On The Slow Death Of Crocodiles

by Estee

Rating: teen
Tags: Original Character, Suicide / Self Harm, Rarity, Main 6, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Sad
Length: 13559

It's so easy for Rarity to feel pity for those less fortunate than she, to give of herself in the name of helping. But even Generosity only has so much to give.

You pity her. You see her, you speak with her for a few minutes, learn about the myriad of tragedies in her life (and there's always something new), and you just feel bad for her. You want to help. Really, it's easy for Rarity to let somepony stay with her for a little while, just until that guest truly gets back on their hooves, because the mare needs help.

You pity her. And when the pity runs out... that's where the self-loathing starts to come in.

(Part of the Triptych Continuum, which has its own TVTropes page and FIMFiction group. New members and trope edits welcome.)

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

Published 2019-06-26 23:20:02 UTC
Last updated 2019-06-26 23:20:02 UTC

The Algebra Of Necessity

She pitied the mare, almost from the very start. To not feel pity, to do anything other than wish for some way to help... that would have been the act of a monster. And so at the beginning, she had pity and near the end, after the pity had run out, she would come very close to deciding that she was a monster. A monster was something which could only care about itself. Something which devoured the world in an act of ultimate selfishness, and then placed the blame for the act upon the vacuum.

Somewhere within the time she would spend with the mare, there was a monster lurking, waiting for its chance.

She would remember that, after it ended. That there had been a monster.

She didn't visit her family all that often (especially when her father was coaching the hoofball team on the road), certainly not as much as she sometimes felt she should. The feeling that she was neglecting something would gradually build over the course of several weeks, nagging at her until she was convinced that the only way to prove she wasn't the worst pony to ever live was to take a few hours on the other side of town. The duration of such visits was a variable, and just about every last one ran out when she was finally provided with a definitive example of why it had been so long in the first place, followed by the reasons it probably should have gone on for much longer. But the bonds -- no, the obligations of blood kept pulling her back.

It wasn't a particularly interesting autumn day when she made the visit: nothing notable about the weather schedule, not a single atmospheric detail which would have distinguished from the rest of the season. It was a little cold and slightly breezy, plus it had also been long enough since the last visit for Rarity to have very nearly convinced herself that maybe things wouldn't be quite so bad this time. But then she'd carefully rapped a forehoof against the door, the most familiar female voice in her life had called for her to come in (looking back, there had been a faint note of desperation) and she'd instantly felt her fur begin to rebel against its own grain. She spent the first part of the trot down the too-short hallway in convincing herself that there had been a horrible mistake and she was the one who had made it.

But then she made out the other voice.

It was, in its way, a rather remarkable voice. It was the sort of voice which didn't so much vibrate eardrums as grind against bone. It included a laugh which expressed itself as the kind of sharp barks and yips which were usually confined within the Dogs' warrens. It was very easy to hear, and rather difficult to stop.

There was also some pain in that voice. There usually was.

But the other thing which registered was that her mother had a guest, an unfamiliar one, and that led to a moment of something less than precognition. An experience repeated far too often could wear a rut into the future, and so the inevitable happened at the instant she crossed the threshold into the kitchen, allowing her to both see and be seen. For her father would introduce the elder daughter by occupation, proudly talking about the Boutique because he knew how much work went into it every day, and her mother would start (and frequently finish) by talking about Rarity's old boarding school because she had been responsible for that. The fact that Rarity had dropped out to Do Something Else was an unnecessary historical extra, researched only by those hopelessly obsessed with trivia.

She knew her mother would do that, and so she didn't truly listen as it happened yet again. She was looking at the mare.

How old? It was difficult to tell. At least two decades beyond Rarity, but it could have been so much more. The brindle-black fur of the mare's coat had a coarse look to it, as if time itself had worn away the softness. It took a second to dismiss the image of collapsed hay and replace it with a dulled yellow mane which fell to the sides in a style where the lone consideration was to give a clear path to dimmed grey eyes. In all cases, the results had a curious visual density to them: the fur strands in particular had a noticeable diameter.

She was fairly short, with an oddly slender build: something where her body seemed to compact in on itself as it moved towards hooves and tail, belly and legs steadily diminishing in proportion before shockingly flaring back out into frayed tail and chipped hooves. Too slim, but -- oddly heavy for her size, and Rarity would only learn that before the end.

The mare raised a foreleg in greeting, and did so with visible pain: there was a wince as the knee bent, and the shy smile displayed yellowed teeth. It was the sort of yellow you got when you both didn't brush enough and drank wake-up juice far too much, and in fact there was half a mug of the creamy fluid on the kitchen table, right next to the mare.

(It was always half a mug.)

The mark... it took Rarity a moment to make it out, for even those colors seemed dingy, and once she'd spotted it, the identification took still longer. It was some sort of thick white ring with rope looped around it and a long line of hemp trailing off towards the tail -- oh. She'd seen the real thing all of once: it was equipment used to rescue floundering swimmers. Perhaps the mare had once been a lifeguard.

But not any more. She didn't move well. She didn't seem to be seeing clearly. There was a strange indentation at the base of her snout, as if agony had carved out a tiny divot. Time was assaulting her fur and pain had permanently creased her features and there was a scent about her, something which put Rarity in mind of mulch and compost. The smell of illness expressed as slow rot.

She looked at the mare, and she felt pity. The only way not to have felt it would have been if the observer was a monster.

Rarity looked at the mare, and so failed to truly see her mother. (The totality of that appearance would eventually reach her, after it was far too late. The hesitations in the movements which were normally so smooth, like those of a dancer.) But she heard her, because of course the visitor had to know all about the exclusive boarding school which Rarity had attended (and fled at the end of her fifth year, just as soon as her birthday had permitted her to do so, but Sun and Moon never overheard that part being brought up). And once the only thing about Rarity worth mentioning had been paraded out in full tack yet again, the guest was introduced.

It was a foreign name for an Equestrian pony, as some parents felt the way to give their child a chance at an interesting life was to add a touch of the exotic. The name made Rarity think of windswept moors, distant aviaries and towering cliffs.

The mare, claimed her mother, was an old friend -- well, somepony she'd known in school. Somepony who had recently returned to the area. And she had -- well... there had been certain things going on in her life...

Which was when the mare took over.

Could it be described as a river of words? Perhaps more of a faucet. You turned the tap and tragedy flowed.

Rarity listened. You couldn't help but listen when the mare talked about herself, at least for the first time. Perhaps just about everypony listened once, and when the tap wasn't quite closed...

(It never closed, not completely. There was leakage, an endless slow drip, and she could never be quite sure when the next piece of pain would fall. She waited for it to impact against her fur, she knew it was coming, and the wait could come very close to driving her mad.)

The mare was trying to rebuild her life, after all of that. She had been in Ponyville for -- a while: the time was never quite defined. But she was looking for a place to live, a place of her own, somewhere she would be safe. Simply to move forward after all that, to believe you could move forward when...

Rarity wanted to weep. (It wouldn't be the last time.) You almost had to weep, in the face of such pain. When you were looking at bravery and the insistence of going on in spite of it all.

The mare was sick.
The mare was dying.
But she had some time left. And while she had time, while there was still a chance to be under Sun and Moon -- she would move forward. Something which required safety, a haven, somewhere she could rest and venture from to seek her new home. And she didn't really have money at the moment, but money was on the way and --

Rarity... didn't think about it, really. She didn't ask how long the mare had been in town. She didn't attempt anything in the way of follow-up questions, and she certainly didn't recall that when it came to the care of others, her mother's habits could be described as pass-along. Not just then, anyway.

