Portrait of a Pinkie

by Fylifa

Chapter 1: Imprimatura

There was something fulfilling about painting one’s namesake.

As backgrounds went, Sunset Shimmer had painted thousands of literal sunsets. With the view afforded by Canterlot High School’s roof, this one was shaping up to be one of her better ones.

Until a loud thump from the rooftop’s door interrupted her brush stroke.

“It’s open!” Sunset called.

The door thumped again, and the knob rattled for a response.

Sunset placed her brush down and crossed over to the door. When she opened it, she found Pinkie Pie stooped over, trying to turn the doorknob with her mouth.

“Thanh yuth,” Pinkie mumbled.

“Why are yo—“ Sunset started, before seeing Pinkie had her art easel underneath one arm, a grocery bag in the other, and a duffel across her back.

“Here, let me help,” Sunset amended as she took Pinkie’s bags from her. “What’s with all the stuff?”

Pinkie straightened and grinned at her. “I took a trip to the store to get some supplies for our picnic painting party. Today is super special!”

Sunset arched a brow. “But we’ve been painting together plenty of times before this.”

“Not on this rooftop! That makes it tippy top special!”

“Okay, I’ll give you that one.” Sunset chuckled and gestured towards her easel with the half painted sunset. “How about you set yourself up over there while I do the picnic. I already got a head start on mine.”

While Pinkie worked to set up her canvas and paints, Sunset opened the bag with the picnic items.

It was always amusing to see how Pinkie had a stereotypical idea of a picnic. There was the iconic red and white checked tablecloth, red cups, and an honest-to-goodness wicker basket. Which, like most things Pinkie, was dyed a bright pink and featured three balloons on the side. Sunset wondered if it was a custom job or if Pinkie herself wove it together at some point.

Inside the basket, she found two bottles of Sweet Apple Acre cider and a neatly wrapped pie tin. It was telling that the only store-bought thing in the basket were the napkins and cups. Pinkie must have gone home to personally bake the pie and get the bottles. The pie even still felt warm.

“Last time we painted together we had a Brushing Bash at the Park,” Sunset remarked.

“Yep!”

“And the time before that it was Classroom Carousing Composition.”

“Mmmhmm!”

“And the time before that was a Paint Splattering Shindig Soiree.”

“That one was one of my favorites!”

“Is there ever going to be a time when us going out isn’t also going to be a party?”

Pinkie shrugged. “Ooooh, when it stops being special. Maybe.”

Sunset couldn’t keep her grin away. “So, never, then?”

“Now you’re catching on.” Pinkie’s coy tone and smile had Sunset taking a second glance over. Pinkie was swirling her paintbrush deliberately through the yellow and pink paints. She winked when Sunset caught the motion.

“You know if you spent half as much time thinking of what you wanted to paint instead of ways of making me laugh, you’d be halfway done by now.” Sunset pointed out with a smile.

Pinkie sighed and turned back towards the canvas. “I knooow. But it’s so hard to think of something to draw.”

“Have some confidence in yourself,” encouraged Sunset as she stepped up beside Pinkie. “Your brushwork has gotten pretty good. Just go in and put some paint down.”

“Maybe I could paint a sunset,” said Pinkie, looking over to Sunset’s half-finished painting. She then turned to look over her shoulder. “Or a Sunset.”

“I don’t want you to copy off what I did. As for me, you’ve already done me before.”

Pinkie started giggling.

“You’ve already painted me before,” Sunset clarified with an eye roll. “You could try something inspirational. Something from the heart.”

Pinkie reached with the brush towards the canvas and then hesitated. She drew back, then moved the brush to a different spot before losing her nerve and pulling back again. Finally, she sighed and stuck the end of the brush in her mouth and gnawed on the stem like an oversized cigar. “Ugh… Can you give me a poke and tell me what to draw?”

“Give you a poke…?” Sunset squinted briefly, wondering if this was another one of Pinkie’s jokes.

“Yeah! Like at Everfree.”

“Oh… ohhhhh!” Sunset laughed. “That kind of poking. Sorry, Pinkie, taking a trip to a world of candy will spoil my appetite. I think you’re the only one my powers don’t work on. Or… work too much on. One of those two.”

Pinkie pouted, which made the brush in her mouth waggle and send a few droplets of purple paint flying.

Sunset shook her head. Pinkie always seemed to stall when she had to do something for herself instead of someone else.

Gently, Sunset reached and took the brush out of Pinkie’s mouth and placed it in her hand. While holding Pinkie’s wrist, Sunset guided her to the canvas. “You’re the most creative person I know, and you have plenty of imagination inside you.”

