For Display Purposes Only
It had reached the point where the Canterlot accent was beginning to act as acid against her coat. She was a rather large fraction over six days beyond having each of the fuming, stinking, repeated words try burn through her eardrums, and since it was only the seventh day of the summer tourist season...
Rarity, if pressed on the matter by a good friend who wouldn't mind camping out on one of the Boutique's guest couches for the three hours it would take for her to fully vent, might have described the situation as painful. Wearying. "Depressive" might have gotten involved somewhere, although it would have had to wait its turn in a rather long line and help the speaker to line up a properly dramatic sentence-ending semi-swoon before being launched into sympathetic air. But Rarity had owned her own business for several years, was more than familiar with the seasonal tides and what tended to wash into her shop on cresting waves of relocated ego, and so she had other words for the way her day was proceeding.
"So," the non-customer preened as the dress came off, false eyelashes (and not even good ones at that) weakly batting in Rarity's direction while the just-removed creation was unceremoniously kicked across the floor, "I admit it does fit, at least -- to a degree, for some standards, and the colors don't seem to be doing anything too horrible when contrasted with my mane..."
Rarity (who had known it was a perfect fit before the dress was ever donned, who had seen the manestyle gain extra highlights from the reflections off myriad garnets) waited for it, and used the pause time to indulge in a few predictions of what "it" would turn out to be. Giving the rustling of feathers, her imaginary bits were likely best off being placed on --
"...but it's somewhat early yet, and I do want to see what the rest of this... 'town' -- has to offer! So I'll just drop by and pick it up on my way out, yes? Would you be a dear and set it aside for me? Make sure nopony else touches it in any way?"
Which would leave Rarity with one less piece on the sales floor for the duration of the selling day, an occupied slot in the Reserved cabinet, and a grand total of no bits collected on the dress until closing, when that nil state would miraculously transition into an angry black slash of a ZERO recorded in her daily tally.
Her reply would be pointless. Rarity knew it. And yet she said it anyway, because there was at least the tiniest chance remaining that the vocalization would work out in her favor, at least in what often felt like never-proven theory.
"If you wish," Rarity proposed, keeping the words even while her inner self stared at what was coming out and shook an imaginary (but beautifully styled) mane in weary despair, "you may choose to pay for it now, or leave some degree of deposit --"
"-- no, I trust you to hold it for me!" the mare smiled. "There's no need to get money involved! Besides, there's every chance somepony else in 'town' has it at a better price, yes? Why commit too early?"
As Rarity had only finished the dress several hours past Moon-raising on the previous night and sold to no shop in the settled zone so as to keep her products locally exclusive, locating a lower price struck her as a rather impressive and completely impossible accomplishment. Still, the performance was heading for the curtain on the current act, and all Rarity needed to do in order to advance the play into the next scene of personal agony was to say her rather partial line. "If it helps you to plan your schedule at all, I close at --"
The wind backblast of takeoff wreaked its typical havoc on Rarity's mane. Forward-thrust forelegs impacted the shop's door and told it to let the rest of the pegasus through while doing its usual degree of damage to the paint. And Rarity was alone in the Boutique again, at least if she didn't count the dozens of seasonal dresses displayed around the shop, the completely empty guest couches and benches, a fully silent waiting area for bored stallions and marefriends with magazines of nearly all types waiting to distract (and that reminded her: she needed to renew the Canterlot Shopper Review Quarterly before any chance of missing an issue arose), a currently-silent sewing device waiting for her to make a last-minute adjustment which might never be coming, and a sales book whose current total collection of ink was today's date.
Several years in business now, and exactly the same number of summers, as Rarity had opened the Boutique immediately after dropping out of school, with one of her father's friends reluctantly telling the bank to grant her the loan which had made it all possible. It had taken something much less than the first moon after her Grand Opening to pick up on the patterns. Salesponyship was no real part of Rarity's mark, not even a minor facet on the overall gem of talent -- but some things could be learned for oneself, and rather quickly.
Rarity had seen the curiosity on the mare's face as she'd entered, the intensification into want as she'd approached --
-- the flash into disdain at the moment she'd read the elaborate calligraphy of the label.
Summer in Ponyville was many things, and for those who ran retail operations within the settled zone, chief among those was tourist season. Ponyville was but a single gallop from Canterlot, a simple day trip on hoof or by train and as such, there had always been a few residents of the capital who chose to make the journey and see what the nearest other settled zone had to offer. There was a term many of those travelers used for such activity, generally either whispered to each other or used at volume fully in the open in the comforting (false) belief that none of the locals would understand it: slumming.
Early in her career, Rarity had found that Canterlot tourists tended to treat Ponyville not so much as a rustic backwater where unexpected treasures could potentially be unearthed and more towards something like a zoo. Come And See The Ponies Without The Common Sense To Move Into The Capital. Admission (plus guaranteed escape) only one roundtrip trainfare. And once the Elements had been found again, with all that had come from that... well, there were now a number who treated the town as disaster theater, dropping by in the hopes that something interesting would happen (while somehow managing to convince themselves that it would never happen to them), and it had caused tourist traffic to surge.
But pre-Generosity or post (with virtually nopony who entered the Boutique forming any connection between the owner of the shop and the events they were hoping to see play out), the effects on sales had remained consistent.
Oh, some in Ponyville benefited. Packing a meal was an act often seen as plebian, and so the majority of those tourists had to eat. Local restaurants saw an increase in business, particularly places like Mr. Flankington's, which only the natives knew to avoid. On those summer days when the Crusaders were determinedly keeping themselves from gaining marks through activities which required truly unsuspecting victims, they found a fresh supply, and most of those events both fulfilled the requirements for a local comedy/horror production and kept more than a few tourists from ever coming back. And a few shops saw improved trade. But for Rarity...
