An Evening at Carousel Boutique

by Velocipede

Rating: teen
Tags: Sex, Human, Drama, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Romance, Original Character, Comedy, Rarity
Length: 11719

Rarity tries to come on to Ellie during her suit-fitting, but Ellie is not quite ready to admit to herself that making out with the magical horse ladies is cool and normal. She has a lot of feelings to process first.

Blurb

Rarity tries to come on to Ellie during her suit-fitting, but Ellie is not quite ready to admit to herself that making out with the magical horse ladies is cool and normal. She has a lot of feelings to process first.

Tags

Sex: Prime time television rules. Cuts away before the action starts.

Sequel-ness

Though technically a sequel to Scenes From a Life in Equestria, I recommend starting here. At one point I will rewrite the parts of the prequel I am currently dissatisfied with, and when I do I will relink it as a direct prequel.

Author's Note

My entire life has been preparing me to write this story lol.

Published 2020-12-27 21:00:01 UTC
Last updated 2021-01-27 07:07:21 UTC

Soir

“How’s that, darling?”

Ellie felt a tug near the small of her back as Rarity fastened the last button of her suspenders with her aura. She smiled in satisfaction as she slid her thumbs into the gap formed by her breasts. Sometimes she wondered what the appeal of suspenders even were for people without that gap.

She had a good look at herself in the standing mirror, whose height was actually tall enough for her to use despite towering over the ponies that it must have been created for. She did not think too hard about that fact, nor about the fact that she had never been in a room meant for ponies with a ceiling that was too short for her. It was just one of those things.

“Amazing, Rarity!” Ellie marveled. “These are perfect! But I need to see how the whole thing looks.”

“Oh, yes, of course!”

She floated over an open suit jacket, which Ellie extended her arms to put on. Buttoning the center button, she noted with satisfaction how her suspenders disappeared behind the Mare-ino Super 130 in navy blue, and she could finally take in the whole ensemble. The silk tie in dark purple knotted in full Windsor, the light blue dress shirt underneath crisp in tight weave, the aforementioned jacket and matching trousers in sleek, modern cut, acknowledging her curves but not accentuating them, all the way down to the argyle socks in dark cork-leather oxfords.

All quite a step up from the button-down shirt, sweatpants, and ratty Chucks she had been wearing ever since she arrived into this strange new world.

“Just need to get the accent, now!”

“Right you are, darling.” Rarity approved, floating over the orange pocket square Ellie had selected earlier. Her hand bathed in the warm aura for just a second as she took it gingerly, making sure not to undo any of the folds as she displayed it in her front pocket.

“Right, that! But I actually meant this one.” Ellie pointed to her hair, a pixie cut in golden blonde. “Maybe a bit lighter?”

Rarity’s eyes widened. “Oh, of course! It is so easy to forget…”

Her horn glowed as she sent a zap towards Ellie’s hair. She saw in the mirror how it had turned a very strong platinum, almost white.

“Maybe a touch darker…”

Another zap. The platinum gained a bit of the yellow back.

“Perfect!” Ellie smiled. The look was complete, satisfying the aesthetic goal she self-deprecatingly called “animé schoolboy”, despite never having watched a single episode of an animé in her entire life. She looked over at Rarity, who was beaming with excitement.

“Darling, you have no idea how exciting this is!“ Rarity was practically prancing in place. “For ponies, I’ve no choice but to be restricted by the color scheme of their mane and coat, but for you, I can actually match your mane to the color scheme! Such possibilities!”

“We just call it ‘hair’, since, y’know, that’s all we have of it.” Ellie shrugged. “And I should be the one who’s excited! You have no idea how many hours I’d need to spend sitting in foil to get done what you just did in a second.” Ellie chuckled to herself. “It may shock you to hear this, but I am not a natural blonde.”

Ellie paused.

“Wait, you would have no way to get that joke here.”

“Yes, I must admit that I do not get it…” agreed Rarity, nonplussed.

“Oh, don’t worry about it.” Ellie said dismissively. “Not a very good one anyway.” She paused. “Hey, I could get purple hair! I’ve always wanted to try that!” She smiled, then realized something, and looked over at Rarity. “Wait, you have purple hair! I mean, a mane! Whoa, could you give me what you have? I have, like, absolutely no idea how that would even work on a human.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, darling…” Rarity said politely in a way that meant they were not going down that road. “Besides, it would not really fit your aesthetic at all…”

“Oh, of course! I wouldn’t be caught dead with hair past my shoulders.” Ellie agreed. “Just thought it would be funny.”

Rarity laughed lightly. Ellie smiled.

“But as for the ensemble, it is absolutely perfect. I have no words. I really can’t thank you enough!” She puffed up her chest as she had another look at herself in the mirror. “I think I can say that I look better than I ever have right now! I’m just so amazed you were able to do this for someone of a species you’ve never seen before.“

“We may be of different species, but there were commonalities to help adapt the designs. Thankfully, we are both mammals.” Rarity floated a tape measure and began to extend it and move it in orbit around Ellie, as if taking her measurements. “Forelegs, rear legs…” She held the tape up to the length of her arms and legs. “Haunches, waist.” Then loosely around Ellie’s hips and waist. “Of course, there was a new measurement.” Unexpectedly, she wrapped the tape measure around Ellie’s bust. “I had to think about these for quite some time.“ The way she said that gave Ellie pause for just a split second before she continued. “It took me ages to figure out how to accommodate them in the cut of the shirt and jacket.”

