Faeforches

The door to Twilight’s old family home creaked open, spare house key floating in a raspberry aura as she peered inside. It was dark; Canterlot was a peaceful enough city where ponies didn’t feel the need to leave a light on when they went out, and Twilight tilted her head. Her parents hadn’t met them at the train station, and hadn’t responded to Pinkie’s staccato a-knocking of their door.

“Mom? Dad? Anypony there? I brought Nyx.” Twilight looked back, nervous. “And uh… A friend.”

“Hi Mrs. and Mr. Sparkle!” Pinkie cried. “Your daughter’s super hot!”

“Pinkie!”

“What?” Her girlfriend grinned at her. “I figured that’d get them to come out of hiding, if nothing else would. They’re definitely not home though. Are they usually out late or something?”

The unicorn shook her head. “Dad’s almost always home and upstairs on the roof stargazing by this time. But if the lights aren’t on…”

They moved to the guest bedroom now, Twilight turning on the lights while bouncing Nyx in her hooves and lost in thought. The travel crib her parents installed was there and unfolded; so everything at least looked set up to expect an incoming daughter and granddaughter. But a note was sitting on the nightstand, and Twilight levitated it over, squinting at the text.

Twilight,

Hey honey! We got a coupon for a buy-three, get-two nights free at the Maredalay Bay, so we’ll be getting in a day after you. Just wanted to give you a heads up, don’t blow up the house again while we’re gone!

With Love,

Mom

“Ugh!” Twilight rolled her eyes and crumpled the note up, still bouncing Nyx in her hooves. “They knew we were coming and still they did this. My mom’s always finding stupid travel deals last minute.”

“So Shining Armor’s not the only SparkleTwinkle that communicates entirely through last minute letters, huh?” Pinkie perked up. “Hey, that means we have a whole day and a whole townhome to ourselves for that whole day! You know what that means? You know what we can do?”

“Stress out?”

“Nuh uh!”

Pinkie flung the suitcases behind her into the bedroom in one smooth motion, the luggage opening mid-arc and the various bits, implements, foalcare, and toiletries flew out of them, every single object landing perfectly in its expected and unpacked position. She nodded, grin widening at Twilight’s stunned expression. Friends for years or not, dating or not, one never truly got used to Pinkie Pie.

“There! All unpacked. I meant that with your parents out a day that means…” She took a deep breath, reaching over to grab the settled diaper bag, whereupon she strapped a carrier onto herself and scooped up the black-coated filly out of Twilight’s forelegs. ““It means we can have a family date!”

With one smooth motion, Nyx was deposited into the carrier, and then, before the baby could protest, Pinkie proudly shoved a bottle of milk into the little alicorn’s face, who took it with hooves and a coo. The mare grinned.

“Am I mama yet?” She asked. Nyx popped the bottle out of her mouth.

“No,” the filly said, and popped the rubber nipple back in.

“Aw, fair enough. I tried.” Pinkie smooched the top of her mane, then looked back up at Twilight, noticing the little frown on her girlfriend’s face. Instantly, she was by her side.

“You’re doing the brain thing Twily, and I know why. No brain stuff, even if you’re worried about Nyx being outside of the palace.”

Twilight gave a brain-related grumble, and Pinkie wrapped a hoof around her and jossled her girlfriend.

“C’mooon, it’s Canterlot! The capital of Equestria! The City At Five Thousand Feet! You’re telling me you have a super hot girlfriend and a super cute daughter and a bunch of time before you’ve got to tell your parents about your new super hot girlfriend and you aren’t gonna spend it going somewhere neat? C’mon. C’moooooooon.”

“Pinkie, I’m from Canterlot.” Twilight took the hoof in her own. “I’ve been all over the city. Sort of. Mostly the upper canton.”

“Yeah but that was Canterlot as Twilight Sparkle: Celestia’s student and late night coffee hound! It’s way different to see Canterlot as Twilight Sparkle: best mom and best girlfriend ever! There’s a whole family friendly side of Canterlot you can experience now without ponies giving you weird looks!”

Pinkie hummed. “Like have you ever gone to Horse Legoland in Applewood?”

Twilight shrugged. “No, Pinkie, I’ve never gone to Horse Legoland in Applewood. I’ve never even gone to Applewood.”

“Whaaaaaaat?!” Pinkie paused and whirled about, Nyx giving a giggle as the foal carrier swang slightly. “Oh wait, that was Rarity and Applejack, right. Okay next family outing we are totally going to Applewood. What was I talking about? Oh, right! Okay so you go to Horse Legoland and it’s really kiddie—”

“But you like kiddie.”

