“I’m waiting for you!” called out through time and space and eternity.

I remember standing before a foggy mirror (not the friendly fog of steam, but the parasitic fog of unwashed grime) in the dingy bathroom of the Open Doors Diner. It was a charming, if kitschy, establishment that I had no memory of entering.

Even standing still I could feel that my hooves were stuck to the floor with Celestia-knows-what.

Before moving, I slowly tilted my chin upward and gazed into my own face.

There wasn’t much to see.

My front hoof pulled away from the tiled floor with a gummy smack. It sent a chill up my spine. I slowly washed my front hooves, avoiding eye contact with my reflection as I did so, and made it to the door without touching the floor again in a terrific balancing act I’m not certain I could duplicate.

The main space of the diner was not unlike any other. The furniture had chrome trimmings. The waitstaff (all mares) wore little blue dresses with white aprons. I didn’t wonder about their construction, or the fabric choice. I simply noticed they were blue.

It appeared to be near dawn, and thus a few traveling groups and most of the town’s working population were feasting in exhausted silence. One small foal was asleep in her breakfast. It would have been sweet, had I not felt like I had been run over a few times.

“Miss?”

I opened my eyes, not realizing they had been closed. “Mm?”

“You alright?” the waitress asked. I could barely register a face in my groggy confusion.

I blinked one slow blink. “Oh! Yes, fine. Just… ran in to use the little filly’s room.”

She looked me up and down, put a gentle hoof on my shoulder. “Would you like some coffee?”

“Oh, I’m not…” I paused, gazing out at the rising sun. Ponies were starting to clear out already, needing to start their journeys once more. The quiet grew quieter. “Sure.”

The waitress led me to a booth near the window. The butte, behind which I could be almost certain I had spent an emotionally healing night with an old friend, showed no signs of supernatural invasion.

The thick ceramic mug thunked down on the table in front of me. The waitress, whose name badge I simply could not focus on hard enough to read, expertly poured me a cup of hot coffee.

I lifted it to my face with my magic, feeling the hot steam curl through my nostrils and the scent of the coffee cut through my psyche.

“You’re Rarity, right?” the waitress asked.

I sighed. “I suppose.”

“I don’t mean to pry, but…” she shuffled her hooves. “Well, don’t you have friends in Ponyville?”

“It’s a long story.”

The bell at the door gave a soft chime as another customer left.

“I got the time,” the waitress said. She slid into the booth across from me. “I’m Moss.”

The letters on her name badge suddenly made sense.

“Mossy Bridge. But Moss is fine.” The way “fine” slid off her tongue was so soothingly reminiscent of Applejack…

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Moss,” I said. “But I don’t think I’ll be sharing anything that personal today.”

Her mouth twitched up in an almost-smile. “I understand.”

I set the mug back down on the table. “I’m sorry. You seem like a sweet girl, but I think I need a moment to myself.”

Moss pursed her lips a bit. A lock of her mane hung frazzled against her cheek, clearly being chewed in times of thought and anxiety. “Of course, miss. My apologies.”

She stood up in an awkward, halting motion. I tilted my head away from her. My mane fell against my own cheek in a gesture of shame and shielding. There was a time when I would have gladly given myself to any young fan or curious follower of ‘The Mane Six.’ That time had long since passed.

I picked my coffee back up and my eyes drifted back to the window. The rising sun illuminated San Palomino in an eerie, almost otherwordly light. Not in the traditional sense, of course. But the elongated shadows and the strange green-tinged hue of the light which spilled over the landscape always made me want to hunker down indoors.

I took a long, slow sip of the coffee. It was decent. Certainly the best in town.

A light breeze blew through town. It was normally quite difficult to tell when this happened, as there was little to be ruffled by the wind.

Today, however, the flutter of a piece of highlighter-yellow paper caught my eye.

It was stapled to a telephone pole across the street. I set down my mug and leaned towards the window, my muzzle scrunching up in a squint.

MISSING

the paper proclaimed. There seemed to be a portrait of a pony below it.

As soon as I had processed this information, the wind snatched the paper off the pole and sent it tumbling away into the desert.