When it came to the various price and quality levels of clothing, her product was -- she had to admit this -- high-end. She occasionally tried to produce a few lower-priced pieces so she would have something suitable for those of lesser income -- but for the most part, she aimed for the upper levels. (And at that, her prices were sometimes seen as too low (and simultaneously, too high) for the results produced, which sometimes caused ponies to upturn snouts in suspicion. She couldn't help that: unearthing her own gems kept her costs down, and she passed most of that savings along on the retail level -- but she did understand how the situation might appear to a few closed minds.) Which, to those Canterlot tourists who saw Ponyville as a giant stable sale, made no sense. For surely nothing of quality would ever originate from a rural landlocked backwater. Oh, it was remotely possible that a good label might be in a shop, perhaps from having been accidentally shipped to the wrong address, or being resold as falsely-new by a pony who couldn't pay for their own former purchase, or just a train car which had somehow collapsed at her doorstep, for everypony knew that all the best goods fell off a train car.
(Rarity had often wondered about that train. Where it ran to, why ponies continued hiring it to carry goods when all it ever did was fall over and spill its contents everywhere, and the means by which she might attain a schedule. She suspected it might help if the thing had ever actually existed.)
But to find high-end goods in Ponyville, of all places, and of no label they cared to recognize...
To Rarity, it would have represented discovery. The chance to try the new, to set the trend instead of following it, that welcome opportunity to be among the innovators. Yes, she sold her wares to a few stores across the continent, had begun to make tentative inquiries about finding a route into the Griffon Republic because the nation's native pony population surely would benefit from a few well-crafted dresses of their own. Some of the places she did business with were in Canterlot, and those shops sold a few pieces. But somehow, the ponies of the capital, at least for those who came slumming along to Ponyville, never knew about her, or made a connection...
So to a certain kind of non-customer, it was risk, and fear, and a dress they would have to be caught dead in, with the sight of what was exquisitely fit onto the fresh corpse representing the deceased's final lingering shame. And that didn't include those who found her prices too high no matter what had gone into the dress, or rejected her styles and designs and ideas and everything else, had no bits and simply wished to pretend an ability to buy anything while never demonstrating it, had nopony to buy for, had no taste...
There were words Rarity used to describe her summer tourist situation. Typical. Expected. And with each stale iteration of the excuses and dismissals and outright shameless lies she'd heard a thousand times before, increasingly, inevitably, insufferably irritating. Moons of such encounters with non-customers, none of whom had a fresh falsehood to give her, all seeming to believe she fell for the lies every last time while never caring about the fact that they had lied, and yes, perhaps there were a few who purchased, it wasn't as if her books remained empty of anything but sales to locals for the entire season, but the vast majority just kept indulging in their happy confident superiority where her label being one they didn't care to recognize was the least of it, there were so many other lies and all of them were just as stinking and stale and echoed in the ears she tried to keep from flattening during every encounter, trying not to spit her rehearsed lines in a manner so much less than ladylike, it was only a week into tourist season and...
There were times when Rarity truly felt as if she was on the verge of saying something.
On that early summer day, she did.
As trigger words went, they weren't particularly original. Rarity had heard them said on her first summer day in business, and at the time, they had forced her into a post-visit retreat into her storeroom for a slow weep into a fabric bolt which she hadn't been planning on using anyway. But in the time since, she had learned to recognize it as just another lie, an excuse given to prevent any bits from being transferred, and so the emotional impact had dulled into something more -- grating.
Really, Rarity knew the sentence which set everything off, had often muttered it to herself in mocking tones after the offending pony had moved out the door and well beyond even the most ear-twisted hearing range. It was an old enemy, and so had struck her in the same vulnerable spot so many times as to kill most of those nerves through repeated tissue damage. Nothing should have happened but the most minor clenching of the jaw, and that only on her inner self.
But on this day...
There were five mares in the shop. Three had already made their excuses, but they were of a variety which would allow them to continue browsing for some time before exiting without a purchase, happily wasting Rarity's time while planning out the gossip they would spread to their Canterlot friends about the idiot in that "town" who felt she could launch a label off of backwater, or simply didn't realize that ponies of quality would recognize how very stupid she was being, to fall under the delusion that it was even possible to try...
Two mares had yet to vocalize their lie. But it had already been picked out, and as Rarity watched the non-customer sniff with disdain before glancing at her companion, she could see the thing making its way towards the lips.
"We should just leave," the non-customer said, fully turning her attention away from Rarity's most elaborate summer offering. "Frankly, I could make any of this stuff myself."
There was a faint pinching sensation around Rarity's right eye.
"Anypony could," the non-customer added with open self-satisfaction. "In about five minutes."
Spontaneously taking a few hoofsteps forward seemed to make it go away, and so Rarity found herself doing some more of that.
"So let's just get out of --"
"Pardon."
The mare almost jumped. Rarity didn't know why. It had been a rather standard request for a moment of attention, and she felt it had even been a polite one. It had been accompanied by a smile.
"We don't need any help," the mare quickly thrust at her. "In fact, we were just leaving --"
"No, not yet," Rarity replied, and found that rather odd smile still sitting on the end of the words. It felt rather welcome to be there. It was warm, comforting, perfectly reassuring in every way, and had no real reason to make the non-customer and companion pull back as much as they had. And yet that was exactly what had happened. Well, she'd already known they were something less than intelligent... "Not without your free dress."
The mare's ears perked. Her companion blinked a few times.
