Time Enough

The streets were dark, and almost empty. Evening had come and light spilled out of homes on either side of the cobbles, but the most light came from the lamps that loomed above the sidewalk. The candles within them were large, intended to burn through the dark hours until the sun rose once again. Throughout the city, most of the streets were lit, but there was a lot of ground to cover, and the most popular roads were lit first. This road was not one of those, and it traveled into a dead end, where the darkness yet ruled. Plodding down this street, a lone pony walked, a small pool of light from her lantern the only illumination in the otherwise black road.
There was only one lamp in it at the far end of a cul-de-sac, and she walked through the darkness to it with her lantern swinging from the side of her saddlebags. When she reached it, she slipped a long pole out of a hook on her saddlebag and lit a wick at one end in her open lantern. She reached up to the lamp, pushed it open and lit the candle inside. She closed it again, and extinguished the wick on her pole before putting it back in its slot on her saddlebag.
She adjusted her shawl and took a deep breath, then turned around and looked at you. Her mane covered much of the left side of her face, but the one eye that you could see was wide open, with a dark circle underneath it. It stared back at you unblinking as you stared at her. She didn’t seem surprised to see you there, but the look she was giving you was cautious and on guard. She sat at the edge of the lamp’s light, her own lantern meager compared to the brighter post above her.

“Hello there. You must have heard, then? About Waxworks and her stories?” She brushed at her shawl with a hoof, not looking away from you. “It’s true. I am she, and I know a lot of them, and some are probably about ponies you know. I won’t tell you how I know them, nor why I keep them, but I can tell you one, and only one, before I get back to work.” She pulled her lantern off its hook and set it on the ground in front of her. The flickering light cast long shadows onto the buildings nearby.
“I’m a busy pony, with only so much time in the day,” she said. “I hear there is a way to get more time, but eventually time catches up to us all…”

Pinkie Pie rushed about the bakery, zipping to and fro, from countertop to cupboard, oven to refrigerator. To any onlooker, she would appear to be pink blur. To Pinkie herself, she was simply finishing her work at a leisurely pace, wandering here and there at a calm and controlled speed. From her side of things, there was no need to rush. No need to speed up to get from here to there. The cakes would bake, the icing would set, and the dough would rise, all in good time. She had so much of it after all.
Pinkie looked at the customers in the front of Sugar Cube Corner and counted. There were still only four of them, and they all had what they needed. While she watched, a stallion reached out a hoof and ever-so-slowly lifted his milkshake up to his mouth and tilted it up to get the last dregs of sweet, melted ice cream. She waited until he started lowering it to the table before walking at a calm pace out to the front. By the time his mug hit the table, she was there next to him.

“Would you care for another?” She picked up the empty mug and waited for his response.
To him, she had blurted out the sentence in a way that made it sound like she had run every word together after the other. “Wouldyoucareforanother?” he had heard. Still, most ponies had grown used to it, and he understood what she was asking.
“No thank you, Pinkie. I’ll just settle my tab and be on my way,” he said.
Pinkie nodded. To her he had taken an excruciating amount of time to finish his sentence. She could be patient, though. She had to be. Not everypony was as quick as she, and she was the one that had to be patient. She was the odd one out, after all. When he finished speaking, he drew out his wallet ever-so-slowly and placed the bits on the table. She scooped them up with a hoof, gave him a wide smile and a nod, and waved goodbye. “Okay see you later!”
She was already back in the kitchen and had placed the mug in the sink to be washed before he was even out of his chair. By the time he had reached the door to leave, every single open oven was filled with baking goods, with more prepped to go on the counter. Pinkie double-checked the fridge to make sure any of the desserts that needed chilled were done yet. They weren’t, but she had nothing better to do than wait.
Once she was certain everything was in its place, she left the bakery with a note for the Cakes when they got back, and bounded out into Ponyville, smiles on her face as she moved about town at a pace that left most other ponies in the dust. She was going to go visit Twilight today, and maybe check out a book or two.

