A She-devil in Plain Sight

Rarity slowly moved her palms away from her eyes, uncurling up and laying on her side. She panted quite heavily, emptily staring at the white wall on her right side, as if that- not her own wicked longing- was the source of her own anguish.

The book’s sentences, written in a clinical style suitable for its purpose, gained a sinister and unwanted emotional impact, echoing inside her mind. Lustful memories were resurrected and rescued from a faraway place inside her consciousness, at first casting her as a terrifying wicked abomination, one against all that is good and right, as an abhorrent thing not easily understandable by others, almost like some kind of incarnation of a force of nature. Then, as seconds flew by, the images morphed in look and mannerism, degrading into parodies of themselves, in which Rarity was as disgusting in her actions as much as she was pitiful to look at.

Rarity felt as if she had been covered with a cape made of pure lead, then forced to cover it up, with no hope of release but melting it directly on her skin… and knowing that maybe she was already trying to do so, at least subconsciously.

Rarity gritted her teeth and clenched her fist, trying to stop a few tears escaping her eyes to join the others on the pillow below.

“But, then again, what good does it do, if I stay here crying?” She muttered to herself, looking down at the large wet stain on her lilac pillow. “If it’s only a matter of time… no point in living by crying like a fountain. But if if it is true it can be resisted… Then I am better off trying to distract myself from this topic.”

Calmed down, she sighed deeply and rolled herself on her bed's other side, then slowly got up, walking up to her desk in order to close the book down. Done so, she picked it up and threw it away, close behind the door.

“Let us not remind ourselves of that. I’ve had enough of it today.” she muttered, as she walked towards her bedroom door and out into the rest of the house.

“I shouldn’t try to study, not right now.” she whispered to herself while walking down the corridor, past her sister's and her parents’ bedrooms, towards her destination, a small living room furnished with a pair of black sofas and a glass coffee table, that lead to either another corridor or to a frosted glass sliding door.

“I am better off trying to sew something simple up, just to try to relax my poor nerves.” She muttered to herself. “That, or see if my pacifier can help me this time.”

Even if she wasn’t really sure about the reasonableness of her choice- considered her current mental state- Rarity had decided to quietly call off any socially-related meeting for the next day and, if really needed, the days that were to follow, in order to not accidentally speak about her horrible discovery about herself.

In order to make that day of relative solitude pay off, Rarity had decided to move her studying operation to the public garden close to her house.

Minutes of search later, she finally found a spot suitable for her outdoor studying needs, Rarity slid her light brown bag off her shoulder onto the layer of pebbles ordinately set around the unpainted metal bench, used her left hand to quickly dust away a few shriveled-up leaves and dirt, and then slowly sat down. She took a deep breath, staring off in the distance, past the orderly lines of trees and the small mound before her, onto the gray and lobster pink apartment buildings across the street, enjoying the relative tranquility of the place. Leaves rustled softly, blackbirds and song sparrows sang all together, and the occasional far passerby’s chatter provided a base. Even the sound of cars roaring in the distance felt part of some kind of concert directed by nature and composed by the fates.

“Yes, this will do indeed,” Rarity said after around a minute of listening, moving the bookbag close to her feet and the pulling it up onto her knees, opening it up to reveal the few books Rarity had brought along.

“Philosophy or English?” She muttered, just before snapping her fingers. “English, its test is closer than Philosophy's”

Once the related book- a paperback orange book with a Manierist painting of a man reading a red booklet as a cover, a rainbow of bookmarks between pages accumulated by months of studying it- was out of the rucksack, Rarity opened it at the page she needed to, signaled by a red bookmark with a circle engraved on it.

Skimming over a couple of paragraphs about the author’s literary corpus, Rarity arrived at the part she had left off, reading it to herself out loud.

“In spite of the strong religious undertones of those poems, part of the critical world has identified, inside the peaceful landscape of the monastery’s cloister a repurposed and ‘blessed’ Garden of Pleasure, the same one so accurately described in the author’s previous and most famous creati-”

A shrill cry- its words drowned out to the point of gibberish by the loudness of the voice itself- pierced Rarity’s eardrums, prompting her to snap the book close and to look around her surroundings to search for the shout’s source. The voice called a second time, now low enough for her to understand a few syllables, but not whole sentences. It was enough for Rarity to follow the sound’s direction to see who was shouting with such vigor and such high pitch of voice, however.

On the dirt and pebbles path passing close by in front of her studying spot, somewhat close to a cluster of scrawny poplars with large and rather tall nettle bushes close to their outwards roots, a rather young boy wandered around.

His skin was the same colour as polished turquoise and his locks, shaken by the wind occasionally, had the tint like Sicilian oranges shining under the summer sun. His yellow and black clothes flowed all around him like the sails of a ship following the winds’ capricious will, at times revealing parts of his fair skin.

