fandomtownies | Fandom Post Office, Tuesday (October 7)

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Fandom Post Office, Tuesday (October 7)

This was going to be another very quiet, possibly very boring week on the island, Éponine could tell, though that didn't necessarily translate to her having a quiet day at work.

Not when someone had mailed in three dozen individually stamped and labeled helium balloons this week, and she was starting to suspect that someone was just trying to be annoying for fun.

It was a good thing the balloons were so light -- when she called the originating post office to ask about it she was told that the customer had even tried to argue that they should get mailed for free because they'd probably make the mail truck lighter -- and came with strings. They weren't too difficult to handle this way. If they had been, she might very well have ended up "accidentally" popping some of them out of irritation before lunchtime.

So yes, there was one amused but perplexed mail carrier making her rounds of the island today with a large cluster of multicolored balloons tied to the strap of her mail bag and bobbing overhead. All things considered, that was relatively normal.

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No, there isn't a party going on, sorry.

You can't have a balloon, though. Maybe. Unless one of them is addressed to you.

[OOC: You can totally mod one of them being addressed to you by accident, even.]

The "they should be free because they'll make the rest of the mail lighter" argument was apparently actually used once. I didn't bookmark the site where I read it, unfortunately, but if you Google "weird things people have mailed" you should be able to find it on the first page.

And there was Pinkie, watching Eponine go by, her eyes wide as actual literal saucers.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" she squealed, prancing in place. "THAT'S SO MANY BALLOONS!"

Éponine had to pause at that, because one simply did not fail to notice a pink prancing pony squealing in excitement. It just wasn't allowed.

"They are bright, aren't they?" she asked, laughing. "S'pose they ought to cheer up anyone who gets them. Maybe that's why they were sent."

"Oh yessirreebob!" Pinkie said with tremendous enthusiasm. "Balloons are just about the bestest ways to cheer up someone in the gloomy dumps ever!"

"And why's that?" To her credit, that was only half cynicism; the other half was genuine curiosity. "What's it that makes them so much better than other ways? The colors, is it, or the way they float?"

"Both," Pinkie said with great authority. "They're just so light and cheerful and usually they mean there's a party!"

Éponine tilted her head back to look thoughtfully at the balloons overhead, and probably looked slightly like a flamingo or some other bird.

"Well now, maybe that's it! Maybe all these people are being invited to a party! What a funny invitation, though, seeing as there's nothing written on them other than an address -- perhaps it's some sort of code."

And now she was wondering if all these people were being notified about developments in some sort of crime plot.

"Like a mystery party!" Pinkie cheered. She bounced on her hooves like her legs had turned to springs, trying to jump up level with the balloons and read them. "Who're they for?"

Éponine semi-subtly tugged on the balloons' strings to bring them down to a more readable level because the bouncing was a little bit scary.

"Different folks. Haven't got them all memorized, though. D'you want to see if one of them's for you?"

"Oo!" Pinkie did want to, yes! "Do you think someone might've sent me a balloon-gram? Really really?"

It would make her entire day.

"Don't see why not, I've plenty of them here," Éponine said, waving a hand. "So it isn't all that unlikely one might be for you, is it? Have a look."

She wrapped the balloons' strings around her hand several times and held the whole bunch out, like an oversized, floating, rubber bouquet.

[[Totally up to you if she finds one!]]

Pinkie popped up on her hind legs and started sifting through the balloon bunch with her hooves and a look of intense concentration, up to and including her tongue poking thoughtfully out of her mouth.

Then she dropped back down to all fours with a melancholy sigh. "Nope," she said sadly. "None of them say Pinkie Pie."

She heaved another sigh, then abruptly brightened. "But that just means there's more balloons for everypony else! I mean, I already have plenty."

"Well, that's all right, if you've got some, but where d'you keep them?" Éponine asked offhandedly. "You don't seem to have any right now. It's good that you don't mind, though. Some folks get so disappointed when they see me coming and I haven't got anything for them today! I tell them there isn't anything I can do about it, it's not up to me how fast the mail travels to get here, and I can't help it if some great lizard tries to chew on it at some stop along the way, but oh, how fast their faces go from excited to sad!"

She unwound the balloon strings from her hand and watched the bunch of them bob back up overhead. "Well, there's a few people around here who won't be disappointed today, at least."

