As I Lay Smiling

by shortskirtsandexplosions

Sister Sister

The tall glass doors to the library slowly creak open.

Twilight Sparkle and Starlight Glimmer hobble through the door-frame, bathed in moonlight from the windows. Their manes are a frazzled mess and there are bags under their eyes from countless, untold hours of intense experimentation. Still—even as they teeter from utter exhaustion—they are both smiling. Tenderly.

They turn to look towards me. Twilight nods.

One leg at a time...

...I hobble past them.

My joints are stiff, my muscles even stiffer.

But...

It doesn't stop me.

I limp forward, my eyes glued to a series of sleeping bags stretched out across the floor of the library.

Two of the mats are empty. That's because Maud and Marble have scooted into the center—where their older sister Limestone has both mares safely tucked away beneath her strong forelimbs. Together, the three slumber the nightly hours away, silent and still. Limestone, of course, is drooling a bit. Maud's body slowly rises and falls while Marble clings to the other two in a fetal position.

I take in all of the details that I can, because I already feel tears fogging up the corners of my vision.

"Mmmmmm..." The air fills with song. My song. I crawl on my knees and slide over to the group. "Silly fillies..." I sweep all three of them into the fuzziest, cuddliest hug. "...how can I ever stop smiling when I've got the absolute best sisters in the world?"

They say nothing. Limestone snorts in mid-sleep, and I try not to giggle. Marble's tail wraps quietly around me while Maud's cheek cuddles into my fetlock.

There's a choking sound from behind me. Twilight shushes Starlight, and the two unicorns make a quiet exit, leaving the four of us to snuggle warmly together until sunrise.

Four slices.

Author's Note:

User: kihutaja
Prompt: "For my modest contribution, I would love to read your take on all four of the Pie sisters. Preferably something E-rated with respect to dialogue. Haven't come across any fics with them yet (to be fair, I haven't had much time to browse for new ponywords lately)."

Comments

[Velvet]

Chill out

[DeathFox4]

7412104 Well, this was cute.

*fires freeze gun at you*

CHILL OUT!

[Booster Spice]

Pi is De jure Four.

More at 11. :Discord:

[Cursori]

This is a story about Pinkie Pie. The second chapter has 314 words. God damnit.

[Tangerine Blast]

*Whipping tears away* This... this was so good.

[PiercingSight]

awwwww...

[Dracon_Pyrothayan]

Here I thought the unicorn would have been Moondancer

[Schmleh]

So what is your take on Pinkie pie?

[SpiritOfDancingFlames]

There's a slight problem with this.
I don't seem to be able to favorite this more than once, and the upvote stops at one. This is a problem.
Well done, Skirts. Yet another masterpiece.

[Bubbler]

So many layers to this story. I love it.

[Maromar]

Hmm. Normally, I'd say that this kind of fic feels like a cop out; using a single moment that wasn't explicitly shown to draw in "feels" rather than attempting to tell a legitimate story, thus negating any emotional appeal it provokes.

I can not say such a thing with this story.

I can sense each of the Pie sister's personalty types and coping mechanisms, we are given a window into the crux of character development, rather than a quick punch to the stomach meant solely to make the hug that comes after more fulfilling. Good work with this one, good work indeed.

I also appreciate the allusion to As I lay Dying. It's a nice touch.

[Steel Resolve]

7413206
7412188 The problem with Discord is that he's not a solver of problems, he's a creator. His magic is incredibly powerful, but unpredictable. I imagine he was considered a last resort, as he could end up turning her from stone to pudding.

[UniqueSKD]

As I Lay Smiling

The blow-up doll next to me looked at me with a surprised face.

[Kevin Lee]

Nice blend of the sisters each having their own time with Pinkie and yet all together at the same time.

So, it this an entry to submitting for TDR's "Stories-in-Stone" collection? Maybe not quite the length of time Applejack got stuck, but I think it qualifies.

[kihutaja]

Thanks!

[insertfootinmouth]

7413493 Pffffff

[Piecemeal Pony]

Goddammit, Skirts.

You really know how to pull on the Heartstrings when you want to.

And I'm being serious about that, ya big fuzzball.

[Summer Dancer]

Just wanted to come back and say that this is my favorite Pie sister story ever. It's so incredibly rare to find a story with all of them as a whole after Hearthbreakers aired. This was written so beautifully and it really was bittersweet to read.

Also I hope to see more Pinkie in your stories nudge nudge, wink wink

But, yeah, wonderful job.

