Following Instructions To The Letter
Sunset Shimmer sat alone in a lobby full of people. They were all in suits, moving with purpose towards whatever business they had in parts of the building that had nothing to do with her. She felt invisible, but not at all uncomfortable for it. The last couple of weeks had left her starving for solitude. It seemed like every time she took a breath, someone else was there to ask if she was okay.
Was she eating okay?
How was she doing with the bills?
What about the arrangements?
Help packing?
It was nice to know people cared, but Sunset was tired of being cared for. Tired of having to tell people she was okay, because if she tried to say otherwise, they would pester her until she ached for the burden of grieving silence.
She had the whole rest of her life to be alone, and somehow she just wanted to get on with it. To let herself be submerged in ‘aloneness’. Maybe the idea of it wouldn’t be so terrifying once she was experiencing it.
“Miss Sunset Shimmer?”
Sunset swallowed the hard little rock that had wedged itself in her throat. “Yeah, hey,” she said, affecting a distracting laugh as she swiped at the corner of her eyes. “Sorry. I got distracted.”
The woman standing over her nodded, giving an understanding smile. She was dressed in a slate-gray pencil-cut skirt that hugged her hips in a barely-workplace-appropriate manner, and an ID card that read ‘Zazzle’ was clipped to the plumage-like ruffles of her canary-yellow blouse. She stepped aside and held out a hand like a concierge, beckoning her further into the building. “I understand, ma’am,” she said. “Miss Beagle will see you now, if you’d like to follow me to the elevators.”
Sunset nodded, following the chipper young woman – girl, if she was being honest – through the busy lobby and past the large front desk. The stream of busy lawyers seemed to part, as if by magic, as they went to the bank of elevators behind the security station.
“This way, please,” the girl said, motioning for Sunset to follow when the older woman had stopped to wait for the elevator. “We’ll be taking this one.”
Sunset walked a few feet further down, to an elevator with no one waiting in front of it. She watched as the girl scanned her ID card, which was on one of those zippy little badge reels, on a sensor next to the call button. The LED light on the security panel blinked, changing from red to green, and the doors opened for them.
They got in and the girl, Zazzle, pressed one of the buttons at the top of the panel – not quite the top floor, but close enough that it’d be a long ride up.
“That’s a nice outfit, by the way,” Sunset said as the doors closed.
Zazzle looked up at the taller woman with a gracious smile, and there was a youthful glimmer of excitement in her eyes at the compliment that made Sunset feel like she’d just aged ten years. “That means sooo much coming from you,” she said with teenybopper enthusiasm. “You must know so much about fashion!”
“A little, yeah.” Sunset flashed a nervous smile, shrugging as she stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jacket. “I was always just a tag along for that stuff. That was always… you know… her thing…”
The excitement in Zazzle’s eyes transmuted, as if by alchemy, to pity. “Of course,” she said with a polite dip of her head. “It’s still incredibly flattering.”
Sunset nodded, and the girl took the silent reply for the retraction that it was. With nothing but the dim warble of smooth jazz drowning out the whirr of the elevator, Sunset shrank into herself to stare out the glass wall of the elevator. The people and cars on the street below were shrinking as the clouds overhead grew, as if the elevator car were slowly ascending into another world. The glass monoliths of the human-version of Manehattan were impressive the first few times she’d seen them, but they’d lost their novelty around the time Rarity was having her fourth showcase for Fashion Week. And the allure of the highrise penthouse, like glittering mansions in the sky, had shed its mystique the night she’d joined Rarity at an industry party and watched a drunk supermodel puking over the rail onto the street half-a-mile below.
She didn’t know why they couldn’t do this in Canterlot City, but their lawyer – Rarity’s lawyer, more accurately – had insisted Sunset come in to her office. As to what business the woman had in mind, it was anyone’s guess. All she would say on the phone was that it was in regards to some special instructions that couldn’t have been mentioned at the will reading.
The elevator finally slowed, doing that little jump they did as the mechanisms all locked into place, and the doors opened with a polite ding. This hallway was far less busy than the lobby had been. They were high enough up that the only way to get to this floor was to have a security card that allowed it, and the hallways were lined with art pieces that looked expensive to Sunset’s fair-to-middling knowledge of the subject. She was more of a nuts and bolts gal, but that didn’t mean she didn’t appreciate it whenever Rarity had made her a ‘plus one’ at art exhibitions.
Zazzle walked briskly down the hall and ushered Sunset into an open door. “This way, please,” she said, waiting for Sunset to enter first.
The receptionist area was small, barely big enough for a small waiting area, a desk for the receptionist, and a fish tank that was placed oddly in the corner. There was a sort of minimalism about it that seemed off for such an upscale building, and Sunset’s instinct told her that must’ve been by design. Someone had to have paid a pretty penny to make this high-powered lawyer’s office look like it belonged to a stripmall ambulance chaser.
That was something Sunset had learned from being with Rarity. It didn’t matter what you had spent your money on, it just mattered that you spent a lot of it. That was like half of what fashion was.
Zazzle took her place behind the desk and picked up the phone. She waited a moment for the other end to get picked up, then said, “Miss Sunset Shimmer to see you, ma’am… Okay, I’ll send her in.”
Sunset took that as her cue to step through a second door, leading into the actual office. Zazzle, ever the polite and professional go-getter, shot to her feet to make sure she held the door open. Sunset almost wanted to tell the poor girl she didn’t have to do that every time, but she already knew what response that would get. Instead she just smiled and stepped inside.
Sunset had met Legal Beagle on several occasions over the years. She was a few years Sunset’s senior, and a stern-looking woman in the eyes, but the rest of her features were soft and slightly pudgy. Like a strict aunt that would surprise you with an extra dessert when your mother wasn’t looking. She’d always worn a few extra pounds, but wore them well, and in places that could be flattered with a well-cut suit.
That was probably why she and Rarity had enjoyed such a long friendship. They’d always bartered one another’s services, and Sunset could see the little touches of Rarity’s handiwork in the dress Legal Beagle was wearing as she stood to greet her – a pastel pink two-piece number cut in that retro Jackie O style that was currently back in vogue according to the fashion magazines that were still being delivered to the house.
“Sunset,” the woman said, smiling. Her normally hard, squinty glare was softer than Sunset was used to, just like it had been at the funeral, and at the will reading. “Please have a seat.”
Sunset nodded in thanks and sunk into a leather smoking chair in front of Legal’s desk. “Heya, what’s up?”
Legal walked around and sat informally on the corner of her desk. “How was your flight in?”
“Didn’t fly,” Sunset said. “Drove. It’s relaxing, and you don’t have to take off your shoes to get through a security gate.”
Legal nodded politely. “Rode your motorcycle, did you?”
A pang of guilt gave Sunset’s heart a little squeeze as she shook her head. “I sold it. Rarity always hated me having it. Said I was too old to be riding around without a care like a kid.” She shifted in her chair, the leather squeaking as she slid into a more comfortable position. “We used to get into arguments about it all the time, and last week I went into the garage and I saw it, and like a reflex I just had all those fights pop into my head, playing in a loop. I dunno, I might regret having done it later, but for right now I just couldn’t look at it anymore knowing she hated it…”
Legal smiled, her chubby cheeks puffing up with matronly warmth. “I understand,” she said, because everyone had been very understanding. “What about work? Are you keeping busy?”
Sunset squirmed again at the shift from one unpleasant pleasantry to the next. “I’m taking a break. I’m not worried about money, and I just don’t have it in me to be teaching engineering right now. You know how needy college kids can be.”
The older woman nodded, still smiling, still understanding. She took a deep breath, apparently ready for more smalltalk, and Sunset suddenly felt like she couldn’t take it anymore.