I tapped my hoof lightly on the top of the table.

“I am Rarity. Today is Friday. I am alive.”

Goodness, I’d made it to Friday.

The bell above the door tinkled lightly.

“Mornin’, sunshine!” a waitress proclaimed.

I turned to glance over my shoulder, got halfway there, regretted it. None of my business, really. My business was coffee. Little else.

Delicate and gentle hoofsteps tap-tap-tapped closer and closer to me, and I finally felt something graze my shoulder.

“Mind if I sit here?” The voice was raspy and small.

The tip of a bright blue feather brushed against my shoulder a second time. My breath hitched in my throat.

There she stood, once again.

“Rainbow…” was all I could manage.

She laughed a little. It was a familiar little “heh-hyeh!”, but strained all the same.

“Think you can stay awake long enough to fill me in this time?” she asked, sliding into the booth across from me.

“Awake?” I repeated.

She squinted at me. “Yeah, Rares. You got crazy tired last night and conked out on me. Basically in the middle of a sentence. I had to carry you home. Remember?”

I rubbed my eyes with both hooves. Splotches of color danced before my eyes. “I don’t remember that at all…”

“Jeez. You doing okay?”

I paused. “Wait. You carried me?”

Rainbow scoffed. “I mean-- Well, I helped you walk. I’m not Supermare.” She laughed again. “I’m flattered, though.”

I must have not had the appropriate reaction to this, as Rainbow cocked her head slightly and gave me a curious look.

“Have you been having a lot of trouble remembering things?”

I sighed. “Goodness, I suppose I have.”

“Hm…” Rainbow was rubbing her hoof in a little circle on the countertop. “Say, you think I could get some coffee, too?”

She looked past me then, over my shoulder and into the rest of the diner. One of her eyes twitched slightly, imperceptibly, and she shook her head lightly.

“On second thought, why don’t we go somewhere else?” she asked, already halfway to her hooves. “This place is a little hot for me.”

I turned around, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever it was Rainbow had seen. There was only an empty diner, an empty desert, and empty sky.

“I don’t--”

“C’mon, Rares,” Rainbow held out a hoof to me. “Let’s go for a walk.”

It’s difficult to explain, but there was a sinking feeling in my gut as I considered leaving the diner. This place seemed very safe, calm, quiet. A part of a life that might not have made me happy, but at least a life I had.

Rainbow’s eyes, while shaped in a smiling squint, had a milky film of an emotion that I simply couldn’t place across their shimmering surface. Her lips seemed to curl up in a soft grin with a difficulty that I couldn’t understand.

I took Rainbow’s hoof.

She pulled me up out of the booth and we walked, together, towards the front doors of the diner.

There wasn’t anybody in it.

The chrome had lost its shine, and vines were squirming across the surfaces of the tables. They exploded through the vinyl seats. Silently.

I drew closer to Rainbow, and the windows became slowly, slowly, slowly covered with moss and grime and more vines, moving like snakes, moving like the tentacles of a monster which lay beneath the sand.

Rainbow looked straight ahead, chewing one trembling lip. Otherwise, unfazed.

She pushed through the door. The bell did not chime. The ribbon which held it to the wall disintegrated with the small motion, and the bell clattered across the floor.

In the vestibule now. There was a small display of brochures in the corner. As we hurried past it, every brochure said the same thing:

GODDESS!

Black paper. Large, white text.

“R-Rainbow--”

She gave me a shove through the final door, and we were back in the desert.

It was… unchanged.

I whirled about. The diner, too: unchanged.

Mossy Bridge was clearing our table.

Rainbow’s breath whistled gently through her teeth. Even just thinking about how solidly and clearly she stood there made me want to cry. Her form was real and palpable and my fury at that very concept stirred in my chest, a rumbling force as powerful as an oncoming storm.

For the first time in a long time, I remembered the box.

Clearly expecting a question of some sort, Rainbow’s eyes flicked over to look at me a few times. She said nothing.

I didn’t say anything, either. I turned away from her, slowly, and began to plod out into the desert.

It took Rainbow a few moments to decide to gallop to my side.