“I do!” Pinkie agreed. “But sometimes foal-level stuff is only really really really good when you’ve got a foal that gets to experience it. Like when I took the Cake twins to the Ponyville Foal’s Museum—”

Twilight up a hoof, ears perking up. “Wait, Ponyville has a Foal’s Museum?”

Pinkie opened her mouth, then closed it. “Okay next family outing we totally take Nyx to the Ponnyville Foal’s Museum, then next next family outing we go to Horse Legoland in Applewood. I keep getting really really off topic!”

The pink earth pony took a deep breath, sidling next to Twilight and popping out a brochure from her saddlebags. She tapped it, then handed it over to Twilight with a grin. “What’s something in Canterlot that you’ve wanted to take Nyx to? Something not in the palace.”

“Zoo,” Twilight responded immediately. “I’ve wanted to take her there for months. Foals three and under are free and you’ve seen how much she loves Fluttershy’s animals. Canterlot’s Animal Society has a huge amount of specimens and creatures you can’t find anywhere. I think it’d be excellent for her mentally. Regular and early exposure to unique experiences is apparently really good for cognitive development in babies.”

“And it’d be super duper fun for a baby! C’mon.”

Twilight’s ears had begun to droop by the time they reached the Canterlot Royal Zoo. Canterlot, as she knew, had no shortage of judgmental ponies, but her usual neuroses were sending just about every red alert they could come up with to the command center of her brain. She gave a concerned whimper, scooting closer to the beacon of confidence that was Pinkie, who strode along as if nothing was the matter, Nyx still in the carrier around her chest and blowing spitbubbles with reckless abandon.

“Ponies are staring,” Twilight muttered.

“You’ve got a baby alicorn and we’re national heroes. Ponies are gonna stare.” Pinkie gave Twilight a big smooch on the side of her head, then shot the onlookers a big glare. “Let em.”

The unicorn gave an unsatisfied little grumble, but also opted to shoot her girlfriend with a quizzical look. “Pinkie… You’re weirdly prepared for all this.”

“I like to improvise! Oooh! We should do a date where we take an improv class together!” Pinkie giggled, stepping up to the ticket office. “Two mares, one foal!”

The ticketmare’s eyes flicked down to the alicorn in the carrier, eyebrow raised.

“She’s adopted,” Twilight explained, as if that explained it. “You uh. We don’t need to rent a stroller, but have you got one of those floppy foal hats?”

“Gift shop,” said the ticket agent, floating forward three slips and not taking her eyes off of Nyx. “There’s a 15% discount for royalty.”

“I’m not–” Twilight frowned. “I mean I guess I vaguely am? Thanks.”

“The Space Cheetah just had cubs, I’d recommend going to that first before the crowds get in,” recommended the mare. “They’re a real popular exhibit.”

“Well duhhh!” Pinkie blew out a raspberry, which the foal beneath her attempted to mimic. “Everypony loves babies.”

Nyx peeked out from beneath a floppy foal’s hat patterned like a tiger (which both Pinkie and Twilight had given far too many coos at, unable to help themselves), tilting her head. Before them, a glittering school of colors floated in midair.

“They’re flying fish, sweetie,” Twilight said. “They absorb magic from sunlight and use that to levitate themselves.”

“New words?” Pinkie was immediately by Twilight’s side, crouching down next to the foal. “Wait! Wait wait wait! How about ‘Pinkie Pie’?”

“Fish.” Nyx pointed a tiny hoof towards the enclosure full of the flying animals in response, and Twilight gave a happy gasp.

“Oh, a new word!”

“No.” Nyx pointed again. “Fish.”

“Aw, dangit!”

Twilight smiled. She had asked this after every exhibit, and unfortunately Nyx had now considered it a game. “You’ll get there eventually, Pinkie.”

Ponyville’s foremost and only laundromat was closed for repairs. Its owner didn’t particularly need to close it for repairs, but labored under the desperate belief that the bright red CLOSED sign would create enough artificial scarcity to finally attract at least one customer.

Inside, the Ponyville laundromat was a mess of experimental tools, easily lost bolts, and, for some reason, a windup toy in the shape of a robotic pegasus. These were all apparently essential for washing machine repair.

“That’s gonna break,” Squeaky Clean said at last. The toymaker popped up from behind the dryer and paused, wiping the sweat from his face with his handkerchief and gave it a once over.

“Nah,” he responded, scratching his beard. “You can’t break what’s already broken.”