“Sorry, but can we get on with it?” she said, flinching internally at how brusque her interjection had sounded in her own ears. “I don’t mean to be rude and it’s not like I don’t like talking to you, I just… I want to put the business end of all this to rest already.”
Silence filled the room as though a living thing, with only the soft ticking of a desk clock keeping rhythm like a heartbeat to disturb the stillness of the moment.
“We can do that, if you prefer, I understand completely,” Legal Beagle said, sliding off the desk and returning to her seat. “You haven’t done anything with the ashes yet, have you?”
Sunset sunk into her chair, scratching her nails in disquiet along the leather armrest. “I talked about it with her family… we’re not really sure what to do. I think Hondo and Sweetie want to put some ash in lockets for us, but Cookie thinks it’s macabre.”
“And you?”
“I’m indifferent to it.” Sunset gave a noncommittal shrug. “I’m not sure what I want, or what Rarity would have wanted. I just know she wouldn’t have wanted anyone to fight about it, so I’m letting them figure it out. I’ll go with whatever they settle on.”
“Lucky for you, then, that Rarity already made the decision for you all.” Before Sunset could ask what she meant, Legal picked up the receiver of her phone, which was immediately answered by her assistant outside. “Zazzle, please bring it in.”
Sunset blinked, the dozens of questions spinning around in her head all fighting to get to her mouth and getting caught in the door like an old Vaudeville gag. Indecision filled the gap in time between the secretary being summoned and her entrance.
Zazzle came into the office carrying a bright red shoebox, tied with a big white bow. It didn’t look like anything special. Rarity had probably literally thousands of boxes just like it in her stores and in their closets at home.
Zazzle set it down on the desk while her boss sifted through one of her desk drawers. Sunset reached out a hand to undo the bow, to find out what was so important that she had to come all the way to Manhattan to get it.
“Not just yet,” Legal Beagle said. At her words, Zazzle placed a gentle hand atop Sunset’s, stopping her from pulling at the bow. “I’m sorry, but there’s a letter that you’re supposed to read first. Rarity was very specific.”
Sunset let go, with great difficulty, of the flash of anger she felt at being stopped from touching something her wife had left behind. She sat back in the chair, her arms crossed over her chest, watching as the lawyer fussed about with some paperwork.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to give this to you at the will reading,” Legal said. She pulled out a large manila envelope and set it on the desk. “These items were in a deposit box here in the city, and we had a bit of difficulty getting the bank to release them to us in a timely manner, as the box was owned by her LLC, rather than as a private account… though I suppose you’re not interested in any of that at the moment.”
Legal pushed the envelope across the table to her. “These were instructions that Rarity left behind for you,” she explained. “Something she said was for your eyes only, so I have no idea what it is other than directions about what to do with her ashes and with this box.”
Legal Beagle stood and walked around the desk, motioning for her assistant to follow. She looked down at Sunset, smiling again, and a small shudder trembled through her as she took a deep breath and said, “I have a meeting with the other partners. You may have my office to yourself for the next hour or so. And if you’re gone by the time I come back, I just wanted you to know that I cared for your wife very much. Rarity was more than a client, she was a friend, and I had regrettably few opportunities to tell her that. We were all lucky to have what time with her that we did.”
And then she left, swiping at her eyes as she strode out of the office with Zazzle on her heels. The door closed, but Sunset didn’t feel alone. That same living silence was back, its heart somehow racing at only sixty beats per minute.
* * *
The portal to Equestria was where it had always been, hidden in plain sight right in front of Canterlot High School. Why the portal was there was anyone’s guess, and in the end it didn’t really matter. The portal worked when they needed it to and that was all Sunset cared about.
It was Sunday and the school was happily empty. A few of her friends had talked about seeing her off, but Sunset had insisted that she would be fine going alone. That she preferred it.
Sunset ran her fingers over the stone plinth holding up the statue of the school’s mascot. It was rough, and warm, and decidedly not yet a portal, so she checked her watch. It was already past the time she had arranged with Princess Twilight, who was notoriously punctual about everything.
The magical diary that she used to communicate with Twilight was in the trunk of her car, parked just a bit up the road. Just as she was beginning to toy with the idea of sending another message, there was a quiet electric hum in the air that vibrated the fillings in her teeth. The sensation faded almost as soon as it began. A moment later an apple fell out of the statue, causing shimmering ripples of magic like a stone breaking the surface of a still lake. Sunset picked the apple up, polished it on her jacket, and took a bite.
Definitely an Equestrian apple.
The apple went into a trash can, and Sunset adjusted her backpack before stepping through the portal. The familiar sensation of falling sideways overtook her as she was dragged along the magical corridor, past glimpses of other worlds and melting clocks peeking through the tunnel of rainbow-colored light.
Coming out of the portal was different depending on which end you were coming out. The Equestrian side always felt like tripping over your own shoelaces – just a sense of weightlessness for a fraction of a second, and a shift in your guts that told you that you were about to pitch forward. Sunset took that trip, falling out of the portal and landing on all fours, her hooves clicking on the hard tile of the library in Canterlot Castle. The familiar and unexpected pattern on the marble flooring caused a moment of disorientation that had nothing to do with the shift in her guts and the change in her anatomy.
Twilight lived in this castle now, and Starlight Glimmer was living in Castle Friendship, she recalled after mulling it over for a few moments. She hadn’t been back to Equestria since they’d made that change.
“Sunset, I’m so sorry I was late,” Princess Twilight Sparkle gushed, rushing up to give Sunset an apologetic nuzzle.
“My fault,” Spike said, raising a claw and giving a little wave from his seat atop a pile of books. “I was supposed to remind her of the time and it got away from me.”
Sunset smiled at them both, taking a moment to appreciate that she had to look up at both of them. She hadn’t seen Spike on this side of the portal in years, but every time she did, he seemed to have grown another few inches, and Twilight was no different. Alicorn and dragon growth spurts were nothing to laugh at.
“It’s no problem,” Sunset said.
Twilight sat on her haunches, hunching her shoulders and lowering her head closer to Sunset’s eye level. Sunset had seen that posture a lot in the past few weeks, whenever someone approached her while she was sitting, or if that person was very tall. It was the posture of someone trying to be sympathetic, to put you at ease, and it was fair warning for the question that Twilight asked next.
“So how are you holding up? Seriously.”
Sunset shrugged in response. “As well as you might imagine.”
Spike and Twilight shared a knowing look.
Twilight cleared her throat, swallowing whatever uncomfortable thoughts had just creased her brow. “How long do you think you’ll be staying with us? We’ve already set up a room for you.” A disapproving frown cracked the alicorn’s mask of empathy. “Starlight is away on some sort of ‘booze cruise’ with Trixie—” The frown intensified for just the span of Trixie’s name. “—but we sent her a message and she’s eager to see you when she gets back.”
“I don’t think I’ll be long.” Sunset tugged the straps of her backpack in emphasis. “I’m going to take care of what I have to do and then I think I just want to go home.”
“Oh, this isn’t a social visit?” Twilight asked, her ears folding down in clear disappointment. “You were a little vague in your message, I just assumed you were… well nevermind.”
“Some other time,” Sunset said, quickly adding, “I promise. I was actually kind of hoping to take off directly from here.”
Twilight nodded, her eyes peering with naked curiosity at the human backpack sitting awkwardly on Sunset’s pony back. “Spike, could you go get Sunset a saddlebag since she’s leaving soon?” she asked without taking her eyes off the bag. “That backpack can’t be too comfortable.”
The dragon gave a lazy little salute and plodded off to find a spare bag for Sunset’s luggage, leaving the two mares alone in the library.
Sunset had a seat on the chilly library floor and carefully extricated herself from the backpack. “Thanks, that’s actually really appreciated,” she said. “It’s been a while since I’ve been on this side, I forgot about, you know… anatomy.”
