The Eyes of a Stranger

by Cynewulf

Rating: teen
Tags: Fancypants, Rarity, Sex, Fleur de Lis, Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Original Character
Length: 6903

Rarity finds that success is hollow.

Success is often a bitter thing. When one has everything, then what worlds are left to conquer, after all? Rarity has expanded her business into every province of the Principality and is known in every city. She has everything that a much younger Rarity dreamed of, and yet absolutely nothing satisfies.

We must imagine Rarity happy, no matter how impossible it seems.

Forgot. Sorry. This was written for the Barcast's "Make Rarity Not Garbage" contest.

Published 2017-09-17 02:00:06 UTC
Last updated 2017-09-17 02:00:06 UTC

And I raise my head and stare into the eyes of a stranger

My mother gave me the most useless advice as a filly. “Be yourself,” she would say, meaning well as all mothers do at some point or another along the way. “Always do your best, and that will be enough” or “Good company props up good character.” That last was always one of my favorites. The poor dear could have used a better phrase than “props up” but she was trying, and if I am being honest she was very right. Even her choice of words was almost painfully accurate. I am sure she would be unhappy ‘twere she to know that I’d twisted her lesson inside out, but I’m sure she would be rather unhappy about many things about me.

Well, let me add a saying of my own; an aphorism to, ah, prop up my mother’s long list of bite-sized bits of wisdom. Consider: “I am a mare more sinned against than sinning.” It’s a lie, of course. I am a consummate sinner, and an equal opportunity sort as well, for no creed is too sacred to infect or shatter. But it does help me sleep soundly at night, and I do sleep quite soundly.

I would say that the clink of glass against the glossy bar drew my attention up from my musings, but the truth is that I never am entirely in the present. To be entirely in the present is a miracle denied me. Pinkie Pie is capable of it. She is, I think, a bit too blessed as to be always in the Now.

No, a Lady is always parted three ways. One part in the present, one part in the past, and one part two moves ahead.

I smile. Not an automatic smiles as most of my smiles are, but a genuine gesture. The barpony is Mountain. No second name. Just Mountain. His name is apt, for he towers over anypony not as tall as our Princesses, blessed their names. He is what we call in Ponyville a good sort.

“Thank you, good sir,” I say, and he nods at me.

“You’re welcome, Miss Rarity.” He grins conspiratorially, like a foal on the playground. “Used some of the Iced Crsytalberry Vodka. I remembered it was your favorite and I had a bit left over.”

I make a soft, appreciative coo. “Aw, Mountain! How sweet of you, darling.”

“Glad to make somepony smile. Have a good night.”

“Oh, always,” I say, and float off with a wave over my shoulder. A good sort. Not the best for conversation, a black hole of intrigue, but a good sort. One expects the bar pony to have a bit of a taste for the petty drama of life, but Mountain simply doesn’t have it in him. To him, the tragicomedies of the drunk are merely sad stories and an opportunity for a bit of unlooked for charity. Admirable, and perhaps a bit embarrassingly earnest.

The party is lively. Pinkie Pie would disagree, I’m sure. Most of my friends would, save perhaps for Twilight Sparkle.

Thinking of Twilight, I chuckle. My reaction to discovering that Twilight, who I already held up a Canterlonian, was in fact minor nobility still haunts me. I made such a fuss over it!

How little I knew then. What small trifles threw me.

The band is less a band and more a force of nature. Flowing, riotous, sensual-to-sexual jazz assaults the air as much as fills it, and in and amongst the frayed melodies the ponies come and go, talking of Marangelo. Literally, in this case, as one does at an art gallery function.

The Canterlot Museum of Art is wonderful. I’ve been when it was a bit less chic, a bit calmer, and enjoyed myself. It was actually my first date with Twilight Sparkle, when that was a thing we did. There were only a few, really, but they were quite nice, weren’t they?

Parted Three Ways, remember? Present, past, future. The past trots with Twilight of House Twilight, the present enjoys the subtle, bitter hint of Crystalberry in the martini, and the Future? The Rarity who plays two moves ahead whatever the game may be is cataloging. I have to be this way. The lessons learned by an earlier, younger, softer Rarity were painful, and I’ve no mind to be reminded of them again. No, hope not for hearts in mares or stallions alike.

