Cut, Color, Carat, Clarity

by Estee

Rating: everyone
Tags: Pinkie Pie, Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Rarity
Length: 18879

Rarity's first moons back in Ponyville after leaving school have her still trying to catch up on the events she missed -- like the arrival of a certain apprentice baker. And until now, neither knew the other existed.

In many ways, Rarity is still trying to settle back into Ponyville life. Her first moons after dropping out of boarding school have been hectic: preparing for that now-passed first trade show, opening the Boutique. She's been completely out of the gossip circuit and doesn't know what she missed for events, scandal -- and new arrivals. She and Pinkie have spent years with neither knowing the other existed.

As if that was going to last.

(Part of the Triptych Continuum, which has its own TVTropes page and FIMFiction group: new members and trope edits are welcome. This story takes place shortly after the events of its prequel and while it can be read as a stand-alone, checking out the original piece might help.)

Now with author Patreon, SubscribeStar, and Ko-Fi pages.

Published 2017-03-27 18:50:01 UTC
Last updated 2017-03-28 21:04:49 UTC

Imperfect Settings

At that point in both the summer and sales day, it wasn't so much waiting for the pony to trot into the recently (and not-so-grandly) opened Carousel Boutique who would change her life as simply waiting for the one who would at least alter the amount of ink which had been used on Rarity's daily tally sheet. And in either case, it was turning into a decidedly long wait.

The moons following Rarity's dropping out of school and first failed trade show had been busy ones: applying for the loan which had allowed her to purchase the abandoned beauty shop, converting the building into something more suitable for dresses -- time and labor, especially for that last. And said last wasn't even finished: Rarity had managed to get most of the old equipment out of the building and repaired the spots where it had rested, but there had been so many demands on her time. Painting, harsh negotiations with contractors and materials sellers which allowed her to get the work done in something which fit within her new and rapidly-dwindling budget, plus there was the designing and creation of the pieces which were meant to show off just why the Boutique would succeed -- it all added up.

And there had been a deadline. Rarity had decided to open her business on the first scheduled day when the new train line would truly connect Canterlot and Ponyville. She'd anticipated any number of capital residents making the journey just so they could say they'd done so on the first day, and so she would have a freshly-opened high-end business waiting to be Discovered. Put it all together, place extra emphasis (and hours) on the time required to create the dresses because the most important thing was in having something to sell, and she'd wound up still having a few beauty stations in place as the last days had ticked away, attached to the floor by nails, screws, and her need to get the last of the opals properly aligned. She'd been thinking (or rather, panicking) about just putting up a series of decorative screens to block them off, but...

She'd advertised: another expense. Not just one-sheets distributed to every home in Ponyville, but formal space purchased within a variety of Canterlot newspapers. All focused on promoting that crucial first day. The formal announcement of her arrival on the fashion scene: something she hadn't been able to manage at her first trade show, the ultimate goal of the Boutique's very existence. She'd sewn and painted, decorated and then, after a few minor attacks of hyperventilation followed her first true survey of the results, redecorated. The upper level had been turned into a living space, which had allowed her to escape her mother's final desperate too-late attempts at control (a dream) just before Rarity had encountered the still-ongoing series of costs (a nightmare) involved in turning that space into something a pony could truly live in.

Rarity had worked and spent, sacrificing sleep while desperately doing everything she could to retain some money for the first few moons of loan payments, just in case. She'd filled sketchbooks, covered the newly-assigned workroom floor in fabric scraps and, occasionally, the shredded remnants of sketchbook pages. Over the course of just about three moons, nearly every waking minute of her life had been dedicated to getting ready and, but for the final lingering grooming stations in the Boutique, it could be argued that she'd succeeded.

In the purest technical sense alone, the nearly-as-recently-founded Equestrian Rail Commission hadn't been quite as dedicated to their own deadline.

Oh, Rarity understood the problem, at least after the screaming had died away for the third time and she'd finally bothered to put a little research in to learn the exact reason behind her fresh loathing. There had been an unexpected delay, created by an equally-unexpected monster. No casualties, and the injured among the railway crew would fully recover. It was nothing which was truly anypony's fault, and she'd understood that after spending a few moments in mentally kicking herself, followed by sending some polite get-well-soon cards to everypony's current beds. But the sections of track which had been torn up, workers in the hospital and no way to readily replace them, not with crews laboring all over the continent... the opening of the line had been postponed.

The government could freely change a deadline when such things occurred. Rarity, who'd been advertising her Grand Opening date for moons and had a mere three days left at the time everything happened, could not. And so the Opening had come, with Grand turning out to be rather the wrong word.

Not that she'd totally lacked for attendance -- or, for that matter, sales. The rail line's completion schedule had been forcibly changed, but that of the Weather Bureau had not: it had been a fine summer day, exactly as dictated by that section of the bureaucracy -- and so even without the train to provide ready access, a few residents of Canterlot had been curious enough to take the trot as a day trip. They had been joined by a number of the Ponyville residents who'd seen the one-sheet and Rarity had quickly learned that some of them had treated 'seen' as more than sufficient, because by the third time somepony came in to inquire about her prices for grooming services, she'd realized more than a few hadn't bothered to truly read it.

It hadn't been what she'd most longed for: no trade magazine reporters had come into the Boutique and Discovered her, nor had any shop owners from the capital arrived to inquire about purchasing her wares for their own establishments. It certainly hadn't turned out the way she'd dreamed of. But there had been some ponies at the opening. (Even now, a week into her new career, there were ponies coming in under the impression that they were arriving on her first day, because the dedication to not reading also allowed them to fully avoid the actual date.) A number had simply examined her wares and departed. Some had sniffed, snorted, and made comments meant to be overheard, for Rarity was beginning to truly learn that a creative talent was always at the total lack of mercy of those whose skills centered around a complete lack of taste. But a few had purchased and one, a newly-married minor and rather impressed noble from the capital, had inquired about a commission...

She hadn't finished the day with what she'd truly dreamed of. But her loan payment for the moon had been secured. She could purchase a few bolts of cloth to start working on replacement items and had begun the sketches for that advance purchase, which had to be delivered by the start of autumn. Rarity, in spite of everything, had ended her first hours in business under the impression and hope that she was on her way.

Most of the hours since then had been spent under the crushing weight of boredom.

[/hr]

The door opened, and the soft blue of Rarity's field surged in response: the sketchbook was hastily scooted under a nearby swath of fabric (which had been discolored by the grayish light coming through the windows), the quill nearly slammed into the inkwell, and her glasses leapt from her face to take refuge behind the shielding cover of a trade magazine. (She'd only begun wearing glasses within the last two moons. She didn't strictly need them and in fact tended to get headaches after wearing them too long, but the magnification made it easier to check fine detail work. Rarity had yet to find a style she was even remotely happy with.) "Welcome! Welcome to the Carousel --"

"-- I'm just looking, Rarity," Mrs. Voyeur casually interrupted, shaking her body slightly to get rid of the moisture in her fur and feathers while still standing on the absorbent mat: the Bureau had given Ponyville the dubious benefit of a summer day in which the air was filled with something just above mist and slightly below drizzle. It generally took about twelve seconds of exposure to begin permeating fur and up to three days before anypony truly felt dry again. "I thought it was about time I came in. Don't you agree?"

Rarity just barely managed to repress the sigh. "Yes," she told her former neighbor. "I've been expecting you, actually." Because wherever ponies gathered, Mrs. Voyeur might eventually follow. Standing on the absolute border of the discussion (or, given the benefits of wings, somewhat overhead, behind a cloud, well out of sight), close enough to overhear everything -- followed by retreating to a location where she could find more ponies, because what was the point of acquiring gossip if you didn't repeat it?

At the time Rarity had been sent away (rather against her will) to boarding school, Mrs. Voyeur had been serving as the settled zone's central distribution center for tales, pass-along semi-facts, rumors, and gossip of all sorts. And any number of things had changed during the young unicorn's period of forced exile: ponies had moved away, and some new ones had moved in. There had been relationships begun, while older ones had ended. Some businesses had closed, and one of those closings had allowed Rarity's to open. She'd missed all of it and was still desperately scrambling to catch up, trying to find a fresh place within the town's social web. (Her carefully-manufactured accent was working against her: some of the new arrivals felt she was from Too Far Away to trust, and a few of the long-time locals heard the voice and failed to see through the years, beholding the adolescent and failing to recognize the youth they'd once known. However, her profession seemed to be helping.)

But some things didn't change. Where ponies gathered, Mrs. Voyeur would be there. Eventually. There were ways in which Rarity could try to tell herself it was a positive sign. The Boutique was now officially something worth gossiping about.

"You don't seem to have any customers," Mrs. Voyeur openly noted. "Unless there's somepony in the dressing rooms?"

Not that all gossip was positive.

"No," Rarity steadily replied, and felt the second repressed sigh join the first in the bottom of her stomach, where the squirming immediately turned into a duet act. "It is somewhat slow at the moment." Knowing, a split-second too late, that 'somewhat slow at the moment' might turn into 'she's teetering on the verge of bankruptcy' before the pegasus elder cleared the second rack.

"Well, I'll just be looking around," Mrs. Voyeur said. "Maybe I'll see something interesting."

Followed by repeating it to most of the settled zone, with no more than ninety percent of the details lost along the way. "Yes," Rarity said for lack of anything which wouldn't be falsely incriminating. The older mare nodded and began to browse. Rarity went back to her sketching.

She'd been learning a lot during her first week in business -- the first normal week (or rather, what she was still desperately hoping wouldn't be completely normal) after her Not So Grand Opening. And one of the first lessons had concerned the passage of time. Namely, that the average duration between one sale and the next was forever, although that was simply the mean of the numbers: you had eternity at the low end and infinity holding up the high.

The moons leading up to her opening -- work. Endless work, with just enough time available to her in which to realize there wasn't enough of it. The first day, even with the train postponed, had been active: enough to grant her a taste of success and the bitterness of what might have been. But since then...

There were only so many times one could adjust the display. Clean the shop. Going up the ramp to continue the work on what still wasn't quite a comfortable residence was impossible: there was a chance of missing somepony walking in. She could sketch and sew, of course, and it turned out that in the right (or wrong) pony eyes, that was offensive: if she was not fully ready to serve them at the moment they trotted inside, their eyes would roll, their ears would twitch, and bits would remain within saddlebags. Of course, for those same ponies, if she then politely offered to help them, she was putting undue pressure upon them and they would certainly never spend at a place which refused to leave them alone...

(A certain number of contradictions seemed to be extant in selling. Rarity had begun the slow process of resolving them through deciding that a surprisingly large number of ponies were stupid.)

