Bittersweet Trails

I so wasn’t holding this until you guys said to continue it. /Applelie

In the following days to come, the nightmares only worsened.

No longer did I simply fight off my deepest-seated fears, such as an Ursa Major stomping into town, or the untimely passing of my brother.

Instead, I had to deal with her.

I spent long, fitful nights seeing her tearful face, knowing she wanted nothing to do with me. Knowing that I'd reacted as I had. The sound of her sobs would endlessly reverberate in my ears, until I awoke in a cold sweat, screaming as though touched by a ghost.

The days were no better. I knew very well that she was taking special care to avoid me, and I made no such action to force contact with her. It hurt, but the fact that seeing her again might be for the worst kept me going the way that I was.

Well, I saw her once. She only spoke briefly, though unusually chipper: "Oh, don't worry! I just need some time to myself anyways!" Before I could get any elaboration, she'd turned quickly around and walked away, ignoring my questions.

I felt even worse after that.

It was a long three days, indeed. Long, lonely days of attempted categorization, only to end up in a sad, withdrawn heap in a corner. Not crying, or anything. Just...numbly aching. Yearning. I'd had a taste of what might have been, and now it was most likely 'what won't be, ever, for sure'.

Somewhere along the way, I knew I had to talk to somepony, to at least vent, if you will. Optionally, I wanted to see if I could patch things up with her, which is what I wanted most. Spike wanted nothing to do with it as soon as I mentioned the venting part, though I suppose the point is that you don't tell them that you actually are.

The next few days were spent racking my brain, thinking of who I might trust with this...secret.

I'll be honest, I've never spoken a word about my...'orientation' to anypony, and I like to keep it that way. Some ponies end up making jokes about the preferences that we don't necessarily choose, whether you're in the control group or not. Granted, colts will be colts, but those colts can be pretty immature if you give them a stick to grasp at.

Plus, the fact that another two ponies who were best friends had found love was a stick that was roughly one googol of meters long. Or, a lá scientific notation, one quadrillion to a power of ten thousand.

I first thought of telling Fluttershy. She was kind and understanding, and perhaps she might even help me and Pinkie resolve our differences. But then the fact that my telling of such a well-kept secret to such an anxious pony could lead to disaster. Not through publicity, necessarily, but through worrying about whether one might let it slip or not.

The next pony that came to mind was Applejack. She was in a relationship of her own, and being the honest pony that she was, she would speak her exact thoughts, and I'd know immediately whether she'd be able to help or not. But she'd had her share of snide comments and jeers, and prejudice might get in the way of her thinking. Plus, something told me that how she worked was much different than I did.

For some reason, I thought of Rainbow, but then I immediately shook my figurative head. Provided, she too was in a relationship, with Applejack, she obviously knew very little about such matters, perhaps even less than me. Consulting her might have me dangling off a cliff, with a smiling manticore leering over me.

The thought made me shudder.

Then it came, and the final choice was clear. A pony who already knew about it, and who had apparently sworn to secrecy, as she hadn't said a word since. Without another thought, I quietly set out from the library, to one Carousel Boutique.

"So, Twilight, you've come seeking romantic counseling? Well, you've come to the right place!"

Shifting my hindquarters around on the red velvet cushion that they resided on, I took a sip of some generously provided Green Herb tea, nodding assent.

The pony across from me leaned excitedly across the low-set table that hardly separated us, beaming so widely that her grin nearly cracked. "I still can't believe that you managed to overcome your nature, and find a nice pony to settle down with! It couldn't have been hard for you, right? Pinkie must have absolutely fallen for a beautiful mare like yourself!"

"Uh-huh, sure. Let's go with that." My voice sounded unusually sardonic and snide as I spoke, which caused Rarity to move back to her seat, her grin fading.

"Right then," she began after a quiet period that seemed both a blessing and a blight. "So what's the trouble in paradise? I can't imagine anything-"

"She painted the library pink."

Her shocked expression looked almost like a paragon of what I imagined my face had looked like at the moment of discovery. "She painted a tree pink?!”

"Yup." Not much more could be said, really.

"What a dreadful disaster! At least, she could have made it green?" With a cold glare from me, she immediately hopped back on track. "So did anything else happen at all? It might be a barrier, sure, if you didn't wish it to be so, but that's no reason to get so worked up!"

"Well..." My gaze fell, and I could feel my breathing fluctuate slightly, becoming more ragged as all sorts of memories returned at once. The pain in my heart became so unbearable, that my speech was even affected by it. I had to fight back the horrible memory of her tears, and doing so, I almost cried myself. "I, uh...she knocked, and...she cried, and...I...I..."