Exhaling oddly, Ellie gave a slightly nervous laugh. “Yeah, that must have been new!” She felt Rarity withdraw the tape measure. “Well, you did an amazing job with that, too! The shirt fits perfectly. I have to go to, like, a very specific tailor in Manhattan if I want to get that done right back where I’m from.”

Rarity raised an eyebrow.

“It’s just a dress shirt and jacket! Are you saying that you have to go to your own version of Manehattan just to get a basic item of clothing made right?”

“Well, the number of people who share my specific aesthetic needs are… not high. Especially the number of people with money.” Ellie was not sure if she had a way of explaining this. “I’m not exactly the… typical human back where I’m from. At least, in the way I present myself.”

“Oh, of course! I could tell.” Rarity smiled. “You are very fashion-forward!”

“’Fashion-forward’, huh?” Ellie smiled. “Isn’t that just a polite way to say ‘weird’?”

“Oh, no, darling. Pinkie Pie’s ideas of fashion are weird.” Having gotten to know the pink earth mare, Ellie had to agree with that statement. “You clearly have a coherent aesthetic, and were a delight to design for.”

“Well!” Ellie chuckled. “Your design is a delight to wear!”

“So you’ll take it?” Rarity fluttered her eyelashes.

“You couldn’t stop me if I tried!”

“Splendid!” Rarity beamed. “So, which event is this for? The Festival of Friendship? Or the Grand Galloping Gala? Well, that one is a bit far off, but one can never be prepared too early for that sort of thing…”

“Actually, it’s not really for an event.” Ellie shrugged, then frowned, realizing a possible faux pas. “Oof, sorry, you didn’t prioritize this because you thought it was for something coming up, did you?”

“Oh, no worries! You did say it was ‘no rush’.“ Rarity assured. “But if it’s not for an event or a ball or anything… What is it for, exactly?”

Ellie shrugged. “I don’t know, I just wanted to look good? I mean, do I need a reason?” Ellie’s mind then jumped at the opportunity to use one of her favorite sitcom lines. “What am I, a farmer?”

Rarity didn’t react for a second, her eyes going wide as if processing the input. Then, she began to giggle, snort, then guffaw uncontrollably. She managed to wrest some control over herself just enough to say “Excuse me for a moment” and close a thick, heavy curtain around Ellie and the mirror. Then, she let loose a series of shrieking laughs and began, as far as Ellie could tell through the gap underneath the curtain, prancing. Ellie was a bit concerned.

After the laughs died down, the curtain opened back up around to reveal a Rarity who was so calm and poised it was as if nothing at all had happened.

“My apologies. It was a… private joke, that I cannot possibly explain.”

“Oh, I get it.” Ellie dismissed. “I do that kind of thing all the time.” Ellie wasn’t sure but she could swear that Rarity’s smile towards her was a bit wider than it had been before.

“You know, Ponyville ponies don’t really ask for anything so bespoke unless it’s for some ball or event. Even in Canterlot it’s all about following the trends, and even for the trendsetters it’s about setting the trends! It’s all a game to them! And I admit, it is fun and exciting game, but I do wish there were more ponies like you. But ponies with such a coherent aesthetic sense are a rarity.”

“No, you’re confused. You’re Rarity. I’m Ellie.”

Rarity laughed very coquettishly at that. Ellie wondered to herself if this world lacked an immunity to dad jokes because if so, she should probably ask Pinkie Pie how to break into the stand-up comedy business here.

Rarity smiled at her without saying anything, in a way that made Ellie feel a bit awkward. She said something to break the silence.

“If there’s nothing else for me to try on, do you mind if I sit? I want to see how it all looks and feels seated. I’m going to be sitting a lot in this.”

“Oh, yes, of course!” Rarity floated over a short stool, and Ellie took a second to realize that it was actually a normal-sized stool for a pony and just short for her. She squatted down awkwardly into it, and tried her best to look cool in the mirror.

“Absolutely smashing,” Rarity commented. Ellie had to agree that it worked better than she would have thought. She turned to face the unicorn.

“It’s also nice not to have to crane my neck down to talk to you.”

Rarity smiled, and giggled, and didn’t say anything. An awkward second passed.

“You know, I still can’t believe you’re letting me just have this, especially with all you went through to get it right. I mean, I don’t think it needs any adjustments at all.”

“Oh, nonsense, darling!” Rarity dismissed. “I am the Element of Generosity, after all!”

“But I don’t want to be a charity case!” Ellie insisted. “I mean, you ponies have already done so much for me in my time here, I feel like I have to at least give something back. If you don’t want bits, maybe there’s something I could do for you?”

She did a quick self-assessment of “applicable skills” and was dismayed to realize that nearly all of them required a computer. Or were not really applicable to, um, horses. But there was one that she used to live off of back in college.

“When does Sweetie Belle start calculus? Maybe I could tutor her?”

Rarity gave her a quizzical look. “Darling, she’s thirteen. She’s already had calculus.”

Before Ellie could ask any follow-up questions to that, Rarity continued.

“Are you really that unable to accept a gift given out of generosity?”

“Well, there’s generosity, and then there’s this!” Ellie bit her lower lip as she did rough calculations in her head. “Something bespoke like this is probably at least two mortgage payments for me. Probably three.” Ellie paused. “Oh, right. You see, a mortgage payment is when—”

“I know what a mortgage is.” Rarity smiled. “I’ve one on this very shop! And yes, three mortgage payments is quite a sum indeed…”

“Exactly! And I don’t want this to be something you felt obligated to do out of pity or anything! I don’t want you to regret it when you’re doing your bookkeeping later.” She sighed. “And I admit it, I feel a bit weird about just accepting this much generosity. Doing something for you in return would also make me feel better. So if there’s anything I can do, any desire I could fulfill, let me know.”