She worked when she could, as ideas came to her. There were still sales here and there: not many, but enough to give her hope -- although she was beginning to wonder if that was truly a gift worth accepting. But for the most part, she waited. Not necessarily for the pony who would change her life, or even her tally sheet, but just for a pony. Anypony at all.

Mrs. Voyeur qualified as an 'anypony,' which made Rarity realize she should have been considerably more specific.

"You've left a few grooming stations up," the pegasus observed, and Rarity listened to the subtle sound of internal notes being taken. "Couldn't quite finish in time?"

Yes. Rarity weighed her words carefully before replying, trying to figure out which ones would suffer the least amount of distortion. "Actually, a surprising number of ponies seem to think this is still a beauty shop," she tried. "I've had more than a few ask me to style their manes. So I've decided to study that. After all, I am selling a few hats here and there, plus not all of my dresses are intended to cover the tail. Styling a pony's coiffure into something which would best suit their purchase would only help them." Not that she intended to become a professional and she still wanted to get rid of the grooming stations eventually just in the name of having a pure shop -- but as long as ponies were wandering in under the impression that the previous owners had just taken a year-long vacation before opening with some mostly-ignored new stock, she might as well try to get a few bits out of it.

"It can be rather difficult," Mrs. Voyeur nodded with what felt like a mostly false sympathy. "Getting the entire herd to realize the charge direction has changed, especially when the new leader is -- less than ideal. And aren't you still a little young for this?"

This is not the time to grind my teeth. "I am doing this at my current age," Rarity steadily replied, "and therefore this is the age at which I should be doing it. The only completely unnatural act is the one which cannot be performed."

"I heard you dropped out of school," the pegasus mostly ignored her.

Rarity didn't answer that one. It seemed just about everypony knew that by now. Her mother's voice, especially when boosted by the heat of argument, tended to carry a rather long way.

"Well," Mrs. Voyeur continued, "everypony makes mistakes..." And back to pretending towards browsing, an act which the lone member of the local audience was no longer willing to believe.

More sketching. Rarity watched Mrs. Voyeur from the corner of her right eye as the older mare repeatedly demonstrated the art of putting things back in exactly the wrong place, because it simply wouldn't do for the pegasus to sneak up on her and spot the image which was lovingly being created, no matter how much fine detail work Rarity had managed to get in on the noose.

The door opened.

Rarity's field covered the sketchbook again -- and that was all there was just barely time for.

Time passed slowly in the opened Boutique: an early lesson. A fact which instantly, loudly shattered.

"HI!"

The new arrival abruptly shook herself to get rid of the mist's moisture, turning the pink body into something of a blur. That state then maintained.

"I'm really really sorry I couldn't get in here earlier!" the blur apologized as it sped towards the first rack. "I mean, I've been meaning to, because if I came in too late, I'd look like a meanie! Is that too much mean in one sentence? I can't tell. Anyway, HI! I saw your one-sheet, and of course I saw the building at night or early in the morning, but I couldn't come in because I had school, and then I had work, and then I had summer and there's just so much to do! Like when you opened, because I was working. And most of this week, because I had parties and play and just about everything else. But since you weren't new or anything, there wasn't much of a hurry, and even if I didn't know your name, it's because I'm still meeting everypony and I could meet you when I came in, and you could meet me!"

The full speech had come across from a series of at least twelve different locations within the shop. Rarity was fairly sure one of them had been almost directly behind her. She'd felt a little movement of breeze along her fur as something had glanced past her to get a look at the sketched-out noose on that briefly-uncovered page, immediately followed by what had felt, even completely unseen, like a quick smile before the presence had briefly relocated itself to the dressing rooms, then found that boring and checked out the magazines in the waiting area. Most of those had then ridden the wind from the next shift and wound up on the floor.

Rarity felt her ears beginning to descend towards her skull, pressed down by the rushing weight of words. For the other occupant's part, Mrs. Voyeur had taken off, and the backblast of that takeoff had done cruel things to the contents of a rack. It was now completely disorganized, with the overlapping contents appearing to have simply occurred of their own accord, in something perilously close to a totally random state. On the bright side, however, it now matched the local theme.

"So it's nice to be here!" the blur gushed as it pronked -- pronked? -- towards Rarity's central sewing station, where her device was now starting to bounce from the vibrations of the repeated jolts against the floor. "Wow, it's pretty in here! The paint, I mean. And the dresses! The decorations are kind of nice. Not enough streamers, though. And I mean -- there it is again! -- there aren't any streamers. Somepony should do something about that, especially for a new shop! From a not-new pony. A pretty shop! And that pony is --"

All movement abruptly stopped. This seemed to include blinking.

They were staring at each other. Rarity did a little more with the time.

The now-motionless arrival was an earth pony adolescent mare, somewhat younger than Rarity. Pink, yes, the only detail Rarity had truly been able to make out while everything had been happening: a rather bright, happy hue which still only went with a few other shades and would take a lot of work to get into something a little more subdued. The body was still in the process of filling out into its adult build, and that potential result was partially shrouded by a touch of extra weight. Both mane and tail (also pink) were heavily, wildly curled: twin masses which were something close to untameable, and Rarity instinctively knew it had nothing to do with the humidity outside. The blue eyes were a lighter shade than Rarity's own, and the earth pony's features were pleasant, even cute -- and then moved beyond that state. She was no great beauty, but had something which might have been better than the mere perfection of snout and ears. Her appearance did not speak of the barrier which so often existed between the ideal and those around them. It was the open appeal of total approachability. Anypony could come up to her without being stopped by the wall created by the aloof, and find her waiting to speak with them. Rather quickly.

And the mark was -- balloons? Rarity, with no sign of talent visible before her, tried to interpret it. Aeronautics? It might be possible. For an earth pony, the new arrival certainly seemed to spend an impressive amount of time above the ground.

"You're not new," the earth pony said. "I'd know if you were new in town. I would." A quick nod at that, as if reassuring herself. "But you are new. And not new. I don't know everypony's names, just the ones I've heard, and I would remember if I'd ever seen you. But you're new, and not new. How is that possible?"

Still staring. She seemed to be fairly good at it.

"Not new," Rarity tried, "in town." It was mostly buying time. Repeating some of the younger pony's words would have to give her a few seconds for finding her own.

"Yeah!" Curls bounced as the nodding drastically accelerated. "I'd know!"

"I recently moved back to Ponyville," Rarity carefully attempted. "I had been away at boarding --"

"You don't sound like you're from Ponyville!" the earth pony enthused, with Rarity completely aware that the particular descriptive term shouldn't have been on that bit of speech and had somehow wound up there anyway. "At all!"

Rarity made a careful, sincere, and completely desperate attempt to dredge up one of her standard responses for that.

"Um..."

"But that's why I didn't know you'd come in!" the earth pony gushed. "Because you're not new! Even though you are. Which means --" and the bright features abruptly collapsed into worry "-- oh, no, the shop's been under construction for moons, I didn't know about you for moons because I've been so busy with everypony else, I've completely neglected --" with an instant transition to sorrow "-- I'm sorry! I really am! I should have said something way before this! And somepony should have totally done something just because you're home again after being away for so long! Because home is important, once you know you have one. But --" and surging to brightness again "-- I'll fix it! I'm going to go work on that right now! So I'll see you when it's ready!"

The pink body blurred, raced for the door --

-- stopped halfway through the opening. The door rebounded into the wood on the other side, came back, and was stopped by a pink forehoof.

The young mare stared at Rarity again.

"What's your name?"

"Rarity," managed the slightly older unicorn, and not by much.

"I'll remember!"

-- and gone.

Time resumed its normal flow, which suddenly felt like the only normal thing left, especially after Rarity looked up to make sure Mrs. Voyeur had survived the onslaught and found something partially blocking the view.

"...what," Rarity asked the world, not particularly expecting an answer, "was that?"

The older mare slowly worked her way past the intermittent new barrier, touched down, sighed.

"That," Mrs. Voyeur said, "was Pinkie."

"Ah."

The pegasus nodded.

"And what," Rarity dazedly forced herself to continue, "is a 'Pinkie'?"

The town's foremost gossip slowly smiled.

"You really don't know?"

Rarity just barely managed the smallest shake of her head, which allowed her to truly feel the recently-inflicted damage done to her own manestyle.

"Well," the elder pegasus settled in, arranging her body into the position of a pony who was prepared to talk for quite some time while providing absolutely no guarantee for the accuracy of anything she said, "that's a story..."

And Rarity listened as best she could, with her ears trying to focus while her eyes stared up at the streamers.

Minor Flaws

She'd gone for a trot after closing the Boutique for the night. The mist had been cleared and it had seemed necessary, somehow, to get out of the shop for a while. She'd been spending far too much time there over the last few moons. If it wasn't a supply run or a negotiation session, if her rest times hadn't taken place during the days before she'd moved into that too-big, still uncomfortable space on the upper level, she'd been in the Boutique. That was what had been necessary, what she'd had to do. Before that, it had been getting ready for the trade show: just about a full moon of that labor, with a different deadline pressing against her fur. And to set all that off, the first two days after her official and rather final return to Ponyville, which had largely been spent in fighting with her mother.

Rarity had been back in Ponyville for moons now, and the last few of those had been spent in getting ready to become the newest part of the town's shopping scene. But with nearly all of that time spent in labor...

It had taken the arrival of Mrs. Voyeur and -- the other one -- to make her fully realize it. Rarity had come home, yes. But she hadn't spoken to her old schoolmates, because there hadn't been time. With the exception of the few who'd come to check out the Boutique, she hadn't seen her neighbors (old and new) for more than the seconds it took to gallop past them, because there hadn't been time. She'd just barely found a few days for reconnecting with her father and hours for getting her little sister away from her fabrics before everything was ruined by a fast-rolling body which liked to wrap itself up in what Sweetie apparently saw as a mix between swaddling cloth and one-pony play fort, but for everything else...

She'd come home. But when it came to gossip or actual news, the flow of life in the settled zone -- in so many ways, Rarity was now an outsider. Almost a stranger in her own town.

Rarity had missed things, and one of those was currently somewhere behind the lit attic windows of the otherwise-darkened bakery.

She stared up as she stood under Moon on that warm summer night, looking for the movement of shadows. Nothing.

[/hr]

"She's the Cakes' daughter," Mrs. Voyeur had begun, just a few hours earlier.

"Who?"

"You haven't been in the bakery? The new one -- well, it would still be new to you, I suppose. Sugarcube Corner?"

