Ahem, awhoom, ahoum, a who? A Houyhnhnm homonym I. A Pony and Pie, no lie! And a dillydance I do, on this fine morn in town, updown the avenindues of my innuendous ways, in crusscarrants of herds of Ponyville hooftrotters, all a travel in ravellous teeming streams of comfortuitous equanity, amid which I pronk-a-pie, dancing and leaping in salmonpink upstreaming through the Ponyflow! As I turn the south corner, upturn the corners of mouths. I fight the glums and glumes and I am vectorious with infectious glee. I pass blimpaloons to sillicolts and boldfillies, fold paper darts and kites, sing ditties in spindizzies that loften the harpes and spiracues of fronds and neigh-burrs as I greet the hourdes in passenage and ungdulate amung’em. –Howdy? Very Dee indeed, thankee Berry! A tope of the marening to ye. –How present to see you again, Turner! Many haply returns! –What luck, a fresh bud for me? [i]Aurora Rhodopli![/i] –Ho, Macintosh! Mac in Toffee? A fine candapple! Share in a cakecup, two bits! So I prattlance a ringly round on streets run on lines laid down by G. Smith as she uptrod the road to market as a filly in years long by. Her courage echoes. Past dances perdure as I retrance their steps that show to me as hints of hooves in fiery action. I see bits here and there of what was distantdone to contect to the willandnow. None can see all; Discord tried. Everything has the space intween, the gutter unmuttered, the shortest possileap parting the momuments that your eyes are too befunneled to see, but I a Pie can. I just try to sillip my way slithely into the justelly presized point between, and place a Pie [i]right[/i] there. With so much space where I amn’t, how hard can it be? And asudden, a doosiance disburbles my equulubrium, my ears swangle and tail swoops low to smack my bellyboobs and carmand my atension… Strangersense is ringling, burnsome and balefully… Eeek! A new hydra at the skirthems of town. We’ll have to convoke a party. A war party. A call to alarums, harum skarums and dispersions! But convergence is called, as the Parensis of Friendship herself, doubtless alarted by mapclap, sounds the call to all on lavendwing above, and so we convenerate about her. From blue sky and amber fields come our strengths steadfast and true, from town our alabestest elegarity and precision, from Froggy Bottom our gelben patience and understanding, and I, I was just pying pankly about so I simply chose to be already there, as our Brightest Brain selects the battle plan. For this beastie despite its multiferous headlings has little graimadder to knockle between them, and is a natural boring meaniepuss of lowest water, and lacking all conceipts of cordialations cannot be made to accede to Friendship, even when foired from the collossalest Rainbowitzer powered with all the kilophilos my chums and I can muster. Thus The Good-Thinking-Egg has rightly-as-reignly construded that strapping on the ole spiked iron wharshoes is the best way of discompelling the infrequent Hydratic inscurgions. Cry [i]avec[/i] and cut loose the Elephants of Harm! Fill it with Eire! We find the Inhorifungurundulum by course of riverrun, acharge with multi-necked tilting to usward. Whydra? Could be miscarried crusade, extended snailhunt, foalish indiscrecense… but time to admonish later, with last thirty secs. for plainly-recited gold platitudes. But now we are in the thicavet and it is time to show what ponies are made of, not that we are tasty meatmorsels for rumbly monstummies, but that we have pointyshockyflappyhoofy bits that sting! Now Dashie hoofs up a cloud all darcoalish to fire flashzaps; Twi’s harn, redaglow, seizes serpenecks and renders then full windsors; AyJay loops swirly hydreads and Rarity and Shy direct silk ropes to entangle maloferous monster tootsies. And I… I sing, a morale chorale, as well I can with just one of my many on the deck, until I entract the intentions of a cross sour head on a low stumpbilly neck. The longfanged visage descends at me to deliver a buss from its pus-spotted puss, and I buck back hard to deliver a boop to its snottydroopysnoot! But gnarled and snarly its mouth curls wide and its slicky slucky stinkery tongue forks forth and tangles my tail, and keryanks! And just in that manner, like a Bonbon popped