At First and Only Chapter
I was a dark prison cell and he was a diamond, playing on the light. It reflected through the holes of that straggling black curtain appropriated as a mantle for my heart. His rays bore a single fleck that somehow found itself filtered through that window and brought illumination in this drab, austere place, like an archer who peppers the sky with arrows eventually found his mark. It was inevitable by the sheer quantity, this heart should be pierced. A mote of clarity— that of which I had never felt— pierced this makeshift battlement built by trembling, clumsy hooves in the wake of my failures. I pined for that diamond, for that marvelous reflector of light. So that I might bask in all its radiance. So that I might see every facet of him.
And in front of me, across the room, I could see naught but one aspect of that beautiful gem, positively leavening the entire salon and sprinkling gold over my lackluster dresses. His spotless silver coat and charcoal black mane shimmered and bounced around the natural light from the display windows throughout the store. In contrast to that, his eyes were deep and void-like, seeming to attract light and drown it in a dark sea of cobalt where the treasure that is his soul lies at the ocean floor, leading one to wish to venture deeper into the rest of that gem as if with a jeweler's loupe.
And be sure to find it free of inclusions.
"Not again..." Fluttershy groaned, two yellow appendages promptly connecting and dragging along the her face. They were her hooves of course. She wasn't attacked or anything like that. Fluttershy was still fine. Well maybe her shin throbbed a bit from bumping into that ponnequin a few seconds ago but, goodness. That wasn't very relevant... Sorry.
Rarity seemed to be at it again. This was about the fourth stallion Rarity had ogled in the last week. He was a monochrome unicorn stallion with the most unctuous of hair she'd ever seen. His flank sported what appeared to be a hunk of gray clay in the shape of an ingot. All in all, he would never be as interesting as the vivacious yellow pegasus coolly leaning against a ponnequin that she totally didn't almost knock over twice.
Oh, he would never do.
Fluttershy, very surely, trotted up to Rarity with her head held high and a fiery glare in her irises, branded with a fervent, slow burning that matched her determination to put the kibosh on her friend's capricious mating decisions. Fluttershy plumed herself on knowing a thing or two about animal husbandry and she certainly wasn't going to let this impending offspring disaster come into fruition.
Fluttershy could already imagine what she'd say at that moment. She would go up to the misguidedly lovestruck unicorn, held captive to the nefarious snares of unrealistic fantasies and quixotic love stories. Probably accentuated with a yellow hoof-shaped blur— or a wake-up slap— to Rarity's face to snap her out of it, she would harangue her in the most elegant of syntax so moving it'll bring Rarity to tears and in the midst of her bawling, she'll pull Fluttershy into a passionate, unforgettable kiss that she would never, ever forget... in order to thank Fluttershy for opening her eyes to the truth that Fluttershy is the one she really wants, of course.
Ugh, you were doing so well. Fluttershy mentally chided herself as she walked.
As the intrepid pegasus galumphed to her friend, she noticed the... enamored expression on Rarity's face, the mare's gorgeous eyes half-lidded, shining liquid-like, and... and that goofy smile plastered fully across her countenance. Fluttershy suddenly felt like a balloon placed in the freezer, deflating. It wouldn't do that her stupid mane was probably already limp naturally.
Maybe I should just... leave it be this time.
Fluttershy shook her head for a second. I mean, look at the hidden terror frozen in her features, those... those tremulous legs quaking from the subconscious instincts aware of her current ingenuity, ineffectively portending to her potential lost innocence. She was obviously a mare in distress and Fluttershy was going to save her.
But even though Fluttershy was still 100% sure of her justifications, she still gave pause.
Prima facie. It antiquatedly conveys "at first sight." The adage once before articulated in one of the languages of the classical period. But what did they imply through that? What did prima facie mean to me at this moment? Surely that phrase couldn't couch anything so visceral, so introspective as love, created in a time of inequity and chauvinism. In that case, the alternative of lust would quite readily fit them. But I was sure I felt something in that prolonged glance, however mollified that je ne sais quoi. Something akin to a dull throbbing euphony behind whitewashed walls.
