Wishberry

by mushroompone

Week of June 12

It was, quite frankly, too early for Strawberry to be awake.

She heard it all the time—that she must be a morning pony, that she must have a sunny demeanor, that she must be so warm and loving and everyone must love her in return. In a way, Strawberry Sunrise proudly bucked the stereotypes that her name set. In another, she sort of wished she was different.

She wished she was more like her name.

It was this thought, astoundingly complex in its outward simplicity, that led Strawberry to set her alarm a little earlier than usual. It was this nagging need, this wish, that had Strawberry pull a pre-packed pint of strawberries from her stash and sit to eat them, slowly, by the window, waiting for the sun to come up.

“Stupid,” she muttered to herself as another plump berry burst between her teeth. “So stupid,” she repeated, flinging little flecks of red juice onto the window pane.

She reached up and rubbed away the strawberry juice with one velvety pastern. It left a pink stain on her fur.

In her head, she resolved not to wish anymore. She revoked her previous wish and set about polishing off the pint without any more superstitious nonsense.

Until she took another bite, and wished for it all over again.

It was a difficult wish to put into words, and she had an awful feeling that that would probably disrupt the wish’s effectiveness, but there wasn’t really anything she could do about it. Strawberry simply wanted to be the sort of pony who would want to wish on a strawberry, the same way some ponies want to want to eat healthier, or want to want to exercise more.

There was probably a word for that. Strawberry didn’t know it.

She felt a bit like she was playing a game with her pint: I wish, I do not, I wish, I do not. Like a filly pulling petals off a daisy. She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she loves me not…

Back and forth. Each berry, each bite.

I wish.

I take it back.

I wish.

I don’t deserve it.

I wish…

Until Strawberry reached into the pint one last time, watching the golden rays of the early-morning sunshine stretch lazily across the pink sky, and found that it was empty.

She couldn’t remember if her last strawberry had been a wish.

She felt stupid for hoping that it was.

And, in a simple pang to the chest, it was clear her wish had not come true.

---

“I don’t really get why you took the bit about wishes off your sign,” Dust Devil said. “I mean, weren’t you selling, like, way more when ponies knew they were magical?”

Strawberry heaved a long, deep sigh. “I think I’ve decided I just don’t want to bother with it,” she admitted glumly. “It’s been a lot of pressure, actually. Getting the wishes right.”

Dust Devil snorted. “Yeah, but… it isn’t you granting the wishes,” she said. Then, in a snap, her eyes went wide. “Wait, are you?”

“Tsk, no!” Strawberry scooped Dust’s payment off the table and dumped it into her lockbox. “I just meant—oh, nevermind. It doesn’t matter.”

“Well, they’ve been working for me,” Dust Devil said with a grin. “I’ve had successful wishes the past three weeks in a row!”

Strawberry arched a brow. “Oh?”

Dust nodded emphatically.

“And, um…” Strawberry hesitated, feigning disinterest. “What exactly did you wish for? Like, what did you get?”

“Bonuses!”

Bonuses.

“But—” Strawberry paused, then shook her head. “Dust, you’ve been wishing for a bonus every week?”

Dust shrugged. “Well, sure.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“No, I mean—” Strawberry paused again, trying quickly to organize her thoughts as they piled to the front of her tongue. “Why don’t you just wish for a raise? You deserve it by now.”

Dust thought about that. For a while. Hoof to chin, grimacing at the ground, the whole nine yards.

“You’d get a bonus every week?” Strawberry prompted, her patience waning. “Without wishing every time?”

Dust’s eyes went wide. “Whoa.” She nodded, slowly at first, then suddenly faster. “Wow, Strawbs, you’re a genius! Then I could get even more by wishing for a weekly bonus!”

Strawberry’s mouth opened to pick that one apart, but she thought better of it. “Say, what are you using all this money for, anyway?”

