Both Sides Now

The shared bathroom was, like the whole hotel, elegant and marvelous, although Rarity did have time to wonder as she combed the sleep out of her mane: just how was it practical if the two ponies in the shared suites were not on familiar terms? Perhaps that was the point, bringing strangers closer together. Or perhaps it was just a hold-over from when this hotel, like many of the older surrounding buildings, had been part of Canterlot Castle proper before Princess Celestia at some point in history reduced its opulence.

Or perhaps the rooms were reserved for dual bookings. There could be a simple explanation.

Having applied the last brushstroke to her mane, Rarity considered the door that led not to her room but to Twilight's. She wondered if she would need an excuse to open it up, to just check on her, to see if she was getting ready properly, if she needed any help. It was only a couple of hours until the first event of the weekend, after all, the open air party in the Canterlot Gardens.

Twilight would probably appreciate her help. Welcome it, in fact. She deferred to Rarity in the matter of most things regarding fashion and personal style. Of course, it was rare that she asked, given that she was a princess now and could get by on just her natural elegance, but in the instances that she did, she trusted Rarity's opinion.

So she knocked lightly on the door. It swung open with a push of purple magic, revealing Twilight pacing the room, a half-eaten bagel floating behind her.

"Come in," she said, treading back and forth on the fine rug. "The papers I asked for haven't shown up yet, so I didn't really have all that much to do with my morning, and I was thinking about getting some breakfast but I remembered the room service from last night and that was incredibly fast. So whoever is in charge of getting a dozen little bread things up to the newest princess' room, they're on top of their game." She paused and looked at Rarity. "Do you want a bagel, or a croissant, or a danish, or a... whatever those are? Why are there so many different kinds of little breakfast pastry things?"

"Twilight, dear," Rarity asked, stepping into the room, "have you had much coffee this morning?"

"No. Maybe. How much is much? No more than usual. Coffee, the room had. Enough to go with that whole spread there." She waved a hoof at the mountain of pastries. "And no," she added, noting Rarity's look, "I didn't drink it all. There's plenty left. I'm just... y'know."

Rarity inspected a puffy thing with some sort of frosting on top. "I'm afraid I don't. Well, yes, I can see you are a little... terse, but I don't know why, I'm sorry." She selected a pastry package filled with some unknown substance and sat at the table. "Perhaps you'd like to tell me?"

Twilight took the other seat. "It's this garden thing. And the other things that aren't the Forum. I just don't see the point in it all, we're not meant to be doing any discussing of policy or preparation or anything, it's all just... talking and doing nothing. Smiling and waving. I just want to skip past it all and get to the Open Forum, which is meant to be the point of this whole weekend." She dropped her head down on the table, her face in her hooves.

Rarity had an inkling of why she had invited her out of all of their friends to accompany her to Canterlot -- the real reason, not that she would most appreciate the fancy atmosphere (though that also was true). Twilight needed support, some pony to assist her in the areas where she fell short, which in this case was socializing. If Twilight had been an ancient ruler, before the unification of the three tribes, Rarity might have held a place in her court, offering her advice when Twilight lacked expertise; she found she quite liked the idea once it took form in her head.

"You know, I was thinking," she said.

She bit in to her mystery pastry, which turned out to be filled with a warm apple paste. Not a patch on anything Applejack had ever baked. She set it on her plate and continued.

"I was considering what you said last night, about being your adviser, and I think it's got some real merit to it. Not," she added quickly, seeing Twilight jump to respond, "that I should take your place, but the general idea of expert advice being available in your ear if needed. There was a word for it that's been on the tip of my tongue all morning -- do you remember that thing Rainbow Dash was talking about? About not flying solo, that a pony needed... something, but I can't recall the term."

Twilight did. She remembered the conversation vividly because she had been under the impression Rainbow had been explaining flying maneuvers in detail, when it had only dawned on Twilight more than halfway through the discussion that she had actually been using aerial terminology as a metaphor for dating.

"Wingmare?" she offered.

"Yes!" Rarity's face lit up so suddenly that Twilight almost saw it glow. "That's it. Wingmare. Twilight, let me be your wingmare."