Her budget had been -- tight. Decidedly so, especially with those emergency first payments put aside. It had reached the point where a few of Rarity's meals had at least partially consisted of grass gathered on the way back from her favorite gem hunting ground: it wasn't particularly nutritious or tasty, but at least it was decidedly free. "No."

"Well, you must have seen the couple who runs it," Mrs. Voyeur had declared, and then quickly described them.

And in fact, Rarity had seen them, a few times: it only took a moment to bring back those memories.

Then she silently calculated their rough ages, and compared those numbers to the same estimated total for Pinkie. Some rather distressing subtraction occurred.

"Errr..."

"Adopted daughter," Mrs. Voyeur quickly clarified. "She came in a few years ago, a little while after they did."

Rarity's head had briefly dipped from the weight of empathetic sorrow. "So her birth parents --"

And Mrs. Voyeur's expression had cruelly sharpened.

"Nopony knows."

[/hr]

When you lived in a boarding school, the sorting of gossip was a survival skill. Rumors traveled around the little environment at something slightly over the speed of the words themselves. Every tale distorted in the telling, putting an exponentially increasing distance between itself and the actual events with every set of ears it passed through. Reach the limits of the small world, bounce off the barriers and gain force as the stories somehow took strength from the walls. In her youth (well, deeper youth), Rarity had simply been cautioned by her parents against believing too much of anything Mrs. Voyeur said, although such had never seemed to prevent her own mother from seeking that dubious counsel time after time. But five mostly-wasted years at secondary school had brought a scant number of useful skills. Rarity didn't think she had the whole story: Mrs. Voyeur would have needed to possess that in order to change it, and she'd gotten the impression that the Cakes were very careful when it came to any true information about their daughter. But some knowledge inevitably escaped, and Rarity believed there was a good chance she'd managed to sort that wheat from the chaff.

Not that there was still much to work with.

The scant story, as best she could distill it, was this: an earth pony filly had been brought into the settled zone in the company of a unicorn stallion, with the younger body showing some signs of recent injury. The male had spoken to a number of ponies, then gone into the bakery. Some talk had apparently followed and then the unicorn had left. He visited every so often, checked on how she was doing -- but the filly had remained in Ponyville.

She'd had a mysterious accent: something nopony had heard before she'd (shyly) opened her mouth for the first time, and the years Rarity had spent working on a new group of intonations had been used by the new arrival for getting rid of her own. She'd had to attend remedial classes, because she appeared to have never previously attended a formal school of any kind. She'd apparently had no real concept of what a true settled zone was, much less how it worked. Everything had been new and strange to her, and as far as new and strange went... well, there had been plenty of that coming back the other way.

But eventually, she'd settled in -- somewhat. The adoption had been legally formalized. She worked in the bakery during many of her afterschool hours. She'd made at least one good friend that Mrs. Voyeur knew of --

-- the somewhat-derisive snort was instinctive, and almost as instinctively softened.

Applejack.

A name Rarity hadn't heard in years. She'd seen the young farmer during the interval, but only briefly: Rarity had occasionally gone home for the holidays and trotted through the town's market square, where the familiar (and desperately in need of a severe redecorating) cart might be set up for fruit selling. But that had been it. Rarity would trot by, notice that yes, the earth pony had become visibly larger and stronger during the last few moons away too, and move on. Neither would ever say a word to the other and Rarity wasn't sure Applejack had ever truly seen her, much less knew just how much the other adolescent remembered.

They had never truly been enemies. Being enemies would have required an emotional connection with the other which neither was capable of forming. Rarity regarded Applejack as an alien life form: something she understood to exist, but didn't truly comprehend how it could -- and had suspected that the farmer, for some strange reason, regarded her the same way. There had been a perpetual, permanent disconnect between their viewpoints and worlds. Never truly enemies, and there had in fact been one successful (and decidedly temporary) alliance of necessity against a common foe. But they hadn't been friends. Rarity felt she had a better chance of striking up any degree of true relationship with a dragon than she did of ever befriending Applejack.

The young baker was apparently Applejack's best friend in the world and as far as Rarity was concerned, Pinkie could have her.

I shall not hold that against her. She clearly needed friends and Applejack -- this was now more times than she'd thought the name in several moons -- provided one. It was a gracious act towards somepony who truly needed to see a foreleg being outstretched towards her own. But...

She'd listened to Mrs. Voyeur. Carefully, so as to pick out the pieces of the story which should not be believed, and that had turned out to be most of it. Some of it wasn't just not worth believing, it had been outright unbelievable. But at the core...

An adopted daughter from somewhere nopony's heard identified. A talent for party planning, and so she apparently throws them for just about everypony in the settled zone, which sounds quite frankly impossible given that she has both school and work hours for most of the year, and even the summer demands that she put in her time at the bakery. Another exaggeration. She likely exercises her talent for the benefit of her friends while asking a few acquaintances if she can practice with them as well.

But as for how she came to be here... not even Mrs. Voyeur can track the truth of that, because it would mean looking through the rumors she likely started in the first place. Lone survivor of a monster attack, or the only pony who failed to fall to the illness which wiped out the rest of her family. A runway, a foundling, somepony raised in the wild zones or who somehow raised herself from infancy. Sarcastically, I can likely rule out the one concerning her having been brought up by sapient pony-shaped insects. But...

There had been rumors and stories, most of which couldn't possibly be true and with the majority of the remainder so exaggerated as to make Rarity wonder if they had gained strength from having bounced off the continent's coastlines. But there had been a common theme to every last one of them, and Mrs. Voyeur had finally summed it all up.

[/hr]

"She's strange. There's always been something strange about her. Not in a bad way." With surprising thoughtfulness, "I think most ponies understand that she's still catching up. That wherever she came from, it's almost too different, and she's still trying to fit in. Figuring out how. I've seen griffons adapt faster, but you know most of them grow up with ponies around. Not our kind of ponies, of course. She's just... strange, Rarity. She's been strange since the day she was brought here."

"Strange like -- the streamers?"

And Mrs. Voyeur had frowned.

"Weren't those here when I came in?"

[/hr]

At the best of times, Rarity was detail-oriented. (At the worst, overly focused to the point of obsession. She knew it, and possessing that knowledge didn't seem to provide any degree of solution for the problem.) She'd planned out every aspect of the Boutique's appearance, sometimes over and over again. Just about every last tenth-bit of it had been placed by her, excepting the few times her father had managed to come by and offer his field to the cause.

She hadn't placed streamers. She was sure of that.

Maybe Dad...

Actually, that was a possibility. Her father had his merits (and a surprising number of them), but a professional hoofball player really couldn't be expected to possess much in the way of decorating skills. She'd had to supervise every effort he'd made, and there was still the possibility that he'd managed to sneak streamers into the mix when she wasn't looking.

Which would have meant I'd overlooked them for days. At a minimum.

And failed to take them down with the rest of the Grand Opening touches.

Additionally, this would require that my rather unexpected guest ultimately chose to comment on the lack of something which was already there.

Pinkie was... strange.

She could have just head-tossed streamers from out of her saddlebags. With perfect accuracy. Well, that could be part of a party mark, I suppose. Always carrying supplies, just in case they were necessary. Yes, that makes sense.

Or it would if...

Had the earth pony even been wearing saddlebags?

[/hr]

Deep under Moon now, and Rarity continued to wander throughout her settled zone. Her settled zone again, with so much more space to travel through than the school had ever offered. But the school had become familiar, and even with her scant time home during the holidays to consider, time during which she and the apprentice baker had somehow managed to completely avoid each other... Ponyville was not.

Here a new building, there the loss of an old one. A family gone, another moved in. A new room added to an house which had been there for years and the sound of muffled crying which indicated the nature of its easily-upset occupant, now waiting to be fed.

Rarity was home. After years of waiting for the crucial birthday which would make her attendance at the hated facility into her decision, the prisoner with only a single, perfect, and painfully long-term plan for escape holding out for her chance, she was home. But...

...there was a lot of living space on the upper level of the Boutique, really. She'd recognized that on the first day, during her initial trotthrough of the property. She'd even told her father that she'd been thinking about getting a pet, just for the company. But there had been dresses to make and advertising to buy, supplies to acquire and decorations to plan out, which now apparently (and inadvertently) included some level of thankfully color-matching streamers. Hours dedicated to all of it, and so no pet had ever been sought. She simply hadn't had the time.

She could cease her trot and go home any time she liked. She lived alone, and that meant she set her own hours. Her responsibility: waking times and number of hours spent in rest prior to them. Food and shelter and budget. All things she was now taking care of alone.

Completely alone.

So much living space on the upper level. She had yet to fill it with much of anything. She'd tried to transfer the contents of her old room, and... she was too big for that bed now, didn't have the money for a new one yet. She was sleeping within a nest of blankets on the floor. Cooking equipment for her very own kitchen had meant scavenging stable sales: she didn't have a full set of anything, not from a single source: any company she hosted would require a two-tone serving arrangement on the table she was still trying to clean, and additionally would have had to deal with the fact that Rarity was still very much learning how to cook. Her current pride was in having managed a decent arrangement of fourthhoof towels which didn't clash with each other.

At her parents' house -- well, her mother might try to renew the fight, or see her older daughter's visit as some temporary level of surrender. Her father was currently on the road again, and would be for weeks to come. But her sister would be there. A sibling she'd hardly seen for years, a little filly whom Rarity barely knew.

There were a few nightlife facilities in Ponyville: she was passing one of the more lively ones now, paused as she listened to the music which vibrated through the walls, turned to face the door --

-- stopped. She was too young. She didn't have the years required to enter most of them and when it came to the remainder, she didn't want to spend the money for a cinema this week and had never taken to bowling.

Back to trotting. It felt as if her hooves were beginning to drag, which was certainly a logical outcome from their slowly increasing weight.

She wasn't dating. She didn't know whom she could date. She'd been completely out of the social scene for years, missed the time of first attractions. No idea who might be interested in her, not a single clue as to whether there was a single pony she could look to in return. And even if she did locate somepony... there were always parents to consider, and the idea of having their child dating a minor who lived alone might not sit well with any elders.

She could go to a friend's residence and visit --

-- five years.

I spent five years at that school. It took days to travel back and forth. I had a little vacation time in Ponyville, and that was time when others traveled or had already set their own pursuits, along with deciding whom they would pursue them with. I barely saw anypony from primary school for more than a few minutes. I got off the carriage, and somepony was waiting for me. I'd go home. There would be things to do there, and by the time they were done, it was back on the carriage and...

