Of Delicate Things... And Hard Work...

Chapters

Admission
Gratitude
Fear
Honesty
Regret

Admission

Of Delicate Things… And Hard Work…
Chapter 1 - Admission

She’d been watching Applejack tend to the apples one particularly sunny morning. She was such a hard working pony, and it was really something to watch. She always admired Applejack’s strength; she never backed down from anything, she wasn’t afraid to speak up for herself or for her friends. She sort of envied that tenacity, but more than that she loved it.

She sighed, wishing she could work up the courage to say something to her. It made perfect sense in her head; Applejack was a nice mare with a really good heart. She was good with animals, at home in nature, and she could be so gentle and so delicate when she wanted to be.

And to think she’d almost left Ponyville out of shame. How could she be ashamed of trying her best? She still won medals, and still did her best. It didn’t matter that she didn’t bring home any blue ribbons, to Ponyville she would always be a blue ribbon pony. It was so sad to see her so shamed by it. She really was a wonderful pony and there just wasn’t any other like her.

She had spoken some of her heart that very day, but she couldn’t finish the thought then. It was okay, at least it told Applejack some of the truth and it did help her to feel better. Fluttershy would never forget those feelings, that worry she felt about losing Applejack. She was too important for that; she couldn’t bear it if that happened.

How could she ever tell her what she really felt inside? She was so shy, so afraid to speak her mind to other ponies. She doubted she could ever do it.

• • •

The apples were coming down easily today, but she sure didn’t want to be here doing this. She wanted to go and see Fluttershy. Ever since her friends came and brought her back to Ponyville, ever since Fluttershy said those beautiful words. It meant more to her than she had let on, she had always cared a great deal about Fluttershy.

She was a delicate thing, so fragile and so gentle. She spoke so quietly; and that made her voice so comforting. She had trouble standing up for herself, so she could use someone to stick up for her. Applejack wanted to be that someone. She just wanted to protect Fluttershy from everything that could ever hurt her or upset her.

She loved her beautiful flowing pink mane, and how it hung over one eye, and how Fluttershy would hide behind that mane when she was uncomfortable. There wasn’t much she did that wasn’t just adorable and charming. She was graceful, elegant, and so peaceful.

How could a pony so delicate and graceful possibly like a pony as rough and tumble as me? I’m all into rodeos and I work at my apple orchard, and I’m always dirty. She probably feels uncomfortable around me. Thought Applejack.

She really wished she weren’t herself today. She’d give anything to be the type of pony that Fluttershy might notice.

• • •

She swallowed hard, and looked around for a place to hide. Applejack was approaching the tree she was in and she had seconds to figure out what she was going to do. She took a deep breath and opened her wings, and glided down to the ground. It startled Applejack.

“Oh my, I’m so sorry!” she cried softly. She hadn’t meant to upset Applejack.

She wasn’t sure what to say; well actually she was completely sure but lacked the courage. Instead, she waited for Applejack to say something.

“Hey there sugarcube,” she began, and Flutterhy’s heart skipped a beat. She knew that Applejack used it a lot, but she loved it when Applejack called her that. “You okay?”

“Oh… Um… Yes,” she said quietly.

Applejack was always glad to see Fluttershy, but she never really knew how to talk to her properly. She was always so concerned with the mare’s feelings, and how delicate she was, that she found herself at a loss for the right words. She tried to be soft though, to have a gentle side of her own.

“Um… Applejack?” said Fluttershy, concerned. Applejack had been staring at her without saying anything for the last two minutes.

Applejack snapped back into reality. “Oh, sorry sugarcube,” she said. She really couldn’t think of anything else to say. She wanted to say so much, but none of that seemed right to say.

“You wanna help me out?” she asked, sort of hoping she’d say yes and spend some extra time around the farm with her. At the same time, though she had helped there before, she wasn’t sure it was the right environment for Fluttershy.

“Oh.. Yes!” answered Fluttershy, with a small but recognizable spark of enthusiasm in her quiet voice.

• • •

It was a pretty good day at work for Applejack; it was made much better by having Fluttershy around. She went home humming, and a bit dirty, but she seemed very happy on her way out. They had shared a hug before she left, and as tired as she was it really picked her up.

These kinds of days didn’t happen very often, and she needed one. She headed back to the house, and greeted her family as she entered. She was exhausted, and she needed to rest after all that work. At least, she thought, she would have thoughts of the day to welcome her into her dreams.

• • •

Fluttershy was humming the entire way home, she was glad she didn’t have to make up an excuse for sticking around. After all, she wasn’t very good at it. She was dirty, and tired, and oh so very happy. She had only ever worked so hard one other time, and that was during Applebuck Season. But this time, she got to have alone time with Applejack.

She rested on her couch and sighed happily. She couldn’t remember feeling happier, but then she reminded herself that they were only friends and that while they had spent a lot of alone time together, it didn’t mean anything.

A gaze at the ceiling helped her to remember all of the events of the day. The conversations weren’t much, but they never needed to be when she was with Applejack. It was more than enough just to be around that pony, she made Fluttershy feel so safe and so happy.

She looked around her cottage, and while there was certainly no shortage of animal friends, she never felt more alone. She had always liked that about the location of her home, it was quiet and out of the way and avoided a lot of pony traffic. Still, there was one pony she wouldn’t mind seeing right now.

• • •

She tossed and turned in her bed for hours, she couldn’t stop thinking about Fluttershy. She had to tell her, somehow. Oh, but first she might want to make a few changes to herself. She was much too rugged for such a delicate pony.

She was never much for that frilly stuff, never liked wearing a dress or being girlish. She was perfectly comfortable being herself, but she couldn’t see that attracting Fluttershy. She really needed to change herself a bit; perhaps the best start would be visiting Rarity. If anypony could teach her to be more ladylike it was Ponyville’s fashionista.

That was going to have to be it. Tomorrow she would go to the Carousel Boutique and get a dress and some lessons on behaving like a lady. She needed that if she stood any chance with Fluttershy. How would she explain any of this to Rarity though? She couldn’t very well tell her the truth, and she had no idea what else to say.

Oh well, she’d figure something out, she was sure of that.

• • •

“Darling! What brings you to Carousel Boutique?” Rarity asked excitedly. She rarely saw Applejack there on any fashion business; she wasn’t that type of pony. If she ever did show up, it was usually with a delivery of appletastic treats.

Today, though, was an unannounced visit. So Rarity was more than a little curious, and excited. Did Applejack finally want a proper dress? Oh that would be so wonderful!

“Uh… Well…,” she started, feeling quite a bit foolish all of a sudden. She knew why she was here, but she suddenly realized she had no idea how to ask. Still, it was important that she did. She had to, she couldn’t back down now. “Ah… um… Ah I need s-some advice…,” she stammered.

Rarity blinked, she was taken aback. It wasn’t something Applejack really did, coming to her for advice. She appreciated that Applejack was strong willed and plenty happy with herself as she was, so what advice could Rarity possibly offer he now?

“Ah’m… not real ladylike, am ah?” she asked, pushing her way inside.

Rarity blinked, pushing one’s way into a place certainly wasn’t ladylike. “Well Dear, not all of the time, no,” she offered, shutting her door as she trotted after Applejack.

“Why?” she asked, she was definitely curious.

“Ah… um…” she didn’t know how to answer. She knew the answer, just didn’t know how to say it and she wasn’t sure that she wanted to. Still, she had to say something. “Ah just don’t feel like ah know how to be ladylike, tha’s all,” she said.

“Oh, well, that’s easy to fix darling,” Rarity said, smiling. She had a few ideas in mind. “I think the first thing we ought to do is outfit you properly. First of all, take off that hat, won’t you?” she spoke gently, but she was firm. She knew what she had to do. Applejack needed a proper dress and a lesson or two in proper elocution.

Applejack complied, taking off her hat and tossing it across the room. It landed on one of Rarity’s mannequins, positioning perfectly on the crown. Rarity frowned, for while that had been impressive, it wasn’t especially ladylike.

“Oh dear, no you mustn’t do things like that if you are to be ladylike,” Rarity scolded.

Applejack blushed; this might not be as easy as she thought. She had to really restrain herself if she was going to be ready for Fluttershy. She sighed and looked at Rarity. “Sorry,” she said simply.

“Oh no dear, you are still learning after all!” Rarity couldn’t help her enthusiasm, it was about time Applejack had tried this. She only wondered what took so long, but at least the day was here finally.

The minutes collected into hours and the hours seemed like eternities unto themselves, this was real torture for her. She was walking with poise, speaking with elegance, and Celestia help her, she was grooming herself and putting on a dress.

By the time she was through, she didn’t look herself at all. She found that her hair shined from the thorough cleaning Rarity gave it, and it was tied in a French braid from the back of her head down to the very end. The same was done to her tail. She had her bangs brushed into an elegant swirl, and she was wearing a baby blue dress set with emeralds (“Darling, they’ll bring out your eyes!”) and she felt ridiculous.

“Ah…,” she stopped herself, took a deep breath, and started over again. “I’m not sure about this, Rarity.”

“Oh nonsense, you look simply darling and you are unquestionably a lady!” chimed Rarity. She was proud of her work, the entire package. The dress was fabulous, of course, but that was hardly the work she was admiring right now.

• • •

It was a quiet day, but then every day was quiet at the edge of town in her little cottage. She loved it that way; the silence was very comforting to her. It was also very calming for her animal friends, with whom she had shared her deepest secret.

She sighed, and looked at Angel.

“Do you think she’ll ever notice me…?” she asked of Angel, who responded with a frown and a shake of his head. Angel was quite blunt, although even that would sometimes find its way over Fluttershy’s head.

Fluttershy sighed again, and looked down at the floor.

Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock.

Fluttershy jumped, as always, at the sound of knocking at her door. She had wonderful friends, and they did pay her visits, but somehow she could never get used to ponies knocking on her door. She took a breath and walked to the door, opening it timidly.

What she saw standing outside caused her eyes to shrink. What in the world was Applejack doing?

Why did she look like that? It was absurd. It wasn’t her at all.

“Um… Hi…,” said Fluttershy for lack of any other response coming to mind that felt appropriate to share. She still couldn’t believe her eyes. Applejack was standing there, more done up than she ever had been in her life. Even going to the Grand Galloping Gala, she had just worn some spiced up work clothes that Rarity had prepared for her. Why on earth would she be dressed like this?

“Wh…why are you…?” stammered Fluttershy. She really didn’t want to hurt Applejack’s feelings.

Applejack blinked, and swallowed. She felt like a real foal standing there in that dress, she had no idea what to say. She came here, and hadn’t so much as planned the first word. She really didn’t know what she expected to happen, and suddenly she couldn’t help herself. She turned and began to gallop away.

Fluttershy blinked, and stepped back, startled. What was that about? Why did Applejack run? Was it something she said? Oh dear, did she hurt Applejack’s feelings? Oh she couldn’t bare it if Applejack were angry with her.

• • •

She had taken her dress off and thrown it on the floor of her room, and now she was a wreck. She was very angry with herself for what a complete disaster that was. She pulled her hair out of its braiding and let it just fall flat against her coat. She sat there in her room and stared at the mirror.

“Stupid… stupid stupid stupid…,” she said to her reflection. She closed her eyes and shook her head and decided it would be best if she just went to bed. She wasn’t used to feeling like such a foal or doing such ridiculous things for anypony, she’d never been like this before.

She wasn’t used to this sort of feeling; she didn’t exactly know how to handle it.

She just climbed into her bed and buried her face in her pillow. She needed to just forget this whole embarrassing ordeal; it wouldn’t do to dwell on it.

How could she not dwell on it? She’d showed up at Fluttershy’s house looking like a foal and then turned tail and ran. Could she ever face Fluttershy again?

• • •

A few days had gone by, and Applejack had chosen to remain at the farm for all of them. She worked harder than ever, trying to just lose herself in the effort. It was working too; she was starting to forget her embarrassment as she kicked more trees and carried heavier bunches of apples back to her cart.

• • •

She hadn’t seen Applejack in days, she wasn’t even around town selling apples or spending time with any of the other girls. She was growing concerned with each passing second, and she wanted to know what was going on. It wasn’t like Applejack to stay hidden away like this; she loved spending time with her friends and having a good time when she wasn’t working.

She had even missed a party of Pinkie Pie’s, and that was even less like her. All the girls loved Pinkie Pie’s parties, nopony knew how to party harder and have more fun. Something must be terribly wrong for Applejack to be this absent for this long, and she needed to find out what.

It was early Monday morning after a week of Applejack’s absence that she decided to take action proper. She had gathered her courage, and this was very important to her and even more important: Applejack wasn’t herself.

She took off for Sweet Apple Acres just after the sun rose into the sky, you could count on Applejack being up early to harvest the apples. She flew through the air, the wind pushing her mane behind her gracefully and rustling her feathers.

The orchards were expansive and the trees rather numerous. It was always a sight to see from the air, the farm nearly dwarfed Ponyville and Applejack still didn’t quite manage to make ends meet. Still, the Apples were a close knit family and that was always so nice to see. She felt it must have made it easier to work day after day to think that she was taking care of Granny Smith and Apple Bloom with Big Macintosh’s help.

She approached the farm fast, scanning over the fields of trees to see if she could spot Applejack as she moved. All over the land there were bare trees and fallen leaves, the grass was looking a bit trampled down from wheels and hooves. She could see that Applejack had far outdone herself this week; the work looked to be complete. She decided instead to look around for any trees that still had apples in them, for this would most certainly be where Applejack was.

As she continued to scan she began to lose heart, there really were no trees still bearing apples. She decided that she must ask at the door, perhaps Applejack was inside and resting after so much hard work. If that were so, if Applejack really were resting, she had decided that she wouldn’t interrupt her.

She landed gently in front of the door to the Apple family house, and gazed at it timidly. She took a deep breath, and rapped on the door quietly. It wasn’t long before Apple Bloom answered the door, and seeing it was Fluttershy, she welcomed her in straight away.

“Sure is nice of ya to stop in fer a visit!” said Apple Bloom.

“Oh… yes…,” replied Fluttershy.

She had momentarily forgotten what she was doing here, but had remembered from the moment she didn’t see Applejack inside. She was disappointed to see that blonde farm pony wasn’t in the house, but it wasn’t going to stop her. She decided to ask after her, which would sound innocent, right?

“Um… Do you know where Applejack is…?” she asked, as timid as ever she was.

“Nnnope,” replied Big Macintosh.

• • •

She remembered it perfectly, the swamp land that was Froggy Bottom Bog. It was the place Fluttershy was going the day Twilight Sparkle was learning about Pinkie Pie’s weird ability to predict things. Applejack had known for a long time that you could surely depend on Pinkie Pie’s sense to tell you when something was about to happen, bad or good. So when she got a severe case of the shivers, and said that whatever was going to happen would be happening at Froggy Bottom Bog, Applejack felt a pang of concern that she was sure no one else shared.

