Pinkie decided she’d better pack a picnic. Cheesie wasn’t so good about food. He was great at parties, and his fondue was totally yummy, but she wasn’t sure if this counted as a party or not. If it wasn’t a party, she’d rather bring something they could eat than wind up in the hospital, because while Cheesie could definitely make anyplace funner, there was no way anypony could actually make the hospital fun. She was very careful about what she packed, making sure it was a sensibly balanced meal. Honestly, she thought, snorting with irritation, everypony thought she was some kind of foal who didn’t even know the difference between mares and stallions, and she knew perfectly well, thank you very much. Mares liked chocolate and ice cream, and stallions liked chips and pretzels and things with a lot of cheese on it. Oh, and one could have cute little baby ponies and the other couldn’t, but that wasn’t so important for a picnic. She thought briefly about putting in some more of what Twilight or Applejack would probably call “real food,” shrugged, and threw a checked cloth over the top of the picnic basket.

By the time Pinkie left Sugarcube Corner with her basket, the late afternoon sunshine was already casting long shadows, and at first, she couldn’t see Cheese at all. Then she realized that he was lounging in one of the shadows, hat pulled down, one leg crossed over the other, a noisemaker in his mouth. He almost looked unfriendly. Before she could ask why he was hiding over there, he glanced up, saw she was there, and sprang into the air with a happy cry and a burst of confetti. “Pinkie! It’s you!”

Pinkie looked around behind her. “Yepsidoodle, it’s me. Who else did you think it would be? You looked kinda spooky, hiding back there.”

Cheese trotted forward. “I wasn’t trying to be spooky. I just didn’t want everypony to see me waiting for you.”

“You could have come inside, silly!”

“I didn’t think of that. I just stood there, feeling dumb, and some of the fillies and colts from this morning wanted to know when the party was, and I said, ‘tomorrow,’ and they seemed to think that if they kept staring at me, the party would happen a little faster. Then they asked me to juggle, which was fine, and then some of the fillies started asking was I waiting for anypony, and was it a special somepony, and did I liiiiiike her, and I panicked and hid. Are they gone?”

“I don’t see anypony,” said Pinkie. Cheese just stood there, looking uncomfortable. “Did you still want to go for a walk? ‘Cause you could try kissing me right here, if you want. I don’t mind.”

“Walk,” said Cheese. “Definitely walk.” They turned and headed in the opposite direction from the one they’d taken this morning.

Pinkie talked for a few minutes about packing, candy, rocks, why melons get mushy, the Equestria Games, the Wonderbolts, and more rocks, and then she noticed that Cheesie was exceptionally quiet. Do I talk too much? she thought. Everypony thinks I do. I guess I could talk about that. “Do I talk too much, Cheesie?” she asked. “ ‘Cause you’re super quiet over there and I don’t like thinking you’re grumpy, but you don’t feel grumpy and I don’t get what’s going on, and I’m not used to that, so I think you’ll have to tell me this time.”

He stopped for a moment and swung his head around. “Is there anypony following us?” he said, his voice dropping low.

She looked around. “I don’t think so.”

“Are you sure?” he insisted. “Because they do that—follow us, I mean.”

He really did look worried, and she put her hoof on his shoulder. “It’s ok, Cheesie. The fillies and colts think ‘party today,’ and you know they’re right, because it’s always today.”

She could feel that he did understand that. To a party pony, tomorrow was just a today that hadn’t happened yet. “But the grown ponies understand ‘tomorrow,’ and we told them ‘party tomorrow,’ so they’ll just go home and dream about the party, and we’ll make sure that it’s the best castle-warming party ever. So really, the party is happening now. Just not right-this-minute now.”

He nodded, but he smiled this time. “You,” he said, “are good. I wouldn’t have thought of that. I was just worried, because they always follow us when we’re happy.” His smile became a really super duper smile that went all the way to the corners of his mouth. “And I am really so happy, Pinkie. You have no idea. I’m so happy that I thought they’d be following us for miles. And . . . and . . . I’m happy I can go ahead and be really happy, and I am so glad that—” he grabbed her in a hug and whirled her around until she giggled. “That happy. Plus, I just like listening to your voice. Tell me more about the rocks.” His amble forward had a little extra bounce in it, and soon she was bouncing beside him, and everything was Easy-Cheesie again.

“Nope! I want to hear about what happened in Manehattan. That must have been a doozy!”