Pinkie leaned her head back against Sunset’s and let the brush be led to the canvas, though when the brush was an inch away, she bit her lower lip, and her hand trembled.

“Close your eyes,” Sunset instructed.

“Huh? I’ll totally make a mistake then!”

“Nothing is ever perfect from the first stroke. What matters is how it comes out altogether at the end. Close your eyes and think about something inspiring. I want you to think on that more than the brush or anything else.”

Pinkie nodded and screwed her eyes tightly shut to the point of being comically over-exaggerated.

Sunset leaned in and kissed Pinkie’s nose.

“H-Hey! No fair!” Pinkie complained with her eyes closed.

“You looked too cute like that. But you need to remember to relax, too.”

That brought a huff out of Pinkie, but she soon followed through. With Sunset’s hand gently keeping her on target, she touched the brush to the canvas and painted a circle.

Pinkie opened her eyes and stared at the circle. After a beat, she moved to refresh her brush with a different shade and painted a new streak of color, slowly gaining enough confidence that Sunset didn’t have to hold her hand anymore.

“Think of something?” Sunset asked.

“Yeah, sorta,” Pinkie said, distracted as she began to work at a rapid-fire pace to set the rest of the canvas up.

Sunset kept quiet. It was something she noticed times before that once Pinkie was in motion she was like a determined machine.

Eventually, Pinkie finished filling in the sky and rapidly swapped to browns for the lower half of the canvas. Her pace slowed once the underpainting was set, and she turned to fill in the fine details. She spoke up. “It’s something I saw from when I was growing up. You ever have something, so super-duper stupendous happen to you?”

Sunset blinked, then let out a laugh. “Actually, yes, Pinkie. Though I’m a special case. I’m a reformed villain from a magical ponyland. For me, having friends is pretty amazing.” She grinned. “And knowing you is probably the most super-duper stupendous part of that.”

As far as Sunset knew, Pinkie was immune to blushing. The compliment, however, was enough to have Pinkie pause her brushstroke and mirror Sunset’s grin. “Now lookie who is bringing the sweets.”

“I try,” Sunset said and returned to her own easel. She picked up her palette and resumed painting the sunset she’d started before. “Though you probably want a more artsy answer.”

“I like talking. If I think too much about something, then I stop doing it. It’s why I can’t bake anything without Gummy around.”

Briefly, Sunset had the mental image of Pinkie in a constant conversation with her plushie. Sunset would have thought it weird if Pinkie’s sister Maud didn’t do the same thing with her pet rock.

Well, Sunset would have thought it weirder, in any case.

“Sure, if talking helps, what do you want to talk about?”

While rubbing her chin with one hand, Pinkie reached with the other to her poofy hair and dug in with her fingers. Sunset watched out the corner of her eye, waiting for some miraculous sleight of hand. It disappointed her when it seemed that Pinkie was merely scratching her head.

“How aaaaaabout... why we are on a rooftop this time? You come up here a lot by yourself, but this is the first time we’ve been up here. Is this a secret fun place to paint?” Pinkie finally asked.

“Hmm… that’s a little tricky to explain.” Sunset began outlining some of the surrounding buildings on her canvas. Instead of painting them in the red brick, she mixed in white and gold to layer in fantasy over the real-life models. “When I was growing up, I lived in Canterlot.”

“You’ve said! You were like Twilight! Err... Princess Twilight.”

“Not exactly, I wasn’t a princess. Just a student of one. They built Canterlot on the side of a mountain and it has some of the tallest towers.”

“Hee. If you painted anypony from up high, they’d be more than little. They’d be tiiiiiny.”

Sunset rolled her eyes. “The littlest, tiniest ponies, yes. But it wasn’t always for the view I painted for. You see, in Equestria, the sun is moved by a princess… okay, that probably sounds weird to you.”

“Nah,” Pinkie cheerfully disagreed. “Every world has its own thing. They don’t even push across the sky in Sugarland or spin the world around.”

That gave Sunset pause before she snickered. “Oh yeah? How does it work in there?”

“The Empress Twizzler replaces it with a gumdrop at night,” Pinkie replied matter-of-fact.

Sunset snorted her laugh. Knowing Pinkie, she probably could write an entire story about her imagination. ’If Sugarland is all in her head that is...’

“Was it the Princess you were drawing?” Pinkie prodded as she lingered her brush over the canvas. She was slowing down again.

“Not her… not exactly. I was probably going to always be painting sunsets on account of my name. It became a daily hobby. Eventually, I noticed these little differences: a tint in the surrounding clouds or sparkles around the corona. Sometimes during motion, you can catch a ripple along the surface. You can probably guess what I saw.”