The mare just needed a place to stay (her mother was insistent on that), and the Boutique... the upper level, even after its conversion into an apartment, was simply too large for a single pony. It was even too big for a pony and cat. She had the space.

She was Generosity, and so the mare followed her home.

Much later, she would consider that some ponies changed their names. Did so as an act of defiance against destiny, or a way of expressing who they truly were. It sent her to the tree, and it didn't take all that long to learn what the exotic term might have meant.

If it had been the parents, there was a chance they had never done the same. That they'd simply liked the sound of it.

A translation which was three words long. The first part, she managed to lock down: 'sea of.' But the third... it was an old name, and so time had worn away at the origins. The last term could have come from a choice of two, and they both fit.

Perhaps the mare had chosen it for herself.
Or it could have been the parents. (Adoptive parents, claimed the mare. This was true.)
Or anypony she'd ever known.

It was generosity, was it not?

The mare needed a place to stay, and Rarity had space. She was too thin, and not in the way that Twilight was. The librarian had a naturally-slender build added to a small frame and a distressing tendency to swap meals for extra research time: the mare simply hadn't been eating properly, or perhaps not much at all.

(There was nothing natural about the mare's build. Nothing whatsoever.)

So she also needed feeding. And rest? Well, that was obvious! Plus the mare was sick, she'd talked so much about how she was sick and that meant doctors: Rarity could help her find a few. Oh, and a dress: that was just about mandatory. A new life (for the short time which remained -- it was a fairly short time, wasn't it? The mare hadn't really provided specifics...) required new clothing, and that wasn't going to be fitted until the mare had gotten some weight back and had a decent spa day, at least one, some grooming was clearly going to be involved here...

A new home, in Ponyville? That was the easy part! The town was perpetually under construction and in those cases where mission-related damage wasn't being repaired, those homes were new. All anypony needed to do was choose a neighborhood, style, and whether they wished the benefit of having a lawn available: there were worse options for quick snacks. But to get her ready to go on the search -- that would take a little longer. Time to make her feel better (but not fully healthy, for that could never happen). Happier. Show her that even after all she'd been through,somepony cared.

To find a home was, at most, a casual stroll or two. So the first priority was to raise up the soul and for that, Rarity had decided to allow... well, figure for the spa trip (she would have to reschedule on Fluttershy and was already internally composing the apologies) and three days should be enough. If the mare was exceptionally fussy about her accommodations, perhaps four.

Rarity brought the mare to the Boutique, and of course her guest loved the dresses, started talking about how she'd once tried to make a few herself. This was followed by mentioning the designers she'd met, and Rarity wasn't surprised to hear how many professionals had crossed the path of the mare's life, not considering where she'd started from.

She cooked the largest meal she'd made in ages, served it with pleasure, watched as the mare ate very little of it. She mostly stuck to the desserts. And wake-up juice. She pulled herself a full mug from the dispenser, drank about half, and then abandoned the rest. Rarity supposed it was a case of the stomach having shrunk somewhat after some time without true nourishment, and decided to try a smaller breakfast in the morning.

There were bags to unpack: three of them. They mostly held a surprising amount of makeup, and Rarity supposed the mare just hadn't been able to pack properly, given -- everything. Had been waiting to use the cosmetics when she was safe.

She placed them in the bathroom. They took up rather more space than she'd expected.

There were also some slim packets, made of paper, with something strange-smelling within. The mare took immediate custody of those once they were uncovered, tucked them into a loaned drawer. 'Medicine' was the natural assumption.

(She was wrong.)

The mare used the shower, dried off, and Rarity postponed wiping down the walls until morning: the mare had clearly been having a hard time of it -- she fought the tear back -- and shaking was a natural instinct. Gathered blankets and pillows in the glow of soft blue, then made up the couch and went to bed feeling rather good about all of it. What she'd already done. What it would be so easy to do.

After a while, the mare came in. Said that her joints were hurting, that the couch was making it worse. And Rarity had a rather large bed, it wasn't exactly difficult to move over (although shifting Opal took a while), so all things considered...

It took a while to get to sleep. The mare kept talking about her own life, because she'd mostly had wake-up juice and so her rest wasn't going to come immediately. And when that finally faded out, replaced by snores...

It was harder than Rarity had expected, sleeping with somepony else in the bed. A mare she wasn't touching, a weight pressing down one side of the mattress, where the ripples from that disruption were somehow bunching up under her own ribs and...

...there was a smell. The mare had washed herself and there was still a smell.

It wasn't her fault. She was sick.

How much of it was true?

Rarity was never completely sure. Once the research had started, certain contradictions would be uncovered and the funny part was that the mare herself never seemed to be aware of them. She would talk about herself, and...

Most of what she talked about was herself, and it was very easy to bring her onto that topic. In fact, there were ways in which it was just about unavoidable. You said anything to the mare, you introduced her to anypony and it turned the tap --

-- after a while, Rarity came to think of it another way. It was more like a... doll. A very special kind, something minotaur-made. Because minotaurs had looked at gramophones, albums, music boxes, and considered that it was possible to shrink it all down, record speech on a cylinder surrounded by cotton. A little motive force -- say, a pull-string which ended in a tooth-gripped ring, yanked hard -- and the toy would speak. Yes, the vocabulary was limited, but the sound was very nearly like real speech, a sophisticated cylinder could produce a fairly long and completely one-sided discussion because it wasn't as if the doll could actually hear...

Picture such a doll, one beaten down by neglect. Something where just about any movement triggered the playback, and the words skipped. It wasn't as if a doll would be capable of tracking inaccuracies. It couldn't think. It just repeated itself over and over. If nopony came along to pull the string, then the doll would set itself off because that brought attention. And if you told it that there was a possible lie in there, or at least something which might not have been accurately recalled...

You wouldn't expect a doll to hear that, really. You couldn't ask it to think, any more than you would expect an echo to converse. And that was another part of it. You talked to the mare, and...

The mare didn't think, when somepony pointed out the contradictions. She had another way of reacting.

On the first day of the lost moon, the mare mostly listened to Rarity's album collection. She quickly came to suspect the mare was somewhat hard of hearing, as the gramophone's volume was always set too high: a good part of the result came through the ceiling.

It was... disruptive. She tried to sketch, found the field-held quill jerking within her magic's grip as unwelcome beats disrupted her thoughts. Sewing was just as futile, and as for selling -- well, that wasn't so bad: she simply had to put a smile on and make sure her speech wasn't locked to the rhythm. But when it came to creating...

It was only for a few days. She'd had longer droughts than that on her own, dark times when inspiration refused to call at her door. She would get by.

After a while, the mare came down the ramp, while there were two potential customers browsing around the racks. She had a few more things to say about the Boutique's stock, which now included some -- well, call them optional ideas, because the mare had once turned her hooves towards dresses and so there were ways in which she would have done things. Rarity's imagination readily conjured the results and after she finally forced it to stop, she smiled and told herself she'd heard worse. Somewhere. And besides, this was no time to criticize, even if that was what it felt like the mare had just been doing and one of those potential customers had just walked out.

The mare had one of the paper packets with her. She opened it, extracted part of the contents, put the thin cylinder in her mouth, scraped one end against a wall --

-- she didn't understand why Rarity wanted her to leave the shop. To do that (if she had to do it at all) outside. But it was already saturating the air, it would take so long to disperse and if it sunk into the fabric --

-- the mare protested that. She knew fabric, because she'd sold it once. (She'd done everything once, as long as somepony else mentioned having done it first.) Everything would be fine.