"Free," the mare cautiously-if-curiously said, perhaps wondering if there were things her unexpected corpse might somehow wish to be caught in, at least for the right total lack of price.
"Yes," Rarity smiled. "Completely free."
The other three non-customers in the Boutique were starting to stare at them. Rarity suspected they were waiting for a similar offer, or perhaps preparing complaints of discrimination should one not be coming.
"Free..." the mare considered.
"Well, it may take a tiny portion of your time," Rarity noted. "For checking the fit. And other aspects. But yes... free." The smile became more intense. Oddly, so did the pulling back.
Still... there had been a magic word said, and the non-customer was still partially under the enchantment.
"It's not defective, is it? Something you're trying to get rid of, with flawed stones, or a miscast working, or --" the smallest of drops into a false whisper "-- some kind of knockoff..."
"Hardly," Rarity smiled. "Please... follow me."
She trotted. The non-customer hesitated -- but only for a moment, and then that magic word took over again. Hoofsteps trailed Rarity's, and the other mares in the shop came subtly closer.
"Wait here," Rarity told the mare, who hadn't seen anything special about the destination just yet. "I have to bring everything out for you."
"...everything?" With the light of Contest Won in the mauve eyes, perhaps believing she had been some round number of customer in Rarity's total visit tally (which was impossible, as this was no customer of any kind). "I'm getting a lot of things? For free?"
"Well, there's no other way it could possibly work!" Rarity merrily explained, and watched as the mare slowly sat down. "A moment, please..." And confident in her security spell's ability to keep any merchandise from leaving without her supervision, she trotted into the storeroom, closing the door behind her.
They all waited. It didn't take long.
"And here we are!" Rarity beamed as she entered the sales floor once again, her soft blue field towing a number of objects. "There you go, madame! Everything you could possibly require. Now, you just go right ahead and begin. Whenever you're ready."
Her field set the objects down in precise order, and she took a step back. Watched.
The mare stared at her. Then at the fabrics, spools of thread, trays of carefully sorted gems, the sewing device she had been led to unawares, and finally back to Rarity again.
"You're giving me... this?"
"Well, not in this form," Rarity smiled. Really, it felt so good on her face. "The finished product is yours to keep. Once you finish it, of course."
They were all staring at her now, and it seemed to warm her coat.
"...finish it?"
"Yes. I believe the necessary creation period quoted was a mere five minutes?"
The mare blinked. She started to get up.
Rarity, whose field strength was average at best, felt her horn's corona surge into an instant double, and shoved.
The mare sat down. Quickly.
"I will understand," Rarity said, "if you wish to work from a model." Her field seized the triggering garment, floated it over, gathered a dressmaker's form and draped it properly. "Please do not mind my presence in any way: I am simply here to behold a master at work, at least on that level of mastery which anypony can execute in three hundred seconds. Quite possibly less."
Shakily, with Rarity's heavily-spiking field still pressing against her hindquarters, the mare's mouth tilted to the right, towards the first bolt of fabric.
She hesitated.
"...how do I load this?"
"Load what?"
"The device."
"Oh, everypony knows that!" Rarity happily declared. "How would they be able to create a dress in five minutes if they couldn't even load the bolt? And so there is no need for me to explain the process. At all. To anypony, ever. Much less the attachment lines, hiding the stitching, invisible gem cradles, adhesives, hue balancing, size approximation without measurements..."
The mauve eyes now held an odd touch of fear, and Rarity had no idea what it was doing there. Not that she objected...
"Let go of me," the mare whispered.
"I am hardly holding you," Rarity replied, which was the truth: she could manage a shove, but restraining a determined adult was beyond her strength. "And I will let go. In... roughly two hundred and fifty seconds? When you have finished your free dress." With open admiration, "To sacrifice so much of the limited time required on a discussion -- truly, you must be expert. To think that a mark of an upturned snout represents a talent for fashion...!"
And then the mare proved Rarity couldn't hold her, hind legs kicking at the floor. The field winked out.
"You're -- you're crazy!"
"No," Rarity calmly said. "Insanity would be demonstrated in the expressed belief that anypony can produce a dress with five minutes of work. Sanity comes when the claimant is made to prove it. Anypony could do it. That was your claim. And you appear to have forfeited. So either your statement was false -- or you lack capabilities which every other pony possesses. So which is it?"
They stared at each other for a while, as the other mares in the shop slowly backed towards the exit while keeping their heads angled to never miss a moment of the confrontation, as Rarity's smile grew stronger than ever.
"I'm..."
"Yes?"
"...I'm never buying anything here! EVER!"
"And why does this matter to me?" Rarity politely inquired. "It would be like my declaring my intent to never levitate Dragon Mountain. You are threatening to do something you were going to do -- or not do -- anyway, with the actual counter-feat forever beyond your ability to accomplish."
She took a step forward. The mare froze, and it might have been from terror.
"You were never going to buy anything," Rarity told the mare. "I knew it from the moment you entered, from your eyes and tail and stance. You picked your excuse, a rather transparent lie which granted you a false belief in your own superiority, and if I have done nothing else, I would hope you might now see that the creation period for such a garment might be something over five minutes. Perhaps even beyond six. Or in the case of the piece you were always going to reject, including initial sketches, purchase of the necessary fabrics, the process of color saturation through dye, gem gathering and mounting, trial runs, and the finalization of the product -- fifteen hours."
Another step. Twenty hooves, regardless of their location in the Boutique, simultaneously pulled back.
"Get out of my shop," Rarity gently suggested.
Three ponies got jammed in the door. Their attempts to resolve the impasse did some damage, but Rarity didn't mind. In fact, she didn't seem to mind anything just now. She felt...