Twilight considered. She heard Rarity's flute-like laughter, saw her summon up the perfect graceful response to a dry joke befitting business colleagues where she herself would only be capable of a forced smile. She could picture a branching array of follow-up questions ("How interesting! What is it like to..." "It must be fascinating to work with...!" "You know, I can't say I've ever met a... before!") that would sound completely natural without feeling probing or invasive or mechanically rehearsed if Twilight herself had said them. She took the awkward scenario she knew she would be in of trying to remember somepony's name that she should know but had eluded her, and solved it with a nearly-universal sentence: Have you met my friend Rarity?

She felt herself smile. "That sounds like a really good idea." She was interrupted partway by a knock at the door. "Wonder who that is," she said, frowning a little.

"Perhaps it's your newspapers," Rarity suggested. She took another bite of her pastry.

"Oh! Maybe it is."

Twilight stood to check the door. When she opened it, she was greeted by their bellhop from yesterday with three papers clutched under one arm.

The day was looking better already.

-/-

"Is there that much more news in Canterlot?" Rarity asked, eyeing Twilight covering her half of the table with newspaper before turning back to the lovely teapot, which had begun to whistle.

"Not really." Twilight shrugged and took a sip of her coffee. "I picked up the habit of reading multiple newspapers from my father. He swore by it, said it was the only way to know what was really going on."

"Wouldn't you end up reading a lot of the same stories twice?" Rarity came back to the table, setting down a steaming cup of tea.

"Mm-hm," Twilight said around a mouthful of bagel. "But the slant on the reporting is often very different. The Journal's editor-in-chief supports Princess Celestia to a fault, the Times is more progressive and takes controversial stances on issues for the purpose of creating a debate. They sort of cancel out each others' biases." She shrugged, and took another bite. "It's fun."

"I see," Rarity said. "What's the third paper?" She nudged one of the open newspapers, which had a greenish tinge to its pages.

Twilight chuckled. "That's my guilty pleasure reading. The Post picks up some interesting stories that actually do turn out to be true, but it's more a case of a stopped clock being right twice a day than anything else."

Rarity glanced at the open page. Although it was upside-down, she was able to read the enormous headline -- THEY TOOK ME BEYOND THE STARS! -- and the smaller subheading claiming Local Stallion Reveals Otherworldly Creatures Live Among Us!

"Twilight," she deadpanned, "this is a tabloid. And not an especially good one, at that."

"Oh, yeah," Twilight agreed. She took a sip of her coffee. "It's the worst. I don't think you could find a single pony who reads it who takes it seriously. You might even have a hard time with the ponies who write for it, for that matter."

"Could I take a look?" Rarity asked, curious as to what could be interesting to Twilight in such pulp.

"Sure," she said, spinning the paper around. "I really only have time for proper news this morning, anyway."

Rarity skimmed the headlines, each more incredulous than the last. CRAGODILES FOUND IN MANEHATTAN SEWER. MY VAMPIRE BAT-PONY LOVER. THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF CLOUDSDALE -- REVEALED! "And this is real news, sometimes?" Rarity asked, skeptical.

"Well, you do have to read between the lines a little," Twilight admitted.

Rarity shot her a raised eyebrow, which earned a laugh.

"Okay, a lot, but... see here?" Twilight tapped the page with a charcoal drawing of an elegant mare swooning for a menacing shadow with heavy wings and gleaming fangs. "There's been a huge uptick in bat-pony stories recently, while all the respectable news has to be pushed into even admitting they exist. It lets ponies experience something new and confronting with a safe buffer of knowing that it's just the Post, everything they print is fabricated, so when the actual news has something real to report, everypony's hungry to learn the truth."

"Shouldn't you know the truth already?" Rarity said with a mischievous smile. "Being a princess and knowing all these national secrets and all."

"Pfft. I don't think even Princess Celestia knows what they're all about. They're Luna's thing."

"So you're saying she might make some big official statement soon about exactly where they come from, something like that? Because of what this paper is printing." Rarity had forgotten the intense flurry of speculation that followed Princess Luna's last public appearance riding in a carriage drawn by two mysterious bat-ponies. It was odd, how one could just overlook things that had, even for a brief moment, seemed so important.

Twilight shrugged. "Or it could be nothing. Most of the Post's big leads are nothings."

Rarity turned another page, finding a scattering of smaller articles. One of them stood out to her, one that could not be classified as 'nothing'. It was not a nothing article, because it was about Twilight.

Or, more correctly, Twilight and herself.

PRINCESS ARRIVES WITH ESCORT IN TOW! blared the headline.