A Lady attends a Function not to socialize but to Socialize. The naive and the noblehearted might cry out that such an occasion as this is inequine, or complain that it is a nest of vipers seeing who can bite first. They’re completely right. But a room full of vipers is social, isn’t it? Even timberwolves in numbers know society. Even, and I’m loathe to say it, there is a social aspect to Diamond Dogs. The social is in the masses, but it is also in the company of select sorts.

I brush by a young stallion by the name of Fable. Fable Rowan-Oak, of House Rowan-Oak. A buffoon, though not a vile one. His love for wine, mares, and song is perhaps balanced out by his youthful cheer. In a world of vice, a love of beautiful company and a bit of cards over swill beer is very low on the list of punishable offenses.

He notices me briefly, but there’s not much to be gained by any interaction. I give him one of my practiced looks, calculated as every single thing is calculated. A Lady at a Function brings an arsenal of such things, mannerisms designed to appeal to some base instinct or misconception. I flutter my eyelashes, walk with a bit more of a sway. I make myself simultaneously interesting and very not available. The trick is in getting a bit of distance quickly.

“Excuse me, ah--” he calls out, but my stride is unbroken. The whole thing is ridiculous, isn’t it? This is all a farce played out by idiots. A hyper-feminine and a hyper-masculine presence, interacting so briefly, so shallowly. For a heartbeat a part of me almost wonders if we might be the same sort of pony. But then that suspicion is dispelled. It’s not that I’m certain. It’s just that I don’t want to think about it or anything adjacent to it.

The crowd is not seamless. It is more of an archipelago where a few ships navigate as I do with cunning and sometimes savage grace. But I’ve no plans of ruin tonight. No, tonight is merely reconnaissance.

Fancy Pants sees me. We lock eyes, and I maneuver towards him. Again, not my intended target, but sometimes one simply must detour.

He reclines on a couch with his young wife, Fleur. On an opposite couch sat a couple I did not at all recognize.

Past Rarity cringes. Future Rarity is elsewhere. Present Rarity must make her own way.

“Rarity! It’s good to see you,” Fluer says, and flutters her eyelashes at me. She is a strange and lovely creature. I was never sure how much of her was guile and how much of her was as naturally and honestly charming as she so often seems to be--and I suspect I may never know.

“Well, I was in the neighborhood,” I say with a smile. Performance is never far away, but I do try to be something approaching authentic with Fancy Pants and Fleur. He’s one of the few in this city that has seen me as I truly am, after all.

“And a jolly good thing you were,” Fancy cuts in and waves me closer. I circle the couch and sit where he pats the couch. “Have you met Mr. Bona Fide and his lovely wife, Gentle Reed?”

“I can’t say I have.” I flash them a pre-fabricated smile of inoffensive greeting. How many times did I practice this smile before the mirror, hoping to perfect some imagined performance of perfect feminine grace?

The stallion is young, about as old as I was when I sat on a couch across from Fancy and his lithe spouse and soaked in their company. His wife seems younger still. They smile.

I have a feeling that they are new.

“It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Rarity,” Gentle Reed says. “Fancy Pants was just telling us we might have a chance to see you. He talks about you an awful lot!”

“All good things,” I reply quickly, flashing him a knowing gesture. “At least, I hope! Fancy can be a lovable sort of scoundrel.”

“I do not for a moment deny it. A good gentleman remembers how to be a cad when the time is right,” Fancy replies, and his grin has not a touch of malice, and yet there is a part of me that lives in the past which withers slightly.

“Quite,” I say and turn back to his guests. “What brings the two of you to the museum tonight?” I ask.

Gentle Reed gets a starry look in her eyes that I recognize and with a great deal of control I avoid grimacing. “Well, I’ve been a fan of Blank Canvas’ work for years, since I first stumbled across him while I was Celestia’s School.”

That is interesting. I raise my eyebrows, a calculated gesture as all the others are.

