Chapter 1
Her name was Golden Harvest, and she lived up to her name. Her carrots always came up plump and full of flavor. This season had been especially generous to her carrot farm, bringing in some of the biggest, most delicious carrots she'd ever grown. As she spent the day harvesting, she counted her blessings. She thought about all the renovations she could soon bring to the farm with the money these carrots were sure to make. She thought of all the presents she could buy for her friends and the smiles she would bring to their faces. But most of all, she was admiring the beautiful weather, breathing in the fresh air and looking at the clouds slowly drift through the sky.
Clouds!
She remembered. She was supposed to meet her very best friend today. Her pegasus friend Ditzy Doo had told her to come by for a surprise and she had completely forgotten until just now. Knowing the harvest could wait a few more hours, she hurriedly gathered her carrots and brought them back to the farm. She washed the dirt from her hooves and raced into town with the fear that she was late and had disappointed her friend.
Golden Harvest arrived sooner than she expected and stopped to catch her breath before knocking on the door.
“Goldie!” A familiar voice rang from inside as the door swung open. “I’m so glad you showed up!”
“I’m really sorry, Ditzy,” Goldie ashamedly exclaimed. “I hope I’m not late.”
“Nah, it’s okay,” came Ditzy’s reply. “I hope you’re ready to make muffins!”
“That’s the surprise?” Goldie was not exactly thrilled. Ditzy was very fond of muffins and made them whenever she had the chance. This wouldn’t be the first time Goldie helped her make a batch or two.
“Yeah! I was so excited I even made a batch before you came over.”
“Oh, really? Then I guess you don’t really-”
“You wanna try one?”
Goldie tried to hide her lack of enthusiasm. She nodded her head and Ditzy Doo shot off like a rocket into the next room, knocking over a lamp and a bookcase on her way. Ditzy was not exactly the most balanced flier in Equestria and often found herself messing things up. The bookcase falling over reminded Goldie of the time she spent an entire crop’s worth of revenue on a new wall for her farm, thanks to her winged companion.
Ditzy came back with a fresh blueberry muffin. It looked absolutely delicious and made Goldie completely forget everything else for one brief moment. “I used a special ingredient,” Ditzy said. “I hope you like it.” She then promptly shoved the muffin into her friend’s mouth without giving her a chance to react. Goldie began to taste the treat in her mouth, the sweet blueberries filling her with ecstasy, the texture brimming with perfection. If there’s one thing that pegasus knew, it was making muffins.
Then she began to feel woozy. Goldie’s vision began to blur, but she noticed a big smile appearing on Ditzy Doo’s face. “What did you put in this muffin?” Goldie asked as she began to stoop to the ground.
“I told you, it has a special ingredient!” Ditzy’s grin was as wide as could be as Goldie slowly but surely drifted into a deep slumber.
I can’t move my hooves. This was her first thought upon regaining consciousness. Goldie tried desperately to move, but to no avail. Each of her four legs had been strapped to a table. She wasn’t going anywhere. It was about this time that she also noticed where she was. It was Ditzy’s basement, but how did she get down here, and when? The room was darkly lit and completely empty, save a small surgical table next to the much larger one she was tethered upon.
“Oh good, you’re up,” mumbled Ditzy. She had a surgical bag in her mouth, though Goldie had trouble noticing this as her vision had not fully recovered yet. “I swear, you’ve been out for like six hours.”
“Ditzy, what the hay are you doing!?” Goldie struggled once more, but it was no use. Ditzy opened the surgical bag and place on the smaller table a butcher’s knife, a scalpel, a pair of brass knuckles and, of course, a muffin.
“I need you to be awake so you can help me with a new ingredient for my muffins,” Ditzy explained, excitedly. “The screaming always helps me.”
“Screaming? Wh- You don’t mean- That knife? Oh Ditzy, no!”
“Oh Ditzy yes!” Ditzy picked up the knife with her mouth and slowly made her way over close, right next to Golden Harvest. She began to lower the knife to her friend’s middle, but it didn’t feel quite right. She adjusted herself into a different position, but it was still far too awkward to do any effective damage. She turned the blade so that she was holding the tip of the handle, balancing the entire knife to get a straight stab. Goldie closed her eyes as she sweated profusely and shook vigorously.
Clang! Goldie stopped shaking. She looked up and saw that Ditzy had dropped the knife on the floor. Ditzy looked a little embarrassed as she knelt down to pick the knife up with her teeth again. She rose and noticed Goldie looking at her with a perplexed expression on her face. She got angry at this and decided to try holding the knife differently. She got up on her hind legs and held the knife between her front hooves. She could barely hold on to it. It kept wobbling to and fro. As she carefully tried to make an incision, her hoof slipped and the knife went flying across the room.
“Uh, Ditzy?” Goldie almost felt sorry for her friend now. She fact that her friend was trying to do something horrible to her was now nearing the back of her mind. The pegasus got back on her hooves and trotted across the room, muttering to herself the whole way. “Look, Ditzy, I don’t know what you’re doing exactly, but-”
Ditzy darted a look back at Goldie. The stare pierced Goldie harder than she believed any knife would that night. Ditzy picked up the knife and set it back on the table. She sat down on the ground and put her hoof to her chin, puzzled.
“Have you-” Goldie hesitated. She wasn’t sure how Ditzy was going to react. “Have you ever done this to anypony before?”
“I- Well...no.” Ditzy no longer looked menacing. “I mean, I’ve tried. I once even got Pinkie Pie to bleed a little, but then she started laughing and told me she was ticklish. I couldn’t do it after that.”
“Why exactly are you doing this?” Goldie asked in an oddly sympathetic manner, considering the situation.
“I found a recipe for ‘The Most Delicious Muffins in the World,’” Ditzy explained as she pulled the recipe from her medical bag, “but it calls for pony entrails,” she continued to mumble, the paper still in her mouth. She spit it out so she could speak properly “but I didn’t have any of those so I asked Twilight what they were and, well, here we are!” Ditzy nervously smiled at this.
Goldie looked at the piece of paper lying on the ground. “Ditzy,” she said, “that page is from an evil book of unspeakable evil.”
“What? How do you know that?” Ditzy was shocked and slightly appalled that her dear friend would accuse a muffin recipe of such a thing.
“It says right there at the bottom: ‘The Evil Book of Unspeakable Evil.’ Where did you find it?”
“That pony who makes all the hour glasses in town, he appeared out of nowhere and gave it to me. He told me to destroy it immediately.”
“Then why didn’t you!?”
“Because, muffins!” Ditzy jumped to her hind legs to hug herself in her joy, only to fall on her back. She never lost her smile though.
“Oh, Ditzy.” Golden Harvest shook her head and smiled. She knew her friend wasn’t the most careful of ponies, but she was happy that this fact may have saved her life, and their friendship.
Ditzy untied Goldie and let her down. The two made their way back upstairs where Ditzy rushed to find those muffins she had made earlier.
“Ditzy, these aren’t-”
“Don’t worry,” Ditzy explained, “I only put the knock-out powder in that one muffin.” She looked down at the ground. “Sorry about that.”
Goldie smiled. “It’s okay, Ditzy Doo. We’re still friends. Just don’t let me catch you doing anything like that again.”
And they spent the rest of the night laughing and eating the best muffins they had ever eaten.
The End