“Are you coming to bed, Rarity?”
The tender voice of Princess Celestia distracted me from an idle train of thought. I stopped the sewing machine for a moment in order to look back at my beautiful paramour and found a smile gracing my lips at the sight of her effortless beauty, at her transcendent mane shimmering all around her but most of all at the warm and gentle smile she was giving me.
“No. I don’t think so.” I said, turning my head back to my machine and returning my concentration to the dress I was sewing. I couldn’t even remember to whom this one belonged after eleven straight hours of work and I’d lost count of the number of dresses I’d finished in that time.
“I would like to continue working, if you don’t mind.” I said to the Princess, not even bothering to look for her response.
“Are you sure?” The Princess asked with some concern. “You’ve been at it all day already. That doesn’t seem entirely healthy.”
I shrugged. That was all the response I could muster.
I needed to focus.
I needed to keep working.
“Well…” she sounded surprised. Was she hurt? Did I honestly hurt the feelings of Equestria’s monarch with my callousness?
No, I suppose it didn’t matter.
I needed to focus.
I needed to keep working.
“I suppose…” she said slowly, drawing out every breath like she was waiting for me to interject. “…if you’re suuuuure…”
“I’m—”
I paused, very nearly tearing a seam in the dress I was sewing if Celestia had not stopped the machine with her magic just in time.
“Yes?” she said with a glimmer of optimism in her voice.
I looked down at the dress and the machine in front of me, unable to dare look at the most beautiful mare in Equestria standing behind me. She deserved better from me. She deserved better than me.
I needed to focus.
I needed to…
To…
I stopped what I was doing and sat on my flank, my forelegs slipping from the table where the machine was sitting and hitting the cold marble ground with a barely audible thud.
I continued to stare at the machine, as though I felt that if I looked at it hard enough it would drag me through a portal to anyplace else, anywhere other than here.
But there wasn’t any place that I would rather be.
Here, in the royal castle of Canterlot, in a little studio made just for me by the Princess of Equestria, designed by the Princess herself specifically for her lover.
For me.
She made this for me, and I was using it to shut her out.
“If there’s something on your mind, Rarity…” Celestia spoke and with her voice shattered the prison of thought I had locked myself in, “I would like nothing more than to hear it.”
I didn’t want to open up to her.
No, I was afraid to open up to her.
Why?
Oh I don’t know, maybe because she was the Princess of all bloody Equestria and all she had to do was flick her hoof and suddenly I would be nothing more than a pile of dust! Could you imagine angering the monarch of all—
No, no no no. That’s all ridiculous.
I wasn’t afraid to open up to her, I was afraid to open up to myself. Because I knew, somewhere deep down I knew, that what I was hiding from myself was an ugly truth and that I wouldn’t like it if I opened it.
But Celestia deserved better from me.
I deserved better from me.
“I’m tired, Celestia.” I said coldly, unable to raise my head or turn around to look at her. “I’m so tired.”
“I take it this isn’t a tiredness that simply going to bed will solve, hm?” Celestia said casually, a slightly chipper joking tone in her voice, as she walked over to me and sat beside me.
“No.” I shook my head. I flinched at the feeling of her feathers brushing across my back as she wrapped a wing around me, but I found myself instinctively sidling into her embrace regardless, even leaning my head against her chest. “I’m so tired… of working for nothing.”
I felt the Princess’ head nuzzling against mine and I closed my eyes, letting a breath I hadn’t realized I had been holding escape my lips. I wanted to tell her that I loved her but fear bit my tongue instead.
“I’m tired,” I repeated. “I have spent my entire adult life working, and where have I gotten from it? A mountain of stress and a constantly busy schedule that keeps me more and more isolated from my friends.”
I shook my head and jerked away from the Princess, leaving her embrace and finding the rest of the room to be so cold and empty by comparison. I paced the marble floor and fumed, gritting my teeth and just trying, in vain, to find words to express the strangling sense of urgency that surrounded my daily routine, and the bitter sense of hopelessness that clawed at the back of my mind constantly.
“Rarity.”
That voice, her tone. That was not my lover or my friend, or even the Princess of Equestria speaking. That was my Mistress, and I stopped instantly as my ears flicked up. I looked at her with wide eyes, eagerly awaiting her next words.
She walked over to me, placed a hoof under my chin and raised my head to look her in the eye. A frown marred my normally beautiful face as it scrunched up to hold back the tears which would doubtlessly ruin my flawless makeup.
“Yes, Princess?” I whimpered, silently begging her to give me some direction.
“What do you want to do?” The Princess asked gracefully, a gorgeous smile brighter than the sun itself adorning her lips. “What do you really want to do with your life?”
“I don’t know.”
My answer was instantaneous, because it was the truth and I didn’t have to think about it. I honestly did not know.
“I’ve been chasing an ideal that I—” I bit my lip and backed away, fear and pain and grief and regret choking me and making it painful to get any of my words to come through. “I don’t know if it really exists—no, I’m sure that it doesn’t. And I don’t know what ‘real’ happiness is supposed to look like, or if it even exists either. I have my friends, I have you, I have a great career, and yet…”
I fell on my flank and shut my eyes tightly, unwilling to ruin my makeup and sully my beautifully crafted appearance in front of the Princess.
“I’m still miserable.”
I shook my head and wanted to scream.
“But what happens if I stop?” I whispered, more to myself than to the Princess. “What happens if I let myself stop working… I’ll never get to where I want to be, to a place where I can be happy, but what if… what if that place doesn’t exist? I don’t… I don’t know.”
I let out a bitter, ghostly laugh.
“There are times where I worry… I feel that even what I have with you is nothing more than a dream, and that it will disappear from my grasp if I even so much as blink.”
The Princess was silent, yet her quiet was not cold or harsh. She seemed to be doting on every word that I said, considering each and every piece of my rambling confession as though it were the most important of peace treaties or country-wide laws.
She leaned down and gently placed her nose against mine, and that is when the tears finally began to fall down my face. I couldn’t stop them after Celestia made it clear to me that even despite me being… the way that I am… she still loved me.
“Rarity.” Celestia’s tone was that of an angel, the pure and sweet sound of the woman who I had fallen in love with. “I will face every one of your demons head-on alongside you, if you will let me. But we can only move forward step by step, one at a time.”
The Princess put her hoof underneath my chin once more but I did not need her help to look into her gorgeous, radiant amethyst eyes.
“So tell me, Princess Rarity,” Celestia said with a warm smile, “what do you want to do now?”
I gently walked over to Celestia, the Princess sitting on her flank and outstretching a wing to cover me once more. I pressed my body against hers and let out a contented sigh, choosing to heed her words of comfort and support, and truly believe that no matter what came tomorrow, we could handle it… together.
“I want to sleep. With you.”
Author's Note
My first foray into the realm of microfiction. It's a bit rough, but I like it. :3c