Rarity's eyes narrowed as she rapidly read through the brief story.

Last night Princess Twilight came to Canterlot -- and she was not alone! Sources say she and her "friend" were quite cozy while checking in... what could be going on in their shared suite, we wonder? Hm...

She cleared her throat and turned the Post back to face Twilight. "There's something you may want to see," she said, tapping a hoof to the page.

Rarity watched Twilight's eyes scan the paper. She expected shock. Outrage. Confusion, fretting, worrying that all of Canterlot would think she was up to something untoward when they retreated to their hotel.

Instead she laughed.

"What did I tell you?" Twilight said. "It's dumb. If the Post ever prints something true, it's an accident."

Rarity breathed a sigh of relief. It was good that Twilight could disregard some distractions. She had enough to handle already.

"You're right," she said. "Not a word of that is true."

"We're not even sharing a room." Twilight finished off her bagel and went back to her serious newspaper.

Rarity turned the offending page with her magic, intent on putting the silly article out of her mind. But although she read a dozen or so stories in the back section of the Post, she would have been hard-pressed to recall any details about them.

-/-

The royal gardens were, for lack of a better word, big.

Their entire area spanned a semi-circle around the edge of the mountain, forming a skirt at the base of Canterlot Castle. The westernmost area was heavily wooded, home to many flocks and herds of simpler animals that had their own run of the dense forest. It stood in the mountain's shadow until late in the afternoon, covered in trees that stood close together and dense underbrush that threatened to trip and tangle, parted by dutifully maintained roads that followed the curves of the mountain that had existed long before there was a Canterlot. Rows and rows of greenhouses populated the eastern section, all uniform from the outside but each containing a separate controlled ecosystem: here dry Badlands sands, there bubbling marshes, another with frozen northern tundra, all carefully maintained with magic. Their sheer number was visually impressive, but to ponies not in possession of a key to open the dual sets of doors at either end of each structure they were little more than a momentary curiosity.

The main, central section, the place that most ponies considered the royal gardens proper, more suited casual visitation, be it from a pair of ponies wanting a pleasant stroll or a mass outdoor gathering. A great marble fountain formed the centerpiece of a large flat expanse carved into the mountainside, with rows of bushes and beds of flowers radiating out from it in all directions like rays from the sun. Ponies dotted the entire gardens in clusters of threes and fours, while red-jacketed loners Rarity recognized as castle staff flitted from group to group with trays of bite-sized food.

"Somehow," Rarity said, taking in the stretching flat land of the gardens as they reached the top of the long staircase, "I had expected... more."

"More?" Twilight asked.

More of what, she was not exactly sure. Aside from the size and the number of attendants, the garden party seemed remarkably simple, like they could have been out the back of some pony's cottage at Ponyville instead of a mere hop, skip, and jump from Canterlot Castle. Perhaps she had been spoiled by Pinkie Pie and her unending well of enthusiasm for parties.

"More... pomp and circumstance, perhaps," she settled on at last.

"Princess Celestia pushed for today to be very relaxed, very informal," Twilight said. "Puts everypony on equal standing."

"That would explain things, yes." Rarity made a mock pout. "I almost feel overdressed now."

Twilight considered Rarity's outfit. It was a vibrant yellow dress that reminded Twilight of buttercups. It was simple as far as she could see, very uncomplicated as far as Rarity's personal designs went, but came with a broad and slightly translucent sunhat in a similar color, under which Rarity's mane was packed in a mass of curls held in place partly by hair products Twilight hadn't recognized and partly by a spell she hadn't known had existed. To Twilight she looked as she always did: composed, refined, beautiful.

"Impossible," she said with a smile, and Rarity shared it with her. "But I do hope you saved the good stuff for Sunday night."

"Well, it would be poor form to show up underdressed to the opera," Rarity said, but something told her this wasn't precisely the point Twilight had been trying to make.

Further discussion of the exact levels of dress one should employ for royal functions, low-key or otherwise, was interrupted by a deep male voice calling: "Twilight!"

Rarity turned to see Twilight's brother and Princess Cadance hailing them from beside a nearby rosebush. Twilight trotted to Shining Armor and embraced him, neck to neck.

Cadance gave a mischievous look which, in the few times Rarity had met with her in an unguarded, pressure-free situation, seemed to be quite common. She bowed low to Twilight and addressed her: "Her Royal Highness Princess Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship and ruler of Ponyville."