“Um…” She thought a while about that, too. Strawberry could have sworn she could hear her last two brain cells rubbing against each other, though she guessed it was more like two foals trying and failing repeatedly to perform a hoofbump. “So far? Strawberries.”

Strawberries.

Strawberry Sunrise wanted very badly to try to walk Dust Devil through her plan’s mind-numbingly circuitous logic, but thought better of it.

“That’s, um…” She sighed. “That’s really nice of you, Dust.”

“Aw, it’s nothin’,” she said with a blush. “I’ll see you next week!”

“See you next week,” Strawberry replied.

As she watched Dust Devil disappear back into the crowd, Strawberry wondered privately how much longer she would have to wait for the updates on the mares’ wish experimentation.

Then again, she would understand if they didn’t really feel like sharing with her. She hadn’t made herself an easy mare to share with. She hadn’t even made it obvious that she wanted Fiddlesticks and Redheart to share with her. For all she knew, they were off chatting about it right now. Maybe they’d been chatting all this time. Maybe, in a strange yet predictable twist of fate, Redheart was going to turn up swooning over Fiddlesticks. That seemed like a Redheart sort of thing to do.

Anyway, it was probably fair to want to avoid her. Strawberry hadn’t exactly earned anypony else’s company. She was rather adept at getting others out of her mane—had spent years cultivating this very skill, in fact—and you can’t have it both ways.

As her mother would have said: “You get what you get and you don’t get upset.”

And Strawberry wasn’t upset.

That would be stupid.

Strawberry wasn’t stupid.

She picked up her book and tried to find her place, but her eyes danced over the text without absorbing a single word. She slammed the book down on the tabletop again and growled softly to herself. Now that was ruined, too.

That was fine.

She was working anyway.

What had she done to earn getting lost in her book? Sell a pint of strawberries to a sap? Perhaps the sap?

“Whatever.” Strawberry folded her forelegs tightly over her chest.

“Talking to yourself already?”

Strawberry jolted.

Lily Valley, the friendly-but-neurotic florist from the neighboring stall, smiled back at her. Lily’s stand was so overstuffed with flowers that it seemed more spherical than the traditional stand, and her head seemed to be floating at the center of the colorful explosion.

Even just glancing over at her display was enough to make Strawberry feel a bit insecure.

“Sorry. Slow days always get to me,” Lily said sweetly. “I just get this weird feeling that something bad’s about to happen. Do you ever feel that way? Like a… a vague sense of impending doom?”

Shocker.

Even knowing Lily Valley’s penchant for the dramatic, it was sort of an ironic thing to say. Here was Lily, a picture-perfect little pink-coated mare with a magazine-worthy windswept mane, her head poking out of an explosion of colorful flowers… and yet, a deep terror lurking in her eyes. A nervous little flicking back and forth, like a frightened bird.

“Eh…” Strawberry gave the question a moment of genuine consideration. “It’s more of a lingering frustration with life in general.”

“Huh. Interesting.” Lily plucked a single petal off of a flower from a nearby bouquet. “I’d trade with you if I could!”

“I… wouldn’t.”

Lily giggled at that. “Fair enough!”

She had a tiny little voice. Sort of nasally, but in an endearing way, if that was possible. Strawberry figured it must be, since she was hearing it.

“You’ve had a bit of a buzz lately!” Lily said. “I’ve been hearing about the wishes. I figured there’d be a run on your stall this week.”

Strawberry rolled her eyes. “Lucky me,” she grumbled, dripping with sarcasm. “I’ve got buzz.”

“I was thinking about picking some up for myself today,” Lily continued, unphased. She grinned expectantly at Strawberry.

“Yay,” Strawberry said.

Lily laughed politely.

Strawberry did not laugh at all.

“Is any of it… true?” Lily asked carefully.

Strawberry sucked in a slow, deep breath, and rolled her head to the side to shoot Lily a withering glare.

Lily cringed slightly. “W-what?”

“If it were true, do you think I’d still be here?”

