Soul So Vibrant

All at once, something changed.

At first, Rarity couldn’t put quite place her hoof on what. The world had just, quite unexpectedly, taken on a completely different quality. Everything was more distinct, and Rarity could not for the life of her find the words to describe it.

What exactly was this strange… shimmering? To literally everything?

The mare’s gaze swept across the open Ponyville Market, darting to and fro at every object, every passing pony, every blade of grass, as she scanned the world around her—the world that had completely changed, and yet somehow seemed exactly the same.

…It was beautiful.

“W-what…”

At the sound of her own voice, she blinked, and warmth began to flood her face as she suddenly remembered: she had been talking to somepony.

“Oh dear me, I’m so terribly sorry!” she said quickly, turning to face the merchant stallion in front of her—who himself looked awfully scintillating, just like everything else. “Something quite, er, odd crossed my sight, and I confess it caused me but a moment’s pause—”

She blinked again.

The stallion was staring at her. Gaping at her. Like he had seen a ghost.

Had she not been doing the same thing just moments ago, she might have slapped him for gawking.

Instead, she took a cautious step forward, curious of his current state. “Beg pardon, sir merchant?” she asked the stallion with a gentle tilt of her head. “Is something the matter?”

“…I, ah, whoa,” he uttered, stepping back in shock. “Sorry, I just… your mane. Every time it bounces, it… it’s like… what the hay?” He gulped again. “It’s like everything just…”

“…Changed?” Rarity finished his sentence for him, now almost certain that he had noticed the same thing she had.

“Y-yeah,” he continued, nodding. “You see it too?”

“I… I do,” she replies.

“I don’t… I don’t even know how to describe it,” he said, staring at his surroundings in awe. “It’s almost like everything has this extra quality to it that I can’t… It’s like, shimmery.”

“I’m not sure if ‘shimmery’ is the word I’d use,” Rarity said, tapping a hoof to her chin. “Perhaps… ‘effervescent’?”

“Maybe ‘vibrant’.”

“‘Vibrant’,” she said slowly, tonguing each syllable. “Yes, vibrant… almost as if…”

“As if the world was suddenly… full of…”

She froze—dead cold—and watched as the color drained from the stallion’s face.

The color.

“No…” he started.

“Oh… oh my Stars,” she whispered in awe. “We can see it.”

“Color,” he said, breathlessly.

“How— how is this possible?” asked Rarity, baffled. “It can’t be that… that…”

“That we’ve met our soulmate?” he finished. His eyes locked onto hers, blinking with a strange expression.

Oh. Oh my.

“Then d-does this mean,” she stuttered, stumbled over her words, in abject disbelief that the moment had finally come, that the thing she had dreamed of all her childhood were finally true, “that you are my s-soulmate?”

“I…” He uttered, before falling silent. “I think so.”

…Incredible.

What did this mean? Rarity couldn’t fathom the consequences, the implications.

For years, she had been besieged by stories, and books, and plays, and poems, and songs, of ponies that had discovered their soulmate. For years, she had become enraptured with the prospect that one day she herself would find true love, that she would discover a side of the world that had been so cruelly deprived from her since the moment she was born.

She had wanted to see. She had wanted to know. She had wanted to feel what it was like to live in a world filled with color and love.

And now she could.

By the stars, this had to be the most momentous occasion in all of her life! The entire world had changed!

And yet, somehow, it hadn’t. In fact, it was as if it had the gall to simply continue existing without ceremony! Everywhere Rarity looked, ponies went on about their business in the Ponyville Market, exchanging wares and trivial conversation like absolutely nothing was out of place.

How could that be? How could it go so tragically ignored that everypony, everything, everyone, had at once become so vibrant, so lush, so staggeringly beautiful?

It was breathtaking.

Suddenly the possibilities were sprawling before her eyes. Already the colors and hues of the world were beginning to form connections in her head, overriding years and years’ worth of monochromaticity, of her entire visual spectrum being dominated by scales of gray and grey.

Oh she couldn’t wait to go home to her boutique, to rifle through all of her designs and see how she could use this newfound vision to reimagine every dress, every line, every season. She couldn’t wait to see how the colors of every stitch could complement the vibrant coat pigments of all the ponies before her.

Everything old was new again, and it was magical, so magical, magical beyond comprehension! Oh she couldn’t wait to tell Twilight Sparkle what had happened. No doubt she would be exhilarated by the news that Rarity had finally met her—

…Her soulmate.

