"Pinkie," Maud said, "I'm glad you could meet us on such short notice."

The two sisters were sitting for a cup of coffee (tea, in Maud's case) at a small table in the corner of Sugarcube Corner. A persnickety individual might have wondered how it was a bakery could itself be a corner and be possessed of a corner at the same time, and Maud was one such pony, but luckily had aired her grievances about the misleading naming convention months earlier, and reserved future griping for her monthly post-cards.

"No problem!" Pinkie said. Her coffee was barely identifiable underneath a towering hat of whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles. Pinkie took a big sip with one hoof on either side of the cup, and when she lowered it, she had a giant whipped cream mustache. She giggled and licked it off.

Maud's expression remained as unchanging as the thousand year old stone face of... some cliff, that had been there for a thousand years.

"Have you ever noticed how many important conversations happen around coffee?" Pinkie asked, tilting her head. "It feels like somepony can't think of a more interesting setting for conflict to take place! Hee hee!"

"Pinkie, I didn't ask you here to talk about that." Maud's deadpan could have cut through the drone of a dozen chatty customers, but it was oddly cold in a room without any background noise. "There's something important on which I need your advice. You're my close family and I thought it would be suitable to come to you for counsel."

"Yeah, I'm great at all that stuff!" Pinkie said, her mouth half-stuffed full with muffin. "I even get asked by Pinkie's from other dimensions to fill in for them when their sisters need advice!"

Maud would have raised an eyebrow, but her facial expression was permanently fixed. Like a rock.

"I left Mudbriar. Last week."

"I'm sorry," Pinkie said, "could you repeat that? The band kind of picked up all at once."

Well, suddenly, there was a band. Thirty-two ponies in marching uniforms, storming in a noisy circle around the inside of the bakery. Confetti. Balloons. A giant cake with Pinkie dancing in the center.

"Pinkie," Maud said. She took a sip of her tea. "I'd like you to be serious for a moment."

"I'm serious," Pinkie said. Her eyes shifted sideways to the 'SO LONG, STICK IN THE MUD!' banner draped above the bakery exit. Her eyes shifted back to Maud, who was glaring at her. Well, she was always glaring, more or less... but Pinkie could tell when she was really glaring.

"Eheheheh... do you want me to take that down?" Pinkie asked.

"Just sit down and listen, please. And tell the band to turn it down a little."

"But they're getting paid by the decibel!"

"Pinkie."

"Alright alright!" Pinkie waved a hoof with a conductor's baton, and the band dipped in volume until they were barely above the level of background jazz on burnt out coffee-shop speakers. "There," Pinkie said. "Happy?"

"Presently, yes. I'm overjoyed to have met someone I have even more in common with than Mudbriar. He took the news very well. Said he wanted to travel. Somewhere without any bothersome colours or tourist attractions."

"That sounds great." Pinkie darted to the kitchen to highlight the date on her calendar, and on the day next to it, drew fifteen lines of varying width all exploding out from 'SO LONG PARTY'. Pinkie circled it three times and smiled. "So what do you need my help with, exactly?"

"Well," Maud said, her dreary voice carrying through the band-noise to the kitchen with ease, "I'm a little uncertain how to proceed. While my feelings for Mudbriar are mostly gone, I still find myself thinking of him sometimes. At the same time, my new partner is so unlike anyone I've ever met... he really 'rocks my world', so to speak."

Pinkie nodded with her head sticking out from around the corner of the kitchen entrance-way. Somehow a chef's hat had lodged itself atop her mane.

"Uh-huh," she said. "I think I've got it. You wanna get rid of all your pent up feelings for your old squeeze and move on to a hot new flame that will get your igneous moving like sedimentary! Am I right?"

"I don't think that rock pun was necessary," Maud said flatly. "In addition to being factually inaccurate, my new partner—"

"They're not Mudbriar, right?"

"Hmm?"

"Your new partner... they're not, like, Mudbriar in surprise or anything, are they? Or... like, Mudbriar wearing a funny hat?"

"Mudbriar would never wear a funny hat," Maud said. Her tea was cold, which meant she could finally drink it the way she liked it. Sip. Mhm. Stone cold.

"Right," Pinkie said. "So what are you asking again? Also, do you want to come to a party tomorrow? Totally unrelated to what we're talking about."

"I want to know how to get him to open up," Maud said quietly. "They're so... reserved. Like a quarry teeming with geodesic formations begging to be uncovered."

"Uh... huh. Well... have you tried talking to them?"

Maud tilted her head ever so-slightly to the right.

"Yes," she said flatly. "I'm very good at conversation. But for some reason they just won't let down their wall." Maud sighed. "I'm beginning to wonder if maybe they're just using me for s—"

"Woah, woah, okay now, let's not get carried away," Pinkie said, carrying an interrupting cake. "First, I'm not sure I need to hear about my little sister's... and second... just talk to him! Did you come here with a real question, or was this just a weird contrivance to talk about your sex life?"

"I don't think so," Maud said, holding her tea-cup curiously. "Although, now that you mention it, that has been the biggest change since leaving Mudbriar. You'd wonder sometimes if he knew what all the parts were for... I feel like I'm a little filly again, exploring her youthful awakening in the company of a strong, voracious, rock hard—"

"Ah ah ahh! I think that's enough." Pinkie had plugged her ears up with cotton candy, which made it look like her mane had expanded in a downward and sideways direction. "I think I get the picture. I'm very glad for the two of you, and hope you'll be able to make it to the party tomorrow—"

"Is it a special party?" Maud asked nonchalantly as Pinkie shoved her out the door from behind. "The two of us were just talking yesterday about how we'd love to meet new couples, and, after getting to know them sufficiently, invite them to our bedroom so we can—"

"That's nice have fun goodbye now!" Pinkie yelled as she slammed the door shut. She wound a chain lock tight around the handle, then bolted it shut for good measure.

"Phew," she said, slumping to the ground with her back against the door.

"And here I thought Maud's 'erotic poetry' phase was as bad as it was going to get..."

"Well, I tried talking to Pinkie," Maud said. She was sitting on the opposite side of a flat rock carved to look like a table. Or it was a table made out of rock. Definitions can be pernicious. "I don't think she was very receptive. Maybe I should have lead with the sex stuff."

Across the rock table was a large rock. Maud regarded it affectionately as she sipped her tea.

"You're right," Maud said after a while. "I'd guessed after that blog post she accidentally removed from 'private' that she'd be more open to discussion of a sexual nature. Apparently this is something we'll have to discuss with somepony else."

The large rock sat unmovingly in its place, as rocks are wont to do. If anypony sees a rock moving, please notify the authorities at your soonest convenience.

Maud sighed.

"Yes," she said, "I do think of him sometimes. Pining, in a way. It's very hard to move on all of a sudden. I've never been swept off my hooves like that before."

Maud raised one of her hooves blandly as a visual example. The rock sat there. Like a rock.

"Oh, Tom," Maud said, setting down her tea and standing up from the table, "I can't keep myself off you any longer. You're irresistible, staring at me with your stern, stony gaze."

Tom the rock sat there. Like a rock.

"Oh, Tom," Maud said again, throwing herself across the table and onto the large rock named Tom. "Take me now!"

As the camera panned out, the pegasus holding it wondered what under Celestia's sun they'd done to deserve a job like this.

Author's Notes:

i'm very sorry