropped the questionable edibles she'd collected.

Pinkie caught the wolf's throat with a lucky hit.

The wolf wheezed and slashed blindly at her chest. The tearing, the sting, and the sight of her blood distracted her, and it threw her aside, grabbed Skyline's broken, bloodied leg, and tried to drag him off.

Inkie roared and charged.

The wolf looked up in time to see her swivel on the spot and plant her hooves in its side with enough force to crack a boulder. It howled, releasing its grip on Skyline, and made a break for the treeline. It trailed blood and gasped for air.

Just like that, it was over.

Inkie rushed to Pinkie's side and said, "Pinkie, are you all right? How bad is it?"

Pinkie pulled herself to her hooves with Inkie's help. Hobbling toward Skyline, she said, "I'll be all right, but he needs your help."

Skyline struggled to remain conscious. "Inkie... that you?"

"Rest, Skyline," Inkie said. Her voice shook. "We'll get you taken care of."

Pinkie rifled through Skyline's saddlebags. "Compass? No. Sample jars? No. Rope? Hm, maybe. Aha! Here―"

She tossed something to Inkie.

It was a first aid kit. Inkie asked, "What am I supposed to do with this?"

Pinkie joined her by Skyline's side and looked at the wound. Skyline's lower leg was bent where there wasn't supposed to be a joint, and a half-circle of bloody punctures marked where the wolf's fangs had been. The bone speared through his skin, and the surrounding fur was stained maroon. They could see the pink, spongy marrow.

"I think we're supposed to set the bone so it doesn't heal like that," she said. Ten minutes of tense, amateurish fumbling later, they managed, miraculously, to set the bone and stem the bleeding without making things considerably worse.

"We'll need some kind of splint too," Inkie said and looked at her. "Right?"

Pinkie nodded, but she didn't move. There was a certain forlornness in her eyes that told Inkie to leave her alone.

Inkie looked around for a green branch of a suitable thickness and noticed something for the first time. "Hey, where's Blinkie?"

"I'm here."

Inkie looked to the far end of the clearing, where Blinkie leaned against a tree. There was blood in her fur. She got the feeling it wasn't hers, but she wasn't about to ask questions. Blinkie was safe. That was all she needed to know.

Pinkie looked over. The blood didn't bother her―there was blood on all of them, mostly Skyline's―but the look in Blinkie's eyes did. She approached Blinkie, who met her halfway, hugged her tightly, and eased her to the ground. Her forelegs around her, she asked, "Blinkie, what did you do?"

Blinkie met her eyes and said, "I ended his suffering."

Pinkie stared, but she didn't falter. Her sister had taken a life. She never would have believed it had she not heard it from Blinkie herself. Self-defense was one thing, but the wolf had retreated, hadn't it? Granny wouldn't have allowed it to die, would she? Then again, why would she have allowed it to attack them? Pinkie had walked these forests as a filly countless times, and no harm had ever come to her. It made no sense.

Inkie finished splinting Skyline's leg, turned to Blinkie, and asked, "Whose side are you on, that you would run off and help the wolf that just attacked us?"

Pinkie turned and asked harshly, "What kind of question is that? Can't you see she's traumatized?"

"We're all traumatized! We've just been attacked!"

Pinkie turned back to Blinkie and asked, "Why did you do it, Blinkie?"

"He asked me to," Blinkie said. To the blank looks she got, she explained what she knew, which wasn't much. The wolf was uncannily intelligent, even civilized―all the animals were. It hadn't attack out of desperation. It had attacked because it could sense that Skyline didn't belong there, and had she not followed it, it would have slowly suffocated as its lungs filled with blood where its mangled ribcage had punctured them.

She didn't explain that the truly traumatizing part wasn't the act of snapping its neck or the light fading from its eyes but the lack of emotional impact doing so had on her, nor did she explain her real reason for following it. She hadn't wanted answers. She'd wanted to make it pay for laying its paw on Pinkie.

Uncomfortable with all the attention, she asked, "How's your chest?"

"It'll be fine," Pinkie said, smiling for her benefit. She looked down and touched the gashes with her hoof, which came away with minimal blood. Pretending not to wince, she said, "See? Already clotting."

Blinkie was about to ask about Skyline when Inkie hoisted him onto her back and said, "Whether or not any of us belongs here, it doesn't matter now. We've got to get back to the surface so he can get proper medical attention."