“It was a doozy,” he said, lifting his eyebrows with a smug little smile. “You felt that one, did you?”

“Are you kidding me? It was awesome! I had to go and lie down afterwards! What did you do?”

And soon they were swapping stories comfortably again, mixing shoptalk with adventures, jokes, and just plain silliness as they took one of the streets that became a road out of town, and then they left the road. While it wasn’t a real road, it did look familiar. Cheese stopped. “You remember this place?”

She looked around at the clearing, the red rocks, and the overlook with the scrub desert stretching before them. “I think so,” she said slowly.

“This is as far as I got outside Ponyville, that first time I tried to leave,” he said, and pulled out a large roll of fabric. “I got this far, and no further, until you joined me. I thought it was a coincidence, but now I think it’s some kind of a line. What do you think?”

She tried bouncing around a bit—a circle forward, a circle backward, a figure eight, and then skipping back and forth as though she were playing hopscotch. “Yep,” she said. “You’re right. The line’s here. Over there is where Ponyville really ends. This is not-Ponyville.” She looked over at Cheese, who was unrolling a blanket by pushing it with his nose, and then placing a lantern filled with fireflies at the edge.

He lifted his head. “And that’s why I brought you here. You made me think of it, when you were talking about Twilight’s home, and your home on the rock farm and Sugarcube Corner, and I thought you’d like to see mine.” He took the picnic basket from her and placed it down on the blanket.

“Not-Ponyville?” said Pinkie, looking out at the scrub desert.

Cheese spun in a circle, his forelegs flung out. “This,” he said. “Not-Ponyville, not-Appleloosa, not-Canterlot; all of this. It’s practically a palace, don’t you think?” he said, laughing. “It’s certainly beautiful enough.” He gestured towards the blanket as gracefully as though he were pulling out a chair. Pinkie settled herself down, her legs tucked under her, as Cheese whirled around to face her. “I guess some would say I’m the Prince of Nowhere.” He dropped down so that he was next to her. “But I wouldn’t. I think I’m something better.”

“What’s that?” said Pinkie, who had never heard him talking like this.

“I’m a party pony,” he said, his body utterly relaxed. “I don’t have to own things. Although I do,” he said thoughtfully. “I guess the hats and the party bomb and all of that stuff does count. Anyway, this is it. It’s my home. All of this is mine.”

Pinkie looked at everything Cheese had gestured at. Not-Everywhere sounded too big for her, but not-Somewhere . . . She noticed a little hill some distance away. It had a soft meadow to roll on, and the sunlight was just beginning to tint it gold. “Could I have that bit?” she said, pointing at it.

“Of course you can!” he said, laughing. “I’d give you all of it, if I could.” He cleared his throat. “But, um, really, it’s everypony’s.” He dove into the picnic basket and pulled the checked cloth over his head. “Oh, hey, you brought sandwiches. Grass sandwiches, too. Boneless 2’s favorite.”

He started pulling food out of the basket, and Pinkie noticed that he didn’t say, “oh, you didn’t have to do this” or anything like it. She did have to do this, and he knew it, so there wasn’t any point in saying so. She didn’t have to explain things. That was such a comfortable thought that she rolled on her back from side to side, legs in the air.

Cheese looked over at her from where he was piling up stuff for a fire—old boxes, broken instruments, crushed party horns, and all the junk party ponies tended to collect, especially after a really epic party—and smiled at her until his eyes crinkled. “Maybe I can’t read you as well as you read me,” he said, “but I know exactly what you mean.” He exploded a cigar to light the fire, dropped back on the blanket next to her, and pushed her the plate of sandwiches. They really were very good sandwiches, she thought, and this was a very good sunset.

“Isn’t Not-Anywhere a lonely place to be?” she wondered aloud. “All by yourself?”

He looked up in surprise. “I’m not alone. I have Boneless 2. And there’s all the ponies all over Equestria when I give parties and play for them. Making them happy is the best thing in the world, isn’t it? I just like coming back here when I’m done.”

She shook her head as she shoved over a basket of chips. She didn’t have to ask if she was right about stallions and salty food. “That sounds too much like the rock farm for me. I guess it’s different when you’re from Manehattan.”

“I’m not from Manehattan,” Cheese said, with his mouth full. “Did I ever say I was? I’m from Bayroan, Neigh Jersey.”

“But I thought you said—”

Cheese swallowed. “When other ponies ask where you’re from, you usually say ‘a rock farm,’ don’t you? You don’t say where. You don’t say, ‘oh, it’s near Nickerlite,’ because they’ll just say “where?”