into Lyra’s chasmous maw, I am ingusted. Tongundulations surge me past pointy unsizers and mushticators to mouthback, where I scrample at the edge of the throat, clinging at all to stop the fall, [i]carpe uvula![/i] But a gulp unglues my grip and down the hitchless hatch I go! Gashlorp! Grullop! Gwrlumph! and a Hey Nom Nom Nommy! Aslipperslide down the ewslophagunk with a slurbglomgollumorfmurfglump to the deep dank dump of its smellybelly! ALP! An I live, deplorable! Down here, deep in bellumbeast, it is dark and sickery and ickhory beyond descreption, soured with acrid dribbles of digestives and vaulted with ulcerous maimbranes, amid which I am so ensaddered to see the askelerated remainders of several forest craytures to which the Hydrum had taken its fangsy earlier this diem. So saddened I that I cry for them even in the face of my own impending ending by blending, my imminent disPinkering and reHydration. And I cry in such volume that I cry myself away, [i]per se[/i], and ere digested give up my ghost. Whither thou, ghost? So ghost I, with furred spurrited sprites of raccoon and bear and river otter, which beasties had shared with me the gravebog of the hydra’s stummy, we all soar out and away across Illusian Fields. Looking back at the discrant seen of the bitter baddle I see that my dear chooms, distrayed but undanted, have fraughtled the Hydra to the darsty ground, by Jacklasso and Twi’s-Brighty-Mighty-Lighty secured, and Dear Dynamo Dashie is hurling her mightenmane against the monster’s mausoleic middeln to force it to disgorge my corpus. But more I do not see, for shades of Hades bound are the craytures and me. Now Hades is little like Tartarus, for those admittened here are such gentle souls that stones and Styx can never break, and truth bespoke it is a fair place to afterrest in many retrespectives. But I have promises to bake and friends to keep, and so I do not plan to tarradiddle long on the Blackwater shores. For if the UnderLaurd catches a hint I am there, he’ll want me to stay foreverevereverandever and try to take me for pomegranted, and no homebody I, but a Pie with a body at home, just lacking a filling for my crust at prestime. But I sing sanguine, as I have a scheme, for when a pone larves a life of adventure and daring and baked awesomes and tightropely-plotted escapades, that pone needs to keep her bets well hedged in case of emergence dire. To turn Durance Vile to Endurance Viable, and gain gumption to gaggle the ghastlies, you simply pretread the dread-trodden ground, and… Quiz: what’s the usual salution to the hardest of all possible problems in Equestria? Make some [i]friends,[/i] SillyMillie! And as Idleon I, with animule escort, appreach the docks, I am shurene and comfidant, for Charon and I have met before and reached a meeting of the miens, and as I hoof my way to the docked ferry and the cloaked ponsonage awaiting his toll, I bow for psake o’pomposity and spit out before him, not an obol, but a cupcake, freshwarmyum from my soulstove. His grimace acquires a curl at the tips, and his bright stareglare eyes tip me a wink. I turn to take my leave of Lethe and am upshorted by soulful creyeturs wistfulling my way, which gives me not long to pause, for it is supersad that my bestest, bazom chums are missing me above, and I wish to return and reassure to them my resumption and ease their keenings! But these my Shadebound companions, they too are sad, and may be humbglum evermore unless they receive a stuperiffous Welcome to Hades party. And so I tarry just a’twhile, and from meangre scantlings asscrambled from shoredriftings and jetsam, I knock together a minispread of pleasure and fun, aidumented with cakage from my secret spaces and a spray of confruttage from my spiritual Partyretta. And so cheersome feels are spread among lost shoresouls, and Charon unbernds so far as to permit use of his ferry for playing at pirates. Aboom and avast ere I arroint, and splashing of cannolishot! (But always with the Pink slimbelly dodging the wettest splooshes, for unlike the Shadebound I am not ready to Lethe behind my recollects of the Livenworld.) At party’s end, as Charon ferries them all to the farthest of all shores, I bywave across the waters to my new friends I will somedaway see again