Rarity, lost the subject of her studying, the severity of her teachers forgotten, ignored the best judgment of moving away from the sight before her. As he scampered around like a tiny shadow from the Elysian Fields, the older girl’s eyes were captured and her thoughts raptured and brought away as spoil by the unaware crying victor.

But, soon enough, her reason ran forward and, in a brief but valiant fight, reclaimed Rarity’s thoughts. But the internal conflict left the feeling of horns and spines flowing inside her veins, causing her to grasp on her chest and deform her visage into an unorderly union of wrinkles and to bend forward.

“W-what am I doing?!” She scolded herself, raising her chest again, the feeling of spines suddenly turning into mere cold in her limbs. “This isn’t my call at all, especially knowing what I am!”

Rarity frowned and, with a bear-like grunt, opened the book again, back at the page where she was studying, but, by the time she had managed to pick up from where she had stopped, a sect of her mind had a retort ready for its counterpart, one that the more she tried to suppress by forcing immersion face-first into literary knowledge, the harder it fought back and tried to push its head out of the waters of literature.

“Please, not right now!” Rarity said in a low voice to no one in particular as she gave a massage to her forehead. “It is hard enough to concentrate on studying, adding such sights only increases distraction, not to mention incorrect and unrightful thought.”

Rarity paused, putting the book down as she looked up back at the boy, who was wandering close to Rarity’s position. Given the fact she was the only one around in the area, probably he was going to ask her for assistance.

Rarity shook her head at the thought. “That can’t happen. With how children are educated to not talk with strangers, it is a miracle social relations have a chance at still existing,” Rarity mused, her head bowed down and her eyes looking aimlessly at the pebbles on the ground. “Then again…”

She looked up at the boy again, and, against her prediction, he was walking in her direction. His head was bowed down, his movements were as clumsily as they were painfully slow, and his whimpers got louder and louder at every step he took towards her.

Nonplussed, she composedly recoiled against the bench’s back support and batted her eyelids quickly.

“Is he really…” she whispered to herself, her gaze fixed onto him.

Seemingly picking up her discomfort and confusion from afar, the young child made a step back and bent his neck forward, turning his back around before going back to the path from where he came from.

“Uhuh. Guess not.” She said, but, before could sigh in relief, Rarity felt something creeping from her generous breast all over her body. It was a sense similar to guilt, mixed with the vibes of an unfinished duty and what one feels in seeing loved ones brushed by harm going by it's way, with traces of the sense of piety brought by the mere vision of little harmless animals and infants attempting to ask for attention.

Both her hands clenched, one over her chest and one close to her right side. One trying to turn the aforementioned emotion into action, the other trying to quell and subside it into nothingness. One wishing to caress the boy, the other wishing to hit its own owner in her delicate face.

“He looks like he’s a lost child, I shouldn't stop myself from helping him get back to his parents.” She said to herself. “But, then again, if that were true, his own parents must be well aware of the fact he lost them, and interfere may make it harder for them to find him, not to mention the amount of extra worry I am going to cause and the problems I would get into for doing that. And this would be true tenfold, if he was not lost, but merely running off due to a tantrum or things like that.”

She looked at the boy again. He shrieked once again, reinforcing Rarity’s desire to get up and try to assist him, but still not enough to actually make her do so.

“We all know what you really hope to get out of it, and you are fooling no one with this ploy.” She said to herself, bowing her head and limply resting her arms in her lap. She then briefly glanced at her book and to her book bag, and the indignity felt towards herself quickly invaded Rarity’s spirit, lightning it up like bushfire.

“Well, not really. The fact I may want to touch him inappropriately does not mean I can’t try to help him out with no string attached or obscure contract clauses. Besides, it not the end of the world if I am mistaken.” she said to herself, as she set her book bag in the bag, closed it and then, with the bag hanging on her shoulder by a black and sand cloth band, rushed forward towards the boy.

He turned around and looked at the older girl coming at him- his eyes glimmering with tears and his face pitifully distorted by his own terror and disorientation- before slowly walking towards him.

“Oh dear, are you lost?” Rarity- forcing herself to ignore the dirt stains her action was going to leave on her socks- bent her knees close to the boy, resting her right hand on her foremost knee and placing her twitching left one close to her side.

The boy nodded and hummed.

“Aaww, I am sorry, little guy. What’s your name? And what’s your daddy or your mommy’s name?”

“My name’s Hummingbird,” he said, his voice cracking, with his hands and head in a priestly position. “My daddy’s name is Daddy, and my mommy’s name is Hoopoe.”

Rarity massaged her chin and hummed, trying to find a quick way to help him out. Considered his language and one of his answers, asking him for phone numbers was out of the question, and probably so was trying to ask him his address- at least a workable one- and the situation had yet to go so dire to call up the authorities.

