Tears for the Pearl

by The Lord Thunder

Chapter 4

Pearl and Pinkie Pie trotted off towards the train station until a trio of smiling fillies crossed paths with them, waving at Pinkie Pie. Pinkie stopped and waved at them in return.

“Hi, Pinkie!” said the earth pony filly wearing a pink bow in her hair. She pointed to Pearl. “Who’s that?”

Flashing a huge grin, Pinkie draped a foreleg around Pearl’s shoulder. “Fillies, this is Pearl Blush. She’ll be staying in town for a week, and we’re about to head to Funland Equestria for a super-duper great time!”

“Nice ta meet ya, Pearl!” the bow-wearing filly said.

"You, too!"

“I’m Applebloom! We sure do like making new friends here in Ponyville!”

“We do?” the little white unicorn filly asked.

“Duh!” said the orange pegasus. “Twilight’s the Princess of Friendship and her castle is right here in Ponyville. That makes us, like, the capital of friendship!”

The little unicorn’s face brightened with a smile. “Hey, you’re right!” She turned to Pearl. “I’m Sweetie Belle!”

“And I’m Scootaloo!” said the pegasus filly. “We’re the Cutie Mark Crusaders!”

“That’s right,” Applebloom said, cutting Pearl off before she could offer her greetings, “and we’re on a mission! Sorry to leave so soon, but we got work to do. Right, Crusaders?”

The other two fillies nodded, then all three shouted in unison. “Cutie Mark Crusaders, away!”

Pearl giggled at them as they galloped off down the street. “Adorable.”

“Aren’t they?” Pinkie answered.

A loud whistle in the distance signaled the arrival of a train. Pinkie Pie gasped at this. “Let’s hurry, we don’t wanna miss our ride!”

***

Funland Equestria was a one-hour ride from Ponyville station. A grand smile spread across Pearl’s face as they entered. The park was packed with all sorts of creatures, young and old. Pearl even spotted the occasional griffon or yak wandering about the park’s twisting walkways. There were screams of excitement, the smells of all kinds of food and dozens of rides and games – a towering ferris wheel, a speeding rollercoaster and a set of swings spinning high above the park. Funland Equestria had so much to see Pearl wondered how anypony could experience it all in one day.

“Wow, this place is a lot bigger than I thought it would be,” Pearl said to Pinkie as she dodged a group of galloping foals. “I’ve never been to an amusement park before.”

Pinkie Pie drew in another gravity-defying gasp. “You’ve never been to an amusement park? How is that possible?!”

“Well, I lived a few miles outside Whinnypeg most of my life. Kinda isolated, you know? There was a small carnival that came to town once a year, but that didn’t compare to this.” Pearl hopped to the side, barely avoiding getting trampled by a stampede of unruly teenagers. "I have to say, though, I get a little anxious in these big crowds."

Pinkie’s disbelief was replaced by a huge toothy smile as she trotted excitedly in place. “Ooh, a first timer! You’re gonna have so much fun you won’t wanna leave! What do you wanna go on first?”

Pearl blinked and Pinkie was gone as if she’d vanished into thin air. She turned her head to find Pinkie at her side as if she’d been there the whole time.

“Or maybe you want to try one of the games!” the pink pony yelled before Pearl could form an answer.

Pearl held a forehoof aloft. “Well, why don’t —” before Pearl could finish, Pinkie disappeared again. In the blink of an eye, she was in front of Pearl.

“Ooh, how ‘bout something to eat?! Amusement parks have lots of yummilicious sweets!”

Confusion held Pearl’s words in. How DID Pinkie do that?! As Pearl opened her mouth to ask, Pinkie zipped over to a nearby balloon pony in a pink blur and put her mouth over to the nozzle of his helium tank.

Pearl held a hoof out to Pinkie as the balloon pony looked on in utter confusion. “I wouldn’t do that if —”

Before Pearl could finish her warning, Pinkie engaged the pump and like a balloon her body inflated, hovering in midair above the tank.

“Um, why did you do that?” Pearl asked

“Because it’s fun, silly!” Pinkie declared in a distorted, high-pitched voice that sounded like it came from a chipmunk. “And it makes my voice sound funny!”

Pearl laughed out loud then Pinkie zipped about the air as she exhaled all the helium she swallowed, sputtering like a deflating balloon until she landed back on her hooves. Pearl giggled harder. "That is pretty funny."

Smiling, Pinkie trotted over to Pearl’s side and put a friendly foreleg around her shoulder. “I knew I could get you to laugh!”

A bit of weight lifted from Pearl’s shoulders. It had been a long time since she laughed like that, or even felt like laughing. “Thanks, Pinkie. I needed that.”