“Celestia’s School? Tell me, do you know Twilight Sparkle?”

She blinks. “The princess? Goodness, not at all. She graduated when I was in high school! And I’m not sure she would have associated with a lowborn bookish sort as myself.”

Repress the sigh, Rarity. Don’t comment on the ironies. “You would be surprised,” I say softly. “Regardless, a good reason to be here tonight, if I do say so! I first saw Blank Canvas’ paintings about the same time in my career. She truly is a genius.”

“I wouldn’t say she was a genius.”

I blink. “Oh?”

Gentle Reed flushes and looks a bit nervously at us all. I see Fleur nod encouragingly at her out of the corner of my eye.

“W-well, I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s more like… I don’t think of it as genius, exactly. Art can be very, very technical! Blank Canvas is known for her technical skill, right?”

“Indeed. It’s remarkable,” I say, more interested than I had expected to be at this point in the conversation.

“But that’s not what I like about her. I mean, I appreciate that technical skill. And there are some artists, like Trefoil, whose technical proficiency is a huge draw. But with Canvas, I think it’s less some kind of genius, some kind of… mental thing, and more that she has a lot of heart.”

“Heart,” I repeat, more flatly than I intended.

“Yes,” Gentle Reed continues, excited again. “Take The Hamlet on the Plains, for instance. With Trefoil or--oh, I don’t know--Half Moon, I might talk about the historical accuracy or anachronisms or other things in their presentation of the Mustangian settlement. But with Blank Canvas, I know that those things aren’t the point. She’s looking for a feeling. She wants the sentiment. She wants to know what it means.”

“My, and you think you can see all that in a painting?” I ask, with a little smirk. “That’s a tall order, to ask any one painting to mean anything at all.”

She sighs. “I’ve heard that before. But I still think it’s true. I think art can be more than the sum of its parts.”

I shift in my seat.

“Had I mentioned that our Rarity is something of an artist herself?” Fancy said.

I bristle at “our Rarity”, but I cannot afford to be annoyed. I doubt he means to rile me up.

“Oh? What sort of medium?” Bona Fide asks, leaning forward.

Wonderful. They are new. It isn’t that I dislike them. Not exactly.

“Clothes,” I say, a bit stiffly. Control, Rarity! Control! “I design clothes. Dresses, mostly.”

“Wait! Oh, I knew that you sounded familiar! Carousel Boutique, isn’t it?”

I take a steadying breath. Back on top, Rarity. You’ve slipped a bit. It’s time for business. They don’t mean any harm. These are harmless, normal questions. They aren’t a challenge.

I nod, and make a show of seeming bashful. “Oh, that’s me! Yes, I have a shop here in town.”

“A friend of mine visited recently. She had such a lovely dress that she bought there. I’ll have to visit!”

A few more exchanges like that go by. Art lies by the roadside, as it must and always shall. I get along to business, and eventually I find a way to carefully slip away and back into the chattering archipelago of money and influence.

The first of my real targets is a middle aged mare by the name of Misty Aria. One notices her a mile away, her hair done in a great towering eldritch mess. She has forgone any sort of fancy finery for this event, opting to go “natural” as they say, which is not terribly surprising. What little I know of her suggests she is incredibly proud of her appearance, to the point of hubris.

I circle once, pretending to see a friend in the distance--as if!--and take a quick look. Her laugh is boorish, her pearls are too big to be real, her voice is grating, and all in all it galls me that I must kowtow before this apparition of youth.

Coming back around, my mind is elsewhere even as I gently slip into a lull in her conversation with some no-name.

“Ah, Ms. Aria, is it?”

She blinks and looks me over with guileless scrutiny. Weak. I suppose that too much power makes one complacent. Her eyes run over my outfit and her brow wrinkles in confusion before realization hits. “Ah! Rarity Belle, is it? The designer?”

“I am flattered, ma’am.” I smile woodenly and make a parody of a curtsy as a folksy affectation. My origin is well known here. I must act the part without truly being the part. Luckily, I have had an awful lot of practice. It is the one skill that I came into this business needing that I had in abundance.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I simply wished to say hello, madam,” I reply. “I’ve heard an awful lot about you, after all!”