Half a minute of thoughtful silence later, an illumination hit Rarity, as she remembered about the only open kiosk present in the park.

“Do you want anything to eat or drink?” Rarity said, smiling at Hummingbird. He nodded quickly, his face lighting up near-instantaneously.

“I want flatty!” He shrieked ecstatically as he started to skip in place. “Flatty!”

Rarity stared at him dumbfounded for a few seconds, until she remembered- thanks to nearly-atavic memories of her early childhood- what the word was supposed to mean. She shook her head chuckling.

“Alright, alright, I will buy you some flatbread,” she said, lending her still-twitching hand to him. “But now give me your hand.”

Rarity looked around herself nervously in the attempt to not establish eye contact with Hummingbird, who was eating a piece of flatbread, which was filled with cured ham and soft cheese, by deeply sinking his face into it and taking big bites off it, coating his cheek in a white layer of the caseary product.

Sure, she was the one that had brought it upon herself, and she knew it extremely well. However, at the same time, she felt that trying to take up the arduous challenge was better and more right, than leave a young child such as him crying out for his parents, wandering around the park until he was found by his caretakers, the police… or the worst of Rarity’s lot- the ones that had given up their conscience in exchange of fleeting relief or, worse yet, some kind of twisted power trip, one lasting until either the young boy gave up the ghost or the man was found and arrested and the child was brought out as broken shell- did so.

Rarity shuddered at the mere thought.

“I hope I will be better than that,” she muttered to herself, as she took a tiny sip from her coffee. “I mean, I seized an opportunity like this one just like them, but then again, I have to yet do anything, and maybe…”

All of the sudden, Rarity felt her skirt being pulled by the hem. Slowly putting down her coffee cup onto the designated platter, she lowered her eyes to look at the tugging’s source.

The boy- now doing some kind of little dance on his toes- was looking up at her, one hand over his crotch and the other still clinging on Rarity’s purple skirt.

“Um, nice lady, I need to go,” he said, his voice as squeaky as ever ringing into Rarity’s ears. “Can you please bring me?”

Rarity briefly stared at him before audibly gulping. His simple request echoed in her head, seeping through her entire body, making her feel the warmth- one fiery and noisy, one feeble but fumous- of two fires burning in her chest, telling her two very different things and bringing her to three different conclusions and solutions.
At first she had considered to let him relieve himself in his underwear, thus staining his clothes and making him reek, but leaving Rarity’s conscience as clean as a lily. But, realizing rather quickly how disingenuous, disgusting and despicable that was, Rarity had two possible options left: one was to escort him to the bathroom and assist him as he relieved himself, the other was to bring him next to the toilet and hope he knew how to do it all by himself.

“Well, no point in staying completely idle while deciding.” Rarity whispered to herself, getting up from the chair and grabbing Hummingbird’s left hand and slowly walked him deeper into the kiosk to the mint green sliding door leading to the lavatories- labeled as such because it had been scribbled in cubital characters with a dark red fat marker.

“Alright Hummingbird, do you need me to set you up, or do you think you are big enough to do it all yourself?” Rarity said with a gulp- hopefully an imperceptible one- as she slid the door right-left open, revealing the bathroom’s atrium, a small room with old red ceramic tiles that bore traces of their former luster under the black thin layer of filth scattered around, and a faux-crude ceramic sink with rusty water taps and some niches in the sink’s column, niches clearly caused by pieces getting chipped off either by accident or wantonly.

“I’m big boy, I can do!” Hummingbird said, inflating his chest and revealing a tiny little smirk of pride, as he walked inside the bathroom’s filthy atrium and then into the much cleaner bathroom beyond the hinged door made of unpainted tropical wood. Hummingbird scampered inside it and went to stand by the yellowish white toilet bowl- which was situated between a metal sink with small signs of rust and an essential changing table- and then pulled down his trousers.

Rarity gasped and immediately turned her back on him. She set her right hand over her chest and lightly bit on her lower lip.

“So close…” she muttered to herself, her heartbeat and her breathing’s pace decreasing slowly. “So close to that.”

Soon enough, a tinkling sound came from behind Rarity. As result shook her head, she fiddled her fingers around and she squinted her eyes.

“Don’t look back, oh Lord, don’t look back!” She said, trying to hold off the sudden madness that could seize her- an incautious helper- one to be forgiven, if people knew how to forgive gazing longingly. She feared to stop, and forgetful, alas, on the edge of light, her will conquered, to look back, now, at her Hummingbird.

She clenched her hands in two fists, as her mind flashed with images of her gazing upon his young body and enjoying it without him even suspecting her watch. Her heart clenched, as her mind pushed for bolder and more inconsiderate actions with Hummingbird as focus, planning love skirmishes opposing a well-fitted cohort against defenceless serfs, and trampling sieges against a fortress with an open gate.