Ponyville wasn't the smallest settled zone. There were times when it had seemed so, mostly during the deepest of Rarity's dreams, when the world of fashion beckoned to her and home turned into something very close to another kind of prison. But after the failure of the trade show, she'd chosen to make her stand here. She didn't have to deal with the nightmarish store rent costs and label snobbery of the capital. It would be possible for Ponyville to host high-end shops, especially once the trains began to run. She would prove it. The sales traffic would eventually come to her. In the end, she'd chosen -- home.

A home which wasn't the smallest settled zone. A place which she wandered through as something close to a stranger, with everything all the worse for being half-familiar. Voices she almost recognized, laughs she nearly knew, and not a single sound she could force herself to approach.

I haven't truly been back for five years. Not for more than a week or two. And now I live here again, but nopony truly knows me any more, not the me I became while I was away. And I don't know anypony, not the ponies they turned into while I was gone. I was at that school for five years and...

Pinkie, wherever she was from, however she'd gotten to Ponyville at all, had Applejack. She threw parties, and other ponies allowed her to do so on their behalf. Still more ponies attended. To that degree, the adolescent who'd come from somewhere outside the borders had found her place. And Rarity, who'd been born in the settled zone, the native who'd been forced into five years of exile...

I don't have a friend in the world.

Pink Saturation

She found herself wandering through the settled zone on the following summer night, and then again on the one which came after that. It was costing her hours: time she needed for sleep, recovery from the day's (general lack of) sales, and what was required to turn the Boutique's upper level into a place where a pony could live, as opposed to the location of her nightly retreat. But yet Rarity did it anyway: three nights in a row, and then four.

Part of it, she told herself, was from trying to become familiar with her home again. After all, it wasn't as if she could venture out that much during the day. Her hours were her own: that was the arguable benefit to being truly self-employed -- but at the same time, the Boutique had nopony else working there. Rarity could shut the doors and leave the shop at any time she wished -- which meant the shop would be closed. She was still in the first fortnight after her not-so-grand opening. Even if ponies from the capital largely hadn't belatedly trickled in (and the revised opening of the train line was still some time away), there was a chance for them to do so. A local could find themselves in need of a dress. Somepony could drop by and, while not truly showing any interest in the pieces on display, might simply strike up a conversation. A pony who would talk to her for a time...

On one rainy night, she'd found herself wandering past her former primary school and -- hadn't quite understood how she'd gotten there. She certainly hadn't been intending to approach, not on any conscious level, and just going out when the scheduled weather was so muggy and wet, heavy raindrops were saturating her fur while dense air seemed to collect at the back of her lungs... there were better things to do on a night like that, and yet she'd left the Boutique without even bothering to don rain gear and wandered through the increasingly-soaked town, until she'd found herself at the old schoolhouse. And she didn't know why.

At night, the building was empty: that was true in every season. Ponyville occasionally hosted classes for adults who wished to acquire a new skill, but such generally took place in a large, typically-vacant room in Town Hall, if only to keep full-grown ponies from having to find a way of squeezing themselves behind now-inadequate desks. And during the day... well, if any had failed their courses during the bulk of the year, there would be makeup courses in summer: one last chance to advance with the rest of the class. However, it was hardly a year-to-year event: Rarity could recall only one such instance during her own primary schooling, and it had hosted a single, rather embarrassed student who'd never even glanced in the direction of her once-precious glitter collection again. During most summers, even under Sun, the building would simply, quietly wait for autumn to begin.

They're not in summer school. Not all of them. Maybe one or two moved away, and it's possible that there's one who had a bad year, but everypony else would be on summer break right now.

Some might have traveled. Visiting distant family, or the luckiest might have even found their parents offering a trip to Horaceland. But for everypony in her former class to have left the settled zone's borders... that felt as if it was impossible.

Autumn through spring, she would have understood. Her business was open during school hours, homework hours, play hours. There were other things to do. But in summer...

She'd been open for nearly a fortnight now. Adults had come in. Just adults, but for the apprentice baker and Sweetie's single determined try to reach the stockroom during Rarity's very first day. And she'd made sure her one-sheets went to every home in town. Yes, she'd seen plenty of evidence that not everypony had actually read them, and possibly her first townwide advertisement hadn't been the best time to ask the engraver for an accurate transference of Rarity's elaborate calligraphy. But still -- some of them had to know where she was. And none of them had come by to see her, not after five years...

Rarity stood still in the rain, feeling the water running off the ends of saturated mane and tail strands. After a while, she trotted down to the playground equipment, arranged her body on the old merry-go-round. She'd been thinking of that former joy on the day she'd named her shop, looking at the circumference of the building while trying to pin down just what it was reminding her of -- and then she'd had it. The old ride, only updated into something more grand. A carousel, perhaps: that was the basic idea increased in scale. It had seemed workable, she'd never come up with anything better, and -- then it had been on the one-sheet. Official and likely permanent.

But the thing about a carousel...

When it came to store records, Rarity had a bad habit: she kept them.

It wasn't just sales, although those were written down as they happened: the style, size, any comments the customer might have made. Rarity recorded whether a piece had been donned before being rejected, noted which ones had simply been removed from the racks for closer examination. There was a chart for the number of customers entering and how long each had stayed. A separate pair of tallies tracked two numbers: the ponies who'd promised to come back later, and the fractional figure which indicated those who actually had. The ideas was that it would all help her to pin down interests and trends, put away that which nopony was truly interested in (despite how well she'd made it) while making her first forays into learning the art of selling. Everything provided her with numbers, and the endless quiet of a shop awaiting that next visitor granted her far too much time for obsessively reviewing them.

It had only been about a fortnight, and of course the sensible thing to do was reject the figures from her first day: they only tended to unfairly drag up the average. She could also attempt to forecast seasonal sales trends: there should be a little more traffic around Hearth's Warming because that was true for pretty much every other shop and so she might enjoy it as well. School dances --

I will never attend a school dance.

-- might bring in adolescent mares looking for suitable youth sizes, and Rarity was starting to wonder about the long-term value of offering rentals to those who truly couldn't afford her wares.

Perhaps attempting to project things forward was an act of foolishness on her part. There would be upswings and downsurges, plus it was impossible to tell when something might truly catch: the style which brought her notice, the unexpected visitor who finally Discovered her. But with so little else to do, Rarity had still attempted to send her numbers into the future. And what she'd seen there had made a simple statement: she was likely to survive. There would be slow periods, because there always were. But on the whole, if she saved money from when things were a little busier and used it to cover the emptiness, she might just make every loan payment. She would be able to eat, and having the building (eventually) truly paid for would provide shelter. Perhaps a few bits of profit could potentially be risked on an incredibly minor frivolity now and again.

She would survive. But that was all.

Rarity rested on the old, soaked wood, wondered if any of the ancient stain was rising up to discolor her fur, and yet she did not move. She looked at her former schoolhouse through wet eyes, with her right foreleg hanging off the edge of the circle, and made no attempt to push herself along.

For the thing about a carousel was that the pony riding it could potentially travel for a lifetime, and still find themselves in exactly the same place.

[/hr]

A full two weeks now, and nearly all of the daylight portion of that time was spent in the shop. When could she close? What was a good hour to leave without risk? She needed to buy food, look for more stable sales, spend some time making that lonely upper level somewhat more habitable. Was there a point to trying for night traffic in the summer, even as late as Moon arrived? Stay open and wait for ponies to finish their workshifts? Hold out for their days off? Should she be open when everypony else was closed?

Another day had her outside for a few precious minutes, freshening the flowers outside the shop, and it let her overhear ponies talking. Not about her: the subject was the train. The new deadline seemed to be on schedule, the line would be running in just over a moon. Was it worth trying to advertise in the Canterlot newspapers again? There was only one grand opening, but she could at least remind those arriving on the first cars that she was there. Did she even have the money for a fresh round of promotion? Where could she pull it away from, and how would she compensate if that spending didn't produce sales? What if there was another delay and that expenditure was wasted for a second time, with the promise of a potential third?

She wished for somepony she could talk to about it. For somepony she could speak with about anything. But her mother's only business advice was that it wasn't too late for Rarity to enroll in another school, her father (if present) would remind her that the Boutique had been her choice, she could hardly consult her customers...

There was an organization of tradesponies in town, of course: a gathering of business owners which took place once per moon. It was a place to seek advice -- or rather, it would be once Rarity reached the minimum membership age.

The shop saw some customers, and a few sales. Just enough to think about survival, and not much else.

Rarity found herself looking not just towards the door when it opened, but at every shadow which fell across the windows. It didn't take long to realize she was searching for a particular size of shadow. Something a little smaller than an adult, perhaps moving slightly quicker. And she wouldn't recognize any voice calling out to her, not immediately, because it had been years and everypony's voice had changed: the accent might be hers alone, but puberty would have come for all. But it wouldn't take long to see past the change in body, she would rush out to greet her newest visitor and they would talk, talk about all the things Rarity had missed, she would close the Boutique for that because there was more to survival than mere sales and --

-- it was adults. On the scarce occasions when those shadows turned into ponies, it was always adults.

At night, she trotted. And in time, she also recognized that she was trotting to all the old places. Where she'd played, laughed, tumbled with the others (although never too close to the dirt), and --

-- their homes.

She stood outside those homes, on more than a few nights. Two of them were always dark. It might have been families traveling for the summer, or ponies could have moved away. But others had light, if she was there at the proper hour. She heard fragments of speech, voices which almost seemed familiar, and she would trot towards the door, raise a foreleg to knock --

-- the density of five years, abruptly solidified around her hoof, presented something of a barrier. And in time, she would turn away.

The days passed, as did the nights. Sales, waiting, and silence.

Some days had clouds. Others Sun. All were grey.

[/hr]

It happened at the end of her third week and afterwards, she would curse herself for not having recognized what was (retroactively, with the non-benefit of cold experience) so obviously a setup. But only with the minority of her curses, as there was just so much worth cursing about.

"Excuse me?"

She'd looked up as the door had opened, because she still did that, and the words from the teen pegasus stallion cut off Rarity's own prepared greeting.

It wasn't anypony she recognized, not even after spending an extra moment in trying to see past a fresh acquisition of years. A pleasantly dark red shade to the fur, cream in tail and mane, and a mark which was still making itself fully known in Equestria: a movie camera. Nopony she'd ever met, and a stallion of any age -- well, she'd already learned that was a true scarcity for her shop. "May I help you?" A stallion in a dress shop just about automatically seemed to be a situation which begged for help.

"Well..." A forehoof scraped against her entrance mat: it made him look almost endearingly awkward. "I hope so. But it's not for me. You can't help me. Only you can. I hope. I... hope..."

Buying a dress for somepony else? She wondered if he had the budget. Most of the adolescents in town didn't possess much in the way of money, and it was hard to picture a true situation where this one would be able to afford her work. Still, there was the chance he'd taken the day trot from the capital. "Then how may I assist you?"