“Wow!” Pinkie exclaimed and looked up from her canvas towards the sky. “You’re saying sunset shimmers are for real?”

Quickly reaching over, Sunset held a hand in front of Pinkie’s eyes to protect her sight. “Please don’t, Pinkie! It doesn’t happen here. Also, this sun is way harsher so don’t stare… in general.”

“Aww! I wanna see the thing you’re named after… still, it sounds really neat that Celestia made every sunset different.”

“Funny enough, it’s not something everypony can see. It made me wonder why she did it at all if so few would even notice. Afterwards, I realized that this was something the princess added to her work. Probably more for herself than anypony else.”

Sunset smiled at the memory. “One day she was being extra creative, and it felt like how you and I are right now. Each of us working on some feeling of inspiration at the same time. I never showed anypony my art before then, but the next day I brought it to her after class.”

Pinkie nodded as she listened, her brush returning to the canvas at a rapid pace. “Did she like it?”

“It surprised her. In a weird way, even if she was painting for all of Equestria with her sunsets, I was one of the few who saw this hidden thing. I think it touched her to know that somepony was looking after all. She had a laugh at how obvious it was when she remembered my name.”

“Huh, I thought she was your teacher. How’d she forget?”

“Well, it’s her school, but she really only teaches a few classes in it. I maybe only saw her once a week with a group of others. Also it’s kind of a thing with unicorns to be named after light and star stuff.”

Sunset grinned. “But to actually see all the glimmers, shimmers and sparkles? Turns out only potentially talented magic users can see that. She hoof picked me then as a personal student, and I gained my mark. It was the happiest day of my life, all because of a painting.”

Pinkie gasped, and she looked over to Sunset with sparkling eyes. “That’s why you like art?! You painted a sunset and all that happened?”

“I know it’s pretty predictable,” Sunset said while she spun her brush in her fingers. “A girl named Sunset painted a sunset and got a sunset.”

“So what! That’s a super fun story. I’m totally going to get brush-shaped candles on your next cake.” Pinkie hummed and painted faster than ever, her own creativity boosted. “Maybe palettes for plates. Rarity probably has a bunch of berets somewhere we can wear for hats.” She giggled. “Yanno, I always figured it was music over art with you. This changes everything! I got so many ideas and—”

As Pinkie continued on with her stream-of-conscious planning, Sunset marveled at how easy it was to talk to Pinkie about her previous life. Anyone else would have had dozens of questions or been skeptical. Pinkie, though, could get excited about… well, just about anything mundane or magical.

“Heh, it’s alright, Pinkie. You don’t need to make me a big party over something that happened years and years ago,” Sunset said, interrupting Pinkie’s nonstop talking somewhere between using smocks for aprons and candy-flavored crayons.

Pinkie wagged a finger. “Birthdays happened years and years ago, and everybody celebrates those.” She pointed the finger at Sunset, and her expression turned coy. “Anniversaries, too.”

Sunset opened her mouth, then closed it. “You got me there. Though you’re the only one who’s heard that story. It’d confuse anyone else why we’d be dressing up as artists. As for our anniversary, no, I still haven’t decided on what kind of party I want for that.”

Pinkie’s eyes lidded and her lip quirked in a barely repressed smile. “Fine. Don’t pick. It’ll make the surprise all the better.”

Sunset stuck her tongue out. Only Pinkie could make a party sound like a threat. Her attention turned towards Pinkie’s easel. “Anyway, lets look at your painting. You let me ramble forever.”

After a long moment of staring at Pinkie’s canvas, Sunset asked, “Is it a flying donut?”

Pinkie blinked. “What? No! It’s a rainbow, see!”

“It looks like a donut. With multicolored sprinkles and frosting on the edge.”

Pinkie frowned at Sunset, then looked back at the painting and tilted her head. In the moment of silence, there was a small gurgle of a rumbling belly.

“Okay… maybe it looks a liiitttle like a donut.” Pinkie admitted. She put the brush cross-wise in her mouth and reached into her hair. This time she produced a small candy from somewhere from the curly mass. She unwrapped the candy and stopped as she was stuck with the wrapper in one hand, candy in the other, and brush in her mouth.

Sunset solved this logistics log-jam by taking the brush from Pinkie’s mouth and placing it on the easel’s holder. “Tell me about this donut-that’s-suppose-to-be-a-rainbow. How did it inspire you?”