[StormyVenture]

Not bad, although I feel like it lacks something in only implying they succeeded somehow and not really telling us. I also find it annoying to be presented with monologue from different ponies that clearly happens at different and no chronological markers at all to tell how spread out they are. Ultimately there's a little of the warm and fuzzy, but it feels like an unfinished sketch.

[UniqueSKD]

7413683 Have you ever noticed how every blow-up doll always seems to have a surprised look on their faces? It's like they're taken aback by the fact that someone wants to 'inflate' them, right?

Oh, and if the author of this story is reading this comment; your story is pretty good. I'm not going to make any promises here because I don't know if I want to do it yet or not, but I'd like to ask for your permission to do a reading of this fanfic on my YouTube channel in advance. A short fanfic reading would provide my YouTube channel with some content to appease the subscribers while also giving me extra time to work on my latest One Punch Pony VS Changelings animation.

So, what do you say? May I have your permission in advance in case I decide to go ahead and do a reading? Just to warn you though, I'm a British guy, so if you choose to listen to the reading you will have to tolerate a bloke's voice trying to impersonate a female when I read the lines of the female characters.

Oh lord, Pinkie Pie will be ruined forever when I come to voice her lines. XD

[garfan]

I think Starlight would be the perfect pony to deal with this. Take the time travel spell, go back grab the cockatrice while it was a live, make it fix things, then break it's damn neck and drop it where it was found dead

[Zuabug]

7414681
WEEEELLL

... It was found dead. So that is entirely possible. But wouldn't that lead to a paradox? Or is that how it all flows? I do tend to get a bit easily confused with thinking in those circles :|

[TerraZeal]

Very good. I'm guessing Twilight and Starlight figured out a way to reverse it together? Or perhaps found another cockatrice to reverse the stoning? Or they could have used the de-stoning spell Celestia used to free Discord in Keep Calm And Flutter On. Interesting. I'd like to know how they freed her.

[Revan]

Impressive. I've already said what I felt in my first comment, so I won't say anything more.

[Driver240b]

7414709 It's a bootstrap paradox, basically the past was manufactured in order to preserve the present/future.

[Alondro]

And Starlight Glimmer once more creates all magic required to save the day!

...

She's like Eric Cartman having the power to have all the powers...

[Spooky Moon]

7414709 it would create a paradox, a stable paradox. Which instead of fucking everything up just kinda happens, with no adverse effects besides a headache trying to figure it out but I could be wrong.

[Courage Fire]

7415840 Well, at least the fanfic is canonically correct right? :b

[garfan]

7415838 it takes six elements to do anything. They're down to five

[Xanderfox]

7417037
Who says the element of Laughter stopped working? If anything makes more sense to me, the others focus their power on Pinkie and her element if able to cure her from the inside out. It's likely the mental, physical and spiritual equivalent of pushing a Watermelon though a key hole.

[Swan Song]

7414681

The scroll floats ethereally in an aquamarine aura, its wrinkled surface covered in temporal runes and mysterious hieroglyphs, whose origins lay shrouded within centuries of obscurity and history.

Twilight stares at it. Then she stares at me. Then at it. And back to me again.

Is she watching a tennis match that I can't see, or what?

She opens her muzzle. "Starlight—"

"Nope."

She winces. "Listen, I'm worried that you don't know what you're getting yourself—"

"Nope."

"Starlight, how'd you even get your hooves on that time spell—"

"Magic."

She gives me a flat look. "Well, obviously."

"Then why even ask?"

"No, but I mean—"

"Canterlot Archives. Time Spells. Star Swirl the Bearded section."

She blinks. "…Wait, you got into the—"

"Catsuit. Grappling hook. Guard schedule. Maybe I flashed my ID at a guard and yelled, 'do you know who I am'. Might have name-dropped you a few times too. Oh, and some magic."

"…I—"

"Nope."

"Okay, fine!" she finally growls, stomping a hoof. "If you really wanna go back in time and try to hunt down that one specific cockatrice in the Everfree Forest, of all places, you be my flyin' guest, but don't blame me if you get killed!"

"Cool. See you in a nano-second."

She blanches. "Wait, I wasn't seri—"

ZWOOP.

Everything goes white and teal and a swirling maelstrom of other colors that words don't exist to describe as my mind struggles to mentally process the sight of multiple converging dimensions that were never meant to be witnessed by equine eyes for another sixteen thousand years or so before we've developed the Trans-D Hyperlane Personal Relocator.

Oh wait. Sorry, that's a spoiler. Don't tell Twilight.