Rarity, who had some doubts, politely asked her to go outside again. (The other party in the Boutique, having already beaten the mare to it, could no longer be thought of as a customer.) It was practicality, it was trying to prevent her goods from becoming discolored, and in the mare's eyes, it turned Rarity into a monster.

It never reached the level of screaming. (That would come later.) Instead, Rarity was informed, repeatedly and with very little variation in the accusations because the internal spool only had so much room, that all the mare wanted to do was relax, that she was sick and when somepony was sick, was dying, you had to let them have their little pleasures, there was so little left which she could even try to enjoy and Rarity was taking this away from her...

She held fast, tried to reason with the mare. It didn't work. She was calm, polite, explained that she was only worried about her goods, and the mare stomped out.

Rarity took a few seconds for just breathing. It didn't help, not with the smoke still in the air. And then she began opening select windows, turned on her ceiling fans, and finally glanced outside.

The mare was camped near the doors, still pulling in thin streams of air around and through the cylinder. Passing ponies were watching her. One came up to ask what that was, exactly, and the mare explained about exotic imports from distant nations, followed by beginning to talk about her life.

It accounted for some of the smell. A scent which lingered in the Boutique, fought against fans which only further chilled the autumn air, made a private winter settle into Rarity's fur.

A scent which wouldn't leave.

Track the winding trails of paper across a continent, pile the results atop each other. Crumple here, mold there, and bureaucracy begins to create the illusion of a life.

That was Twilight's contribution. All of the documents arrived after it had ended, and there were some which she never managed to find: she couldn't simply order deliveries unless they were mission-related, and this was much more personal. But the librarian dealt with problems through research. She couldn't tell anypony to just give her what she needed -- but she knew of a few secret trails made from ink, end gallops which led into jumps over regulations. In the end, it gave them something.

Who was the mare? It was possible to learn her age, but 'birthplace' was uncertain: with teleportation potentially involved, an adopted foal could have theoretically been delivered just about anywhere. And her birth parents? There was a tale there: surprisingly, one which kept to the singular and by that point, Rarity had already entered its hoofnotes.

The adoptive parents -- that had been a minor shock, that the claims to nobility were at least partially true. The mare was of a House, by acceptance instead of blood. Not a particularly noteworthy one, something where the title was just about the whole of it, but she had a title, even if she'd never accurately pronounced it. That status was something which would have given a younger pony access to the lower levels of a fairly select world -- but no more. Existing on the borders, and there were those who accepted that. Some lesser nobles treated their titles as little more than personal jokes, spent their lives on leveled ground where some players simply needed a slightly longer introduction. The mare, however... it was suspicion only, but Rarity had been birthed by a social climber, recognized the tendencies in herself, and so felt the mare had spent the whole of a lifetime looking up.

There could be a certain pressure to that. Some was created by the disdainful gazes of those who felt themselves above you. The majority came from within.

Pressure. Pressure led to compression.

Twilight had found pictures...

The mare apologized, when she came back inside. Said she was just feeling tense, still couldn't quite believe her luck in being safe. Rarity accepted it, and they agreed that the smoking would be kept outside. (The scent, however, followed the mare in.)

But the mare didn't think apologies were enough. She wanted to help out, as long as she was there. She could do a little cleaning after hours. Straighten up the place. Rarity felt that was fair, especially as it gave the mare some light exercise, but cautioned her not to strain herself, for she was sick. Oh, and the workshop had to be left alone.

So the mare got to work. This started by tallying some of the Boutique's sales sheets, which was something Rarity normally did herself. However, it wasn't labor she enjoyed and the mare claimed to have done some accounting: allowing her to double-check the math wouldn't hurt. So ledgers went up the ramp, the gramophone sounded its too-loud songs, and they eventually had dinner.

The kitchen had to be straightened up first. There were two half-finished mugs of wake-up juice on the counter, while an empty dispenser had been left in the drainboard.

Rarity had a partial meal: she didn't really feel like eating. The mare had a liquid one. And with her own business closed for the day, the shop's owner headed out for a little while. She wanted to check the notice boards, bring back tearaway copies of rental offers. It was also still possible to schedule a few medical appointments, although they would have to be for the next day at a minimum, and that would probably be followed by the spa. The mare was sick and every kind of treatment was required, especially since Rarity didn't know what the exact illness was.

She managed to arrange two, told the mare about them when she got back, was thanked profusely. And then they went to bed.

She had a hard time sleeping again. Wake-up juice had the mare up at all hours and once the inevitable crash came...

The mare stayed in bed for a long time. Rarity woke her up at two hours before the first appointment. One. Thirty minutes, and that was when the mare yelled about being too sick to go anywhere, how Rarity was putting too much pressure on her and that was making it worse, how could anypony try to make her move at all when she was clearly so sick...

She came down the ramp about an hour after that. Went outside and smoked, as ponies watched.

Rarity had originally purchased the Boutique via bank loan, was still paying it back. She had her indulgences and considered her spa payments to fall under Sanity, Maintenance Thereof. But she was careful. There always had to be money in her account, enough for at least three payments, because it was possible to have an entire season where she felt she was designing perfectly and the chosen hideous fad in the trade magazines would still have her on the outs. If she spent a tenth-bit on a little luxury, it was because she knew she had a tenth-bit to spare and the indulgence wouldn't hurt her. It was why she'd never missed a payment.

The mare had some money, and it was an income she didn't need to work for. At some point, somepony within the government had declared that she was incapable of normal labor, perhaps in the name of getting her out of the office before the faucet flooded everything. That certification added to a rather large number of forms meant income. A voucher every moon, directly from Canterlot, meant as assistance towards rent and clothing and everything except food because for that, the mare got coins. Copper ones, the only copper coins in the nation, exceptionally thin and prone to warping. Any food seller would accept them, and only for food. Between the two, those whom the government considered disabled would have small homes, enough resources to get by. It was charity, compassion, and in a way, it was also pity.

She went shopping with the mare on a market day, because wake-up juice cost money. And the mare used the copper coins to pay her own way.

The mare went to the produce stalls, purchased wasabi root as what she claimed to be a special treat and without treats, life just wasn't worth living. Then, having paid for the sixth-most expensive vegetable in the world, she moved up to fourth place by seeking out La Bonnotte potatoes and when that quest came up empty, Rarity got to watch in horror as the mare purchased four ounces of hop shoots, which was the produce equivalent to walking into a jewelry shop and asking if they could fit somepony for disposable regalia. The only thing worse was looking for root angler lure and so the mare did that as well -- but since Ponyville hosted no restaurants where meals cost more than homes, she thankfully came up empty.

The hop shoots, however, took out just about all of the copper and by the time the mare had finished with wake-up juice and candy, she was borrowing real money from Rarity and promising to pay it back when the disability voucher came in. After all, it was being mailed directly to the Boutique, so Rarity would see it...

She did see it. (She wound up seeing quite a bit of mail, as the mare soon began using the Boutique as her personal address.) But she never saw a tenth-bit from it, and never really considered asking. The mare needed rent money, and that was what the voucher was for. If Rarity took anything back, even things which were owed, it would damage the mare's prospects for finding a place of her own.

As it turned out, she would have simply done some harm to a pair of sunglasses, new saddlebags, a pile of cosmetics because the mare kept buying them without using any of the old ones, and paper packets. One shop in town sold the packets, and the mare frequently asked somepony to visit for her. Like Rarity.