Another hoof scrape. "Do you do repairs?"

She blinked.

"There's this dress," the male awkwardly said. "At home. My mom is going to use it tonight. And some friends and I, we've been practicing a scene for -- well, a scene, and some of us have to wear dresses for it. Good ones. My mom has a good dress. But it turned out that it... doesn't fit on my friends like it does on her. Or at all. So -- do you do repairs? Because with all the sewing you have to do in order to make all this, I was sort of hoping that..." One last scrape. "I can pay. But it has to be now."

She looked at him, noted the lack of saddlebags, and asked the question which she was afraid she already had the answer to. "Where is this dress?"

"At my house. I couldn't be seen carrying it, or she would know."

Rarity wondered whether she should be explaining the existence of saddlebags. "I am certain that if you..." How to put this? "...place it within --"

"-- I can't make another trip!" the pegasus declared, starting to breathe faster. "Please! You're new! Anypony else, it would get back to her, and --" His head dipped, and the brown eyes barely managed to look up. "-- please..."

I could use the bits.

Repair services are income. Not my favored source of it, but -- income.

I would have to close the shop. There is nopony who could watch it for me. Nopony to sell on my behalf. The scant income from a repair would not match the profit from a sale. If I miss anything because I leave to help him, then my tallies for the day should be conducted with red ink.

She looked at his face again. The concern. The fear.

"Where do you live?"

All the joints on his wings unfurled, feathers rustling with sudden relief. "Follow me!" He spun, flared those wings --

"-- wait! I need to gather my materials! What is the color of this dress? The nature of the repair? Is this a rip or a patch? Should I bring fabric samples? And I have to lock up!"

[/hr]

It took a surprising amount of time. Not just to gather up her supplies for the emergency (and she vowed to put together a standard kit at the next available opportunity -- which, given the way her days tended to operate, would probably be all of tomorrow). The pegasus almost didn't seem to know where he lived. Visibly shaken, yes, but to be so upset as to keep going down the wrong streets, and of course there were the frequent occurrences when he flew so far ahead that he completely lost her, leaving her standing almost still in vibrating exasperation as she waited for him to realize she was nowhere in range, plus she couldn't get him to speak his address and simply let her navigate her own way. Panic explained much of it, but it was still frustrating -- and as it would soon turn out, panic didn't explain quite enough.

There were several reasons to wish for that address, and the most dominant manifested when they reached his home -- or rather, the place where Rarity could stand beneath the cloud which floated quite some distance overhead. The pegasus then wasted time in inquiring whether she could cast the cloudwalking spell, or self-levitate, or anything which meant he didn't have to bring the dress out and risk having somepony see it. She'd used several minutes in trying to explain that no, every unicorn in the world couldn't cast a spell just because that working would be rather convenient at the moment, in between her increasingly desperate attempts to explain the mere concept of 'saddlebags'. But eventually, she'd gotten him to at least recognize the idea of 'sack' because somehow, 'saddlebags' seemed to be too feminizing for a stallion who might have recently been wearing a dress, and the garment came out, hidden within burlap. He'd then insisted that they get out of sight before attempting the repair, just in case his mother returned, she'd agreed to that, he'd taken a ridiculous amount of time to find a location he was happy with, the sack had finally been opened, and it had taken Rarity nearly twenty seconds before she could visually distinguish the burlap from its contents.

By the time the sack finally opened, she'd formed several opinions of the fear-filled male, and quickly wound up adding several more. Some of the fresh ones equally applied to his mother, and every last one of them wished to know just what that family's standards were when it came to a 'good dress'. The garment was, in fact, in need of some repair. Also reworking. And, if you truly wished to skip over the labor which would need to go into any pointless attempts at triage upon a patient who had been dead on arrival, what it really needed was a rather sudden and fully comprehensive fire, but the pegasus had offered payment and Rarity, whose need to criticize was currently at war with her need for income and suffering heavy losses along the line, had gritted her teeth and gotten to work. She'd managed the first repair, and correcting that had allowed her to see where the second was required. Fixing that distortion led her to find an error, the pull on the weak fabric created by fixing the error exacerbated an extant flaw, and that had meant redoing the entire hem line...

By the time she reached the end, Sun had been lowered. Moon was raised. Rarity had used most of her supplies, along with every last tenth-bit of her patience. The garment had been repaired, and 'repaired' was all the pegasus had allowed her to do, because of course his mother would spot any attempts to render the thing into an actual dress. (He'd made her take her first two tries apart and spotted the third before it could truly find a stitchhold.) And with all the labor complete...

She looked at the saliva-dampened coins which he'd just placed on the ground.

"Ten bits," she softly observed.

"I said I'd pay."

"Ten bits," she too-calmly repeated. "For all that. For all the material. The labor. The time away from my shop. Ten. Bits."

"It's... what I have," he eventually risked. "You never said..."

She hadn't. Her own fault, that, seeing his panic and wanting to help. "Ten bits, then." Her field scooped up the minimal weight, deposited them in much emptier saddlebags.

"So," he awkwardly tried, "if it ever happens again -- because, you know, we're not done with the scene yet --"

"-- it will not be ten bits."

He thought about that.

"Discount for repeat business?"

Rarity briefly entertained a fantasy, one in which her field strength was considerably higher than her actual rating, enough to lift the pegasus, turn him over, and shake the male until more bits fell out. But she didn't have the raw power required for such manipulation of mass, plus the adolescent still wasn't wearing saddlebags. Instead, she simply turned and slowly trotted away.

So now there were four things to do tomorrow. The construction of a comprehensive emergency traveling repair kit, setting a fee structure, creating a very visible policy concerning payments being made in advance, and the complete disposal of any plans she might have entertained for providing costumes to Ponyville's amateur filmmakers -- actually, that made it five things: she would need to form at least one such plan before disposing of it.

How many sales had she missed? Likely none. So in her dreams, it wouldn't become more than a hundred or so.

Rarity sighed, and slowly trotted home under Moon. Any urge to wander the settled zone seemed to have been satisfied for the evening: she'd certainly seen more of Ponyville than anypony would have reasonably expected just from going out to the pegasus' home. She would just go back to her understocked kitchen, find something she could try to prepare without destroying it, and then settle into her blanket nest.

Going home. That was the proper term for what she was doing, and so it only felt as if she was being forcibly returned to her cell.

This is what I wanted.

No. It was an aspect of what she'd wanted. A first hoofstep in creating her own road, after other paths had been closed. It just didn't seem to be a road which was going anywhere -- except, perhaps, moving in an eternal circle.

It's only been three weeks. Things will get better.

Would they?

It wasn't prison. But it wasn't home yet either. It was just a too-big empty space where she slept, above a shop where just enough ponies were buying to allow the chance of survival and no friends ever came to visit. Nopony even seemed to remember that she'd ever been a friend at all, and when she tried to knock...

How good a friend could I have been if nopony comes to me?

Eventually, she got back to the center of town, crossed the train tracks which wouldn't have anything running down them for some time, started to make her way towards the Boutique.

How can I call myself a friend when I'm afraid to approach anypony after so long away?

There was a surprising amount of shadow up ahead, even for a night under what was just about a new Moon. A glance up found unscheduled cloud cover blocking most of what illumination should have existed. Well, the town's weather coordinator had been approaching the age of retirement when Rarity had been forced to leave Ponyville, and was probably now well past the point where he should have landed with his last shred of dignity intact and kicked the job over to a younger pony. But she knew him, or at least what her mother had once said: he would probably keep a mouth grip locked until the complaints mounted into the sky and the Bureau was effectively forced to ground him. That could be a long process. Years.

Eat. Rest. Do it all again tomorrow.

And tomorrow.

And tomorrow.

She should have acquired a pet. Just so there would be something she could come back to.

Yes, far too many shadows around the Boutique, more than there ever should have been. And somewhere within them, the sound of --

-- whispering? Giggles?

Rarity stopped moving. Her horn lit, corona igniting, surging in preparation for her best weak effort at self-defense --

"SURPRISE!

She recoiled from the group shout, which gave somepony in the shadows time to switch the devices over, turning the projection of darkness into pools of light --

-- and there were ponies.

There were dozens of ponies. All ages, including some youths: those younger than she, those somewhat older, and -- she knew that face, didn't she? It had been so long since she'd seen those features and the years had changed much, but that face, and -- adults there, former neighbors, and she was certain some of the vaguely familiar ones operated the shops around her own.

She saw several carefully-arranged tables. Some benches, also brought in for the occasion. One refreshment area featuring a communal drinking trough. A gramophone. And a slightly chubby pink adolescent, rapidly pronking towards her.

"HI!" Pinkie beamed. "We were starting to wonder if you were even coming back tonight! I should have had somepony escort you in -- well, actually, I sort of did, only you didn't know about it because I didn't tell him to let you know, especially since it would have ruined the surprise. But I also didn't tell him to fly ahead to us every so often, just to let us know how close you were getting. So that part is totally my fault." She looked up. "Sorry, Vaude! My fault! The actor doesn't take the blame for the script!"

"It's okay!" the red pegasus called down from somewhere behind the mobile cloud with the spyhole in the center. "I still sold the part!"

"...what?" Rarity finally managed. "...what is --"

"-- it's your welcome home party!" Pinkie smiled. "Because you should have had one, after being away for so long. And somepony totally should have hosted one for you, which turned out to be me. So --" a little more slowly, and much more softly "-- that's also sort of my fault, your not having had one for so many moons. Because I didn't know you were new, even without being new, because I guess when you're away for so long, everything starts being new again. And new can be scary. I know." Back to normal volume. "So welcome home, Rarity! Welcome home! And let's party!"

She allowed herself to be led forward, for there was nowhere else to go and the familiar was in front of her.

Somepony wound up the gramophone. Pinkie took charge of the refreshment table. That old and new face smiled, and its owner began to trot towards Rarity.

The party began. And for a little while, things were better, almost right up until the moment it all went wrong.

Opacity & Asterism

It would take some time before she discovered just how different the party had been, for she had never been in attendance at one of Pinkie's more standard efforts. Eventually, she would learn that some things were just about immutable: for starters, there would practically always be balloons. Even the majority of the gatherings which were meant to be somewhat more serious would feature them, although the host might consider some selective muting of the colors.