She never realized how important Fluttershy was to her until that day, when she was suddenly faced with the possibility she might get hurt, or worse. She couldn’t let that happen, she had taken off so fast she had barely time to think about what she was doing, or what she’d do when she got there.

Yeah, that was a pretty scary day. It was such a relief when she got there, and Fluttershy was alright. She was safe, and taking care of her frog friends.

It was here that she really understood how she felt, what Fluttershy meant to her, and how happy she felt whenever Fluttershy was around. She had fallen for that delicate mare, with her gentle voice and accidental grace.

She looked at the muddy swamplands, bubbling and misting everywhere. It was a strange place to think of so fondly, what pony does that? She had associated this mess of sludge and damp botany with such a beautiful face, she wondered if that was insulting?

She rested on a rock, and took in the pungent smells of the bog and closed her eyes. She tried to visualize Fluttershy standing over the other end of the bog, helping her frog friends to their new home. She could see herself running up and seeing Fluttershy safe.

Even now, she sighed with relief at the sight of it. She started to consider returning home, she was covered in mud and sweat, and she was tired. She had worked so hard all week, almost as hard as she had done during Applebuck Season, when she refused anypony else’s help like a silly prideful thing.

Alright, now it was really time to go home. She’d been here all day, and she hadn’t bothered to even tell her family where she was going. It wouldn’t do to worry them any longer than she already had, that just wasn’t fair.

• • •

As she left the Apple family home, she waved and thanked them for their hospitality. The door slammed shut, and she trotted slowly away, she didn’t feel like flying just then. She was lost in worry about Applejack. Where was she? Why?

The thoughts just continued to pile on top of her, feeling heavier and heavier until she couldn’t take it any longer and she let loose a few tears. She wanted to know that Applejack as okay and as much as Granny Smith reassured her that Applejack was plenty strong and could take care of herself she really didn’t feel that much more comfortable.

Fluttershy had considered how hard Applejack must have worked to take care of the orchards in a week, and she supposed that she must be very tired now. Oh, I can’t let her stay out there all alone and tired and feeling helpless.

With that thought, Fluttershy’s wings opened suddenly and she took off with a burst of speed. She soared over Ponyville and over paths leading out of Ponyville. It wasn’t until she was clear of Ponyville completely that she caught sight of a familiar orange pony. Although still just a distant speck on the horizon, she was familiar to Fluttershy.

She changed direction, and started heading toward the orange speck. She had to know what was wrong; she had to take care of Applejack. She suddenly wished she had Rainbow’s speed and agility, and then she could get to Applejack so much faster and help her that much sooner.

• • •

Applejack was startled when Fluttershy touched down on the ground right next to her, and began to pace with her at a trot even though she was out of breath. She stopped, and blinked.

“Fluttershy? What are you doing here?” she asked, honestly perplexed.

“Oh, Applejack, what are you doing here?” Fluttershy countered, suddenly feeling just a bit more brazen than usual.

She needed to know, Applejack was hurting and she couldn’t let her suffer alone. She couldn’t let her suffer at all.

Applejack swallowed. She had a good answer to that question, one she was too afraid to share. She searched inside her head for something, anything that would justify her coming out this far, but it was no good. “I…I…”

Fluttershy decided to pick up on a thought that had just come to her, when she realized where Applejack was returning from. “You were at Froggy Bottom Bog…?”

“Yeah…”

“Why?” asked Fluttershy, who could only think of the time when Applejack had rushed to her when she thought the yellow pegasus was in danger.

“I… I was remembering somethin’… that’s all,” she replied, not sure if she should go into more detail than that.

Fluttershy smiled; there was really only one thing to remember there. It gave her a bit of courage to think that Applejack was remembering that, although she wasn’t sure why that was; she had a hope for what it meant.

“The day the hydra attacked?” asked Fluttershy.

“Uh… yeah… how’d you know?”

“Well… It was the biggest thing that ever happened there.” Lied Fluttershy. She really had a thought about that; it was something special for them, even if Pinkie Pie and Twilight Sparkle and Spike had been there. She knew that Applejack had rushed there for her.

Applejack thought about it, and that did make sense. She wanted to say more, but she wasn’t sure if she could.

Fluttershy had had enough being afraid now, and she’d been worried about Applejack all week and she didn’t want Applejack to be gone without ever knowing how she felt.

“Um… Applejack…,” she started, feeling her surge of courage slowly draining as she began. No, she had to do this.

“Yeah, Sugarcube?” Applejack replied. It was the perfect thing to say, it made Fluttershy feel very comfortable and gave her just a little more time with her waning courage.

She took a deep breath, and stepped a bit closer to Applejack. She had to do this, it was now or she didn’t know when. No, focus now! Fluttershy reprimanded herself inside, then started to talk again.

“I… I…,” her voice trailed off into a soft mumbling.

“What was that…?” asked Applejack, who couldn’t be sure what Fluttershy was saying. It was cute though, whenever her voice trailed off like that.

Fluttershy suddenly felt her heart hammering inside of her; she didn’t know how she could finish it again. She could barely get her voice back; she just looked at Applejack with huge aqua eyes that shimmered as they threatened to drop tears of disappointment in herself.

Applejack blinked and nuzzled Fluttershy gently. “What’s wrong Sugarcube? Ya look like yer about to cry…,” she said softly. Applejack’s voice was very comforting when it softened this way; it was something Fluttershy had always admired about her. It wasn’t as though she couldn’t speak gently herself; really it was all she could do. What she admired was how Applejack could turn such a firm, strong voice into such a gentle and relaxing one.

Fluttershy felt her cheeks burning delicately, and she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I…,” she felt Applejack close to her, the strong mare really cared about her feelings and genuinely wanted to know what was wrong, “I… like you…,” she finished her thought and felt her heart stop. She had finally said it, and she wasn’t sure how Applejack would react.

Applejack froze, she wasn’t sure she had heard Fluttershy correctly. She likes me? Fluttershy likes me? She was lost in thought and had forgotten to respond to Fluttershy.

Fluttershy swallowed hard, Applejack was just standing there, frozen. What was she thinking about? Was it strange to her that a mare liked her? Did she not know how to react to this?

Oooh, this was no good. Fluttershy forced her wings out and took off into the air, tears were welling in her eyes and she was starting to shake as she flew home. Applejack watched her leave, her eyes shrinking as she began to think of what had just happened.

• • •

Once home, she pushed her door open. It swung inward and stopped just before the wall, never even making contact. She shut the door behind her as she stepped inside, and her tears began to flow freely.

Oh Fluttershy, you are such a foal! Why would she ever like a mare like you? Silly you, thinking you could have a mare like Applejack notice you like that. Why did you ever get your hopes up like that?

She threw herself on her couch, and wept into the pillow as she continued to beat herself up internally.

• • •

Applejack galloped as fast as she could, it didn’t matter that a stitch was building up in her side and she was so exhausted from working all week that her legs struggled against her every step of the way. The only thing that really mattered now was making sure Fluttershy knew the truth.

It felt like forever getting there, but she had arrived at her cottage. She stood there, looking at the door and breathing heavily. It couldn’t wait; she had to do this now. She lifted her hoof and tapped it against the door several times.

Fluttershy looked up from her couch, at the door. Now who could that be?

“Sugarcube? Are you in there?” Applejack asked.

Fluttershy blinked. Applejack was here? Why was she here?

She got up from the couch and trotted to the door, taking a moment to dry her eyes before opening the door slowly. “Um… hi…,” she said.

Applejack looked at Fluttershy, then stepped inside and pressed her nose to Fluttershy’s nose gently. “I like you too, Sugarcube.”

Gratitude

She awoke with a mild start, and the sleep in her eyes obscured the view around her. The sun poured into the room, but that was all she could really make of it. Oh Celestia, had that been a dream? Did she not really say what was in her heart?

Her thoughts were interrupted by sudden movement, although it was ever so subtle. She felt breathing, slow and gentle breathing, the kind that clearly came from a relaxed pony. She froze for moment; for fear that it was somehow just her head playing a very cruel joke.

Another breath and then a very quiet sigh, the warmth against her body, and the sensation of a very soft mane brushing against her chest all pointed to this somehow being very real. She closed her eyes, just in case this moment weren’t true, and tried to take a picture in her mind.

Then, another sigh, it sounded like a sigh of pure bliss. As though for whomever it was from, this was the happiest she could possibly be. Alright, time for a look. She slowly opened her soft emerald eyes, and she carefully turned her gaze downward. She felt her heart jump into her throat at the sight of her.

She had caught the last breath attempting to leave her, for fear of disturbing the fragile pony that was wrapped around her waist. She could scarcely believe this was real, no matter how many times she reminded herself that it was.

She quietly studied the features of Fluttershy’s face. All of them seemed so fragile, like the simple act of nuzzling them could shatter their graceful perfection, but all the while Applejack still wanted to kiss those beautiful lips. It was sort of foreign to her, that kind of thinking felt girly to her, although whether or not it actually was happened to be a concept not entirely within her realm understanding to begin with.

She carefully exhaled, still studying the features. She knew the color of her eyes by heart; they shimmered with a deep aqua tone that made Applejack feel like she was losing herself in an ocean of innocence. But, somehow, being closed made her eyes look so much more breathtaking to her. It was this moment of serene still, this heavenly absence of motion, that highlighted her real grace.

She gazed down the flowing pink mane that seemed to engulf her, threatening to fool some unworthy onlooker into thinking that Applejack herself had a pink coat. It just felt indescribable to be here, to have her so close, and to be able to feel the beat of her wonderfully kind heart and each individual breath as they came and went. What had she done to deserve this moment?

• • •

She could not recall a single moment in her life when she felt safer than she felt right then. She felt the last remnants of a wonderful dream threatening to fade from her mind as she stirred in her sleep, but even though she was on the precipice of consciousness she could still somehow feel the warmth of the farmpony she loved.

Just a little longer… I don’t want this dream to end…

She felt a single suppressed breath beneath her delicate frame, and felt compelled to bury herself further into the warm presence she felt around her. It was something quite strong, very sturdy and it felt so right to her.

As she nuzzled into her newfound warm and snuggly pillow, she thought more about the dream she had. She had felt so nervous approaching the farmpony, scared to say her true feelings and unwilling to let them stay hidden any longer. It was a surprise to her that she was able to say it, but it was heartbreaking to watch her friend frozen like that. She didn’t know when she had fallen asleep after running home as fast as she was able, but, that didn’t diminish the beauty of the dream. The knock at the door, the confession, the kiss, it was all just perfect to her.

• • •

All at once, it crept inside of her head before she realized what was happening. It was a harsh twinge of self doubt that overtook her mind and swiftly began to strangle her. She tried desperately to focus on slowing her breathing; she didn’t want some senseless anxiety to disturb this moment. More importantly, she didn’t want to disturb the angelic visage in her embrace.

A soft voice, no louder than a whisper, reached out from the ensuing darkness. “Applejack…?”

She suddenly felt herself grounded, and turned her gaze back to Fluttershy’s eyes. Although they were open, they were filled with a mixture of sleep and concern.

“Did I wake you? I’m sorry, sugarcube,” she finally replied.

Fluttershy snuggled into Applejack a bit more, pulling the blankets of her bed tighter around them both. “It’s alright…,” she started; her voice projecting a tone of apathy to her conscious state followed by genuine concern towards her friend, “Are you alright…? You look a little upset…”

She didn’t really know how to respond. It wasn’t that she didn’t know what was wrong, what her voice was screaming at her brain. She could hear all her words, all about how she was a cowpony and she was built strong and durable and how she was, in most every way that mattered, the least appropriate pony for Fluttershy. She hated herself for thinking it.

She focused on a fixed point on Fluttershy’s bedroom ceiling, screwing up her courage. It wasn’t as though she was about to confide any of this in, say, Rainbow Dash. She felt certain that would only illicit a lot of mocking. No, she was talking to Fluttershy, the kindest pony she knew. She handled everything delicately, and took everypony’s feelings seriously. She could do this. Right…?

“Ah… Ah dunno if this is the time--…”

“You can always talk to me, Applejack, I don’t mind…”

“Right, well… um…”

Fluttershy remained silent, nuzzling Applejack under her chin in such a delicate way it was all she could to hold still. She felt at ease, at least, but she was still struggling to keep a grip on her self control. She really did want to say what was on her mind; it was just a matter of getting the words together from the enormous jumble.

“Fluttershy…,” she began, immediately taking note of how she used her name instead of calling her sugarcube, “Ah…,” her voice trailed off without her consent. It annoyed her inside, but she ignored that and proceeded to build up the courage and strength for another attempt.

“Ah… ah know what ah like about you… love about you… and ah’ll tell ya, if ya like… but…,” she paused to collect herself, even though she had already closed her eyes she still found herself stopping for the moment to decide if there wasn’t a more suitable substitute for, “well… Why me…?”

Fluttershy blinked, taking in the question and carefully considering it as she continued to snuggle into the farmpony. Alright, that could mean a lot of things. She really needed to know more in order to give the straw-maned mare an answer she deserved. “…what do you mean?” she asked, looking up at Applejack.

Applejack had settled down, and Fluttershy could feel that. She had been listening to Applejack’s heart beat as she spoke, carefully memorizing each thump and shudder for prosperity.

“Fluttershy… Ah really like ya… but… Ah never thought… that a mare such as yerself… all graceful and delicate-like… and beautiful… and…,” she was trying to stop herself from showering Fluttershy with flattery, if only to be able to carry on her thought, “..well… Ah… Ah’m not… any of them things…”

Fluttershy felt her cheeks burning, but was nonetheless focused on Applejack’s concerns. She finally understood exactly what the orange mare meant by her original question. She couldn’t believe that Applejack didn’t think better of herself, and she felt the need to correct this create a kind of unabashed resolve within herself.

“Applejack… Do you remember Dodge Junction…?” she began, not waiting for an answer, “Do you remember what I said to you that day…? After you finally told the truth to us…?”

Applejack closed her eyes and thought back, she remembered exactly what had been said. It was more of a fond memory of Fluttershy, than a memory of her own stubborn pride getting in the way of her friendships again. “…we’ll never be able to fix the hole in our hearts.”

“Yeah…”

“You fill my heart up… You make me feel safe, Applejack… You’ve always been there for me… You’ve always been the one to stick up for me… I remember when that mean old dragon was snoring up a lot of smoke over Equestria… I was so scared… I couldn’t move my wings and… then I couldn’t move myself… then you stayed behind, and worked very hard to bring me up the mountain another way…”

“You’re strong… I mean… I know that I’m strong too, in my way… kind of… but you… You’re brave… You don’t even hesitate to jump to somepony’s rescue… or to carry their scared little bodies up a mountain when they can’t do it for themselves…”

“It’s more than that though… a lot more…,” she sighed happily, snuggling into Applejack once again.