Rarity hated that shop. The way it smelled. The way everyone within shared that stink. Her inability to scrub it out of her own fur.

But the mare smiled, and said it was only fair, because she'd gotten hop shoots for them both, as her thanks to Rarity. And wasn't that a treat indeed?

She didn't know. She'd never gotten a chance at them. The mare had prepared them, nibbled one, pronounced them garbage, and nosed the lot into the trash.

She'd gotten outside for a while. She'd... been doing that more than usual, and so much of that had been at night. Sleep just wasn't coming and she was normally comfortable in the Boutique, you couldn't spend that much time in a place unless you could see it as a haven, but she'd been going out more and more and...

When was the last time she had finished a sketch? She'd done some minor repairs on her own stock, fixing damage done by too-rough customers and -- all right, yes, the mare had been around some of those items while talking about adjustments which she would have made, but Rarity hadn't actually seen it happen and so it would just be an accusation. Most things were accusations, especially if the event had been directly witnessed.

It had been a week, yes? The mare had been there for -- a week. Somehow, it was a week. And Rarity kept bringing notice board postings home, she'd even fetched some Canterlot newspapers, and the mare was just on the upper level playing music at a too-high volume. Reading happened, although that was confined to the most lurid celebripony tabloids. And she went outside to pull air through smoldering cylinders or to get more wake-up juice because the mare always needed more wake-up juice and never finished a single mug. Rarity had finally said something about all the half-full vessels which she was cleaning out of the kitchen every morning (and empty dispensers, always left behind, never so much as turned back in for the deposit, the mare's resources would jump just from bothering) and it had led to another one of those one-sided fights. The ones where Rarity just stood there and listened, because the mare was sick and she didn't want to make it worse by adding stress, and...

...it didn't make any sense. Yes, the taste of wake-up juice changed slightly at different temperatures, but all you had to do was cool or heat it again. It wasn't ruined. But half of every mug went to waste, and the mare just purchased more...

...Rarity hadn't truly sketched for a week. The same duration in which the mare had been staying with her. She wasn't designing.

She had tried. She would sit down with her sketchbooks. Her field would take up a quill. She would start, the lines swooping across the paper, dreams manifesting -- and then the mare would laugh to herself, or turn up the music, or have a question, or borrow money for packets or snacks, she would just be there or Rarity would think about her being there, about how she was probably just about to arrive, and it would be lost. She would just be staring at the paper, and...

Longer droughts than this: she knew it. Everything could be managed. She would take the mare around to see various residences tomorrow.

She trotted. She tried to settle her mind, and as she ranged further from the Boutique, it felt as if her thoughts were calming. She was out of the mare's presence, and it allowed Rarity to center somewhat. She could just stand under Moon and breathe. Chill, clean air.

It let her focus, and she wove a garment out of silk and moonlight, fixed it in her mind and headed back. She had something she could work with. She would work. She had every intention of working.

But that was the day she met the mare's youngest son.

Her friends had met the mare by that point, of course, although it had mostly been through coming to the Boutique. Rarity had been cancelling her own appointments in all directions. She would schedule doctors for the mare -- by now, it was rescheduling -- and arrange for her to go out, do various things, and then the mare would claim illness and definitively declare her intent to stay in, typically about five minutes after it would have been possible for Rarity to do anything. But friends came to see her, and some of them had simply wandered past the building enough times to wonder why a mare was generally creating a cloud of smoke out front.

She didn't introduce them as the Bearers: she never did, and she suspected her mother hadn't bothered. The third meeting on found her heading into a different room about halfway through, because the story was being told again and it had been hard enough to hear it once: moving into the dozens wasn't helping.

Rarity didn't tell the mare who they were, or what they all did. But you couldn't hide Twilight. And the mare did love to talk about all of the important ponies she'd met...

There had been three children: the paperwork backed that up. All colts. Two were still alive. The third, the middle child... that story had come out on the first day, one of the weapons the mare used against the world, and at least for the way events had concluded, it turned out to be a true one.

Imagine a dimly-lit holding cell at the far end of a long corridor, one which had apparently been completely unwatched. Place a stallion in it on a night when nopony else has been incarcerated, leave him alone with his thoughts. Thinking about everything he's done, and what little it's left for him to do.

Let him think about that, unsupervised, all by himself with nothing more than echoes for company, something which can do nothing more than agree with him.

For hours.

The stallion was rather lanky and somewhat disheveled, wearing ill-fitting empty saddlebags and a sheepish expression. But he had an artist's mark, and so Rarity found him rather easy to speak with.

His mother had written him, letting her know she was safe. (She wasn't in the Boutique when he arrived: the smoke shop had opened.) And he was grateful to Rarity, for giving that mare somewhere to stay --

--- well, what about the stallion? Shouldn't family be together? And she was shocked at her own words, they had just slipped out, but it was a natural assumption and --

-- he laughed a little, looked even more awkward. He was -- traveling. No fixed address, no steady income. He couldn't offer a bed when he didn't have one for more than a night. But he'd wanted to see his mother and the train tracks came this way, so...

They talked for a while, as customers came in, went out. It was usually busier when the mare wasn't camped by the door. And then nature called, she discreetly headed to the restroom and was casually adjusting her false eyelashes when the alarm went off.

She galloped, found that the stallion had responded to the presence of security spells by kicking down the stockroom door. He was trying to load up his saddlebags with blue diamonds while Opal hissed and did her best to scratch him, Rarity saw the stallion poorly aim a kick at her cat and that was when her field went for every sewing needle in the room.

The police had some trouble tracking the trail of blood after it crossed the fringe: searching the wild zone would take a while. They promised to tell Rarity when they had something. And the mare came back about an hour later, an hour during which Rarity had been able to do nothing more than curl up against her pet, listened to the whole thing and was so sorry, so sorry but that was just what her children were, they just acted like that and it wasn't her fault, was never her fault, please let her stay because if she left she would be homeless and it hadn't been her fault...

Three children.

The youngest had just gotten out of prison. The oldest would still be there for a while. Before it had happened, the middle child had been free for some time.

The transcripts from the first court case of the oldest took some time to go through, mostly because no lawyer had been able to keep the defendant from interrupting and multiple delays for contempt just allowed him to save up decibels for when he got back. She'd testified to his having stolen from her, claimed that he'd had her cashing the disability voucher just to present him with the funds. But she'd also been living with him at the time, and he'd called it 'rent' and 'expenses'.

She'd further claimed he'd been controlling her, keeping her away from other ponies so she wouldn't tell anypony the truth. He'd said that she couldn't be allowed out on her own. Neither made much of a difference to the actual fraud charges, and that was what the jury had ultimately convicted him on. He'd laughed all the way out of the courtroom, and perhaps he was laughing still.

The youngest... Rarity had some experience with that and by the time she got the transcripts, she would have more.

With the middle child... in Equestria, the act of using those particular drugs wasn't in itself illegal. The charges were generally tied to the selling, the things you did while they were substituting for your thoughts, and some of the things you did in order to get the money for them. He'd done time for all of them, and none of the three had been responsible for that night in the holding cell. He had gone to a cheap diner, vanished into the restroom for far too long and when the owners finally got the door open, they found the latest dose had produced a knockout effect. The summoned officers had determined he was in no danger (officers whom she claimed to be suing, along with what seemed to be an entire settled zone), and he'd been put in the holding cell to dry out. To think about what he'd done.

It could be safely presumed that he had.