After more than a few moons had passed, she would become familiar with the default style, which was often aimed at a target several years younger than the ponies who were participating. Admittedly, there was some joy to be found in that, because you could be too old to bob for fruit of your own accord, but if you were too old to be talked into it, then either one's cosmetics truly needed protection for the latter stage of the evening or one's next bobbing might come in the form of a one-way descent into the earth. But on the whole, the games, a touch of the music, and nearly all of the refreshments were targeted towards the young, and it would take far longer before she realized that a pony who'd never had much of an early childhood was still trying to make up for the lost years.

But for this party... for this party, the hostess had skewed things a little older. Part of that might have been just because so many of the guests were adults: Pinkie had invited just about every last one of the owners for the businesses which neighbored the Boutique, and most of those had been in operation for years. And of course, there were her other neighbors -- the former ones -- to consider, for the baker had also learned where Rarity had originally lived and requested that some from that area attend: that tilted the average age upwards still more.

Some of it, however... it would take time to fully reconcile many things about the party, and one of those elements was the age Pinkie had aimed it towards, one above Rarity's own. Because eventually, the unicorn would learn that the earth pony's first priority in so many parties was the guest of honor, to make things comfortable for that pony if such was possible at all. And it seemed that in Pinkie's eyes, Rarity came across as being much older than she truly was.

There were times when she tried to feel somewhat honored by that. And others, when school dances which would never take place in reality manifested in the nightscape, when it hurt.

But that was in the future. For now, the party was in full swing, and had been for about an hour. Rarity was being, for lack of a better term, circulated. Ponies whom she'd had no true chance to meet were being brought to her, or she to them. She was becoming acquainted with the owners of her neighboring businesses. One of them had said something about approaching the tradesponies group concerning an age exemption, because it wasn't as if Rarity was simply trying to operate a lemonade stand on a hot summer day: it was a full-fledged shop and so some degree of courtesy should be paid to its sole owner. It had felt like a chance, and she'd still been thanking the stallion when she'd been circulated to another portion of the gathering.

The businessponies were treating her -- well, not necessarily as an equal, but at least as a rookie who might need a little coaching before truly rising in the ranks. It was still something which said she'd been able to make the team. And she was getting to see her old neighbors without having her mother within tilted or rotated earshot (somehow, Pinkie had thought to exclude Rarity's mother), there were ponies who were completely new to her making their first introductions, and then there was a presence which had started out as something that initially, had felt very much like a gift.

"So how are you holding up?" Sequin smiled as Rarity's passage through the winding paths of the party brought her back to a friend.

Well -- 'friend,' if used back in the day, would have felt like a rather awkward term. Their parents were friends. The daughters were expected to play together while the elders talked, and there had been days when that had occurred. But there had been just as many times when the two had managed to get on each other's nerves, in the relative privacy of their respective bedrooms, backyards, or just at school. They were often together because they were expected to be together, and any personality clash Rarity might experience when what felt like Sequin's built-in need to control took over was generally explained by her mother as Rarity's fault, because a friend would learn to work with that. Of course, that had come in the days before Rarity had truly learned just how much her mother wished to personally control of her elder daughter's life: in retrospect, she really should have spent more time in considering the source.

But now Sequin was next to her again, and it created the comfort of the familiar without reminding her about every last detail of what she'd once been familiar with. The light green coat, grey eyes, and what was now an overly-polished horn -- seriously: even after figuring for the automatic increase which could come with the passing years, Sequin had to be using just about all of her allowance on cosmetics alone...

It felt good. Just having somepony she could talk to felt so very good.

"Rather well," Rarity smiled. "I believe I can keep going for some distance into the night. Are we sure there will be no interruption?"

Sequin tilted her head to the right, giggled. "I can't get used to that accent... we're fine as long as we don't get too loud, Rarity. Pinkie doesn't host a lot of outdoor affairs, but she always lets the locals know when it's happening. And it's not like we're in a residential neighborhood, so we could even get a little louder without bothering somepony. Maybe a lot louder. Not as loud as when Sledge and I just about closed down --" A quick laugh. "-- well, maybe that's a story for another time."

Rarity blinked. "No, tell it! Sledge? So he's still in town? His parents did not move the family away?" It had been one of the dark houses.

"They're traveling for the summer," Sequin told her as she started to trot towards the refreshments stable. "He'll be back in time for school. You'll see him -- well, not at school." A quick glance backwards at Rarity, who was following more closely than she ever had. "What's that like? Not having to go, or answer to anypony at all?"

She almost said something about still having to answer to the bank, but settled for "Strange." A glance ahead at the refreshment table, which had recently been restocked. The hostess was currently nowhere in sight. "Sequin -- who pays for all this? The treats and drinks have a cost, and the shadowcasters alone..."

Sequin shrugged. "Some of the treats are from the bakery, I think. Things they can't sell tomorrow."

"And the rest of it?"

Casually, "Pinkie gets stuff."

The question was automatic. "Where?"

Sequin turned. Shrugged again.

"Maybe she borrows it. She probably has deals with some of the stores. Or she makes it herself. She just gets stuff. Why does it matter?"

Rarity thought about streamers, and the absence of saddlebags.

"I'm --"

The rest of the sentence would have been 'not sure,' and it was never voiced. The elder pegasus inadvertently guaranteed that.

"Rarity?" Who glanced to the left and found Mrs. Voyeur standing there -- no, just about hovering. Looking as if she needed to go somewhere in a hurry or rather, go to one very specific place a little faster than that. "Could you please do us all a favor?" The young unicorn listened. "Your shop is the closest place to find a bathroom." Desperate fluttering added vibration to the words. "If you would just provide access?"

Oh -- right... She had rather sensibly locked up just before leaving, and while there were other business owners at the party who might offer up their own facilities, there was no denying that Rarity's was the closest. Admittedly, that would cost her something in toiletries, but given the amount which had been spent by Pinkie on arranging this night...

The storeroom was locked up well before I left, and it's not as if anypony is going to try shoplifting when they'd have to make their way out past the party and explain just when they purchased the dress which they weren't wearing when they arrived. It should be safe.

"Just a moment," Rarity replied. "Sequin, I'll be back after I unlock my doors. If you see Pinkie, please tell her she can send others with similar concerns inside. My apologies, Mrs. Voyeur: I didn't know this party was going to take place, and so had no opportunity to consider all of the requirements. If you'll follow me?"

The elder pegasus did. Rarity's field interacted with the hard-purchased security spells which were keyed to her alone and with that second hostess duty performed, she began to make her way back into the heart of the party.

It wasn't a casual effort. There were ponies she hadn't met yet and now that she was in a different part of the celebration, some of them were taking their opportunity. She didn't want to be rude with any of them, and yet she had to reach Sequin again. It was a difficult balancing of priorities: time for a friend, or time for potentially making the contacts which could assist in advancing her career? Rarity felt as if that was a problem which might take more than a single party to fully solve.

Minutes passed, and some of them felt necessary. At one point, she caught a glimpse of Sequin, who was now dancing with an adolescent male whom Rarity hadn't seen before. Oh well: there would be time later, and perhaps Rarity could even find somepony to dance with herself.

It was a pleasantly warm night now, with the cloud cover having been cleared away: that hadn't been authorized, but she doubted the old coordinator could be roused just to check out a minor violation. The music was pleasant, if not quite to Rarity's taste: much to her occasional shame, she and her mother shared their taste in favorite perfomer, and none of that worthy's albums had been stacked by the gramophone. There was certainly nothing wrong with the snacks, and Rarity was becoming curious to visit Sugarcube Corner at some point in the near future, if only to inhale the free scents. It was, all things considered, a fine party.

Admittedly, it was now one in which Rarity's nerves seemed to be humming a soft little tune of their own, a song where she couldn't make out the true lyrics or melody....

A natural consequence of having ponies enter the Boutique unsupervised, she told herself. But her goods would not be so casually stolen, her money was locked away... she was safe. At most, she might have to straighten out the shop somewhat after a few ponies used their time inside to inspect the contents of the racks. Perhaps somepony would even inquire concerning a potential purchase.

A few more body lengths. Another pony whom she apparently had to speak with. She glanced backwards at one point to see a stallion entering the shop. She'd lost track of Sequin. And her ears rotated, listening to the music, the words being spoken by those around her, including the ones which hadn't necessarily been meant for her to hear.

She was within the social web, in a place where she could feel the vibrations moving down the strands. She was learning about the place of so many ponies, and in doing so, was discovering so much about what her own might be.

There was a pony to thank for that, and a passing glimpse of bright pink put Rarity on a new course.

"Thank you."

She should have made the words louder than they'd been: an attempt to get past the music. But Pinkie still turned towards her, smiling. Rarity wondered if the ability to sort through noise was another part of a party mark. In her own case, it was a hard-acquired skill, but to have it as part of the overall grouping of talent...

"It's okay," Pinkie gently replied. "You needed a party. I've seen a lot of ponies who needed them, and... you kind of needed one really bad. So I wanted to make sure you had one. Even if --" her ears dipped "-- it's later than it should have been."

"Your timing," Rarity smiled, "has been excellent."

They were just looking at each other now, dual islands in the stream of flowing pony bodies. The baker was quietly regarding her, and it felt like an odd quiet, given what Rarity had seen before. But in time, she would learn that Pinkie was capable of quiet. Introspection, deep thoughts, empathy which few ponies ever fully understood even when they saw it in action. She was more than hyperactive and loud, something far beyond (falsely) random, capable of priorities which included no balloons at all. The pony before her had a complexity about her, and some aspects of that puzzle would require years to fully manifest.

The disaster, however, was less than a minute away.

"You have costs," Rarity finally said, and felt herself wince as the words emerge. "I was paid for my repair services, as a means of luring me away from the Boutique and preventing me from seeing the setup. That was ten bits which..." She tried to figure out the salary for an apprentice baker who might be getting paid under the parental We're Already Covering Room And Board discount, and just barely fought the second wince down into the dark. "Perhaps you should take them back."

"Vaude said you went through a lot of stuff to make that old rag wearable again," Pinkie protested. "You had costs, and you did the work. You should keep them."

"But your own expenses --"

"-- I don't charge! Only professionals do that, and I'm not one yet. I might not be for a long time."

One final protest: even knowing it wasn't going to work, she had to make one. "But --"

-- and that was when the words reached her well-trained ears, which immediately sorted them out of the party's babble and sent them deep into the core of her soul, where they arrived as fast-spreading ice.

"-- broke. I saw it for myself: she doesn't even have a bed..."

The ice rushed into her limbs, froze all four legs in place, locked her features into horror. Only her ears retained the ability to move, and every part of her wished they would stop.