Pinkie’s eyes bulged. “You knew our rock farm is near Nickerlite?” She stuffed an entire Rainbow Funfetti Chocolate Cotton Candy cupcake in her mouth at once, and then said “mm,” and ate another.

He shrugged. “I said I liked listening to you. Just because your voice is perfect doesn’t mean I tune out the content. So somepony says, ‘oh, Noo Yoke—you mean Manehattan,’ and I got tired of saying “no, Neigh Jersey’ because they just say ‘where?’ or they start making a lot of really annoying jokes, so now I just say, ‘yuh-huh,’ and let it go.”

Pinkie hadn’t heard Cheesie talk so much about himself at one time, or even at all, and she didn’t know why he was doing it now. He was upset and not-upset and relieved, and this time she thought she’d just listen, because she wanted to hear what he was going to say next. He was also thirsty, though, so she pushed over some water first.

“Oh,” he said. “Thanks. We talk a lot where I’m from. Anyhow, there are lots of ponies in Bayroan. The houses are so close together that I could stand on two porches at once back when I was still a colt. But they’re mostly not happy ponies, and I want to make everypony happy as much as you do, so—”

“So you get tired out,” she said. “I see.”

And there was the difference between them, she thought, as the sun slipped below the horizon and the sky grew dark. Cheesie was always going to want to be alone when he wasn’t making other ponies happy, and she was always going to want to be with as many ponies as possible. She was always going to want to live somewhere, and he was always going to want to be not-Somewhere. Thinking about this was beginning to make her sad.

“We don’t all have to be the same, you know,” he said softly. “If all of us were the same, we couldn’t make other ponies happy. We couldn’t spread Joy. Funny’s what we do. And besides, you’re going everywhere anyway, Pinkie Pie.”

“How?” she asked, eating another cupcake, because cupcakes were the best thing when you felt sad.

“Because I’m carrying your magic now,” he said. “I thought that was over when Boneless was –lost—gone—whatever; but now I don’t think so. I have mine, and I have some of yours, too. Every time I see you, even when I think of you, it touches off your magic. There are fillies and colts singing the Smile Song wherever I go. Sometimes they know it before I even get there. There are ponies laughing because of you that you haven’t even met. You matter.”

She looked at him, and deep in his eyes, she saw something or somepony, a blaze of pink; what pure happiness would look like if happiness were a pony. If Cheese had ever met a pony like that, no wonder he was so happy. She thought that maybe if she knew a pony like that, she’d always be happy, too. But something deep inside told her not to ask questions about this. She just wondered at the blaze of pink, and the happiness Cheese was radiating.

She felt him wrapping his tail around her. It wasn’t the involuntary tangling she’d felt before. This was slow and deliberate, and felt very good; like a hug, only better. Maybe cupcakes weren’t the best thing when you were sad.

The darkness was beginning to look beautiful now. It wasn’t sad at all. Out here, in Cheese’s not-Anywhere, the sky was carpeted with stars. “When we were waking up this afternoon,” she said, “and you kissed my nose, you said ‘good morning, Beautiful.’”

Cheese covered his face with his hooves. “I knew you were going to ask about that.”

She didn’t ask anything more. She knew he was going to tell her. She knew with a certainty that he wanted to tell her.

“Pinkie,” said Cheese, “when you wake up first thing in the morning, what color is the sky?”

“Pink. Oh!” Suddenly she realized what he was saying, and felt herself turning an even deeper pink than usual. “The morning sky is pink.”

“Then there’s your answer,” he said, looking at something on the ground—anything that wasn’t her.

“You think of me every morning?”

“Yep. Hard not to, when the sky is that pink!” he said, laughing again, and squeezing her tail with his own. “Every morning, it’s as though I see you running just before the sunrise, and the sky lights up in brilliant pink. I can practically hear your laugh, and sometimes I’d swear that I do.”

Cheese wasn’t looking at her now, but towards what must be the east, almost as though he were expecting something or somepony. “I feel your magic lighting me up, and you fill me with Joy, and I want to run and share it with other ponies and give away as much of it as I can. But before I do, I always say hello and tell you how beautiful you are. ‘Good morning, Beautiful.’”

“Although sometimes,” he added, facing her again and turning as crimson as the fiery sunset they’d just seen, “I say it as though you were here with me. So now you know my stupid little secret.”