Ellie cringed inside at the awkward phrasing as soon as the words left her mouth. She expected Rarity to be giving her a concerned or awkward look, but instead she was biting her lip and scanning her body from head to shoes and back, refraining from saying anything. Ellie realized what was happening.

“You’re rethinking it, aren’t you?”

Rarity snapped to. “Excuse me?”

“The cost of the outfit.” She spread her arms out. “Like, it’s not just the suit. It’s the dress shirt, the accessories, the shoes, all of it. That’s why you’re looking me up and down.”

“Right. Of course.” Rarity quickly agreed. “It is quite a lot, but do not worry. I am an excellent businessmare, and know very well the cost of materials and labor that went into everything you’re wearing right now. I will not regret it later.”

She smiled at Ellie. “But if you do feel as if you must give something back, know that you already have, darling. You are an inspiration.”

“’Inspiration’? Really?” Ellie mused skeptically. “I thought it was a thing when we were going through the design that everything I wanted already had an exact analogue in Equestrian formal wear and it was just a matter of adjusting them for my body. Even my shoes. Which, by the way, is really weird because my feet do not look or function like pony hooves at all.” She crossed her leg over her knee to get a better look at her dress shoes. “It’s really amazing how well these turned out.“

“Oh, do go on with your compliments!” Rarity fluttered her eyelashes. “But that does bring to mind something!”

She trotted off at a light pace, her mane and tail bouncing as she went. “There was one article you had me mend up that truly was novel!”

Ellie worked her jaw as she tried to puzzle that out. She thought she had decided with Rarity long ago that her clothes from the human world were not worth the effort to mend. So what could it be? As Rarity disappeared behind a standing partition, she figured it out. Oh no…

Ellie could not see behind the partition, but she could see the glow of Rarity’s horn indicating that she was putting on something. “Of course, the design on yours was, and I hope you do not mind me saying this, quite utilitarian. I simply had to put my own fabulous spin on things.”

Rarity bounded back, flipping her mane as she did so, effortlessly setting another pony stool in front of Ellie’s and seating herself in it in one fluid motion. She was in the typical pony stance, lower legs bent and spread apart with forelegs straight in the middle.

“Please, do have a close look, and tell me what you think.”

She lifted her forehooves up to reveal what she was wearing underneath. Somehow, without any reference, Rarity had recreated the lace brassière. Ellie had to stifle a laugh as she got a closer look. The band looked absolutely ridiculous in the way that it had to stretch all the way up and across to her hips. Not to mention how small the two cups in the center were. As if such little things needed any support. (You’re one to talk, her brain said to herself.) But she had to admit that for such a ridiculous little thing, it was made very well. The edging. The trim. The way the motif covered the nipples just so. Ellie felt a warmth in her cheeks and realized something. She’d been staring a bit longer than appropriate. With a bit too much interest.

Ellie recoiled back in her chair, averting her gaze off to the side. Clearly, she’d been stuck in this world way too long.

“What’s wrong, darling? Did I make a mess of it?” Rarity sounded concerned, as Ellie cringed. “Does the lacework need improvement? You’d have to feel it to really tell, but if you could do so and tell me what you think, I would really appreciate—“

“No!” Ellie yelled a bit too forcefully. She looked to see that Rarity was frowning at her reaction. “I mean… No, it’s not that. It’s really well done. You should be proud. It’s just that, uh, back where I’m from what you’re wearing has certain connotations…”

“Connotations?” Rarity blinked, confused. “All I am asking you is to feel it and comment on the quality. I had to do the same for yours when I mended its strap.“

“Well, it wasn’t on me at the time…” Ellie cringed again. “And like you said, mine’s very utilitarian.”

“Oh.” Rarity said, in a way that made it clear she was still confused. “I do apologize. I did not realize changing the material would be offensive. I was just trying to make it fabulous.”

“It is very fabulous,” Ellie commented before she could stop herself. “I mean, I’m not offended. It’s just that… uh…” Ellie had absolutely no idea why she was even trying to find a way to explain this to a talking horse in the first place. “It’s that, uh, wearing something so decorative as an undergarment is… uh…”

“Ah, right, your nudity taboo!” Rarity realized. “I see! Since you must always be clothed in the presence of others, I would only wear ‘decorative undergarments’ in front of you if I were your lover!”

In the stretch of silence that followed, Ellie’s face was a mix of shock, confusion, and embarrassment. Then Rarity burst into laughter.

“Well, I truly apologize! Que je suis bête!” She smiled at Ellie, fluttering her eyelashes.

Ellie relaxed into a relieved smile, glad that Rarity had simply found it amusing.

“Oh, don’t worry about it! You would have no way to know what us weirdo humans associate with which articles of clothing. It’s not your fault!”

Rarity gave her a concerned smile, which was concerning. “Well…” Her gaze slid off to the side as she frowned. “If you would excuse me for a moment…”

She hopped off her stool and went back behind the partition to take off her creation. Ellie had found it very amusing at first how ponies were so casual about being naked, but treated the act of taking off clothes as something to be done in privacy. But now she was starting to be thankful that the standard was shared between their species.

Rarity returned and sat back on her stool, her forelegs, thankfully, firmly in front of her this time. She smiled at Ellie, the look of concern gone.

“What did you call that thing again? A ‘bra’?”

“It’s short for ‘brassière’, actually.” Ellie never missed a chance to be insufferable about that kind of thing.

