Rarity's most precious book
Purples, yellows, and blues swathed the walls of the Friendship Castle and danced on Rarity’s coat. She reveled in the splendor of the many tapestries depicting her friends’ stories and other feats of valor.
She’d played a part in those adventures, she knew, and many more remained unresolved. Grandeur permeated the place and fed her pride.
Rarity reached the end of the colonnade and knocked on the council door. The cool, dry air filled her nostrils with the distant smell of old parchments.
“Twilight, darling?” she asked loud and clear, a smile on her lips.
Only silence beckoned. Her voice unheeded, she turned to glance back at the draperies. With time she would fade from their sceneries and disappear, to make space for new faces. She knew. She accepted. The world cartwheeled forward, careless to the whims of pretty mares, and no matter how insignificant she felt, she carried on. Age, what a cruel mistress.
Rarity puffed her chest, flicked her mane in order, and pressed herself against the heavy marble gate. The lingering smell of tea sneaked through the opening slit.
Lit by a single ceiling-dropped shaft of light, the room’s crystal blue table lay dormant with not a single paper to bear. Rarity surveyed the thrones, trotting in silence to her own. Her hoof searched the lengths of the cool stone.
“Rarity, is that you?”
Twilight smiled as she strolled in through a drawn curtain of reality. Her mane and tail scintillated with rivers of night sky, constellations, and trailing comets.
Horseshoes never touched the marble floor as space lifted the alicorn by the pasterns. She drifted across, a hoof stretched outward to embrace her friend.
The businessmare returned the favor. Swallowing the rue that clawed at her lips, she whisked away with magic the gray hairs that skirted her purple mane and worked her cheeks into a smile.
“It’s been a long time, Rarity. I am so...” Twilight sucked in deeply, her mane draped over Rarity’s shoulders, “so sorry.Duty and traditions, you know? It feels like they’re conspiring to keep us apart.”
“No matter how rare, it is still my pleasure to see you, Twilight,” Rarity said, seeking further refuge against the cool fur of Twilight’s neck. Her lavender perfume filled her nostrils. “Pardon my impudence, Princess.”
Twilight chuckled under her breath, tightening her hug ever so gently. Her purple fur ruffled against Rarity’s pristine white coat, still groomed and perfected despite years of toiling commerce.
“Twilight, have you perchance seen my book?” Rarity said, scanning the room for it.
“I... did,” she said with a trailing voice.
“Well, did you read it?” Rarity asked with a smirk, retreating slightly to look back into Twilight’s starlit eyes. “You’re still my Twilight after all—curious and nosy.” Where Rarity expected an embarrassed laugh, she only saw sadness. “Is something wrong, darling?”
Twilight pulled away from Rarity.
“Every single day you’ve come by for the past twenty years, you’ve left me earl grey tea. Bergamot and citrus, my favorite. Even though we missed each other countless times, I’ve cherished each of your visits, every gift.” Twilight sighed with downcast eyes. “When I came by today, I found your gift. And a book.”
“Yes. That’s why I came back; I thought I’d lost it. It’s very precious to me.” Rarity’s heart twinged as heartbreak marred Twilight’s face. “What is hurting you, my dear?”
“I skimmed over it,” Twilight’s mane lolled about, glazing with darker shades, while her tail swayed with somber hues. “Or rather, looked at it—at them—the photos of everypony. Was it supposed to be a gift?”
“Oh, Twilight.” Rarity tut-tutted.
As they stood rooted together, Rarity caught sight of her book. She reached out with her azure glow to hold the heavy thing, aloft in Twilight’s magic in the far side of the room.
Her essence mingled with Twilight’s for a sliver of a second but Twilight relented, leaving the outreaches of Rarity’s soul alone and teetering in a vacuum. Rarity yearned for that cold, dazzling trace of Twilight’s power.
“I think we should have a seat,” Rarity said after a pause.
Twilight considered the suggestion and nodded. She extended her hoof and Rarity led the way to her throne.
Rarity glanced at Spike’s dust-layered seat. “How dreary.”
Rarity’s magic wiped the trace of time and disuse off the seat. For good measure, she swept every other, allowing them to sit. With a smile, Rarity opened the large book in front of Twilight.
“What do you see?” Rarity asked.
“A book? A weird one at that,” Twilight said with furrowed brows.
Rarity chortled, a hoof pressed on her muzzle. “Ah, and they call methe snarky one.”
Rarity’s elegant magic lifted the satin cover, revealing not words or written pages, but sewn color schemes, stapled threads, and bound fabrics. Notes, designs, and many subtle textile samples skidded haphazardly out of the book’s edges. An eclectic, creative whole to Rarity’s eyes—peppered with thumbnails and photos of the many faces she’d met.