Pinkie shook her head. "The closest town is Vanhoover. We'll never make it in time. Anyway, I'm pretty sure flying you guys back up is beyond me. A real pegasus pony could do it, but my wings just aren't that strong."

Exasperated, Inkie asked, "What are we supposed to do, then?"

"Granny will know what to do, won't she?" Blinkie asked.

Inkie was about to state that Pinkie's imaginary friend couldn't help them now, but she caught herself. She wasn't a stupid mare, and it wasn't hard to put two and two together. She said nothing. The day had just begun, but she was already too tired to argue.

Pinkie nodded, but to herself, she had to admit that after all she'd just seen, she didn't know what to think.

"Come on," she said. "It's this way."

Inkie followed with Skyline draped over her back.

Blinkie held up the rear, barely paying attention to where they were going. Uncovering the mystery of the rock farm didn't seem so enticing anymore. In her mind's eye, she replayed the wolf's last moments over and over again.

As they walked with their backs to the portal, only Granny was aware of the two tiny figures that scaled down from it on an improbable length of rope.

***

Pinkie raised her hoof to knock on the door to the cottage, but she hesitated. Granny was the pony who'd gotten the least explanation when she'd disappeared all those years ago; she had no idea what kind of reception they would receive. Then she remembered Skyline and realized how silly such considerations were, given the scope of the situation. Besides, this was Granny she was talking about.

She rapped on the door with her hoof.

There was no response.

She considered knocking again.

There was a noise from within, and a moment later, an older mare answered the door. Her fur was caramel and her mane was white. Her scarlet eyes, wrinkled from a lifetime of mirth, gleamed when they saw Pinkie standing on her doorstep. She said, "Pinkie!"

Pinkie couldn't help herself. Those eyes, the eyes that had taught her what it was to laugh, washed away all her doubts and worries. She threw her forelegs around the mare's neck and cried, "Granny!"

Granny returned the embrace with forelegs and wings. "Pinkie, my dear, it's so good to see you again... and I see you've brought your sisters."

Releasing Pinkie and looking to the other two ponies in turn, she said, "You must be Inkie and Blinkie."

Blinkie smiled politely, and Inkie nodded.

Granny returned her gaze to Pinkie, and in a low voice, asked, "But who's the unicorn pony, a fiance? He doesn't bear my mark, and between you and me, he seems a bit... off."

Pinkie giggled despite herself. "He's nopony's fiance, Granny, at least not yet." She cast a mischievous glance back at Inkie, who blushed and avoided her eyes. Then she grew serious. "But he's injured, Granny. He needs your help."

Granny grew serious too, or at least as serious as was possible for one whose face looked liable to break out into a grin at any moment. "You'd better come inside."

She lead the way, and the others followed.

Inkie caught a glimpse of Granny's cutie mark. It was a symbol she knew well: a pair of white masks connected by a black ribbon. One was comedy; the other was tragedy.

"You've changed the layout," Pinkie observed. For one thing, what had appeared to be a one-room cottage with a conjoined cooking, eating, and sleeping area from the outside turned out to be a sprawling mansion. At that point in their journey, nopony was particularly surprised that it was bigger on the inside. The walls were lined with windows without clear counterparts on the outside, and there was a hallway that bore pictures from previous visits by members of the Pie family, the most recent of which showed Granny and a younger Pinkie making faces at the camera.

"I have," Granny confirmed. "Many times, in fact. There's only so much you can do with the geography, the flora and the fauna, before you have to turn your attention to interior decorating. I've changed the layout quite a few times since you were last here, but when I sensed your presence, I tried to rearrange it close to how you might remember it."

Atop a long, narrow table sat a range of potted plants with cards indicating such things as the date of their conception, the real-world species they were supposed to mimic, and any innovations Granny had attempted.

Pinkie knew from previous experience that they resided within stasis fields that, if disturbed, would collapse and cause the years without sunlight, water, or nutrients to catch up with them. It was an interesting effect, but not one you wanted to see twice. Though the plants were a tiny fraction of what made up Granny's world, they showed a clear progression from the outlandish to the mundane as Granny had decided to try her hoof at realism, at least in the sense that dogs sitting around a smoky bar was more realistic than a ship with butterfly wings. Granny had paintings of both hanging elsewhere in the house.

