Hey girls, did I ever tell you the story of when my sister Maud earned her Cutie Mark? Oh, it’s a doozy of a story. Take a seat, every pony, and I’ll tell you all about it.

I remember the day Maud earned her Cutie Mark like it was just yesterday. We were both fillies at the time and although I had earned my Cutie Mark a week ago...or was it two weeks ago? No, it was certainly three weeks ago. At the time, I was working on an all new recipe: strawberry jam filled muffins topped with refried beans. What? It sounded like a good idea at the time, although my sisters didn’t seem to like it. Anyway, I was taste testing the muffins when Maud had this super stupendous idea.

I was licking the muffin batter off the spoon and Maud trotted up to me and said, “We should go hiking up the Rocky Mountains to look for rocks.”

“Sure,” I said and after packing a lunch, we went out with Maud in the lead.

My sister knows a lot about how to find the right rocks. Even as a filly, she knew how to tell the difference between an igneous and an iguana. Not only that, but she was a skilled geomancer, able to tell the time of day and predict when the pegasi were going to make it rain just by studying the cracks in concrete. She could tell which way was North by tossing magnetized sand into a bowl of ketchup. She could locate home from miles away using nothing more than a hematite, some string, and a chocolate bar for a dowsing rod...but she preferred a map.

We spent hours climbing that mountain. It was certainly dangerous since rocks kept falling around us, wanting to bonk on the head, but I was safe with Maud because she had the umbrella. We arrived at the bottom of a huge canyon that stretched for miles in all directions. If I stretch out my hooves far apart and then imagine my arms a bazillion times longer, that was how big that canyon was. It was so big that even Maud had a hard time finding her way around in it. It was nighttime, which would explain why. So the two of us decided to set up camp and sleep under the stars.

But then, an earthquake woke us up from our sleep. Or at least that was what I thought, at first. I rushed to turn on the lantern while Maud picked up her pocketknife and stood guard. There we were, alone in the mountains in the middle of the night, and we were surrounded by earth elementals. I’d never seen anything like them before. They were huge and monstrous creatures made entirely of rock and dirt that magically clung together. They towered over us like they intended to squash us like bugs.

I cowered for safety but Maud wasn’t afraid. She stood her ground with her pocketknife clutched in her teeth. She was afraid of no pony and she was ready to fight to save us. One of the earth elementals leaned over us and said, “Gluckaguka.”

The earth elemental couldn’t speak Equestrian very well because he had a jaw made of sandstone and a tongue made of a thick piece of tree bark. But Maud, she was such a skilled writer and poet, she knew a thing or two about understanding hard to understand words and was able to translate their gibberish. As it turned out, we had stumbled into one of their secret glens in Big Fissure Canyon just 38 miles North of Ghastly Gorge. Now I can’t tell you where their glen is because it’s a secret.

Why’re you staring at me like that...? Oh, you must want some of the popcorn. Here you go. Now where was I? Oh yeah, the earth elementals.

After Maud was able to talk them out of squashing us, the elementals told us that they were in a bit of a pickle because they were being harassed by diamonds dogs who had been digging in their mines and stealing their diamonds. Or at least that’s what Maud got from them. I was probably passing the time by playing tick-tack-toe in the dirt by myself. I lost every game.

After Maud was done talking to the earth elementals, she told me that she wanted to try sneaking into the diamond dogs’ lair and take back the diamonds. She had a brilliant plan, by the way. A super duper ultra magnificent plan that those diamond dogs wouldn’t see coming. She got some pizza delivery outfits for Maud and I and we went up to their lair and pretended we were delivering a pizza. The outfits Maud found were a little too big for us and they smelled like they’d been in Grandma Pie’s attic for decades, but all I had to do was tighten up the sashes and we looked good enough to fool a not-so-smart diamond dog.

So we walked up to the front door and I offered to ring the doorbell, but as it turned out, the diamond dogs had no doorbell. Can you believe that? They had a fortress manned by hundreds of diamond dogs as well as concrete walls and underground tunnels, but they didn’t think to install a doorbell. What’s the world coming too? So, despite how mad I was about the doorbell, we knocked instead and a really stinky diamond dog greeted us.

“We don’t give to charities,” said the diamond dog.

“This is a pizza for you,” I said to the diamond dog.

“Did I order a pizza? I don’t remember ordering a pizza.”

And Maud, I tell you, she was so sly and persuasive that she just looked that dog in the eye and said... “You did.”