Rarity giggled as she got it. “Oh, because it goes over your arms! Even your version of Prench has those silly arm and hand puns!”

Ellie chuckled at that, considering how it must seem from the other perspective. “Yes, I suppose.” She darted her eyes and gripped the seat of her stool nervously. “I’m sorry I reacted so strongly before. It really was good work, just… unexpected. I’m sure it will be a hit.“ Though Ellie certainly hoped that she wouldn’t wake up in a few weeks to see half of Ponyville casually walking around with lace bras incongruously strapped around their haunches. That would really just be way too weird.

“Oh, I don’t think I’ll be introducing my creation to the public anytime soon,” Rarity assured to Ellie’s relief. “There is such a thing as trop en avant, even for l’avant garde!”

Ellie smiled. “Genius is never understood in its own time.”

“Oh, you flatterer.” Rarity fluttered her eyelashes again. “Just where have they been hiding such a charmer like you?”

Ellie laughed. It was so fun how flirty Rarity was with everybody, no matter how well she even knew them. There was another moment of silence of Rarity smiling at her, as if waiting for her to say something. But Ellie didn’t quite know what to say. After a few beats into the awkward zone, Rarity broke the silence.

“Well, if you don’t mind, there is one last thing I’d like to try this evening.”

Ellie thought the phrasing a bit strange as Rarity floated over some neatly folded-up thing.

“Another gift? Rarity, I can’t!”

“Oh, this will be more of a gift for myself, trust me. You did not ask for this.” The unicorn said this in a teasing tone as she let the article unfold in front of Ellie.

“A dress? Rarity, we talked about this earlier! I—“

“Don’t wear dresses, yes! I found your needless insistence very charming!“ Rarity beamed. “I also could not help but take it as a challenge. Un défi à relever.”

Ellie frowned skeptically. Rarity insisted.

“Please, it would only be for a moment! Besides…” She smiled devilishly. “It would also be, as you said earlier, something you could do to ‘fulfill my desires’.”

Ellie cringed as she realized that Rarity had noticed just how awkward that phrasing had been. She acquiesced.

“All right, it’s the least I could do with everything you’ve done for me.” Ellie smiled and nodded, accepting the dress as Rarity closed the privacy curtain between them. She engaged in her little undressing ritual. Tie first, hung balanced by weight in the middle of the hanger, then the jacket first draped around the arms, then buttoned in front of the tie so it looked like an outfit worn by an invisible lesbian. Then the dress shirt on a separate hanger, with only the collar button and the one below it fastened. Then the shoes, paired off and placed to the side. Then the trousers, folded leg-to-leg and hung off a third hanger, then the tank on said hanger’s arms. Ritual done.

Now. The dress.

She puzzled at the topology of the object in front of her. Equivalent to a T-shirt, right? Just stick your head up the middle, then your arms through the arm-holes, then unroll, right? Or would that cause creasing or wrinkling or something? Ugh. This is why she always preferred homotopy theory to topology to geometry. Things became less forgiving as you went from homotopy equivalence to homeomorphism to diffeomorphism. But this was worse than diffeomorphism. This was some sort of weird locally metric-preserving diffeomorphism with a Lipschitz-like condition on the curvature. Ugh, why did she agree to this?

But wait, there were buttons on the front. On the front! They were meant to blend in, coated in the same material as the rest of the dress and flat and round, but they were there. Undoing them was probably a good idea. If only the buttons could go all the way down, so that she could pretend it was just a weirdly long dress shirt… But that would defeat the point of the exercise, she supposed.

She awkwardly held the dress open from the inside with her arms raised above her, hands roughly placed near the armholes. She double-checked to make sure again that the front was, indeed, facing front. She was pretty jealous of Rarity’s unicorn powers right now as she tried to figure out the best trajectory for the thing to drop on her so that her head would end up in the right place. Looking up as if supplicating a deity, she took her leap of faith into the blue. For a moment, her world was a confusion of darkness and blue fabric, until she emerged from her baptism on the other side and was able to see the world again. She looked in the mirror to confirm that her head was in the head-hole and her arms were in the armholes. There were probably fancier terms for those things but she was no dressologist.

Redoing the front buttons was a reassuring reminder of her normal dressing ritual, though it lacked the climax of the slight auto-asphyxiation that came with fastening the collar button of a dress shirt in preparation for the necktie. Once done, she mentally readied herself to look in the mirror.

The color was a strong, rich shade of darker blue. The shape was abstract; two strong lines forming an obtuse angle at the waist, ending in a straight, stiff hem. The material felt solid. She was less wearing a dress and more embodying a geometric notion. An emissary from the Platonic world of forms, or whatever stupid horse pun they called that here. She did not hate it.

“Are you ready, darling? I am dying to see how it looks on you!” Rarity called from beyond the curtain. Of course, her immediate reaction was that she was not ready. The fact that her thighs could feel the air between them told her brain that she was, in fact, completely naked, which was obviously not at all a state to be in in front of Rarity. But the image in the mirror did seem to indicate that she was, in fact, clothed. That conflict in self-perception made her feel a bit off, and the fact that she was wearing only one layer made her feel vulnerable. But she had a unicorn to please.

“Go ahead!”

The curtain opened back up in a magical aura, and Rarity squeezed her cheeks with her hooves in glee.

“You look absolutely fabulous, darling! I must say, I outdid even myself!”

“Yeah…” Ellie agreed hesitantly. “I have to admit. I don’t hate it.”

Rarity giggled exuberantly. “I can tell that is a compliment from you. But…” She gazed down at the argyle socks on Ellie’s feet. “I do believe shoes are necessary to complete an outfit.”