Then I was spat out onto a— OW! Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow! What in Stars' name—?!

Oh. My time portal put me in front of a tree. And now my horn's embedded three inches into the trunk. Great.

With some rudimentary application of magic, the tree literally explodes, because I'm just that awesome and totally not breaking any sacred temporal non-interference directives of time-travel or whatever. I mean, I totally am, but it's not like anypony noticed any trees exploding back when I was in the future—or the present, whatever—so I'm pretty sure I get away with it.

Also, I think one of those shards of charcoal treeness grazed my cutie mark. Ow. Maybe that wasn't such a good idea after all.

Well, nothing a little magic can't— actually, you know what? Once that thing scars over, it'll look totally badass. Yeah, forget healing magics, I'll just let it scar over. I can totally pretend I got into a fight with an ursa major or something.

Anyways, assuming I landed in the right time—hah, just kidding, of course I landed in the right time, because I'm friggin' Starlight Glimmer—Pinkie Pie getting frozen should have happened about ten seconds ago, riiiiiiight over…

"Heeelp! Somepony heeelp! Auntie Pinkie Pie is deaaaaaaad!"

Yep. I turn my head towards a copse of trees just in time to see a stone statue thing topple to the ground, and a teeny little brown colt skitter off into the darkness towards town. Idiot kid is probably gonna attract the whole forest, screaming his head like that.

As his tail barely whips its way behind the trees, I fire off a warding spell right at it to keep predators at bay—actually, all it does is make him smell like total ass. Not ass like a donkey, but… well, basically he'll exude the most revolting odor known to mare, or maybe some really unfortunate parents who fed their kids something awful. So… like ass. And that should keep predators away, because not even they would want to go anywhere near something that smells that horrid.

He might have some trouble finding a date later in life though. Oh well. Price of having to get your flank saved by the coolest time traveler this side of the Everfree.

Nah, I'm just kidding. I'll fix him when I see him in the future. Present. Whatever. Time is a crime.

Anyways, I trot towards the fallen statue. Yep, it's Pinkie Pie. She's grinning like an idiot for some reason. Not sure why. Maybe as she was getting frozen by the cockatrice, she thought to herself, "man, I haven't gotten this stoned since college." Hahaha. Nah. I'll bet Pinkie Pie didn't even go to— oh wait, no, she's gonna get an engineering degree in about six years. Wants to build more party cannons and candy copters or something silly like that. You go, girl. Way to work those STEM fields.

Anyways, I activate my Eagle Vision—actually, wait, that's a video game reference, you won't know what I'm talking about for another forty years—and see a buncha cockatrice tracks going into the underbrush. Then I push the edges of it further, and… yep. It's about thirty meters in that direction.

POOF.

The world folds in a colorful explosion of nausea. Did I ever mention teleporting sucks? It really sucks. I mean, you're only violating the laws of time and space by tearing a hole into reality just so you can avoid a little exercise. The universe probably hates you a little more every time you do it.

Whatever. Space is a waste. And who needs exercise anyways? So I'm a little pudgy. I can get away with it. Colts (and chicks) dig the Glim Glam glutes.

So, in the non-second that it takes for me to teleport from A to B, I've already used a glimmering field of magic to shield my eyes from the cockatrice's gaze, which is nice, because it's staring right at me, menacingly, like a huge douche.

"You don't scare me," I say for some reason to the thing that probably doesn't understand a word coming out of my mouth.

It stares harder.

"You know what? You can go eat the biggest dick."

And I wrap it up in my telekinesis field, take one of my hair ribbons, and tie it around its eyes.

"Heh. Get it? Dick? 'Cause you're a cockatrice."

It doesn't laugh, but it does make a lot of really annoying noises. Man, this thing is ugly.

I activate my time spell, and one gyrating miasma of awful hippie music video art direction later I flash back into existence.

"—ous YIPE! Oh you gotta be friggin'—" Twilight blinks at me. "Oh. You're still here."

I raise an eyebrow. "What?"

"Nothing, nothing," she said, shaking her head wildly. "You just flashed white for a second, so I thought you actually went back in time."

"I did," I say bluntly. "I'm back now."

"…Wait, seriously?"

"Do you not see the cockatrice floating like five feet from my head?"

I rattle the thing around in my aura for a few seconds, and it starts squaking like a lucky score on prom night.