Lily looked back down into her flowers, a flush overtaking her cheeks. “Point taken.”

She retreated back into her sphere.

Strawberry sniffed lightly, then pulled her folding chair up snug to her own stand and—

“Howdy.”

Strawberry shouted wordlessly, and a hoof flew to her heart. “Fiddlesticks!”

“Sorry. I wasn't tryin’ to scare you.”

“No one ever is, and yet…” Strawberry growled. “Redheart isn’t here yet. Or—I don’t know if she’s coming at all, actually.”

“Okay.”

Strawberry looked up into the eyes of the mare before her. “Lightning Dust isn’t here, either.”

A flicker of something. Strawberry couldn’t place what, exactly.

“Uh. Okay.”

She just stood there. She was thinking so hard Strawberry could practically see the gears turning in her head, and yet she stayed anchored completely to the spot.

“Hmph.” Strawberry tossed her mane over her shoulder. “How do you two know each other, anyway? Neither of you live in Ponyville. Or… do you?”

“N-nope.” Fiddlesticks cleared her throat. “I’m in town for work. So is she.”

Strawberry arched a brow. “Which is…?”

“She’s… well, I dunno what she’s doing,” Fiddle said quickly. “I’m part of a bluegrass band. Here for the festival.”

“That’s work?”

Fiddle scoffed. “Yes.”

“But…” Strawberry wrinkled her snout. “I mean, bluegrass?”

Fiddle set her jaw. “Some ponies like bluegrass,” she replied simply. “You don’t gotta be rude about it.”

“Sure. Whatever you say.” Strawberry looked down at her tablecloth and made a face.

“I saw that.”

“Saw what?”

“Your face.”

“What face?”

Fiddle heaved an enormous sigh, and evidently determined that this was not worth pursuing. “Could I get another pint of strawberries?”

Strawberry shrugged, and pushed a pint across the table at Fiddle. “Hey, wait a minute—did your wish work?” she asked. “Did your sister write you?”

“That’s not really your business, is it?” Fiddle quipped softly as she fished for change. “And since when did you care?”

“Well, they’re my strawberries,” Strawberry pointed out. “And… let’s call it a professional curiosity.”

Fiddle rolled her eyes. She didn’t say anything, just dropped her bits on the table and reached for her pint.

Strawberry tugged it just out of her reach. “Look, I’m sorry about the bluegrass thing, okay?” she said, with perhaps a little too much of her own eye roll. “Just… tell me about the wish. Let me pass it on to Redheart for you.”

“Pass what onto me?”

A little smile of relief passed over Fiddle’s face—there and gone. “Well, well. Speak of the devil.”

Redheart dropped her saddlebag beside the stand and beamed at the two mares before her. “And she shall appear!” she said with a little giggle. “How’d the wishing go, Fids?”

“Well, uh…” Fiddle’s face twisted as she did her best to fight back a grin, but it broke through easily. “Good. Pretty good, I’d say.”

Redheart gasped. “Did you get a letter?”

“Right as I swallowed the last bite. Right at sunrise.” She could hardly contain her smile. “And you?”

“Oh, not so lucky, I’m afraid.” Redheart shrugged.

“What’d you wish for?”

“A million bits,” Redheart said. She snorted in laughter. “Worth a try, right?”

Strawberry scoffed. “You have plenty of money, Red,” she pointed out. “Being a nurse in Ponyville is like being a firefighter in the heart of the Dragonlands.”

Fiddle gave Redheart a quizzical look.

“The triple-overtime on weekly magical mishaps adds up,” Redheart whispered. She threw in a wink for good measure.

Fiddle’s eyes went wide, and she nodded sagely.

“So!” Redheart clapped her forehooves together. “What have we learned?”

“That my strawberries are not—”

“Not you, Strawberry.”

Strawberry’s mouth snapped shut.

“Um…” Fiddle scratched the back of her head. “I dunno. Did you follow all the steps?”