“If you say so,” and the diamond dog let us in just like that. It was that easy. Of course, I didn’t realize that the whole place was heavily populated. While Maud and I were walking down the hallways, we must have bumped into a dozen diamond dogs.

We eventually were led into the kitchen and the diamond dog introduced to us the cook. Now that certainly wasn’t a nice kitchen. It had dirt floors, a fire pit, an iron cooking pot, and what I thought was a food pantry that smelled like an athlete’s locker.

The cook marched right up to us and said, “Who ordered the pizza?”

“Didn’t you guys order the double dip chocolate pizza with avocadoes and rice?” I said.

The cook stamped his paw on the ground. “That’s disgusting.”

“It’s better than you’re slop,” said the other diamond dog.

“Slop? I spend all day cooking and that’s the thanks I get.”

“It’s more than you deserve.”

And then the two diamond dogs began fighting each other. While they were distracted, Maud and I snuck out of the kitchen and ran off to find the stolen diamonds. Although it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be because the whole place was just one long maze. It was like finding our way out of the holes in Swiss cheese where every path led to nowhere.

Hmmm...Swiss cheese... My tummy’s growling. Where did I put those marshmallows?

Anyway, we eventually found our way into the diamond dogs’ reservoir. Funny, considering how diamond dogs rarely care about hygiene, I didn’t think they would have clean water. We were about to leave when Maud saw something in the water. We got close, and sure enough, the diamonds were right there in the bottom of the pond. We wanted to dive right in and get it, but then this huge sea serpent rose from the pond.

“I’m the sea serpent who watches over this pond,” said the sea serpent.

“Will you let us dive in and get the diamonds?” I asked. “We need to return the diamonds to the earth elementals.”

“What kind of a guard would I be if I just let any pony come in and take whatever they wanted?”

“Well, how about a trade?”

“What could you possibly have that I would want?”

“Umm...we got pizza.”

“Deal!”

So we gave the sea serpent the pizza and he devoured it in one bite, just like this marshmallow here in my hoof...arm-nom-nom...delicious. So we had the diamonds, but we had no way of carrying all it out of the caves. The sea serpent told us that there was a clogged up drain nearby before he slithered off to take a nap.

Maud was strong, you see. She swam down into the drain, and with her powerful hind legs, she bucked those rocks away. Bang! Bang! Crack! The clog was cleared and the water drained away, leaving the diamonds behind. Unfortunately, Maud created so much noise that it alerted the diamond dogs. I could hear the diamond dogs running down the tunnel but Maud wasn’t afraid. She spun around and bucked the wall of the cave and the entrance to the reservoir collapsed in on itself. By the time the dust cleared, there was a pile of rubble in the tunnel and the diamond dogs were cut off. However, we forgot that diamond dogs were expert diggers, so they were already digging their way through the debris.

Eeeek! I was shaking in my horseshoes with fright.

Luckily, I had along with me some dynamite. Well, actually they were just fireworks. What? I always keep fireworks stashed all over the place, even in the middle of a diamond dog cave, just in case of firework emergencies. So with the explosives, we loosened the wet ground the diamonds were sitting on and the diamonds just slid down the hole on a river of mud as well as us along with it. So we slid down into the depths of the caves and out into a pool where the water had drained. I’m not entirely sure what it was we fell into. I suspected it was a bathroom what with the large pools, dust covered brushes, and moldy shower curtains everywhere, It was certainly in poor condition, almost as if the diamond dogs hadn’t used it in years.

What did you say, Rarity? Oh yes, they really do smell awful...they should brush their teeth more often too.

As I was saying, in order to escape, we piled all the diamonds into the cart and we were going to use the rest of the fireworks I had to launch the cart down the halls. Just then, diamond dogs started sliding down the hole we came from. While I was tying the fireworks onto the cart, Maud was beating up those diamond dogs with her kung fu martial arts. You should have seen it. She just whipped them and tossed them around like they were as light as cotton candy. She kicked them, tossed them, bended them, and made them cry “uncle.” She was awesome. Once those diamond dogs were beaten into submission, we leaped into the cart and I lit the fireworks. We rocketed down the tunnels, speeding along at breakneck speed, blasting passed every diamond dog that got in our way.

Cough! Sorry, all this excitement is making me thirsty. Now where did I put that cup of hot cocoa? Aw, here it is. Glug, glug... ahh, much better. Now, where was I? Oh yeah!