“Not a problem. There isn’t anything else that you need, is there?” Twilight’s horn lit, and a scroll appeared in the air with a little pop of summoning magic. She unrolled it, taking the quill that had been rolled up inside and making some marks on the page. “Maybe I could come with you on whatever errand you’re on. I think I can spare some time if I move my schedule around.”
“I’d rather do it alone,” Sunset said, for what felt like the twentieth time since she’d found out about this impromptu trip back to Equestria. “Sorry… um… I hate to ask, but...”
Sunset reached for her backpack, fumbling clumsily at the zipper with unpracticed hooves. She gave herself a mental kick in the pants for forgetting that she was a unicorn again, and channeled magic into her horn. It was weird trying to use unicorn magic again. It was like suddenly remembering that you had a third hand and trying to tie your shoe with it.
She managed to get the pack open and levitate her wallet out.
“Don’t suppose you can exchange some currency for me?” Sunset asked. “I’m kind of gold-poor.”
Twilight smiled brightly as she sent away the scroll with a flash of magic. “Money is something I have,” she said, taking the wallet in her own magic and stuffing it back in the bag. “Don’t worry about it. Is there anything else you need? Maybe an escort?”
Sunset chewed her lip, unsure of whether or not to say what her next stop was. It would only invite more questions if she did, but it wasn’t likely to stay a secret for long.
“I don’t need an escort,” she said, deciding that it’d be better to just say it outright, “but maybe you could get me a train ticket to Ponyville?”
* * *
Ponyville was nice, same as always. Even with a big castle and a fancy school sitting on the outskirts of town, it had never felt like a city. Even as the town grew, it had still kept those small village sensibilities. Everyone said hello to their neighbors, and nobody locked their doors unless they were too close to the Everfree Forest.
Sunset was sitting at the little open air café across from Carousel Boutique, nursing her third cup of coffee and toying with the crusts of her dandelion sandwich. The waitress had just left her table. Asking for the second time in an hour if Sunset wanted her plate taken away, or if she might want something else. She didn’t want anything, but it was rude to take up a table like that without ordering anything, so she’d asked for a slice of pie that had been pushed to the empty chair across from her.
She actually knew the waitress. Or at least she knew the mare’s human double back on the other side of the portal, in the parallel world. She was a waitress over there, too, at the greasy spoon next to the college where Sunset taught.
It was always strange to think about how parallel dimensions worked, as far as the people went. Timelines existing adjacent to one another, consisting of entirely different events. And yet, somehow, the people were the same. The human world had a lot more people, of course, but the analogues of ponies or griffins or whatever from the Equestria-side were there. Often with the same personalities, same career choices, even same families.
Destiny. It was the only explanation Sunset had ever been able to settle on. People would do the things they were meant to do and be the people they were meant to be, regardless of their world or the shapes of their bodies – driven by their Cutie Marks, even in a world that lacked the magic to bestow those marks. Rarity had thought that was beautiful the times they’d discussed it, usually laying in bed, fingers interlaced and bodies sweaty. The post-lovemaking endorphins always made Rarity a little love-drunk, and she annoyingly sometimes liked to talk philosophy and metaphysics in those moments.
Providence, Rarity had called it. Something was looking out for them, she would say. Maybe not a god, or a God, but something that could touch them across dimensions and link them by their souls like a great tether reaching across the void of space and time. The same person by nature, but different by circumstances, like a dish changing flavor with the seasoning.
Or hell, maybe it was just math. It was just as likely that with infinite permutations of parallel worlds, there was a chance for there to be two worlds with exactly the same people – save for the buggaboo of species – living the exact same lives. And the chances of those two worlds being linked by a magical mirror approached infinite likelihood the further you considered it. They were simply living at the furthest end of a statistical curve. The winners of a queer pancosmic lottery that offered no prize except a mild uncanny feeling when you met such familiar strangers.
Whatever the case, it was always a little weird to come home.
A string of bells rang as someone left Carousel Boutique. It was a stallion, walking out with a large hat box balanced atop his back. His face was an odd mix of lustful anticipation and pained resignation. Sunset had seen that look on the faces of many men leaving Rarity’s stores carrying newly purchased gifts for their paramours.
“Please don’t hesitate to bring her back if we need any alterations to the fit, my door is always open! Thank you for your custom and have a beautiful day!”
The voice calling after the stallion wrapped itself around Sunset’s heart, squeezing until it hurt. That was her voice. Not like it was in a recording or in her memories, but alive and loud and impossibly here.
The door closed after the stallion, bells jingling and glass rattling as the door hit the frame. The voice retreated back into the shop, and though Sunset felt like she could breathe again, all the air was gone from her vicinity. Rarity had taken it with her into the shop.
“Why are you doing this to me, Rares?” she moaned as she buried her face in her hooves. Her eyes burned with unshed frustrations, and her heart was beating against her chest like it was trying to escape. “Why do I have to do this?”
The quiet murmur of ponies living their lives seemed to dim around Sunset, and she could feel dozens of eyes on her taking notice as they passed by. She ignored them, having retreated into herself defensively. Her only tether to the outside world was the hoof she kept pressed firmly atop the saddlebags in the chair next to her. This was Ponyville, but she was still a human gal on the inside, and she didn’t want anyone to steal something so irreplaceable.
“Are you alright?”
Sunset looked up at the waitress through swollen red eyes. “I’m fine, thank you,” she said, swiping at dry cheeks. She was overwhelmed, but not crying. She could cry later. “Just… I just recently lost my wife. Sometimes it hits you without expecting it.”
Understanding possessed the girl, like it had to everyone else. “I understand,” she said, “my dad was like that when my mother passed.” She placed a hoof on Sunset’s shoulder in quiet support. “Take your time.”
The waitress retreated, and Sunset could see her through the window as she walked up to the cook and another waitress near the counter, her body language bespeaking whispered gossip. A few nosy old nags were loitering around, ears twitching as they tried to catch the scuttlebutt about the widowed stranger sitting alone at the café.
Sunset ignored them. Her concerns were bigger than curious looks from gossiping strangers. She pulled the chair with her saddlebags closer and put a hoof inside. The urn containing her wife’s ashes was smooth, the steel chilling in the breezy late-afternoon of an Equestrian fall. The leaves had already all fallen, leaving the branches of every tree in sight bare – ugly.
The wind blew again, a bit harder than before, catching the bough of a tree next to the café, which in the summer would have brought comforting shade to anyone dining on the terrace. With no leaves to sing in the wind, the wood groaned, sadly, as the branches swayed and stretched out like hands reaching desperately towards the warmth of Spring.
* * *
Sunset sat alone in Rarity’s – the pony one’s – parlour, on a big couch in a dark regal purple. The buttoning on the backrest puckered the upholstery into little heart-shaped dimples.
Down the hallway, past the bathroom, and an inventory room, was the showroom. The indistinct hum of Rarity’s voice drifted mutely into the parlour as she massaged the ego of a customer that Sunset had followed in.
Sunset hadn’t had the courage to go in alone, and having seen an older mare going inside, she’d left a generous tip of Twilight’s bits and hurried to follow the other mare. Shamefully, she’d used the poor lady as a buffer. An excuse to dip her hooftip into the water and acclimatize herself to the boutique without having to deal with Rarity straight away.
The place was different from any of her Rarity’s stores, that much she could tell. Her wife had talked endlessly about her ideas for product display, and Sunset knew far more about the subject than she was comfortable admitting. The color scheme was right, sure, but the curtains were something her wife never would have used, and the little touches in the way she displayed merchandise were all wrong.
And the smell... Sunset was terrified that she might walk in and smell her wife’s perfume. It was a mercy that this Rarity had different leanings in regards to scent. Or perhaps the only difference was availability of the product. Either way, a mercy was a mercy, and a lot of her fears were allayed once she knew she wouldn’t break into tears just walking into the building.