"Well, most of them I keep in my apartment," Pinkie said. "And I've got lots stashed all over the island in case of balloon emergencies. And some of them are loaded into my party cannon or the welcome wagon. And I always have a bunch of them with me wherever I go." She pulled a suitcase from -- you know, it really is best just not to ask where she pulled things from -- and opened it up, releasing a slew of festively colored and shaped balloons. "Balloons are super easy to pack!" she said with a squeaky grin.

"It's good you have some fun deliveries to make today," she said. "I guess being a mail pony isn't always very much fun, is it?"

Éponine burst out laughing, too intrigued by the sudden influx of balloons to ask where the suitcase came from (luckily). "I don't know that it would be so easy if I tried! It would be nice, though, that sort of thing might come in handy."

She twitched the strings in her hand and made the balloons -- hers, that was -- dance a bit. "It isn't," she said, almost conspiratorial. "Sometimes the mail's awfully heavy, and slogging up and down those stairs can get tiresome fast. I don't mind, though. Mostly I don't, anyhow."

"Is it your special destiny? That's usually why ponies join the Express back in Equestria."

"Special destiny?" Éponine couldn't help a disbelieving laugh; to some degree she'd cheated destiny by being here. "No, it's only my job. It's what I know how to do, and they'll pay me for it, so it's what I do."

"Oh. Well, I guess that's okay. You humans don't get cutie marks, so you don't really get to know for sure what your special destiny is." Pinkie shrugged. "It must be tough, but I guess also pretty exciting. You get to just keep trying new things if you want to."

"Cutie mark?" Éponine repeated, frowning. "It tells you what your destiny is? But what happens if you don't care for what that turns out to be?"

"See? Like this!" Pinkie twisted to show off the trio of balloons on her flank. She blinked at the question. "Your special destiny is what makes you uniquely you. Why would anypony not like the thing that makes them them?"

"Say my special destiny was to be something awful?" This was a purely hypothetical question. Really. "Even if I disagreed with it -- would I be stuck?"

"But if you thought it was awful then it wouldn't be you," Pinkie reasoned. "Someponies' destinies involve being snooty-patootie ponies, which I think is gross, but that's 'cause it's not my destiny and I understand the power of friendship. But I'm pretty sure they think being snooty-patootie is super duper great and fun."

"Perhaps your idea of destiny isn't the same as mine." Éponine considered for a moment, then laughed. "I thought it was something like learning you're to inherit a fortune, or have something horrid happen to you, but what do I know! I didn't have any lessons about that, only what I've read in books."

Half of which were potboiler fantasies of dubious quality, so . . .

"Well, books are loads of fun, but they never get anything right."

"Surely some of them do get things at least partly right," insisted Éponine, "otherwise what's the point of studying?"

"I've never been able to figure that out." She was not the book-pony, no.

"You don't like to read?"

She still didn't get that, no.

"Oh, no, I love stories!" Pinkie assured her. "I just don't use them to learn things."

That was what Twilight Sparkle was for.

"You haven't got any books on history or numbers or anything like that where you come from?" Éponine asked. "Or have you got other ways of learning?"

Man, Éponine was asking all the tough questions, wasn't she.

"I like to learn things by talking to ponies," Pinkie said. "Or by trying to do them!"

She was kind of a pain that way, yes.

"That's what I used to do," said Éponine, who hadn't actually learned much more than what she needed to do to be useful in her father's various illicit attempts at moneygrubbing, and still resented it. "There's so many things I've yet to have a chance to try, though, that've been written about in books, and I do like reading, so may as well read about them! I've never been to the South Pole, you see, and I don't know that I will. It's awfully cold there. I read about it. So I know, and didn't even have to freeze to find out!"

She trailed off, humming softly, and stared into the distance for a moment before snapping her attention back to Pinkie. "But I s'pose that's what you're at, too, only by talking rather than reading?"

She knew better than to ask how Pinkie would turn the pages, anyway, after three games of Cards Against Humanity.

Yeah, there was a lot about Pinkie that was probably best left unasked.

"But books are sometimes full of stuff that ponies just make up," she pointed out. "How do you know if it's true if you don't try it out or meet the ponies for yourself?"

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Fandom Post Office, Tuesday (October 7)

Mod Your Post Office [10/7]

Talk to Éponine [10/7]

OOC [FPO 10/7]

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