Chapter 7: Homecoming

As the cab pulled up to the farm Pinkie felt her heart drop, seeing the fields being worked over by two familiar looking ponies while an old stallion sat on the porch of the farmhouse. Pinkie carefully stepped out of the cab, nodding to the stallion that was pulling it with a smile before turning to face the farm again. It had been years since she's been here, the most she's heard about it was in letters from her mother, but they stopped almost a year ago. When the old stallion on the porch saw her coming up her shouted to the ponies working the fields, waving his hoof towards her so they knew she was there.

"Pinkamena!" a grey toned pony shouted as she came running towards Pinkie, jumping at her in an attempt to hug her. Pinkie didn't make any attempt to dodge the hug, so she felt herself get pulled from side to side as the grey pony pulled her into a tight hug, soon being joined by the other pony that had been working the fields. The old stallion that had been sitting on the porch came over and smiled at Pinkie, his tired face showing years of hard work.

"Welcome home"

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"So you guys defeated the Changelings?!" Inky asked loudly as her jaw dropped.

"Well, not really us, but we were in the room for this one" Pinkie replied as she thought about the wedding disaster, "I got to use my party cannon as a weapon"

"How well did that work out?" Blinky asked from the other side of the room, her hooves crossed in front of her.

"Well, it made a fun noise, and blew the Changelings away with confetti" Pinkie said as she laughed, remembering the pile of Changelings that were unconscious and covered in tiny strips of paper. Her two sisters looked at her in disbelief as their father came into the room with a teapot on a plate.

"Sounds like you've been busy" Clyde said as he placed the teapot down, moving to  pour each of them a cup.

"Yeah, it's been fun" Pinkie said as she started to look around, "Where's mom?" Her sisters froze at the mention of their mother and Clyde just looked down into the teacup as he continued to pour into it. Pinkie noticed that something was off and decided to get up, moving towards an odd looking cabinet in the corner of the room. As she got closer Pinkie felt an odd sadness fall over her, making her feel the urge to open the doors.

"Don't open that" Clyde said flatly as he put his hoof against the cabinet, holding it closed. Pinkie leaned back away for a moment before looking back at her sisters, but both of them had looks of pain on their faces. When Pinkie looked back to her father she saw a tear run down his face, and it all made sense to her.

"Mom's..." Pinkie started to choke on her words, "Dead, isn't she?" Silence followed Pinkie's statement as her father moved to sit in his chair, and empty one right beside him. Inky and Blinky looked down at the ground, looking up slightly as Pinkie moved to sit back down where she had been before. They continued to stay silent until Pinkie felt a kick, making her jump in her seat.

"Are you okay?" Inky asked, her eyes finally registering the abnormal bump on Pinkie's belly, "Pinkie, are you..."

"Pregnant?" Pinkie asked back, "Yeah, that's why I'm here"

"When did this happen?" Clyde asked quietly as he looked up, his eyes squinted as he looked Pinkie over.

"A few months ago, at a party I threw for the Apple family" Pinkie explained, "I ended up, um..."

"Ok, we get that part, what happened after that" Blinky said, her cheeks flushing slightly as she thought about what had happened. Pinkie thought about it for a second before continuing her explanation.

"Well, I went through the first few months of pregnancy, told the father about it, and then decided to come here before winter so I could tell you guys" Clyde looked at Pinkie closely, thinking quietly to himself as he looked over her body, trying to see if anything else was wrong with her, but he couldn't tell.

"So why did you want to come to us now?" Clyde asked, his eyes darting to the cabinet behind Pinkie for a split second.

"I never knew anything was wrong before" Pinkie admitted sadly, "When her letters stopped I thought she just forgot to send them once, and I never got a letter about..."

"We forgot to send one..." Inky said sadly as she looked at the cabinet sadly.

"It's okay" Pinkie said with a sad smile before continuing her story, "I wanted to know if you would want to spend the holidays with me this year, considering"

"What about the father, shouldn't he be with you?" Inky asked, raising an eyebrow as she thought about how odd it seemed.

"He's from Appleloosa, he won't be able to make it to Ponyville in time, so I just thought..." Pinkie trailed off as she looked up at her father. Clyde stared back at her for a moment before smiling, which lifted her spirits. Her two sisters looked at each other happily before they ran over to Pinkie, eager to get her set up in her old room again. Their father smiled happily as the three sisters ran up the stairs to the room while laughing happily. Once they were out of sight he got up and walked up to the cabinet, opening it just enough to see his wife's smiling face, with a certain pink pony with a fluffy mane just below it.

"Hey dad, where's the bed sheets?!" Inky shouted from upstairs, snapping Clyde out of his thoughts.

"In the hall closet, where they always are!" Clyde shouted back as he shut the cabinet.

"Oh, yeah, I forgot about that!" Inky shouted back, followed by a laugh from the other two ponies upstairs, which made Clyde smile again. He went back to his chair and began to sip his tea, laughing from time to time as he heard his daughters talking from upstairs, their own laughs echoing throughout the house for most of the night.