Yarn, patterns, and ponies flickered past as Rarity browsed the book, casting airborne perfumes from all over the world. Finally, she settled on a myriad of colors: A bundle of crumpled papers bound together into a wavy page. A photo dangled facedown at the tip of a thin pink streamer.
“May I?” Rarity asked, brushing the tip of her hoof against Twilight’s pastern. With the princess’s nod, Rarity carried her hoof till the frog settled on the open page. “What do you feel?”
Twilight grazed her hoof over the fabric like a breeze. “It’s coarse, and light, and fragile.”
“Mistreated, it tears apart, but stretches with ease under patient hooves,” Rarity said, musing as she watched the paper crumple under Twilight’s hoof. “What do you smell?”
“Sugar and tanginess,” Twilight said, hesitating. She closed the distance and inhaled. “Black currant?”
Rarity smiled. “Yes, so hard to find these days. This,” Rarity said, running her hoof along the paper’s edge as it flecked brief sparkles of red and fuschia, “is crêpe paper.”
“Like... the thin pancakes?”
Rarity tilted her head back and laughed, her eyes creasing at the sides. “Yes!” Her magic held the page teetering above the next and she twisted. Twilight tensed as it crinkled. “Don’t worry, Twilight, that’s its talent and purpose. It strains and creases, certes, but it expands and rebounds as well.”
Though she lacked Twilight’s magical prowess, Rarity remained a master of her craft. She nimbly used her magic to convoke a roll of pink crêpe and, with swift snips from ethereal scissors, cut out a large rectangle.
The roll vanished; only the scissors and cut remained. With snips and slices, Rarity trimmed and strung the cut into many long straps. With a smile, she folded them into minuscule streamers that would fit a tiny party.
“This paper is like a recipe,” Rarity explained, seizing with magic a sheaf of offcuts. “It takes many ingredients to assemble.” She folded and snipped at it. “The need for a binding agent, a glue, to hold the whole coherent like a dough.” She twisted and smiled. “It’s rough but versatile and, when you see what it can do, ends up being a sweet surprise.”
Rarity sliced the top of the bundle and rotated the base, and a rose flower origami blossomed. Rarity carried it along the flowing brook of her magic and secured it on a lock of Twilight’s mane.
With a pinch of her hoof, Rarity flicked a few pages forward and settled on a rough, bleached blue cloth pulled at the sides, and leather-patched at its midsection. Denim. Traces of matted green mottled the fabric. Applejack’s photo dangled by the side at the tip of a leather strap.
“I don’t recall Applejack wearing pants.” Twilight snickered. “Did you steal a pair from her hidden wardrobe?”
“Pish!” Rarity scoffed, flicking her hoof in the air to ward off the accusation. “That was years ago when I tried to crass myself up for that accursed stallion. How immature I was then.”
Rarity brushed the sewn junction between the leather and denim, circling the edges of the seam.
“So...” Twilight paused, a smile crawling on her lips. She chuckled, raising her eyebrows at Rarity. “You did steal her pants.”
“Not. Quite,” Rarity said, brushing her mane back to reveal a smirk. “It's an offcut from one of her sets of work clothes. One she ruined while doing repairs on a special oak tree. That was ages ago... after a particularly mighty storm.” She looked down at the open page. “Despite the years, it remains, bearing the scars and marks of the work she achieved.”
Twilight nodded and brushed the fabric. The ridges and roughness corrugated under her hoof. A strong fabric for strong ponies. Broken rarely; easily repaired.
“With each fix, a new visible notch exposes tidbits of personality,” Rarity whispered. “A pony’s experience and growth.”
Twilight smelled crisp cider and toil that still exuded from the fabric. Memories bubbled to the forefront of her mind. That of simpler times.
“You’re teaching me a lesson, aren’t you?” Twilight said with a bothered smile.
“Am I, really?” Rarity asked, cocking a brow.
The Princess nickered with amusement and lifted her hoof off the book to set it down upon her leg rest. “Tell me what meaning you’ve imparted to this work of yours?”
“Art, for all its worth, is subjective. Thus, meaning? Pah! An abundant and diverse commodity.” Rarity motioned her hoof as if to kick away a fly. “We sadly live in an age of relativism. Nothing’s fixed. We may want to thrash and claw to get back a sense of structure but we can’t. There’s no solace in fighting changing times.” She sighed and looked up, stretching her back. “Something is bothering you, Twilight. I can tell. Please, talk to me.”
“Is this art?” Twilight asked, scanning the book.
“Do you feel like it is?”