...warm.
Rather content.
Free.
So many responses. How long had she been storing them up, for them to come so readily to her lips, with variations waiting their turn should the same falsehood present itself again before the close of the day? Mostly likely since the moment she had been offered the first lie, in her very first minutes as a new and proud business owner.
Really, when she thought about it, everypony in town who dealt with the public on some level of retail had to have the responses set aside for just the right moment. Certainly Ratchette had once confessed a few reserved speeches (nearly all based on open pony observations of her race, as there would always be those who refused to accept the very concept of a pegasus device mechanic). but had also admitted that she would never give any of them voice, for her position seemed too fragile to risk any sound dislodging a single potential client. And the client, or customer, was always...
...well, that would surely come up before the end of the day, and so it could wait its turn.
Rarity examined the internal queue, and happily wondered what the next release would be.
As it turned out, the next trigger was one of her all-time favorites, simply for the sheer stupidity of the statement. And so the burden grew that much lighter.
At least, hers did.
"You don't understand," this particular non-customer stammered, with two witnesses drinking it in. "I just said I didn't..."
"...want to carry it right now, yes," a delighted Rarity echoed. "So I would hope you would understand my natural concern, as you had been browsing through my clearance rack of pocket squares at the time. It may interest you to know that this is not the first occasion when I have had a complaint about somepony's inability to bear their relentless mass. But this time... why, sir, I am simply worried about your health. To be broken by the weight of my fabrics... how could anypony of caring possibly allow you to leave before determining exactly where your tolerances are, lest some water spray from our central fountain splash onto your back and shatter your spine."
Her field dropped another gem tray onto the stallion's back.
"Still upright, I see," she observed. "Well, perhaps you have been working out, likely against your physician's orders. Simply bearing all the dust you have allowed to accumulate in your coat must represent a considerable degree of constant exercise. Do not worry: I will stop at the moment I hear suspicious cracking sounds emitting from your tibia, which I assure you I will be able to recognize even through the reinforcing bolts of fabric I wrapped around your legs out of concern for your health and the need to finish our emergency testing. Cloth next, I think. And to make it a true test, something with gold thread..."
Sometimes the simplest interactions were the best.
"I was looking at that!"
"Yes, you were. And since you clearly stated that you have no need of it, you can use your time to look at something else. Perhaps somewhere else, with an item more suited to whatever taste you might somehow possess."
"But I said --!"
"-- that it was cute. And adorable. Are you truly saying that you have no awareness of what those words mean?"
The mare stared at her. It seemed to be happening a lot today. Rarity supposed it was from the shock of witnessing truth, especially since these ponies hardly ever heard it and never spoke it. The lone other mare in the shop was doing the same, after all... But staring was the only response she received, and Rarity realized she would have to do all the work in this discussion. Again.
"They are known as the Death Words," Rarity explained, and tried to keep her sentences from entering Twilight's familiar lecturing cadence. "They are, in their own way, magic. To wit, they bear resonance, and the emotion carried is that of dismissal. Things which are cute and adorable are never considered in the speaker's mind for purchase, for they have judged those pieces unworthy, and the Death Words are simply meant to pronounce the curse which renders them forever forgotten. I began my career at an unusually early age. I have had more time than you might suspect to monitor trends. But no number is simpler to track than zero. And of all those who have pronounced the Death Words in my shop, none have ever purchased. And so you are wasting your time here. I am glad you were able to admit that to yourself so early, although I confess to some surprise that you have yet to act on it -- by leaving..."
Was there anything under Sun which felt better than the smile?
"I'll pick it up later."
"So based on my normal return rate for those who express that thought, I would be expecting slightly over four percent of a pony? Very well: I shall use the intervening time to cut the design down..."
It was so peaceful.
The Boutique was quiet. No customers. No excuses, no dismissals. No dresses kicked across the floor. No accidentally (or had it ever been deliberate?) inflicted damage poorly hidden away, generally in the dressing rooms. No lies.
Rarity basked in the warmth. And smiled.
The door opened. She eagerly glanced up, ready for the next --
"-- Pinkie!" Well, this was going to be an unusual day: summer tourism generally locked the baker into Sugarcube Corner for the full duration of each sales period, as that product was typically something the tourists only lied about not appreciating after they consumed it. For Pinkie to get away even long enough for lunch was a special occasion, and given that Rarity had a chance to take on her friend's role for a change... "Come in, please! Sit with me for a time, if you can spare it. I have had the single most delightful business day I've experienced in several years, and I believe the vast majority of it will make you laugh. It has certainly provided me with no end of delight. And given a certain degree of overlap in our professions, I truly feel you are in a position to appreciate all of it. Certainly Twilight and Rainbow might never truly understand, although I suspect Fluttershy's frustrations with those who have accounts due might find empathy, and Applejack -- yes, I must tell Applejack! Perhaps --"
But Pinkie was coming closer now, and her expression bore heavy interest --
-- no, not interest. Something else. Something which Rarity didn't care to think about just yet.
"Rarity?"
"You will not believe the first one, Pinkie, or perhaps even that I did it at all, but once you understand how it feels..."
"Are you okay?"
Rarity blinked.
Pinkie closed to within a body length, slowly lowered herself to the floor in front of Rarity's happily-resting form, taking up a little more of the beam that came in through that one window. Sharing Sun.
"We've had ponies in Sugarcube Corner," Pinkie began, speaking much more slowly than was typical. "They've been talking about the Boutique. Not by name, most of them, you or the shop. But it's easy enough to recognize the place they've all been discussing. And... that they're talking about you."
