A moth flitted past Rarity's eyes, and for a moment she almost knew the difference between being asleep and being awake.
The mare sat up in bed, drawn out from beneath the heavy covers with a sigh. All was fuzzy and dark. She thought she smelled something beside herself, but she was wrong. Her stomach gurgled—something like hunger, disgust. Her belly rolled onto the floor and her limbs followed. The walls of the Boutique were cold, glacial, dark. She couldn't tell where the corners began and her shadow ended.
She trotted downstairs and into her workroom. Everything was ugly. The mare squinted, no longer able to distinguish the floor from the fabrics. The windows did nothing. She knew why.
Several unfinished things lay draped and dead across the drawing boards and work tables. A sewing machine dangled with loose string. There were tangles, knots, dust.
Rarity moved towards the projects and experiments. She stopped halfway, unable to go any further. Her eyes fell upon a partially-laced skirt. The article's hem was only half finished. It would take very little effort to finish it. Just a few stitches. Just an hour of otherwise worthless time. Maybe two.
She went across the hall and took a shower instead. Moisture and vapors massaged her, heated her, tempted her. She hugged herself, awash in darkness and exhales. Her thoughts stretched and stretched between each shudder until they resembled nothing at all. Water pooled around her hooves, turning cold, squirming and crawling across her fetlocks. She let it last until the sickness returned, and then she exited the bathroom, dripping and dismal.
Wet hoofsteps stained the linoleum. With a lazy breath, she dropped a wet towel across the corner of a table. Another moth flitted past dead lightbulbs. The walls risked growing mildew with all the coldness and moisture. Rarity opened her freezer and grabbed a tub of ice cream. She lifted a spoon out of a drawer and stuck it straight in. The mare leaned against something, staring into the shadows as she ate, suckled. It tasted like vanilla, or perhaps strawberry. She thought of telling somepony. She thought of fixing the hem of a skirt. Then she took another bite and another. She thought of nothing.
The stillness lingered, dragging time and tinnitus across the mare's ears. She sighed, her body slumping, settling, fattening. Rarity shoved the ice cream back into the freezer and trotted back across the boutique. She passed the workroom—but not without slowing down slightly, if only because it hurt so much. A close brush with her own heartbeat.
Within a minute, she was back upstairs, crawling into bed. The sheets were stale... but warm, at least for the time being. She surrendered to the darkness. There was no sleeping. There was no tears.
There was a flutter in the back of her throat. She almost welcomed it, including the gagging sensation. Hours later, Rarity was standing up, coughing and sputtering. The moment the sensation stopped, she sensed movement out the corner of her eyes. She looked aside, catching the twitch of moth wings. And then somepony knocked on the bottom door. Rarity stayed put. Seconds pounded by. Her skull ached. There was another knock on the door, ghostly and persistent.
Rarity slumped back down into bed. She pulled the covers over her eyes so all that she saw was fuzziness. This sufficed for a while... at least until she could smell herself again. Then—with a sigh—she hoisted her weight up over her leg joints and hobbled somewhere. Her senses tickled at the feel of water. She stared down at the shower drain. Tiny papery flakes gathered around the metal slits, dissolving slowly in water. Insect legs swirled.
Bile rose in Rarity's throat. She needed to wash it down. Stepping out of the shower, Rarity hobbled across the foyer. She squinted her right eye as she passed the workroom. It was simple. It was all so very simple. She only needed to start on the skirt and work her way up to the bodice.
The freezer gasped wide open. Rarity dropped the wet towel, reached in, and grabbed the tub of ice cream. A spoon glinted gray and garish. Two bites in, and Rarity heard a slimy, curdling sound. Slowly, she stabbed a third time into the dairy treat. She stared into the cream. Her spoon lifted, crawling all over with silkworms. A pale worm or two slithered up the handle of the instrument.
The mare blinked. She stared across the Boutique. Shadows strove to blanket the ugliness. They failed. She felt bloated. Heavy. Empty.
A gurgle. A growl.
She placed the tub down somewhere. Moisture tickled her nostrils. She walked circles around the Boutique. Photos drifted by. Faces and names, more shadows. She saw fabrics lying on the floor. Lace and crinoline, all untouched, unfinished. So much unfinished.
There was a knock on the door again. Rarity flinched. She stood in place. Sometimes she sat. At other times, the shower faucet vomited warm rivulets down her shuddering sides. There was no moving—not really. Just occasional, rancid thoughts sandwiched between naps and showers and bedsheets. She hungered, but every time she looked at the tubs of ice cream, the silkworms spread. So many things in this world was adept at what they were born for. The mildew spread. Rarity's flesh hung thick and flabby.
The door was still—as were the shadows. Rarity took a deep breath. She grabbed a saddlebag and hoisted it over her flank. It felt feather-light and cold. Shuffling into the foyer, Rarity opened the front door. The grayness blinded her, bone chilling and deathly. Her heart sank—only at her reflection in a pair of glass eyes. A mailpony stood at her stoop, stiff as a ponyquin. His body swiveled left and right at twenty degrees. A rock-solid hoof rapped and scraped against her front door. Twitchless ears lingered dull under an overcast sky.