I’ve seen an awful lot of you too, madam, but I won’t say that. How can you not see such a creature from far off? There are ponies who glow less with good qualities and more with their own self-importance.

But who am I to blame another for such a thing as wearing a mask and tilting the word down into one’s mouth? Who is Rarity to castigate another or feel disgust? If this is her mask, then mine is worse and far uglier. She was at least born to be what she is.

“Oh? I’m sure you have.” She grins like a shark. Exactly like a shark. “To what end?”

Ah. I do so hate the ponies who think they are being clever when they openly question your motives. As if ulterior motive is not the rule of life! It’s a show of weakness, honestly.

“Mostly, I’ve heard that you’re well known in the artistic community here in Canterlot. Also,” I lowered my voice conspiratorially, “I was intrigued to find someone else who appreciates the sorts of things coming out of Saddle Street.”

She flushes and looks around quickly. But it’s worked. I wasn’t sure, but the rumors had been quite strong. “I wasn’t aware that was, ah, well known.”

Her sudden nervousness practically reeks. I shake my head, feigning apology. “Oh, no! Not at all, not at all. I confess I guessed based on what I knew.”

She breathes a sigh of relief. When the shell of the mare is shattered, I confess there is something homely about her. I can almost believe that someone might have loved her once. Yet that homely, plump mare vanishes as she straightens. “I see we shall have to talk on this at some later date. Might I ask where you can be reached, Rarity dear?”

I give her the address of my apartments here in the city and we part after a few pleasantries.

The second target is a flamboyant stallion who owns a chain of boutiques on the east side of the city. He isn’t producing anything of his own, so he’s always on the lookout for good deals on designer products… and I happen to supply those in abundance. The perfection of one such as myself helping another pony pretend to be something is not lost on me, and I am not quite as ruthless in fleecing him as I perhaps could be, out of pity. We talk business and I finish up my drink.

Feeling warm from the vodka, I let my mind slip as I set sail back into the chattering islands.

Fancy and his wife. Twilight. I will perhaps never be entirely comfortable again in the company of Fancy Pants and Fleur. I do feel fond of them both, very much so! They have always been kind to me. It is unfair to say that they make me uncomfortable now. I would have felt better had I not known exactly what promised end they have planned for the night’s festivities if the young couple across from them are willing. Of course I know--that young couple sits where I once sat, and perhaps they’ll mount the bed I once timidly climbed. They will find Fancy and Fleur eager, generous, and above all genuinely kind. I bare them no ill will.

It hadn’t been so long after I called things off with Twilight when I found myself drawn in by their charm. Again, I wish not to disparage them! If they had known the state of my heart, I have no doubt that that night would have been rather different. After all, I have spent nights in their estate where there was nothing, ah, intimate occurring beyond shared champagne and talk.

They accepted me for what I was, and for that I am thankful. Baffled, a bit frightened, but otherwise thankful. Fleur was the one who actually helped me feel out my misgivings regarding myself. Not that my progress mattered to anyone but myself and perhaps her. The working out of the soul is a perilous and frankly unprofitable business.

It is… difficult, walking here. It is difficult not to think of Twilight Sparkle walking by my side, matching my stride, chatting about this and that, explaining the history of a dozen paintings. It is so, so difficult not to hear her nice, cheerfully melodic voice sing-songing unintentionally as she says the names of this artist and that one. Beyond all of that, it is difficult to be Rarity sometimes, and when my thoughts go on a few certain unfamiliar paths it is even more difficult.

The last of my targets tonight is an art dealer who has an interest in haute couture. He’s not exactly a rising star in my field by any means. He’s an amatuer, but an amatuer with a lot of money looking to start with some third party designs. I have a few throwaway products I could sell him for rebranding, and I do so. He’s eager. He knows absolutely nothing and I am almost feel bad as I drain his bank account right there on the floor, shameless as a back alley mare of the evening.

