How She Got Her Cutiemark (An Alternative Reality)

[Valentina Crush 84]

    It was a rare and suspicious thing for a mare of her age to be a blank-flank. As a filly, the lack of a

cutie mark seemed, albeit perhaps embarassing, innocent enough. "Don't force it," ponies would tell her time and time over in her youth. She supposed they were trying to comfort her, but their words were prone to have the exact opposite effect. She knew for other filles and colts it might be that way. She knew other  filles and colts had the same problem before her. She knew all of this; but she wasn't any of those other foals. Having no cutie mark wasn't just an inconvenience or a source of schoolyard bullying- to her, it felt like a premonition of doom. Whats worse was the casual manner in which adults would treat the issue. The way that they would smile down at her, ruffle her mane, and offer up useless sentiment only drove the stomach-twisting sensation deeper into her abdomen. Years had passed now, and they had all been wrong.
                                                            -----
    Prevasive chill rippled through the sleeping mare's coat, seeping like an acid through flesh and tissue- only her bones felt indifferent to the cold. Sore, weary, and dusted in the fine powder of fresh winter, the earth pony came to.  With sleep's dark shroud lifted from her eyes the pony recognized immediately that the vacant expanse around her was not her room. Like her own body, the stretches of soil  and its freckling of rocks were painted with frost. The stones looked like small corpses, hunched over to face the brunt of pain. The flurries that fell over them in a deathly veil gave the impression that this place was a miniature Pompeii. The mare rose with aching difficulty and turned away from the  scene. Her hooves felt like wet glass as she stumbled towards home, something which might have been easily managed if her legs weren't limp and trembling from sleeping in the hearth of winter.  As of late, she had grown accustomed to sleeping outdoors. After a long day of nothing but solemn work she knew the next day would hold just the same, so why leave her post? It wasn't that the mare particularly cared for her work, she in fact disliked it, but she cared for nothing else either, so this was her fate. She shivered bitterly, though it was a familiar thought, her hopelessness had never become something she had overcome.
    "Pinkamena Diane Pie!" A voice struck her more sharply than any amount of sleet had in the night. She raised her head, her long, limp mane parting to reveal her face as she looked up. The evenly gray sky was painfully bright and made it difficult for her to look anywhere but the ground, even still, she could see her mother's stern approach.
    "Yes,"   she answered flatly.
    "'Yes' is all she says. I should know by now. No common sense. No work ethic. No wonder you've still got a blank flank. Just isn't right. Do you realize what today is? We're supposed to harvest the rocks from the south field! And you, sleeping the day away- outdoors! Don't you know what that does to a body? Makes you weak! We need all the hooves we can get today and now what." Her mother's eyes were little more than slits peering up angrilly over the glinting edge of her semi-circle glasses. An exasperated sigh prefaced her next statement.
    "You're no use to us out here today being like you are after a night like that- take this into Ponyville and bring back some flour." She produced a pouch from her shawl and tossed it to the ground near Pinkamena's hooves. As she walked back toward the house, she twisted her head back toward her daughter.
    "Just flour." she added firmly, disappearing into the entryway. Pinkamena kneeled and retrieved the pouch. As she trotted away from the field, down the narrow path towards town, the pouch bobbed noisily.