Twilight returned the bow with solemnity. "Her Royal Highness Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, Princess of Love and ruler of the Crystal Empire."

This alternative to that little song-and-dance that was equal parts adorable and nauseating was perhaps a little more befitting of royalty, Rarity thought. But at the same time, she found she missed Twilight hopping about and chanting about sunshine and ladybugs. Perhaps it was marginally more adorable than nauseating.

Shining rolled his eyes, and encouraged Rarity to do the same. Cadance and Twilight giggled, spoiling the illusion that they had the same kind of unflappable composure as the elder princesses.

"Is everypony else from Ponyville here?" Cadance asked, looking briefly around.

"Unfortunately, no," Rarity said with a wan smile, "it's just us two."

"Oh. Well, that's alright, it was you I most wanted to see."

"Me?" Rarity pointed at her chest with a hoof.

"Yes, I never did get to properly thank you for your help with the Equestria Games selection committee." Cadance glanced off into the distance. "We were all a little tight for time that day."

Rarity laughed. "Oh, that's quite alright. Assisting a princess with her beauty routine is its own reward." She tipped her head, indicating the bun in Twilight's hair. "As you can see, once one gets the taste for it, it can be quite difficult to stop."

"I can see how."

Her gaze lingered on Rarity, and for a moment she thought she had committed some kind of minor social faux pas. But then Cadance sighed and swept her gaze around the gardens.

"But," she said, "we should be making the rounds. We shouldn't be monopolizing each other's get-to-know-a-princess time."

"You're right," Twilight said, and broke her princessly demeanor to hug Cadance and her brother briefly. "Have a good rest of the day, you two."

"You too," said Shining. "Hey, check the Post tomorrow, okay?"

"Oh, I will," Twilight said, grinning, and Rarity wondered if this had a special significance for the two of them."I'll look for you tomorrow," Cadance said as they parted.

Rarity waited until the couple was safely out of earshot. "Those two are cute," she said, though she suspected they were aware of just how cute they were.

"They are," Twilight agreed.

"And..." Rarity deliberately bumped into Twilight's side as she began to walk slowly towards one of the more populous sections of the gardens. "...That wasn't so hard, was it?"

Twilight rolled her eyes. "That was Cadance and my brother," she said without humor. Then she noticed the look on Rarity's face, somewhere between bemusement and pity. "And, that was you making a joke."

"Trying, at least."

"It's appreciated." She huffed a breath that would have blown back part of her mane, had it been in its natural state. "Your target just has her shields up."

Rarity saw the opportunity to change the subject. "You made mention of getting dressed up for the opera," she said. "Moreso, I mean. How come?"

"Oh. Well, that's going to be mostly Luna's doing." Twilight tracked a waiter that had crossed her path as she spoke. Was there something unusual about him? Or was it just her imagination? "She wanted a very formal approach to the whole weekend, and Celestia compromised her into taking control of the opera night. She has something planned for it, something big and impressive."

"Like what?" Rarity asked.

"I don't know." Twilight shrugged, continuing to stare at the waiter. Had she seen him somewhere before? His cutie mark was a blot of ink at the top of a scroll -- not quite fitting for a waiter, but neither were the marks of half the ponies in the red jackets. "But I'll be willing to bet it warrants a nice dress."

"Hungry?"

Twilight blinked. "Hm?" She wondered why a dress would make her hungry.

"Well," Rarity said, gesturing with her hoof to Twilight's waiter, "you've kept your eye on that plate of hors d'oeuvres..."

The waiter made a path towards them, and Twilight swallowed. Wordlessly, he approached them and offered his plate to Rarity, who took one of the colorful and ambiguous morsels. His light brown coat and dark brown mane both seemed to Twilight like they were nondescript on purpose, like somehow his special talent was blending in to the background. She could have run into him through her whole life and not remembered a single meeting.

"And you, Princess Twilight?" he asked. His voice, like his appearance, offered no clue.

Twilight held up a hoof and shook her head. "No, thank you."

He made his exit just as unobtrusively as he had arrived. Twilight noticed Rarity watching her, and that she likely would have had a question were she not occupied with chewing.

Shelving the mystery of the waiter, she pre-empted Rarity's curiosity. "There was a function once, when I was a little filly," she explained, "where I discovered that you could just take as many of those little things as you wanted. I was about a dozen or so past what should have been my limit before I spent the rest of the night in the bathroom trying to not be sick. I've never really had the stomach for them since."