“To the letter,” Redheart said. “I ate every strawberry in the pint, the last one as the sun was rising, and not a bit in sight. Maybe I wasn’t focused enough on my wish?”

Strawberries snorted. “Sounds like—stop me if you’ve heard this one before—the strawberries don’t actually grant wishes,” she said.

“Heard it,” Redheart said with a dismissive wave of her hoof.

“Maybe it was… too much?” Fiddle suggested.

Redheart’s brow crinkled. “Too much? How?”

“Well…” Fiddle cast a nervous glance in Strawberry’s direction, then cleared her throat and refocused on Redheart. “I feel like the wishes that got granted were all pretty small and doable. A raise, a date, a letter. Maybe a million bits just… ain’t reasonable?”

“So now the strawberries can reason?” Strawberry laughed dryly. “Am I hearing that right?”

“Oh, don’t be like that,” Redheart scolded. “Plenty of spells are limited by their reasonability. It’s all about energy exchange—a tiny spell is like throwing a pebble in a river, I only get a splash. You have to start casting boulders if you want to really affect the flow.”

Strawberry sighed and shook her head. “And, on the pebble-to-boulder scale, the strawberries would be…?”

“Um… strawberries?”

Strawberry gave Redheart an unimpressed look.

“They’re already pebble-sized,” Redheart explained. “It’s kinda perfect.”

“You and I have different definitions of ‘perfect’,” Strawberry said. “And ‘pebble’, actually.”

“Oh, shush.” Redheart turned back to Fiddle. “Thoughts?”

Fiddle shrugged. “I dunno. I feel like the letter was… kinda huge.” She sniffed lightly. “I think if the two’a you knew my sister, you’d be inclined to agree.”

Redheart nodded. “Hm.”

“And—well, we don’t even know what Lightning Dust wished for,” Fiddle pointed out. “It could have been anything. I feel like it’d have to be something pretty big to come back here after… well.”

Quick, harsh glances were thrown in Strawberry’s direction.

“Wh—me?”

“I didn’t say nothin’.”

“Well, Strawbs, you roasted her pretty hard the first time,” Redheart reminded her.

Fiddle scoffed. “Try front and back ‘til crispy,” she amended.

“How do you even know what happened, Fiddlesticks?” Strawberry asked. “You weren’t there.”

Fiddle’s gaze shifted back towards the ground. “Uh. Lightnin’ told me.”

There was an odd little hitch in her voice, as if she didn’t want to admit she had even spoken to Lightning Dust at all. Despite noticing the hitch, Strawberry honestly wasn’t the least bit interested.

“Whatever. She had it coming,” Strawberry remarked. “She did some pretty messed up stuff.”

“Y-yeah, well. It was a long time ago,” Fiddle said quickly.

Strawberry scoffed. “Not that long ago.”

“She’s doing her best,” Fiddle added. “She’s trying to be better. She’s owning up to her mistakes and making amends. What more do you want?”

Strawberry blinked. “What more do I want?”

“Yeah, you,” Fiddle said. “Since you’re suddenly judge, jury, and executioner for all of Ponyville. She’s doing better now—why would you say all those things?”

“Well, I—” Strawberry stuttered a moment. “I didn’t know she was working on it. How was I supposed to know that?”

“Did you ask?”

“Uh… that’d be a weird thing to ask about,” Strawberry said with a dismissive laugh.

“So you didn’t?”

Strawberry opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “No.”

“Then why’d you rake her over the coals like that?” Fiddle asked. “That ain’t fair.”

Strawberry rolled her eyes, feeling a flush creep into her cheeks and doing her best to suppress it. “That’s not fair? Life’s not fair.”

“Yeah, well.” Fiddlesticks reached out to take her pint of fruit. Strawberry did nothing to stop her. “Ever stop to think that maybe life ain’t fair specifically because of ponies like you?”

Strawberry’s mouth hung open.