when my fineral has been funalized, and then I tack the track back, and point my solely soul to the wayhomehole. No dillydance suits my escape; it is a dourdle of grimmy grimey slimey mishmesh through which I must thread, for as cupcakes must taste very good, and medications must taste bad enough to call for a cupcake chaser, a reroute from Hades must be frighted with pearils. I am on full duesy alertness for quivers of Tartar source, or brays from the Fae realms, all of which may mistract or sidetempt me. But I make of my innersoulf a bubble, a baulb of cheersome giggles, and so, swirled and chirled and turmled as I may be, yet I rise, roise, roister my way back from the shady layers to waird the wards, to yeastily yearn, to swell with japes of joy and touch the houter hair again. Surf is up! And like a cork from a grand green land, up I pop again… To see nowt but black, an dark, and nowhere starlights! Luna’s dimshed the whole sky! She must not feel like twining or shinkling either. With her evening mourning me, I tread the streets over lines where G. Smith trotted home with bits in her bag long agos ago (her canter endures), sensing the layout of where I am laid out and walking without thinking as a horse will, and find myself approaching the Cake’s shop, and my happiness quavers and spectral eyes flood until the world quivers, for the town is there, spilling out into the streets, and they are all here and weeping together and all I see around me are friends, and my tears would run down the streets did I have my body back yet. It makes me so sad, straighthair sad, which is good because now I can tell sad me, you see? This is how they will truefeel should you go, and happme and sadme burst out crying together in my own of each other’s arms, for none other can touch me yet. So now I am sadappy, as I pass ghostly through their grieving flanks and enter the Cake’s side parlor where those dearest and nearest see me here, rest. Inside, there is a press of ponies, and food and drink from near and far, for the Cakes have outpulled the stops and the Apples have unstopped the casks and the Davenports have supplied the fainting cushions and all around have brought at least a plate for the only Ponyvillewide party I have ever had the misfort to inaugulate in this manner. Twilight is sobbing in the midriff of her eulogizing which is elevendy pages long so she must be [i]so[/i] upset and Dash and AJ vie to outcider all the outsiders and Shy is shy in a corner somewhere as Rares retales a story to Starlight and Spike which is half smiles and half sobs. I ancroach the bier, where they’ve recovered my incorporation from the Hydra’s haggis, probably by aid of Zecora and her Hermetic emetics. I hope my poor bloody body buddy emerged from the less holesome end. It looks well enough, besconced in this supernaleato coffin, inlétaglioed with my fannyballoons. My mane is mainly matted and I see here and there points of broken combs and brushbrist whichby I surmuse that Rarity’d tried to tame my tangle, and with the amount of terreffort I put into manecare (not to mention all the random tchotchkes I put into it) I cast her no blame for giving it up as a capital Jay-ob. Pretty darned perfect for a Pinkawake. My ghost eyes roll over my me, seeking the seemliest point of reentry, and at the distral end I seem to see the finale of be, where I see… ice cream, my only emperor, in a bowl at the table near my rear, and I perceive a kween jape, a once in alive-time prankapow, and I wait until Dashie is making her way past for another mug, and give her glazeyed puss a little hint of a Boo, and she falls backward onto the table and flips the bowl of creamice up over my restful head as I dive swiftly back in and reambulate the old pumps and unbink the foires. As they hoof her up and turn to me, I awake at my wake for sake of friends forsaken, and shake my head as they quake at my surprising arising. I stand under the bowl, whole, creamcold, and the old ticker recounts the seconds of my life and laughter as it didafore, and I spring in dillydance again among them and sing out: “My love to you all, and did you think I was [i]dead[/i]?” And Whack! Hurrah! Thence, there was lots of [i]fun[/i] at Pinkamena’s Wake. How could it ever be otherwise?