“You’ve got a wonderful heart… I love your heart… I love how hard you work for your family, and for your friends… I love how honest you are… I don’t think I can trust anypony as much as you…,” she exhaled dreamily.

Those were the most positive things she could remember ever hearing about herself all at once. She had some trouble believing some of the things that were said. The really important part was not so much what was being said, but the gentle voice that was saying these things. Fluttershy was telling her these things when no more than a day ago she didn’t know if Fluttershy even realized she existed.

Well that was a stupid thought; Fluttershy was her friend for a long time, so of course she knew she existed. But, the thing was, she’d always been a farmpony, working the land and toiling for as long as she could remember. She never had any of that ladylike grace or fancy poise, she was rugged and rough and, well, a brute. She had just come to accept it about herself.

“But… Ah’m nopony special… just a rodeo lovin’ workhouse that spends most of her time covered in dirt and sweat.”

“My rodeo loving workhorse that spends most of her time covered in dirt and sweat.” Fluttershy corrected.

Applejack blinked, a silly grin crossed her lips, she was very glad to hear what Fluttershy had just said.

“I’ve always liked you for who you are, Applejack. I take you for all of your good, and your bad. I don’t want you to change, okay? You are wonderful just as you are.”

Applejack took a deep breath, and smiled.

“Sugarcube, Ah take ya for all of yer good, and yer bad too,” she replied, not wanting to leave such a lovely sentiment unreciprocated.

Suddenly, without any warning, she felt the most delicate lips she had ever known press firmly against hers, the rest of the world melted away and she could only hear the birds sing their tune to the morning sky and the thumping of her own heart.

Fear

Spa day. Now that she stood there, gazing at the sign to the local spa where she and Rarity met up and discussed the weeks’ events, she felt mildly amused at the unintended redundancy of the place. She had just the evening prior been with Applejack, and for all her rough edges she was a very gentle pony in bed. She couldn’t imagine that this spa offered any treatment more relaxing than her beloved farmpony.

She lost herself in thought, a delicate pink overtaking her facial features as she recalled the precision with which Applejack had touched her body, her wings, and her lips. The entire experience played in her head.

“Hello Darling!” cried a confident voice, full of the vigor that only the anticipation of a spa day could bring it.

She jumped, her wings flaring in reflex to her sudden start as she spun to meet Rarity’s sapphire gaze. After a moment, she felt her cheeks burning and recoiled from Rarity, immediately retreating to the protection of her mane as she forced her wings down to her sides. She could utter no noise above a timid squeak like that of a sick mouse whilst Rarity continued her greeting.

“Isn’t it simply lovely today? Oh, I must tell you what happened to me on my way here!” she beamed, not seeming to notice Fluttershy’s embarrassment at all. Sensing that very thing, Fluttershy felt herself relax after a brief exhale and focus more fully on her best friend.

The time seemed to move far too quickly for Fluttershy’s liking as she listened to Rarity ramble on about some pony having paid quite a lovely compliment on a scarf she had made and worn earlier in the day, going over the weather, detailing juicy gossip about their friends and about one or two clients she carefully left unidentified while adding enough clue for a more attentive pony to appreciate.

As they settled into the sauna, Rarity felt a need to address her friend more personally. Even for Fluttershy, she had been exceedingly quiet for the duration of their visit and while she was accustomed to the good natured attention that her friend paid her, she was not at all convinced that it was coming naturally today.

“Darling? Are you okay? You seem awfully quiet, even for… well you,” she said in a sunny, yet concerned, voice.

Fluttershy was still very much lost in thought as Rarity asked, but even against the obscuring nature of her train of thought she could hear what was said. She snapped her head towards Rarity, trying to recover from what must have looked like an absolutely terrible startling. She took a deep breath, and braced herself. It was now or never.

“Oh! Um…,” she swallowed, feeling her throat thickening against her will, “I… Well, I have something to tell you.”

“Yes dear, go on, I’m listening…,” Rarity said sweetly, the unmistakable sincerity bathed over Fluttershy and gave her previously unfelt confidence.

“Well, Okay,” she began, “This isn’t easy…”

“Hm?” replied Rarity with increasing interest.

She closed her eyes, using all of her strength to maintain the already timid volume of her voice as she spoke her next lines.

“I’ve known for a long time that I don’t like stallions. At first I was confused about it, wondering if I was just not maturing as quickly as the other fillies, but, even after I came to Ponyville… well… I still didn’t think anything of stallions, but there was this one mare that I could never stop thinking about,” she took a breath, feeling the need for oxygen make itself apparent as she struggled to fit as many words as she could in a single breath, “what I mean is, I’m gay.”

Rarity sat in silence, soaking in the warm water as she pulled herself back into focus. Fluttershy quivered in nervous anticipation of her friend’s response, but as each minute passed with no sign of a response she became more worried.

“Oh my, I’ve just remembered a rather difficult order I am expected to complete before tomorrow morning. I am so sorry, but I really must take my leave!” she said in an unexpectedly high pitched voice as she moved hurriedly towards the exit.

Fluttershy simply watched her leave, unsure of how to gauge her reaction from that point. It was clearly not favorable, and as much as it sounded like an excuse it could just as easily be the truth that she was spouting. Rarity was known for getting a bit too emotionally invested in her projects, causing herself undue stress at the threat of a looming deadline and an oversized order to fill.

She felt herself calm at these thoughts, reassuring herself that it had not gone disastrously as she relaxed in the sauna and lost herself in thoughts of Applejack.

• • •

The bells chimed as Applejack let herself into the library in the afternoon, she had decided to take a bit of time off from the farm after lunch. Big Macintosh certainly didn’t seem terribly worried about it, but then he always felt she worked much too hard. Not to mention that Fluttershy had been helping out there recently and the work went faster as a result.

“Twah?” she called out.

“I’m up here,” replied a focused sounding Twilight Sparkle, but that changed as soon as she heard a book settle onto a desk with a very quiet but still significant thump, “Can I help you with something, Applejack?”

“Oh, um…,” and now was the moment she hadn’t prepared herself the least bit for, “Well, I’m lookin’ fer a book”

“What book?” asked Twilight.

“Well, I dunno yet,” she admitted

“Okay, well, what kind of a book then?” asked Twilight, her patience not challenged the least bit.

“Well, somethin’ mushy,” she said

“…Mushy?” replied Twilight, not entirely sure whether or not she was referring to the aesthetics of the novel, the overall texture of the pages, or the contents of the tome in question.

“Uh… sappy?” she offered, recalling Rainbow Dash’s particular vocabulary for the subject.

“Oooh!” exclaimed Twilight with a sound of eager dawning eclipsing whatever confusion had been there earlier.

“Um… yeah?”

“Oh, I think I know… wait… why?” asked Twilight in a sudden surge of curiosity that caused her to pause in her search.

“Um…,” Applejack began with a hint of discomfort in her voice, but as she was wont to do, the truth became her decision, “I wanna surprise mah marefriend with a day of romantic stuff.”

Twilight took a moment to absorb the words, not initially reacting but at no time looking the least but superficial on the matter. Still, confusion did linger on a particular word in her friend’s sentence.

“Marefriend?” she inquired carefully, not wanting to upset Applejack.

“Uh huh,” replied Applejack

“Do I know her?” inquired Twilight, her sudden thirst for knowledge overpowering her better judgment.

“Um… yes.”

“Oooh!” she giggled almost too loudly, causing her to blush and hide her face under her hooves. She wasn’t accustomed to such a giddy demeanor within herself, and felt that it better suited Pinkie Pie or perhaps even Rarity, so it remained a constant surprise that she was so excited about this news.

“Are you going to tell me who?” she pushed, hoping her luck, and Applejack, wouldn’t run out.

“Why?” asked Applejack, feeling as though she were suddenly the subject of intense study under the lens of a carefully adjusted microscope.

Thinking quickly, even for Twilight, she came back with, “Well, if I know which pony you want to surprise with a day of romance, perhaps I can select the romantic novel that best represents her interests.” Perfect. She won’t be able to argue with that!

Applejack blinked, searching frantically in her mind for any flaw in that logic. Oh well. She hadn’t lied to this point, why bother now? Besides, Twilight didn’t seem to be judging her at all. In fact, she seemed oddly excited at the entire idea of it.

She closed her eyes before she spoke, “Fluttershy.”

In an instant, Twilight’s voice went from the unusually excited ramblings of a filly to the serious and meaningful tone of a close friend, “Fluttershy? Really?”

“Uh…yeah?” she replied, suddenly feeling uncomfortable on a whole new level from before. If it weren’t enough to feel as though she were under a microscope, now she felt as though Twilight were holding her and Fluttershy up side by side and carefully gauging each and every compatible trait against the incompatible ones.

“That’s so nice! I’m so happy for you!” she chimed, bursting from her serious bubble and into her giddiness once again. Only now it was the type of giddiness a friend reserved for her friend’s best news, in order to share in the excitement of it.

Applejack sighed with a great deal of relief, and trotted further into the library. She had to grin at the sight of Twilight Sparkle bouncing around the library like she were Pinkie Pie in a room full of cupcakes, it certainly fit the otherwise serious librarian pony.

“Oh let me think now… Fluttershy has taken out quite a few of these novels herself, so I want to find one she hasn’t actually seen but that she would really like… Hmmm…,” she was managing to bounce around excitedly while sounding seriously contemplative; the experience was very amusing for Applejack.

“Oh! I have it!” she chimed as she bounded to the far end of the book case she had been investigating in her impromptu bouncy frolic.

Applejack followed her every movement, finding it hard to feel entirely comfortable around a pony that acted the way that Pinkie Pie did. She had already reasoned to herself that while Twilight Sparkle was acting like Pinkie Pie, the idea of her doing the things that Pinkie Pie did was unthinkable. Until she remembered that Twilight Sparkle happened to be proficient in magic.

“Yes! It’s here!” she exclaimed as she rushed down to Applejack’s side to deliver the novel. It couldn’t be counted among the older tomes in the library, but it certainly did not appear to be a brand new addition either. It looked to be a few months old, and the binding was well worn. Of course, a book owned by Twilight was bound to have suffered that particular stress.

“A Sunrise to Remember…?” she read the title aloud, curious as to the contents and feeling just a bit skeptical.

“Yeah! It’s great! I think it’ll have the perfect romantic idea in there for you to treat Fluttershy to!” she chimed; she sounded as excited as one would be if they were to be on the receiving end of the date she seemed to have in mind.

“Thank ya kindly,” said Applejack, tipping her hat before taking the book and dropping it into her saddlebag. She was thankful, but still a little put off by the excitement her friend had showed. Although that didn’t mean she didn’t share in the happiness of the news herself.

• • •

The market was active as ever on the main street of Ponyville. Ponies to her left and right called out their slogans and drew attention to their products of the day as they avoided announcing prices. The entire practice was intimidating, listening to those shouts she had to constantly remind herself that they weren’t directed at her just to avoid feeling self conscious about not replying to everypony. She wasn’t the most fond of the thick social atmosphere of the main street, but it was something she had come to tolerate in order to see her friends.

She also learned to live with it in order to take care of her animal friends, for if she didn’t manage her way in the market, she might never be able to get the food that they needed to survive. Truthfully, she has reasoned quite a few things that were more important than her constant anxiety in crowds. Using that, she had almost overcome her fear of them altogether, except for the constant nagging feeling that she might accidentally be ignoring somepony and that brought her undue guilt.

Today, her reasoning for braving the hustle and bustle of Main Street was simple: she had a Cutie Mark Crusader sleepover scheduled at her home, and tonight she wouldn’t be alone in taking care of them. Applejack had agreed to be there with her, and she looked forward to that more than anything else.

So, it was her mission to arrive at Carousel Boutique and pick up those fillies for the evening. She had become one of their favorite hostesses since the cockatrice incident, so was often requested. Fluttershy was fine with this; she still enjoyed the company of smaller creatures. The Cutie Mark Crusaders were exactly that, and now that they were tame around her, it was that much more comfortable for her.

Not too far ahead of her she could see the exceptionally stylized exterior of the Carousel Boutique. It really did reflect the personality of the owner, and that was something Fluttershy found a little unnerving. She wasn’t as comfortable with being noticed as Rarity was, and certainly wasn’t as comfortable displaying so much of her personality all at once for the world to see.

In a way, she found herself envying Rarity’s bold personality. Still, if she had so much of that in herself, she might not be able to communicate with her animal friends on the level she did. So while there was certainly calculable envy there, she was equally grateful of her own timid nature.

She lifted a hoof, and gently knocked on the door to Carousel Boutique. It took a few minutes, but eventually there was an answer. The door swung open slowly, freezing halfway as soon as Rarity saw that Fluttershy was there.

“Oh!” she exclaimed in a volume not at all intentional before clearing her throat, “Oh, Fluttershy, it’s you. Is there something I can do to I help you?”

Fluttershy blinked. Surely Rarity hadn’t forgotten about the sleep over? She took a breath before speaking, as was customary to suppress the often welling anxiety she felt at the beginning, middle, or end of any conversation. “I’m here for Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle.”

“Oh! Yes! Um… Oh, I’ll be right back,” she said as she slammed the door. Fluttershy could hear the faintest hoofsteps from within. She waited at the door patiently, unsure of Rarity’s attitude but unwilling to question it.

After a few minutes, and the unified chiming of the Cutie Mark Crusaders as they announced their next great adventure, she heard hoofsteps closing the gap between the interior of the shop and the door to it. Casually, the door opened a fraction of the way and Rarity delicately poked her head out.

“Oh, I am so sorry dear, but I thought perhaps the girls would have more fun tonight trying to get their cutie marks in modeling. So I thought they could help me work on some of my designs while acting as models for the new cute-ceañera line of dresses I have in mind.”

“Um… A-are you sure?” replied Fluttershy, taken aback at this behavior. Fluttershy could no longer reason anything but the worst behind Rarity’s behavior, and it was killing her to see and hear.

“Oh yes, I’m quite sure, they’ll be fine here. Don’t worry, you’ll get to see them another time!” and with that the door slammed shut.

Fluttershy stood rooted to the spot, staring at the door for what felt like an eternity before she could will herself to move. In fact, however much time had passed was enough for Luna to have brought the moon into the sky. She closed her eyes and shook her head to loosen the current thoughts on her mind, in hopes they might simply tumble out of her ears and onto the road below.

She turned from Carousel Boutique in low spirits, hanging her head as she trotted away. At least, she thought, the roads were going to be quiet for her return trip home.