“It’s what I do. So, what do you wanna do first?”

Pearl looked around to try to spot something suitable. The roller coaster track towered over everything else, cars blurring down a steep 200-foot drop, extracting screams from the ponies aboard. Pearl had gone sledding many times in the mountains, but the roller coaster looked to be an entirely new kind of exciting.

“I’ve never seen a roller coaster that big before. I want to give it a try!”

Pinkie gasped, then smiled. “It’s your first time visiting an amusement park and the first thing you want to do is go on their wildest ride! Pearl, I think you and I are gonna get along great, just like jellybeans and ice cream!”

Pearl and Pinkie took their place in line and waited to be seated. They buckled themselves in and a moment later the ride stirred. Up and up and up they went, the anticipation building with each second until finally they neared the top. From there, the ponies on the ground far below seemed like little toy figurines.

“Wow, we’re pretty high up,” Pearl said, her voice shaky. Her eyes scanned the steep drop and she gulped, knowing that the biggest fall of her life was only seconds away. “Not sure if I’m ready.”

“You better get ready fast, here it comes!” Pinkie yelled. “Hang on for your life, and be sure to scream real good!”

Pearl didn’t feel she had much of a choice. No sooner had their cart reached the top of the climb than she felt herself fall. She squealed and squeezed her eyes shut, her stomach sinking at the sudden change in pressure as the wind blasted her in the face and whipped through her long hair. She heard Pinkie scream too, as well as many of the other passengers. Seconds later, their momentum slowed. Pearl opened her eyes to see that they’d reached the bottom of the drop and were now scaling another incline.

"Wow, what a rush! That was awesome!” Pearl shouted above the clack-clacking of the wheels.

Down and up and around, the cars twisted and zoomed their way through the ride. They blurred on down the tracks, soon approaching a loop that would turn them upside down.

“Oh, it goes upside down?” Pearl shouted, bracing herself.

Pearl’s world flipped and she screamed, her long mane dangling in front of her face as all her weight suddenly shifted to her shoulders. In the next moment, they were upright again, When the coaster slowed to a crawl and stopped at the loading area, Pearl still tingled with excitement. She stepped out, fighting for her balance. “Wow, that was fun! I’ve never felt anything like it my life, not even when I would go sledding back home.”

Pinkie wrapped a foreleg around Pearl’s neck and drew her close for a one-legged hug. “That’s what happens when you hang out with Pinkie Pie! Come on, let’s go see the pictures.”

“Pictures?” Pearl asked.

“Abso-tively!”

The exit path led to a small hut with rider reaction photos on display, taken during the first huge drop. Pinkie Pie pointed to theirs, laughing.

“Look at your face, Pearl! You were totally freaking out!”

Pearl couldn’t help but laugh – her eyes were squeezed shut, her mouth agape in mid-scream with her pale-violet mane whipping behind her. Even funnier was Pinkie’s expression: eyes wide and tongue dangling lopsided from an impossibly wide mouth distorted by the rush of air.

“Look at yours! I didn’t think a pony could make a face like that!”

Pinkie chuckled and waved the idea away. “That’s nothin’. I got lots of crazy faces.” She reached into her pouch and pulled out several bits, which she gave to the mare running the photo booth. “Two, please!”

Pearl waited while the photos printed, looking at the various booths in the park. Nearby, she saw a slate-grey pony standing at a souvenir stand, arguing with the salespony.

“It’s not real gold,” Pearl heard the gray pony say.

“Of course it’s real gold. Look at the way it shines!” the salespony said, holding up a gold-colored watch on his cart.

“It’s not real gold,” the mare repeated.

“Are you saying I’m not an honest sales-stallion?” the vendor challenged.

Curious at the mention of gold, Pearl trotted up to the two. “What’s going on?” Pearl asked.

The mare, still wearing that flat expression, looked Pearl over briefly. “You must be the newcomer my sister Pinkie told me about last night.”

“I suppose that would be me. Hi, my name’s Pearl.” Pearl offered the stranger a hoof.

“Maud.” She blinked once, not bothering to shake Pearl’s hoof. “Do you like rocks?”

Pearl put her hoof back to the ground, finding it hard to believe this oddly unemotional pony was related to Pinkie. “Well, my dad’s a prospector. He taught me about all kinds of minerals.”

“What is this made of?” Maud asked, holding the vendor’s watch.

Pearl inspected it for a few seconds. “It glitters like gold, but no smooth metallic sheen.” She held a hoof above the watch to cast a shadow over it. Out of direct sunlight, the watch lost its shine. “Real gold would keep a soft lustre.” She held the watch in her hoof. “Too light. Way too light to be gold. It's iron pyrite, fool’s gold.”