We are all deep in the night now, deep deep into it. The band plays on, the cool night gets cooler, and the crowd begins to loosen up. The alcohol is starting to make its presence known like a young buck at his first dance, carnation hanging limply from his chest puffed up and pitiable, gangly legs barely keeping his nervous soul on the right side of the floor. Liquid courage, they call it, and I’ve always chuckled at that. It’s not wrong, just incomplete. I prefer to say that it’s liquid audacity. Courage has a point. Courage follows a path. It’s getting from one place to another via the straightest line. Courage is, really, a very sensible thing. To be brave for ten seconds, and then victory. We call bravery madness mostly because we are too frightened to see that the quickest way over is through.

Audacity? Audacity is about the suicidal, stupid, overwhelming lusts that the flesh is heir to for good or ill. Bravery is about charging the barricades because it’s the only way to win. Audacity is drunkenly walking up to Princess Celestia and telling her that you think her teats are nice.

But it flows, the bubbly alcohol that brings good cheer and poor decisions. The words also flow, and I soak them up with attentive ears. Even when my mind is in the past and my heart is buried, my ears will still be pressed to the ground to ferret out the most innocuous news and interrogate it.

I talk to a few more ponies, mostly functionaries and Canterlot elite of that lower tier, the ones who have the money but no personality whatsoever. They’re invited to sweeten the pot, but there’s no reason to talk to them for more than a moment. You maintain the illusion anyone cares about them, and that’s it.

A new drink is acquired. Mountain has gone off duty and the new bartender is a mare with an undercut and a sharp, sullen look about her. Here is the undergrowth, the kind of pony consumed with her perceived value and that of others. Understandable. Am I not the same? She doesn’t offer me any friendly banter. The drink is fine, at least.

But the night has dragged on. I talked already to who I wished to talk to, and done the things I needed to do. Business was over.

So I began to walk and walk until I found a side door and slipped out into the air.

The Canterlot Royal Museum of Art is a fine place. Massive, well funded, and above all designed as the sort of locale one could burn an entire day visiting. There are five floors, four restuarants if one counts the cafes, and two gift shops. I have visited all of them. I’ve walked these floors so many times that I daresay I can navigate with my eyes closed.

So it isn’t hard to find the little open air cafe on the second floor balcony. There are a few tables situated on the leaning edge, with a strong railing so one might peer over into the lovely gardens and the park beyond that make up the center of this tier that the locals call High Canterlot.

The night is lovely. Warm summer nights with the gentlest breeze that rustles through distant trees and caresses your cheek--these nights always remind me of home. Not the Boutique, though it is still home. Nights like this one remind me of my parent’s home, the home with a capital H, and my foalhood. Perhaps another might say that such a frame of mind brought them back into simpler or happier times, but I cannot say the former and the latter would describe most times that were not now. Canterlot is a city of awe, wonder, art, and grace. But for those like myself, in one way or another, it is also a gilded trap.

I stand by the balcony and enjoy the air a moment, listening for company. There are a few voices below, as ponies in the lit gardens converse. The party is beginning to spill out into the night. Excellent. There’ll be less of a chance that I’ll be seen.

I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and then dispell the enchantment I’ve been wearing for two solid days.

My whole body feels loose. Only through experience and expectation do I not lose myself altogether and sink down onto my haunches. The feeling of disorientation always passes. It can be weathered. A Lady learns that any storm can be, and this is hardly a storm.

It used to be.

The first time I cast this spell, the first time I called myself Rarity and meant it, I cast off my charm whilst watching in a mirror. I had lived as one pony and knew I had to return to living as another, if only for a moment, and so I had wanted to bear witness. I had wanted to see myself when it happened. That younger Rarity was a fool. I am glad I am no longer her.

I looked into the mirror then and saw myself, but I did not see myself. I saw there the eyes of stranger looking back at me with dizzying incomprehension and dawning horror. This was wrong, those eyes screamed at me. This was all wrong. This was not as things were supposed to be and yet, and yet. And yet.

Time brings perspective. The changes had been greater than, but they are subtle now.

My mother always said to be myself, but I am probably not capable of that no matter how you reckon it.

