Innocent

by Puzzle Piece

Interlude Part 4: Considerations in Cowardice

Pinkie woke suddenly. By her estimate, it was either midnight, or very shortly after. Having gotten home late in the evening, she’d been supremely tired from all of the merrymaking she’d shared with the ponies visiting Ponyville. They were a hard lot to cheer up, but her efforts had made some headway by sundown. She’d fixed a tiny dinner and flopped into bed. Until a moment ago, she thought that was where she’d stay until morning. She was normally a sound sleeper, but something had tingled and it had shocked her awake. She lay where she was, waiting for the sensation to repeat itself. When it did, she simultaneously heard hooves downstairs. Her teeth chattered in response to each rapid shuffle from the floor below. Pinkie had never dealt with this particular Pinkie Sense. She quietly crept toward the stairs to investigate. She stopped when she was nearing the bottom, and listened as hushed voices that rose and fell between the hoofsteps reached her ears.

“Oh, should we take a few sets of dishes?”

Mrs. Cake’s voice was strained and worried.

“There’s no time for that. We’ll have to haul it the whole way.”

Mr. Cake’s voice was even more so, impatient and jittery. Something about hearing his voice was bothering Pinkie, but the reason escaped her. The voices were coming from the kitchen. The Cakes were out of sight for now, but their silhouettes were occasionally cast onto the floor where soft candle light spilled through the open door.

“We need to be as far away as possible before they get here,” Mr. Cake went on, the sound of his hooves tramping over to a different side of the kitchen.

There was a short silence before Mrs. Cake replied.

“They were my grandmother’s dishes.”

More silence followed the forlorn statement.

Pinkie felt her tail twitch and bolted down the stairs and into the kitchen. Mr. and Mrs. Cake yelped in surprise, causing Mrs. Cake to drop the stack of plates and bowls she had balanced on her back. Pinkie slid beneath them and deftly caught all of the falling dishes in one lightning quick and fluid motion. She carefully set them down on the counter again and turned to face the startled Cakes again.

“Pinkie! What did you—how are you—what?” Mr. Cake sputtered, looking from the door of the kitchen to the dishes to Pinkie.

“My Pinkie Sense told me something was about to fall, so I caught it,” she replied casually, gesturing at the dishes. She took a second to contemplate the event and Mrs. Cake’s startled expression before going on. “Although, it may be that I caused it by coming in here unexpectedly like that, huh?”

She smiled benignly.

“Well, thank you anyway,” Mrs. Cake smiled back. “But we can handle this from here. Please, go back to bed dear.”

“What is it that you need to handle so late at night,” Pinkie asked. She glanced out the window. “Or early in the morning, depending on how you decide to look at it.”

“I-it’s nothing!” Mr. Cake said, too loudly and too quickly to be true.

Pinkie took a long look around the room, noticing for the first time that several bags of luggage had been stacked by the back door. The cupboards were all opened haphazardly and their contents rummaged through.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Please, Pinkie,” Mrs. Cake pleaded. “We don’t want this to be any harder than it already is. Just go back upstairs.”

“But what do you need to pack all these things up for? Are you going on a trip?”

“Pinkie…” Mr. Cake tried to interrupt, but she kept talking.

“Why would you need to take dishes with you? Are you going to be somewhere they don’t have them, like on a camping trip? Or at a bit-pinching hotel that makes you bring your own?”

Both of the Cakes continued to try to interrupt her, but her questions came on, heedless.

“I don’t understand why you’d be doing your packing at night. I’d rather do my packing in the morning. I’d help you now since I’m up, but it would make more sense to wait until the sun is up too. But you sound like you can’t wait. Is something happening somewhere that you can’t wait even until morning?"

The Cakes fell silent, unwilling to answer her with more than pained looks. Pinkie looked around again, still searching for an explanation. That’s when she realized why it was odd that Mr. Cake was there at all.

“Um, Mr. Cake?” she asked hesitantly. “Didn’t you leave to join the Army a week ago?”

“I did,” he answered woodenly.

“Shouldn’t you still be…?” Pinkie began.

“No!” he cut her off. “I shouldn’t still be with the Army. I shouldn’t have been with it to begin with! There isn’t even an Army to go back to now. It was the worst idea ever, to stand our ground and fight. We should have been running. And that’s what I’m doing now. I’m taking my family and running. And I’ll run as far as I can, for as long as I have to, to make sure they’re safe from what’s out there!”

Pinkie was stunned by the outburst and she recoiled from the anger in his voice. He didn’t blink, keeping her fixed in an iron-hard glare for nearly a minute.

“Get the foals,” he said to his wife without looking away from Pinkie. “We’re leaving.”

“What about…” Mrs. Cake tried to ask.

“We’ll make do,” he said without waiting for her to finish. “We’re leaving now.”

Mrs. Cake hurried upstairs. They could hear her hoofsteps as she moved around. When she came back down, she had Pumpkin and Pound Cake in a carrying basket. They were awake enough to stir after being jostled, but too drowsy to do more than blink up at them. As Mrs. Cake took them outside to where a cart waited, Pinkie found her voice again.

“But, when will you be back?”

“After these Trolls are gone,” Mr. Cake replied bluntly. “And they might never leave.”

“Never is a long time to be gone from your home,” she lamented. As he walked past her toward the door with the last of the luggage, she offered him her best pleading face. “Your friends here in Ponyville will miss you.”

Mr. Cake stopped in the doorway. “I know. But we don’t have any choice. You should be running too. All of you.”

With that, he walked out. He hitched himself up to the cart as his wife settled the foals into place. Pinkie stepped outside to watch them go. Mr. Cake turned the cart to the south and started walking, not looking back once. Mrs. Cake looked back at Pinkie with enough sorrow on her face to bring a tear to Pinkie’s eyes. They waved to each other and then the Cakes disappeared into the waning night and were gone.

Pinkie stood at the back door for a long time, trying to process what had happened, but she gave it up. As she turned back toward her bed, plodding through the kitchen and up the stairs, she couldn’t help but feel the darkness and emptiness of the shop closing in around her, threatening to swallow her just as the hole in her heart was draining her cheer away. She went back to bed, hoping she would wake up in the morning to find it had just been a bad dream.