But behind that partition, then what? Was it something like the sound of a beautiful symphony or the obstreperous notes of a ratty pop song to be forgotten in the piecing of fragmented memories when I wake up and regarded as superfluous. The beginning notes seemed to meld and jumble together in a mysterious amphigory and remained indiscernible simply going off of its genesis.
Maybe it wasn't that bad. How could Rarity being spirited away from her by this random stallion be so bad? To be forever lost to Fluttershy to some cloistered place far from Fluttershy. They'll get eloped in Las Pegasus without inviting me and then move to Cloudsdale and have kids. They probably know Fluttershy is afraid of going there. That unicorn is likely privy to Fluttershy's acrophobia. Even if he wasn't, Rarity would tell him because she hates me, I mean, she hates Fluttershy— that No-Fun Fluttershy. Come to think of it, her parents probably named Fluttershy "Fluttershy" because they knew she'd be no fun. Then all the ponies could use her name in that disparaging epithet.
Probably in their heads, though, because they don't want to be mean.
Did I even want to know? Behind that emollient obfuscation, what does it belie? Did I want to open my tattered black curtain looking for what reflected that ray to be downtrodden at a broken piece of glass lying on the road? A single name manifested itself in the recesses of my weltering mind: Blueblood. Did I want to experience again that shattering, that slighting of my fantasies? To break down the barriers between my dreams and seeing him up close and be thrown into another sharp decline of what I thought was a shallow vale on the other side turning out to be a cliff's precipice. Barren and jagged.
Wait a second, she's not a Pegasus. The imaginative Fluttershy had only just realized this fact. Perhaps the rest of her thoughts were wrong as well. But I mean, maybe Rarity really wanted to live in Cloudsdale one day. She certainly liked having those wings at the Young Fliers' Contest. Why, if it were possible, she wouldn't mind giving her useless appendages to the unicorn. Then Rarity and her new stallion could go fly away, leaving Fluttershy all alone like before.
No. Fluttershy couldn't lose her best friend so easily. She wouldn't go down without a fight. If Fluttershy was really Rarity's friend, then it was her job to try and keep her. That's a good enough excuse, right? She convinced herself of this and Fluttershy's nerves were something of Damascus steel set in her conviction.
Triumphantly putting a hoof forward, she powerfully jogged the entranced unicorn's foreleg (moving it a whole centimeter out of its past position!), who turned towards her, seeming to snap out of whatever daydream she was in upon contact. Fluttershy took a deep breath and began her vehement diatribe characterized by a stentorian shout, causing the glass panes to tremble and quake and the ground to suddenly shake. Fluttershy couldn't help but internally wince at the deafening magnitude of her discourse. "Rarity, you know I'm one of your best friends and— and, um, I always want what's best for you, but..." She paused, trying to find a way to euphemize what she was to say. "Remember that time when I quit being a model? A– And when we left that dressing room together and we promised to never keep anything from each other ever? Well, I'm going to live up to that promise and tell you what you should know." She bit her lip. "Rarity, I—" Taking in a deep quaff of air, she released it in one burbling breath, "—think you shouldn't waste your time with that stallion."
In times like these, I can't help but ruminate the frailty of the veneer. How the most elegant of facades, when broken, shatter the only thing unblemished. Why couldn't I just be okay with good enough? "Why?" the voice in my heart echoes, bouncing off dark cemented walls. "Why?" it repeats louder, squished in the unwholesome languor pushing down on it from the apprehension I felt.
A tap.
My head turns to Fluttershy standing in front of me. Somehow I had failed to notice her in my nearsightedness before she was already standing right there in front of me. She flinches a little at me snapping to sobering attention but quickly recovers, looking up through liquid aquamarine. Like the turbid lenses of my glasses being polished with magic, so was the overtness of her apparent to me in that moment.
She looks like she's talking but no words come out of her barely-moving mouth. The mare looks at me expectantly. Oh dear, was I tuning her out the whole time? What would she think? I simply nod towards her. Fluttershy seemed satisfied with my neuron-lacking response nonetheless and turns and walks back to her sewing machine in another room. I watched her go.
I beat myself to it. "Because better yet is right in front of me."
A sigh.