The enchantment that had slipped off of me did a few things. It was part-illusion, part transformation, part cosmetic, and in her estimation entirely necessary. What did it do? What didn’t it do, really? It smoothed out her face, slimmed her waist, gave her the curves she needed to work as she must. It gave her the looks and the melodic voice and the big, bright eyes and the neat, feminine silhouette she needed to survive in this world of shifting sands and first impressions.

That first time, as I had watched what I had assumed was the truth of Rarity wash away and reveal an altogether more androgynous appearance take its place, tears had filled my eyes. She had tried so hard, and to see how far she was from looking the part?

But that was a long time ago. I would do what she needed to, change my body and my face as once long ago I had changed my name, and survive in a world that was friendly to very few without a fight. The spell taxed one if worn for too long, sapping one’s strength both emotionally and physically, and so whenever I can, I drop the armor and be just as I am for a moment before returning to performance before the waiting crowd.

I would have returned, but something kept her there on the balcony.

Then footsteps were behind me. A moment of panic, and then as I turned, I saw a pony that I did not at all recognize. It was a diminutive earthen mare with a frazzled undercut, bags under her eyes, and far too many piercings in her ears.

I let the worry roll off of me, leave along the floor, and leave nothing but relief in its wake. No one important then. I do not mind being seen with my mane down, as it were, by one such as this.

“Good evening,” I say as the mare stops short.

“I, uh… I’m sorry. I figured it would be empty out here,” the mare says.

“Well, it’s not. But that’s alright. I’m fine company! I promise. I can be quiet enough when I need to be, and you can enjoy the summer night.’

The mare takes a deep breath and then shrugs. “Sure.”

She laid against the railing. No, it was more accurate to say that she was sprawled out on the railing. With a grunt, she straightened up and looked at me.

“What brings you here?” she asks.

“Art.” A pause, and then I laughed. “No, not that at all. Business. Making connections. The art is just a plus.” I look away from her and back towards the gardens and the bright starry torches that dot it. “You know, I love her works, and yet I’ve not spent a moment of my time here seeing the new exhibit? Not a moment. I’ve been too busy mingling and drinking and, most importantly, coaxing.”

“Sounds… not my style, honestly,” the strange little mare says. I smile.

“It wasn’t mine. Well… The mingling always was. I dreamt of parties like this when I was a filly. I wanted to be high society. But I also thought high society was rather different, when I was young. I imagined the conversation at such gatherings would be a bit more, ah, elevated. The only thing elevated about it in reality is the piles of money keeping them suspended. I dreamt of art and talk of the finer things, but I suspect most of our companions here know very little of art except as a thing to be bartered off.”

“That… that’s a bit more my speed.” She stretches. “What’s your name, mystery girl?”

I smile reflexively. Years later, and someone knowing what I am without the magic guarding me still makes me smile. “Rarity,” I say.

“No kidding?”

“So you know of me?”

“Of course I do. The papers. You’re an element of harmony. And I, uh,” She scratches her mane. “I’m not big on dresses. Or clothes, really. But my agent insisted I wear something so I stumbled into your store in Ponyville while I was there on a trip. I never got to meet you. Guess you were out! But I did meet a nice filly who helped me find something simple. Something Belle.”

“My sister Sweetie. She’s a good mare.”

“I don’t doubt it. Made me feel right at home.”

“I miss her,” I say suddenly, and then blink. “Sorry. I have been in a strange mood tonight.”

“Nah.” She shrugs. “Don’t ever gotta say sorry ‘bout that. I feel you. I’d love to go home. Really, I’m only here because I have to be and as soon as it’s morning I’m hopping on the train and riding straight back to Tall Tale.”

“A lovely town,” I say. “I’ve only been once.”

“It’s a dump,” she says cheerfully.

I snort. “Ha! I suppose. But I meant the ponies there. They were friendly, and it’s just a port town. Not so bad.”

She laughed. “Thanks for sayin’ so.”

“”It was my pleasure,” I say.

“So… art’s just the cherry on top for you?”

I shrug. “Well… I used to think of myself as an artist, you know.”