The same dish, just with different seasoning, she reminded herself.
Rarity had recognized her straight away, and the look of pity in her eyes had almost withered Sunset – those eyes that were so much like the ones she knew with a lover’s intimacy. This Rarity had obviously heard about the accident from Princess Twilight. The princess was an old friend, and of course had attended the funeral. Someone as important as her definitely wouldn’t have been able to take leave like that lightly, so obviously word had gotten around.
Sunset hadn’t visited in many, many years, but all of Twilight’s friends knew her circumstances. They knew whom she’d fallen in love with. Whom she’d lost.
Rarity was no fool, and knew that it couldn’t possibly be a simple social visit. She’d quietly indicated that Sunset should follow, and led her out of sight of the customer as she was browsing the wares on the showroom floor.
The sound of bells sang through the building, like the sound of coins jingling thankfully in a full purse. “Thank you for your patronage, and enjoy your dress!” Rarity shouted over the tinkling bells.
Sunset turned her ears towards the hallway, straining for any sign of Rarity’s movement with a voyeur’s nervous curiosity. The sound of blinds and drapes being drawn and closed fluttered in from the front of the shop, and the click and clank of locks told Sunset that the shop was closing up early, just for her. The dainty rhythm of Rarity’s hooves beat an ominous tattoo as the mare walked down the hall.
Sunset wrapped an arm around the saddlebag next to her, snuggling it closer against her haunches until it was pressing painfully into her hip. The heft of the urn, and the sight of the shoebox sitting on the coffee table with its big white bow, were the only things anchoring her to the couch. She wasn’t ready for this, but it was what her wife had wanted. If Sunset had had her choice, she’d already have jumped out the window and chain-teleported herself miles away.
An unexpected comfort came in the form of an audible pause in Rarity’s footfalls. Mercifully, it seemed that Rarity was at least partially as uncomfortable as she was.
“Sunset Shimmer!” Rarity said, her face split into a grin that was of appropriate intensity when greeting a freshly-minted widow. “It’s been so long.”
Sunset nodded mutely, swallowing hard to find her voice hidden under all the butterflies in her stomach. “It has,” she said. Struggling to find some purchase, all she could think to say was, “How’ve you been?”
Rarity cantered over, jerking to an awkward stop next to a fainting couch on the other side of the coffee table from Sunset. That moment of hesitation before Rarity climbed onto the couch told Sunset that she’d just been spared a friendly hug or a kiss on the cheek, or some other affectation of greeting that was ground into the other mare’s behavior by years of practice.
“Oh, I’ve nothing to complain about and yet could complain endlessly if you gave me the opportunity,” Rarity said with a dismissive wave of her hoof. Her eyes drifted down to the shoebox, narrowing in thought before flicking back to Sunset. “But honestly, please, it’s such a surprise to see you… I’m just ever so sorry to have heard about… about your wife.” A shiver trembled its way up her back. “It was so unexpected. She was so young... If you don’t mind me asking…?”
“Car accident,” Sunset said autonomously. It was practically a reflex now to say those two words. They’d almost lost meaning at this point, even though they were the words that had brought her entire world to a screeching halt. A moment of thought and she added, for the sake of her Equestrian host, “A car’s a kind of carriage. Like a big go-kart with an engine that makes it go really fast.”
“Ah, I see…” Rarity pawed nervously at the upholstery, her eyes flicking from Sunset to the box, to the bulge in the saddlebag pressed against Sunset’s hip. She leapt quite suddenly off the couch. “Would you like a drink? I should like a drink.”
Sunset was about to decline when she noticed that Rarity wasn’t going to the kitchen further into the house. Instead, she went to a cabinet against the wall furthest from the fireplace, snuggled between two bookshelves. Inside were bottles of wine inside little cubby holes, and shelves with decorative crystal decanters, many of which were still full.
“Anything but wine,” Sunset said.
Rarity nodded and poured a glass for her from a bottle shaped like a crystal heart. She sent the drink floating across the room to Sunset, and poured herself a glass of wine from an unopened bottle that followed her back to the couch, trailing behind like a child’s balloon.
Sunset took the glass of false courage and had a nip immediately. Just enough to get a little warmth in her stomach. It was good scotch, or at least the pony equivalent. She conjured a couple of ice cubes and dropped them into the glass.
“I suppose I should ask about this,” Rarity said over the rim of her wine glass. A shimmer of blue magic, the color of Rarity’s eyes, tugged inquisitively at one of the loops of the bow around the shoebox on the table. “Might I hazard to guess it’s the reason for this visit? Not to be so rude as to make suppositions to a friend, of course, but you did set it out on the table rather enticingly.”
Sunset pushed the box across the table with her magic, close enough that Rarity could reach out and touch it. “It’s for you,” she explained. “It’s from… from my wife. I don’t know what’s in it, but whatever it is, she wanted me to make sure you got it, and she didn’t want me to look inside.”
Sunset could taste the bitterness in her voice as she explained that last detail, or maybe that was just the scotch. She had another drink, and the fresh shot of courage was enough to give in to the temptation to study the other mare’s face.
The years had been kind to this Rarity, just as they had been for her own. She was a little thicker in the middle than when Sunset had first met her, but no more than anyone else their age. There was a streak of gray going through her mane, gamboling playfully along the curl of her hair. But where her age really showed was around the eyes – laugh lines, her wife had always said. Signs of a happy life, filled with good company and good memories.
Rarity took the box in her magic, bringing it to the seat next to her to study. Her magic probed it, this way and that, tugging at the ribbon without undoing anything, as though afraid it might protest if she acted too bold.
“We never even got to meet,” Rarity said under her breath. “Why would she leave me anything?”
“She had wanted to meet you,” Sunset said, shaking her drink just to hear the cubes clink against the glass. “To meet other versions of all our friends, honestly, but you especially. We were always planning a trip through the portal, but we never got past the planning.”
Rarity was looking at her now, the box seemingly forgotten in favor of some fascinating new thought. “You’ve been back to Equestria a few times. Why didn’t she visit with you?”
“Work,” Sunset replied with bitterness once more creeping into her voice and spoiling the taste of her drink. “Just work... She never really ever stopped working. Even when we were together, she’d be doodling designs on cocktail napkins and commenting on the fashion choices of every other woman in the room.”
Rarity hung her head, again plucking idly at the bow with her magic. “I see.”
“I’m actually…” The words caught in Sunset’s throat. She hadn’t yet explained to anyone in Equestria the real reason she was here. She hadn’t even thought the words in her own head since a few days before, as she was sitting in the living room with her in-laws, explaining why she was going to take their daughter’s remains to a whole other world. “I think my wife always really regretted never finding the time to visit. So she left a letter, asking me to spread her ashes here.”
If Rarity was shocked, it didn’t show on her face. The only indication that she’d even heard what Sunset had said was the way her eyes drifted, almost subconsciously, down to the bulge in the saddlebag at Sunset’s side.
“Where are you going to do it?” she asked, sipping daintily at her wine.
“Rainbow Falls,” Sunset explained. “I went there with Celestia when I was a kid. For the swap meet. It was some lesson about the spirit of friendship and fairness that I’d been too stupid and young to understand… regardless, my wife’s eyes always lit up when I told her about how the rainbow rivers would sparkle as they cascaded down the cliffs. The letter she left me said she wanted that to be her resting place.”
Rarity smiled, genuinely and without reserve. “A fine resting place,” she said. “I couldn’t have picked a more appropriate place myself.”
Sunset took the last of the drink into her mouth, swishing it around like a rinse and swallowing in one go, just so the taste would stay with her for a while. “I should leave,” she said as she slid off the couch. The saddlebag went back across her back, and the eerily comforting weight of her wife’s urn settled against her side. “I have to get up early in the morning.”