Pinkie felt a sudden wave of nostalgia. The adventures they'd shared had been better than any storybook. A.K. Yearling's brief dealing with sea ponies as sirens didn't hold a candle―or as it were, a strand of bioluminescent seaweed―to the undersea world she and Granny had gotten roped into saving from a kraken that had crawled forth from the abyssal depths. From what Granny had told her, her world used to be even crazier in its earliest incarnations. She had to wonder if the artistic shift was deliberate or if Granny had somehow lost touch with her muse over the years.

"Now, tell me," Granny said, turning to face Pinkie. "Why have you brought a stranger to my door? This is a dangerous place for outsiders. I'm offering my hospitality because I understand he's your friend, but as you saw, the wildlife is not so discerning."

Pinkie shifted uncomfortably, as if she was a filly again and her grandmother was scolding her. "I didn't bring him here so much as he brought me here. He was going to find his way here one way or another. See, he was looking into this type of crystal he discovered that's perfect for holding enchantments but only comes from the rock farm. I know I promised not to reveal your secret, but―"

Granny sighed and hugged her, and Pinkie relaxed. "There's no need to be defensive. I know your heart was in the right place. It had to be said, that's all, but how I decide to deal with his questions when he comes around is another matter."

She addressed Inkie, "Be a dear and set him down on the coffee table."

Inkie did so, stepped back, and watched her carefully, not sure what to expect.

There was a collective intake of breath as Granny removed the splint and undid the bandage, not least because of the putrid odor that was released into the air. The bleeding had stopped, but other viscous fluids accompanied a range of disconcerting hues.

Pinkie and Blinkie had to avert their eyes.

Inkie didn't dare.

"Oh, deary me," Granny said to herself. To the others, she said, "Perhaps you'd better go have a look around or something. Make yourselves comfortable, just don't touch the plants, and whatever you do, do it somewhere else. I can't work with all you ponies watching me. It makes me very self-conscious."

Pinkie led Blinkie away under the pretense of showing her around.

Inkie stayed.

Granny didn't seem to mind.

Inkie asked, "Is he going to be all right?"

Granny said, "Hm? Oh, yes, he'll be right as rain after a good night's rest. Once I'm through with him, anyway. How long have you two known each other?"

"Not long."

"Time is relative, dear. I'm a thousand years old, but in here, it's felt more like forty."

"A few days, I guess."

"But you care about him a lot, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Why is that?"

Inkie had to admit that she hadn't given it much thought.

Granny had surmised as much. "Well, you'll have time enough to think about it while you're waiting for him to wake up. You're a tough mare, but carrying him all the way here was no small feat. It's important to know why your loyalties lie where they do. The rules your family lives by would have me turn him away, but I care more about an injured pony on my doorstep than any stupid tradition."

She gave Inkie an appraising look. "Since you're a member of the Pie family, I'll let you in on a little secret: I know a bit of magic. It's not the magic of a pegasus pony, nor that of an earth pony or a unicorn pony, but it might be just what our friend here needs."

Inkie watched intently.

Granny focused on the wound, and though there was no light show at all―unicorn ponies really were the showoffs of the magical world―the infection foamed and dissolved, the discoloration dissipated, the leg twitched a bit as the bone properly set itself, and the broken skin and muscle began to mend itself before their eyes. Sky-blue fur grew from the newborn follicles, and not a trace was left of the former injury.

"Healing magic," Inkie breathed. "I'd heard that only the princesses could do that."

"You might say they stole the idea from me. Not me, personally, of course, but those of my kind. Unless I'm the last of my kind, I suppose. I'd take credit then, but that would be awfully depressing."

"What are you?"

Granny smiled the smile of somepony who delights in the kind of answer that raises even more questions, "Let's just say that I'm what ponies were before ponies were ponies."

Comments

[The Fool]

5249902

Thank you. That goes to show how old this story is.

5250280

How curious! That wasn't my intent, but I certainly don't object.

5254342

It's a very old concept. Lauren Faust first imagined her as a pegasus pony, but there were copyright issues. How she can change forms in story is explained... somewhere, and further explained elsewhere.

[Tennis Match Fan]

5254600 'Kay. I knew Pinkie was originally gonna be a Pegasus, I just wasn't sure why she was in this story.