“Mmm,” Pinkie replied as she chewed on the candy. She bunched up the wrapper before giving it a toss over her shoulder where it burst into a small shower of magical sparks. “When I was growing up on the farm, we didn’t have much to do. No talking, no smiling. Just get up, do work, go back, eat and sleep.”

Having met Pinkie’s family, Sunset could easily believe that. The Pies’ home didn’t even have a TV, and Pinkie’s parents were the sort to quietly enjoy books by the fireplace. “Couldn’t sneak off to the town for a little fun?” asked Sunset.

Pinkie shook her head. “It was too far! Besides, when you grow up like that you don’t even think anything is missing.”

Sunset took another look at Pinkie’s painting. The multi-colored donut in the sky was above a monochromatic grey land dotted with barns and farmhouses. “Did you get the inspiration to try baking?” Sunset guessed, thinking in the abstract.

“Nanna Pie already taught me how to bake. What the rainbow taught me was that there was more to the world than the routine. That something incredible and super-dippity could come out of nowhere and make your day special. But my sisters, Ma, and Pa didn’t have a chance to see it! I knew I couldn’t wait for a rainbow to come again, so I got to work setting something up in the old silo. Betcha can guess what it was!”

Sunset laughed and put the clues together. “A party. You threw them a surprise party!” She paused, struck by the memory of Pinkie’s father and his stern expression, stern demeanor and somehow stern hat... not to mention the perpetually scowling Limestone and Marble, whose shyness was worse than Fluttershy’s. “How did your family take it? I hope they weren’t put off.”

Pinkie’s eyes twinkled. “They weren’t! They all burst into laughter, smiles and joined in song and dancing!”

“What, even Limestone?”

“Especially Limestone!”

“All that from a rainbow? Now I can see why you love that movie with the wizard so much. I always thought it was for the lollipop guild.”

Thus prompted, Pinkie reached into her hair and drew out a lollipop. “That movie’s great! But it was the rainbow that gave me the idea to bring a smile to everyone I met. After that, I couldn’t stay at home every day keeping to the same thing. Not when there is still someone someplace who is waiting like I was for their biggest surprise ever.” She put the lollipop in her mouth and grinned around it.

Sunset looked back at the pair of paintings. “That’s a pretty sweet story. Heh, it looks like we both painted the same theme. We both saw something in the sky and it…” She trailed off, her eyes returning to Pinkie’s painting. Something about it nagged at Sunset.

It wasn’t the style. She had gotten used to the big swings and changes in Pinkie’s methods and types. She suspected that Pinkie didn’t even need a brush half the time. Right now it looked like Pinkie had gone for an impressionist style, flashy blobs of color made with quick strokes.

Sunset blinked. The big ring of rainbow took up most of the picture, with a farm in the background. On the farm were typical farm things one saw in paintings. Having a herd of horses was normal for a rural landscape.

But the proportions were off. They weren’t horses... Pinkie had painted ponies. Equestrian ponies. One of them even had a hat on.

“How do you know wh—“ Sunset started and froze.

In the painting was a small pink filly leaping in excitement with a trio of very familiar balloons on her flank.

Slowly, Sunset turned her head to stare at the girl next to her. “Pinkie?” It was all she could manage; she felt as if the rooftop was falling away.

Pinkie watched her with bright eyes, lips turned up in a small smile around the stem of her lollipop. She let the question hang in the air before very deliberately taking the lollipop out. “Surprise!”

Comments

[AlexTFish]

Dun-dun-dun!

Yeah, I have to imagine that anyone romantically involved with Pinkie would get used to all sorts of weirdness happening on a daily basis.

I did notice Pinkie saying "anypony" once. I thought it was unusually empathetic (or in fact I thought it was likely just an error). Nope, subtle foreshadowing :)

[Ri2]

I'm surprised Pinkie didn't try eating the 'donut.'

[FanOfMostEverything]

"But... then... which one have I been dating?"
"Pinkie Pie, silly!"

Delightful tale of pivotal moments and bonding through art. Thank you for it, and best of luck in the contest.

[Darkstarling]

9139709
Pinkie is pan-dimensional. All Pinkies are as one Pinkie. Across the multiverse it is the great Pinkie Continuum.

[Rose Quill]

9139642
Also assumed that she knew Celestias name from stories, but that ending added a while new level of whoa.

[Esorial]

9140479
I choose to believe this is canon. Actually, more that they’re all pandimentional to some extent. Why else would Sci-Twi have wings?

[Luna Aeterna Solutae]

9179983
Sci-Twi is a unicorn.

[Snowdrifter]

9179983
Too much Red Bull?

[Amber Spark]

Okay, didn’t see THAT coming...