He said good morning to her, every morning. She didn’t know that, but she’d somehow known that he must, so why did it feel different when he told her so?

“Did you still want me to kiss you, Pinkie?”

She nodded. Now that it had actually come to this, she found she really was a little nervous.

Did you keep your eyes open or shut or what? First she thought she should keep her eyes open, but Cheesie’s eyes got kinda stare-y like that, and she guessed hers did as well, because he pulled back and rubbed his eyes with his hooves for a while. His muzzle got in the way, and then her muzzle got in the way, until they both began to wonder how other ponies did this at all. Cheese burst out laughing until he rolled onto his back, and Pinkie did, too, because it was so silly. Then he stopped laughing, sat up, and said, “hey,” and wrapped his front leg around her neck and kissed her, just as simple as that. And that wasn’t quite so silly, but it was warm and very, very sweet, sweeter than Rainbow Funfetti Chocolate Cotton Candy cupcakes, and something in her chest hammered, and she wanted to rocket straight up into the sky and explode from all the happy, but she’d have to stop being kissed first and she was enjoying herself right where she was.

Pinkie thought she’d like to see what happened next, but Cheesie said he was really tired and he was going to get some sleep now and she should, too, although Pinkie knew this was a big, fat fib, and that he couldn’t possibly be tired after that long nap this afternoon, and she certainly wasn’t a bit tired herself. She decided she would just pretend to sleep, but really she’d be awake, because she didn’t want to fall asleep in case something exciting happened after all and she would have missed the whole thing. She curled herself up into a rebellious, determined, and very happy little ball, but not before noticing that Cheesie slept on his back. He looked very silly. She giggled.

Yes, Pinkie thought, she definitely had liked being kissed.

~~

Cheese opened one eye and sneaked a glimpse at Pinkie Pie. She was absolutely adorable curled up like that. When she was asleep, it was easier to forget that she was Joy Herself, the Laughter-Bearer, the source of his magic, and his muse. Instead of the bright, almost blinding radiance he’d seen sometimes and which evidently only he saw, she was surrounded by a warm, rosy glow. He might be the only pony who saw that, either, but for an entirely different reason. She looked like what she was: a small, perfectly rounded pink mare, a grown-up version of the cute filly with messy pink curls he’d seen on the day his life changed forever.

She kept doing that, changing his life forever.

He reached out and allowed one curly lock to fall over his hoof. She really was as soft and squeezable as he’d thought, and her coat plusher than he’d imagined, and the overwhelmingly sweet smell of her had made him dizzy, but a good kind of dizzy; the kind of dizzy that made him cling to her tighter and pull her closer. He was always going to admire her, and she’d always be his inspiration, but right now he didn’t want to admire or be inspired. He merely wanted to snuggle. And maybe they would, later, when she was awake.

He kept screwing things up, like agreeing to a Goof-Off or accidentally trying to kiss her, and yet somehow it had all turned out ok. He’d always been surprised when other ponies didn’t take Pinkie seriously, or when they assumed she was too foalish or silly to know what was good for her, but maybe he’d been doing the same thing. Maybe Pinkie was the sort of mare who could make almost anything turn out ok. He could easily believe that.

He could see just a little bit of pre-dawn light now. Soon Celestia would raise the sun and Dawn would tint the world pink: brilliant and radiant as Pinkie Pie, bringing so much Joy with her that every morning he found himself welcoming her with a smile and murmuring, “good morning, Beautiful.” There was a long day of party planning and making other ponies happy ahead of them, and after that, who knew what would happen. They still had all the same problems, but he’d kissed her once, and that was everything.

He smiled. In a few minutes, Pinkie Pie would wake up.

And he knew exactly what he’d say.

Author's Notes:

Nickerlite is the name of the town near the Pie Rock farm in The Rock Farmer's Daughters, by Sketch-Aholic, and too good not to use. I was looking for the name of the town near the Pie Rock farm in Jordan179's stories--I think it is West Dunnich. But yes, it is near there, too. Anyway, I won't insist on it, but Cheese is most definitely from Bayroan.

I don't think I have anything to add, except Happy Summer Sun Celebration, a day late. Thanks to everyone who liked and faved this story and got it in the Feature Box. I suppose caring about that is shallow, but maybe I'm shallow.

Considering that this is such an important moment for Cheese and Pinkie, I wanted to tell about it well, even if it's such a short little story. And now I am going to go and buy myself a well-earned cupcake somewhere.