Twilight's jaw drops. "You… you actually got the cockatrice?! You were only gone for like—"

"A nano-second, yeah," I said, trotting back towards the door out of the lab. "I did say I'd be gone for a nano-second, didn't I? I don't get these things wrong, Twilight. And besides, you know how time works. I spent much longer there than I did here."

She trotted beside me to match my gait, utter shock still painted across her muzzle. Hm. You know, Twilight, flabbergasted disbelief is a pretty good look for you. "How long did it take you to find the cockatrice?"

"About a minute."

"That's it?! How—?!"

"Magic."

I throw open the door into the main hall. On the other end is the Hall of Friendship—which, really, is just a glorified living room—and inside there is a statue of Pinkie Pie waiting to not be a lawn ornament.

"Now let's blow this thing and go home."

---

Three days earlier…

A flash of aqua flares to life on the edge of a cliff overlooking a lake. From the light, a cockatrice appears, slowly fluttering to the ground. Its eyes are dead, staring blankly towards the mirror-stillness of the lake reflecting the majesty of Luna's sky above. It slowly begins to soak in the serenity of its environs, a cool salve against the fiery chaos of its mind, which had only just borne witness to a vortex of swirling futures and pasts beyond all understanding, a sight that has left it reeling, questioning everything it once understood to be true, everything that it never imagined could be possible—

"Hey, look, there's the cockatrice!" yells a raspy voice, and a blue pegasus flies into view just above the trees. "Quick, grab it before it—"

The bird squaks and puts its existential crisis put on hold for a split second, only to promptly run off the cliff like an idiot and plummet into the lake below.

Among its various existential quandaries, it never managed to ask itself whether it could swim or not.

Oh well.

[garfan]

7417285 nice story there. Twilight's complaints about having to find it are really weak though, since they know where Pinkie was turned to stone and they know where it was found dead. So, go to either of those two places

[PanzerBrony Metallicom]

Anybody else that thought of THAT when they read the title?

saladdaysmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/27.jpg

[BlabideeblahMLP]

7417639 Yes.

I don't like them, but yes.

[Zuabug]

7415338
7416116
Ahh, okay. I knew it was supposed to work out, but I couldn't find the words to convey it :| Not without going around and around or using the wrong technical term for it. Thanks giving me the proper term! \o/

@Lunar specifically, the way it was explained by Driver is how it works out. If they didn't go back to fix it then it'd never happen, but since they did go back, the timeline progresses "normally".

[Spooky Moon]

7417785 Ah, thanks I knew I messed it up a little.

[Driver240b]

7418248 To give a good example, look at It's About Time.

[kihutaja]

7417285

"You know what? You can go eat the biggest dick."

(This made me actually go and read that fic. Glad I did, it's a good one.)

[NotSoWickedWitch]

Another beautiful story!

Now excuse me as I bawl me eyes out.

[scootasway]

Short, disjointed, and packed with emotion and character.
Something only the few like ss&e can pull off.

[deathtap]

Never doubted it even for a moment. Good on ya, Twi. Starlight.

Nice pacing. I always enjoy reading your stuff, SSE.

[Alondro]

7417117 The cockatrice is that little beaked thing on Jabba the Hut...

Oh god... that works... now someone's going to make a fanfic of it!

[Leonzilla]

Absolutely lovely.

I particularly liked the way Maud Pie opened up to share a personal part of herself.

Not that the other two weren't nice too, is just hers was probably the best way to handle the possible loss of someone important out of the three.

And it hit me right in the feels.

~Leonzilla

[Sparkletop Rainbows]

Greats story! I loved every bit of the emotions and details! Well done .

[ersmiller]

7417639 I suspect the title is referring to the novel "As I Lay Dying" by William Faulkner which was published in 1930.

[Solaris Hemera]

Was going to like it, but the number of likes are at 314.

Never mind, a favourite should suffice, right?

[Titanium Dragon]

I reviewed this story as part of Read It Now Reviews #89.

My review can be found here.

[Alondro]

7437809 I voted 5 million times for Trump. And then gave him the big red nuke button. In that future where he's President. This then gave me the nuclear powers to become God, allowing me to come back in time and set these events in motion!

And the paradoxes don't matter because Universal Plot Convenience, so there!

[Hap]

I saw this in my RiL and thought, "this looks reeeeally familiar."

Then I saw the note at the bottom and remembered why.

This was a good read overall, but I feel like Limestone rambled a lot.

I'm glad it had a happy ending. I was kind of expecting the ending to take place hundreds of years in the future, when Pinkie's fun-talents are desperately needed.

[Narrative Style]

7417285
That was amazing.