• • •

The cottage built on the very edge of town, near the Everfree Forest and populated by all kinds of woodland creatures, was really a pretty good home for Fluttershy. Applejack couldn’t help thinking about this as she moved about the tiny cottage and cleaned up a few stray messages from the animals becoming too fidgety with food. She had nowhere near the experience that Fluttershy did with these creatures, but she had agreed to take care of them when Fluttershy wasn’t around.

Today had been that kind of a day, where her own work was slowing down and she found more free time than she generally knew what to do with. Now she had something special to fill that time up with, helping her marefriend out. Fluttershy was quite ready to help out around the farm, although she had her own way of bucking apples out of the trees. She was nowhere near as strong as Applejack, and that was evident in her inability to actually kick the trees with enough force to even rattle a leaf.

Instead, she recalled how she had helped out during the time when the Flim Flam Brothers had been in town. She found it was very possible for her to get the apples from the trees if she flew into them and disturbed the branches manually. It was easier to do and just as efficient as properly bucking them, and while she was in the trees she could give whatever birdies happened to be there fair warning. She mostly enjoyed it because it brought her closer to Applejack, and that was worth a lot to her. Applejack was grateful for the help, and it gave her a lot of free time. She decided to repay Fluttershy’s kindness with a romantic gesture, rather than her typical practical approach to things. She wasn’t accustomed to it though, but it was something she was more than willing to try for Fluttershy.

So, she slipped the novel out of her saddlebags that were hanging on the wall and cantered over to the sofa, and settled herself down to read. If she was going to get an idea in mind, she was going to have to read this novel.

She was startled at the opening of the front door, and quickly hid her newly acquired novel behind her back as she looked to see Fluttershy entering the cottage. She wasn’t accompanied by the three fillies, and she seemed to be sad. In fact, she looked heartbroken, and that was unacceptable. Fluttershy deserved to be happy, and Applejack wanted only that for her.

“What’s wrong Sugarcube?” she asked as she trotted over to her butter yellow dream.

Fluttershy gazed into Applejack’s eyes, and the orange mare could see the shimmering of continually building tears in those aquamarine depths that she could so easily get lost in. Now was not the time for that. She drew Fluttershy into a warm and loving embrace and Fluttershy’s voice found itself after some time spent in Applejack’s hug.

“I think,” she began, sniffling while she caught her breath, “I think Rarity hates me…”

“What? What gives ya that idea Sugercube?”

“I told her, during our spa day, that I’m gay,” she said quietly, sounding almost defeated as she spoke, “and she started acting very strange.”

“Strange?”

“She made an excuse to leave the spa early,” she said somberly, “and then when I went to pick up the girls she made another excuse, or at least it felt like one.” She sniffled again, another wracking sob suddenly shook her body, but Applejack kept her close.

It wasn’t really a mystery to Applejack what was going on, and it made her angry to think about it. She was going to settle this, she wouldn’t let Fluttershy lose her friend and she sure wouldn’t stand for anypony hurting her marefriend.

• • •

It was not long past midnight when Fluttershy finally fell asleep. Applejack just watched her for a short while, bathed in the pale blue of the moonlight as she was brought out a sort of inexplicable beauty that threatened to outshine every star in the night sky. She was caught breathless at the sight of it, but gathered herself back into focus.

She had somepony she needed to talk to, and that pony was not likely to be sleeping with three energetic fillies – that included her own little sister – sleeping over her home. She knew the kind of energy that those fillies had, and only Pinkie Pie could ever keep up with them. She was also the only pony, other than Fluttershy, to have the patience to deal with them. She sighed and looked at Fluttershy, and kissed her forehead before she carefully removed her forelegs from around Fluttershy and lowered herself to the floor.

• • •

The night air was cool and crisp, and that made it very inviting. The walk from Fluttershy’s cottage was not unpleasant, but the idea of confronting Rarity still did make her slightly uncomfortable. She had really had to work hard to get along with Rarity in the past; the slumber party at Twilight’s being the first example to come to mind.

The streets were empty, the only real company being the street lights that lined either side of Main Street in a comfortable, if limited, glow. It brought a soft golden hue to an otherwise silver scene, and made the whole place feel more inviting. It was never especially frightening at night, being a small town whose economy was based mostly in the farm and garden trades. The only real excitement the town knew was in Pinkie Pie’s rather generous helping of parties. Well, and the occasional end of the world event that she and her friends had to stop.

Applejack took no time to really appreciate the sheer emptiness of the normally busy streets, electing instead to focus on her goal for the night. It was important that tonight’s conversation went well, and she had been trying to come up with the right way to begin it. The right answers for any possible questions that Rarity had and the right reactions to any stupid things that might pass through her lips. She needed this to end in such a way that Rarity and Fluttershy could be friends again, so she needed to plan this. The problem with planning a conversation is that the other pony could still surprise you, so you needed to try to prepare for that possibility.

There it was: the door to the Carousel Boutique. She could hear the chaos that came from the attempts of the Cutie Mark Crusaders to get their cutie marks and she knew that it was impossible for Rarity to be asleep during that. She took that as a good sign, and even thought that if Rarity was stressed enough it might make the conversation a bit easier for her part. In that Rarity would have difficulty maintaining her composure, and therefore be easier to read.

She raised her hoof, and had to resist the urge to slam it against the door full force. Instead, she knocked rapidly on the door, and then turned to face away from it.

It was a few minutes, several shouting matches, a collective “Awww” from the Cutie Mark Crusaders, and two separate world shattering crashes before Rarity came to the door. She sounded completely stressed out as she spoke. “Oh, Applejack, is everything alright?” she said amongst short intakes of air.

“Nope,” she replied, still facing away from Rarity, “we need to talk.”

“Oh, well. Alright then,” was the uncertain reply, “Do come in then.”

“No, come out here,” she said, thinking it best not to let Apple Bloom or the other fillies see or hear this particular conversation.

“What’s wrong?” asked Rarity as she stepped outside of the Boutique, and closed the door against her better judgment. She still worried about what the girls were up to within.

“What’s goin’ on with you’n Fluttershy?” she asked.

“What ever do you mean, dear?”

“We was talkin’ tonight. She was awful upset with you, well more hurt than upset really. She says you’ve been makin’ excuses to get away from her, and you didn’t let her take the fillies for their sleep over at her cottage tonight.”

“Oh, well, u-um…,” she stammered, shifting her weight in preparation to run inside.

“She said she told you somethin’ personal about herself.”

Rarity closed her eyes, trying to push back tears as she spoke.

“Yes… yes she did. She told me she was a fillyfooler.”

Applejack took a deep breath before replying.

“Okay. So why’ve you been avoidin’ her since she told ya?”

Rarity paused, briefly considering a number of lies she could employ at that moment. Instead, she decided that the Element of Honesty deserved just that. Honesty.

“Do you remember the Best Young Flyers Competition?”

“Um…yeah?”

“Do you remember my atrocious behavior towards Rainbow Dash?”

“Sure do.”

“I mean… I saw how nervous she was. I was the first to see it, actually. Really, the only one to identify it amidst the false bravado she was trying that day. Anyway, I had really wanted to go there in full support of her. She deserved that, after all, she had put a lot of work into qualifying for that competition and winning meant spending time with her idols.”

“When Twilight first put those wings on me, I didn’t think much of them. I saw them for their practical use, keeping me flying so that I could help support Rainbow Dash. It wasn’t until we arrived in Cloudsdale that my head got inflated with the words of praise and adoration the Cloudsdalians began to shower me with. I had become used to hearing praise about my fashions, and I so loved to hear them. When I started hearing this praise about my new wings, I got lost in it.”

“So, I started getting carried away. I forgot about Rainbow Dash in all of that praise, and started taking my wings far too seriously. I didn’t even think of how it might make her feel to just show up and enter the competition with no effort at all for my part. After all she’d been through to get there; to watch a pony who could not appreciate the hard work or the Wonderbolts suddenly take that stage next to her must have felt awful.”

“I wish I had seen it then, I really do, but I was too lost in it. Too selfish to see it. I wanted to put on a glorious show. I even thought that if I could put those wings to such marvelous use as the light show that I had in mind, it might help my business here in Ponyville and I might become better known throughout Equestria. In other words, I was only thinking of myself at all. It wasn’t until those wings evaporated that everything stopped being about me. I was scared, I won’t lie about that. I was suddenly falling from an incredible height, and watching helplessly as the ground just sped towards me.”

“I was so panicked that I couldn’t get control over my limbs, flailing them in every direction like I was going to somehow start flying again if I did that. I knew deep inside that it wasn’t at all possible for that to happen. I still had to try though, you know? Because I didn’t want to die without being able to apologize to Rainbow Dash at the very least. She deserved one, more than one really, and I wasn’t sure she would be able to forgive me and I wasn’t prepared to blame her if she didn’t.”

“In my panic I had harmed the ponies who were trying to save me, and put them in jeopardy as well. I was just making more mistakes and doing more harm, but then it seemed to be my special talent for the day. Then, suddenly, I saw her. She was moving faster than I had ever seen before, and directly toward me. She had left the competition behind. Left her dreams behind. To save me. She was coming for me at the expense of everything she ever wanted in life” she said, her eyes shimmering in the light of the moon.”

“…so?” asked Applejack, utterly confused at the relevance of any of what Rarity had said.

“Since then, I’ve looked at Rainbow Dash differently. I couldn’t tell you in what way, but she seemed larger somehow. Like she was more special, more important. I couldn’t stop thinking about how selfless she had been after I had been so incredibly selfish towards her. I didn’t like some of how I thought about her, I was afraid of it. So I kept my mind on things that were coming up.”

“Things like the Gala, because I wanted to look my best there and make my very best impression on Prince Blueblood. But, even meeting him, as quickly as my heart raced, felt somehow wrong. I just didn’t feel anything for him, as much as I had hoped for him to be as chivalrous and caring as he had always been in my fantasies. The night with him was frustrating, true, and he was no prince that I should ever like to see again, no doubt. The problem was that I couldn’t stop thinking about how lovely Rainbow Dash had looked in her gown.”

“I think I would have rather spent that whole night with her, but I knew she wanted to be with the Wonderbolts. After how I had behaved in Cloudsdale, I couldn’t get in the way of another of her dreams like that again. So I tried to spend the night with Prince Blueblood. Well, you saw how he was.”

Applejack nodded, “Oh yeah, he was a real jerk.”

“Yes indeed,” she agreed, “he made me realize something though. I wondered if other ponies saw me that way from time to time. I know that I behave poorly at times, that I think more of myself than others. I hope that I was never that rude or selfish, but I think that there must have been times when I was grating on somepony’s nerves,” she stopped, looking at Applejack, “like during our slumber party at Twilight’s.”

Applejack sighed, “Ya had good points though. I was ready ta just tread a whole buncha mud into her house all thoughtless like. As annoyin’ as you can be with how ya say things, ya weren’t wrong.”

“Yes, that is my point. Whether or not I am right does not give me the right to act so… so superior. Well, after the night of the Gala… I knew that there was a reason I looked at Rainbow Dash so differently.”

“Yeah?”

“I cared very deeply for her. I didn’t know what that meant right away, but over time I understood something about myself. I figured out why the night with Prince Blueblood felt so unnatural, and it had nothing to do with what a snob he was. It was me. I just didn’t want him. I didn’t like him. I couldn’t. I was already feeling something for somepony else. For Rainbow Dash.”

“So… then…”

“I feel awful, Applejack. I’m so confused. I know how I feel about her, but to me it doesn’t feel right. When Fluttershy shared her secret with me, it forced me to look at myself. I was scared of that. I was glad for her to be able to say it, but I’ve gone and made her feel terrible about it, haven’t I?”

“About herself? No. She ain’t feelin’ bad about who she is. She’s feelin’ bad about losin’ you because of it,” replied Applejack, “because she ain’t gonna change into somethin’ she ain’t and she don’t wanna lose ya if’n she chooses to be happy with who she found.”

Rarity stared at Applejack in amazement. She hadn’t thought of it like that at all, and it made more sense than her original concept on Fluttershy’s feelings of the aftermath.

“Look, I ain’t gonna force ya to say yer sorry or nothin’,” she continued “but I ain’t lettin’ you keep hurtin’ mah marefriend with yer foalishness.”

Rarity blinked, staring at Applejack in yet another light, “M-marefriend?”

“Eeyup,” she replied.

“So… you and Fluttershy?”

“Eeyup,” she replied

Rarity couldn’t help but smile at this revelation, “Oh Applejack, I just know that you’ll treat Fluttershy right!”

Applejack nodded at that. She knew she’d always take care of Fluttershy. She loved her, plain and simple.

“Now, listen here… Yer okay if’n ya like a mare, ain’t no crime in that. The crime is lettin’ a good friendship go to hay onnacounta ya can’t face yerself.”

Rarity took a deep breath, and nodded. “I understand, Applejack. I’ll apologize to her, and I hope she can forgive me.”

• • •

The return trip to the cottage was far nicer than the one from it. She felt better for having listened to her friend being so honest about herself, and she had even received a tiny blessing to be with Fluttershy. It was important though, because that blessing came from Fluttershy’s closest friend and that made her feel more deserving of Fluttershy’s love.

As soon as she arrived, she endeavored to make her quietest entrance ever. Moving slowly through the door, and tip hooving into the cottage as she very quietly shut the door. It was a miracle of sorts that she moved through the cottage without waking a single one of Fluttershy’s animal friends while she ascended the stairs. It was pure skill that got her from the stairs to the bed without disturbing Fluttershy.

She carefully climbed back into the bed, and wrapped her forelegs around Fluttershy as she pulled the covers over them both.

“G’night Sugarcube,” she whispered as she kissed Fluttershy’s forehead and squeezed her gently.

Honesty

Their tails intertwined to create a color scheme not unlike the sky as painted by the setting sun and cirrus clouds; a beautiful mixture of pink and gold that just seemed to work in harmony amongst each other. Such a combination of color fits surprisingly well with the vibrant colors of the gradually turning leaves in the cool autumn air. Pony and nature seemed to play in elegant harmony today. Applejack hadn’t planned this day out, and had only managed to read half of the book she had taken from Twilight’s library before deciding to do this. It was odd how something so unrelated to the book came to her mind, but then she realized it was something she would need to do eventually.

Fluttershy had no idea what Applejack had in mind when she told her there were some important ponies she needed to meet. The cryptic message left her speculating endlessly. Although that was mostly about whom the ponies were, she was even more interested to know which ponies she hadn’t seen in town that Applejack could be so concerned about.

The turn into the cemetery caused her mind to go blank; suddenly nothing she could have possibly thought of would have made any sense. She trusted Applejack completely, so her resolve to follow her marefriend hadn’t wavered in the slightest. It didn’t really matter where they were going, somehow she felt safe as long as she was with Applejack.