“Do you really have to go?” Rarity asked. “I don’t mind if you’d like to stay the night. I have a guest room all made up and you’d be welcome to it.”
Sunset shook her head. “I’m staying at Twilight’s old castle. Starlight Glimmer and Trixie aren’t home right now, but Twilight gave me a key so I could get in. I know this was all very sudden and probably very uncomfortable, but thank you for indulging my wife’s selfishness. Good bye.”
Sunset hurried out of the room, leaving a stunned Rarity sitting in the parlour, and she broke into a run the second she was out of the boutique. She wasn’t sure why she was running, but something inside her demanded it of her. She was still clumsy on four legs, and just a bit tipsy besides. She wasn’t a young girl anymore, and her lungs were already burning before she was even half way back. She kept running, the urn bouncing against her ribs, urging her on like spurs digging into her flank. Once she was finally back at the castle, behind a locked castle door, she allowed herself to collapse onto the ground.
* * *
It was already past noon when Sunset Shimmer arrived in Rainbow Falls. The events of the previous day had replayed in her head, keeping her up well into the night and causing her to sleep right through her alarm clock. As a result, she’d missed the commuter train that would pass through the Rainbow Falls Station, and had been forced to take a later train.
Rainbow Falls was just as picturesque as she’d remembered. The tall mountain spires and cliffs rose into the sky, with naturally forming rainbow clouds spilling rivers of liquid rainbow down onto them, creating the falls that were the namesake of this place. In the midst of it all was a large, flat bluff, which was the grounds for the annual Traders Exchange.
There was also a village, which saw a fair deal of tourism, even without the Exchange. The falls were a popular location for honeymoons and romantic getaways during the spring and summer months, and the colder months of the year saw traffic down in the valley beneath the falls. Down there were natural hot springs, heated by volcanic activity, and colored by the rainbows pouring into the springs. Ponies could escape the biting snow with a dip in the hot water, and the diluted rainbows would dye their coats in bright, festive colors.
You could always tell who’d been to the springs for vacation, in the same way you could tell someone had been to the beach in the human world. Tie-dye tans were their own fashion statement in Equestria, and Rarity had gushed almost endlessly about wanting to try it for herself.
Sunset’s business wasn’t in the village, though. As she left the station, she turned from the main road, onto a path that led away from town. The path was rough, but hikers had beaten it into the ground over the years, leading up into the woods that would take her further up the mountain. If she was going to do this thing, she wanted to do it right, and that meant climbing higher.
“Ah, there you are. I was beginning to suspect I might have caught the train for nothing.”
Sunset froze as she heard the familiar voice. “Rarity?”
The mare in question was trotting up from behind, panting a little as she hurried to catch up. She had a saddlebag that was bulging at the seams with supplies – or maybe just changes of clothes.
“I saw you come in on the train from the bistro outside the station,” she said as she finally caught up. “What happened, did you miss the first train?”
“I overslept,” Sunset said, sourly. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, but please just go home. This is something I have to do alone.”
Sunset turned and started back up the path, expecting that to be the end of it. She really should have expected that it wouldn’t be. It definitely wouldn’t have been the end of the discussion if it had been her Rarity, after all.
“Come come come,” Rarity said as she fell into lockstep, tutting her tongue reproachfully. “There’s no reason for that, is there? What’s the harm in bringing along a friend? Especially when you’re so ill-prepared for the hike. Luckily for you I am an expert backpacker.”
“I’m fine,” Sunset said, shooting a sour look over her shoulder. She used her magic to open her saddlebag and levitated out a scarf, some warm boots, a knitted wool cap, and a thermos of coffee. The clothing items were borrowed from Starlight’s closet. She knew her friend wouldn’t mind.
“Ah, but those are hardly provisions enough for the trip,” Rarity said, wagging her ears cutely as she looked up at the mountain. “I think you’re rather underestimating this hike.”
“This isn’t a hike!” Sunset snapped, biting into every word. “Just go, this is something private between me and my wife.”
The hurt look on Rarity’s face tugged at something in Sunset’s guts, but the words were already out there, and she didn’t regret them. She wasn’t wrong, and Rarity was the one that was intruding.
“Just go back,” Sunset repeated. She turned and began walking up the trail again, steadfastly ignoring the tingling discomfort of being watched.
“I won’t leave,” Rarity shouted, her voice breaking under the weight of whatever emotions she was feeling. “She wouldn’t have wanted you to go alone.”
That… that stopped Sunset in her steps.
“What do you know?” she asked, and to her surprise the words weren’t bitter. “What do you know about what she’d want?”
“I know it because it’s what I would want if it were me in that urn,” Rarity declared. “I would want you to have someone with you that understood what this must be doing to you. Even if it was just someone to stand next to you when it happened. You can do this alone, but you shouldn’t have to… no one should have to.”
There was truth in that. Sunset, by her nature, was always a solitary person. It was something that had been at the root of her many failures over the years – a strength that had revealed itself as a weakness time and time again. It was the friendships she’d made in high school that had led her from a dark path, and Rarity, her wife, had insisted that Sunset was always at her best and strongest with a friend at her side.
And her wife had been her very, very best friend.
She spared a look back at the other Rarity, the living one. The mare was standing there with her shoulders square and chest puffed out in defiance, daring Sunset to tell her to leave. It was a sad display of challenge, and nowhere near as effective as the tears glittering on her cheeks in the midday sun.
“Fine.” And she started walking again.
Sunset was nearly a dozen paces away before she heard Rarity’s hooves beating the path in a hurry to catch up.
“Thank you,” she said with a wet sniff.
Sunset grunted a quiet affirmation. “How’d you know I’d be hiking up the mountains?”
“I’ve been here many times over the years,” she explained. “It only took a bit of thought to realize that there wasn’t really anywhere… appropriate to spread a loved one’s ashes. No, I assumed the only choice would be to climb the mountain. There’s a cliff that overlooks the valley, where the late-blooming wildflowers grow.”
“You’ve been up there?” Sunset asked.
Rarity nodded. “Rainbow Dash took my sister and I up the mountain once.” Her brow furrowed in thought. “Well… I should say that she took my sister and her friends, and that I was just an extra pair of eyes to keep an eye on the girls.”
“Yeah, my Rainbow doted on those kids, too,” Sunset said. “She always liked kids. We probably shouldn’t have been surprised that she was the first of us to have one of her own.”
“I’d heard about that,” Rarity said. She tittered with an almost musical laugh. “We teased our Rainbow endlessly about it. Applejack kept trying to set the poor girl up with some of her cousins.”
“And then they got married.”
Rarity laughed again, just as musically. “Oh yes, I rather think all the pressure to pair her with a stallion forced her hoof, so to speak, about her attraction to Applejack. And we all suspected Applejack was only teasing her out of some immature schoolfilly-esque display of affection, though she fervently denied it every time the issue was raised.” She let out a long, dramatic sigh of relief. “Thankfully it all worked out in the end. That certainly would have made for some awkward holidays.”
Sunset hummed in agreement. “It’s always a risk when friends date friends,” she said. “It’s a selfish thing to do to the group, but… sometimes you have to roll the dice.”
The trail finally began to slope upwards, leading into a sparse forest of evergreens.
“Was it a risk for you?” Rarity asked. “For you and your wife.”
Sunset sniffed uncomfortably, the question being a bit more probing than Rarity must have realized. It was the kind of off-handed question that brought up a thousand little memories, some good, some bad, with the bad being the loudest and most vivid.
Wondering how much to say, she settled on an enigmatic, “It all worked out in the end...”
Rarity must have sensed Sunset’s discomfort, and she was generous enough to offer her company without further discussion.