Squeaky raised an eyebrow at that, pointedly not looking at the dryer next to the one he was currently guts-deep in. At one point in the past, it had worked. Then it hadn’t worked, but could still probably have worked. Then her boyfriend, toolbox in hoof, had strode confidently towards it with an idea. Now it would not, pointedly, ever work again.

You could, in fact, break what was already broken. At least nopony had ever needed to use it.

With a final clink! that indicated an uncharacteristic moment of mechanical competence from the toymaker, the dryer rumbled, groaned, creeked, grinded, sputtered, and finally with the energy of a colicky foal projectile vomited a mighty stream of gold bits out of the payment slot, the shower of coins sounding like the jackpot at a Las Pegasus casino, though with an audience about eighty years younger than normal.

“What?” He popped his head back out again, first surprised that something he had done had actually worked, then further surprised at the stream.

“What?”

“What?”

“That!” He pointed to the considerable pile of coins piling up on the floor of the laundromat. “Seriously, how did… I mean…”

The good thing about running Ponyville’s only laundromat was that the rent was cheap, almost nothing, and the hours quiet. Dead quiet. As it turns out, when one lived in what was effectively a town full of nudists, clothes didn’t get washed.

The bad thing meant no clothes meant no bits. No washing machines running meant the things got dusty and full into disrepair. No bits meant no money to pay for the repairs for the washing machines nopony ever used, but Squeaky Clean had her pride, dammit.

The other good thing about Ponyville was that if you had a boyfriend that was the town toymaker, the only cost for repairs were a smooch and a nuzzle. Windup Key, such as his given name was, was the best toymaker in town. The bad thing about Ponyville was that the town toymaker was also the only toymaker in town.

In plain, continent-wide terms, Windup Key was not a very good toymaker. Quality assurance, when it came to his creations, was something that happened to other ponies. Things tended to spectacularly explode, and Squeaky often thanked Celestia that her boyfriend was born an Earth Pony. Princesses help them all if he ever got access to magic.

“Babe,” she said carefully. “Don’t question it. Cash is cash.”

“Yeah but I’m pretty sure that’s like…” He squinted down at the pile. “One of those is definitely a Skyrosian denarius. Who… who pays for laundry with a ten thousand year old coin made of meteorite iron? Why did the dryer take a ten thousand year old coin made of meteorite iron?”

“Babe. Nobody pays for laundry in this town.”

“Right. Sorry, Ducky,” Key looked down at the pile again, mustache frizzling as he contemplated its dimensions. “Given the size and height that’s probably… Well it’s a lotta money.”

“Yep,” Ducky, as the rubber duck on her flank had nicknamed her, looked down at the money pile. “Could do a lot with that money”.

“Yep,” he agreed, then looked up. “Big thing of Horse Curry? New stuffed animal shelf? I’ve got an allen wrench that could–”

“I want a baby.”

Windup Key froze, tied tongue in his mouth making it hard to say exactly what he wanted to in that particular instance. Come to think of it, he had no idea what to say. ‘What kind’ seemed appropriate. ‘You mean right now?’ was another good one.

“Like a cat, I mean,” she clarified, waving a sudden hoof. “Something cat-ish. Something with like a question mark tail and a big fat face that we could give a dumb name.”

“Oh.” Windup Key visibly unwound. “Like, right now?”

“Why?” Ducky took one of the coins in her hoof and bit down on it. Definitely real. “Do you know an animal shelter that’s open?”

“Babe, this is Ponyville. We could probably ask the Apples if they’ve got any barn cats they don’t want and they’d give them to us in exchange for me not trying to sell them any toys.”

Ducky frowned. “I don’t think I want to take one of the Apple’s cats away. Those cats have jobs. You sure there’s not an animal shelter?”

Key shrugged. “I think there’s that one girl out by the woods that runs an animal rescue service. You know the one. Wasn’t she a supermodel, or something like that?”

“There’s a supermodel that lives out by the woods that gives ponies animals?”

“Yeah!” He said, waving his hoof around. “The pink girl. The one with pink hair.”

“Pinkie, you mean.”

“No, no, obviously not Pinkie Pie,” he paused. “The pink hair lady. You know the one. She’s a pegasus, you asked her one time if she needed to wash those blankets and she squealed and ran off like a startled squirrel…”

“Fluttershy?”

“That’s her name!”

Ducky raised an eyebrow. “How in the world did you forget Fluttershy’s name?”

“Babe, babe,” Key looked at her with a sympathetic look, as if he too understood just exactly what she was getting into when it came to a relationship with the toymaker. “I forgot my mom’s name for like a week. I was 12.”