Rarity blanched. "I'm not sure I do now, either."

"Sorry," Twilight said as she gave Rarity a smile.

"Well, if you weren't hungry, then why--"

"Princess Twilight Sparkle!" a thunderous jovial voice boomed from over Twilight's shoulder.

Twilight and Rarity turned to see a tall unicorn stallion barreling down upon them. He stood nearly as high as Big Macintosh with a coat in a more violent shade of red, with a heavy angular jaw and neatly-parted mane.

"Big Apple," he said, introducing himself with a cursory bow, "Mayor of Manehattan, but I'm sure you knew that already. And this is my wife, Brownstone." He indicated an earth pony by his side who could have been easily mistaken for his shadow.

"And I am Rarity, from--"

"From Ponyville," he said, laughing. "Yes, know all about you, too. Read all about your, ah, dress store in the Ponyville Express. Took out a subscription once the word got out about there being a new princess in Equestria. Did the same thing when that whole Crystal Empire business happened, but, ah, just between us..." He made a show of leaning close, and lowered his voice to a theatrical whisper. "...I think I like the sound of Ponyville better. Nice, quiet place. Simple living, simple folk, good old down-to-earth community."

Twilight had to restrain herself from physically biting her own tongue. Quiet? Between magical disasters, Discord, and Pinkie Pie, quiet was one of the last words she would have used to describe Ponyville. "It is quite nice," she said, finding something she could easily agree with.

"But, ah..." Big Apple seemed at a momentary loss for words, but something about it felt disingenuous to Twilight. Put on. Rehearsed. "It is a little... how would you put this... out of the way? That's the exact thing you look for in a summer getaway, but for a princess... Now, I don't mean to be too forward, but have you ever thought about moving?"

"I had not." And she hadn't, not even when her castle had been at its most uninviting and she had terribly missed the creak of the wood and the smell of the books at the Golden Oak.

"Well, you should really give it some consideration! I think you would love Manehattan, being right at the center of the beating heart of Equestria, so many ponies looking for the guidance of a princess right at the tips of your hooves. There's really nowhere else in the world like it; whatever you want, if you look hard enough for it, it is there. Of course, I'd be willing to put in a good word to the right ponies, see you saw the city in the best light, but..." He shrugged and made an off-hoof gesture, then gave Twilight a conspirator's smile. "...You wouldn't need me to do that for you, am I right, princess?"

"I already have somewhere to live," Twilight said, and her thoughts childishly added: It's a castle. Made of crystal.

"Well, of course you do, but, ah, you know what they say: location, location, location, right? If you are ever interested, come see me, and we'll work something out. Manehattan would love to have you, even just as a part-time resident."

A stunned silence followed in Big Apple's wake as he and his wife departed. Twilight could feel her expression frozen rigid on her face, a kind of bemused puzzlement.

"What an ass," Rarity hissed under her breath.

The strangled sound of Twilight's double-take pleased her almost as much as aiming a choice bit of vulgarity at Big Apple while he had stood with them would have.

"I don't think," Rarity continued, "I've ever heard so many underhoofed comments come out of a pony with such a wide smile. Twilight, I do hope you're not upset by any of the multitude of horrid things he just said."

"No, not really." Twilight made to brush her mane away from her eyes, but on finding no mane there settled for itching her ear instead. "I, um, sort of expected something like that, actually. Big Apple has been kind of... not subtle about his opinion that there should be a princess in Manehattan."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, it shows up in the news from time to time. Not front page, or anything, but it's a recurring theme. A reporter caught him saying it was ludicrous how Princess Celestia assigns new royalty to the backwaters of Equestria, once." Twilight scoffed. "As if that's the way it works."

"B-backwater?" Rarity was almost lost for words. "Ponyville may not be as fancy and grand as Manehattan, but--"

"Oh, no, this was about the Crystal Empire," Twilight said. "Which didn't really have much of anything until it rematerialized from wherever King Sombra trapped it, so 'backwater' isn't completely inaccurate."

"Wait a moment, you don't agree with any of this nonsense, do you?"

Twilight shook her head. "No. I understand where Big Apple is coming from, that's all. I don't agree with him."

"And you're fine with all of these slanderous attacks on..."