Rarity smiled. "So my non-clientele has decided to recharge their reserves before giving their threadbare excuses to others? Hardly a surprise, Pinkie. Or perhaps they are simply gathering strength to get back onto the train and return home, having learned that there are those in this 'town', as they continue to encase it, who will not put up with their lies --"
"-- you're losing business."
Rarity's tail lashed, exactly once. She didn't notice.
"No, I am not," she calmly replied. "It is rather difficult to forfeit sales from those who never had any intention of purchasing. I am simply taking the null entries they place in my accounts and rendering them into the positive bookkeeping of laughter, something I am certain you of all ponies will understand. If I can gain no bits from these tourists, then at least let me take my price in amusement and the release of stress I have been carrying for far too long. For years, Pinkie. Muscles are loosening which have been tight since the day I opened my doors. I have lived with the pain so long that it became natural to my existence. I never knew that tension was there until it was gone. Do you know how sad that is, Pinkie, to have torment as such a constant companion that you only feel the hurt without recognizing a source, much less remembering that there were once days when you felt no pain at all? The joy when it all finally starts to go away?" It was like the best spa day of her life -- no, it was beyond that, a relief Lotus and Aloe had never come close to bringing her, and she suddenly realized why she had become such a frequent patron to begin with...
And yet there was another lash, no more registered than the first.
"Losing what I never had," Rarity said. "Losing what does not exist. Forfeiture of negatives only, Pinkie, replacing them with truth. I know you have had those who complain about your personal product without ever tasting it, believing nopony without a baking icon for their mark could ever produce quality. I receive the same, as so many misunderstand my own mark. I have prepared a number of responses, none of which have had the chance to be vocalized today, and I believe it will take very little effort to adapt them for your situation --"
A pink forehoof came up.
"Stop."
And it had been a whisper.
Rarity blinked.
Stopped.
"I know," Pinkie softly told her. "You're right, I've heard some of it. Applejack gets her share. There are unicorns who come into town and tell her they know more about apples than she ever will, when they can't even figure out how to put a core in a trash bin, and it's a core from an apple they probably stole because some ponies think they can do anything when they're away from home. We've all shared stories, about how stupid some of them are. And we all have things we want to say, Rarity, and we say them -- to each other. Because ponies talk. They're saying... there's a crazy unicorn in the dress shop, not to go in there at all, they're warning ponies away from the Boutique. I don't know if you told them half the stuff they say you did and I know you wouldn't have kicked anypony unless they'd tried to hurt you, plus that one was in the bakery instead of the police station, so she was lying, I know that, but... Rarity, they're talking. They may not stop, not for days, not until after they've gone home and told other ponies there, and those ponies won't come in either..."
And Rarity gave the best answer she had to give.
"So?"
Pinkie blinked.
"...so?"
"So they tell other ponies. Ponies with no intention of ever making a purchase inform whatever friends they might somehow possess of my existence. The type of pony who would be a friend to such a party would also be one who would never grace my account ledgers with a positive integer. I still lose nothing, and gain a true negative in having less fools to deal with. Where is the harm?"
"You almost sound like Luna."
"Then I imagine Luna to have a point."
"And you're acting like Flitter."
"Perhaps..." Thoughtfully, "You know, she and I may have to engage in discussion concerning her methods. I feel I may have been misjudging her. We may even discuss quaraxing. I never did find out what that was..."
Pinkie took a slow breath. "Rarity... you said it's you, me, and Applejack. What do we all have in common?"
"We all sell," Rarity said after a moment of uninterrupted thought, for nopony had entered during their discussion, and none came to try and break up the sentence. "I believe I already said something along those lines?"
"We don't control our incomes."
Rarity waited. Checked coat, mane, and tail on her visitor. Bright and curly. But the words were still thoughtful, still slow...
"We rely on other ponies," Pinkie quietly continued. "We have to. We create -- and then we get to find out if somepony else likes what we did. We don't earn anything unless somepony tells us we're okay. We're worthwhile. It's easy... to take things personally, when they say no. It's like having a dozen or a hundred dates in a day, and you remember how that worked out. I came over because ponies were talking about you, and it sounded sort of like you were trying to give yourself a laugh, a laugh you really needed... but a laugh you were having in the wrong place. It sounded like..."
A deep breath. Curls (still curls) shifted.
"...you were rejecting them before they could reject you."
Rarity took a breath of her own, and it felt as if her ribs refused to shift with it.
"They had already decided not to purchase. I know the signs, Pinkie. I know all of them, and will not believe that the speakers of lies are deaf to their own internal meaning. In your scenario, I had already been rejected, and simply chose that I would be the one who terminated the date."
"I believe you for that, Rarity -- that they'd already made up their minds. I can tell when somepony's not going to buy, and the Cakes..." She was slowly, subtly shifting her body, moving across the floor, gradually changing orientation. "But there were other ponies in the Boutique. Some of them hadn't made decisions yet. And you scared them. They didn't know how you would treat them, and they ran --"
"-- treat them? If they had turned out to be actual customers? With respect. The same as always. And if the truth made them run, then 'customer' may have been exactly the wrong term. Only those with something to fear would experience it."
"Or they're afraid because it's new, salesponies don't act that way, and some ponies are always going to be worried about new things --"
"-- and as fashion requires either the production of new styles every season or the resurrection of the vintage with enough changes to make it fresh again, those ponies are still unsuited for my shop." It was perfect logic, and so it made Rarity smile again. The same smile, and the comfort continued to flow. "Pinkie, what I am beginning to hear are the words of a pony who is trying to talk me out of this because if she does not, she will eventually talk herself into it."
The shifting was steadily becoming less subtle. "You're self-employed. I work for the Cakes. Everything I say affects them."
