Inkie Pie was born on a rock farm. The Pie family had a very long tradition of farmers in the family—they would dig the earth for the rocks, sculpt them, break them, move them, work them, destroy them, harvest them, and sell them. The work was hard, but it had to be done. They owned the only rock farm in more than a thousand miles around, and Equestria needed them.

Inkie’s parents would start working at dawn and would not stop till the moon was up in the sky. Inkie’s sisters would do the same, their bodies soon hardened and grew used to little scratches, to the hardness of the rocks. It was never a fun thing to do, but they did it anyway, and they enjoyed it.

But Inkie Pie couldn’t work. Her hooves wouldn’t allow her to do so.

Countless times she would escape from the house and go to the westernmost part of the fields, where she knew her parents wouldn’t be. The West Fields were not used anymore, as the granite was not in demand, at least for the time being. The Pies knew that one day granite would be useful again, so they refused to destroy the fields or try to harvest different rocks. Rock farming was a long-term business, and they always had to look forward to the future movements of the market.

But Inkie Pie didn’t know that yet. She just knew that nopony ever worked the West Fields, so she could be alone in there. And when told that she could never work the farm, that the hard physical work would destroy the fragile bones of her legs, that the pain would be unbearable, she didn’t listen.

With the rebellious spirit of a child that doesn’t know better, she chose to walk barehoofed to show everypony that she was a fake pony, but she refused to be treated as one. Both embracing and denying her disability, she would walk to the useless fields and she would try to break the rocks, to work the granite, to be useful.

Her parents had known better than Inkie Pie. She couldn’t do it. She lacked the strength, she lacked the tools, she lacked the body needed to work the granite. Day after day she would eventually pass out—sometimes because of the blood loss, sometimes because of the fatigue, sometimes because of the pain. Her father soon got used to finding the little bloody hoofsteps that lead from Inkie’s room to some random point of the West Fields, where he would find his daughter.

Sometimes, he would find her still conscious and would try to stop her. Sometimes, he would be too late, and they would go to the hospital. Then she would stay there for two or three nights, until finally she would go back home, weaker and with bandages on her hooves, but never wearing the boots.

But it didn’t matter to Inkie Pie. She didn’t like working with rocks. It was painful, it was boring, and it was dull. But she still wanted to do so.

Day after day, week after week, she would work her best to break a useless rock in the abandoned West Fields, trying to prove that she was worth it, that she could create something, that she would do something. If she had succeeded, it wouldn’t have mattered.

But she never succeeded. She never broke a single rock.

And as her father kept on finding her unconscious at the end of a little path made of blood, he decided that his daughter would not die like that. A Pie would never be defeated by a rock. It was better to fly from battle than to die in it.

So he took Inkie Pie one morning, and they went to the city together.

To the music store.