“Rarity?”

“You’re not real,” I said.

“No, Rares, I--”

“I was an idiot to think that you would come back,” I continued, barrelling over whatever it was that this utterly convincing mirage was arguing.

“If you just listen--”

“I’m all alone out here. I’ve been alone for quite a long time, now.”

“I know, but--”

“Not that it’s anypony else’s business, but I’ve been doing really well out here!” A little bit of a choked sob slipped out. “I’ve been doing really, really well, and that’s my place to judge.”
+
“Well--”

“Everypony left me. Everypony ignored me. And here I was, alone, missing all of them and nopony even cared!”

I threw myself down into the sand at the base of a gnarled fan cactus. Normally my need for the box was slower and more calculated, giving me time to prepare myself, but not this time.

I snapped one of the paddles off the cactus with my magic and began to dig furiously at the soft sands. You would think it would be difficult to keep track of something so small in shifting desert sands, but this box always stayed stuck right here under this prickly guardian.

Rainbow Dash, now silent, knelt in the sand across from me. She folded her front hooves under herself like a cat and gazed at me with a vague mixture of emotions I couldn’t place. Through the flurries of flying sand, out of the corner of my eye, she really looked like she could have been a trick of the light. A solar flare in the eye which made the air dance with pulsing rainbows for a moment.

The cactus caught something and drew out a bit of clear plastic bag. I tossed the makeshift tool to the side and lifted the bounty out of its hiding place.

Here was a plain little cardboard box stamped all over with old shipping labels. It had probably been used to carry some sort of expensive thread to my workshop.

The box was inside a bag held shut with a clothespin. The bag had held a ball of yarn at some point.

I removed the clothespin, gently tugged out the cardboard box. The flaps popped open a bit once they were free from their prison.

Rainbow Dash swallowed hard.

I sniffled, partly against the sand.

“This,” I said, lifting out a piece of smooth paper, “is the first advertisement I ever saw for Pinkie-- excuse me, for Rock Pink’s comedy hour. Not that anypony bothered to tell me about it. I saw it one day in a magazine I bought at the Kwik-Grab. I didn’t know she was doing stand-up at all. Funny way to find out.”

I looked down at the ad a little longer. Pinkie’s trademark hot-pink curls towards the bottom, her silhoutette looking out at crowd which was dark against the spotlight.

I folded it back up, tucked it away. Pulled out a metal tag.

“This is Opal’s nametag. She had to be put down… something wrong with her pancreas. Fluttershy wasn’t even available, so busy with her clinic. Some Canterlot vet put her down. She sent me a card and some information on adopting a new kitten.”

The tag was dull with years of wear. The letters still caught the desert sun when you tilted it the right way.

I dropped it back in the box, reached in a third.

A curled-up label. I uncurled it, sniffed again.

“Applejack’s Apple Jam. Her own recipe. I bought at a market from one of her employees. Tasted delicious.” I cleared my throat to swallow down the tears threatening to jump out. “I wrote her to say so, but she never responded.”

The paper curled back up with a snap, fell hollowly back the box.

Rainbow’s lips thinned as I fished for the next item.

I had to take a breath before I spoke. A shaking, rattling breath which nearly collapsed. “A commemorative pin. Twilight’s Coronation. Needless to say, I wasn’t present.”

This one hit the inside of the box with force.

“This last one is yours.”

Rainbow straightened up.

“This was your tour announcement. Do you remember it?”

I held the paper up for her to examine. It was a poster that had been stapled to nearly every telephone pole in Equestria. Everypony loved the Wonderbolts, and everypony sure loved Rainbow Dash. Her prismatic mane streaked in a lightning bolt down the paper, flanked by Spitfire and Soarin, their stylized and graceful forms dive-bombing the words “WONDERBOLTS WORLD TOUR.”

Rainbow tore her eyes away from the sand with visible difficulty.

“Yes.”

“All of you just disappearing on me, refusing to answer my letters. Ignoring me. Deliberately avoiding me and anything to do with me!” I huffed through my nose. “With no explanation.”