Applejack took a deep breath, holding it in for a moment before exhaling once again. She was uncomfortable; she hadn’t shared this secret with any of her friends. She talked about it with her brother or grandmother whenever she felt the need. Today, she was going to share it with somepony outside of the family for the first time in her life. She was absolutely terrified. Suddenly, as if by some previously unrecognized mental link, a wing embraced her trembling form very gently. A wave of calm rushed through her body, bringing her tremors under control and stabilizing her troubled breathing.

“What’s wrong?” asked Fluttershy, but her voice wasn’t filled with concern so much as love and compassion.

“Ah… Ah I just ain’t told nopony this before… tha’s all,” she said, although there was a very distinct edge of uncertainty in her admission.

Fluttershy simply nodded, and decided against pushing it. This, of course, came to her quite naturally.

In only moments they arrived at a headstone, it was large pale marble that showed very few signs of age. It was simple, even the engraving was very basic. Fluttershy supposed the family that paid for this wasn’t particularly well off.

Applejack inhaled deeply, trying to calm herself down again. She was still under Fluttershy’s wing, but there was no avoiding the shaking as she was this close to her parents’ grave.

“Ma… Pa… I’d like ta introduce ya to somepony special…,” she began.

Fluttershy’s eyes widened as she heard that, and suddenly things began falling into place from throughout their lives. She brought back focus by thinking about Applejack here and now, and remained silent as she continued to speak.

“Her name is Fluttershy… and ah love her,” she said, as though she were admitting something incredibly difficult.

“Applejack…,” Fluttershy said softly, barely a whisper with her sweet voice shining through, “I love you too.”

She turned her gaze to the headstone, and smiled warmly as she began to speak again, “Mister and Missus Apple… I’m so pleased to meet you both. Applejack hasn’t told me much about you, but that’s alright. I think I’ll enjoy getting to know about you.”

Applejack’s eyes widened in surprise at Fluttershy’s reaction, it was so unlike anything she had imagined that she could scarcely believe her own ears were telling her the truth. All at once she felt her every muscle relax and her breathing pace more comfortably. Most of all, she felt indescribable relief at finally telling the truth about her parents to one of her friends. No, to her marefriend.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t get a chance to meet you in life. I want you to know that your daughter is one of the most amazing ponies I know. She’s a very hard worker, a really wonderful friend, always honest, and… well… sometimes she’s a bit too hard on herself,” she finished, with a soft giggle.

Applejack sat there, vocal chords in sudden paralysis as her face was overcome by a furious blush. She couldn’t find any words to speak even if she could remember how to use her mouth at that moment. Fluttershy simply nuzzled her gently as she moved closer; closing what little gap there had been between the two of them. Once she got closer, she delicately kissed each freckle on Applejack’s right cheek.

• • •

She felt her heart pounding in her chest as sweat dripped eagerly down on her orange coat. She brushed her purple mane out of her eyes as she peaked around the large headstone she had hidden behind. She had never known about this part of the Apple family, but then Apple Bloom has never spoken about her parents. It suddenly made sense to her why that was.

She settled herself down behind the headstone once more, closing her eyes and directing her face skyward as she caught her breath. She felt like she had just run a marathon, but in truth she had only just jumped with a start as she found a place to hide. She had her own secret to protect, but she had no idea that she wasn’t alone in it. Perhaps then it wouldn’t be so hard to tell her friends?

• • •

Dust was thrown into the air as her hooves rushed down the path. She was exhausted, her lungs were burning and her mouth was dry, but she was not going to give up. She trained like this every year since the first ‘Running of the Leaves’ she participated in. A race she would never forget, against a mare she couldn’t get her mind off of. Now, of course, it was a friendly competition between her and Applejack, but that didn’t mean she was comfortable with losing. So she found herself here, always at the same time of year, training to win the race. She continued her gallop down the path leading towards the Everfree, stopping just at the very edge and turning around to continue her gallop in the opposite direction.

She had another reason for her love of this particular race. It gave her a good excuse to be close to Applejack. It meant more to her than she cared to let on that she get to spend time with Applejack, even if she were spending that time hay bent on winning. She still didn’t know how to say what she wanted to say to her friend, but she knew she would figure that out all the same. Right now, the priority was her training. She was going to beat Applejack this year, she was absolutely determined.

As she continued her gallop down the path, Fluttershy’s cottage came into view. She never did understand how Fluttershy could stand to live so close to the ground, but she gave up questioning it long ago. She noticed Fluttershy strolling along the path leading to her front door, and just as quickly noticed that she wasn’t alone. Rainbow snickered to herself, thinking that Fluttershy was secretly bringing home a date and couldn’t wait for the scandalous reveal. She stopped in her tracks when she saw the familiar golden tale and the trademark Stetson. She suddenly felt her insides twist in an agonizing way as she fought to rationalize what she was seeing. The problem was she noticed that golden tale intertwined with the soft pink tale of her oldest friend.

It was no good; she couldn’t rationalize it into anything that didn’t mean it was too late. She turned and began galloping back towards the Everfree before flaring her wings and taking off into the air. For all the good flying normally did, today it was failing her when she needed it most. The wind pushing through her polychromatic mane didn’t bring the usual thrill. The view of Ponyville from her altitude meant nothing to her right now. She couldn’t see past her own broken heart, and she needed to talk to anypony who would listen.

• • •

A gentle creaking sounded as the door to Fluttershy’s cottage swung open slowly and the two ponies trotted in. Their walk back was spent in silence which Fluttershy did nothing to change. She knew she would talk to Applejack when they returned to her home, and so allowed her marefriend to grieve quietly.

Now, however, it was time to speak. She had questions to ask, and more importantly, Applejack shouldn’t have to go through this alone. She didn’t have to be alone any longer, and Fluttershy only wanted her to know that.

“Why didn’t you ever tell any of us…?” she asked, her timid voice full of a distinct loving firmness that would have surprised Applejack any other time. Right now, it made perfect sense to her.

“I… I didn’t know how. It’s a sad thing, and… well y’all’er my friends, how could I bring ya down with that?”

“Bring us down? Oh Jackie… How can you worry about us so when you have pain like that?” Fluttershy asked, utterly astounded at Applejack’s selfless attitude, yet still somewhat agitated by it.

“I just didn’t wanna hurt y’all.”

Fluttery gently nuzzled Applejack, her voice softening from its previous firmness as she continued.

“I am only hurt that you have been going through this alone for so long… Please… Talk to me?”

“Well…” said Applejack, sighing and sitting on her haunches while collecting her thoughts, “I was real young when I lost ‘em. Bit too young to recall ‘em too good. Big Mac can remember ‘em better, actually.”

Fluttershy listened carefully, absorbing each and every word, however extraneous it might have sounded. To her, every word out of that mare’s mouth was the most important word yet spoken.

She sniffed at the air, attempting to stifle oncoming tears. “I wish I had got to know ‘em better though… Granny Smith made mama sound like a real tough gal… and Pa… like about him workin’ the farm… Granny says Big Mac got his size from ‘im… but I never got to know ‘em. I wanna know where I get mah work ethic from… I wanna remember learnin’ ta buck apples from my pa… I can’t remember her eyes… it hurts Fluttershy… they’re my parents… and they’re strangers ta me!”

Fluttershy took a steadying breath, before wrapping a wing around Applejack again and snuggling up to her.

“How many stories has Granny Smith told you about them?” she asked.

“Lots, don’t reckon I could count ‘em all.”

“How can they be strangers after countless stories from Granny Smith? I know that isn’t the same as growing up with them, and I’m so sorry you didn’t get to… but you still get to know about them, right?”

Applejack sniffled, and then buried her face in Fluttershy’s shoulder, crying into her mane.

“It’s okay… I’ve got you…,” she said in a soft voice, her own eyes a shimmering picture of sorrow. She hurt for her mare, for her sorrow, for what she didn’t get to experience. She quietly thanked Celestia internally for her own parents, promising herself to visit them again soon.

• • •

A telltale buzzing filled the air as she approached the clubhouse at half her usual speed. She still had to admire the quality of Apple Bloom’s hoof work on the place, because she could distinctly remember the words ‘totally lost cause’ passing her own lips. Every time she saw the clubhouse since then, she had to admit how wrong she was about that. She had hoped the thoughts of that day might be enough to distract her from what was really on her mind. She had spent a lot of nights in that very clubhouse, sleeping under the cape that Sweetie Belle made while trying to get comfortable on the hard wooden floor. Other nights, colder ones, demanded better shelter and more protection, and she’d often have to leave the clubhouse behind as she searched.

By Celestia’s grace she survived this long on stolen foods and discarded boxes. All of these thoughts drove her to wondering why she didn’t tell her friends anything. What was the benefit of keeping this to herself? She couldn’t rightly identify any benefit amidst the thoughts of her daily struggles to survive.

As she approached the ramp she dismounted her scooter and set it leaning against one of the stilts adjacent, and hung her helmet on the handle bars. She closed her eyes and prepared herself for whatever was going to happen. She hoped they would understand, and help keep her secret safe from the grown-ups. She feared that they would to want help her more than she liked, and she would find herself with a new family that felt entirely wrong, or worse than that, far from Ponyville.

She found herself focusing entirely too much on the rhythm of her breathing, and had to force herself to take the first step towards the ramp. She could recall only one other time in her young life that she ever felt so scared and so unsure of what lie ahead of her.

She felt her legs buckle, and finally give out under the weight of her thoughts. She fell to the ground, and tears slipped from her violet eyes as she was drawn back into the worst day of her life.

• • •

She awoke with a start as her mother gently shook her and explained that she needed to wake up and go with her to the hospital. She took a deep breath and pushed herself out of bed. She hated to think of her father in the hospital, alone in that cold unfriendly room with a bunch of machines constantly beeping in his ear. She would have liked to stay with him so he wasn’t so alone, but the doctors at the hospital told her it was probably not a good idea.

“Come on, dear, there isn’t much time left,” she said gently, failing to hide the grief in her voice from her daughter, “visiting hours don’t last forever you know.”

She heard it there, the truth behind the false comfort. She hated it, what she could feel from her mother was such unbearable sadness that she felt compelled to cry for her. She gathered herself, trying to keep her tears in control as she moved alongside her mother to the front door of their cloud home. A chariot awaited them outside, ready for the trip to the hospital. It was her mother’s preference to use chariots, she felt so uncomfortable flying ever since her husband’s accident that she scarcely managed it on her own any longer.

As they stepped into the chariot, the Pegasus stallion in front greeted them with a cold professional tone. He wasn’t invested in them at all; she had no way of conveying the pain she and her mother were in, or the sorrowful situation that awaited them at the hospital. She would have liked to scream it into his ear, to make him understand, to keep him from acting distant at a time they couldn’t handle such attitudes.

She did none of those things, unable to open her mouth for any of it. She found herself numbed to paralysis with everything that had happened in the weeks prior. The thought of that storm, the fall, and the message all came into painful clarity at the same time. She was glad to know that he had survived, but the doctor could never give her mother a straight answer as to when he might wake up. She felt that must be the worst part of it, the total uncertainty. She knew that she would have given anything for an answer.

The chariot lurched forward as the Pegasus stallion stepped forward and flared out his wings. Soon they were moving through the air at a brisk pace. Scootaloo always liked the feeling of moving through the air and the amazing view of the land far below as it moved slowly with the pace of the chariot. She closed her eyes and tried to forget about their destination.

Without warning, there was a sudden harsh movement from the chariot. She felt herself topple over in the chariot, and a hoof reach down to correct her shortly thereafter. Suddenly, another fierce gust of wind forced the chariot to tilt awkwardly on its side. Scootaloo felt herself becoming dizzy from the unsettling motion and closed her eyes. As she did, the wind kicked up again and forced the chariot into a tight spiral.

Scootaloo’s mother had lost her grip and felt herself moving away from the chariot in its spin. She felt a sudden sharp pain in her wing as the chariot collided with her side with unpleasant force, the same impact pushed her out of the chariot completely and sent her hurtling towards the earth far below. Scootaloo felt her vision dimming as nausea began to set in, so she didn’t notice when she felt like she was floating through the air rather than sitting in a chariot.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

She found herself irritated at the beeping noise before she opened her eyes. It was slow and difficult work to bring them into focus. She carried her gaze across the darkened room, taking in the various lights and sounds as she registered the room she was in. She had barely registered her own position in the room before she saw her father lying on his bed. She was curled up on a couch on the side of the room, near a window. She had no idea how she had gotten there, and scanned the room to see if she could spot her mother. She found no sign of her mother at all, and decided she must have gone to retrieve some food or use the restroom.

She tried in vain to stifle a yawn and decided to move from the couch she was on to her father’s side on the bed. She trotted across the floor, jumped onto the bed as carefully as she could manage, then snuggled up against him and closed her eyes.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

A long piercing beep shattered her sleep hours later, and as she opened her eyes she saw nurses and doctors rushing around the bed. She was ushered out of the room by one of the nurses before she had a chance to ask any questions or fully assess the gravity of the situation she had woken into.

After what felt like a thousand numb hours in the hallway, a nurse trotted out and looked down at her with a mixture of pity and sympathy that Scootaloo couldn’t read as anything but negative and somehow condescending. It disgusted her.

“Dear, do you have any family you can stay with?” she asked gently

The question rang in her ears for seconds, but it grew to such intensity in such short time that she felt like the walls were screaming at her in mockery of her situation. She was young, but not stupid, she knew what that question meant and she hated that nurse in that instant for trying to hide the truth behind a question like that.

She felt herself moving before she knew what was happening, coming into focus after she passed through the hospital doors and darted down the street. She had to get home; she had to find it before she left. She couldn’t stay there any longer, she couldn’t let them take her away.

• • •

“Scoot?” said a familiar southern voice as a hoof gently rested on her shoulder, “Are ya alright?”

Scootaloo looked up at Apple Bloom, and sniffled, and picked herself up off the ground.

“No,” she answered, “and we need to talk.”

Together they entered the clubhouse where Sweetie Belle was waiting, and through a lot of tears and a lot of patience, she managed to tell them about the day she lost both of her parents.

“After the nurse asked me… if… if I had any family to stay with… well I ran… I found my way back home, where I found Mom’s gift to me… she was going to move us down to the earth after Dad got better… and she wanted me to have a way to get around that stilled exercised my wings…,” she said sadly, “so I took it and just… ran…”

She felt a pair of forelegs wrap around her and hold her tight as her tears broke free of their orb prisons once again. She had no way of knowing what was to happen from there, but in that moment she felt safer than she had in a very long time.

“So, why didn’t you tell us before…?” asked Sweetie Belle.