“Oh, right!” Ellie popped her feet back into the loosened oxfords she had set aside. “Huh. The contrast is kinda fun!” Ellie remarked as she observed herself extend her foot in the mirror.

“I was thinking something more like these, darling!”

Ellie gave a curious look as Rarity floated over a pair of shoes. She was horrified to see that it was a pair of heels.

Heels.

She had worn heels exactly once in her life. A drunken evening with Alyssa, who had the idea of having Ellie try on the shoes that she made a point to wear all day every day as a witness to her high femme identity. It was actually a really fun game, seeing how fast she could get across the floorboards of her kitchen in such ridiculous things. But she couldn’t imagine wearing them all day. Going up stairs in them. Tying her identity to them.

But she actually did tie her identity to shoes, in a way. It wasn’t a coïncidence that the most feminine pair of shoes she had ever worn as an adult were Chuck Taylors. That she had never in her life stepped into a women’s shoes section for herself.

She smiled nervously at Rarity as she took them, then tried not to frown as she realized that she would have to take off her socks as well as her oxfords to put them on. She didn’t know much about heels, but she at least knew you don’t wear socks with them. But bare feet in shoes just felt wrong. Wait, but Alyssa didn’t really wear her heels in bare feet much, did she? But she certainly didn’t wear socks either. What did she…

Ellie looked up at Rarity, dreading that she would be holding up the article she feared. But no, the unicorn was just smiling expectantly at her. Ellie was relieved. There were limits, even when pleasing Rarity. She took off her socks and put on the heels, then rose unsteadily to her feet.

The heels were as if they were cut from the same cloth as the dress, except they weren’t made of cloth. A matte black that seemed to be from the same universe as the blue of the dress, the same triangular theme, the same abstract austerity. It fit together very well. She did not hate it.

“What do you think?” Rarity asked, a curious tone in her voice.

“It’s… nice.” Ellie found her voice oddly small. Rarity was smiling smugly in response.

“Not bad?”

“Not bad.” Ellie gulped nervously. The black of the shoes, the blue of the dress, the pop of yellow of her hair. It all did work together. “I really don’t know how you did it, Rarity. I’m supposed to hate this, but I don’t. I think I just lost my Home Depot lumber section discount.”

Rarity giggled despite having no way to understand that last reference, which was a complete lie anyway since Ellie was, and had always been, awful at anything handy.

“I am flattered that you have followed me up to this point, darling, which I know is past where we originally started, with just the dress. But I am afraid I must continue to cruelly take advantage of your desire to please me. There’s one more thing I want to do to complete your look!“

Ellie rolled her eyes at the teasing, wondering just how long Rarity was going to milk that dead horse. But she figured she deserved it. It had been an awkward thing to say.

“What’s next? Makeup?” Ellie joked, though it wasn’t really a joke because it was the natural next step. Yet even before starting, Ellie somehow didn’t hate the idea, either. But only because it would be Rarity doing it. She wondered why that was.

“Oh, you hardly need it, darling.” Rarity dismissed. Ellie felt a warm tingling on her cheek, and could see the white glow of an aura from the inside corner of her eye. Wait, could unicorns feel with their auras, too?

“Your skin is so smooth, and soft!”

That seemed to confirm it. It was also something she had heard from many a femme, often with a tinge of jealousy. She’d always had a self-deprecating deflection ready to go in response, but nothing came. Instead, she noticed with consternation that when the aura left, the warmth remained as her cheeks blushed. She looked nervously at Rarity, expecting a response, but it was as if she hadn’t noticed anything. She kept looking at her with that constant smile.

Of course. There was no reason for these talking horses to assume that a blush response meant anything in humans. Silly Ellie. Nothing to worry about. She could just pretend everything was fine and freak out about her feelings later, away from Rarity. It would probably be best to avoid her for a while after this, too, until the processing was done. Her way of speaking to and acting around platonic friends clearly just felt way too close to really good flirting.

“If you don’t mind, would you follow me to the chaise longue? We will need to be seated more comfortably to do this.“

Yep, there it was again. Something that was clearly innocent just said in a way that sounded way too suggestive in her voice. Ellie should have been hesitant, but she was very bad at refusing anything asked of her with a smile by a pretty high femme, ever since Alyssa in college. This was nothing new; it was just strange that the property apparently also held when said high femme was a magical talking horse. She numbly followed Rarity to the fancy chaise, and sat down on the spot she indicated welcomingly with a hoof.

“So what’s this?” Ellie asked with trepidation, but Rarity did not answer the question.

“Give me your hand, darling,” was what she said. Ellie did so. She felt the warmth of her aura as Rarity flattened and spread her fingers, then placed her hand on her upturned hoof. Ellie could feel the softness of her frog on her fingertips.

“Five miniature hooves! Fascinating, and adorable.” Rarity then took out what looked like a nail polish bottle except about ten times larger by volume.

“Oh, nail polish?” Ellie realized.

“Hoof polish.” Rarity insisted. Ellie chuckled.

“Wow, I haven’t worn that stuff since my gender was Gerard Way for, like, a month back in college.” Rarity gave her the concerned smile she always did whenever she made an obscure human reference knowing full well nopony would understand. The unicorn spoke as if she had not said anything.

“Matte, of course. I assumed a glossy one would be pushing your limits.”

“Oh, you know me too well!” Ellie laughed.

“I know your aesthetic well.” Rarity smiled. “I look forward to getting to know you.”

Weird place to put the emphasis, but okay.

“Would you mind if I start?”

“Sure, why not?” Ellie shrugged.