"Pinkie, you are their daughter in all ways but blood, with that last meaningless. They would never fire you because you chose to say words which needed to be said --"
"-- and everything you say affects you. Rarity, I know what it's like, needing to vent and -- not being able to. Because sometimes, that's what laughter is. Having that pain and finding a way to let it out."
And Rarity had no words.
Pinkie was almost parallel with her now.
"But there's a time to laugh, and a time to wait until you're out and safe and have friends to laugh with. And sometimes... one or two, Rarity, you could always go off on one or two, I guess. Not too often, and it's still a big risk. But not all the time, not even for one full day's worth of it. You're hurting yourself, and they're just going to keep talking about you, and --"
"-- it doesn't matter."
It had been a whisper.
"Rarity?"
"Let them talk," she said, and the decibels wouldn't come back. "You told me, Pinkie... the reason I can say anything, anything at all, and it won't matter. Because no matter what I create, how I act, what I might say or do, most of them can't even be bothered to remember my name..."
Pinkie pressed against her.
For a time, there was silence under Sun.
"I need customers," Rarity told the world. "Those ponies were not customers. And so I lose nothing. I cannot give up what I never had. I do not need every pony who comes into my shop to purchase. Only some. The right ponies. I am not hurting myself, Pinkie. Venting? Yes, I confess to that. But... I need that laugh, even one expressed inside, and you of all ponies should understand --"
"-- that there's a time to laugh. And a time -- when you have to wait, and then laugh with friends."
No. The smile had felt too good.
"You are," Rarity quietly observed, "being rather serious about this."
"Laughing's a serious subject sometimes."
Slowly, Pinkie stood up. Their fur meshed with the movement, strands intertwining, separating.
"The Cakes need me," she said. "It's a busy day. I could barely get away for this long, and only because they heard what was going on. So I have to go, even when I don't want to. But I'll come back later. So you can tell me all the things you said, and -- if you need me, I'll come back every day until tourist season's over, so you can tell me all the things you wanted to say. Sometimes with Applejack, and maybe the others once we teach them to understand. That won't take long. But today... Rarity, close the Boutique, please. Take the rest of the day off. If you think you're not going to sell anything, then just don't interact with anypony."
"Oh, nothing here is for sale," Rarity tried to jest. "Don't you see the sign?"
She tilted her head up. Pinkie followed her gaze.
The hastily-drawn (but still elegantly-calligraphied) banner read Ponyville Museum Of Fashion.
"I hung that after somepony told me they had only come to town in order to look," Rarity happily declared. "For some reason, she failed to understand why I then asked for an admission fee..."
"-- Rarity."
"Yes?"
"Close the Boutique."
Merrily, and she convinced herself that none of it was faked: "Because?"
"Because sometimes you have to listen to me. And you're already hurting enough."
Slowly, with frequent glances backwards over low-carried curly tail, Pinkie reluctantly trotted out.
Close the Boutique?
Ridiculous. If she stayed open and got another non-customer, she could smile, and this new tension would drain away along with all of the old. Besides, there were so many ponies who practically made a business of being selective and insulting and rejecting anything they didn't like, especially at the trade shows when she tried to explain why her wares would be a perfect fit with their own shops, and those ponies did well enough in life, didn't they? Maybe they even smiled after they rejected her, once she was well out of sight.
She tried for it. The expression wouldn't come.
Perhaps they even laugh.
She had stayed open. Because there were in fact times when the group had to listen to Pinkie -- and this clearly wasn't one of them. Ponies had come inside, here and there. Not many, and all, being non-customers, had been truthed into leaving. There were rather more clustered at the windows, and she was used to that, even if the current number was a surprise. Still, window-shopping was a minor passion of her own, along with the haggling she so disliked in others and could never quite admit to in herself, preferring the term negotiations in the face of all evidence, which included having half the wholesalers in Canterlot diving under their benches when they heard her hoofsteps approach.
Those outside could window-shop all they liked. It was also not-buying, but at least they were doing it outside.
And really, Pinkie was just being silly again. Ponies talking? That might be happening, but there was no way they could get everypony. Because some took the early train, and others the midday, while a few came in much later, generally under the ongoing delusion that it was easier for Ponyville's shop owners to sell something at a third of the wholesale cost due to an approaching closing time than it would be to simply lock the door and try again in the morning.
Rarity imagined how many ponies would be making her smile tomorrow, and it was a warming thought.
The door opened. Two mares entered the shop.
Rarity, who had been field-straightening the banner while wondering if her hasty fabric choice was clashing with anything, turned and watched them come in. She did not approach. There were times when it was best to take over an interaction immediately: some ponies had body language which screamed for help from the moment of their entrance, with most of those being stallions. But these two, manes still somewhat out of sorts from the open windows on the most recent of trains, were giving off no such invisible, intangible emotional aura. One of them looked --
-- well, given how that one looked, the other hardly mattered. And Rarity waited for it.
She didn't have to wait long.
"Oh, let's not even waste any time here," the elder sniffed. Older by at least a generation, wearing a rather familiar light summer dress which might have once been described as being in fashion, at least after the wearer kicked the speaker enough times and promised to stop if the utterance somehow came across as sincere. "I thought having all those ponies at the windows meant there was a chance to find the first worthwhile shop this entire 'town' has to offer, but I can just tell that all this stuff is cheap."
She started to turn. The other, younger mare --
-- it didn't matter. Because Rarity had just learned to teleport.
Well -- not really. Her horn remained dark, the between was never entered, and the only flashes of light came from Sun moving across the windows, at least where there was still space between viewing pony bodies to get through. But given the speed with which she crossed the Boutique and got in front of the door, a teleport could have been fairly assumed.
