What Is This Place?

A/N: if there are any errors, it's because our editor has not yet come around to check on this. It might be corrected by tomorrow, and I think I only made minor mistakes. Nevertheless, enjoy.

Chapter 13: Etiquette (Matthew)

The first thing I noticed when I woke up was the little dried-up saliva line that was now in my cheek. After wiping it off, I reluctantly began to get up from my very uncomfortable but tolerable position on the couch, I realized I had forgotten to take my contacts off, but they were no longer placed on my eyes, which, using my deduction methods, meant they had fallen off and were now hidden somewhere around the floor or the couch. Honestly, I didn’t like them and I rather use glasses, so it wasn’t such a big deal for me. Now I need to ask Rarity if she, by chance, sells any glasses. After getting my eyes to see at least half decently, I noticed Peter was building some kind of 3D puzzle with the shape of a piñata. I was about to ask him where did he get a 3D puzzle and, more importantly, where did he get a 3D puzzle with the shape of a piñata, but, as always, I decided against it to avoid further confusion and urge of slapping him. It was then when noticed Rarity coming from upstairs, wearing her trademark red glasses and with a measuring tape hanging on her neck. Beside her were floating what appeared to be 2 suits, although i could not see very well without my contacts and with no glasses, so all I could see were two blurry ensembles surrounded by a faint blue aura. As far as I could tell, one of them was a light blue, while the other one was a dark grey.

“Wake up, sleepy head~” she said in a sing-song voice, obviously excited to see our faces when we feasted our eyes on her work. “So, what do you think, dearies?”

Peter was the first one to walk over her, eyeing his new suit with what seemed to be glee, and immediately grabbed it and went to try it on, but not before shouting back at Rarity. “THANK YOU RARITY THIS IS AWESOME!”

As Peter dashed away to a dressing room to change to his new formal attire, I could see a very blurry Rarity that seemed to be looking at me. “Well, Matthew dear, what do you think?”

For a moment I was thinking about lying to her face and telling her how great the new suit looked, but the prospect of lying to someone on their faces when they had worked so hard on something for you made me feel a little sad. I’ll have to be honest, I’m somewhat embarrassed of my bad sight, since in my early days kids picked on me because of it. I hold no grudge though. Kids do that, and you and me would be lying if we said we were perfect kids and never made fun of anyone. Nonetheless, my eyesight was something I considered a flaw.

I obviously knew I was getting worried over nothing, so I decided to tell the truth about what happened. “Well, you see Rarity...” I began “when I woke up, I believe my contact lenses fell and are now probably hidden between the cushions of the sofa or lying on the floor somewhere. Long story short, my vision is really poor right now, and I can’t very well see what you have done for me.”

“Oh my, that does sound like a problem.” Given that I couldn’t see her face very well, it was hard to tell if she was being serious or not, but her voice did show some worry.

“Yeah, well, I was kind of wondering if you knew of any place that sold eyeglasses? Or if you by any chance sell them as well?”

This elicited an excited gasp by Rarity, who in an instant grabbed my hand with her hoof and dragged me to one corner of the boutique, in which she had a wooden wardrobe. “Well, why didn’t you say so earlier!?” She was barely able to contain her glee, probably because it meant she could make me look fabulous. When she opened it, I could tell there was a vast selection of eyeglasses inside of it. To be honest, I didn’t quite expect her to have such an ample selection of clothing that covered eye-wear as well, but coming from the fashionista, i must say I should have seen it coming. “Choose whichever you like,  my dear! Don’t worry, these glasses are special and will magically magnify themselves according to your necessities.”

“How convinient!” I exclaimed. Looking back to the shelf, I realized how many glasses were there. To say there were hundreds would be an understatement. There were all type of glasses in there: big-rimmed glasses, round glasses, no-rim glasses, really small glasses, reading glasses, and even monocles with golden chains attached to them. Given that I couldn’t see from a distance, I had to get pretty close to get a good look at most of them.

One pair really catched my eye. They were fairly simple, rayban style glasses with blue rims. I thought they were really cool, so I extended my arm to grab them and-

“No.”

That caught me off guard. When I looked back at the source of the voice, Rarity, she was staring at me with a disapproval. “What? Why?”

“You cannot expect me to allow you to have those. With your eyes and your mane, they would look simply dreadful.”

“Gee, thanks for that, Rare. I guess I’ll just pick these one-”

“No.”

“Ugh, fine, then I guess these will d-”

“No.”

“Then what about these-”

“Nope.”

“AGH, FINE!” I exclaimed angrily. “YOU CHOOSE THEM, THEN.”

“Well, you could ask nicely for starters, but I guess I can do that for you.” She quickly took over my spot and began inspecting each eye wear, occasionally glancing at me again, presumably imagining how I would look with them. After a minute or two, she looked at me once again. “Hm, it’s a hard decision. Which ones do you like?”

“RARITY!” I exclaimed once more. If I tried to choose any pair once more, she would just reject all of my choices.

“Why, how rude! You could’ve just rejected my proposition,” she said, waving a hoof in front of her to empathize her point. Getting back to her thing, it took her another 30 seconds to finally grab a pair of glasses. “Here, try these.”

I took the glasses that she had chosen on my hand and took a look at them. They were fairly common. Your average black rimmed glasses, although these ones had what seemed to be a chinese craving on the right inner part, and a red symbol of some sorts at the peak of the right outer part. They were nice, to say at the least. Something that I would wear. But there was only one problem.

“Rarity, these are made for ponies, I don’t think they will fit me.”

“Ah,” replied Rarity in a casual way. “give them here, I’ll go fix that.”

I handed over the glasses to Rarity, and she trotted upstairs once more. After 2 minutes, Rarity trotted down with a seemingly smaller pair, presumably made for little colts or fillies. “Is this any better?”

I took the pair of glasses once more and tried them on. Surprisingly, they were almost a perfect fit, a little bit more uncomfortable than the ones I had before stumbling into Equestria. But if my past experience taught me anything is that you will get used to them in about a week or two. After 2 seconds of trying them out, I could see perfectly once more, most definitely because of the magic that Rarity had previously mentioned.

“Wow, these are really good Rarity!” I decided to get right to the point. “How much will these cost?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that right now, Mattie dear,” she replied, giving me a new nickname. “For now, I only want to see your face when you see the suit I made for you!”

In that instant, Rarity’s horn began glowing with a blue aura, and began levitating something at the other side of the room, presumably my new suit. She brought it right in front of me, and upon seeing it my mind could only formulate one simple word:

“Woah...”