Rarity had met her soulmate.

And… it wasn’t her girlfriend of two years.

It wasn’t her beloved Twilight Sparkle.

“No…”

As if struck, Rarity took a sudden step back. And another. One. Two. Clip. Clop. Soft, delicate strikes against the cobblestone streets of the Ponyville Market.

The stallion, himself in a reverie, was shaken from her sudden movement. “Miss…? Is everything—”

“What?” she exclaimed in shock. “W-what, I— ah!”

Her rear hooves intertwined and she was sent straight to the ground, landing on her rear with an unceremonious fwomp.

Dizzy from the fall, she simply sat there, reeling as her mind attempted to catch up to her circumstances, to the gravity of her situation, to the truth that had so suddenly dawned on her, the ultimate truth, the impossible truth.

Twilight Sparkle was not her soulmate.

“Miss! Miss, are you alright?”

The voice broke through her trance. She slowly stared up at the stallion, meeting his eyes—his shimmering, concerned, startled eyes.

The eyes of her soulmate.

“I…” Rarity uttered, nearly choking on her words. “I… I don’t know.”

“Here. Take my hoof.”

He extended it before her eyes.

She blinked at them.

They were a vibrant, earthy color. She couldn’t name it. It matched the pale tones of the cobblestone streets underneath her hooves. What color was that? Red? Green? Orange? Brown? Pink?

What color was anything?

She took it. And slowly, but with a hardy strength, he lifted her to her hooves.

“T-thank you,” she stammered, unsure of what else to say. Her mind refocused itself, shutting everything else out, in her attempt to focus on the conversation, on speech, on speaking, with her newly-discovered soulmate.

“Will you be a-alright?” he asked, his own voice a little shaky, his own eyes barely focused, his pupils dilating rapidly in what could only be described as confused shock.

“I think,” Rarity began, slowly working out—among the sudden raging storm of all of the things she knew she needed to do—what needed to be done right now.

“I think… I need to sit down. And just soak all of this in.”

“Yes,” he agreed numbly. “Same. Somewhere quiet. A cafe. With a coffee. A really strong coffee. And figure out… what this means.”

‘For us’, came the words—unspoken, but implicit—to both of their minds.

“Coffee. Yes. That sounds grand.” She nodded, rapidly coming to agreement with his suggestion. “Shall we—”

She froze, the rest of her sentence dying on her tongue.

He noticed, and raised an eyebrow at her. “Pardon…?”

She had nearly invited him to coffee without thinking.

She didn’t even know the stallion. Didn’t know him at all. Not his name, nor his origins, not a single shred of his life.

But for whatever reason, the universe had conspired to make him her soulmate.

If anyone could best help her figure out what this meant—for her, for him, for the world, for everything—it was him. He was the only one who could.

So she mustered up her nerves and said it.

“Shall we… go together, then?”

~ ⚫ ~

Brown.

Very dark brown, the waiter had said, when Rarity asked him if there had been some kind of mistake with her order, when she asked why her coffee wasn't ’black’ like she had always taken it.

“Coffee is brown,” he had said, matter-of-factly. “It has always been brown. Even when you take it black.”

The prim stallion spoke with the well-practiced authority of someone who had possessed the gift of color-sight for a very long time, and Rarity found no reason to contest his assertion.

And yet, Rarity couldn’t help but be amazed that, in all of her years of drinking coffee, the fact that even the blackest coffee was brown had somehow eluded her.

How many things like that existed in her life? How many things had she once assigned a color, but was completely wrong? How much of her imagined expectations would have to be completely shattered to make room for the reality of her the world around her, a world so new, yet had always been?

No doubt she’d be seeking the assistance of a Palette Master in due time. She knew a few that resided in town, but out of all the color-sighted ponies, Palette Masters—those who had dedicated their gifts to studying the mysteries of color—were the most rare out of all color-sighted ponies.

And color-sighted ponies themselves—like their moderately-aged waiter—were rather uncommon. Not exactly rare, but by no means in abundance either. As was only natural. Out of the hundreds of thousands of ponies in the continental territories of Equestria, the odds of one running into their soul mate were quite low.

“One in twelve thousand,” echoed the voice of Twilight Sparkle in her mind, on one of many occasions where Rarity had needed convincing that it wouldn’t likely happen in her lifetime.

But it had.

