“–And that’s when I bumped right into me – er, she – er, the other me! Being the wonderful ladies we are, we of course apologized immediately. But then we looked up and noticed we were bumping into ourselves! And we screamed!” Rarity recalled with a mix of horror and fascination.
Twilight listened with fascination. “I would have too! Well, I almost did when I met my human half years back. I concede it would have been stranger to meet her first in pony form.”
Rarity eyed her fascinated friend’s facial expression and smiled, though a shudder ran through her nevertheless. “Alas, I do understand now why you never allowed us and the girls to accompany you to that other world.”
Oblivious to the emotional atmosphere, Twilight giggled. “Think of what it would have done to our other halves. They’ve barely seen magic before! All the rainbow-lasers in the world couldn’t prepare somepony for that!”
“Hey, I don’t think either Pinkie Pie minded!” she laughed. “Though in retrospect, you did make the right decision forbidding us from the portal.” Rarity wilted. “Granted, it would have helped prepare me for meeting my personal doppelganger. I was minding my own business, trotting through the Ponyville market without a care in the world, when poof, there was she. Me.”
Twilight frowned. “Yeah… I’m sorry I didn’t think to warn you and the girls about the portal’s strange energy emissions.” She pouted. “Gee, I’m sorry I didn’t even think to consult with my best friends about how to handle what could have been an extremely delicate situation. I did know something was up, and I did discover unexpected magilectric perturbations in the dimensional link during my preliminary diagnostics on the portal. Unfortunately, I didn’t put the pieces together until after it was… too late.”
Rarity trailed off, staring at Twilight, perhaps a little lost in the ambiance. Quietly, she whispered, “It’s alright.”
“Are you…” Twilight hesitated, the pain of self-accusation lacing her voice. “Are you mad at me about what happened?”
Rarity blinked and her smile returned, perhaps a little too toothy to pass as normal. “Pft. Of course not!” Rarity returned to an authentic grin, gazing at Twilight. “I’m a little shook up, yes, but you did nothing wrong.” She inhaled and smiled, “And even if you did mess up, I would forgive you in a heart beat, because you’re that special to me. After all, Twilight, you’re my girlfriend.”
Twilight blinked. “Girl friend, as in, female, platonic friend.”
“Er, yes, of course, that’s what I meant!” Rarity coughed. “After all, Twilight, you’re my girl friend.” She chided comically at Twilight’s apparent error of listening comprehension. “Emphasis on the friend, dearest.”
“Dearest–”
“–Dear! Dear is what I meant. Because that is what you are.” Rarity interjected. “Dear to me. No more dear or less dear than any of my other girl friends.”
“Uh-huh.” Twilight nodded. “You’re dear to me, too, Rarity.” She scrunched up her muzzle, pierced by an entranced gaze from her friend. She paused, her eyes drifting up-right. Faintly, her horn glowed, far too dim to signify magic use but bearing a definitive magic aura at its tip. If noticed, an unsuspecting on-looker would dismiss the sight as a muscle twitch; even the most magical parts of a pony are constrained to the limits of biology. Of course, this glow was no biological coincidence; her most detail-oriented friends would recognize it as a subconscious reenactment of the sensation of levitating a quill. Levitating a mental quill atop a psychological canvas, as it were.
After a moment of detached eyes, scrunched face, and glowing horn, Twilight returned to face Rarity, who immediately looked away with a pink flush along her cheeks, caught dead in the act of staring. Ignoring the inexplicable response, Twilight said with decisive cheer, “Hey, Rarity, could I ask you a question? It’s about our friendships.”
“Why, of course!” Rarity daydreamed. “I do love talking about our friend ships–” Her eyelids sprung open, coughing once again from a mysterious cause. Poor Rarity must have been developing a respiratory cold; unfortunately, ’twas the season. “Friendships,” she corrected. “Friendships, not friend ships.” She nodded aggressively in affirmation of her own words.
Twilight bit her lip. “Uh, Rarity, you just said the same word four times in a row. Is everything alright?”
Rarity forced out a laugh. “No! I mean, yes! I mean, ha-ha!” She averted her dear friend’s glance, repositioning her stare to focus solely on the colour patterns of the floor tiles. Granted, they were hardly à la mode in the cosmopolitan year of 1009, but evidently the fashionista found something worthy below her hooves. Her gaze transfixed to the intersection of two tiles, she continued, “Of course, everything is alright.” She paused, tagging on beneath a strained smile, “Thank you for asking!”
Her mare friend – that is, her friend who happened to be a mare, with no connotations other than those of friends and mares – bore a subdued frown to complement, nodding her head slowly. “Alright. I believe you, but I’m worried. Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”
Rarity lost herself into Twilight’s eyes, almost crystalline in perfection, a perfect focal point to a beautiful face. “I’ve never been better,” she cooed. As Twilight proceeded to open her mouth, Rarity blinked and blurted, “Nor have I ever been worse! I am in exactly the same emotional state as I have always been, both in times when I have been talking to you and times that I have not. I am most certainly enjoying your dear company, if that was the friendship question you wanted to, uh, question.” Her eyes widened again, now four times larger than moments ago when lost into Twilight’s own. “I mean! Not that I wouldn’t also be okay and finding something to enjoy if I weren’t with you! Because I would! Be okay. Without you. But I don’t want to be without you, because you’re my friend!”