Twilight’s horn glimmered and the book flickered in and out of reality to come back open to a new page: thin and fragile, woven in a near-translucent rainbow-tinted fabric. Twilight and Rarity both let out a long sigh. A tense silence followed in its wake.
Twilight broke stance first, slowly moving to lay the tip of her hoof on the medal pinned in the fabric. The laurel wreath glinted with the bolt and five-pointed gold star it enclosed. Twilight brushed the sky blue pendant before her eyes traveled down along with her hoof. She rubbed the page.
“Spider silk for Dash…?” Twilight pondered as she lifted the page’s corner. She glanced at Rarity.
“It’s tough. It can be woven into steel-strong bonds, nigh impossible to break.”
“And the picture?” Twilight asked as she hovered the picture of a young, triumphant, and serious pegasus mare looking offside in the distance behind the camera.
“Young Featherlight took the picture a few days before… before.” Rarity sucked air.
“She lived doing what she loved.”
Rarity rubbed a hoof over the other. “Twilight, did you know some spiders could fly?”
“I’ve never seen a spider grow wings,” Twilight said with a half-smile.
“It happened with a pony I know.” Rarity chuckled and rested her head against Twilight’s shoulder. “Some spiders cast a single strand of silk in the nether, and let themselves be carried by it to new destinations. They take leaps of faith.”
They didn’t talk for a while. They took turns browsing the pages, touching, smelling, and watching the decades-long collection of Rarity’s memories.
Fluttershy’s photo flicked off into the air as Twilight turned yet another page. Twilight and Rarity cast their magic together, and blue and purple mingled to snatch the photo.
“You’re clingy,” Twilight said, giggling as Rarity’s magic twirled around and over hers.
Rarity looked away to the side with hot cheeks. But she didn’t drop the magic. She let it skitter over the cool purple blaze.
Meanwhile, a golden thread and a needle materialized in another strand of Rarity’s magic. She sewed the photo back onto the khaki cloth that now took the center page. Waves of mated gold and silver crawled over the fabric under the light.
Twilight frowned, pinching at it with her magic. She pulled the page out and unwrapped it into a shawl so thin and refined she could barely keep it, if not feel it, in her ethereal grasp.
“The finest of all cashmere,” Rarity whispered with a prideful smile. “Shahtoosh.”
Twilight smirked and shook her head. “I still can’t believe it’s called that.” She bent forward and brushed the fabric against her muzzle. She smiled, then frowned, looking sideways to Rarity. “Aren’t those illegal?”
A hoof pressed on her lips, Rarity threw a knowing look to Twilight. “Only selling it, Twilight.” She pointed at the shawl. “I never paid for it. It was given to me, woven from the finest hair of the Chiru Antelope tribe.”
“How did you even come into contact with those recluses?” Twilight asked.
“Commerce, of course,” Rarity said without skipping a beat. “With our age, we’ve been around.”
They exchanged another look. Rarity extended her hooves to take the unfolded shawl out of Twilight’s magic. “It’s so light, and gentle, and ephemeral.”
“Such a singular item and you’d put it in a book,” Twilight said.
“Like words—they deserve safety and remembrance. They don’t have any use unless they sit among the hospitality of their peers.”
Twilight looked down and her eyes wet a bit. She sighed and tapped her hoof against the edge of her crystal throne.
“We’ve been looking at it for a long time, Twilight,” Rarity muttered. She smiled but her breathing was slow. The outside, real life, called. “I would hurt departing without hearing and mending your heartache.”
Twilight’s breast swelled and heaved, her voice crackled and her words clipped.
“There’s everypony in here. That is, except me.” Twilight sighed. “I see friends, I see partners, I see acquaintances, and enemies. But I’m not there. Why?” She paused to suck in air in erratic breaths. “We loved each other Rarity, I still love you, th– then we parted ways.” She sobbed. “We had to. I may be immortal, but what’s the worth of power when even I could not bend traditions?”
“Oh, Twilight, you never change,” Rarity said, hugging her hooves around Twilight’s shoulders. “Always missing the library for the books.”
“I– I don’t get it.”
Rarity helped Twilight closer to the book and closed it. With the cold light of her horn, Rarity lit the periwinkle leather and smiled.
“This swatch book is you, to me.” She brushed the cover. “It will be yours one day.”
Twilight swallowed with difficulty and pulled her head to the side with a grimace. “If it is for me, why aren’t you in there, then?”
“Because I’m here,” Rarity whispered, wrapping her hooves around Twilight’s withers again. Her chin rested against Twilight’s crest. “It’s not my place to decide how I will be remembered. You’re the Princess of Friendship. And friendship is also memories.”