“This…” Ducky nodded. “You know what, this explains a lot about you.”

“I know, right?”

“Seriously though, we’re getting a cat,” she emphasized. “Life’s better with a cat.”

“I mean… You still have… me,” he suggested, and Ducky raised an eyebrow. He blinked, once, twice. Then he sighed.

“We’re getting—”

Pink train. Pink seats. Pink girlfriend who was using a pink hoof to tickle a midnight-black foal whose mane was done up in, unsurprisingly, pink bowties. Twilight let out a puff of air and tried to steel herself. It was just a train ride to Canterlot, no big deal. No big changes in her life, right?

No, not right.

“Bit for your thoughts?”

The unicorn’s thoughts shifted away from disapproving parental glares to thoughts of warm baked sugary goods as she suddenly found her shoulder weighed down by the head and cotton candy mane of her very own Pinkie Pie, who was gazing up at her with those big beautiful eyes and blinking innocently and loudly.

Loudly.

Seriously, Twilight could physically hear her blink, big beautiful eyelashes fluttering with a sound like a sparrow’s feet on glass. Nyx, happy to mimic anyone in her immediate vicinity, leaned into her chest and attempted to do the same. It came out more like a well-meaning squint.

“Tell me something silly,” Twilight murmured, and Pinkie ceased her blinking, frowning. Nyx, of course, copied her in turn.

“Nervous, Twi?” She leaned further into unicorn. “It’s just your parents.”

“My parents and telling them we’re dating!”

“Dating is good!” Pinkie said. “I like dating. Parents like dating! It’s like a cliche, y’know? ‘Oh Twilight when are you gonna settle down, oh Twilight when are we gonna see some grandfoals–”

She gave the baby’s mane a tussle, earning a drooly squeal. “I mean, I guess that step’s already out of the way.”

“Yeah but I never…” Twilight hesitated. “I’ve never brought anypony home before, let alone a special somepony. And they don’t know I–”

“Aw come on Twilight, I’ve met your parents. They’re cool!” Pinkie paused. “I mean your dad feels like the kind of stallion who would answer scammy chain letters and take them seriously—”

"He does."

“Got it in one!” Pinkie grinned. “But they’re nice. It’ll be fine.”

“We’ve only been dating for a week, Pinkie,” Twilight tried to justify.

“And it’s been a super duper awesome week!”

"Yeah but what if they—”

“Twily…” Pinkie said. “You’re doing the brain thing, Twily. The thing where you do things with your brain instead of not doing the brain thing. C’mere.”

Before Twilight could protest, Pinkie pulled her in, lips smooching against her temple. “Mwah! Look at Nyx. Look at her.”

Twilight’s eyes flicked down to the foal in her lap, who tilted her head and attempted to shove Twilight’s hoof in her mouth. Finding it too big, she opted instead for her own hoof, which was far more acceptable. Twilight gave a laughing little sigh, and instead levitated a pacifier out of a nearby diaper bag, which Nyx found even more acceptable.

“See? She knows she’s gonna get to see Meemaw and Peepaw and absolutely nothing will go wrong, because unlike Ponyville Canterlot’s not regularly under siege from…” Pinkie squinted. “What was the thing we fought last week? That guy without a head?”

“A Dullahan–”

“Canterlot’s not regularly under siege from Dullahans because the Crusaders accidentally dug up an ancient pegasus burial ground during a sleepover. It’s gonna be alllll okay.”

“Yeah.” Twilight deadpanned. “Still. Nervous. Tell me something silly.”

Pinkie leaned back from her girlfriend, and hummed, scratching her chin. Getting unusually blushy, she looked away.

“I uh…” She chuckled. “I’m kindaaaa hoping that Nyx calls me ‘mama’ soon.”

Twilight blinked. “Really?”

“Really really!” Pinkie emphasized. “I mean jeez, Twilight, you can’t run around being a hot single mom with a cute filly in tow for all those months and not want your new girlfriend to have the whole package. I didn’t get her to say ‘Pinkie Pie’, and so far her vocabulary is ‘book’, ‘mama’, and ‘big’ for some reason.”

“Don’t forget ‘no!’.”

Nyx took that moment to spit out the pacifier, where it went sailing off into parts unknown.

“No!” She confirmed, and Twilight smiled down at her.

“See?” Pinkie smiled. “She’s impressionable, so I’d say my luck’s pretty good. I’m confident about my odds.”

“But?” Twilight shot her a knowing look, and Pinkie blushed again and looked away.