Mind of a Madman

by Botched Lobotomy

Bildungsroman

Some genres, it must be remarked, expressed themselves in subtler ways. Others did not.

“I don’t remember being born,” began Pinkie Pie, “I suspect this is true of most ponies—but for myself most especially, the circumstances of my coming into being may, I hope, forgive this lapse in memory.”

Pinkie, as it came to pass, had, for some reason been unable to flip genres. Pinkie Pie had again been called to action, and Luna was starting to wonder if the mare’s luck at the trick was actually the result of some masochistic, torturous urge. Or perhaps she simply had terrible taste.

“You see, I, like many of my sisters, who sadly now all lie drowned, am the progeny of just one mare. A very special mare, it must be agreed, but a single mare nonetheless. I am a clone.”

Of course, Luna had known about the remaining Pinkie clone wandering the world. There had been reports—disturbing reports—about the pink mare being sighted in two cities at once—and, on one particularly memorable occasion, the same diner at once—which Celestia, given the mare’s history with the ancient Mirror Pool of Ponyvillian legend, had seen fit to investigate—Luna had walked the mare’s dreams, and seen her obvious intelligence, seen her quickly forming personality—and had deemed her to be indeed a different pony from her originator, and as such a being with a moral worth all her own.

“I wandered this word destitute and alone, robbed even of my friends, whom I had just barely begun to know, by the fact of my horrid nature. For many years I walked Equestria, seeking those that would have me. I found few willing to accept my help. I stayed a time at an old Canterlot boarding house for orphans. I did my hours at the docks, working with the fisherponies to bring bread to the table. I stayed a while at the country house of an elderly donkey named Miranda, whose daughter Matilda had vanished to some backwater, leaving her as friendless and abandoned as I. We parted ways on good terms, and for personal reasons, and if I should run into her again tomorrow I should greet her with a friendly smile.

“The body of my self-discovery, though, I tell you, if it can be said to have happened at all, happened in the town of my most recent stay, and unless my memories have been tampered with beyond repair—a condition which would leave me as unsurprised as it would uninspired—the town in which I still make residence: namely, the small town at Equestria’s border known to one and all as Klugetown.”

Luna, as the hillocks rose steeper, and the incline of the ground rose larger, wondered if she hadn’t rather have stayed in the comedy.

“I arrived there on the second moon of last spring, when the ice was still melting on the rooftops. It seemed to me at the time a most lonely and miserable affair, and I didn’t anticipate my staying long at all. All this was interrupted however, and my life forever altered, by the arrival in town of a Miss Lady Tempest Shadow—whose real name, when I reveal it later, will be sure to amuse you—who was travelling the land on most intriguing business. We shall, however, get to that later. I met her first on the eve of the Spring Ball...”

This was all Pinkie’s fault. It had all started when the mare had, seemingly out of nowhere, asked, “What did you mean, when you said to me earlier that you didn’t wouldn’t remember the Tantabus anyway?” At which point, needing no further prompting, her clone had started off on her account.

“A most delightful dinner. Afterwards, when all were so full and stuffed with fish—despite the sealife-adjacent nature of most of our companions, the humble ocean-dweller is by far the most eaten meal about town—we retired to Capper’s drawing room, and there Ms. Tempest, after much excited interest on the part of myself and my allies, was persuaded to entreat us to a piano tune she had composed herself. It was during this song, dear companions, that I found myself trembling upon the edge of realisation: and when she finished the song, and her voice and playing trailed off into the silence in which the only other feeling in the room was basic, rudimentary awe, I tumbled over the brink of that awful canyon—you see, I had found myself quite in love.

“Yet who was I to love such a creature? A penniless wretch, with no being nor fortune, who could give the dear Lady none of that she was sure to want. I confess I most embarrassed myself that night, fleeing from the scene as I did, so suddenly.”

The foothills soon expanded, growing into larger and larger rises, melding together as the mountain proper began to assert itself over the surrounding landscape. The first order of business, as they approached this colossal shape, had to be a path. Climbing this monolith without one would be next to impossible, and Luna didn’t fancy her chances clinging to the sheer side of a mountain slope. Discord didn’t want them to climb it, so naturally there would be a path. All they had to do was stumble upon it.

“I spent that next week in the blackest of moods, railing and thundering and taking no calls. She sent me three letters in that week; in my stupor, I burned them all. It was only when, at last, I found myself at risk of driving away every friend I had—every creature gained among my travels—that I found myself at last able to grasp the last of my sanity, and with it, pull myself through. That indeed was three weeks before the very events, and the meeting of a genuine Princess—or Princess now-resigned—which started off this sorry adventure. First, however, there is a final part to my sorry tale that must be told, for fear of being accused a devil or a liar.

“In the dark of a storm one night, as I gazed, entirely morose, at the raindrops pattering against the fog of my window, there came a knocking—a knocking at my chamber door. I opened it to discover my father, long thought non-existent, had arrived to pay me a visit—”

“Oh, look!” said Luna brightly, as Pinkie Pie, engrossed as she was in her sorrowful tale, tripped on a rock, nearly turning her ankle. “I fear we’ll need your full concentration for this endeavour, Miss Pie. Pinkie Pie nodded, following her duty with dueful solemnity, and with a thought, and a grasp, and a yank, reality changed.

Comments

[Celefin]

Most fascinating actually. Can't put my finger on what this story reminds me of, but... 'tis good.

[Yoshifan30]

whoa that was heavy man