There were times when the mare was on the sales floor. Rarity occasionally heard the words, and most of it was just the faucet going off again. But sometimes, she would happily tell ponies how they looked in the dress, followed by abandoning a half-emptied mug under a rack.

A lot of ponies were leaving. Others saw the mare at the front of the shop, and the stinking patch of dirt where the packets were kicked away. They never came near it at all.

Music played at all hours and one volume level. Because the mare was sick.

The tale was told, over and over. Contradictions were punished or rather, that was what verbally happened to anypony who questioned them.

The apartment level seemed to be shrinking. The lower existed in a kind of fog.

The secondary school's fall formal dance came and went. Rarity offered rentals for the occasion, and it felt as if she'd had considerably less of them than in prior years. It was probably because she'd had so little to offer which was new.

Still, she had to see what the actual damage looked like. It sent her to the ledgers in the smallest of the walk-in closets, the place where she kept just about everything from the earliest days of the Boutique (original sketchbooks included), and she opened the first one to find it covered in fairly recent mouthwriting. Some of it was math: checking her own totals. The vast majority was notes which the mare had made to herself, along with shopping lists (wake-up juice and packets), some short bursts regarding ponies she didn't like, little sections where she'd obscured so much of Rarity's crucial sales data by writing the same things over and over and over and...

She looked at that for a while. Briefly closed her eyes, thought about going to the spa. She needed a massage. It could start with her temples. She hadn't been to the spa in...

...how long had it been?

The mare had been living in the Boutique for...

...yes, the recent days had a tendency to blur together, because she wasn't sleeping well and she wasn't really sketching or sewing or going out to see anypony. She was taking care of the mare, and the mare would surely pull it together for one good day, a day in which she could go out and see a doctor because she was in pain, pain she seldom seemed to treat. And a nutritionist! Rarity could schedule one of those in the name of proving that you couldn't live on wake-up juice alone, and then the mare could cancel on that too!

She... didn't seem to be feeling well. She had a headache. Another one. Possibly the same headache, as she wasn't sure the prior example had ever left. Plus she'd been coughing recently, but it was getting colder and the pegasi had been steadily drying out the air. Winter throat in late autumn, nothing more.

She checked on the mare. Sleeping. Sun hadn't reached noon yet, so the mare was sleeping. She would only wake up if Rarity tried to sketch something. Dream. Think.

She didn't feel capable of that, or of selling. She went into the kitchen for food, was confronted by empty dispensers and half-full mugs. Tried the bathroom, and every shelf inside the walk-in shower was occupied by unused cosmetics. Enough for at least five bags.

She left a note for the mare (because paper didn't have to listen to anything), politely asking that the books be cleaned up somewhat, and decided to go see her mother.

The mail was collected on the way out, and then she brought it with her.

In some of the earliest photographs, the younger mare looked... familiar.

It took Rarity a moment to understand why, to acknowledge that the image reminded her of a friend.

The mare didn't really look happy in any of the images, not even on her wedding day. She'd married above her station, the husband went below his, and perhaps that was part of what would lead to the divorce. The mare would claim abuse, and... it's possible that at the moment she read that, Rarity had heard the word too many times. According to the mare, Rarity was abusive. Trying to get her up on time for anything was abusive. Asking her to have a proper meal qualified. The sample budget Rarity drew up in an attempt to show her just how much she was spending on juice and packets, all the basic necessities it could pay for... that wasn't abuse. It was crueler than that. It was torture, for the mare had so many problems in her life, and Rarity just didn't understand the need for basic pleasures --

-- the mare didn't look happy, and in that aspect failed to resemble her friend. But Pinkie had always been a little overweight. A tenth-bale or so, hardly a threat to her health, evenly distributed and carried well. The only time Rarity really thought about it was when checking measurements for new clothing. Pinkie was comfortable in her skin, and anypony who asked her to change for somepony else's standards could look forward to a speed tour of Ponyville, or at least the portion which existed between bakery counter and what might not be an open door. If Pinkie wanted to slim down, she would. She didn't.

But when the mare had been young, the fashion had been for slender forms. And it was easier for some ponies to lose weight than others: some would forever have a little further to go. Low-level noble children, under pressure from adoptive parents to appear at their best, forever looking up...

It was easy to perceive pressure.

It was a cold trip: winter was so much closer now.

(The temperature would be the warmest thing about the day.)

Her father was on the road. Sweetie was in school. Her mother was home.

That parent was somewhat surprised to see the elder daughter, although nowhere near as much as she was by the stomps which sounded in the hallway as they went into the kitchen. Rarity wasn't her father, would never have his build or mass, but she knew how he had strode across the hoofball field, as a player in his prime. She could walk just like him, and...

...it was the headache. She tried to tell herself that afterwards. It was the headache, and not having been sketching or truly sewing, and... that was it. That was all.

(It wasn't.)

Her mother stopped near the fridge: the daughter was next to the oven. And the first question was a simple one: why haven't you been by?

The parent didn't answer, and the daughter persisted. This was her friend, was it not? A friend who had been staying in the Boutique for -- it was a moon now, more than a moon, and her mother knew where the Boutique was -- which was when her field flung envelopes onto the table -- because everypony seemed to know where it was. The collection agencies certainly seemed to have figured it out, especially since they were sending their letters in care of the daughter, and the most creative composition had falsely implied that housing somepony made you responsible for their debts. So if they could find the Boutique, her mother surely could. To see how her friend was doing.

Perhaps if she'd been clearer-headed, in less pain, she would have expected the answer: that this wasn't so much a friend as somepony known from school --

-- somepony who had been pushed off onto Rarity, the daughter challenged. Reminded the parent that the mare was still there, wasn't leaving --

-- the parent hadn't wanted the mare to be homeless. Surely Rarity understood that. Somepony had to take her in or she would just be on the street, with winter coming --

-- it had been autumn when it started! Winter was just getting closer now, and... her mother had just pushed the mare onto her, had just passed it off like --

(She could have stopped there.)
(She didn't.)

-- like she passed off everything in her life, wasn't that right? Oh, there were so many examples Rarity could cite, and she started with the boarding school, the prison which had consumed five years of her life. It was too much trouble to raise the elder daughter, so the so-called school could do it --

-- the parent just barely managed to get a word in, claimed she'd only wanted her daughter to be better off than she --

-- which was when the daughter's volume dropped, and the near-whisper dripped from her tongue like acid, burning through everything between them.

The mother didn't want the daughter to be better. The Boutique was already better, and the parent had never quite accepted that, had she? No, because the mother wanted the daughter to be her. To be the mare which the mother wished she'd been, and was the mother still embarrassed, having met her husband while performing for a victorious hoofball team as an exotic dancer -- yes, she knew, she'd known for years, and that was what had put Rarity in boarding school, wasn't it? Trained in the skills the mother wished she'd had. Passed off, the same way the mother liked to decide she was tired of raising Sweetie, was going on a little vacation, and just dropped off Rarity's sister with no notice or warning because somepony else could take care of it, could take care of everything, and the daughter's voice was so soft, but her horn was lit and the corona was nothing but spikes of coruscating rage as she said the things she'd always believed, the words which have their variants in every family.

The accusations which are never said because when the words end, there isn't a family any more.

The parent was shivering. Shaking. She didn't move. She simply stood there, pressed against the chill device as her daughter's anger burned hotter, the fury regarding time lost and mark denied, her mother had denied the true nature of her daughter's mark to insist it was about wealth and for a pony, what greater crime was there than to thwart a talent? Her mother didn't know what ponies had done in the name of that goal, should never know, and Rarity still wanted to tell her because that way, there would finally be an appropriate party for comparison. Her mother could just -- just --

(It was too late already.)