"-- did you see the towels? Nothing matches! I thought I saw her at a lot of stable sales in the spring. Well, if that's the kind of color palette she's working with in her own bathroom, the dresses are probably --"

"-- cupboard's just about empty, and as for her kitchen devices, I swear one of them sparked when I just looked at it --"

"-- sleeping in a nest. Well, everypony knew she was too young for this. I certainly did. As I was telling her mother after I came in the first time --"

The bathroom...

Her frozen eyes were still locked onto Pinkie's face, and part of that visual scope reached the ears. There was a degree of rotation going on there as well, along with what felt like a slow crashing of expression across those approachable features, a new feeling moving in --

-- but that was when the fire appeared in Rarity's heart, surged into the rest of her body, sent her spinning away from the baker, charging through the crowd and if her head was lowered, if her heavily-spiking corona and horn were at an angle which made them into the weapon nature had designed them to be, ponies staring at her in shock and alarm as a pony on the attack shoved past, then that was what the soon-to-be victims of her efforts deserved.

The bathroom is on the upper level.

The true risk had not been within the Boutique, allowing ponies unsupervised access to her wares. It had been in allowing those same ponies that kind of access to her residence.

Another body length: a startled earth pony got out of her way. She nearly grazed the leader of the tradesponies group: he leapt back just in time. That movement cleared the last bit of the path, and the primary instigator was before her.

The elder pegasus almost instantly took off. Some of that action might have been caused by shock. Rarity chose to see it as an attempt at retreat.

She could not hold an adult body, not within her field, not against the effort of even casual flight, and the tail had gone up too fast for her to have any hope of clenching her teeth around it. But when it was a pegasus in flight, especially one who was perfectly visible under the lights and hadn't gained much altitude yet, you didn't need to get your field around everything. It was simply necessary to be -- selective.

Soft blue lanced forward, quickly surrounded crucial flight feathers, pushed there and there.

It could be argued that Mrs. Voyeur had just barely cleared the ground, and so Rarity was prepared to argue in court that the elder had just barely crashed into it.

"YOU!" and she knew it was a scream, could almost smell the surrounding rise in the herd's fear as ponies pulled back from her. "I LET YOU INTO MY HOME! I OPENED MY SHOP AND HOME TO ALL OF YOU, AND YOU USED IT TO --"

"-- Rarity!" That was almost a shout. "Rarity, it's not --"

"-- SHUT UP, SEQUIN!" Followed by, just a little more softly, after the gasp had faded, "Do you think your new voice is so unfamiliar to me that I cannot recognize it spreading the same tale? How many of you went inside? How many walked through my bedroom simply to survey? Opened my cupboards, tried to examine the contents of my stockroom? How many can claim a true primary motive for entrance, and how many are like YOU, Mrs. Voyeur? Any excuse! Any at all! You and my mother are some level of acquaintance, but I choose what I will inherit from her, what and whom. I choose."

The elder pegasus was staring at her, eyes wide and wild with fear as the glow of spiking corona danced over her form. It was a look Rarity could capture within a design and still preferred to have in front of her, one last time.

"Get out," Rarity hissed, and the words broke through all music. "Get off my property. Never enter my shop again. Get out."

And the herd, which was afraid, moved.

It only took seconds. And then Rarity was standing under the lights of abandoned devices, listening as hooves and wingbeats pounded their way into the darkness.

Alone.

[/hr]

After the tears finally slowed enough to let her see what she was doing, Rarity cleaned up, or at least did so as best she could. The lighting devices were too heavy for her to move, but she could dispose of the refreshments, fold the lighter tables and benches before leaning them against the shop's outer walls. There was a moment when she considered returning everything to the bakery, but she didn't know how much truly belonged to the departed hostess, and what had been borrowed. Ultimately, she simply secured everything to the best of her ability, with the gramophone and its precious collection of records stored within the Boutique. A note was attached to one of the outside tables, requesting that the device's owner inquire within to secure its return. Unless that owner happened to be Mrs. Voyeur, in which case Rarity was fully prepared to state "What gramophone?" while within a single body length of it.

Trash was disposed of. The drinking trough had its contents unceremoniously dumped onto cobblestones. And then Rarity went inside, slowly checked to make certain nothing was missing from the shop level, found all the little bits of not-quite-obliterated evidence which told her just where ponies had ventured within what was meant to be her home, and eventually settled into the blankets.

There was nopony to speak with. No pet she could whisper to while pressing a damp face against comforting fur. There was simply a window, a tree visible through the glass, and Moon. None of them spoke to her, or cared about what had happened. In the end, there was an adolescent within what was never going to be a bed, one who had just chased away everypony who had come to her party -- including those who hadn't been at fault. She'd terrified those who had violated her privacy. She had also been a source of fear to her new neighbors, those who had seemed ready to welcome her, to help.

They'd all left her. Every last pony, and her final view of the exodus had been of a ridiculously curly pink tail shaking with terror as its owner raced towards safety.

What could she have done differently? That question created an instant, rather long list, completely covered in entries she would never be able to check off. Isolate Mrs. Voyeur in privacy. Ask a neighbor to offer their own bathroom while she closed off access to her home. Have a few quiet words with those who'd been speaking, about how she was just starting out, a collection of mismatched pieces must have been the hallmark of so many who were on their own for the first time, several of those who were speaking had probably been through the same thing while others hadn't even had the opportunity, and...

So much she could have said or done. But she'd let the anger take over, and...

It was her, the blankets, a partially-visible tree, and Moon. It was hours before the group was joined by sleep, and only long enough for Rarity to be woken by the first touch of Sun.

[/hr]

She closed the shop.

Rarity didn't know what she could say to anypony. She didn't know if there was anything to be said. She just knew that she'd barely slept, and so was in no position to try and say it. There were things she would have to face, apologies which could only be delayed for so long -- but any degree of delay might give her time to think of something she could say at all.

So shortly after Sun had been raised, she added an extra note to the one she'd put on the folded table, then put its duplicate on the door.

Closed: Supply Gallop

And then she'd made her way out of Ponyville, quietly moving down the back roads which she was once again beginning to learn, doing her best to stay out of sight -- something which failed. The weather team was setting up for the day, and other ponies were getting ready for their own work. But she didn't see anypony who had been at the party. Not that she recognized, and certainly nopony who said anything to her at all.

She ate on the way. The grass wasn't particularly nutritious or tasty, but it was free.

[/hr]

It was something she had to do anyway. After all, she'd had some sales, enough to survive. And some of those sales had (hopefully) come purely from her designs -- but another portion of her work's appeal was in the price point. Rarity had a high-end shop, and yet the bits being requested in that shop were not as significant as they could have been. There was a certain advantage in play, and Rarity passed most of those savings down to her customers.

But it meant she had to restock. Personally, every time, if the appeal of that savings was to be maintained. And so she was slowly trotting along the fallow dirt she knew so well. A new portion this time -- and perhaps always, or at least for the part of 'always' which stretched out before her like the hoof-stomped judicial sentence of a lifetime in prison. She didn't know why this huge area was so full of what she needed, much less how the contents had become both so variegated and densely packed. There had been days when she had wondered, and done so for hours without ever finding an answer. In the end, she simply considered herself lucky. And today, she trotted, slowly, horn lit with an oddly wavering corona. Lack of sleep.

Glow indicated a section of soil. She scraped her forehooves across it, over and over, until the deed was done. Something she could reach, at least: she lacked the equipment required to unearth the best finds, and of course no unicorn could move one object which was fully inside another. Sometimes she felt as if it was only the affinity of her mark which allowed her to even detect things so completely buried.

Move a little ways. Repeat.

It might take her decades to fully exhaust the soil. Decades during which the story of the party would be repeated, having lost all of her motivation on the first telling. But it was something she had to do, if the sales continued at all. And it was -- something to do. A place to be other than the shop.

Her field brought up one of the finds. She carefully examined the lines within the blue, rotated everything under Sun.

Can I use this by itself? If I can't find any more which match?

It didn't matter. She'd find a way to work with it when she got back. In the meantime, there was more work to be done, in a place nopony else knew, somewhere nopony would ever find --

"It's the rutile."

Rarity's wavering field, still holding her find, turned with her.

"There's little bits of rutile in the stone," the new arrival said. "Or hematite, if it's a black one. But that one's blue, so it's rutile doing it. It's like little needles, or tiny strands of silk. And that's what makes the star."

Slowly, carefully, Rarity set the sapphire down between them.

"I know that," she said. "How do you?"

And there was a moment when there was something strange.

Pinkie's eyes half-closed as her head dipped. Her mane dipped, equally pressed down by the weight of emotion. The approachable features began to close themselves off, fur seemed to darken with pain, a straight tail sagged towards the earth...

...the moment passed.

Bright pink ears forced themselves upright, and blue eyes came up to meet Rarity's gaze.

The apprentice baker took a breath. Rarity watched as every last tenth-bit of strength was mustered, just before the words were released.

"I used to be a rock farmer. Well... my -- parents were." Her eyes briefly closed. "Not me, really."

"Ah," Rarity said, mostly for the brief lack of anything else -- at least until the natural follow-up question appeared. "And what is that, exactly?"

"It's..." A long pause and then, awkwardly, "...rock farming."

A mining family, perhaps. It was certainly a way to lose one's parents --

Wait.

From somewhere nopony's ever heard identified. A pony who, as far as anypony knows, only began to exist when she crossed the border into the settled zone. Somepony who --

-- never talks about her birth family.

"Why are you telling me this?" Rarity softly asked.

"Because..." Pink hooves scraped shallow trenches into the soil. "...you didn't ask. And I saw you when I was coming up --"

"How did you know I would be here?" As interruptions went, Rarity didn't feel it was all that rude, but it did seem rather necessary.

"I didn't," Pinkie hopelessly said. "I looked all over town. I looked in places nopony ever looks. And then I ran out of town to look in, so I started looking in the places which weren't town. I just -- got close, and then I sort of... well, I saw a little glow after a while. I got a good look at your field color last night. I saw you -- finding gems. With magic, right through the soil and everything. How can you do that?"

Rarity silently glanced down her own right flank, nodded to her mark.

"Oh," Pinkie softly said. "That's... a lot. For a unicorn. I mean --" more quickly, almost apologetic, "-- I've never heard of a unicorn who could find gems like that. Not even in stories. If my father knew somepony could do that, he'd --"

-- dead stop.

There was an odd expression on her face. It wasn't quite pain, and it wasn't quite jealousy. More of a mix. And then it was gone, replaced by a silent determination.

"I had to find you," the earth pony quietly stated. "I've been looking for hours. At the shop, and then everywhere, and finally here. I wanted to say... I'm sorry, Rarity." Volume still dropping, "It was supposed to be your welcome home party, it was supposed to be special and make you feel good, like you really had a home again. And all it did was make some ponies talk about how you didn't have a real one. Parties are supposed to make ponies happy. That's all I wanted for you, because you weren't happy and... I thought maybe, if you knew somepony cared, then you'd feel better, but it all went wrong and --"

"-- I don't blame you."