“And you don’t anymore?”

I shake my head and chuckle. “Not in the slightest. I am a craftsmare, certainly. An artisan is not an artist. When I create I do not ask whether it was worth it to do so. I do not ask if it is beautiful, or if it was honest, or if it was anything other than profitable. Creation becomes a sort of, ah, a machine with levers. One pulls and the bits flow. What were those called? I saw them in Las Pegasus.”

“Slots.”

“Right! Thank you. Slot machine. That is what it is. To be honest with you, I used to look forward to these as an escape from reality. I could come and sit before a great work of art and think to myself--this means something. This is beautiful, or meaningful. This is an expression of the soul. I could pretend that there was anything to it at all besides merely blind grasping and perhaps some greedy luchre. More and more I think that I was even more of an idiot as a young mare than I had suspected. Head filled with nonsense and heart full of idiocy.”

I take a deep breath. I continue. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. It’s just…” I shrug. “I don’t know. Hear somepony tell you that they don’t understand, and then think about how it makes you feel, and then imagine that you hear it every day and then ask if you wouldn’t think the same as I do: that art was a cruel, cruel lie told to us by those who wished to profit off of our work or that it was a delusional story we told ourselves to feel better about how pointless our elite snobbery was. Art was what divided us from the beasts and their savage tooth and claw. It was what made us ponies and not dumb prey animals.”

“That’s… that’s bleak.”

“Yes.”

She was quiet for a while.

“I don’t know,” she said at last. “I know what you’re talking about with that question. I get it all the time, every day, about everything. Or they don’t ask--they just assume they know everything about it already.”

“And of course,” I said, flipping my mane. “They’re wrong. They have half of it at best an have ignored all of the carefully laid out clues, the overbearing hints, the all-but-screaming.”

She growled. “Right. Fuckin’...”

“Either way, we’ll still go about what we do. I learned that not in art but in life.”

“Being an element sure must help out with learning stuff like that.”

I smirk. “Take a good look. No, passing helped me learn that. One either ignores or one drowns in the baleful glances and the jokes. One learns not to respond to the rude gestures and the sneering, the uncomfortable sidelong glances and the lewd suggestions of drunks.”

“Shit. I imagine.”

I shrug.

“I guess… I kinda assumed things were different here,” she says. “Being the big city and all. Like, I just assumed once you got out of the boondocks everything goes that doesn’t hurt anybody else.”

There’s no other response to that but to laugh.

“Nowhere on earth will match that dream,” I say. “No where and no-when either. Sure, the big cities don’t have some of the same problems. In a larger population, it’s easier to melt away and be nopony at all. But that’s just the surface, friend. No, there is really no way to escape the things we often don’t like about small town life. Truly, there is nothing beyond the small town. It isn’t really just a small town thing, you see, but something in ponies that is just easier to see in such places. But it manifests everywhere, this watchful petty survival game we play, watching as we do for somepony to stumble. Perhaps we don’t seek their downfall or harm, and perhaps we love them, but we are waiting for the ripples they will cause to tell us where we are in the chain of being, like bats in a cave using sound to find our way. If my sister has fallen, and by her struggles I see both below and above her, I can triangulate my own position and know my own status.”

“You make us sound like some kinda wriggling eel-pit jus’ blindly struggling.”

I sigh but smile. “I know. I had a thought like that once. When I was younger, when I first came to this city and found that my dreams of acceptance and high living were not as perfect as I had dreamed… But no, I don’t think so. I do not, in the end, think so unkindly of ponies as that. They are nervous--no, we are nervous--so very, very nervous beings. We are all trying, some of us more than others, but we are all in fact trying.”

She hums.

“You know,” she says after a bit. “I started painting ‘cause I figured it was the best way to talk.”

I blink. “Talk?”

“Yup. Talkin’ is hard for me. It used to be a lot harder.”

“You’re doing fine right now.”