Rarity had been about to say your home, but something stopped her. Ponyville wasn't Twilight's home, not completely. She had been born in one of the outer suburbs of Canterlot, Rarity knew, and had done most of her growing up in the heart of the city. It had been less than a year and a half since Twilight had moved in to the old library.

"...On where you live?" she finished without too large a pause.

Twilight shrugged. "I like where I live," she said with a smile, "and there's nothing Big Apple could say that would get me to change my mind about that."

"Well, that works out wonderfully," Rarity said, "we like having you live there."

"Oh, look," Twilight said, focusing on a pony making a bee-line for them across the gardens, "here comes another one. At least he's coming from where we can see."

"How does a pony that large sneak up on you?" Rarity asked while the newcomer was still out of earshot. Twilight chuckled.

The new pony -- a cloud-grey pegasus with a pencil-thin mustache, a rouge's smile, and a pair of flying goggles slung jauntily around his neck -- greeted them with a bow more formal than what was needed. Twilight nodded to him, a formal acknowledgement that she had seen Princess Celestia use many times on ponies she passed by during their lessons; she felt maybe she might need a couple centuries of practice before it felt natural.

"Princess Twilight, if I may be so bold, I noticed your outfit from all the way over by the hydrangeas and I just had to drag myself away from the excruciatingly fascinating subject of Zebrican imports to inquire: who is your designer?" His words ran together with liquid grace, stretching and leaping like a ballet dancer.

"As it so happens," Twilight said with a smile, "she's right here."

The pegasus' eyes lit up at he glanced over to Rarity. "But of course! You must be Rarity. The style, the sophistication, the proximity to Twilight Sparkle, it could be none other."

Rarity gave him a demure smile. "Guilty, as charged." She liked him; the way he had dropped Twilight's title, unintentional or not, felt natural, more genuine that all of Big Apple's airs of familiarity. "But I'm afraid I'm not so familiar with you, mister...?"

"Banks," he said, "Fair Banks, but give it a couple of moons and there won't be a pony in Equestria who hasn't heard of me, not to be letting the cart lead or anything. I'm in the pictures, you see, the moving pictures, and I have on my hooves the exclusive directorial rights to the biggest story the screen has ever seen. It's got it all: Adventure! Suspense! Romance!

"But! My costume designer walked off the set last week, something about that she wanted to be working in a more serious medium and that she was going back to Bridleway, but I'm not bitter, all water under the old bridge."

He sucked a deep breath through his teeth.

"Anyway, that leaves a big hole in my crew waiting to be filled by somepony with a sharp eye and sharper needle, and here I happen to run across the up-and-coming designer, the pony whose name is on lips all over Equestria. And my horoscope said today was a day for caution and restraint."

He threw his head back to give a sharp laugh -- a single theatrical "Ha!" -- and refocused his attention on Rarity, eyes dancing.

"I couldn't tell you just what the story is, confidentiality agreements and all that, but you would be designing costumes for ancient heroic warriors, ponies from exotic locations around the world, and..." Fair Banks held his hoof up to the side of his muzzle, making a big pantomime show of telling a secret. "...Relic hunters with pith helmets, if you catch my meaning, wink wink."

"Wow, that sounds like a great opportunity, Rarity," Twilight said. "You should take it and definitely not let anything slip about what's happening on set to any friends you might have who are big fans of ponies with pith helmets."

"A thoroughly convincing argument, on both your parts," Rarity said. She realized she was lost for words, and she found the feeling of struggling for a direction to lead the conversation quite strange.

A stack of business cards appeared in Banks' hoof and disappeared just as quickly as Rarity took one. "I'm staying at the Saddleton, we can get some coffee while the big political meeting for big political ponies is happening. You don't have plans then, do you?"

"I do now."

"Marvelous! Talk more then, don't need to be taking up any more of your mingling time, and I'd better be getting back to doing my sworn duty as a plus-one. Continue to have a wonderful day, ladies."

As Banks strode back across the grounds to fall in at the side of a mare with a mane so long and straight it almost brushed the ground, Rarity glanced at his card. That had been almost effortless. The chance to attach her name and, more importantly, her artistic flair to something that might be seen all over Equestria had just leapt onto her plate. She wondered what her horoscope had to say on the matter. Opportunities await, perhaps.

"I wonder what book is getting adapted," Twilight mused.

"Shouldn't it be the first one?" Rarity asked. It was easier to speak to Twilight than to struggle to comprehend the enormity of somepony approaching her, wanting to work with her, because they knew her name and she was unaware of theirs.