Fiddlesticks stood there a moment longer, waiting for a response. When none came, she gave Strawberry Sunrise a curt nod, said, “So long, Red,” and turned to leave.

Redheart didn’t say anything for a long moment. She only watched as Fiddlesticks slipped back into the crowd. Then, still wordlessly, she pulled a second folding chair up to Strawberry’s table, fished a book out of her saddlebag, and began reading in silence.

At the stall beside them, Lily Valley chirped a thank-you to a customer who had just bought a small bouquet of daisies. Strawberry was too absorbed by her own inward fury to notice Lightning Dust, bouquet in hoof, follow Fiddlesticks into the throng of chattering ponies.

Comments

[The Red Parade]

I'm not kidding when I tell people this is the greatest Strawberry Sunrise character piece I have read, ever. It's so good and I am so excited that it's finally on FimFic! Thank you so much for this, it is literally one of the top ten horse fics I've ever read on this site! Can not wait to dive into this story again.

[The Iguana Man]

Heh, I give it about five more weeks before Sunrise is standing on the roof of her house, shaking an angry hoof at the sky and screaming "Stop It!" until the neighbours complain.

[BirdsBooksBrownies]

Mizz Strawberry is the sort of pony who just likes to gripe isn't she? ya know the ones who seem to be happy being cranky, miserable, etc?

Besides griping about anything and anyONE, the only other thing she loves in life is strawberries, and she doesn't give a flying feather about your feelings on the subject strawberries are Faust's personal gift to equinity and they are the best thing in the world. Heck if the Princesses decided to make a national fruit, they'd probably pick strawberries over anything else, ESPECIALLY APPLES (gross).

The only other thing I can think of is that she's secretly Tsundere for someone, and hates the fact that she feels this way, so she doubles down on the unlikable crank act in a ploy to chase off anyone that could break her shell.

[Bicyclette]

She felt stupid for hoping that it was.

And, in a simple pang to the chest, it was clear her wish had not come true.

augh poor Strawbs!

Strawberry’s mouth opened to pick that one apart, but she thought better of it. “Say, what are you using all this money for, anyway?”

“Um…” She thought a while about that, too. Strawberry could have sworn she could hear her last two brain cells rubbing against each other, though she guessed it was more like two foals trying and failing repeatedly to perform a hoofbump. “So far? Strawberries.”

ooh the religious studies student in me just loves this! 

Anyway, it was probably fair to want to avoid her. Strawberry hadn’t exactly earned anypony else’s company. She was rather adept at getting others out of her mane—had spent years cultivating this very skill, in fact—and you can’t have it both ways.

augh so relatable

Even knowing Lily Valley’s penchant for the dramatic, it was sort of an ironic thing to say. Here was Lily, a picture-perfect little pink-coated mare with a magazine-worthy windswept mane, her head poking out of an explosion of colorful flowers… and yet, a deep terror lurking in her eyes. A nervous little flicking back and forth, like a frightened bird.

always love it when you take the one character trait a background pony has and suffuse it with this literary quality

“But…” Strawberry wrinkled her snout. “I mean, bluegrass?”

Fiddle set her jaw. “Some ponies like bluegrass,” she replied simply. “You don’t gotta be rude about it.”

aww but being rude is Strawberry’s thing!

Strawberry scoffed. “You have plenty of money, Red,” she pointed out. “Being a nurse in Ponyville is like being a firefighter in the heart of the Dragonlands.”

so true

“Oh, don’t be like that,” Redheart scolded. “Plenty of spells are limited by their reasonability. It’s all about energy exchange—a tiny spell is like throwing a pebble in a river, I only get a splash. You have to start casting boulders if you want to really affect the flow.”

also so true to how magic in Equestria works

“Yeah, well.” Fiddlesticks reached out to take her pint of fruit. Strawberry did nothing to stop her. “Ever stop to think that maybe life ain’t fair specifically because of ponies like you?”

daaaaaamn! and of course Fiddlesticks would have this in her when it comes to Lightning Dust