She looks at me and smiles briefly before looking back over the railing. “Thanks. Really, it means a lot. But it was less the whole, like, the words part. It was everything else. It’s all the other questions other ponies didn’t ever seem to have. The idea of trying to talk with another pony is just freakin’ weird. What would you talk about? Could you talk for more than a minute? Is that okay, to talk just a minute and go quiet? How do you remember their name, or what they said earlier, or what you were doing before or during? What if you miss a word, can you go back and ask for it again, or will they be angry? Followin’ conversation left me feelin’ worried and nervous as a colt at his high school dance, so I just sorta stopped doin’ it altogether. Just stopped talkin’. I smiled and I waved and I said hello back. That was it.”

“That’s bleak,” I say, echoing her.

“Ain’t it? Ain’t it just?” She laughs. “Yeah, but I started painting cause I figured that it wasn’t words, but it’s close enough for me. A painting says stuff. It doesn’t say ‘hello!’ very well and it sure as Tartarus doesn’t hold a real conversation. But it says stuff. It gets people to know who you are, or at least know your name, or at least know the name you picked to paint under. No one ever bothered to come to me, and I couldn’t go to them, so I made somethin’ that I could hang on to and crawl across. They still didn’t come to me, those other ponies, but at least I could reach out from the edge and sometimes I touched the hems of their fancy dresses at gallery parties.” She smiled at me. “Like now.”

I smiled back. “I think I understand that more than you know.”

“I thought you might. ‘S why I toldja.”

We both heard a reedy voice from inside. Two pairs of ears went on swivel, and then the strange mare stuck her tongue out. “Looks like my agent is looking for me. He knows I hate these, so he figures if he plays babysitter I’ll have a better time.”

“I take it he’s wrong.”

“Completely. I really just need a lot of booze. But he’s trying, bless his heart, and I do like him. I’ll have to go. Thank you for talkin’ Ms. Rarity.”

She turned and waved before striding away. It occurred to me that I did not even know her name! Appalled at my behavior, and needing to know, I called out to her.

“Excuse me! Miss! You didn’t tell me your name.”

She stops, looks back at me and grins mischeivously. “You can call me Fresh Catch, cause I think you’re a swell pony. But you know who I am already. The other name is Canvas. Oh, and I forgot. You should go home sometimes. You could use it.”

And with that, she vanished downstairs and I stood too astonished to consider the fact that anypony could see me without the feminizing effects of my magic up here.

I descended eventually. I did not say hello to Fancy, mostly because he and his companions were gone. I did not say hello or goodbye to anyone. There was no need. My magic was up.

Canterlot was cold, but not unwelcoming. I took a carriage home but asked the nice driver to stop a few blocks from my flat so I could walk. He was understanding, and bid me have a good night.

The streets were not full but they were alive. Well lit, with ponies bustling back and forth, they hummed with living and breathing and I was there and I too lived and breathed and in the way of cities I felt we were all a single breathing and a single living.

But only for a moment. And then I was a my door, and then up the stairs, and then into my own apartment and lying flat on my bed.

Only necessity forced my hoof, and I rose to stumble into the bathroom. When I was finished, I undid the enchantment and looked at myself, into the eyes of a stranger, and thought that it did not feel real. None of it.

I kept thinking of her paintings. I kept thinking of myself getting of the Canterlot train to set up my shop. I thought of myself before the elements, learning that spell, hidden in my room for days on end, hoping beyond hope I could one day be undetected, so that I might learn to be all that anypony noticed.

Stars above, it’s nothing. It’s nothing at all. I pull the little stool in front of the mirror to catch me as I fall back onto my haunches and I start to laugh at those stranger’s eyes and I think that all I ever wanted was the same thing as anyone, and here it is, to know why I was and where I was and what I was, and how lucky I was. I was lucky.

I kept saying it. I was lucky.

Very lucky.

I think I will go home tomorrow. To Ponyville. I think I shall walk down the field to Applejack’s for lunch, and then knock on Twilight Sparkle’s regal door around sunset and ask if she would be interested in a bit of wine and perhaps cards or the book I’d started on the train. I think I shall go to the Boutique and listen to my sister sing, and drop in on my parents. I think I shall go home again.

It’s just time, is all. I am perfectly happy here.

I’m very lucky.