At the same time, she considered the consequences of such deeds, giving her a prospect that was not as idyllic as part of herself passed off. After the gazing, the guilt followed. After the skirmishes, it was only matter of time until the fallen servants were going to be properly avenged, and ruin awaited to befall her, if she capitulated his fortress.

Her turmoil stopped as soon as she noticed that the tinkling had stopped, replaced by a loud sound of water being flushed, and the young voice declaring triumphantly. “I'm all done!”

She sighed deeply.

She evaded all mischance, and now she was ready to look behind again, which she did. Hummingbird had just pulled up his trousers and now he was adjusting his shirt to fit it under his trousers and over his colorful underclothing, just before stepping forward towards the sink.

Rarity imitated his action, standing by his side.

“Good boy!” She said in an overly- but not so fake- cheerful manner, as she felt her hands twitching at the thought of the action that was fatally going to follow. “Do you want help in reaching the sink?”

Hummingbird crossed his knees and lowered his head, blushing a little and nodding. Clearly, he didn't like to have his pride of being an older child cut down to its proper size.

Rarity grinned and embraced him around the waist, her hands and arms trembling, her eyes rolling, as she realized just how warm his body was and how his overall body was soft- even under layers of loose clothing- which only piqued the interest of her unwanted guest and worried the beleaguered host.

“No, bad Rarity!” she said while vigorously shaking her head, pushing away the thought before it could develop any further.

She, with her left hand, turned the rusty handle leftwards, before placing the young boy's small hands under the stream of fresh water, allowing him to rub them clean of any filth gathered. Rarity then quickly closed the tap with one of her elbows and set Hummingbird down, who proceeded to use his trousers to dry off his hands.

With a small smile, Rarity looked at him doing just that.

“Yes, he is a cute young boy indeed,” she set her left index finger under her chin, thoughtfully considering her next action.

“Maybe I could be a little more ‘affectionate’ with him? Or should I still avoid to try to start contact?” She whispered, before shrugging, as she realized that no important moral objections were standing in her way this time, and the only feeble principle opposing it was supported only by a nagging minority in the back of her head . “Pet his head and pinch his cheeks? That I can actually do.”

Rarity took Hummingbird’s hand and lead him- who was idly and rhythmically swishing his orange curls around like silky stripes, and lightly humming a musical piece unknown to Rarity- out of the bathroom and back at the outdoor metal, glass and wood table she and him had been sitting at moments before.

Rarity sat down onto the bamboo-poplar chait , lightly pulling Hummingbird’s arm in her own direction in order to get him close enough to do what she wished to do to him.

“You know, you are…” she paused, massaging her upper lip while she held him by the right arm. “A pretty young boy, of an handsomeness not seen everyday.”

Hummingbird reclined his head and tilted it, his eyes wrinkling up, clearly due to confusion, one that made Rarity give herself a harmless but dramatical slap on her forehead, coupling it with a chuckle.

“Oh, never mind, I am just begin fussy about this,” she told him, as she started to use her hand like ivory sail to cross the unusual but silky-soft and almond-smelling orange sea that was Hummingbird's hair. “Nothing to worry about, sweet young one.”

Hummingbird nodded with a small smile. “Okay,” he had simply said, before letting himself to the pleasure given off by his capital sea begin crossed by a magnificent ship such as Rarity’s.

As she kept petting the boy’s head, Rarity felt her previous tension falter and fade away, allowing her to lean back and relax, while listening to the ongoing chatter and birdsongs around her.

“Dream on, oh my dearest boy, dream on, let them say that the ones like you shall always fail, because, I swear, you have already triumphed.” A young man near her sang, his chant deep and nearly lyrical, but oddly not loud. “Dream on, my boy, don’t change any verse of your song because one wanted you to, because this is your life, life is so true, that it’ll sound impossible you’ll have to leave, it’s so mammoth, that when you’ll have to abandon it, you’ll plant a lemon tree, convinced you’ll see it bloom.”

“I know that you’re proud of your situation, o ye turner turner of citri,” a female voice, one Rarity seemed to have already heard before not too long ago, when she took part in the Friendship Games. “But don’t you think it’s inappropriate to flaunt it?”

Rarity froze and frowned. Turner of citri… the name rang something to her ears, but not enough to give her a definite answer.

“Not at all, Sunny Flare, my dear ally,” he said. “I’m not afraid of those self-proclaimed ‘spies’ Canterlot High’s lowlives send me, in order to catch a predator only them can see.”

Rarity, after a couple of seconds connecting the name to the described events, snapped her head around.

“Lemon Turner, is that really you?”