And that thought—the thought of her beloved, of her name, of her rosy voice, as delicate as fine china, of her face, of those wide, earnest eyes—brought forth an ache in Rarity’s heart that struck like a lightning bolt and sent her mind reeling.

“One in twelve thousand.”

How…? How could this have happened?

“Beg pardon?”

“Hm?” Rarity looked up at the stallion, who had taken his seat across from her. He himself had a steaming cup of coffee before him.

He tilted his head, blinking. “You muttered something, but trailed off. ‘One in something’…?”

“Oh.” Had she said that aloud? She cleared her throat, but even that couldn’t prevent her voice from trembling. “O-one in twelve thousand.”

“Ah, right.” A thoughtful glance at his coffee. “The odds. Of course.”

“O-of course, the odds rise as you grow older,” she stammered, almost without thinking, merely citing factoids that had been passed onto her by… by…

Don’t. Not her name. Not right now. You need to sort everything else out, first.

“T-those in their late twenties will have nearly double the chance,” she continued lecturing in a practiced tone, itself a mockery of the mare that inspired it. “And double again for those in their late thirties. …Or so I’ve heard,” she finished lamely.

“Well then,” he said—hesitantly, cautiously, like he knew his words could be trotting on something fragile. “We must be very lucky ponies.”

“Yes, I suppose we are, aren’t we, Mister…?”

It only just occurred to Rarity that she hadn’t yet gotten his name.

“Tinder Hooves,” he said quickly, as if on impulse. “A-and yours?”

“Rarity,” she replied. “Just Rarity, if you please. No compound name.”

“Ah.” He blinked, then smiled. “Single names are quite the discovery. I wonder what the odds are for those?”

“Not quite as high, I’m told,” Rarity said, struggling to remember the figure off the top of her head from one of Twi— from a trivia session with her friends. “I believe it was… one in forty?”

“Still quite the rarity,” he noted. And the color instantly drained from his face—what a remarkable phenomenon. “…Ah, no pun intended.”

Rarity blinked at the stallion. Then, unexpectedly, to both of them… she chuckled.

It was a delicate titter—light… but genuine. And it was matched, albeit nervously, by the stallion across from her.

She didn’t expect to be laughing right now. But she simply couldn’t help it! Despite all circumstances, the stallion was perfectly charming.

And quite dashing, to boot. Tinder’s colors were soft, inoffensive, earthy tones, and his moderately-ruffled mane gave him a sort of rugged look that she had to admit was quite handsome.

If this were her soulmate, she could certainly do much worse.

But hadn’t she already done much better…?

NO. Not right now.

“I really need to find out what color your mane is,” Tinder suddenly said, distracting her from her thoughts. Her eyes snapped to his, and she noticed his gaze tracing the intricate curls of her well-groomed mane. “It’s quite a lush shade of…”

“Purple,” she supplied for him. “More specifically, a ‘rich, dark violet’, if you were to listen to my hospital’s Palette Master tell it upon my birth.”

“Purple.” He tongued the word. “It’s a very… regal color, I must say. It looks very good on you.”

She felt her face flush. “You are too kind, Tinder.”

In truth, the lushness of her mane colors had shocked her when she had first seen them. But it took mere moments of acclimation for her to find that she was very much growing fond of its luscious hue.

The striking eyes of an excited mare leapt to the forefront of her consciousness.

“Mulberry!” her voice came, unbidden into her mind, an echo from a time nearly before recollection. “My coat is mulberry! Similar to purple, actually! We could be matching, Rarity!”

Brilliant, earnest eyes. A bright, excited grin. Rarity couldn’t help but idly wonder what colors adorned her coat and mane.

Not. Right. NOW.

“And what are your colors?” she asked, seizing the opportunity to distance her mind, and perhaps expand on her color vocabulary association a bit more.

“‘A coat of yellow, pale as a fresh daisy in spring,’” Tinder recited, apparently from memory, “‘and a mane as blue as a bright summer sky.’”

Rarity cracked a smile. “Fancied himself quite the poet, did he?”

“I suppose he did,” he agreed, returning the smile. “You fond of poetry?”

Oh there’s a dorky poet I’m fond of, alright.

Chasing away the rogue thought, she leaned back in her seat, finding herself far more relaxed. Despite the occasional interruption, the maelstrom of thoughts in her mind had mostly abated, if only for a moment, as she soaked in the ever-quaint charm of another Ponyville morning.