"And what," Rarity merrily inquired, feeling the smile starting to come back, "is the basis of your judgment?"
The older mare froze.
"It looks cheap," she said disdainfully. "And I would be in a position to know."
"That would be an echo," Rarity observed. "Not a cause." Her horn ignited with a partial corona, and her field fetched one of her more recent creations. "These emeralds along the hock line. Exactly how cheap would you say they are? Should you not be used to expressing gem quality via the standard terms, I will accept a spot analysis on a scale from one to ten, or rather, given your first determination, zero to three, which I will then compare to the color, cut, clarity, and carat weight which I had previously gained professional ratings for."
The mare was staring at her, and there were more echoes coming from the windows.
"I don't have to know anything about gems to know your stuff looks cheap," she sniffed again. "And is cheap. Come, Rici. We are leaving."
"But..." the younger mare started.
The older mare took a step forward. Rarity, who was blocking the door, didn't move.
"The fabric quality?" she brightly asked. "Surely a connoisseur like yourself has already gauged the thread count as a glance. What do you feel the wholesale on a bolt was? The original price, please, not post-negotiation. If you feel I have been ripped off..."
The older mare put a lime-green hoof forward again. Rarity didn't move, and the leg was pulled back.
"It is cheap," came the answer, "because I said it is cheap. I am the customer, just for starters -- and the customer is always right."
"Will you be making a purchase here?"
That got a blink. "No!"
"Then -- how are you possibly any kind of customer?"
And Rarity smiled.
The older mare's face still held disdain. But now there was confusion riding alongside: a refusal to believe this was actually happening, added to a demand that it stop at once.
"I am expressing --"
"-- a fact? An opinion?"
"Mrs. Occlusion..." This from the younger mare. There was something of a pleading tone to it, which Rarity ignored.
And before that elder could respond, Rarity happily continued with "Well, if it happens to be opinions which you enjoy... here are a few for you to cherish. In my opinion, your dress is hideous, and I know for a fact that it was a ten-bit clearance from the day of its release. And in my opinion, purchasing one at the outset, and then forcing it to remain intact over so many years rather than updating into something a pony could stand to look at, would make one rather -- cheap."
She stepped aside.
"I would show you my price tags as final factual counter to your lie," she smiled, "but in my opinion, you might not be acquainted with the idea of numbers existing in that range. Please do enjoy your stay in our 'town'. The residents will simply enjoy your departure."
The elder mare had only one response, and it was a rather unimaginative one.
"I'm -- I'm going tell ponies about you! More ponies than you would ever believe! All I have to do is --"
"In your opinion, are they all as cheap as you? If so, then I have nothing to fear --"
-- and was interrupted by the slamming of the door. After a moment, the younger mare scrambled out after her.
Rarity, smiling, went back to inspecting the banner. There seemed to be quite a bit of light bouncing off the lettering. Unblocked Sun? Camera flashes? It didn't matter. All it meant was that she really should redo the entire thing on a swath two shades lighter.
Time passed. Nopony entered the shop.
Nopony at all.
And Rarity didn't mind in the least. For there was nopony there to lie (and she wondered how Applejack ever managed to stand that on market day after market day), or make claims which everypony knew were lies, things Rarity was simply the first to openly declare as such, or anypony to say her creations were ugly or overdone or stupid and reject them and kick them aside and kick her aside and reject her and --
-- what?
No. I am simply echoing what Pinkie said earlier. Pinkie is wrong. Rejection of my art is not a personal attack. It is simply...
...rejection.
Dismissal.
Belittling.
Of the artist.
They are my creations. My labors. My time and thought and imagination and mark and soul.
And they are rejected every day.
Why can I not perform my share of rejections as well? It takes so long for me to create, so much effort, and but mere fractions of a second to declare that nothing I have done is worthwhile, that nothing I am has value, that...
...it felt good.
It felt so good to call them out.
To reject everypony who rejects me.
The door opened.
It was almost timid, both the motion and the words. "Excuse me?"
Rarity spun. It was the younger of the last two. A pinkish-pearl earth pony, about her own age, very stylishly dressed, an outfit she would have personally been proud to bear in summer, if in a slightly different hue.
The door closed behind her.
"Yes?" Rarity inquired, ready to get the smile back again: it had somehow become misplaced while she tried to get Pinkie's words out of her head. "Is there an opinion your companion forgot about, or one you wish to deliver?"
The mare's neck turned, head reaching for the exceptionally well-made saddlebags. "Just a fact."
Bemused, "And that would be?"
Some rummaging, and a small rectangle of paper came out, clamped between white teeth. The mare's head angled towards Rarity: an invitation to take it.
Rarity's field went up, surrounded the little scrap, brought it into close range...
...close enough to read the business card's printing.
Rici Thirtee
Editor In Chief
Canterlot Shopper Review Quarterly
And with that, she felt her blood enter Moon-locked exile for a thousand years.
In desperate denial, "You... you went to our printer and had that --"
"When did I have the time?" Ms. Thirtee calmly inquired. "Also, if you'll hold that into the sunbeam, you'll see our house watermark. Since we have the presses, it just makes sense to do it all in-house..."
With her field's borders twisting like a clothesline caught in a tornado, Rarity did, and saw exactly what she didn't wish to.
"We wanted to branch out," the mare softly offered. "Some ponies get tired of reading about the same old Canterlot stores -- I certainly get tired of editing them -- there hasn't been all that much new opening lately, and I spiked the article on the butcher shop because the pictures -- well, because of the pictures. Ponyville is so close... I thought featuring some of the best reasons for a day trip would make for an interesting section in the midsummer issue. So we came to Ponyville. We have photographers and writers roaming all over the place right now, searching for potential layout subjects. But I wanted to take a personal look, so I would know when to take their biases out of it. And then... we found you..."