"Well, you'd think that, but there's important information in the spin-off prequels that might make a composition of those a better starting point, and there's also an argument for beginning at the second installment because of the difference in tone between..." She trailed off as she noticed Rarity staring at her. "Sorry. I forget sometimes that not everypony is as big a fan of Daring Do as I am."

"Now, now, you don't know for sure that's what I'll be working on," Rarity said, allowing herself a nervous grin.

"Uh huh. Anyway, that's a huge deal for you, isn't it? Shouldn't you be, I don't know, freaking out or something?" Twilight nudged Rarity's shoulder. "Freak out a little."

She took a quick breath. "Relaxed as this pleasant mid-morning gathering is," Rarity said with measured voice, "I don't think it would be quite appropriate for me to be freaking out."

"You are on the inside though, right?"

Rarity glanced at the card again. "A little," she said.

"I wish I was coming with you, now," Twilight said.

"I'll tell you everything, I promise. Even if it turns out to be some other pith-helmeted relic hunter."

They were walking slowly between two rows of bushes, headed towards the big central fountain. The distance between the shrubbery narrowed, driving them subtly closer.

"No, no, not like that. I..." Twilight shrugged. "I don't know, I like seeing things behind the scenes. How it all works. It's more interesting than the finished product, sometimes."

Rarity noticed one of the waiters hovering by the fountain. He was serving an animated quartet chatting with Princess Luna, yet he looked right in her direction.

"I was part of a theater troupe when I was in school," Twilight said. "I ran backstage for a couple of the productions. Acted in some of them, too."

That was a surprise. Rarity imagined Twilight had only ever been interested in learning about magic, but the theater took all types. "I can't quite imagine shy Twilight Sparkle up on stage," she said, trying to observe the waiter out of the corner of her eye.

"Well, I did plan to just be in the crew. But there was an illness one night when we were doing The King of Shetland, and I was the only pony who knew the lines. It was a small part, but being on stage wasn't so bad. It wasn't like I was me, I was the character whose costume I was wearing." Twilight shrugged. "It also doesn't hurt that you can't really see the audience from under the stage lights."

"Were you any good?" Rarity asked. The waiter and thoughts of Twilight made up for a performance and reciting lines fought for her attention.

"I was okay. I liked playing different characters, stepping outside of myself and understanding their motivations and all that stuff. I'm not sure I was any good at it, but I liked doing it."

Was she doing something unusual? Was something caught in her hat? Maybe he was just a little starstruck by Twilight, but that was a little far-fetched for the catering staff for a royal event.

"You should try that now," Rarity said, looking over at Twilight and trying to push the insistent waiter out of her mind. "Play the part of Twilight Sparkle who likes big social events."

Twilight laughed. "No, I know what her motivations are, and she doesn't care for them."

"Well," Rarity said, "you're doing a pretty good job fooling me. Maybe you're a better actress than you give yourself credit for."

"I think my partner should take most of the credit," Twilight said. "I'm just smiling and nodding."

"Darling, that's what we're all doing."

-/-

The morning wound on until, just as the sun was reaching its zenith in the sky, Princess Celestia gathered all her guests and thanked them for attending the first of the events leading up to the Open Forum. Twilight let out a breath when the speech started and closed her eyes, picturing walking down the stairs away from the garden, and in minutes she was doing just that. That was the first day down. She'd made it.

Two more to go.

"What shall we do with the rest of the day?" Rarity asked her as they descended the stairs together. "I heard about a lovely little flower stand and café that I've been just dying to visit, and--"

"Actually," Twilight cut in, "I was kind of thinking I'd just go back to the hotel. Maybe read a little." She glanced at Rarity. "That's okay with you, right?"

"But of course, dear! Being in Canterlot must be old hat to you by now." She gave Twilight a broad smile. "I'm quite capable of exploring the city on my own."

Twilight smiled back. They had reached the base of the stairs. "That's good." She gave Rarity a quick hug. "Meet back at the hotel?"

"Certainly."

"Enjoy yourself," Twilight said, walking off away from the gardens.

"I shall," Rarity said, watching her leave.

She was free to roam all of Canterlot, see whatever sight, browse whatever boutique in the beautiful old city. She looked at it all spread out before her, and took a deep breath.

It was quite difficult to choose, she found.