* * *
Their late start up the mountain had hurt their time considerably. By Rarity’s recollection, they were only an hour or so from the perfect place to release the ashes. Sadly, they didn’t have quite an hour worth of sunlight left, so they had no choice but to set stakes and camp out for the night.
Rarity hadn’t been kidding when she said she knew backpacking. Her kit had contained a pup tent, some of those foil emergency blankets, and all the things they’d need to start a fire and make some instant dinner. Sunset’s lukewarm thermos of coffee hadn’t felt quite so impressive next to the rest of their combined provisions.
“Nothing quite like ‘Kappa-Soop’ on a cold night,” Rarity said as her magic lifted the kettle off the fire and poured the boiling hot water over their instant noodles. She weighed the lids down with a couple of sticks, and tossed the water into the bushes before emptying the contents of Sunset’s thermos into the kettle. “Except maybe reheated day-old coffee,” she said with a laugh.
Sunset couldn’t help but stare as the other mare revealed herself to be a fairly competent camper. Her wife had had a great love of the outdoors, but her idea of camping was more posh than Sunset had liked. Glamping, it was called.
“You’re comfortable out here, huh?” Sunset asked rhetorically.
Rarity waved a hoof and blew a dismissive raspberry. “Oh, do go on.” She laughed again. She laughed a lot, Sunset couldn’t help but notice. “You know I was positively rubbish about camping the first time I tried. I must have brought half my boutique with me, refusing to give up even a single comfort.” She sighed. “But of course, I was disabused of that rather quickly once I discovered that I had to carry all those things myself. That’s when I realized that camping was rather like applying makeup.”
The kettle began to whistle, and Rarity removed it immediately. She poured a measure of coffee into a matching pair of ceramic mugs, and gave one to Sunset.
“Less is more,” she said, giving a wink that was so familiar to Sunset that it almost stopped her heart.
“Right…” Sunset held her mug between her hooves and drank with loud, slurping sips.
Rarity finished up their preparations for the night, laying out one of her space blankets and weighing it down with some stones. It was breezy, and the autumn chill was biting at the fire, kicking up sparks that drifted away and died in the darkness.
Sunset threw some more wood on the fire. Gathering fuel had been her job while Rarity had insisted on taking charge of the camp. The least she could do was make sure the fire didn’t get blown out.
They ate in silence, listening to the whistle of the wind. the cracking of the fire, and the hooting of an owl nesting somewhere nearby. Nothing human or equine broke the peace of the moment, save for the sound of slurping noodles and loud sips of coffee. It was peaceful, almost meditative.
“She would’ve liked this…” The words were out of Sunset’s mouth before she’d even realized they were on her tongue. She shook herself, frowning. “Actually, no, she would have hated it, but I think she would have liked the company.”
Rarity flashed her a smile, gentle as the breeze and warm as the campfire. “Would it be a silly question to ask what she was like?”
Sunset considered the question, frowning as she chewed on the best way to express the ways in which her wife was unique to this other iteration of herself. Setting aside all philosophy on the nature of the relation between the two worlds, the fact of the matter was that this Rarity and her own were, to the best of her knowledge, similar in many ways. The differences were mostly in the specifics.
“She liked horror movies,” Sunset said.
Rarity made a face, scandalized at the very thought. “Blech, those dreadful slasher things? I see those sometimes being advertised on the marquee at the theater down the street from my Manehattan shop.”
Sunset couldn’t help but smile. “She hated them at first, too. But she knew I loved them, and the more she watched the more she saw what I saw in them. ‘It’s pageantry! It’s camp!’ she would say, and she would just… get lost in the drama. There was this one slasher series we both liked – the Camp Crystal Pond series. She used to say that they were just thrillers, except that when everyone got killed after having sex it was hilarious and full of squibs.”
“Oh…” Rarity said, slowly pushing her disposable chopsticks around the inside of her soup cup. “What’s a squib?”
And Sunset laughed. She laughed for what felt like the first time in years. Not a polite laugh, or a small chuckle, but a loud, pealing bark that shook her guts.
“Really now,” Rarity said with feigned offense, betrayed by the grin she wore. “Did I really ask something so silly?”
“No, no,” Sunset insisted, clutching at her belly. “It’s just… just the way you asked it. It was very like her.”
Rarity poured out what was left of the broth in her noodle cup and packed up the refuse for later disposal.
“So I am very much like her then?” she asked, with hesitation, or nervousness, or… or something that wasn’t immediately identifiable tinting her voice.
“In some ways,” Sunset said, her fit of laughter still turning up the corners of her mouth. “But ya know, not as much as you’d think. You’re only mostly the same, except for the seasoning, and that’s the bit that matters.”
A tension that Sunset hadn’t recognized seemed to leave Rarity’s shoulders at her explanation.
“That’s an interesting way to put it,” she said, smiling wanly. “What about you? Were you much like your double?”
“I never had one,” Sunset said. She added more wood to the fire, even though it didn’t need it. “We looked, just as a matter of curiosity, but there was never a human Sunset Shimmer before I arrived there.”
“That’s… very strange…” Rarity said, rubbing her chin in thought. “Twilight had explained that almost every pony she knew had a double in your world.”
“My wife used to say it was because I was special.” Sunset finished the last of her coffee and passed the mug back to Rarity, who rinsed it with water from a bottle before putting it away. “She said I was always meant to exist in both worlds. That it must have been my destiny to stand with a foot on each side of the portal.”
Rarity placed a comforting hoof on Sunset’s shoulder. “That’s a beautiful thought.”
Sunset turned away, shrugging off the friendly touch.
“It was a lonely thought,” she countered. “Not really human, not really a pony. Not really anything and not really belonging anywhere.” She placed a hoof on the saddlebag, which had never left her side even once. “The only place I really belonged was next to her… and now she’s gone…”
The quiet came again, roaring over the fire and howling over the wind. It pressed itself into every unfilled space between them.
But Rarity, it would seem, didn’t care about the silence.
“May I see her?”
Sunset blinked, turning her head and narrowing her eyes at the other mare in puzzlement. “What was that?”
Rarity sat up a little straighter, undaunted by the awkward look. “You said your wife wanted to meet me… She’s been here the whole time, and we still haven’t been introduced.”
Sunset blinked again, taken aback by the odd request. But… maybe it wasn’t as weird as she thought.
Sunset opened the bag, and carefully, with her own hooves, she lifted out the urn containing her wife’s remains. She levitated the saddlebag and set it on the ground between her and Rarity, and set the urn atop it, so it wouldn’t touch the ground.
Sunset watched as the other mare scooted closer, her eyes wide and unblinking. Rarity reached out a trembling hoof and pressed it against the cold stainless steel.
“Hello, Rarity… it’s nice to finally meet you… My name’s also Rarity.”
She reached out her other hoof, tearing her eyes away from the urn only so she could look to Sunset for any indication that she should stop. Sunset gave none, and allowed the other mare to pick up her wife’s remains.
Rarity held the urn with a look of reverence, and the care one might use in handling a newborn child. “So this is me, only different…” She brought the urn to her chest and held it. “I’m so sorry… I’m just… so, so sorry.”
Sunset looked away, giving Rarity as much privacy as she could without getting up and leaving the warmth of the fire. The minutes ticked away, the time kept only by the crack of branches in the fire and the great noisy guttering of flame that accompanied every stiff wind.
“Thank you,” Rarity said wetly, after what felt like an eternity.
Sunset nodded, wincing at the crick that had developed in her neck. She took back the urn and carefully put it back in the saddlebag, pointedly averting her eyes as Rarity retrieved a kerchief from her bag and swiped at the mess she’d made of herself. The perfectly white fur on her cheeks was streaked black where her eyeliner had run.
“Can I ask a very personal question?”
