Thirty Minute Pony Stories

With a quiet sigh, Pinkie Pie dragged herself into the bathroom and over to the sink. She turned on the cold water faucet and stared into the mirror that hung right across from her. The pony who stared back at her was a mess—a deep frown tugged at her mouth, her eyes were bloodshot and pale, and her mane hung like a dark, heavy curtain. She tried to force herself to smile, just to see if she could, but the best she could manage was a mocking rictus grin. All in all, the pony in the mirror didn’t look very much like Pinkie at all, really.

She looked like Pinkamena Diane.

Pinkie closed her eyes and splashed some water on her face. It stung as it hit her, like a slap in the face, and it helped. Not very much, but it helped. Still, she didn’t look back up as she shut off the sink faucet, and she didn’t look up as she turned away from the mirror.

Gummy was waiting patiently for her out in the main, and she lay down beside him. She’d never really noticed before, but the floor was cold. Everything felt chilly and damp, and a shiver ran the length of her whole body. Though that might have been from dowsing her face in ice-cold water.

She lay there in the center of her apartment, her chin resting against the hard wood of the floor, for minutes that stretched into hours that felt like days. A gnawing emptiness made her chest hurt, made her heart beat in a strange, sickly rhythm. At some point or another, Gummy got up and waddled away, but Pinkie didn’t take much notice. All she could focus on was that hole inside of her, which grew wider and darker with every passing moment.

You sure you don’t wanna stay? There’s still some cake left …

The floor was so cold, and yet she couldn’t quite find the energy to get up. There wasn’t any point in doing so, anyway, was there? Where would she go? Not to Sweet Apple Acres, certainly. And not to Carousel Boutique. Not to the library, not to … not to anywhere.

She bit her lip and tried to force her thoughts toward something else, something happier. But her unruly thoughts refused to obey. Instead, she found herself remembering Applejack’s huge, surprised smile the day Pinkie had thrown that “Congratulations on your first day of school!” party for Apple Bloom. Or that small, quiet smile that had graced Rarity’s face the time she’d helped the unicorn carry an unexpectedly large shipment of fabric bolts to the boutique.

Rainbow Dash’s special grin, the one she wore only when she and Pinkie were out pranking. Fluttershy’s gentle giggle at Pinkie making silly faces. The first time she’d ever gotten Twilight Sparkle to smile.

Secrets and lies! It’s all secrets and lies with those ponies! They’re up to something, Gummy! Something they don’t want me to know about …

Each of them had at least a dozen different kinds of smiles for a dozen different occasions, and Pinkie knew them all. She knew each of her friend’s smiles as well as she knew the recipe for blueberry muffins. And now … now she wouldn’t get to see any of those smiles ever again. She wouldn’t have those smiles to light up her day, to give her a reason to throw parties, to fill up that yawning void that by now had spread to the very tips of her hooves.

She wouldn’t have those smiles anymore, because they weren’t her friends anymore. And she needed her friends. She needed their smiles.

Your friends are all lying to you and avoiding you because they don’t like your parties and they don’t want to be your friends anymore …

But her friends? Her friends didn’t need her smiles, it seemed.

Oh no, my friends don’t like my parties and they don’t want to be my friends anymore.

They didn’t need her.

But then, who would need a pathetic, mopey little rock farmer who didn’t even know how to smile?

——

Comments by Kyronea:

DB, my heart! Pinkie, a jiang shi, needing to feed upon the smiles and laughter of her friends, is so devastated without it that she just falls apart. Without them, the hole within grows so much that it’s going to kill her before too long. It’s no wonder she undergoes the transformation she does. This is a fantastic rendition from “Party of One” and lends that episode even more tragedy than it already had, because as dark as the episode was…we didn’t get a sense the lack of friendship would outright kill her.