Scootaloo couldn’t answer right away, and Apple Bloom just held her tight as she soaked her mane in fresh tears. Altogether, ten more minutes went by before Scootaloo was able to speak again.

“I… I was afraid…,” she began, “that if I told you, that you might tell the grown-ups, and I would be taken somewhere away from Ponyville,” she pushed through sob, “away from my best friends.”

Sweetie Belle blinked back tears as she rushed towards her two friends and joined their hug.

“No, we don’t want you to leave Ponyville either!”

“Ah’m sure mah sis can’ think’a somethin’,” offered Apple Bloom

“NO!” cried Scootaloo, taken aback at her own volume, “I mean… No, please.”

“Why not?” asked Sweetie Belle

“I don’t know what the grown-ups will do, okay? I don’t trust them.”

“But mah sis-“

“Please Apple Bloom; I don’t want to tell them, okay?” Scootaloo interrupted, “I mean, not yet, at least.”

“Well, Awright,” replied Apple Bloom

• • •

The cool air of the autumn evening made no effort to penetrate the library whilst the crackling fire protected it. The entire scene was quiet, with two ponies sat comfortably near the fire and engaged in their own books and in idle conversation of no particular significance to either. It was a lovely evening, and it was very much helping Rarity to relax after a night of tending to the Cutie Mark Crusaders and dealing with her own swirling thoughts.

The peace of the library was shattered by the chiming of the bells at the door and the eruption of cyan and rainbow colors that seemed to highlight the fluster in her speech as they whipped around.

“Twilight!”

She had already looked up from her book and focused on Rainbow Dash before she had even addressed her by name. She appeared to be mildly irritated, but was mixing that with concern and care to the best of her ability.

“Yes, Rainbow?” she replied

“How long have AJ and Fluttershy been going out!?” she cried. It almost sounded accusatory, but Twilight reasoned that she could not possibly be blamed for it and decided against holding Rainbow Dash to that initial conclusion.

“I’m sorry?”

Rainbow Dash took a deep breath and landed on the floor of the library with a resounding clack.

“Twi, How long have AJ and Fluttershy been together?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, offering a guess, “a few weeks?”

Rainbow Dash sat on her haunches while she processed the guesswork.

“I’ve been too late for…,” her voice trailed off.

“Rainbow, are you alright?” Twilight asked

“No… Yes…,” she didn’t seem sure how she wanted to respond, “…no”

“What’s wrong?” she asked

“I’m too late… I didn’t tell her how I feel…”

“What?”

Rainbow brought herself back to her hooves and trotted over to Twilight, throwing her forelegs around her friend’s neck and burying her face into her friend’s mane. “I didn’t tell Applejack how I feel… I waited too long… and I let her get away…,” she muffled through her tears and Twilight’s mane.

Rarity’s breathing had seized up at the very first mention of Rainbow not having told somepony something about feelings, and was just now reassembling her composure. It felt very odd to hear this, and what it did to her was beyond explanation. She had felt her stomach twist into a knot and her lungs collapse in on themselves, daring her to try and breathe ever again. She felt her eyes burn, but no tears would come. All at once, she felt her limbs return to feeling and decided to use them to the best of her ability while she still felt able. She moved quickly to the door of the library, which still stood open after Rainbow burst in. It was not difficult for her to sneak out with that being the case, not having to worry about the chimes as she rushed out the door and through town.

“I’m sorry Rainbow… I didn’t know she was so important to you.”

Regret

Of all the things Rarity had felt anxious over in her lifetime, the spa had never registered in her mind as a potential threat. It was one of her favorite places to be. It always felt so good to be pampered here. She felt all of the stress of a week’s work just dissipate as the mud bath embraced her aching body. How this could end up something she’d be so nervous about was almost beyond her understanding.

She had experienced something very similar the time she’d met Photo Finish on the street and intended to ask Fluttershy to model some of her designs for the famous fashion photographer. Still, that day didn’t end up all bad. If only she had been the one Photo Finish wanted to help “shine ALL over Equestria!” but alas, Fluttershy’s natural grace won her the attention that Rarity deserved. No, she couldn’t afford to continue thinking that way. Today was important, but it had nothing to do with anything fashion or design, today was a day about friendship. Saving a friendship.

Rarity was never one to immediately judge anypony for their preferences on anything, but somehow she had let the simplest admission from Fluttershy make everything absolutely awkward. It was awful of her to do, and it was even quite hypocritical. She hadn’t meant to do it, but that didn’t make it okay or change that she had done it. Today she was prepared to apologize and humble herself before her longtime friend and spa companion in order to save a friendship that was indeed very dear to her.

So why, with something so important hanging in the balance, she couldn’t force her carefully cared for hooves to move further than the front door was a mystery to her. This was Fluttershy, her friend, the Element of Kindness, and without a doubt the nicest pony anypony could ever hope to meet. So what if she liked mares? Was that really wrong? Did that make her a bad pony? After all, if she’d liked mares all along than she had been the very same Fluttershy during all of that time as well. Why, then, did Rarity feel so awkward around it?

Well, even in her mind that question was rhetorical. It was Rainbow Dash; it had been ever since the Best Young Flyers Competition. She just didn’t face it then and there, and the day Fluttershy came out to her she almost felt as if Fluttershy had somehow done it to her. Of course, that was now an absolutely absurd notion that she’d not likely forgive herself for entertaining.

Enough, she’d been standing there for at least ten minutes just lost in thought and paralyzed in the legs. It was time to push passed this, and she could think of only one way to do that at this point. With that, her horn lit up with soft blue magic and enveloped her hooves, forcing them to move forward.

• • •

There, in the warm water of the mineral bath, Fluttershy was relaxed. She didn’t look at all angry, but then the idea of Fluttershy being angry was sort of an alien concept. It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen it before; it was that it had never been directed at another pony. It brought some confidence to her to see this, and she felt the control come back to her legs. At this she ended her magic, and proceeded to walk under the power of her own leg muscles.

Fluttershy was comfortable, and content. She hadn’t thought much about Rarity’s reaction to her, but that was because of how well she knew Rarity. She knew a Rarity that nopony else knew. It gave her confidence that whatever happened, Rarity would either apologize or explain herself, or perhaps both. So she waited in the mineral bath, listening for Rarity’s voice to chime in a request for ‘the usual.’

She was also just a bit confused at Rarity’s rather heavy regimen, for what she saw of Rarity, the mare certainly didn’t need any help looking so beautiful. It was something she’d attempted to get through to Rarity on a number of occasions, but it was something Rarity always refused to hear.

Rarity, for her part, was not at all herself. She didn’t go through her usual routine of asking for ‘the usual’ and announcing her presence. Instead, she was quiet as a mouse, or Fluttershy. She made her way cautiously to the mineral bath and sat on her haunches on the platform surrounding half of it. She inspected a basket of sponges, but immediately reminded herself that that was a terrible waste of her and Fluttershy’s time.

“…Fluttershy?”

A pair of aqua marine eyes opened, and looked at Rarity. A butter yellow muzzle formed a soft smile as she acknowledged Rarity’s presence.

“Rarity, Hello,” she replied.

“I…,” Rarity began, but her lungs failed her just after that one word. She found herself unable to recover either, and so she resigned to looking at Fluttershy whilst attempting to plead with her eyes.

“I forgive you,” she said, her voice as gentle and understanding as ever.

Rarity swallowed, and focused her thoughts once again. It was nice to be forgiven, but Fluttershy deserved to actually hear the words from her mouth. She refused to let her friend go on without an apology.

“Fluttershy… I’m so sorry for the way I behaved…”

“I know, Rarity… I know…,” she replied, but her thought didn’t end there, “I just… I don’t understand… why?”

Rarity sighed and rested on her four legs, then rested her head on the platform so that she was eye level with Fluttershy. She looked into those aqua marine eyes, and she felt every part of her calm down all at once. She could do this. She could talk to Fluttershy about anything.

“I’m afraid…,” she said, “afraid that… that I have feelings too… for one of our friends…”

Fluttershy blinked, but remained quiet. She just always knew when to stay quiet, and let another pony speak.

“I… I don’t mean that it would be a bad thing…,” she continued, “I just don’t know what it means for me… I mean… I’m a fashionista… I have a reputation… It’s important to me…”

She looked at Fluttershy, her own eyes barely held their usual light. Fluttershy had seen this look before, she had listened to Rarity speak during times like these before.

“But… so is Rainbow Dash…,” she carried on, “and I don’t know what to do… I’m afraid of what either decision will do… oh but then… I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? There’s no saying that Rainbow Dash would ever feel the same way about me… there’s no saying she likes mares, either, is there?”

Fluttershy made no attempt at responding. She had known Rainbow Dash since foalhood in Cloudsdale. Rainbow Dash had always been a loner, too focused on her dreams and her passion to really settle down. She’d had a few flings here and there, and she never went into much detail about them with Fluttershy. It wasn’t clear to Fluttershy what kinds of feelings Rainbow Dash might harbor for a stallion or a mare, because she had always been very closed off about that sort of stuff. She had declared it ‘very uncool and way too sappy’ a long time ago.

Rarity struggled to read Fluttershy’s expression, but it was useless. She opened her mouth to speak again, but somehow Fluttershy had interrupted her.

“Do you remember our trip to Appleloosa…?” she asked.

Rarity nodded as much as she could with her chin resting on the platform.

“By the way, I’m sorry for keeping you awake that night…”

Rarity rolled her eyes at this. It wasn’t the first time she’d received an apology from her for that. It probably wouldn’t be the last.

“Right… anyway… I almost told everypony how I felt about Applejack that night…”

Rarity blinked, she couldn’t recall a single word about feelings or Applejack in all of the conversation that had been interrupting her valuable beauty sleep.

“Rainbow Dash was talking with Pinkie Pie about Bloomberg…,” she continued, “and Pinkie Pie had some fun with her… making her say which tree she meant… and Rainbow Dash… well… she was sarcastic with Pinkie Pie… and that never works… Pinkie just jokes around with that…”

“So… when Pinkie Pie had asked her if she meant Bloomberg, she retorted that she was talking about me…,” she said, smiling a little as she went on.

“Anyway… Do you remember me saying I wished I was a tree…?”

Rarity nodded, again slightly impeded by the platform.

“Do you remember how Applejack treated Bloomberg on that train ride?”

Rarity snorted, “Like royalty…”

“With love,” Fluttershy corrected.

Rarity stared at her with a quizzical expression. She hadn’t really figured out where Fluttershy was going with this story, and that particular kind of confusion was usually reserved for another pink-maned pony.

“I was scared…,” she continued, “so I didn’t finish my thought… and I laughed with the girls… and…,” she sighed, “and I teased Spike…”

“Why are you telling me this...?”

“Rarity… look at what I did… instead of being honest…”

Rarity considered it for a moment, suddenly very unhappy with herself.

“You shouldn’t have to choose between your career and the pony you love…,” Fluttershy said, “But that has to come from you… if you keep hiding this… how will that affect your designs?”

“I won’t be able to think straight enough to complete any… why then… my career would be ruined…,” she replied.

“Rarity, I’ve never known you to be lost for words… and I’ve never known you to back down from anything…,” Fluttershy said.

Rarity just stared at Fluttershy, deeply engrossed in thought about Fluttershy’s perspective on her situation. It was amazing just how much she put her own thoughts out there since she tried that assertiveness training. For the all the hurt feelings it had caused, Fluttershy had truly come out a better mare for it.

“You’re… you’re right…” she said softly, lifting her head from the platform and crossing one foreleg over the other elegantly, “but what do I tell her…? How do I broach that subject?”

“Rarity, when have you ever needed anypony else’s help to say the right thing?” Fluttershy countered in her usual quiet tone, “You’ve always been the best at talking amongst all of us, haven’t you?”

Rarity considered this for a moment, thinking back to many occasions where she has had to carefully piece together sentences in order to preserve somepony’s feelings. She smiled to herself, remembering just how much practice Sweetie Belle offered her at this particular skill. She looked at Fluttershy with renewed vigor in her eyes.

“You are so right, Darling!” she cried, jumping to her feet and startling Fluttershy in the process. Fluttershy dipped her head under the surface of the mineral bath to hide from the sudden outburst. After a few seconds, she poked enough of her head out to expose her eyes, then drew her face completely out.

Fluttershy’s breathing returned to pace after a moment, and she relaxed her suddenly tensed body, lying back against the side of the bath. By the time she’d recovered enough to look at Rarity again; she wasn’t there to be seen. Fluttershy looked around, confused, wondering if perhaps she had missed Rarity moving to another part of the spa. A moment’s scanning proved that Rarity had simply left the spa altogether.

“Oh… my…,” she squeaked to nopony but herself. She’d become accustomed to Pinkie’s talent for simply ceasing to be wherever she was or suddenly coming into existence with no discernible point of origin to speak of. She had become accustomed to a great many of the pink pony’s particular peculiarities. It was an entirely new experience to witness this of Rarity, arguably the most collected of her friends.

• • •

A row of clouds spun hastily in place as a blaze of rainbow colors zipped by them and spun around them in the midst of a carefully choreographed series of tricks that she’d never managed to perform with absolute success in her life. She found she could either manage the feats of agility and the manipulation of clouds, or, given the correct motivation, she could penetrate the sound barrier and perform a sonic rainboom. Today was to be different.

She had spent far too much time practicing and training to become a Wonderbolt to allow even one arrangement of tricks to meet without total success. She owed herself that much, after all. Today, in the absence of any cheering squad, she performed with all of her heart. Truth be told, she wasn’t simply doing this as a standard routine, this gave her something to focus on other than her heart. She was a notoriously unsappy pony, but the past few days had seen a dramatic shift in her usual temperament.

It was time to take it back, to take herself back to who she knew she was inside: A proud, strong, and awesome flyer. So, here, in the open fields beyond Cloudsdale and really most any hint of civilization, she was performing in front of a crowd of zero. It was a genuine first for her as she had always felt the need to impress somepony. Today, she was doing this for nopony but Rainbow Dash.

It was a confusing combination of jealousy and regret that fueled her every maneuver and so abruptly drew her focus to oddly clear levels. She had always expected such a volatile combination of emotions would readily hamper her maneuvers and cause her to crash, but she was glad to see it was working in exactly the opposite way.

It was important to her that she pulled the last trick in this routine off. She needed to be successful on her own; she needed to know that she could do this trick without somepony’s pride or life being on the line. She had thought about it time and again, and she realized that if she was ever going to perform well enough to join the Wonderbolts, she would need to be able to perform a sonic rainboom with absolutely no motivation other than performing the sonic rainboom.