Rarity giggled in excitement, and took off the applicator lid of the bottle with her magic. She began with Ellie’s pinky nail, putting down a streak of a dark blue.

“I must say, Ellie, I am grateful. You’ve not only provided me with an exciting challenge, but gave me the satisfaction of overcoming it as well.”

“Yeah, you definitely met it!” Ellie agreed. “Getting my nails painted while wearing a dress and heels was not how I would have bet this evening would go. Défi relevé.”

“Oh, describing it as such does not do it justice!” Rarity insisted. “Surviving a neurotic bookworm’s sleepover with a muddy-hooved farmer pony Is a challenge. All this is more akin to getting said farmer pony jealous enough to give herself a full haute couture makeover in a barn!”

Ellie wondered if this is how she sounded to all these ponies when she referenced human things they had no way of being able to understand. If so, she had no idea how she ever managed to make any friends here.

“What I’m saying is…” She pointed the applicator at Ellie like a finger. “Your resistance to feminine expression was so strong and insistent that watching it melt away in front of my very eyes was, well…” Rarity smiled wickedly. “It was exciting.”

Ellie laughed nervously. “Well, I’m glad you had fun, Rarity!”

“Yes, fun! Precisely!” Rarity agreed enthusiastically. “Spending time with you has always been fun!”

“Yeah. It’s been fun for me, too.” Ellie reflected. She did have fun just being around the ludicrously high femme unicorn.

“You know, I knew from the moment I met you that we would be able to get along like this!” Rarity spoke as she finished up the ring finger. “Despite the awful state of your habillement at the time, I could see in you that you saw the world as I did. Through the eyes of an esthète.”

Rarity pointed towards the mirror with the applicator, indicating the pieces of the outfit hung around it. “The beautiful composition that you rendered me was only confirmation of what I knew. That I had found a peer.”

Unexpectedly to Rarity, Ellie frowned, and did not respond for a few seconds. “But I’m not like you, Rarity. I can’t do what you do.”

Rarity fluttered her eyelashes. “Ever the charmingly humble gentlecolt, even in a dress!” Ellie cracked a smile at that. “But you must learn how to accept a compliment!”

Ellie sighed into a smile. “I do appreciate the compliment! It’s a really nice thing you’re saying. But what I do really isn’t a big deal.“

Rarity looked at her with concern. She recapped the bottle of hoof polish and set it aside. She ventured a guess. “It’s a shame that those of your world are too vulgaire to appreciate your aesthetic, but trust me, I know taste. And you have it.”

“They do appreciate it, actually.” Ellie avoided her gaze. “People compliment me all the time on my outfits. Especially back when my hair looked like this.”

Rarity frowned in confusion.

“Darling, there’s humility and there’s this. You must have some self-confidence! Why, our friend Fluttershy learned many a time that—”

“I’m not like Fluttershy.” Ellie interrupted. “I know I look good, Rarity! There would be no other way to explain some of the… experiences I’ve had. The problem is that I don’t deserve it.” Ellie sighed. “It’s my world, or at least the parts of it I live in. The standard is lower. The people on my half of the gender expression scale just don’t try as hard as the people on the other half. So it’s easier for anyone who makes any effort at all to stand out.”

She looked away, towards the mirror. “Masculine aesthetic is based on what’s missing and forbidden. Sure, an accent here or there can break the rules, but too many and you’re on the other side. I know what colors go together. I can match between the five different fabrics I’m allowed. I can make sure my clothes actually fit my body. But the form? At this level of formality, it’s just a jacket, a vest maybe, a dress shirt, and trousers. Three cuts between them. That’s it. No other choices, besides accessories, and the aesthetic range on those are limited, too!. It’s easy to look good when all you’re doing is coloring in the lines.”

She looked at Rarity. “But you, and every other femme… You carve out a personal aesthetic out of nothing. The full range of fabrics and colors and patterns and cuts is available to you. Then there’s the velocity. Things go in and out of style, trends come and go, contexts shift and change so much more quickly on your side. I don’t know how any of you do it. And I feel so lucky to be able to live in a way where my participation in that world is optional, because I have no idea where I would even start.”

There was a beat as Rarity looked at her in silence, nonplussed.

“Well… you could start with this!” Rarity offered, sounding a bit like she didn’t know what else to say. Then, with more confidence. “I put a lot of thought in trying to get it to reflect what I knew of your aesthetic. The solid, cooling colors. The austere abstraction of the form. Even the weight of the fabric! I tried to get it as close as I could to what you would be used to with your suit jackets.”

Ellie had noticed and appreciated that.

“I knew you needed something solid, that would not feel as if it would tear or rip at the slightest snag. That would stay in place. Honestly, it reminded me a bit of designing for Applejack…”

Ellie smiled in appreciation. “You did an amazing job. It does reflect my aesthetic, and I like the way I look in it. If I would wear any dress ever made, this would be it. But I…”

Ellie tried to imagine herself outside of the walls of the boutique in the dress. No, too much. Inside another set of walls. Fluttershy’s cottage. No, the animals. Okay. The library in Twilight’s castle. It’s only her friends there. Could she do it?…

Ellie frowned. “I’m so sorry, Rarity. You must have put so much work into this, so much thought. I should… I should be able to be a normal person and just be able to wear this but I can’t. Because—”

Of a bunch of things she couldn’t say, because it would take paragraphs to explain them to someone who grew up in Equestria.

Nobody yells things at you from their car here.