They stood under Sun on a summer day, separated by a few body lengths of dirt and the soft blue glow of buried gems which had yet to be uncovered.

"...you don't?"

"How is having ponies use their trips into my bathroom as an excuse to snoop through the rest of my home your fault? I blamed any number of ponies last night, including all of those who were spreading the gossip. But at no point did I ever blame --"

But the baker had been thinking about it. "-- I could have brought in an outhouse."

Rarity blinked.

"Really?"

"Um... no," Pinkie eventually admitted. "They're not easy to move. Plus there's a smell. You really don't want to have a party near that smell. You're -- not mad at me?"

Rarity took a deep breath of her own. It took very little strength to get the words out, and too much to push through all the emotions. "You were the only pony at the party whom I was never angry with. And that number includes myself. When I saw you galloping away -- when I thought I'd scared you off along with all the rest..."

"You can be a little scary when you're mad," Pinkie told her. "And when everypony is scared... I didn't even know I was running until I'd stopped. Sometimes the herd just... thinks first. Rarity -- are you okay?"

She sighed. "Again: this is not your fault. Nothing which happened was, and certainly not the way I reacted to events. But -- no, Pinkie. I'm not okay. I don't know how much damage I truly did last night, and I'm afraid the amount was considerable. I'm not certain I can even truly measure --"

With the smallest of smiles, "Maybe it's not as bad as you think."

"No," Rarity admitted, feeling the graveyard humor suffuse the words. "It's likely worse."

A soft breeze ruffled their fur. The curls slightly shifted.

"I came out to find you," Pinkie told her. "After the morning shift. The Cakes understand when I have to go, especially once they heard about last night. But in the bakery... do ponies talk in dress shops? While they're being fitted, or looking at things, just so somepony's talking at all?"

Her profession had been helping her. A little. "Now and then."

"They talk in bakeries too. While they're waiting. To us, and to each other. They talk a lot. Ponies have been talking, but -- not just the ones who were talking last night, after they tried to make you feel like you didn't have a real home. All the ponies are talking. Some of them just ran because everypony else was running, and now they're talking because everypony else is talking. It means there's a lot of stories moving around, but just one truth, and there's more ponies saying that, so maybe it'll win." Abruptly, "Do you need help? Bringing the gems up?"

"Pinkie --"

"Because I can help with that! I can totally scrape the dirt! I'm really really good at it! Ask the Cakes! When I was littler, I used to come in dirty all the time --"

"Pinkie?"

"-- and it took a while before I really started washing up before I came in, because dirt isn't good in flour. Unless you like dirt in flour. Somepony has to, right? Somewhere. So maybe that's you. Have you ever tried it? I did. It's horrible. At least, it's horrible for me --"

"Pinkie."

The baker stopped.

"...sorry."

"It's quite all right," Rarity half -- perhaps one quarter, or even an eighth -- lied. "What are ponies saying?"

The other pony visibly considered her words.

"I think you should hear it from them, when you go back to town," she finally said. "Because sometimes I talk too much, or too fast, and I try too hard a lot, still. But if it's coming from them, then maybe you'll believe it. Are you ready to go back?"

And Rarity knew that was all she would hear about it. "Not yet. If I can still have any degree of local business, then I have to replenish my stock. I would have had to do that eventually, and so I am doing it today." And then the words which surprised her: "Mostly because it was something to do other than thinking about last night."

"That doesn't work," Pinkie quietly said. "I've tried."

"Then what does?"

"Talking to somepony." Which was followed by, "Do you want some help bringing the gems up? The Cakes understand if I'm gone all day. I don't need to hurry back for the bakery. I had some other things I could have done, but -- you're what's important now."

More blinks. "You want to scrape?"

"I want to be here," Pinkie stated. "Until you feel better."

"It's -- rather boring."

"So we'll talk. Maybe that won't be." Pinkie glanced down, looking at the closest patch of glow. "That's a lot of opals. Do you like opals?"

"Very much."

Pinkie nodded. Bright hooves began to scrape. Rarity put a little more effort into the spell, making the limits of the patch more defined.

"You're a curious one, Pinkie Cake," she openly mused, and felt the other adolescent would not be offended by the words.

She was wrong. The head came up, and a tiny frown appeared on those slightly rounded features.

"Pinkie Pie," the baker insisted, and then went back to work. "So who were your friends in town before you left?" Hopefully, "I think you two are the same age, so you might have been in the same class... did you know Applejack?"

And because she was looking down, Pinkie failed to see the wince.

[/hr]

Sun was about three-quarters of the way along its summer path when they towed the cart back into town. Or rather, they moved along with Rarity insisting that it was her cart and finds, and so it was also her responsibility to haul. Pinkie countered by pointing out that she was the stronger and there was still some dirt on the gems, so as the earth pony, she should be the one hauling soil. The easiest solution was to switch off the harness every so often, usually while giggling.

"Rarity?"

They heard the male's voice, and both stopped.

A light brown earth pony stallion had just stepped away from a vegetable shop, saddlebags weighted with recent purchases. Green eyes went over the pair.

"I was at the party," the stallion said. "I came as a tradespony, to meet another. I never really got a chance to speak with you, but -- I just wanted to tell you that last night? I'm sorry about running. There were just so many other ponies moving, and I..." The skin under his fur was starting to flush with embarrassment. "...I don't know if you've ever had it happen, when the herd just starts to --"

"I understand, sir," Rarity quietly said. "It can happen to anypony among us."

A reluctant, slightly humiliated nod began the next part of his response, and was quickly followed by "Anyway, you were right to tell them off. Ponies snooping in somepony's home... I was on a sofa for nearly two years after I started out on my own. Not that it's a bad thing. I always say there's nothing like a sofa for sleeping when you really need it, along with all sorts of other --"

Pinkie lightly, unexpectedly, and falsely coughed.

"-- but what I'm trying to say here," the stallion continued without missing a beat, "is that I'll vote for the age exemption at the next meeting. I think a lot of ponies will. Have a good day, Rarity. Let me know if you need any advice. I'm planning a Canterlot advertising campaign for the next -- hopefully the real -- scheduled first train day, promoting the singular specialty of my shop." With open pride, "Something they certainly won't find in the capital! And anyway, no matter how I've tried to plan it out, I've still got some space left at the bottom of the page. If you need it."

It look a second to realize that her mouth was trying to fall open, and another to make sure he didn't get more than the briefest glimpse of her tongue.

"Thank you, sir," Rarity finally managed. "I may take you up on that."

He smiled. "Well, back to my own shop, then! I've got to take inventory tonight. It's amazing, isn't it? How the larger pieces, which should be the ones which can't go anywhere on their own, are always the ones which wind up with the suspect count...?"

The stallion trotted away. The adolescents watched him go.

"I forgot," Rarity suddenly said, feeling her own blush beginning to rise under the fur. "In simple politeness, I should have asked for his name. And I --"

"Davenport," Pinkie told her.

"Davenport," Rarity repeated, fixing it in her memory.

A nod. "He's weird."

Rarity slowly turned, focused the stare on her companion. The pony whom she was sure hadn't been wearing any streamer-hosting saddlebags --

-- did it matter?

Maybe a little. But currently, only for the purpose of comparison.

"You are saying," she carefully tried out, "that he's 'weird'."

"He's nice," Pinkie failed to clarify. "But have you ever been in his shop?"

"No..."

Definitively, "He's weird. Anyway, that's what a lot of ponies are saying. The ones who weren't snooping. Not all of them, but -- I think maybe it's enough. So anyway..." She resumed her trot, steadily pulling the cart forward, "...you were talking about pets."

Rarity tried to get her thoughts to surround the sheer scope of the hope, and wondered if that emotion was a gift. "Pinkie -- do you really think so?"

Curls bounced in time with the nodding. "Sometimes the truth wins, especially once ponies figure out what it is. So -- pets. I think you really should get one. And..." She paused, words and motion both and in each case, the brief stop was equally awkward. "There's this pony."

"A pony," Rarity tried out.

"She just moved to Ponyville this spring. Well, just barely Ponyville. She lives on the fringe, right up against the wild zone! And there's been ponies going out there, and the ones who come in the bakery say she takes care of animals. She helps them, and part of that is helping some of them find new homes. And I have this friend who comes to see me sometimes, and it turns out he knows her, he said the two of us should really meet because he thought we'd have so much in common, plus I try to meet everypony anyway but when he says I should meet somepony, it's really really important. So I trotted all the way out to her cottage, and..."

"And?" Rarity eventually prompted.

"...I was sort of -- me," Pinkie winced. "And she sort of -- isn't. She's kind of the opposite of me. I think she might still be hiding. Under her couch. It sort of sounded like somepony going under a couch. I've heard a lot of that. Even through a door, it's hard to miss. Which is why I haven't given her a welcoming party. Because the living room has windows, but the cottage has a basement and hiding down there forever would be really really dark."

The young unicorn found herself smiling, and was slightly surprised by it. But the expression, and accompanying feeling, were welcome. "So you think that if we go out there, she might have a pet for me."

"And you're good with words," Pinkie said. "Maybe if you mostly did the talking, and when I talked, it was -- slower? Maybe then, we could get her to... come out? With a pet?"

"So what's her name?"

Pinkie told her, and Rarity instantly perceived a hint of the social effort which might be required.

"Well," she shrugged, "we can try. But don't be surprised if nothing comes of it."

Pinkie nodded. They both trotted a little more.

"Rarity?"

"Yes?"

"Are we friends?"

She stopped, and Pinkie stopped with her, waiting for the answer. Words Rarity would not release without full consideration of their impact.

"I think we're ponies who know each other a little more than they did," she finally said. "And who might spend more time together --" although not with Applejack "-- and learn still more, moon by moon. And that such is one of the many ways in which friendship might come. If you wish me to be both fully honest and sincere, Pinkie, I don't know if we're friends just yet. But I believe we'll get there."

The answering smile brought relief. "I like you. If that helps."

"Somewhat," Rarity giggled. "So we'll drop these off, and then to this cottage?"

"Sure! And if we can get her to come out -- what kind of pet were you thinking of?"

An empty space which needed another warm body to help fill it. Something she could speak with and at least pretend there were words coming back, if masked within extremely vocal sounds. A strong degree of intelligence combined with highly visible emotional reactions, so that Rarity would always know the truth of how she had come across...

"I was thinking about... a cat."