But it wasn’t just another Ponyville morning, was it? From the corner seat on the porch of the cafe, she had a clear view of the surrounding town. Her eyes began to scan the surroundings.

Purple. Yellow. Blue. Brown. She had known these colors existed ever since her youth, of course, heard their names over and over again. And even from her youth, she had begun recognizing them amid the endless gray, despite the monochromaticity of her world. She had developed the uncanny ability to distinguish between the subtle shades of gray, and, when pressed, she had always shown a knack for knowing which shade was which color with surprising accuracy. It was a talent that lent itself well to her craft.

But now? Now, the handicap was gone. Already, she was beginning to identify objects around her and categorize them into their various hues and shades. Many objects matched her expectations for their color, while some differed in surprising ways—she wasn’t perfect, after all. She began reinforcing her understanding of the relationships between them—some colors seemed to go well together, and others stood in absolute contrast with each other.

The home of one of Rarity’s occasional customers, Roseluck, was just down the street. Ever the gardener, her front porch was lined with rows of planters, resplendent with neatly-arranged flowers of so many vibrant shades—lavender petunias and pale pink lilies, rich red dahlias alongside blossoming sunflowers of the brightest gold.

Rarity knew, from her time with her notoriously-picky client, that Roseluck was a color-sighted mare. But even without knowing that, it was plainly obvious that her home was a product of that gift. For only one with such a talent could create such coordinated beauty out of the unpredictable nature of… well, nature itself.

Across from Roseluck’s home was that of Ditzy Doo, a local mailmare. Rarity knew Ditzy Doo from her school days, and thus knew that the dopey mare had been color-sighted since before she could even fly, the lucky little rascal. But despite that, the porch of the bubbly family mare was a veritable cornucopia of clashing colors—from the sun-faded pastels of scattered antique porch-side furniture, to the discordant primaries and bright-hot hues of her children’s little macaroni creations hanging from the window sill.

The facade of her home, in all its garishness, stood in stark contrast to Roseluck’s carefully-curated arrangements.

And Rarity loved it. It was bursting at the seams with charm and personality, so clearly was it a home filled with life and happiness and the warmth of a loving family. She relished in the warmth that emanated from the vibe of Ditzy Doo’s homey little home.

Or perhaps that was her coffee?

“This is incredible,” she whispered, turning to the stallion with shimmering eyes, to the only pony within arms’ reach that could possibly understand. “Absolutely incredible.”

He nodded, his own eyes bright with wonder as he, too, broke from his wanderings to meet her gaze. “It absolutely is.”

“I must admit,” Rarity continued, “I’ve dreamed of this day since I was a filly. I just… it’s been so many years, and I had pretty much given up any notion that it would ever happen.”

“And yet, here we are,” he said. “On such a regular day, too. Everything about this is just… magical.”

He’s right. And I would know magical. I’m friendswith magical.

“Not at all what we were expecting to have happen today, is it?” Rarity said, giggling away her rampant thoughts.

“Not at all!” he agreed. “Today was just a routine stop in Ponyville, to offload some leftover stock on the way back to my home base in Tall Tale.”

“So you’re a traveling merchant?” Rarity inquired, curious of the pony’s history and more than ready to focus on somepony else for a moment.

“Yep!” He nodded proudly. “Selling the finest, most exotic fruits you can find in the Equestrian Heartland.”

“Exotic specialty fruits, you say?” Rarity said, leaning forward in interest, her mind wandering to her orange friend. “I’ll bet you don’t sell Applejack’s finest.”

“That’s a bet you’d lose!” he said, grinning. “Not here, of course, but we have exclusive contracts with the Apple family to sell their rarest stock anywhere else we go in Equestria. Including Zap Apples. When they’re in season, of course.” He winked.

“Ahh,” Rarity said.  “That’s quite the lucrative business arrangement. Here I was under the impression that you sourced your own stock, but by the sound of it, the Apples aren’t your only supplier?”

“Oh, heavens, no,” he chuckled. “There’s some fancy crops we’ll grow in Tall Tale, but those aren’t always in season, so we stock from all over the Heartland to make up for it. Opal oranges from Manehattan, candied carrots out in Fillydelphia, dragonfruit from the Dragon Lands, even a few numbers out in Trottingham when it’s not cold as a windigo’s backdraft.”

“Goodness!” Rarity giggled at the analogy, before settling into an impressed hum. “Mm, a traveling merchant, selling exotic goods all over Equestria. I must say, you certainly do have entrepreneurial spirit.”