Well, it rarely happened back home, too. Maybe because she was a shut-in. Maybe because her daily driver wasn’t silk ties and blazers cut to acknowledge that she had breasts, but rather loose denim on denim in muted secondary colors. Vaguely masculine with the intent of standing out as little as possible. (Or getting read as male, if she was particularly lucky.)

The rare times when she heard slurs or gross comments, the circumstances were predictable. It would be night. She would be out with a girl in heels. She would get mad, and the girl would not, and try to calm her. Get her to not flip them off or insult them in response, because who knows what they’re capable of. It’s not worth it. It’s just a thing that happens.

But not to Ellie. She’s not used to feeling vulnerable in that way. She’s not used to being forced to take an insult and just accept it. When she does, it is as if a jagged scar is tearing reality asunder. That the world is not as it should be.

Because she is not used to it. Because she is a coward who does everything she can to avoid it. It’s not just getting yelled at by dudes in cars, that’s just a discrete example that also happened to her. It’s everything that comes from being marked.

Yet people sometimes call her brave for being who she is. She hates that more than anything else. The ones who came before her, decades ago, who risked getting arrested for dressing the way she does. The ones who can’t afford to live in her pricey neighborhood where people smile at her if she’s holding hands with a girl. The ones who live in places where that kind of thing had more consequences: other countries, certain parts of her own country, of her own city. They’re the brave ones. Not her.

She had the privilege to be able to contort her social circles, to contort her career, to contort her behavior, in order to live this life of cowardice and comfort. Yet she was rewarded for this. By an easier time getting dates than her femme friends, especially her femme trans friends. By an easier time getting respect from male peers. By naturally being considered too out of scope to be gender policed by certain straight women with toxic femininity. She’d never felt stereotype threat or impostor syndrome. (Did she even count as a woman anymore?)

She’s in this magical land far far away from all the troubles of her world, where femininity is associated with power and prestige instead of passivity and vulnerability, and she still can’t bring herself to wear a dress.

All of these thoughts flashed through her mind in an instant. None of them were new.

She looked at Rarity, who was looking slightly away, deep in thought.

“I’m so sorry, Rarity. This was supposed to be a fun time. I… I’m sorry I ruined everything by being weird.”

“No, it’s not that. I just have a distinct feeling of déja vu…” Rarity looked at her with a sorry expression. “I don’t know what you went through in your world, but— ”

“No, don’t pity me.” Ellie frowned. “That’s the thing. I didn’t go through anything. Nothing bad’s ever really happened to me.”

“Darling.” Rarity said with concern. “You’re afraid of being seen in a dress that you yourself agree reflects who you are and looks good on you. Your world affected you. It’s something.”

Ellie lowered her gaze in shame, but looked up when Rarity put a forehoof on top of her hand, sandwiching it between both her forehooves. Ellie could feel the warmth radiating from her frogs. Rarity looked at her.

“You are more than your clothes. Your aesthetic is more than just how underappreciated or overappreciated it is. It means you have a sense of beauty. That when you see the world, you see more than just the literal image in front of you. You fit what you see in the larger world I can sense behind your eyes.”

She rarely heard such beautiful words. She rarely saw such a beautiful face. Not just the mascara and the eyeshadow and the perfectly coiffed mane, but the nobility and compassion in those enchantingly blue eyes.

What happened next should have been enough. But Ellie was a cool and normal person, and cool and normal people do not ever feel the urge to kiss a talking horse lady on the lips, even if said talking horse lady was accomplished and kind and generous and saying all the right things and yes, she could finally admit it, really pretty.

There needed to be something else.

There was.

Her name was Alexandra, Alex for short. She was pretty and popular. She was kind. Kind enough to start an MSN conversation with the quiet girl with no friends and discover that she was so much more loquacious behind a screen. Kind enough to assume that the reason she only wore the baggiest of t-shirts and jeans from the last decade was because her parents spoke English with a strong accent. Kind enough to want to help.

Though she would not have thought of it in those terms at the time, Ellie had been very bad at refusing anything asked of her with a smile by a pretty high femme long before Alyssa in college. The property also held when said smile was an emoticon.

That is how she found herself in that room, offering her hand to Alex, who took it tenderly, with a smile. The bottle of nail polish between them was still closed.

The touch was electric. Strong enough to reach back in time and retroactively justify every measure she took to avoid spending time in the girls’ locker room. Every ounce of adrenaline squirted into her brain when she was. Don’t look. Don’t make it obvious you’re trying not to look. But don’t look.

The touch was electric. Strong enough to power a billion calculations in her mind within a fraction of a second, crunching together all available data about herself, about Alex, about what looks mean and what smiles mean and what tenderly holding her hand means and what to do at that point.

She ran into the spacious walk-in closet that no 14-year-old would ever have in a country that distributed its wealth equitably, and held the door closed behind her with her body as waves of panic overtook her. She did not appreciate the irony at the time.

Alex was kind. Her voice muffled by the door, she asked if Ellie was okay. If she had done anything wrong. She was genuine. She was innocent. She had no idea of the monster that lurked on the other side of that door, with teeth to bite and claws to rend and a hunger for her flesh.

Hands shaking, Ellie desperately composed a text to her mom, asking her to come and pick her up. She waited. She had no plans for how she would get out of this once her mom came. She didn’t have to.

Three loud knocks, forceful and authoritative in the way 14-year-old girls are rarely capable of. Because it wasn’t. It was Alex’s mom, furiously holding up Ellie’s bag, which she took from her sheepishly. She had just gotten chewed out by a woman who, between her accent and her rage, had been very difficult to understand.

Leaving Alex’s room, Ellie managed to avert her gaze in time. She never saw her face.