We were almost to the exit when a diamond dog the size of a house and completely covered in dragon hide armor appeared. We crashed right into that diamond dog, and he was as immovable as a brick wall. That laundry cart should have had seatbelts because when we hit, the diamonds and us were sent flying into the air like two pegasi. The huge diamond dog grabbed us out of the air and held us in his claws.

“Ugh, puny ponies steal our diamonds,” said the diamond dog.

I was terrified...of fainting from his halitosis. Like I said, they really should brush their teeth.

Maud wiggled free from the diamond dog’s grasp, but she couldn’t take him down, not even with her trademark Judo, karate, tai chi, praying mantis kick to the gut. He was just that well armored. We were surrounded by diamond dogs who wanted to use us as workhorses, but Maud had another clever idea: she offered the diamond dogs an even bigger and better diamond than the ones they already had.

At that point, I knew to trust Maud even thought I didn’t know what she was up to. You see, she was a master at rock chiseling. She managed to find a huge boulder, fooled those dimwitted diamond dogs into leaving us a lone, and Maud used her chisel and pick to carefully carve the boulder into a diamond shape. I had no idea that she could be so fast with a pick and chisel. It was then that I realized that she really knew her rocks since she could so easy carve a large lump of granite and feldspar into a perfectly shaped diamond. In fact, she must have realized it too because once the fake diamond was complete, an identical diamond-shaped rock appeared on her flank. Once she was done, I got out my paints and painted the entire rock so it looked like an emerald. The diamond dogs were so happy that they took it right away and gave us all the smaller diamonds they were hording. So peace was restored to the earth elementals, the diamond dogs got their huge diamond, and Maud and I went home as heroes.

And that’s how Equestria was made.

There was a stunned silence amongst the campfire as Pinkie finished her story. The Mane 6 was camping outside of the Everfree Forest, sitting on boulders and patches of dirt they had available around a campfire, exchanging stories. Once Pinkie finished her sister’s Cutie Mark story, they all stared at her with gaping mouths and wide eyes in disbelief.

“Are you serious?” asked Rainbow.

“Of course I’m serious, Dashie,” said Pinkie. “That’s how it all happened.”

Twilight rubbed her hoof into the dirt in thought. “We know...it’s just that your story does seem awfully farfetched, such as how did you move all that mud and diamonds using only fireworks?”

“Well, you know how much I like to carry around things that go bang and before I got my party cannon, all I had were fireworks.”

“And what about the earth elementals? From what I’ve read, they don’t live in Equestria. Also, what was a sea serpent doing underground? Why would the diamond dogs store their diamonds in their reservoir? And why would the elementals trust two fillies to get back their diamonds?”

“The mysterious ways of sea serpents and diamond dog are not mine to know or question, but the earth elementals do live in Equestria. You just don’t see them because they like to hide out in plain sight.”

Rainbow slouched on her boulder. “Yeah right.”

Pinkie leaped up onto her hooves. “It’s true. The elementals really do live in Equestria.”

“It’s all right, Pinkie,” said Twilight, hastily. “We believe you.”

“No we don’t,” grumbled Rainbow.

Twilight bucked Rainbow in the side, silently telling her to shut up, as she gave a forced grin to Pinkie. “Yep, we truly believe you.”

“Okay,” said Pinkie with a smile.

Applejack yawned. “Well, I’ve had enough stories for tonight. I’m going to hit the hay.”

“Yes, it’s getting late out and I need my beauty sleep,” said Rarity.

“Good night, every pony,” said Fluttershy as she unfurled her wings and rose up to a cloud shaped like a pup tent hanging overhead.

The ponies went to their tents on the ground while Rainbow and Pinkie stayed behind to put out the fire using dirt and their hooves to stamp out any remaining embers.

Once the fire was out, Rainbow let out a yawn and said, “Well, good night, Pinkie.”

“Good night, Dashie.”

Rainbow took off into the sky and was about to enter her cloud tent with Fluttershy when a strange sound caught her ear. She heard the rustling of dirt and rock below her. At first, she thought there was a landslide nearby, but as she looked about, she saw no hills or cliffs, just trees.

“Pinkie, did you hear that?” Rainbow spun around in mid air and gasped in surprise. Pinkie stood by the fire pit they were using and all of the boulders they were sitting on before had all vanished.

“Hey, what happened to the rocks that were there?” asked Rainbow.

“Oh, they went home,” said Pinkie, smiling innocently.

“But...but...” stuttered Rainbow.

Pinkie skipped merrily into the tent with Applejack, leaving Rainbow to hover ahead, baffled and confused.