Rarity stared at him, then past him. She stumbled over dead grass and deader gravel. Ponies stood on sidewalks and bridges—colorful shapes that flounced for a few frames, jostled, were still, then repeated. Their bodies wobbled with the grace of cadavers, the rigor mortis having set in. Bright eyes and bright muzzles—all jerking and spasming with buzzing hums. When Rarity reached the marketplace, some of the figures had even fallen to the dirt, jerking with lifeless rigidity. Some of their coats had peeled away, revealing hollow blackness. Something flew out of one or two of the ponies.
Rarity didn't stick around to watch. She stepped inside the Ponyville grocery store. Foals froze in mid-gallop, their grinning muzzles falling apart at the seams. She stepped past them, waving a hoof in front of her face to ward off the moths. She shivered.
At last, she reached the frozen section. A mare was bent over, her hoof grasping a door. Icicles formed across her statuesque face and chin. Part of the patchwork coat had peeled loose. In the gray light, Rarity could see inside her, could spot the rusted metal wireframe. Insect legs skittered up and down the copper webbing from within the pony. Rarity heard rustling, scratching noises. She grabbed three tubs of ice cream and lurched her way towards the counter.
A pony had fallen over in the middle of the aisle, his belly split open. Cocoons and pupae dangled from the top of his mesh wire frame. Dead brown wings littered the pony's abominable shell, turning to dust in the wind.
Rarity reached the counter, and she fished around her saddlebag for bits. She accidentally yanked out a sopping wet towel, still soaked with shower water. Then another. She looked at the sales clerk. He was mostly intact, but holes had decayed in his coat—flaking off at the moth-eaten corners. Things fluttered about on the inside. Silkworms poured out his nostrils and left eye hole.
Rarity wanted to draw the covers over her head. She placed two golden coins on the table top and bagged her own ice cream. A moth settled on her ear, twitched its wings, then fluttered off. She shuddered as she stepped out of the store.
Three mares waited for her on the outside. She recognized their colors, or so she thought. Nevertheless, she blinked hard, and in that blink they lurched forward, wobbling in place in front of her. She blinked again, and two of them had fallen to their side. Silk worms poured out of their Papier-mâché orifices, writhing with starvation. Rarity hurried off before she could watch the ants consume the pliable flesh.
On the way, she brushed against the sharp edge of a wagon. Rarity felt the briefest stab of pain. There were no tears. With a dull breath, she looked at her fetlock. Some of the skin had peeled loose. She tugged curiously at the paper—but stopped as soon as she heard the rustle of wings. Quietly, one sigh at a time, she smoothed the fabric back. She thought of dresses. There were still no tears.
When Rarity returned to her Boutique, the mailpony at the door had completely melted away. Sheets of dry paper billowed off in the dusty gray breeze, and he left behind an equine-shaped wireframe. The copper beams were frayed at the top where freshly-hatched moths had burst loose. At the bottom—filling his hooves and fetlocks—a veritable pile of dead wings and cocoon shells had formed. Rarity opened her door and stepped inside her home.
She didn't have anywhere to move. So she stayed in place, staring, blinking. The floor was covered in wet towels and tubs of ice cream. Each container was crawling with silkworms. Even in the sink, the cupboards, the freezer. She took one dismal glance in her shopping bag. Popping a lid, she found a tub full of wet towel fabric—peppered all over with dried cocoon husks and caterpillar legs.
Rarity dropped her saddlebags. She trotted past the workroom... the shells of today's and yesterday's death... the unfinished hem. Her bed was full of worms. There was a gurgling to her stomach, but as soon a she switched on the faucet, the shower spilled nothing but dead brown wings. They collected in the drain, rank with mildew, bereft of tears.
With nowhere else to go, she stood in the shadows of a delicate stranger's hallways, adrift in faces—all framed with regret. The gurgle repeated, a ceaseless hunger. Rarity gnashed her teeth. The paper along her fetlock was peeling... flaking. She pulled at it, tugged. It didn't hurt, so she pulled at it some more. The wireframe glinted as it was exposed underneath, the skittering replaced with grotesque curdling. She squinted at the stems of so many cocoons dangling inside of her, so many years and lace wasted.
She inhaled and exhaled. Her lungs were full of fluttering fabric. She felt tired, but she knew no sleep would come.
That's when she started smelling herself again. The scent poured out of her, one hole at a time, one sigh after another that she was foolish enough to mistake for breaths. The pressure built up. The shadows collapsed, like a heavy tent, densely-packed with black fuzz and mildew.
It forced her outside. The grayness had given away to a dull, gentle dark. It drew her uphill. Ponies lay on the sloped ground, limp, their mechanisms collapsed and rusted on the inside out. They all faced the heart of town, anchored by their cold smiles and glass eyes. Rarity trotted in the opposite direction of such gazes, towards the stars. They receded as soon as she reached the summit, so she reached for them the best way she could, by hunching over, grabbing at the back of her skull, and pulling in opposite directions.
The snapping of copper frames afforded a final chorus. Then, as Rarity's metal exoskeleton rooted into the ground, and she lost all sense of smell and hunger, her body expelled the last of its papery surface. The mare burst open like a cocoon, releasing the moths into the heavens, where they would flitter, float, and die... everywhere and nowhere... a first and last communion with her insides and outsides, neither awake nor asleep... but free.
Author's Note