-- pass off the very last bit. Pass off the ties of blood, because Rarity didn't want them any more. Pass off everything until the day Sweetie became old enough to escape, and passed out the door for the last time.

She made sure to look at her mother when she said that. She wanted to see, and so she gained a snapshot of despair which stayed with her forever.

Her father's hoofsteps got her out of her birth home, back to chill air and cold future. Years stretching in front of her where nopony would ever just --

-- just --

-- she had... just said all of that. Everything which had been building for a lifetime. She hadn't even know some of the words had been there until the moment they'd come out.

To her mother.

She hadn't been sketching. Sewing. Going to the spa. She'd been trapped in the Boutique so much of the time and it was the Boutique, she wasn't even calling it home and the air smelled like the packets no matter what she did and the mare would be homeless, she was all the mare had but the mare had been keeping her from her own life and she'd just taken all out it out on her mother --

-- she began to turn, was going to go back to the house, had to see if there was anything left --

-- and the air flashed with green flame.

The scroll opened as it fell. She automatically read the words.

And then there was something else keeping Rarity from her life.

What had his talent been, the one who'd been in the holding cell? The mare never said. Had he been able to practice it in the moons before that night? At all?
What had happened in his life, that suspect powders and banned potions had been the only way forward?
What had he been thinking, deep in the dark, when the only thing he could hear would always agree with him?
When it all came forward at once...

What Rarity remembered most about the four-day mission was the false peace.

There was strange magic being used in a distant nation, something which threatened its citizens: that government had asked Equestria for help. And that magic, channeled through those who used it, tried to take Bearer lives --

-- but she wasn't in Ponyville.
She wasn't anywhere near Boutique or mare.
And as a special benefit, if she died on the mission, she didn't have to deal with the mare or the aftermath of the fight.

It was strangely calming.

But the others knew she had been stressed, and spending so much time together -- well, they already knew that keeping secrets from each other tended to backfire. The second night of the mission was a chance for everypony to finally talk, and...

Twilight didn't have any answers. She wanted to help, but... she didn't know how. And to just put somepony out on the street...
Rainbow offered to take the mare in, just for a little while. Give Rarity a break. And then she remembered about the whole 'cloud' problem.
Pinkie tried to make her smile. But all she had was an attic.
Spike could only offer his basket.
Applejack's perspective was a little different. She hosted tenants, after all: those who truly couldn't survive on their own. But this was a pony. Applejack had rooms. If it came down to it, she had a barn. But... had the mare ever been to a doctor?

No. Not around Rarity, anyway. She'd found a reason to miss every appointment.

So Applejack thought it was possible that the mare was faking it. Faking ailments in order to never work again, but she couldn't afford to see a physician or she would be confirmed as a liar --

-- but there was something wrong with her! The way she looked, the way she acted... there was just something so wrong --

-- so wrong, Applejack countered, that Rarity would let her stay forever? When Rarity couldn't work, when the dreams were building up in her head with nowhere to go, when the mare was keeping Rarity from her mark? There had already been one explosion, and that might have been part of the reason: nopony could deny their talent for long without consequences. What would happen after another moon? Two? A year...

Rarity didn't have an answer. She'd tried to dream. She'd wandered through Ponyville at all hours, because she wasn't sleeping well anyway and the coughing was getting worse. And when she was alone, the patterns began to weave themselves again, sketches drew themselves in the stars, dressmaker forms pranced across the internal stage --

-- until she turned back.

Until she tried to do anything, even away from the Boutique. From the mare.

And then it all locked up. Froze. Shattered. Left her thinking about nothing more than another morning of taking away empty dispensers and looking for receipts, the mare purchased the most expensive things, items she didn't need and if she ever thought to return them, she would need the receipts and those never seemed to be around...

As what didn't turn out to be a joke, she mentioned her best estimate for the total fluid from all the kicked-out mugs of wake-up juice.

It made Fluttershy step forward. And then the caretaker told her something strange. That for anything to live -- something else died.

Rarity hadn't understood.

So Fluttershy had gently explained. Carnivores, omnivores -- where did their meat come from? Something had been alive, and now it wasn't. Herbivores? Fruit was death in the service of creating new life. Vegetables perished when they left the base plant. Life required death and to that extent, it could be argued that life was -- selfish.

(She'd paused there. Closed the one visible eye.)

There had been a time, some winters ago, when Fluttershy had been... a little too kind, because kindness was being treated as the only response and so kindness had warped until it became something which could hurt the caretaker. Letting bills for her services go unpaid wasn't kind: it was stupid. Rarity had reminded her of that, and...

...didn't each of them have their -- opposing aspects? The other side of the coin. Fluttershy denied her anger. There were times when Twilight wanted a fully mundane life. And Rarity... Rarity knew there were times when she was selfish. She fought it. But she was being generous with the mare, giving of herself to grant that pony a place to stay, but it was hurting her and -- what happened when you gave everything of yourself? What was left?

To simply exist meant trading some other kind of life for your own. It could be called selfishness. It was also survival. Carnivores made the decision every day: you or me, and they would always pick 'me'. It wasn't evil. It was necessary. And given a choice between the mare and Rarity...

The mare would be homeless. In the cold. Rarity would be giving her a death --

-- she had, Fluttershy softly pointed out, been coughing. Too much. She hadn't been to the spa for weeks, she wasn't sleeping, she was tired and stressed and sick. And maybe it wasn't enough to kill her, but if everything kept going...

They were her friends, and so they chose her. She understood that, loved them for it. But it wasn't that simple. It was a life. A pony life --

-- Twilight had sighed. Offered to research as best she could, once they were home. Learn the truth about the mare. But until then -- deadline. Give her this much, and no more. A few days to find a home. To rent something. Even taking a hotel room. They could help Rarity with the expenses on that, at least short-term. But for the sake of sanity... the mare had to go.

Fluttershy had then said something about the amount of wake-up juice, something which came to Rarity's dreams that night. And the mission had continued.

Night, and a starless, Moonless sky. The ocean, but with waves of creamy yellow. (It was an ocean's worth.) Cold wind crashing across the exposed portions of her soaked fur. The mare is floundering in what isn't water, and Rarity swims towards her. She isn't sure what she can do, but the mare is going to drown, those oddly-proportioned limbs are flailing and she can't swim, she can't survive on her own and somepony has to do something, so Rarity swims right up to her and the mare's forelegs crash down on her back.

They push.
Harder.
Her snout goes under. Fluid fills her lungs. The white body begins to go limp. And the mare contently rests on her new float because that is the talent: no matter what happens to her, it will always be somepony else who drowns --

-- and Rarity woke up. Shaking, screaming until the others reached her, and she told them what it had been about. They clustered around her, stayed with her, and waited until she fell asleep again. Waited for the dream to fade.

It never would.

Pressure.
Pressure as compression...

They won, and that meant she had to go back.

By the time the Guards teleported them into Ponyville's gatehouse, the world was deep under Moon. For the seven weary travelers, it felt as if they were the only ones in the world who were still awake, even with Canterlot and the palace visible at the horizon to prove the lie.

They staggered towards their homes and with every hoofstep Rarity took towards the Boutique, the tension built.

She didn't have to worry about her income, at least. When on missions, the palace offered Rarity two options: she could invoice them for the average seasonal totals, or they would put a substitute into the Boutique. She'd gone with the former, because she didn't really want anypony else dealing with the mare.