So it was that much more of a shock to her when she found herself utterly paralyzed at the apex of her preparation to dive. She hovered in the air, far above the earth below, and stared in puzzlement at the scene below her. It was a beautiful thing to see, to be sure, but she had no idea why at this moment it appeared so plain and uninviting. Not frightening, nor particularly dangerous, just uninviting.

She didn’t know how long she’d just hovered there, staring at the grass and the trees and the flowers. It had all been confusing to her during all of that lost time until she had realized something that it all had in common. All of it reminded her of Applejack. She felt her heart seize for the briefest of moments as the name echoed through her mind, and in that time she forgot to maintain her wing flaps.

It took only a moment for her to realize her oversight and correct accordingly, but it unnerved her considerably to see what such a thought could do to her. It had to stop, she had to stop it. Fluttershy was with Applejack now, and more importantly they were both very happy for it. She didn’t want to do anything to hurt either of them, no matter how much she’d wanted to have Applejack for herself.

The trees suddenly seemed as though they were taunting her. She could hear a chorus of something unintelligible that sounded a lot like something from her foalhood. It filled her heart with anger and resentment, and with great ease, suddenly she broke into the dive that marked the beginning stages of the sonic rainboom.

• • •

The Carousel Boutique appeared quite gradually over the horizon as Rarity’s light trot guided her with purpose and determination. She had all the spirit now that she lacked at the beginning of the day. She inwardly thanked Fluttershy for her forgiveness and unwavering friendship, and a small smile graced her lips. She wasn’t as abundantly jovial as Pinkie Pie was, but on a good number of days you could certainly catch her humming a happy tune whilst she merrily labored over one of her designs.

Rarity’s arrival at her shop was interrupted by a rather loud thud, a pained squeal, and the telltale rustling of envelopes scattering over the ground. A light sigh escaped from her lips as she turned to address Ponyville’s most famous mailmare.

“Ditzy, dear, are you alright?” she asked as her horn lit up and began to gather and sort the fallen mail whilst offering a hoof to the fallen pegasus.

Ditzy gratefully accepted Rarity’s assistance, and beamed as though nothing had happened in the first place, and her voice betrayed none of this illusion. “Hi Rarity!” she said, a little loudly for conversation, but still just as friendly as anypony had come to expect of Ditzy Doo.

“Have you anything for me?” Rarity asked.

Ditzy nodded happily before reaching into her mailbag and fishing around at length. She had her mail sorted in her own way, and while Rarity’s system was not inefficient, it wasn’t Ditzy’s way. It left her looking a bit longer than usual, but she did eventually pull out a small envelope and hand it over to Rarity.

“Have a good day!” she chirped as she flared her wings and pushed herself into the air, awkwardly avoiding the roof of the Boutique on her way into town. Rarity watched cringing as Ditzy nearly removed the flag from her roof. She shook her head, a new smile crossing her lips as she trotted into her shop without looking at the envelope.

A quick glance about the shop showed that Sweetie Belle had outdone herself, and she was glad for it. She had come to quite like the look of the shop when properly organized, and although she had long ago banned Sweetie Belle from her inspiration room, she did find herself grateful for the ideas she had back then and as such tasked Sweetie Belle with maintenance of the shop.

Sweetie, for her part, never uttered a single complaint about this because all too often she would find herself doing this work with Rarity alongside her. The arrangement, all in all, was favorable to both Belle sisters.

Something caught Rarity’s attention out of the corner of her eye, drawing her eyes before she remembered her encounter with Ditzy outside of her shop. The letter hovered there for a moment, address side facing away from her before she decided to turn it around.

A glance at the address told her who it was from, and that was enough for her to make her decision. She felt no hesitation or guilt for depositing the letter in the garbage without opening it. It had become somewhat routine over the last year, but it was a routine she was tired of. Far more important, she had become fatigued by the after effects of receiving such letters.

• • •

How time had passed so quickly was a concept beyond her current understanding. She had been flying all day, and despite all the anger and resentment in her heart she couldn’t fight past the barrier’s stubborn resistance. She had been launched more times than she could count on her hooves, and she was battered and bruised as a reminder of her failures. It was growing old quickly, and she decided to return home while she still was able to do so.

She felt miserable in more ways than one now. On top of feeling incomplete, she was covered in gashes and bruises and she knew she’d be feeling them twice as much in the morning. Now she had Luna’s moon to guide her home, although home wasn’t the most appealing idea either. Perhaps she’d feel better if she talked to one of her friends about it. At least, that sounded more appealing than simply going home.

The question of which friend remained up in the air. Applejack and Fluttershy were out of the question, either of them was too close to this and she might end up hurting one of them. She ruled Pinkie out, but that was because the party pony was so energetic. It wasn’t that she wasn’t a good listener; Rainbow had discovered a long time ago that she genuinely was. She had also discovered that Pinkie was a good secret keeper as well. No, it was that Pinkie often radiated far too much energy, and Rainbow didn’t feel like exposing herself to that.

Twilight Sparkle; she was the most sensible choice. She was a good listener, she gave sound advice, and she never judged anypony. Rainbow finally had a decision firmly in hoof, and set off in the direction of Ponyville’s public library. After hours, it served only as Twilight Sparkle’s home, and there any friend of hers would find a warm welcome at most any hour.

• • •

A restless night usually means an upsurge in productivity, and she often found herself in this state. Most of the time it was in response to some enormous order that was placed, and she often found it demanded a great deal more time than she had to offer. Of course, this meant she would sacrifice sleep in favor of completing these orders; an act which often left her drained of patience and prone to snapping at anypony who might address her the wrong way.

Tonight was not unlike those nights, except that she had no major order to fill or any particularly significant project she was undertaking. She found herself lacking anything to do to occupy her busy mind, and so needed to create a project. Unfortunately, her mind was so occupied with negative thoughts now that she found herself lacking any inspiration. Well, almost any at any rate. What she had was a million ideas on ways to dress up Rainbow Dash in a variety of colors and styles that would emphasize her athleticism and really display her most treasured quality: her coolness.

All of that inspiration certainly would have been nice if there had been any desire in her to actually create one of the many designs she had in mind for Rainbow. However, Rarity was trying to get her mind off of Rainbow Dash and working on those designs would achieve exactly the opposite of what she wanted. Still, she needed something to do.

She closed her eyes, and began to breathe slowly through her nose. After a few moments, she opened her eyes and cantered to the front room in her shop. Using her magic, she removed the letter she had discarded earlier in the day. She hadn’t read any of them in the last year, and perhaps tonight it would at least provide a distraction for her.

A simple tug with her magic caused the envelope to open almost perfectly, and with that she slid the letter from it. She took a deep breath, and slowly brought the letter to her eyes, scanning over the words. She snorted, and her face found itself in a subtle frown before her lips wavered gently and she dropped the letter.

She dashed up the stairs, and slowed her pace to quiet her steps as she tiphoofed to a door near the end of the hall. It was slightly ajar and she could hear a very soft breathing from within if she focused hard enough. She swallowed and cleared her eyes before magicking the door open slowly and peeking inside. There, in a large soft bed with bedding that Rarity made herself lay Sweetie, sleeping peacefully.

She watched Sweetie breathe, the blankets moving up and down almost imperceptibly as she probably dreamt about her and her little friends finally getting their cutie marks or going on some amazing adventure. She hoped that was what she was dreaming of, at least.

“Sweetie…,” she whispered through a quiet sob, “I’m so sorry…”

• • •

Why did Twilight have to choose tonight not to be home, of all nights? It was more frustrating that Pinkie wasn’t home either. Twilight hadn’t told Spike where she was going, and Pinkie Pie had decided on an impromptu visit to her hometown. Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing remained to be seen though.

She was down to just one friend to talk to. Although Rarity was never her favorite pony, she had to admit that the fashionista had a lot of sense about her. It just wasn’t very easy to talk to her, Rainbow thought. She usually found that she was a bit too persnickety. Rainbow Dash simply didn’t care for that frou-frou stuff, even though she had to admit she made those outfits look good. She never understood how Rarity had managed to talk her into it, but then Rarity had a talent for talking ponies into doing things. She never made a pony do anything that they’d regret or that could hurt them though. In fact, Rarity was very sensitive to the feelings of other ponies, even if she sometimes forgot that they were invested in something important to them. Rainbow suddenly felt somewhat bitter, recalling the day of the Best Young Flyers’ Competition.

Yes, it turned out okay in the end. Still, Rarity’s behavior had really put her on edge pretty quickly; well, further on edge. She might never say it out loud, but inwardly she had to admit that she had felt some pretty severe anxiety prior to the competition even before Rarity had entered herself into it. It was that entrance though, Rarity suddenly thrusting herself into the competition, that hurt Rainbow the most. It wasn’t as though she’d ever threaten Rarity’s spotlight in the fashion industry, not that she had even a fraction of the talent one would need to outclass Rarity in anything fashion.

She just could never stop asking herself why one of her friends would ever do something like that. Yet, she still had to thank Rarity at the same time. If it wasn’t for her antics at the competition, and the subsequent danger she found herself in, Rainbow would never have been able to perform the Sonic Rainboom. She had already messed up on her slalom and her cloud spins, and hoped that the Princess didn’t banish her for accidentally assaulting her with a cloud. Each foul up just made her more nervous.

Anyway, it was pretty confusing to say the least. She wasn’t sure whether to be more grateful or more hurt by the whole ordeal. It hadn’t really entered her mind until after she parted company with the Wonderbolts though. The entire aftermath of the day was so overwhelmingly positive that she didn’t find she had any reason to think. At all. She just enjoyed herself spending the day with the Wonderbolts.

Now, here she was, aimlessly staring at the door to Carousel Boutique. She couldn’t help that she needed somepony to talk to and at this point anypony would do. She’d have dealt with Pinkie Pie if she had been home, even. She shook her head to loosen the meddlesome overthinking and allow it to depart through one of her ears.

She raised a hoof, and brought it somewhat firmly against the door. She reasoned that at this hour, it was likely that Rarity was asleep.

• • •

Rarity was startled at the noise, and quickly closed Sweetie Belle’s door and cleared her throat in preparation to regain her composure. Composure didn’t come easily this evening, and she decided that a customer would be unlikely to call at this hour. She resolved to at least clean up her face and dry her eyes before she turned and left for the front room and the front door.

The journey from the second floor to the front door had never felt like such an eternity before now. She had no idea who was on the other side, nor any idea what to expect of said unexpected company. It was the idea that for once she could not regain her composure that bothered her. If it was one of her friends, she might at least be able to say something. What if it were a stranger though? How could she laugh it off? Explain it away? Make it seem like nothing when really it was quite something?

Time, despite its deceitful illusion of dragging, was certainly not on her side. She was standing at the door before she knew it, and the visitor had begun knocking on the door again. It startled her, causing her breath to catch in her throat and her mane to shift into a frazzled state. It was all she could do to form a semi-smile on her lips before she reached out to the door with her hoof, for she could not concentrate enough to use her magic at this point, and opened the door.

“Ra-…,” her voice died in her throat at the site of the marshmallow unicorn looking an emotional mess. It was clear to the blue pegasus that Rarity had been in tears not long before answering the door, and she knew that Rarity managed to maintain composure under unbelievable pressure and difficult circumstances.

“Ha…have you been crying?” she finally asked, suddenly forgetting her own woes and worrying more about her friend.

She cleared her throat and turned away. “Oh! Rainbow Dash… I… Why no! No, of course not!” she began, “Um… What brings you here?” she asked with a half-hearted chuckle.

“Rarity, what’s wrong?” she countered while moving through the door and past Rarity, closing it with a swift kick from her left rear hoof.

Rarity blinked. It was all she could manage in the face of new confusion and overwhelming fear and relief mixing uncomfortably with each other. It was splendid to hear Rainbow show such concern for her, but now she had no idea what to say. She took a deep breath, almost shuddering with the impact of fresh oxygen in her lungs.

“Do come in, Rainbow dear. I’ll be right with you!” she chimed in her best attempt at a composed tone. It was entirely fruitless, of course, because no amount of acting was going to cause Rainbow Dash to forget what she had seen.

Rarity had galloped off before she had any chance to react, and so she resolved simply to make herself a bit more comfortable while waiting for the unicorn to return. In so doing, she chanced to gaze around the shop and take in her surroundings. The times she found herself here were far and few between, and almost all of them stuck to her memory like scenes of torture. She disliked modeling for Rarity, but could never make herself say no.

What she tended to notice about the place, at least since Sweetie had begun staying around more often, was that it was always pristine. Nothing was out of place; everything was organized and grouped accordingly. She had never seen so much as a sequin out of place in all that time. It wasn’t precisely a mess to her eyes, but the fact that something was out of place stood out as unique to her. A sheet of paper lay on the ground, carried by the air to a rest near the base of Rarity’s modeling stage.

Curiosity quickly overcame her better judgment, and concern for her friend won out over respect for privacy. She soon found herself cantering to the letter before she gently gripped the sheet of paper between her teeth. She carefully maneuvered the letter around and focused her eyes on the writing.

Rarity,

Weather in Prance is fine. Travel still delayed. Not coming home yet.

H. Belle

“Rainbow Dash!” Rarity cried, startling the blue pegasus into dropping the letter and spinning around to face her. Whatever expression she had expected to see on Rarity’s face, she hadn’t anticipated the anxiety in her deep blue eyes.

“I’m sorry!” she yelped, not knowing what else to say and feeling a great deal of guilt for her invasion of Rarity’s privacy.

“No… I-it’s okay…,” Rarity said through a dull sigh as she sat down. “Can you and I talk for a little while?”

Rainbow Dash just nodded.

“I… take it you’ve read the letter…?” Rarity asked quietly. It was impossible not to feel for the mare sitting there, usually the picture of charismatic elegance, now speaking softly in a tone completely saturated in sadness.

Rainbow Dash nodded, again.

“It’s nonsense,” Rarity said curtly. She hadn’t changed her demeanor, merely the affectation of her voice as she spoke, “the postmark is from Baltimare.”

“What…?” asked Rainbow Dash cautiously.

Rarity sighed again and stood, beckoning with her head for Rainbow to follow her as she walked to the kitchen.

“You weren’t there for the Sisterhooves Social… It was surprisingly fun, all things considered… but… The only reason I went was for Sweetie… Who was left with me when our parents went on a vacation and couldn’t take her.”

Rainbow Dash nodded, “Uh huh…?”

“They never came back,” she said, almost too quiet to hear.

Rainbow Dash blinked, not sure she’d heard correctly.

“What?”

“I said… they never came back…,” she repeated with enough volume to be heard.

“What happened?”

“At first, they said that their ride home had been delayed. According to their letter, it would be a few days before anything happened. So, I told Sweetie and told her she was welcome to stay with me.”

Rainbow Dash listened intently, if confusedly.

“I haven’t received a letter from them in some time… so it’s a shock to have received one now....,” she confessed.

