“Did you plan this?” Twilight asked, feeling Rarity’s breath hot against her skin.

“I was hopeful,” Rarity responded, “I like you, but I did not mean for it to be so sudden, or even today, Twilight, I do not mean to take advantage of you.”

But Twilight did not let her talk more.

They kissed again.

Rarity’s lips tasted... not sweet, but wonderful... in a way which Twilight could not seem to place.

“Don’t be sorry,” she whispered, “I don’t think this is a mistake, or does it feel like one to you?”

“You are inexperienced, Twilight,” Rarity said, though it seemed to take great effort from her, “the only pony who has ever won your affection is a teacher, who was three times your age, and you’ve never talked about it with anypony, not even your brother. We might not get along together. It could be a mistake. I didn’t mean for it to be this way, but you...” she paused. “... took the initiative and I didn’t say no. I am not blaming you, dear, please understand that. We can try this if you want but there is a chance it doesn’t work out.”

Twilight gulped, and slowly, things seemed to become less surreal again. Suddenly Rarity’s words made sense. Even Twilight knew that a single moment of romantic attraction was not the best basis for a relationship. As right as it had felt a moment ago, it might not be the smart thing to do. In the back of her mind she knew that this was a decision not to be taken lightly.

She bit her lip.

“Your choice, Twilight. You can take your time, if you want.”

Twilight nodded.

“Yes...” she said eventually. “You’re right. It wouldn’t be smart.”

Rarity’s smile vanished. Twilight could feel a stitching pain in the left part of her breast as she realized how disappointed the fashionista really was – no, how disappointed Rarity really was.

“But that doesn’t mean there can’t be anything between us,” Twilight added quickly. “I only said no to starting a relationship right now. We could still, uhm-”

“-go on a date?” Rarity suggested.

Twilight nodded.

Rarity smiled again, though now maybe it was a bit forced. But not much, really. And as Twilight kept watching her and their gazes met once more, it seemed to become real again.

“So we’ll spend more time together,” Rarity said, “and if we have fun together, then we try again?”

Twilight nodded. “How about in three days,” she said, feeling an urge to take the initiative, “I could take you to dinner? Then we have some time to think things through.”

“That sounds lovely.” And Rarity smiled. “But dear, why not let me choose the place?”

“Alright,” Twilight said, “but I’ll pay.”

Rarity smirked. “Though it might not be proper for a true lady to take that offer, I have a hunch that you can afford it ...”

Both of them laughed.

“It’s a date?” Twilight asked hopefully, and Rarity nodded, still smiling.

“It’s a date.”

Author's Note

Hey there! I hope you arrived here from my notes on the .pdf version.

The idea that sparked this story has nothing to do with what it is now. The first thing I ever published on FimFiction is a piece titled "Infintiy," an ambitious tale about an alternate progression of life for the main6, that was set to go on indefinitely. As you can guess, it never went past a single published chapter, even though I had countless ideas for future plot points. One of those was about Twilight dreaming the world were consumed by a horrible cataclysm and seeking out the literal goddess (not Celestia, but someone above her) of the world to ask, "how could you let this happen?" The goddess said it was an accident, that she has been so wrapped up in a thought that she simply did not notice... however, she would fix everything, bring everypony back to life and restore the world, exactly as it has been before. I flipped between wanting this to be a dream and a real thing.

Later it became quite obvious that I wouldn't continue with Infinity in the foreseeable future, but I still liked this idea, so I decided to pack it into its own story. I wanted it to be a protest against tagging, and sort of against the idea of genres. It had to be a romance story – as harmless as it gets – and in the third chapter, as Twilight and Rarity meet for dinner in a lovely little restaurant, Rarity suddenly points to a comet in the sky, and Twilight turns her head in time to see a second one, a third one, and suddenly countless comets, all sailing across the sky, and then the sky itself bursts into flames, and chaos breaks out, and as the sky is dissolving to ash, that ash falls down and covers the world, getting into Twilight's lungs as she seeks to bring Rarity and herself to safety, fleeing into the caves near the Diamond Dog area. She casts one last spell to rip herself out of the physical plane onto the magical one, which is essentially suicide you see, and a painful one too, but it's the only way to seek out goddess Liara, which no-pony ought to know of, but Celestia had mentioned her once... and just like it was planed in the original story, Liara makes it all right again, and at last Twilight finds herself in the same restaurant once more, with Rarity at her side, keeping their memories... in light of what happened, the thing between them seems much less mysterious, and they now discuss it openly, both concluding that, despite their horrific experience, this is something so important that they don't want to lose it. And so the story concludes, but the romance does not.

I wrote all that before I got very far into the first chapter. But there was a problem. I wanted the beginning – the first two chapters – to be a captivating romance story, and I wasn't really very good at writing captivating romance. Eventually I wrote it anyway, driven by wanting to reach chapters two and three, as well as the small section about Twilight apologizing to Rarity for having looked down on her before, which was written as an idle scene long before I knew what the second chapter would look like. But as I got the Truth or Truth idea, I began to actually get into it. Suddenly I cared about the romance story as a romance story, not as a setup for a world-ending cataclysm. Then I read House of Leaves, and discovered what you can do with formatting to enhance the plot. House of Leaves does it for an agoraphobic and claustrophobic effect; I use it to signal Twilight leaving her c o m f o r t z o n e, and while it is time-consuming, I simply loved the effect it has; I don't know if anyone else does (and I've never seen it done by anyone else) but I do, so I kept doing it. Alas I got really attached to the story, so much that I decided, screw all the world-ending business, this is now a proper, straight-forward romance story, with no dark twists whatsoever, and even rated E!

It is the first time that I tried to develop feelings during the story... usually I simply start off with two of the main6 already being in a relationship, and have that in the background without ever talking about it explicitly. The only exception is The Shrotcut, but even there, it starts off with Twilight already feeling things for Fluttershy. Here, it was all about recreating each moment as authentically as possible, so following my usual priorities, all coin-flips were randomized and all questions were chosen on-the-fly, including the one which lead to the ending. After all, how could I ever write a spontaneous progression believably if not by living the situation myself, as closely as I can? Even so, I'm not sure how well I did.

Anyways. meow! I'm a pony!