The deadline was going to be a week. A week was fair. A week and then the mare would be in a hotel, at the very least. Ponies waiting on her beck and call. She could tap the honor bar for her wake-up juice and not finish that.

Getting closer now: she could tell by the way her tail was beginning to twitch. Chill air soaked her mane, failed to cool renewed determination. One week. No more. Nothing would make her --

-- she saw the Boutique.

Then she saw the thick lines of police rope blocking the door.

And as her soul froze, she heard hooves pounding up the street behind her.

She just barely managed to turn and it was Miranda, of course it was the police chief because no other unicorn was so hard to spot in the dark, she'd just gotten the word that they were all home and she'd been hoping to catch Rarity before she went inside, the location of the mission had been classified and Spike had been with them, so there just hadn't been any way to contact --

-- how bad? And what about Opal? She needed to know how bad --

-- bad enough.

Miranda accompanied her through the ghost of the shop, and the frightened cat pressed against Rarity's forelegs.

The empty racks. The tipped-over mugs at the edge of yellow stains.

The half-vacant storeroom, with so many empty shelves and coffers.

The smallest of the walk-closets, and her ledgers were gone. Her oldest sketchbooks...

But the mare was in her bed.

Her bed.

And Rarity woke her up.

The shout did it, a blast of anger which made those oddly-proportioned legs spasm as the mare's eyes jerked open. It was a shout which continued for some time before turning into words, and those started with asking why she'd let her son in, the stallion who'd already tried to rob Rarity once --

-- no, she didn't care! The mare should have left him outside or better yet, screamed out a window for the police! Even in the dead of night, somepony would have heard! Just because he'd brought an apology gift for the mare, something she supposedly hadn't had in a very long time and what was that now, a root angler lure? The little mock vegetable which the monster under the soil used to draw so many to their deaths? A special packet? Because that offspring had used the chance, disabled what he could of the alarms and robbed Rarity, robbed her of just about everything, was still on the loose with what had to be a cart, he was selling off her things and she was going to have nothing and she didn't care how scared the mare looked, she had no right to let somepony into Rarity's home --

-- what did the mare mean, it wasn't just her home?

(Miranda was there, watching from a short distance away. Miranda, who could break up a fight faster than anypony alive. Miranda would have stepped in if it had threatened to go beyond words.)
(Miranda was about to move.)

NO! The mare had no RIGHT! The mare was housed by charity, charity and GENEROSITY, but those had limits and they had been REACHED! Screaming at the mare, with every inhale having to take in more of that sanity-choking smell with its new overlay of sickly sweetness and Rarity wanted her GONE, one week, no more than one week --

The forelegs spasmed again.
The hind kicked, and did so at the same moment the spine curved, sending the mare off the mattress.
Dulled eyes rolled back as gravity exerted. Sight ended.

Miranda moved. And between the two of them, with the police chief carefully pushing instructions through Rarity's horror, they got the mare's mouth open in time to keep her from swallowing her tongue.

They didn't stay in Ponyville's hospital for long. The doctors could treat the results, but they didn't know how to deal with the cause, not with the strange little bottle Miranda found in the mare's bags (there were more of those now, and Rarity had mindlessly gathered a few to bring along), the one which stank of sickly sweetness. That took specialists, and the emergency teleport brought them to the capital.

Canterlot's physicians went to work, and did so while Rarity could do no more than wait outside the sealed treatment room, collapsed against floor and wall. For she was not family, the only family she knew of for the mare was incarcerated or fleeing from the possibility or -- about to reunite. And without ties of blood or marriage, the doctors would not give her details. They couldn't. They could speak to each other, or to a consultant --

-- the consultant, little body (but not as little as it had once been) slumped from exhaustion, trotted into the room, horn down and wing joints loose.

Twilight approached Rarity, briefly pushed a slim body against a wet face. Promised to come back, and went into the treatment room while the monster who'd done it all hated herself and wished she'd never met the mare, never said anything, never been.

It was the first thing Rarity told Twilight, when the sorrowful librarian emerged again. That she was a monster.

Twilight slowly shook her head.

A monster was something which didn't, couldn't care. Which never took blame. Which reveled in death. Rarity wasn't a monster.

But she'd screamed at the mare. She'd triggered a stroke --

-- still no.

And then Twilight sank down to the floor, pressed against Rarity, and told her.

Pressure and compression.

If you were a little overweight, if the world around you said that was wrong and you had to be perfect -- you could exercise. But it didn't help everypony to the same degree and for some, the last portion of excess mass just never slipped away.

Or you could cheat.

The first thing you would be attempting to cheat was death.

With cosmetic magic, the safest spells affected the exterior of a pony: tint the fur, redo the mane, and nothing ever happened to the mark. But you couldn't go beyond that. True shapechange -- muscles didn't shift: they tore. Bones reacted to strange pressures through fracture. Even changelings projected nothing more than a mobile illusion, with the best ones able to fool every sense. Without access to a kind of working which nopony in the modern world had ever purposefully performed, for a unicorn to try and become a pegasus was to die in twin gushes of blood as their distorted ribs split the skin. (Twilight's case was... different, and the other living exceptions had their own reasons for survival.)

You could try to lose weight. Or you could drink a illegal potion, something which made flesh compress. The pony drinking it would still possess the same total mass: it would just exist in a smaller area. It made you look thin.

If the potion worked properly.
If it compressed only the portions which you'd wanted shrunken.
If you didn't think too hard about the pressure that put on unchanged blood vessels.
If you had never known that nearly sixty percent of the brain was composed of fatty tissue...

Twilight believed it was possible that the mare had gone through multiple mini-strokes. Every time she took the potion (and she would have needed a fresh dose every few years), there was a risk. Simply existing in such a state was a constant risk. And with every stroke, more of the brain would die. Whatever personality there had been would warp. The mare didn't budget because she couldn't, told her story to everypony because no part of her recognized when to stop. There had been a pony there once, one who had gone for the potion, but after that...

After a certain point, some of the pictures featured a slimmer mare.
Then the proportions began to look a little odd.
Then...

Rarity had wept for a while, without entirely understanding why. Twilight stayed with her.

There were treatments, the librarian eventually told her. The most important thing was that they'd gotten her to the doctors quickly because with strokes, the countering medicines had to be issued just about immediately. The damage from the older ones -- it was too late for that. But there was a chance to keep the mare from getting any worse. The initial doses had been given, but now it would take at least three days in the hospital and constant supervision to ensure full recovery.

The realization had come then, and Rarity voiced it: that the mare had never gone to the hospital for treatment before this, because the doctors would have realized the potion was at work. In fact, she had likely stalled her way out of every physician appointment Rarity had made for her just to keep from being discovered...

Twilight silently nodded. Curled up a little closer.

What had that mare been like, before the potion?

Scared, Twilight told her. She was scared.

And Rarity wept again, for that pony had died in fear.

She woke up as the doctor entered the on-call room, wearily pulled her head away from Twilight's soft fur, and was told that the mare had left.

It led to a number of perfectly natural questions. The doctor answered everything that he could. And then Rarity left her friend to sleep, because the next failure had to be hers alone.

The mare was a short distance from the hospital entrance. Rarity suspected she would have normally been right up against the wall, but somepony had probably abused her into shifting.

She was seen as she approached, and Rarity waited for the screaming to start. The mare looked angry, at least as much as she could still look like anything with half of the face refusing to respond.