“What are you gonna do?” Rainbow asked.

Rarity blinked, gazing at Rainbow Dash through misty eyes.

“Follow me…,” she said, before turning around and cantering off down a hallway.

Rainbow didn’t hesitate to follow her friend. As she trailed behind, she took in her changing surroundings as she passed doorways and pictures hanging on the walls. Almost all of them featured Sweetie and Rarity posing together, either in an outfits clearly designed by their wearers or while participating in some activity or another. It was really quite moving to see, although it took on a new light after what Rainbow had just learned.

A few moments later and Rarity paused at a closet door. It was out of the way of the main part of the shop, yet not in her apartment above it. Rainbow couldn’t imagine what this was about.

“I promised myself that I would take good care of her. As part of that, I decided that I needed to prepare something for her eventual discovery of self. She’ll receive her cutie mark one day… and I feel certain what it will be related to.”

Rainbow Dash nodded. She had heard Applejack rave about Sweetie’s voice, even going so far as to place Apple Bloom second to her. She hadn’t heard it herself, but if her friends were any indication, there was no mistaking that she had a gift.

Rarity’s horn sparked and the closet door opened revealing a gown. It was trademark Rarity, fusing subtle brilliance with personal flair. The dress, in all of its presence, seemed to be radiating Sweetie’s personality. It was a silvery material that shined even through the darkness, with a hint of soft pink and gentle purple gracefully accenting the borders. It looked to be perfectly matched with Sweetie, and if Rainbow knew Rarity at all, it had undergone several alterations to keep up with Sweetie’s growth.

“Wow…”

“When she does find her cutie mark… when she does finally overcome her shyness and take the stage… She’ll do so in style,” Rarity stated, “and she’ll do it in a dress no other pony will ever have. I’ll not sell this design, and the world does not need to know who made it. The world needs to know the pony who will one day wear it.”

Rainbow merely blinked. The sentimentality was nice and all, but it was beginning to hemorrhage sappiness at a dangerous rate and she wasn’t fond of sappiness. She slowly backed away from the door.

“Rainbow…,” said Rarity softly. It was heartfelt yet strangely sad. It sounded like a plea in the absence of any begging, as though the voice calling out to her wanted to say so much more.

She stopped, looking at Rarity, waiting for her to continue.

“Do… do you have feelings for anypony…?”

Her eyes widened, and she could feel her cheeks starting to burn as she looked away.

“Um… what?”

Rarity shook her head and replied, “Nevermind.”

Rainbow Dash found herself staring at the wall, trying to think of what to say or if even a single word would be an appropriate response. She had to consider how honest Rarity had just been with her. If Rarity could open herself up that way, then why couldn’t she?

“Yeah…,” she finally replied.

Rarity blinked. She hadn’t expected any honesty at all. It wasn’t that Rainbow Dash wasn’t capable of honesty; it was more like Rainbow Dash wasn’t known for being an open book where emotions came into play. Rarity knew full well how much Rainbow Dash detested the sappier conversations in life, and so she had made special effort to bring Rainbow Dash into a comfort zone with them. It was, after all, for Rainbow’s own good, she reminded herself.

“I… um…,” she began, still staring at the wall while she let her rump fall to the floor, “I can’t help it… but I wish… I really wish that I could…,” she said, sounding more uncomfortable with each passing syllable.

“Rainbow, it’s okay… You don’t have to talk about it if you d-…,” was all she could manage before Rainbow cut her off.

“No! I… Please let me… It’s why I came over here in the first place,” she admitted.

“Alright,” Rarity replied in a calm voice. She really would do her best to hold herself together and be there for Rainbow, even if her own feelings were never returned; at least she could help Rainbow smile again.

“It’s Applejack… I… I’ve had feelings for her for a long time… and… when I learned that she and Fluttershy…,” her voice cracked in a way unnatural to her normally sandy voice, “It hurt… I mean… It wasn’t her fault, y’know? But, it still hurt…”

Rarity swallowed, daring not to speak until she was certain that Rainbow was finished.

“I’m not mad at either of them… that wouldn’t be fair, would it?” she asked rhetorically, leaving no room for a reply, “But, still… I feel like I should tell her… or… something… I… I don’t know… I’m not good at this stuff with feelings…”

“It’s stupid… I’m stupid… I don’t know what to do…”

Rarity took a deep breath, and screwed up her courage before she quietly cantered over to Dash and placed a foreleg supportively across her withers, “You aren’t stupid at all, Rainbow Dash…”

Silence was all she got in return. It was an extraordinarily thick silence that was riddled with tension and unbearable anticipation. She wanted the silence to be over with, for Rainbow to say something; anything at this point. It didn’t matter if she yelled, so long as she said something.

Almost anything. She hadn’t expected to hear the soft sob, or feel the mare trembling beneath her foreleg. She never knew anything could sound so sad, or hurt her heart so. Rainbow Dash was crying before her, and she knew that Rainbow must be feeling very self conscious about it. The only thing Rarity could think of was how much she wanted to bring a smile to Rainbow’s face, whatever it took. She was caught in the web of thoughts as she gazed at the rainbow mane falling listlessly down Dash’s neck and cascading brilliant boundless color around a field of sky blue.

All of her thoughts crashed heavily against the outermost regions of her mind, but no amount of will could make her take action at that moment. She was too frightened of what she’d do if she was in control, and even more frightened of what that could do to Rainbow Dash. More than half of her mind flooded with one single objective: protect Rainbow’s feelings.

“Rarity…,” said Rainbow, quietly and through a sob she had fruitlessly attempted to suppress.

“Yes… Rainbow…?” she replied tentatively. It was all she could do not to say it too loudly or too quickly out of sheer nervousness.

“I’m sorry…,” she said weakly through what was now clearly a wracking sob.

Rarity hadn’t the faintest idea why Rainbow Dash was sorry. So far as she was concerned, no apology was warranted at all.

“What…? Why?” she asked delicately.

“For being so short with you at the Best Young Flyers’ Competition…”

Rarity was caught entirely off guard and taken aback to a degree she would have previously reasoned not to be possible. Rainbow was apologizing for the Best Young Flyers’ Competition? Why?

“Rainbow… there is nothing that happened on that day that you need to apologize for… Not ever…,” she said softly.

Rainbow shook her head. “I talked to Applejack a few days after… I was… kind of upset with you…,” she said softly, “and she told me that it was because of you that everypony was at the competition in the first place.”

Rarity had no idea what to say, nor did she know if it was her time to speak. She elected caution at this time, and remained silent.

“I um… I never thanked you properly for doing that…,” Rainbow said.

Rarity took a deep breath, and in her most confident voice she spoke. “Rainbow Dash, you saved my life. I was a total foal that day, and I treated you terribly. I had done nothing to earn my spot in that show, and I tried to steal it from the pony who most deserved to be there. After what I had done… That you’d still come to my rescue… well that was… more than I deser--…”

She found herself cut off by a glare from Rainbow Dash. She hadn’t expected that at all.

“You finish that thought… and I’ll buck your head in,” she said through gritted teeth.

Rarity was beyond taken aback at this sudden change of tone.

“You deserve to live Rarity. I may not know much about fashion and stuff, but I know that you’re amazing at what you do and Equestria deserves to see more of what you have to offer. And you deserve to show stuck up idiots like Blueblood what they’re missing!”

Rarity felt her cheeks starting to burn as Rainbow Dash carried on.

“So… so don’t ever talk like you deserve to die!” she cried.

Rarity’s eyes widened in shock at Rainbow’s outburst. It was nothing she had ever expected, although that was due in large part to having never expected to have this conversation in the first place. Now it was happening, and Rainbow was showing how important Rarity was not only to herself but as far as she was concerned to the world.

Rarity cleared her throat, attempting some level of composure before continuing to speak.

“I… I’m sorry, Rainbow…,” she managed through strain. Tears threatened to burn right through her eyes, but with effort she managed to keep them at bay.

“Just… Don’t talk like that, okay? You’re a great pony, and anypony who says otherwise will get a face full of my hooves…,” said Rainbow in a quiet voice as she wrapped her forelegs around Rarity’s neck and pulled her close.

Rarity felt her breath catch in her throat at Rainbow’s first touch, and quickly forgot how to breathe altogether as she was pulled into Rainbow’s embrace. She felt her mind blank entirely within seconds, and began frantically fighting to remember how to breathe and to speak before it was too late.

It was strange to Rarity how a world that felt so entirely out of control to her felt so far away and so distinctly insignificant when she was in Rainbow’s arms. She imagined that even the Everfree would pose no intimidation to her in this embrace. It was so consuming to her that she lost track of time and forgot composure altogether. She had, of course, expected precisely this reaction were she ever to find herself in Rainbow’s embrace. It was the actual part about finding herself in said embrace that she had long ago put off as mere hopeful thought.

• • •

“Shah?”

No response, the pink-maned mare was still in another world. It was strange seeing her so unfocused and out of sorts. More than that, it was worrisome. Applejack had been calling out to her marefriend for the better part of ten minutes.

“Shah??” she called out again, with a little extra volume and an added nuzzle to her neck.

The sensation of Applejack’s muzzle gently pushing against her neck snapped her into reality, and at once she remembered to breathe. It was a sharp gasp that alarmed Applejack just the tiniest bit, causing her to jump at the same time as Fluttershy.

“What’s wrong…?” Applejack asked.

Fluttershy found herself examining the woodwork inside of her cottage more closely than she ever had before. It was mostly in an attempt to stall for time. She wanted to tell Applejack everything, but she found she wasn’t able to form words at all. A fairly typical problem for her, certainly, but she hadn’t experienced such speechlessness since she was able to admit her feelings to Applejack.

She felt a foreleg wrap gingerly around her and pull her close. The warmth of Applejack’s muscular body brought instant comfort to her, and she found the tension in her own muscles quickly trickle away as she snuggled up against her marefriend.

“Ya can tell me anythin’, ya know that, dontcha…?” she said softly. It was amazing to Fluttershy just how gentle Applejack’s voice could go, and she quietly wondered to herself if anypony had ever experienced Applejack like she had.

She took a deep breath, and closed her eyes, and tried to manage to say something. Anything.

“Yes…,” she said softly. So softly that were it not for the total silence of her home, Applejack might not have been able to hear.

“Good… so… why dontcha…?”

“I… I talked to Rarity today…”

“Oh yeah? What? She say somethin’ awful again? Do I got-…”

Fluttershy shook her head and stood up, looking Applejack in the eyes. Such a look calmed Applejack immediately, and she found herself entirely quiet and ready to listen again.

“No… nothing like that… we’re okay, really. I promise. But she’s… she’s hurting…,” she said, sighing and returning to her position at Applejack’s side and snuggling back into her, “She has feelings for Rainbow Dash… but…”

Applejack breathed gently, inhaling Fluttershy’s scent as she stroked her mane gently.

“Well… she has feelings for somepony else…,” she said quietly. It didn’t make sense to her, that she’d suddenly withhold truth from her marefriend, or that doing so would feel so correct. It felt almost perverse that a lie should actually feel like the right thing to do, but somehow the truth felt like the beginnings of a chasm in an otherwise solid friendship built of competitive spirit. She had no desire to end any friendships, so whatever she had to do in order to avoid that was what she’d surely elect to do. At least, this is what she told herself.

• • •

“I love you…,” she whispered at what she believed to be an inconsequential volume.

“What?” asked Rainbow, her ears were sharper than one would expect of a pony whose ears had been exposed to a great deal of wind and who had been at the core of no less than three sonic rainbooms. Needless to say, Rarity found herself shocked.

“I… I…,” she found herself at a proper loss for words as she backed away from Rainbow Dash, “Oh… Rainbow…,” she said quietly. There was a particular measure of sadness in her voice that Rainbow picked up on right away, and she found herself more than a little curious about it.

“You okay, Rarity…?” she asked. Rarity had expected some level of anger from Rainbow Dash, or something registering with a negative vibe. Instead, she heard only concern in the sandy voice of her athletic friend.

She found her breathing was shallow and challenging, making it a struggle to fill her lungs comfortably. She felt a thin layer of sweat developing through her coat, and her limbs began to shake involuntarily as she tried to repeat what she had said the first time.

“Rarity…?” Rainbow asked again as she trotted slowly towards her. She brought her face up to Rarity’s, and looked directly into her deep blue eyes. The blue mare’s own rose colored eyes reflected the little bit of moonlight that came in through the window. It created a glow that stole what little there was left of Rarity’s breath.

“I…,” she started again, then closed her eyes, “I said… I love you…,” she repeated through a difficult breath. It felt as though the last three words took with them her remaining stamina, and her forelegs gave way beneath her. She fell, but did not impact with the floor.

Rainbow held her in her own forelegs, staring at her with a disbelief and worry.

• • •

A pair of shimmering olive green eyes watched through the darkness as her sister fell into the arms of a familiar cyan pegasus. A storm of emotions stirred inside of her. She had learned so much just listening to this one conversation. She had never asked about her parents, she’d been far too happy spending so much time with her sister. It was made all the more joyful by the fact that Rarity had long ago started being a better sister and involving her in more things around the boutique and as a general activity for them to share at other times.

The idea that it had been forced darkened her little heart considerably. She didn’t know what to do with that. She wanted to believe that her time with her sister was all from genuine desire, but now she had this nagging feeling at the back of her heart that constantly told her in a hushed voice that Rarity had no choice.

At the same time, she had witnessed her sister confess complicated feelings to another mare and that was, on its own, very confusing. She hadn’t understood why her parents didn’t talk much about her, but she began to wonder if it wasn’t because of something like this. Likewise, Rarity hadn’t spent a lot of time socializing with her parents.

She remembered the day her parents brought her to the boutique. They had given her a night to pack up whatever she wanted to bring, advising her to pack a lot. The morning that they left was exciting. Luna’s moon was still in the sky when they left, and after a long but silent trip they had finally arrived at Rarity’s boutique. It was going to be so great to see her sister proper again. She had seen her in passing, and had on occasion spent a night there previously. While there, she was even able to attend a class or two in the local school. She had made friends, but her time with them and with her sister had been limited at best.

She was excited to have a whole week solid in Ponyville to just be with everypony she liked seeing and talking to and spending time with. She had become that much more excited to learn that she’d be staying much longer than expected. Rarity seemed to have no problem with that, and she and Sweetie worked together to make a proper space for her. She had her own room in a week with help from her and Rarity’s friends, and she was happily snuggling up in her bed every night since them.

So, had this whole experience actually been based on a lie? On who’s lie? Who had told the worst lie? She didn’t know and she wasn’t sure that she even wanted to. She could feel her eyes begin to burn as tears began to well up in them. It was too much; all of it was just too much. She couldn’t take it. She needed her friends.