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    As buildings began to emerge from the horizon, Pinkamena felt her nervousness manifest itself as nausea. It had been a very long time since she had been to Ponyville, or to anywhere that wasn't home for that matter. She wished desperately that her mother had given her a saddlebag instead of this pouch. It had been so long since she had been out in public that she had nearly forgotten that her blank flank was an oddity. She recoiled,  the edge of town was drawing nearer. Despite herself, Pinkamena continued on. The reproachful words of her mother earlier in the morning were enough to keep her hooves from simply freezing to the path where she stood. Not wanting to be a further disappointment, she resolved that she would complete the task as quickly as possible. In fact, her own gnawing curiosity sent her into a haze of deep thought from which she did not emerge until it was too late. Before the mare realized it, she was standing blankly in the middle of the street, surrounded by buildings and by ponies. Thankfully, the building she was here for was among the ones that were currently before her. Though ponies were beginning to stare and she felt very much like running home, Pinkamena knew she couldn't do so. She did, however, quicken her pace, shaking off their murmurs as she made for the entrance of Sugarcube Corner.
    "Dear me! I know a straight mane is the rage this season but has she not heard of volume?" Pinkamena overheard a unicorn mare hiss as she passed. She was one to talk, Pinkamena thought, those overdone curls looked absolutely ridiculous. Her ears flattened aginst her mane as she stepped into the shop. She hoped that, given the professional duty of the employees, the whispers would stop once she was indoors. To her surprise, they did. In fact, no one in the shop said a word for several moments. Pinkamena bit her lower lip and pawed the hard floor nervously as she stood at the counter. Indeed, the whispers had stopped, but in their place were stares. Every pony in the shop seemed transfixed by her presence. Their gazes immobilized her.
    "Well...hello!" A brightly coated mare behind the counter managed with forced pleasantness. "I..." the mare glanced around at the other customers, they all sported a violent frown. "I don't believe I, er, we, have seen you around Ponyville before! Welcome." Her eyes shifted to a dark stairwell behind her. It seemed out of place in the cheerful shop. "What can I help you with?" Pinkamena furrowed her brow, a thin line  appearing in the center of her forehead.
    "Flour." she said, after a moment of contemplation. Pinkamena couldn't decide if anyone in the shop remembered her. She didn't recognize them, but surely they would have heard of her.     
    "Just flour?" The mare insisted, drumming one hoof against the glass case between them; it had several shelves full of pastries, sweets, and cupcakes. Pinkamena nodded solemnly without hesitation. The mare behind the counter frowned and turned her back to Pinkamena, shuffling around in a cabinet on the back wall of the shop. A metallic clatter made them both jump. The bakery mare scrambled to conceal something that had fallen out of the cabinet, swearing under her breath as she shut the door with haste. When she turned back to Pinkamena,  her foreleg had a gash that was leaking blood onto the floor. Pinkamena felt a burning sensation shoot down her throat as she swallowed hard. The blood captivated her. She looked down at her own legs and wondered, but was interrupted by the faux-cheer of the shopkeep.
    "Silly me, no flour up here! I'll just go check in the store room. One moment!" The mare smiled with unusual vigor before turning  and disappearing into the shadowed stairwell. Her hooves clattered loudly against the stairs, the sound growing faint as she descended. Pinkamena, though she didn't turn to face them, could feel the stares of the ponies in the shop still upon her, and could see their glowering faces in the reflection of the glass display case. One of them, yellow pegasus, was holding a newspaper and peering sadly over the top.
    "5 years ago today." she murmured to the unicorn in the next seat over. "Apparently someone in Manehattan did a sonic rainboom last night. Wish I could've seen it." The bitterness in her voice intensified.
     "You would've if Dash were here, she could've done it years ago." A stallion interjected, not being careful of his volume.
    "Could have." the pegasus sneered. Pinkamena couldn't tell in the wavering reflection, but it looked as though she was crying. She felt her stomach turn at the mention of Rainbow Dash. Leaning against the counter, she collected herself, or at least tried to. She didn't care about the flour any more. She was certain now that the ponies here did remember her, and she wanted nothing more than to leave.
    "Its fine this time," she heard the voice of the bakery mare hissing downstairs, "but be more careful where you leave your things." A door slammed angrilly somewhere down the stairs and the mare reappeared, a sack of flour in tow. She set it on the counter without saying a word. A blood saturated bandage was visible now on her foreleg. Pinkamena did her best not to stare as she emptied the pouch her mother had given her onto the counter. She hoisted the flour onto her back and kept her eyes to the floor as she half-galloped from the shop. Her pace quickened even more as she exited the shop.
    Pinkamena ran all the way home. She was never going back, she couldn't. She also realized, however, that she couldn't go on the way she had for all those years at home. Something had to change, Pinkamena decided. It was time to give in to herself. From now on, she would be ruthless. Pinkamena decided then that she would get what she wanted, and for the first time since the incident with her friend so long ago, she felt no regret for what she had done. Suddenly her flank went numb, and then buzzed with a thousand sensations at once. Where for so long there had been nothing, now a gruesome cupcake, overlaid with a bloody scalpel, graced her anatomy. For the first time, Pinkamena smiled. Perhaps, she thought, she could go back. And perhaps, she thought, she would. With that, the mare turned, tossed the flour to the side of the road, and set back for Ponyville. She was going to have so much fun.
 

[Felrora 55]

Well written, even though I didnt get every single word with my school english ;P

 

This might be completly wrong but does your story somehow reflect your current situation in life?^^

That you feel like you have missed something important?

That you want to step out of the ordinary and make a change?

 

Why am I asking this anyway...

maybe you just like dark stories...

[im_an_iceburg 1]

OMG, thats soo good! im not good at fanfics but thats really good.

Edited February 2, 2014 by im_an_iceburg