There are few smells I can call to mind that are quite as insidiously disgusting as dishwater.

Oh, there are sharp and harsh smells of garbage and manure, rotting fruit and dead things. There are overwhelming smells from which you need to escape, like an onion. But there is nothing I hate more than the way the smell of dirty dishwater lingers and lingers, clinging to your hooves and soaking into the soft locks of hair around them. False cleanliness-- the smell of soap which barely masked the smell of old food and grease. It smelled dingy and grey, just the smell of it.

Yet here I stood, doing my best to clean with magic and failing miserably. My focus was terrible, which I suppose was no surprise, and my shaking grip splashed the dirty water all over my chest. Rather than have such a nasty scent wafting up with every breath, I elected to douse my hooves in the unsightly substance.

If I’m honest, though, it was the least of my concerns. It can be convenient to compartmentalize emotions and self-generate distractions.

And so I slowly and methodically scrubbed the dishes, being sure to keep up a convincing clatter of dishes. As long as Nightwhisper though I was busy, he would leave me be. I just needed to be left alone for a moment, put my mind back together.

My foolish, shattered mind.

There was a window above the sink, and a light. It was the kind of window which had no real purpose and didn’t offer a very nice view, it just happened to be there above the sink. The light attracted moths which thumped softly against the glass. The glare of the fluorescent bulb against the window pane made it nearly impossible to see the desert beyond.

I allowed myself to sink into a deep daze, mindlessly gazing into the light on the glass as I scrubbed plates and bowls and forks.

I almost didn’t realize that I was looking into her eyes.

I gasped softly and dropped a spoon into the depths of the dishwater. There she was, Rainbow Dash, peering at me as she hovered outside my window.

At first I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t speak to her. I couldn’t get to her. She seemed stuck, as well, not having expected to make it as far as she did and now lost as to her next step.

“Rarity…” she whispered. I could just barely hear her through the glass.

I looked into her eyes, hoping to communicate a need to be left alone. Did I want to be swept away? Of course. Could I possibly disappear right now? Absolutely not.

She didn’t seem to get the message and started to wave her hoof at me, checking for a response. I intensified my glare.

Still not getting the message, she reached out and gave the window pane a gentle tap.

I shook my head, firmly and slowly.

This appeared to hit Rainbow like a pang of grief. She faltered in the air, her usually steady wings not quite able to take the idea that I didn’t need her.

It wasn’t so. Of course it wasn’t. But what else could I do? I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t risk Rainbow being hurt or chased away.

And this stupid window pane!

Rainbow’s eyes were no longer glazed. They were clear and they were hurt, and they looked so deeply into my own that I was certain she would see the truth of my situation. Surely, surely Rainbow Dash, of all ponies… Surely she could see that I needed her and was incapable of asking.

Surely she could sense my undying loyalty.

The buzzing. The buzzing was there as I looked into her eyes and saw that loyalty reflected and magnified. She could feel I needed her, how badly I needed her because if I didn’t have her then I might--

I smashed the dish down into the sink and it wasn’t a sink anymore. It was the great, dried-up fountain which was set in the center of the shopping center.

This time, there was about an inch of water in the bottom, and it splashed up onto my chest. It smelled of chlorine, one of those overpowering smells from which I needed to escape.

But the buzzing was gone. And so was Nightwhisper. All that was left was Rainbow, hovering before me and looking into me.

I ran to her. I ran to her and pulled her down into the water with a mighty spray of chlorinated water. She submitted to my embrace much easier this time, even squeezed back a little. Burying myself in her was so much more lovely, more intoxicatingly wonderful, than even being near Nightwhisper.

Her mane smelled of berries.

“How do you always know just when I need you?” I mumbled into her neck.

Rainbow chuckled hoarsely. “Hate to break it to you, Rares, but this one wasn’t all that tough.” She stroked my mane with one hoof, and I could feel her gently taming it into a more familiar shape. Just like the old Rarity, but not. “I’ve told you that I like your mane short, right?”

I made some sort of noise, meant to be a laugh but more like a gasp. “I think you have. I like yours short, too.”

Rainbow’s stroking slowed to a stop, and she blushed a bit.

I pulled away from her hug, somewhat reluctantly, and looked her in the eye. “How are you doing this?”

“I-I’m not!” She insisted, her voice reaching pitches heretofore unheard of. “I don’t know anything about this place!”

“What are you doing, then?” I asked.

Rainbow struggled not to roll her eyes as she sighed. “I’ve told you, Rarity. I’m from the future-- I mean, a future. Things went bad and I’m trying to fix them. I can’t tell you anything else.”

“You said ‘can’t’ that time.” I pointed out.

“I-I did?” Rainbow asked. Her eyes flicked nervously up to the ceiling. “I mean, I did before, didn’t I? I musta said something.”

“What can’t you tell me, Rainbow?” I pressed. I took what I could of a step forward, towering nearly a head over that compact racer’s body.

She scrambled backwards a few steps, swallowed hard.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with me, does it? I thought you told me that you’d made a mistake,” I said. “If it was you who made a mistake, what’s stopping you from telling me about it?”