Sunset shrugged as she buckled the bag closed. “I don’t see why not,” she said, feeling generous with her vulnerable feelings. Rarity had sat with her and wept over the passing of her wife. That, and the fact that she’d come this far up the mountain with her, meant that Rarity was owed at least one personal question, as far as Sunset was concerned.
“How did you know you were in love with her?”
Sunset sucked air through her teeth, like she’d just stubbed her toe. Rarity wasn’t kidding when she said it was personal, but Sunset had already committed.
“I guess…” Sunset chewed her lip, wondering how best to phrase her response. “I guess it was the first time we had sex.”
The look on Rarity’s face was the very definition of exasperation. “Be serious.”
“It’s not what you think,” Sunset said, a grin playing across her lips. “Do you guys have TV? Television. Princess Twilight got really into TV back in the human world, and I remember she said she was going to try to bring it over to Equestria…”
“We have them,” Rarity said, tilting her head in confusion. “They’re a bit expensive, but we do have them.”
“Right,” Sunset said, glad that she wouldn’t have to explain that bit of it. “So we had been dating… I don’t know, maybe three months. And Rarity’s dad had this skii cabin he’d won from a guy in a game of cards on a riverboat.”
Rarity laughed joylessly. “That sounds like something my father might do, too.”
“Right, well, he was going to take the whole family up and Rarity asked me to come along, and it was going to be the big introduction to her family of us as a couple. I mean they already knew me, but they didn’t know us as being a thing. We wanted everything to be perfect, so Rarity decides we should head up a day early and get the place tidied up as a surprise, because her dad had gone up to check it out first and said it was a mess.
“Well we get there and it’s pretty bad, but between the two of us we get it close to spotless. Like you couldn’t even tell it was a weirdo riverboat man’s drinking cabin. So we go to bed, in separate rooms, mind you, and we wake up to the worst snowstorm the mountain had seen in a decade.”
“Oh dear,” Rarity said, covering her mouth in worry.
“It’s okay,” Sunset said, rolling her eyes. “We lived. But, we were trapped up there for about three days, with nothing to do except watch the same three VHS tapes over and over. We were watching this movie for probably the twelfth time, and Rarity leans over and kisses me… and I kissed her back... and we just did what felt right…”
Sunset closed her eyes, breathing deeply as she remembered that first night with the girl she’d eventually marry. “We fell asleep on the big bear skin rug, and when I woke up, she was sitting there, looking down at me. The TV was still on behind her, and the movie had finished hours ago, so it was just black and white static. And that light surrounded her in the darkness like a halo, drowning out all the detail of her figure so that all I could see was her silhouette. She looked like she was the one that had come from another world, and as I was looking at her, drinking in the curve of her hip, she reached down and ran her fingers across my cheek. She told me, ‘I can’t believe how beautiful you are when you sleep’.”
Something wet rolled down Sunset’s cheek, and for a moment she thought it might be raining.
“That’s how I knew I loved her,” Sunset said, with grief digging its way out of her heart and wrapping its fingers around her throat. “While I was looking at her, she was looking at me. And she was seeing me the way I saw her.”
She tried to speak, to say more about her love. It was something she could talk about for hours. For days. For years. She could sing a word of loving praise for every second she’d spent with her wife, she knew she could.
If only this tightness in her chest would loosen, even a little.
It didn’t loosen. It only tightened, gripping her heart until she was doubled over, crying into her own chest. Pain bloomed in her like a flower, rising up from her heart and burning her throat and her eyes and everything in between.
She was only dimly aware of someone pulling her into an embrace, stroking her back and whispering in her ear.
“It’s alright,” the voice of her dead wife said. “It’s okay. I’m here with you.”
Sunset grasped those words like a drowning woman, pulling herself atop them for fear of being pulled back under the waves of grief. And then she was on top of more than just words. There was something warm under her, something alive and here and whispering to her in her wife’s voice.
She did what felt right, even though some quiet, forcefully gagged part of her told her it was wrong.
* * *
Sunset Shimmer awoke to the sound of birdsong overhead, and the snap of an open tent flap dancing in the wind.
The emergency blanket beneath her crinkled as she sat up, but it was the mare lying next to her that had her attention.
“No, no no no no, no,” Sunset chanted under her breath. She shot to her hooves and hurried out of the tent. “No no, this is… is bad. I fucked up, I fucked up bad.”
Her heart was pounding, and suddenly no amount of air was enough. She was gasping as she looked around for her saddlebags, panic stealing away every breath she took.
Her bag was right where she’d left it, beside the burnt out remains of their campfire. Sunset ran over, practically falling over her own hooves in her hurry to reach the bag. She touched the saddlebag and felt the urn still inside. Even through the burlap, she could feel the ice cold chill of the container holding her wife’s remains.
“I’m sorry,” she said, hugging the bag to her chest. She repeated the words like a prayer, as if she could beg for absolution from her wife’s departed soul.
Slowly her breath came back to her, and the panic left, leaving only shame and regret. She needed to go. She needed to get as far away from here as she could.
But the old Sunset Shimmer luck was holding strong.
“Sunset, are you alright?”
Sunset flinched at the concern in Rarity’s voice. Some dim memory cut through the haze of the previous night, and she remembered the way that voice had led her astray. How it had made an unfaithful woman of her.
“I’m fine,” Sunset said with ice in every syllable. She put the saddlebag on her back and started heading up the trail. “You can go back now. I can make it the rest of the way on my own.”
“What?” Rarity asked. “What are you saying?”
Sunset Shimmer came to a halt and said, “I’m saying I don’t need you. So just… leave us alone, okay?”
“I-I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Rarity said, tripping over her words. “Are you… are you worried about what happened last night?”
“Why, do you think I shouldn’t be!?” Sunset rounded on the other mare, striding right up to glare into her face. “You took advantage of me!”
“Me!?” Rarity shouted, reeling back in shock at the accusation. “I seem to recall you making the first move!”
“And can you blame me!?” Sunset demanded. “You’re a copy of my dead wife! Whispering in my ear, asking me all these personal questions, insisting on coming along even though I said I wanted to do this alone! Was this your plan from the start!? To get me alone up here and… and… molest me!?”
Sunset was so worked up that she didn’t even see the hit coming. She was shouting, venting her righteous and correct indignation at having been abused by this mere doppelganger, when she felt a jolt of pain against her cheek.
“How dare you?” Rarity sobbed. “How dare you accuse me of something so heinous? Don’t you understand that this hasn’t been easy for me either? Do you not understand that this entire ordeal has had me confronting my own mortality? Can you even imagine what it must be like to hold the ashes of someone who was you, but happier? Someone who didn’t spend forty years of her life pining for happiness, a hopeless romantic in every sense of the word. Not even a bridesmaid, let alone a bride – just the stupid cow that makes the dresses!”
Rarity spun around, her horn flaring as she summoned her bags. The tent dismantled itself with supernatural speed and every sign that they’d even camped there – save for the circle of stones and bits of charcoal where their fire had been – was tossed into Rarity’s bag.
“Here!” Rarity shouted, giving one last flourish of magic that pulled a stack of envelopes out of the bag. The stack of envelopes flew at Sunset’s face, and she only just barely managed to duck out of the way. “You wanted to know what was in that damn box, then here, take them! I hope they make you happier than they made me!”
The fuming mare made to leave, but halted at the last second. “And take this one, too!” she declared as another envelope flew out of her bag. She tore it in half and left it in the dirt before turning heel and galloping back down the trail.
Sunset watched her leave, the anger ebbing now, but still smoldering in her breast. She waited until Rarity had faded away from view before she gathered the stack of letters Rarity had thrown at her. As she turned to leave, she remembered the last letter Rarity left. She gathered both halves and stuffed them into the bag.
Rarity had been right about the cliff. It had only been an hour away, and it was the perfect spot.