“Umm….”
“What I mean to say is that yes, I am absolutely one-hundred percent emotionally fine, and everything about my present situation is exactly what it appears at first blush!” She panted, lacking her mutual party planning friend’s spacious diaphragm required by such a speech. Inevitably, not a moment later she drifted back into her companion’s eyes.
Twilight stared, her face illegible. She tilted her head, a gesture Rarity identified as curiosity, though other ponies might mistake it for condescension or judgement. Observing Rarity, she was perhaps busy forming a mental conclusion or perhaps simply dumb-founded by the compressed sentences that had just transpired. “Speaking of ‘first blush’, I think you might be blushing, Rarity.”
“Am I?” she wondered dreamily. She stared deeper into Twilight’s eyes, catching a glimpse of herself in the glassy reflection. Observing her mirror self, she conceded idly, “So I am.”
Twilight frowned. “Look, Rares, I’m nervous. I trust you, but you’ve been acting really weird these past few weeks, and I’m concerned for you.” She bit her tongue, a gesture visible beneath slightly open lips hanging low in shame. “The portal collapse was hard on all of us, but based on how you’ve been acting…” She dropped her voice, mumbling to herself more than to Rarity, “…and frankly how bizarre this conversation has been…” She paused, continuing, “It’s just, if there’s something else going on you’re not comfortable telling me, I do respect your privacy, but I can’t help you if I don’t know.”
“No…” Rarity forced a word out, insincere on the surface and awkward on the heart. She closed her mouth again, still staring at the mare beside her, either lost in thought or simply lost. She sighed, covered her muzzle with her hooves in shame, and glowing red, she confessed rapid-fire, “I-think-I-have-a-crush-on-you!”
Twilight evidently did not react. “And…?”
By then, Rarity was pressing against her eyeballs rather than merely covering them, simultaneous pressing up against her chair. She continued wistfully. “And… I think about hugging you, sort of constantly, and I think about you when I go to sleep. You’re in almost all of my dreams. Sometimes I do dream about… never mind that. Then every day I wake up with a foalish grin, a part of me still lost in paradise. With you.”
Twilight grumbled to herself, “This is not helpful to the problem at hoof.” Remaining emotionally stoic but strained, she chided aloud, “That’s not what I mean.” She lowered her voice in both volume and pitch. “Look, I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t want to alarm you or the girls, but my research revealed potential thaumaturgic side effects of interdimensional fusing. None of the effects match symptoms displayed by our other friends, but any one of them could be responsible for your erratic behaviour. Granted, the glitches should be easily reversible, but there’s nothing I can do without knowing the relevant circumstance. A circumstance evidently invisible to me but inevitably known to you.” She creased her eyebrows sympathetically. “Rarity, what’s going on?”
“I’m in looooooove,” she sobbed.
Twilight facehoofed. “Yeah, I know–” she groaned, until she was interrupted with exasperation.
“You know?! Like, since before this conversation, you knew?!”
“Everybody knows,” she deadpanned. “And I quote: ‘Girls, I’m in love with Twilight Sparkle!’ That was at Fluttershy’s pre-birthday festival, before the portal collapse, so I know there wasn’t magic involved.”
Rarity frowned comically. “Hmph! I suppose it is possible you may have overheard that from two meters away. But love is magic, so magic was most certainly involved!”
Twilight giggled. “My sister-in-law agrees with you! As for the eavesdropping” – she raised her hoof to shade the side of her mouth – “I can hear your stage whispers.”
Rarity giggled, and in an even louder mock whisper, she replied, “I guess I’ll have to be quieter”, and Twilight laughed in turn.
They shared a silence as the giggle-fest died down, and with it, Twilight’s somber look returned for the onset of renewed serious conversation. “Rarity, I’m not sure how to say this. You’re one of my best friends, and I do like you a lot, as a friend. But I’m not, uh, into mares.”
She shrugged indecisively, nonchalantly declaring, “That’s alright.” She winked. “A girl can fantasize.”
Twilight shifted in her seat uncomfortably, a pale crimson herself. “Eh-hem, um…” She vaguely avoided eye contact, to Rarity’s amusement. “Is there really nothing else going on, then?”
Rarity beamed, her secret out in the open. “Beyond you being far too adorable for your own good? Nope, not that I’m aware of!”
A relaxed sigh. “That’s reassuring and simplifies quite a bit. Given residual magic from the portal collapse isn’t responsible for your situation, you don’t need any magic to fix it.”
“Darling? You’re the only magic I need.”