Rarity's imagination skipped past the suddenly-welcome public stoning, store-burning, and wiping of her name from the census record, choosing instead to go directly for the worst-case scenario.
"That was your fashion reporter."
It was a guess. It was a name she normally would have remembered. But with the distracting smell of imaginary ashes in her snout, all she could recall was that there had been a recent change, and...
Her tail went between her legs. Her ears sagged. All four knees went out, and she collapsed to the floor, too spent for the effort involved in a proper faint -- no, needing to remain conscious in order to hear the pronouncement of her death sentence.
Ms. Thirtee sighed. "Actually... my dam-in-law."
Even worse.
"I..." No, she could not say she was sorry, at least not in a way that might stand a chance of emerging as sincere. She had enjoyed the words, and smiled. "...believe I know what to expect from your next issue. I will... make ready, I suppose." She tried to stand: her legs wouldn't cooperate. And there was no words which could stop what was coming, nothing she could say at all...
She looked at the floor. The floor which still had so many loan payments left before her ownership of it would be complete. The base of everything she was about to lose, which had turned out to be nothing she'd ever truly possessed.
Hoofsteps. The elegant dress moving into view as its owner laid down on the floor in front of her. And soft, sincere words. "Bad day?"
She would not let the tears come, much less look up at the editor. "Not as bad as the ones to come. Please... I know I have no right to ask anything of you, but I truly wish to be alone now, if only for the practice..."
A sigh. "It's... Ms. Belle, right?"
"I only use the first name. It was more -- distinctive that way. I trust you will be able to make ponies avoid me by either or both."
"Then... Rarity... she's really kind of a bitch, isn't she?"
Rarity's head came up. And she saw the smile she'd felt accompanying the words, projecting a different kind of warmth and comfort -- but would not dare to speak.
"My parents... I worked in a shop from when I was five," Rici told her. "Jewelry. I'd probably still be there if I hadn't taken a position at the school paper, and it led to my mark saying I could go another way. I know what it's like to -- deal with ponies like that. Everything you can't say, and everything you wish you could. To judge as soon as somepony enters, know what's coming, and wish you could be wrong. You looked at her, I saw that. I saw you figure her out at one glance. But then you looked at me -- and went back to her. Because it almost didn't matter if anypony was interested any more. The ones who already decided not to buy are one thing... but the ones who are curious are the ones who can really hurt you when they finally push you away. Retailers know that, and an editor who started in the ranks knows it double."
A gentle hoof was pushed forward, touched her own.
"I know a bad day when I see one," she said. "I know a friend when I hear one, because the shock of dealing with you burnt off most of the sugar in her blood, and she decided she had to stoop to eating here and vented to everypony in the bakery, including the pony who took me aside after my dam-in-law started throwing my name and position around again. She may still be there, and I'll owe the nice couple who runs it an apology for all the ponies she's driving out, plus a possible Hearth's Warming catering contract. And I think three things."
She paused, and Rarity realized nothing more would come without a cue.
Trembling, still unwilling to fully believe, "Which are?"
"That... everypony's entitled to a bad day. That your creations are anything but cheap, in quality and design and everything else. I'd like to look around a little more, see your full selection. Maybe even walk out wearing something, and model it if I decide we need a photo shoot. It won't make my dam happy -- but nothing has since the moment I started dating her son. I'm not her, Rarity. Let me have my own opinion. And if you can read ponies that well, at least when you still care enough to fully see... then I think you know I'm not lying to you now."
She looked at the editor, and saw no falsehoods gazing back.
Rarity tried to stand up. It took two tries, and she allowed Rici to help her on the second.
"And... the third?"
"That you were lucky. I know what it's like, and she had it coming -- but if I was a different pony, or somepony else from the magazine had gotten in here ahead of me... Rarity, you were lucky, and it may not be the kind of luck you get twice. We're all entitled to vent once in a while, somewhere. Maybe even to the pony who sets it all off. But it's a chance, every time. You flipped your bit -- and it landed on edge. Take a deep breath before you think about head-tossing it again, okay?"
Rarity managed a nod.
"Now -- I know designers. You strike me as a pony who thinks at least two seasons ahead. Prove me right and show me your winter line first. I bet it's hiding in the storeroom because it's just too warm for most ponies to consider just yet..."
It was.
It also turned out to be the third panel of the mini-shoot.
They still came, the non-customers, for the rest of that summer and beyond. (Ultimately, some damage had been done by her words, was countered by the article, and for the season, she wound up just about where she had finished the previous year.) For as long as Rarity had her business, they always would. And the lies never changed, along with the refusal to ever admit that lies were all they were. But for the most part, she held her tongue, at least until she found a friend with whom it was truly safe to let the words go. And there were times when she still felt she should say things, aim her vocabulary high and turn her meanings double... but she always remembered that there was a risk, and that freedom of speech included the freedom to take the consequences from those words.
Non-customers remained that, and always would. The rejections would never stop. But a business like hers-- and for that matter, an artist -- didn't need everypony. Just enough of the right ponies. And in the wait for those individuals, Rarity was willing to be patient.
Most of the time.
For everypony else...
"What is that? It's rubbing against me! It's -- it looks hungry! Get it away from me! Get it out of here, or --"
"-- do you have some inexplicable level of objection to cats?"
...there was Opal.
Author's Note
If you've sold, you know.
And if you haven't purchased, we know when you're lying.
Every time.