Sunset sat at the edge and looked out over the valley. The autumn bloom had filled the sea of grass with great big swaying currents of purples and pinks and blues – the last gasp of color before the entire area was blanketed in pure white snow.
Sunset removed the urn from her pack and held it against her chest.
“I’m so sorry, Rares… I made it all the way here, but I screwed up at the end… at least you’re here now… I can’t believe this is really goodbye. You were my everything, and now that you’re gone… I don’t think I’ll ever be okay again.”
Sunset licked her lips, which were oddly dry compared to how wet the rest of her face was. She sniffled wetly and laughed.
“I know what you’d say. That I will be okay with enough time. I don’t know about that… but god… God, do I hope it’s true.”
She held out the urn and marveled at how simple a vessel it was. Just a round vase of stainless steel with a lid that screwed on like a jelly jar. It wasn’t even big enough to hold a loaf of bread – at least the kind of big loaves Pinkie Pie would bake.
And yet, this small, simple, unassuming vessel held everything in life that mattered to Sunset. Everything that her wife was, had been burned away, leaving only the most basic carbon molecules. Only this, the essence of her physical being, was hardy enough that not even fire could destroy it.
She unscrewed the lid with her magic and set it aside, revealing the ash. Part of her had expected something more… clean looking. Something small and velvety-looking like dust, or fresh snow. But the ashes looked like sand from the beach, with little hard bits mixed in that she knew must have been the pieces of bone that had been too dense to burn away in the fire. The ashes had been put through a machine, processed so the bits of bone could be crushed to a more appropriate consistency – that was what the documentary she'd watched on the process had said, anyway.
She turned the urn over, dumping the ash out over the valley. The wind was at her back, and it carried her wife away in a plume of dust that would settle on those flowers, and come next Spring, new flowers would bloom with just a touch of Rarity’s essence in their petals.
And she cried. Big ugly tears fell down her face, filling her sinuses and closing her throat until she choked. The sound of her wailing echoed through the valley as rainbows fell from the sky and flowed down the mountains.
The sun was already directly overhead once Sunset had collected herself. Her mourning had wrung her dry and left her tired. She didn’t have the strength to begin her descent down the mountain trail, so she opened her bag and took out the things that Rarity had thrown at her.
The pile of letters were immediately recognized. Every single one of them was in her handwriting. They were the love letters she’d written to Rarity when they were dating. It was one of those early-relationship cliches that Rarity had insisted upon, and Sunset would be lying if she’d said she hadn’t also enjoyed them.
She put the letters away, far too drained to even consider reading them. She already knew what they all said anyway.
Instead, she decided to read the letter that Rarity had torn in half. This letter, she noted, wasn’t in her handwriting.
It was written by her wife.
Hello to you, Rarity! My name is also Rarity! Isn’t that silly?
I suppose I should begin this letter by saying that this is the third such letter that I have written to you. No, don’t look for the others, I’ve already disposed of them. I update this letter every five years, you see, so that it is always up to date. Sunset Shimmer – you know Sunset, don’t you? – doesn’t know about this, but if you are reading this, I suppose she knows some of it by now.
I must never have taken that trip to Equestria after all, for if I had, I surely would have immediately updated this letter and you would never have known that I had been planning to visit and never had… Hm, does that make sense? I’m sorry if it doesn’t. I’m afraid it’s always a little strange when I sit down to write these. It puts me in a weird headspace, and the little bit of wine I have to accompany the writing does little to help.
At any rate, I suppose I better get on with it.
If you are reading this, it means I have died. Hopefully it was because I achieved an impossible state of perfect beauty and exploded, somehow. But if I didn’t, I suppose that doesn’t really matter. The only thing that matters is that I’ve done a very selfish thing and left my lovely wife to fend for herself.
I love my wife very much. More than I have ever been able to explain in words or even actions. I fear, however, that she may in fact be hopeless without me. For all her many talents and her brilliant mind, I believe that without me, she is quite prone to melancholy.
And that, my dear other Rarity, is why I write to you.
You are me, and I am you. I don’t know how it works, or why it works. That’s the sort of thinking I’d rather leave to my capable and brilliant wife. All I know is that there must be something that connects you and I. There’s some piece of our souls that we share with one another, some fragment of an essence that must exist as a thread that binds us together on a level that reaches beyond the great infinite of space and time. I knew it the moment I heard of your existence, I could feel it in my very Rarityness.
You are me, and I am you, and so I ask of you to please, please look after my Sunset. I know the two of you are acquainted, but I ask that you should be there for her. To be the friend she needs, because I know her as well as I know myself. She will push away everyone, curl up into a ball, and insist that she can do everything herself.
I know she’ll be fine on her own. I know with the certainty of the tides.
But she shouldn’t have to be alone.
I’ve left you some letters, so that you might understand a little bit about what makes that woman of mine tick. She’s very strange, you see, but I suppose I wouldn’t change a single neurosis. I love everything about her, especially the parts that I hate.
So please, be the friend she needs.
Additionally, if you happen to be single, and if there’s as much of me inside of you as I suspect, and you can’t help but feel the need to be more than her friend… I suppose I’m fine with that. It won’t be easy to explain to our friends, and Sunset will definitely take the most convincing, but I leave the choice up to you, and to her.
Come what may, whatever you decide, I hope you have an amazing life – for both of us.
With endless love, yours pandimensionally,
Rarity
* * *
The mirror back to the human world was still in the library in Canterlot Castle. This part of the castle wasn’t opened to the public, and the guard stationed outside the door was more than enough to protect such a potentially dangerous magical artifact.
One would hope, anyway. They kind of just waved her in.
Regardless, one of the guards had been sent to the princess’ chambers to announce her arrival. The controls to operate the portal were on this side of the mirror, and Sunset had more than enough power to operate it, but she didn’t feel quite up to something that could go so catastrophically wrong. Considering where her head currently was, she was just as likely to send herself to Narnia as back to the human world. It was better just to let Princess Twilight do it for her.
The door opened with a bang, and Princess Twilight Sparkle rushed in. “Sunset!” she cried. “You’re back. How did it go?”
The alicorn princess walked up to her friend and got a good look at her face, which Sunset knew had to look terrible. She’d been crying the whole train ride back. Even the conductor had stopped his rounds to ask her several times if she was alright.
“What’s wrong?” Twilight asked with clear concern.
“It’s nothing,” Sunset said. She could hear the oncoming protests building in the air, so she quickly added, “I promise I’ll tell you when I get back.”
“Back?” Twilight repeated. “You’re coming back? When?”
“Soon,” Sunset said. “I just need a couple of days to talk to my in-laws, make some arrangements about work and finances and… you know, just arrangements. I’ll be back after.”
Twilight frowned, clearly dissatisfied with this response.
“Please,” Sunset said. “Just open the portal for me, and I promise you I’ll explain everything when I get back.”
Twilight’s frown deepened, but after a moment of silent scowling she acquiesced and activated the portal. “You’d better,” she said, though there was clearly more concern than ire in her voice.
Sunset levitated her backpack through the portal first. There was nothing inside except the letters and the urn, and without the ashes, the urn was just a piece of metal without much meaning. Still, she wanted to return it to Rarity’s mother, so it could go back up on the mantle above the fireplace, next to her graduation photos.
And the letters? Those would stay with her. At least until she brought them back to their proper owner.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Twilight asked. “Nothing happened?”
“Nothing happened,” Sunset insisted. She chewed her lip, thinking over the words her wife had left behind. “But something might. We’ll see.”
* * *
Author's Note
Been a while since something new, and as usual I couldn't say no to a contest by my good friend Oro.
As usual, if you see any mistakes, shoot me a private message so I get to it right away. Thanks in advanced!
Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it and that you'll join me again next time.
Please be excited!