“Whatever puts food on the table,” he said, folding his hooves. “Er, in a manner of speaking.”

They shared a light chuckle, with Rarity finding this stallion easier to talk to by the minute.

“Do I share that ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ with somepony else at the table?" he asked with a curious smile.

“How very observant of you,” Rarity replied sweetly. “I’m the sole proprietor of my own little business, myself.” She slipped into the well-rehearsed tone of an expert salesmare. “‘Carousel Boutique! Where every garment is chic, unique, and magnifique!’”

“Ahh, so you’re a tailor, then?”

Rarity held a hoof to her chest in mock scandal. “Why, I’m not just a tailor, good sir, I am a seamstress. I do not just sew, I design. From dresses, to suits, to even the odd pyjama. I make garments for young and old, stallion and mare! Garments to dazzle and impress on the most raucous of nights! And perhaps, on the more intimate ones… to intrigue as well.” She winked slyly at the stallion in an act of practiced showmareship.

“Haha, well, color me intrigued, Miss Rarity!” he exclaimed, making a grand show of fanning himself and being enraptured by Rarity’s play-seduction. “If your craftsmareship is anything like your salesmareship, I have no doubt in my mind that you are a master of your trade.”

“I do take great pride in my work,” said Rarity, holding her muzzle high in the air.

“Then this…” He leaned back in his seat, searching for words. “This must be an extraordinary moment for you.”

“Hmm?” Rarity looked at him, tilting her head.

“All… this,” he said, extending his arms out to gesture at everything around them. “Gaining color-sight. This will certainly change how you ply your craft, will it not?”

“It most certainly will,” Rarity nodded. “I mean, I’ve been studying color for years now, and I could distinguish most hues from each other at gunpoint, should the need arise. But being able to see it in all its glory… it’s incredible. To perceive something I could once only imagine… it’s like… goodness, I can scarcely find the words to describe it. It’s like if Schaden Freude were to regain his hearing, such that he need no longer compose deaf.”

“An apt comparison,” nodded Tinder.

“No doubt it will help you in your business as well?” Rarity inquired.

“Mm, not as much,” he admitted. “The most practical benefit I’ll gain from it is to better tell how fresh or ripe my produce is, but I could already see much of that through gray-sight.”

“Ah, I suppose that’s true.”

“Though I am looking forward to seeing my stock in all its vibrant hues,” he said, almost dreamily. “Especially those Zap Apples. No longer shall they be striped bands of gray to mine eyes!”

“Oh yes! A few neighbors of mine with color-sight have spoken quite grandly of the vibrant countenance of a Zap Apple. I am very much looking forward to that. No doubt it’ll be a rich source to mine for inspiration when I start designing my upcoming spring lineup.”

“Haha, no doubt indeed,” he said, chuckling. “I take it you work out of Ponyville, then?”

“I most certainly do!” she confirmed with an excited nod of her head. “My boutique—well, actually, it’s also my home—is just down the way.” A sudden idea came to her head. “In fact, why don’t you come and visit sometime this afternoon? My shop is always open past noon.”

“Oh? That sounds like a lovely idea. In fact, my stand is already closed up for the day, so my schedule is free until the evening.” He blinked once. “Though I’d hate to get in the way of your work, considering it would be during your business hours and all.”

“Oh, no, of course not!” Rarity said, beaming at Tinder’s consideration. “I’d absolutely love a companion with whom I can explore my own wares, and who better than yourself? After all, now that I have color-sight, it’ll be just as much a new experience for myself as it would be for a first-time shopper like you!”

His smile broadened. “Well, so long as I am no imposition to your business or household, I’d be glad swing by.”

“Absolutely not, my dear!” she assured him. “It would just be myself, my sister Sweetie Belle, and Twi—”

Everything came to a screeching halt.

He blinked in confusion. “I… I’m sorry?”

“…T-Twilight,” she finished. “Twilight Sparkle. She lives with me.”

“I see,” he repeated. Rarity saw the color draining from his face, almost as if he too had reached the very same realization that Rarity had been so adamant to quash for as long as she could. “And this ‘Twilight Sparkle’… would be…?”

“…My girlfriend.”

His jaw froze. He blinked. He blinked again.

“Your… girlfriend,” he said slowly, his words slowing to speechlessness.

Yes.

My girlfriend.

Twilight Sparkle.