Pinkie Pie hopped down the street at a—to her—leisurely pace. When she arrived at the castle she pounded on the door in what was, to her eyes, a calm and controlled manner, then waited for Twilight or Spike to open the door for her. When Spike finally opened the door, Pinkie had gotten bored and begun bounding about in small circles. To Spike, she was moving at a fast pace that seemed excited. To Pinkie, it was a way to occupy herself while she waited for somepony who couldn’t help being so slow.
“HeySpikeI’mheretoseeTwilightandborrowsomebooks,” Pinkie said. To Spike it was a blur, and ‘Pinkie as usual’. For Pinkie, it was a hurried and impatient statement as she brushed past him to the castle’s interior. She moved toward the castle library, with Spike’s little legs pumping to keep up.
“What’s going on, Pinkie? You seem more rushed than usual,” Spike said.
“Oh,it’sprobablynothing.Ijustneedtoborrowabook,” Pinkie Pie said.
“Oh, well okay.” Spike tried to keep up, but Pinkie was just too fast, and she had already made it to the library while he was only halfway down the hall.
Pinkie burst into the tranquil repository and began rushing about, searching through the books one at a time, pulling them off the shelf then putting them back soon after reading the title or first few pages. After a few minutes of terrorizing the library, Twilight wandered in, moving at the same crawling pace as everypony else.
“Oh, Pinkie, what are you looking for?” Twilight asked.
“HiTwilight,stilllookingformorebooksonclocks.Didyougetanysincelasttime?” Pinkie asked.
It took Twilight a second to register everything Pinkie said, but she shook her head slowly, and Pinkie left before she had finished the second shake. “Nothing new yet, but I hear they’re on their—“
“OkaythanksTwilightI’llbebackwhenyouhavethem.” Pinkie was out the door and bounding down the hall.

Although Pinkie had nothing but a smile on her face, her eyes told a different story for anyone willing to look. She was worried, and that worry took her back home to Sugarcube Corner immediately after her library visit. Once she had checked on all of the baking, she went upstairs to her room, where the object of her research sat.
It was a clock, and like all clocks it told the time. This one, though, did not keep time with other clocks in Ponyville. Since the day it had been given to her, it had given her an extra two years worth of time. She had gotten so much more done, thrown so many more parties, and celebrated so much more than other ponies had. But she found out she couldn’t stop it. She had grown tired of waiting for everypony else to catch up to her. She read so much more, did so much more. She managed to fit twice as much into her days as another pony, but what good was it when the ponies you were doing it for only managed to appreciate it at half the speed you were?
She wanted to slow down, take time to appreciate things. Not to mention she had no idea if she was aging at twice the speed. If she were, she would be dead twice as fast. She wanted to fix it.
Pinkie picked up the clocked, looked at the back at the screws holding it shut, then lifted a screwdriver. She had several of the books Twilight had on clocks, and she had researched how they work, but she was still wary of this one. Clocks were delicate, and the slightest misstep could damage it, but the alternative was to live and possibly die twice as fast as her friends, and she couldn’t abide that. Watchmakers she’d taken it to hadn’t wanted to chance damaging such a rare and expensive clock as this, so it was up to her.

Pinkie stuck the screwdriver in and twisted, pulling out the first one, then the next. She took in a deep breath, and pulled the panel off the back revealing the intricate springs, cogs, and wheels of the clock’s innards. To her dismay, the inside was not anything like the pictures in the books. She suspected it might have been magical, since she’d never had to wind it, but this made things much more complicated.
She recognized the mainspring, at least. That one was obvious. It glowed with what she assumed was the magic that kept the clock wound at all times, but she was looking for the part that regulated the speed at which it ticked. She searched and searched, and eventually, she thought she had found it.
“Okay, just need a delicate hoof,” Pinkie said to herself.
She reached in with the tiny screwdriver she had purchased, and made a small adjustment, then she waited.
Nothing seemed to happen, so she thought she must have accomplished what she set out to do. She put the back panel on again, and went downstairs to see if everypony was still moving slowly.
To her delight, everypony was moving at a much faster speed! They were talking, walking, running, eating, all at a speed that wasn’t half as fast as she was anymore! She laughed and stepped forward out into sugarcube corner, then felt a stabbing pain in her gut.
She felt hungry. Hungrier than she’d ever felt in her life, and it was only getting worse. She grabbed a muffin off the counter and took a bite, but her mouth was dry, and she felt a headache come as she began to feel thirsty. She felt exhaustion hit her like a wave, her eyelids drooping as she felt like she hadn’t slept for weeks. She fell to the floor, her eyes closed, and blackness took her.
Upstairs, her clock ticked. Unconcerned, and keeping perfect time. Time nopony can escape.

Waxworks picked up her lantern and attached it to her saddlebag once more. She stood and began walking past you, heading out of the cul-de-sac. She seems to sense your confusion and turns back to look at you.
“Pinkie Pie isn’t dead, you’re thinking. She lives at Sugarcube Corner and is one of the elements of harmony, along with the other five,” Waxworks said. “And you would be right. She survived. Severe starvation and dehydration, but she lived.” Waxworks turned her body to face you. “She’s still as hyper as always, though, and she recovered miraculously fast. Who knows how much ‘time’ she has left, hmmm?”
Waxworks walked away from you, out of the cul-de-sac, and the small pool of light from her lantern disappeared around the corner, leaving you in the dark. Once the sound of her hoofsteps disappeared, all that’s left is a ticking sound, like that of a clock, keeping impeccable time.

The End.