Rainbow blinked hard. A tear slid down her cheek, cutting a track in its peach-fuzz fur.

I stuffed the announcement back in the box, forced the flaps closed over the messily-packed items, crammed it back in the bag. With one messy swipe of my hoof it was back in its rightful place at the base of the cactus.

The box held my gaze still. “It’s no wonder I imagined you here.”

Her hoof slid against the inside of my front leg. The cool surface of the shoe grazed my ankle, made its way up to my knee. It left a trail of mussed fur as it went, gliding against the grain with ease. She wrapped it to the outside of my leg and pulled herself forward a bit.

I looked up into her eyes. Real eyes.

And here she was. Real as ever, present as ever, but finally cemented in my mind as somepony different.

Time had not stopped for her, as it had for me.

There was a film of age, of sadness, of something entirely foreign over her wide eyes.

Her tongue poked out, pulled in her lower lip. She just held it there for a moment. Her eyes shimmered and flickered ever so slightly as the ran across my face.

She opened her mouth, drew a breath.

There was a pang of fear in my chest.

“Rares, I gotta be honest…”

The buzzing. Like a thousand powered saws, like a million chittering changelings, like an infinity of garbled radio signals hammering in eardrums. It pounded desperately at my skull, threatened to collapse.

Or perhaps explode outward, release something I had buried.

“Some stuff got a little mixed up.”

“M-mixed up?” I stuttered.

The noise and the sun and her mane and the goddamned noise.

I closed my eyes against the invasiveness of it all, feeling no calmer as stinging grains of sand pelted into my face.

“Rarity?” Rainbow’s hoof wrapped a little tighter around me and I felt the world slip away even further. “Rarity, what’s wrong?”

I heaved a ragged breath. “What do you mean, mixed… mixed up?” I barely managed to get the words out.

“Oh, Celestia, Rarity you don’t look so good.” I felt her other hoof against my shoulder.

Everything stopped.

“Ah, shit…” Rainbow muttered.

My eyes were still closed. The sun was gone, replaced by a soft green light which didn’t much try to pry them open as gently beckoned me to look.

Back in the shopping center.

Rainbow was looking up, up at the glass ceiling which was covered in dirt and sand and roots. Little dunes were piled around her, like a pedestal.

I followed Rainbow’s gaze and saw darkness beyond our little encampment. Everything inside was bathed in green light which came from nowhere and everywhere. It should have made me uneasy. It should have made me sick to my stomach, made me want to run away and cower in fear and confusion, but it was like a pleasing warmth on a decades-old ache.

I looked back to Rainbow.

“What stuff?” I asked.

Rainbow blinked, swallowed, avoided my eyes. “Hm?”

My lips tightened into a very thin line. “What got mixed up, Rainbow?”

Her muzzle twitched.

“What do you have to do with this?” I asked.

She scrunched up her nose at this implication of guilt.

“You have something to do with it. This isn’t just coincidence, is it?”

She breathed in, nostrils flaring. Her eyes met mine and locked there. She released her breath. It caught in her throat, and the wheezing edge of a cry escaped her lips.

“Some stuff changed.”

I looked, tilted my head.

“And some… some bad things happened,” she added. “I’m just trying to fix it.”

“So you’ve said.” I shifted my shoulders a bit, pushed them back, sat up straighter. “If this is about leaving for tour--”

“I haven’t made it yet.”

I stopped short, practically frozen. “You haven’t--”

“Nothing bad has happened… yet,” she said. “I came back to fix it. Only I think I did something wrong.”

No buzzing, and yet I couldn’t understand what was being said.

“Rares, none of the stuff in your box has happened yet,” she said, with an unexpected force. “You shouldn’t have it. None of it should have happened.”

“I don’t--”

“I fucked up, Rares…” She bit her lip. “I fucked up time. And you’re in the middle of it.”

END OF PART I

Author's Note

Thank you for reading Part I!! Part II is on its way, just be aware that it might not arrive within the week. Things are a tad hectic for me right now, and I prefer to have a pull part written before I start posting individual chapters. If you would like to hear updates on chapter progress, follow me and watch for blog posts!!
Thank you!