Rainbow’s eyes were darting about the room, searching for a safe place to land.

I stopped my forward momentum and stomped my hoof in the water again. It splashed against my chest and wafted the chlorine smell up to me. “Why is it that I can’t get a straight answer out of anypony these days?” I said, more to myself than Rainbow. “I’m sick of being treated as if I would simply fall apart should anypony tell me something shocking or undesirable. Do I look that fragile?”

Rainbow held her tongue, wisely. I knew what I looked like. I looked thin and delicate and disheveled, most days. I looked as if I didn’t care anymore, as if I were falling apart at the seams and nopony was there to pick up the pieces.

I sighed. “I know it’s strange, but part of me wishes I could just let this all go back to being slow. Everything was so slow… and I could understand things. Now things are happening so fast that I can barely keep up.”

Rainbow opened her mouth, but decided to remain silent. She could have reminded me that this was a mysterious and confusing time for reasons outside of my control, that she was with me every step of the way, that everything would be okay. But she didn't. I’m not sure if that made me more or less angry.

“I just…” I took a shaking breath. “I need a moment. I need one moment and I can’t get it. My time is everypony’s but mine.”

This rang out through the silence. Rainbow dared not speak, merely shuffled her hooves imperceptibly in the stagnant water. The pool was not near as green as it had been the last time I visited, I noticed. It was newer.

I looked upwards. The whole building was newer, wasn’t it? Not by much-- still definitely disused for quite a long time. And yet… not quite as long a time.

“Well…” Rainbow cleared her throat. “If you feel like you need space, I’ll give you space.”

The buzzing came back. Perhaps it had been hanging in the fringiest edges of my mind all this time. Rainbow was retreating, headed for the door, never to return.

“Wait, Rainbow, that isn’t--”

“No, you’re right,” she cut me off, harsh. “You need time alone to figure things out. I sprung this on you and that’s not fair. Take your time. I’ll be back when you’re ready.”

“But I--”

The buzzing was growing, mounting, becoming a shrieking wind which tore at me, over which I could hear nothing else. It took sand with it, and jabbed at my skin with the force of a thousand tiny needles. My mane whipped into a frenzy, and I had to pause, cringe, let the wind wash over me in agony until it finally settled, dropping from hurricane force to nary a breath in an instant.

And there was no more shopping center.

And there was no more Rainbow Dash.

And I was alone. I stood in the middle of the desert, having disappeared right out from under Nightwhisper’s watchful eye, having lost my only supportive influence. Naked to the world.

I stood still for a moment. A gentle breeze blew over me, ruffling my mane and tail. The way my mane writhed on my head was still so foreign to me. I supposed this was how Pinkie Pie’s mane must feel; topheavy, shifting rather than billowing in the wind.

Don’t think about the girls.

Please don’t dig up the box.

I couldn’t do that again. Couldn’t crumble and reminisce and long for the past. I was were I was. I couldn’t change that.

I didn’t cry this time. My heart had been tugged in so many directions today alone--

I am Rarity.

Today is Saturday.

I am alive.

Soon to be Sunday. Soon another day gone, I will have made it to Sunday and have absolutely nothing to show for it. Would have survived shear terror and true heartache and nothing left but an empty shell who wants to be alone. Alone, can you imagine?

Am I even Rarity anymore?

I don’t feel it. I feel like somepony entirely different-- although, no, that isn’t right, either.

I feel as though I have become somepony that I don’t recognize, in pursuit of the pony that I truly want to be. What a twisted and tangled up mess I had become.

What did I want? Did I want true love? Did I want somepony to care for me, to help me when I couldn’t help myself?

Because that certainly doesn’t sound like me.

The Rarity I know is a do-it-herself kind of mare. She doesn’t take no for an answer, slaves day and night to make something she’s proud of. She doesn’t depend on anypony else. She loves other ponies, of course. But she doesn’t need them.

Why Nightwhisper?

I had been too…

Too…

GODDESS

It hit me like a lightning bolt, all other thoughts forced out of my mind in a flash. Never in my life had a thought come to me with such power. It was barely even a thought-- it was a scream of fear and panic and then an explosive rush of emotion. It was somepony else who said it, not me. I very nearly recognized it.

But I needed to go back.

I needed to go home, to Nightwhisper. If I used my magic, I could sneak up the stairs and past the couch (where he was surely sleeping) and he would never know I had been gone.

And he wouldn’t do anything to me.

I set off back towards the gas station. I could see its heavenly beacon from here as it shined down onto the foreign mechanisms which Nightwhisper and his crew tended to.

The word pounded in my mind like a heartbeat. I could feel it against my temples, threatening to explode outwards and spew whatever else came with it. With every step I took, it grew stronger. A chant. A spell, a curse. It pulled me. Pulled me along the path I already tread.