With a sympathetic gaze, Rarity made a little gesture with her hoof, cutting me off in the nicest manner that she possibly could have. "Come now, darling, relax, and have a sip of tea."

I did so, managing just barely to lift the cup to my lips, taking in some of the calming liquid.

As the gentle shaking that had inexplicably built up in my body died down, she took a sip from her own cup, before leaning forward, forehooves crossed on the table as she continued. "Now, how about we start from the beginning? I know it's tough, but I have to know what happened."

I set off on an explanation, the best that I could possibly muster. A few intervals occurred in which I apparently got out of hand, in which Rarity would gently stop me, allowing me to calm down slightly before I continued. Throughout the rest, she nodded, making slight sounds of understanding, her gaze not once leaving me.

I knew I'd made the right choice with her. She was such a good listener, unlike many.

I finally dragged through to the end, managing to ignore the quavering of my voice as I finished.

It was quiet for a few seconds, as Rarity just nodded, taking on a thinking expression so intense that I feared that she may have been stumped. That she might say we weren't compatible, and it wasn't meant to be because of conflicts such as this.

My paranoid assumptions were proved wrong as she finally spoke again: "It seems like you two need to compromise a little."

"Compromise? On what?" What on earth was she talking about? I'd given my heart to this pony, and hoped to give my soul to her as well! She'd done the same on that one skating day, so what could we compromise on?

"On each other, of course!" Taking a hint from my confused cock of the head, she continued with a rolling of the eyes. "Twilight, she obviously wants to help you with something, to make you happier than you are. Your reaction to her was showing the exact opposite of what she wanted, or simply, the fact that you weren't happy. Granted, she should be careful when, ahem, performing deeds like that, but neither of you should have exploded like that!"

I could feel my brain screaming at me furiously, my heart beating rapidly in agitation, and a hoof reaching up to make contact with the rumored land of Forehead-ia as my mouth slowly expressed my disappointment in myself.

"Oh my Celestia..."

"Indeed, Twilight Sparkle." With a habitual sweeping of her mane, Rarity reclined back to a sitting position. "The point is, you need to make her feel like she's making you happy."

"But she does! I love her to d-"

"I'm sure you do, Twilight." Her voice took a sudden turn towards dull force, a serious tone that she hardly ever used. "But if you want this to work, you're going to have to come up with something."

"But..." My mind was a complete blank as I managed to babble out what she'd probably expected. "I don't even know any ideas whatsoever!

The white unicorn had already risen, and now she looked down at me with bemusement. "Twilight. I'd expect better from a pony who can memorize dozens of constellations."
It's nothing too complicated, really. Just let her talk to you-" she stopped, apparently thinking it over. She mumbled 'Celestia help you...' under her breath before continuing. "-let her throw a party, whatever! As long as she thinks you're happy with what she's doing, she'll be happy as well, and your relationship will build on that, strengthening the love that you already share!"

"But what-"

"Twilight, I may be good, but I'm not a guru. Each relationship is different. I'm afraid you have to go it alone from here on out." Rarity suddenly perked up, before rushing from the small sitting room that we'd talked in. "I'll see you later, Twilight!" she called back. "I have a very important, top-secret ensemble to finish, and I'm afraid it slipped my mind when you came around!"

I sighed, looking to the floor.

Great. Now I was completely alone in this. The only thing that had changed from that was me discovering exactly how I'd bucked up, and how I might fix it, provided I could cook up anything along the lines that she mentioned...

Then it hit me harder than a sack of bricks dropped from the top of Ghastly Gorge. The idea carried me so quickly out the door, that I probably pulled off a Sonic Rainboom on the way.

I was going to fix this, make things right. If only for me, or for her.

If only for love.

Sorry for being so cheesy. But I think I actually have the start of a recurring plot, and some actual place to shoot for. I’ll admit, the goal I’ve had has been a little hazy. But I know exactly where I’m going now.

Oh, and you can’t trust me in the comments, but you can trust me here. You can trust me when, if you check the comments, somepony already guessed it (halfway). To find the comment, I have a cryptic haiku set for you!

‘In a land of day,
And a time when I did rhyme
This is the end name.

Hate and dislike are
Both one with this type of thing
Assumption is slain.

In a world where
two-two together is key,
This is not story.

In places of cache,
Some say that they do geo,
This is not the case.

Torture is a thing,
A living being that we all
Hide from, in disdain.’

Good luck!