The love of my life.

So long had she held the thought at bay, so long had she hoped to stave off the reality of her situation, that when it finally came crashing upon her, it crashed with the force of a tsunami.

My girlfriend is not my soulmate.

The mare I love with all my heart is not my soulmate.

Twilight Sparkle is not. My. Soulmate.

The thoughts reverberated throughout her head, crashing against her mind, echoing like bombs, rattling her to her core, shaking her so thoroughly that Rarity began quivering in her seat, nearly slipping out of her chair.

“M-Miss Rarity?!” said Tinder as he leapt to his hooves and rounded the table. “Miss Rarity, please get a hold of yourself!”

She felt his hoof on her shoulder.

And it terrified her.

It wasn’t the soft, concerned, delicate touch of her beloved. It was a hoof she had never felt before. Rough, weathered, hardened through years of traveling across the sprawling roads that connected every major port-of-call in Equestria.

It was the hoof of her soulmate. Her soulmate.

And it terrified her. It terrified her that his touch, the touch of somepony that the cosmos had bound to her, could feel so… foreign. So alien.

And yet…

She turned her head to lock eyes with the stallion, the man whom destiny had declared her soulmate. She could barely focus, her vision having gone blurry through the tears that threatened to overtake her. But she tried. She tried so hard to think of nothing but the shimmering, brilliant yellow orbs belonging to the one tied to her by fate. They were unfamiliar and wholly alien… yet they were filled with concern, with confusion, with fear.

Everything she knew was crashing around her.

But she wasn’t the only one whose world had been overturned.

She focused on his eyes, on the unfamiliar but not unwelcome sensation of his hoof on her shoulder. She focused on the emotions that he no doubt shared with her. She took a deep breath, one that she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding.

And slowly, but surely, her shudders abated, and the world came into clarity once more.

“I’m… thank you, Tinder,” she said, slowly, carefully, her voice hollow. “I think I’ll be alright.”

“Are you sure?” he asked in concern.

“Not in the slightest,” she admitted, trying to rise back to a proper sitting position. “But perhaps if I pretend I am, it’ll magically come true somehow.”

I could certainly use a dose of magic right now.

“That’s… a better start than none at all,” Tinder said with a sigh, his expression softening. Swiftly dragging his chair—and coffee—over to their side of the table, he sat down side by side with Rarity, whom had begun nursing her own mug of coffee once more.  “Is there something I need to know, Miss Rarity? Er,” he hesitated. “If you’re ready, of course.”

Rarity stared into the brown-ish blackness of her coffee.

If I don’t confront it now, I’ll have to eventually. There’s no escaping the reality of the situation.

Without further ceremony, she downed the rest of her coffee in one gulp—it wasn’t scalding, but it was certainly hot enough to jolt her nerves into a state that at least somewhat resembled function—before setting it back on the table without a hint of her usual grace.

“I… yes,” she confessed, refusing to meet Tinder’s eyes. “For the last two years, I have been… spoken for. Her name is Twilight Sparkle.”

“I see,” he said simply. “How long…?”

She spoke slow. “Two years.”

We had only just celebrated our second anniversary mere weeks ago.

A question tugged at Rarity’s mind.

“How about—” she opened her mouth to speak… but her voice caught.

It felt like asking this question would be a betrayal.

Is it though?

“How about…?” asked Tinder, his voice gentle but imploring.

“How…” Rarity whispered. “How about yourself?”

Tinder stared at Rarity thoughtfully, thinking through his words, almost knowing that each one could rattle Rarity to her core.

But in the end, he chose to value his honesty over her peace-of-mind.

“Single. And… looking.”

Rarity let out a breath. Of course he was single and looking. The universe might as well be hinting at something.

“Mister Tinder, forgive the implications, but… you aren’t, perchance, a stranger to romance… are you?”

He laughed nervously. “I can’t say that I am, Miss Rarity. I’ve been with a couple mares. To test the waters. To chase off the ennui of loneliness. To lose myself in a pony I had great affection for. And, well, to… scratch that itch.”

“Ah, yes,” Rarity breathed through her nose with a small smile. “That itch.”

“Y-yeah.” He blushed. “But despite all of that, it just never felt…”

“It never felt…?”

“Right,” he concluded. “Like there was always something missing. Like we conflicted on such a fundamental level that we’d never be able to work it out.”

A pregnant pause.

“So then…” Rarity began. “Does that mean… that you believe in soulmates?”