MISSING

GODDESS

Joined by its partner, now. The Missing Poster, the flash of neon in the drab desert which warned of something that I, perhaps, could have put a stop to. I didn’t like to think about that, though. An innocent soul like Mossy Bridge. Had I known, I would have done something. But there is no time for me to understand things anymore. There is endless information, thrown at me in flashes and snippets and shouts and lies… how could I have known?

Like the heartbeat of guilt in that old story. Warnings which I cannot understand, but should have heeded, pulsing through me. Not only these clear and obvious things, but nebulous feelings of dread which hover about me. Something in the newspaper that I can’t remember…

DUSK

Dusk. Of course, how could I forget? Dusk… it held no meaning at all. A single word, how could it?

MISSING

GODDESS

DUSK

Something of a song. A plodding rhythm to it as I walked through the desert. The wind was at my back, blowing my mane around my face like a set of blinders, my tail tickling my own flank. I struggled to keep a steady pace as the wind forced me along. I was in no rush. If I had a choice, I would walk on forever.

Wouldn’t that be nice? There was nothing stopping me. I could turn and walk out into the desert and be lost for eternity. I could fade away out there.

A tempting thought.

I drew nearer to the gas station. The words thudded harder and harder, flooding my mind and blocking out everything else.

I saw a shape, yes. I saw a shape, but it didn’t mean anything. How could it have? How could such an unassuming mass mean something to me?

It dangled under the large roof of the gas station. In the very back of my mind, the part which the thudded words could not reach, I thought it was some new kind of pump. That’s all. Just a newfangled thing which would feed fuel into the auto-carriages that rolled in and rolled out every damn day.

Just a new pump, which kind of swung in the wind. A new pump which was lit from above like it was an angel sent from heaven, and it probably was. Lit from above so that everything else of it was cast in stark shadow. Lit from above by a flickering light which I had allowed myself to get used to but now shot cold dread up my spine.

And the words slammed against the inside of my skull.

Parts of this new pump hung heavily straight down, dead weights which swung gently from side to side. Parts of it were very loose, and billowed at a much greater rate. The shape had no meaning. The shape was just a shape.

I drew ever closer. I cannot say that this was the moment that realization dawned upon me, because it had truly dawned much earlier. This was the moment that I accepted it.

Moss.

She hung by a thick, heavy rope which ran up over the top of the roof and was probably tied to the spire of one of the old pumps. The real pumps. She hung, still in her waitress’ uniform, which waved and danced in the wind. Lacey trim. Stark, white apron which was yellowed by the light.

Her body was dead weight. It swung and spun ever so slowly in the breeze. Like a plumb bob. Just a meaningless shape.

Her head looked down. Her mane, still working free of a tight bun, almost entirely covered her face.

And, for a moment, it was me who hung there.

And then it was Moss again.

My eyes drifted downwards, too filled with sick fascination to pull away, and yet too disgusted and horrified to keep looking.

And there was Rainbow Dash.

She stood below where Moss hung, her wings outstretched, looking up in fear and terror. The yellow light played down onto her, as well, turning her feathers a sickly green and her mane and muted rainbow.

She was shaking.

Shaking, knees practically knocking. She looked as if she might vomit. And I couldn’t draw up any feeling at all.

Rainbow took a few steps back, still shaking all the while, out of the yellow spotlight.

She saw me.

“Rarity!” she called, breaking into a run towards me.

I stood silently, still gazing at Moss’ limp body, and waited for Rainbow to reach me.

She skidded to a halt in front of me. A cloud of sand rose between us.

I took a deep breath, though my voice was quite steady. “That’s Moss.”

Rainbow was panting heavily. She smacked her lips in an attempt to sigh. “You know her?”

I nodded. “She served us at Open Doors. Don’t you remember?”

Rainbow squinted at me, looked me up and down. “No… Rares, that was Blue Moon. Do you remember Blue Moon?”

I scoffed and pushed past Rainbow, trotting in the direction of the station. “The first time, Rainbow Dash.”

I heard Rainbow’s hoofsteps hurry to catch up with me after a pause. “Rarity, please don’t go over there! Y-you don’t need this right now, you need space and distraction and--”

I stopped as suddenly and forcefully as I could and turned, slowly, to look at Rainbow. “I am sick and tired of other ponies telling me what I do and don’t need. I decide what I need, Rainbow Dash. And I need to see her.”

Rainbow stood in stunned silence. I pushed past her a second time. She did not try to catch up.

Moss hung over an empty patch of asphalt. No gas canisters, no service stations, no pay stations. It was an overlooked place in the plans.

And there, written in chalk:

Now I am perfect

I blinked at the words.

Moss had not written them.

Or maybe she had. Maybe she had, and I didn’t want to believe it. Maybe she hated her life and needed to escape, and nopony would ever let her have peace even though she so clearly wanted it.

But Moss didn’t write it.

The Dusk Guardians did.

Author's Note

Who are the Dusk Guardians?

What do they have to do with the mysterious death of Mossy Bridge?

What does their message mean?

All of these questions and more to be answered... in the next part of Threshold.

Hope everyone enjoyed Part II!! Hang in there for Part III, it may be quite a while before I'm able to update.