“Very good,” the gray mare answered, still not showing any hint of emotion.

“If you ask my dad, that’s day-one stuff.”

Both mares cast their eyes upon the salespony, who cringed under the weight of their glares. Pinkie, who had been listening, now joined them.

“Stealing in an amusement park? How low can you get!” Pinkie double-hugged Maud and Pearl at the same time. “Good thing my sister and my new friend are here to keep you honest. Now pack up before we have you arrested!”

The salespony gathered his goods fast, running for the exit, a few angry ponies who had bought from him in pursuit.

Pinkie returned her attention to her sister. “Hi, Maud! Why don’t you join us? We could do your favorite, the Mirror Maze!”

“Sure,” Maud replied.

The building wasn’t hard to spot, with a tell-tale drawing of a pony’s distorted reflection on its large sign.

“What’s that?” Pearl asked, walking towards it with Pinkie.

“It’s a maze of mirrors, silly!”

Pearl followed the Pie sisters through the doorway and found herself surrounded by a wall of mirrors, all of them distorting her reflection in some way. One mirror stretched her neck to a humorously impossible length, making her resemble a giraffe. Another gave her a round form that looked like it had eaten one too many donuts.

“These are a scream!” she said, laughing at her ridiculous reflections. She moved on to another mirror that squeezed her reflection down to fillyish proportions. “Look, I’m a foal again!”

“The refractory angles of the glass put me in mind of polished mica,” Maud said, then brought out a small rock from her dress. “Boulder likes it too, but I have to watch him. He’s tempted for obvious reasons.”

A filly-sized Pinkie joined Pearl in the mirror. “I love this one!” She giggled and snorted, then bounced over to a series of mirrors set up in the corner, casting her reflection a dozen times over. “This reminds me of that time I found the Mirror Pool!”

“The what pool?” Pearl asked, a dozen copies of her coming into view amongst all the Pinkies.

Pinkie suddenly lost her smile, eyes darting in her head. "Oh, nothing. Just a magical pond that can make clones of a pony." She snapped around, seemingly eager to change the subject, and her smile returned. "Pearl, do that one!" she shouted, pointing at another mirror.

Pearl stepped over to the mirror Pinkie indicated. The reflection thinned her waist and widened her upper torso, giving her body a sultry hourglass shape. Reacting accordingly, she put one front hoof on her hip and the other behind her head and puckered her lips in a classic supermodel pose. A few seconds passed before she dropped back to all fours, giggling at herself.

“I haven’t laughed like this in a long time!” Pearl said. She moved on to a more normal looking mirror and fixed her attention on her own reflection. She studied herself and frowned, knowing what kind of terror had always lurked just beneath the surface of this normal-looking pony.

“What’s wrong, Pearl?” Pinkie asked, edging her way around Pearl.

Pearl sighed. “I haven’t gotten a good, long look at myself in quite a while. I haven’t wanted to.”

“How come? You don’t think you’re pretty or something?”

“It’s not that.” Pearl shook her head. “Maybe it’s because I don’t know that pony in the mirror very well. Where did I come from? How did I get all this destructive power? What is it that keeps me from being a normal unicorn? Sometimes I wonder if I even am a unicorn and not something entirely different. Maybe I’m scared of the answers. Scared of myself.”

Maud took a step closer. “Rocks are honest, because they only reflect back what they see. Ponies are more complicated, but like rocks we all have facets and fissures. Once you accept both, you can move on.”

Pinkie gasped. “Best Maud wisdom ever!”

“That is pretty good,” Pearl said. “Thanks, Maud.”

“I have my moments,” Maud said.

"Besides," Pinkie added, "it's just like my Granny Pie used to say." She took a deep breath and sung out the next words, "you gotta stand up tall-"

Now a song? "That is one random pony," Pearl said to Maud.

***

As Pinkie and Pearl left, the other ponies gathered around Twilight.

“Are you sure this is a good idea, Twi?” Applejack asked.

“Well, I think it’s better than having her arrested,” Twilight said. “And right now, she needs friends a lot more than lectures. Just keep an eye out and if she starts having trouble with her magic, get me or Starlight.”

“I hope this works,” Rarity said. “She seems like such a nice pony.”

“What do you think’s wrong with her, Twilight?” Fluttershy asked.

“I haven’t the faintest, but for right now we just watch and wait. Starlight and I will start researching it from this end, and I’m sure Princess Luna will do what she can on hers.”

Comments

[Disavowed ASH]

I see.