“I do,” he declared, with no hesitation. “One-hundred percent.”

Rarity sucked air in through her teeth.

“And… what do you think, now that it’s happened?” she asked, even if she feared the answer. “What do you think of your soulmate? Of me?”

Tinder gave her a meaningful stare. Then he let loose a sigh, before locking eyes with her.

“Miss Rarity… I think you are an intriguing, fascinating mare. You carry yourself with a confident, radiant beauty, and you clearly have a powerful creative ambition that I can’t help but admire. The more we speak, the more relaxed I feel. The more I learn about you, the more I want to be involved in your life. And, right now… there’s little more I want than that very privilege.”

A pregnant pause.

“Miss Rarity…” Tinder began, hesitantly. He paused for a moment, as if to reconsider what he was about to say. But somehow, he mustered up the courage. “Miss Rarity. You are clearly distressed.”

Rarity glared at him with hollow eyes. “That obvious, is it? How else am I supposed to feel? I’ve wasted so many of my years emotionally investing so much of myself in the love of my life, only to find out that she isn’t the love of my life. Twilight Sparkle isn’t my soulmate. You are.”

Her voice rang hollow as she spoke those last words. It was as if reality had finally asserted itself. As if her admission had made it real.

And it seemed as though the world had turned gray again. If only for a moment.

How am I going to break the news to her?

“I… I don’t understand,” he said, confused. “How is that a waste?”

“How is it not a waste?” she asked, her voice dry, her lips curled. “The universe has spoken. You and I were meant to be together. She and I were not.”

“Well, uh,” he began ever so cautiously, “that certainly didn’t stop you two, did it?”

“No, I suppose it doesn’t,” Rarity muttered. “But what does that matter now?”

“Of course it matters,” he insisted. “By the sound of it, you began dating her, even knowing that she wasn’t your soulmate. So then you must not care if she is or not, or about soulmates at all.”

“I do care about soulmates,” Rarity corrected, gently. “And I began dating her knowing that she hadn’t granted me color-sight, not that she wasn’t my soulmate.”

“You… believe there’s a difference?”

“I… don’t know,” Rarity admitted with a sigh.

“How could you not know?” insisted Tinder.

“How could I?!” she snapped, glaring at him and causing him to jump back. “Mister Tinder, all my life, I’ve wanted nothing more than to meet my soulmate. It was something I’d dreamed of as a child, woven into the tales that I would reenact with my dolls, interspersed throughout so many of the stories I consumed on a regular basis. My parents cooed and cawed about how incredible it was for them to gain their color-sight, how clear it was that they were meant to be together, how happy and fulfilled they were with each other, despite the fact that they might as well have been day and night!

“For so long, every major influence around me had led me to believe that, next to getting your cutie mark, finding your soulmate was the most important moment in a pony’s life. And only a scant few years ago did I finally come to terms with the possibility that it might never happen.”

She tore her eyes from him. “I made decisions based on that realization, Mister Tinder. I chose to try and find happiness beyond the realm of the color-sighted. I chose…”

I chose…

“I chose Twilight Sparkle,” she declared, with deafening finality. “And now… here I am. Forced to confront the weight of my decision. Forced to confront the possibility that… that I…”

I chose wrong.

Despite everything, Rarity had not the strength to bear the weight of those words. She did not have the fortitude to say them aloud. Just the mere thought was painful. Her heart ached. It ached so terribly for herself.

It ached so, so terribly for Twilight Sparkle.

“Can you tell me about her?” came Tinder’s soft voice, breaking through the miasma of pain that so engulfed Rarity’s mind.

She blinked, then finally turned to look Tinder in the eyes. He seemed unsteady, and somewhat on edge, but he otherwise wore a gentle smile.

His hoof had never left her shoulder.

…Tell you about Twilight Sparkle?

Rarity laughed. It was a hollow laugh. “Goodness, how could I— where do I even begin with Twilight Sparkle?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged helplessly. “Maybe from the beginning. How did you meet her? What is she like?”

“But… why?”

Why did Tinder, her soulmate, want to know of Twilight Sparkle?

“Please,” he implored. “Tell me.”

She found that she had no reason to deny him his request. After all… in the span of a single morning, he had gone from just another pony to the single most important stallion in her life.

And he needed to know.

So… as painful as it was… Rarity spoke. She spoke about the mare she loved.

She spoke about Twilight Sparkle.