The mare did, in fact, have a slurred complaint. About the doctors. About how they wouldn't let her just step outside to enjoy her cylinder, the simple pleasure that somepony who was dying was entitled to have. They'd said she couldn't leave without discharging herself, and so that was exactly what she had done.

Rarity said nothing. There didn't seem to be any real point, as she had nopony she could speak with.

So now that she was out, the mare continued, she could just come home --

-- Rarity silently shook her head, and then the screaming began.

In the end, she'd left a note with the hospital's security guards, because the mare was welcome to scream at a note. The mare could resume medical care, or she could pick a hotel room with a carefully-underlined maximum cost. She could stay for as long as the doctors needed her or, in the case of the hotel, up to a week. But she could never return to the Boutique. Rarity would pack those possessions under police supervision, to avoid accusations of theft. (Along with lawsuits. Rarity was expecting at least one lawsuit.) And so she went back to Ponyville with Twilight at her side, and then they both stopped at the police station to pick up Miranda Rights.

There was a lead of sorts. Some of her dresses had been turned in at a Canterlot pawnshop, and one of her dearest regulars had started upon seeing them in the window. But so much of the rest -- she would have to replace it, and the costs...

She would have to design replacements.

How much had the mare cost her before the robbery? Money not paid back, food consumed, imagination locked and sales lost. For compensation, the bottle deposits were now presumably Rarity's alone.

She always kept exacting inventory, and so was able to provide Miranda with a comprehensive list of stolen goods. (This was interrupted for a short trip to the bank: it was loan payment day, and Rarity had never missed one.) But she didn't understand some of it. The dresses: pawned, and that irritated her for the minimal value implied. The gems could be sold. But... her ledgers? Why?

Miranda had blinked. Stood up from where she'd been writing out the list, and taken Rarity outside.

She'd asked the mare to clean up the books. So the mare had kicked them out. Some of the pages had been torn. Spines had fallen open, contents exposed to chill air, and so she learned the mare had scribbled on her oldest sketches too.

Rarity had simply stood there for a while. There had also been coughing, for she had been sick for a long time.

With Twilight's help, they'd packed it all up, sent the lot to Mrs. Bradel's book restoration shop, meant for the tender care of a unicorn who could make paper heal itself. And then they'd gone inside again, finished the list, and packed up the mare's things.

It took eleven bags. Most of them were filled with unopened cosmetics, but one had a dress in it. The mare had purchased a rather expensive dress, and done so after all the times Rarity had offered to make her one. They couldn't find any receipts.

The apartment was cleaned. What little remained of the Boutique took a polish. Rarity accepted the offer of direct police protection for the remainder of the day, opened every window to vent the smell, gently gathered Opal, and followed Twilight home.

She couldn't sleep. She still couldn't sleep. And so she left the library, carefully working her way out of the guest bed in the loft, sneaking past Spike's basket before going through security spells which had been told to make an exception for her, out into the chill night air.

She wandered under Moon and star-filled sky. And eventually, she found herself at a familiar house, one where the door was answered on the twentieth knock.

Her mother's eyes slowly focused. Rarity recalled the half-veiled desperation which had been in her parent's features on the first day or rather, recognized it a little too late. Waited.

Three weeks, her mother finally admitted, and naturally added an accusation about Rarity not visiting often enough or she would have known that. But the mare had originally been there for three weeks. Sweetie had barely been able to stay in the house. The mare wasn't any good with children...

The elder daughter listened. To the part about being unable to just kick somepony out when they had nowhere to go. To render them homeless...

The parent asked if she understood. It was almost timid.

Rarity thought about it, and then name-dropped Fancypants.

Her mother blinked. Rarity explained.

Outside the hospital, during the last screams, the mare (who would be arrested for trespassing if she ever stepped onto Rarity's property) had declared that Fancypants would have never treated her like this. And that was part of why Rarity was so abusive. And of course, Rarity naturally wondered why a stallion of known compassion, if he was truly the mare's friend, wouldn't have been involved before this. Why he hadn't hosted her in one of the many guest rooms.

Then the mare claimed Fancypants was her birth father.

Rarity had simply done the math: her estimated age removed from his. Turned, and began to walk away...

...and the mare had kicked the last bit of verbal ammunition into the purple tail. Demanding to know how Rarity could do this to her, how anypony could do this to her, what kind of monster it took to act like this --

-- when her middle child had killed himself.

"What did you say?"

"It's... what I didn't say. I felt as if I hadn't said anything in a long time, not really. Not when or what I should. But I thought it. I almost said it. And it would have been the worst thing I'd ever said to anypony..."

"...what?"

"You said she wasn't good with Sweetie?"

"With any children. What does that mean with --"

"-- and that also means her own, I think. A mother who couldn't prioritize anything... maybe they never had a chance. So I was about to tell her that her son didn't commit suicide. He'd simply thought of the only means he had of getting her out of his life, and then he acted on it."

"RARITY -- !"

"-- I thought it. But I didn't say it. Not until now. I just -- left. I don't even know if she went back in the hospital or not. I did. I tried to speak to somepony who could... evaluate her. Professionally. Write something down which says she can't make decisions for herself. Put her somewhere she'll be taken care of."

"...how did it go?"

"I asked. But I'm not family. And that means it'll be harder."

"You just coughed."

"I know."

"You're sick. You're so sick and tired, your accent --"

"-- I know."

"...do you want to come inside?"

"No."

"Rarity -- are we okay?"

"No, Mom. We aren't. We haven't been okay for a long time. With you... with you, I said it. And part of me wishes I hadn't. But I meant every word. It's how I've felt about you for years. It's honesty. ...Applejack's not the best influence."

"...do... do you love me?"

"Yes. You're my mother."

"Will you apologize?"

"Was I right about you?"

The door closed.

The door opened.

"I don't know."

And they finally talked.

It was her fourth trip into Canterlot in the last two weeks. In theory, the recovered goods could just be mailed back, but her dresses needed to be carefully folded in order to prevent gems from tearing fabric. Rarity included an instruction card with every sale and in this case, it was best to just to do it herself. Besides, it allowed onsite inspection.

She was about halfway to the police station, still working her way through crowd and scheduled snow flurries when she heard the barking laugh. The pain which was laced through it, and it tightened her own temples, allowed the cold to sink that much deeper.

She didn't get close enough to be seen: within a scant-enough distance to smell the cylinders was bad enough. But that was close enough to both see and hear the mare, who was camped out in front of a building she didn't recognize. There was no sign over what seemed to be a side door, nor was there a window. It could have been a residence, or a place where the mentally infirm were kept. Something the mare would have checked herself out of, or simply done her best to get away from. Or perhaps she'd simply screamed about abuse until they decided it was easiest to let her go outside into cold and snow. After all, those who were dying were allowed their indulgences.

(The mare was dying. She would be dying until the day she finished the process, just like everypony who'd ever lived.)

She was talking to a young stallion, one who was wearing an unfamiliar uniform. He listened and nodded at what seemed to be the appropriate points, keeping his eyes fixed on the permanently uneven features. The revelation that the mare knew a Princess didn't come as a surprise to him, nor did the fact that she was royalty's greatest personal friend. In fact, her birth father --

But that was when she turned away from the mare, who had a name which meant sea of sorrows, or sea of bitterness. In the end, the exact translation really didn't matter, for it was the name of a pony who'd been gone for years. And there was only so much you could give to the dead. Mourning was enough, and that was already over.

Rarity left the monster behind, recovered what she could, and went home to sketch.