Deleting her MSN account, Ellie did not manage to avert her gaze in time. “Are you OK?” “Just want to talk.”

That was the last she ever saw or heard of her. With more conviction than she had ever done anything before in her short life, she begged her parents to let her begin home schooling instead of starting the next school year.

It was an easier sell than expected, between the remaining tuition after financial aid still being quite steep, a mother who blamed the children of the 白人 who talked down to her at PTA meetings for turning her daughter into this unrecognizable gremlin, and a father who long lamented that the American educational system produced “weak-minded woman who want become fashion magazine columnist” instead of the aspiring physicists and doctors of his native Russia.

Graduating with a math degree from a prestigious women’s college, Ellie managed to disappoint only one of her parents.

Of course, never seeing Alex again did not mean Ellie stopped thinking about her. Or more accurately, about that moment.

For years afterwards, more than she’d care to admit, she would churn out fics in the bowels of hp_femslash. The characters and setting didn’t matter. They always seemed to distort themselves into the same shape eventually. A Hogwarts that felt oddly similar to an American high school in an upper-middle class suburb. Two girls kneel in front of each other. One holds the other’s hand, and smiles.

Was there anything more pathetic than this? Distorting the characters and setting from a piece of children’s media to act as puppets to work through your personal issues? Well, at least she had been a child then, and wasn’t doing such things as an adult. Small mercies.

If the story ended there, Ellie would have been able to have pity for that pathetic, lonely teenage girl. But one never merely writes fanfics. One is always part of a community. Egos and drama and the desperate need to be unique. And when one is a shut-in, maladjusted home schooler with no other social outlets whatsoever, one easily does things one regrets, even a decade and a half later.

This is what she associates with that moment now. A stupid, rash decision that no 14-year-old should ever have had the right to make, and the extremely embarrassing fanfic writing career that it engendered. That is why she rarely ever thought about that moment these days. She had moved past it years ago, and it was long overshadowed by the formative experiences of her adult years.

But there was one last thing to resolve. And it wasn’t what some part of her teenage self had deluded herself into thinking, that the desperate scraping and rewriting of the palimpsest that was rewriting the same event over and over again, in different configurations and forms, would somehow reach through time and rewrite history itself. Causality doesn’t work that way. But it affected the one thing it could.

It started when Rarity, holding her hand, looked deep into her eyes, smiled warmly, and said,

“What is inside you is beautiful.”

Through the tracing of a shaky finger on a flip phone’s T9 button pad, through the desperate nights of typing on a laptop under the sheets, through the self-punishment tics accrued during those years in self-isolation, a groove had been worn in Ellie’s brain that she was as powerless to resist as the planets are to their elliptical orbits. The actions of that 14-year-old girl finally met their ends.

The woman that girl had become opened her eyes in horror to find her lips locked with those of the unicorn mare in front of her.

Her lips unsealed with a sickening, lovely pop as she backed away. She blubbered. “I’m so sorry, I— I don’t know what came over me!”

“Sorry?” Rarity gave her a concerned smile. “Darling, I’ve been waiting for you to do that all evening.”

“I—” Ellie’s eyes somehow went even wider. “What!?”

Rarity sighed, then smiled at her. “You are fortunate that I find coltish obliviousness charming. At one point, I admit it became downright amusing to see just how far I could take it without you picking up on a thing! But you surpassed even my expectations. I mean, really!” She looked Ellie straight in the eye. “I invited you to feel the lacework on something covering my breasts! “

“I…”

“Thank Celestia you responded so strongly to that! I had almost convinced myself that you weren’t interested in me, and that would have been the worst! Possible! Thing!” Rarity giggled as she planted a hoof closer to Ellie. “But then, the blushing. The way your eyes widen. That you were desiring me without even fully realizing it, the sensation that awoke in me…” She planted another hoof closer. “Absolument magnifique!”

“But… but…” Ellie blubbered. “I don’t like horses!” she exclaimed in a panic. This got Rarity to step back a bit to feign shock and offense.

“Darling! I am not a horse! I am a perfectly average-sized mare, thank you very much!”

“No, I mean…” Ellie gulped. “Horses back where I’m from don’t… They don’t talk! They don’t think!”

Rarity smiled. “They don’t design lacy things for their bodies you can’t help but stare at.” She got closer. “They don’t get charmed by your quick wit and unearned smirk. They don’t see what is inside of you, and want more.” Her face was right up to Ellie’s now. Close enough to see how pretty her eyes were once again. Close enough to feel her exhales. “They’re not waiting for you to kiss them again.”

Ellie whimpered as something in her died. Then, she kissed her again.

With her eyes closed, focusing on the softness of her lips and the delightful quiet moans Rarity was making, Ellie could convince herself that this was, in fact, totally cool and normal. She just had to ignore the feeling of the hairs of her muzzle coat on her face, and how the tongue lightly probing her mouth was just a touch rougher than she was used to.

The feeling of suction as the kiss broke was also reassuringly familiar. But the face that was gazing into hers… Definitely not human. Definitely pretty.

Rarity smiled lecherously at her as she looked her up and down. “I must say, that is a beautiful dress you are wearing. But I think it might look better on my floor.”

It wasn’t the first time Ellie had heard that line, but it was the first time she heard it not coming from her own mouth. She had always wondered just why it seemed to work so well. Now she knew. Feeling her cheeks turn crimson, feeling something else between her bare thighs, she definitely knew.

She felt a warm glow on her shoulders, and lifted her arms up and sat up slightly in acquiescence as Rarity took off her dress with the confidence and care of somepony who had stitched every seam. She felt another warm glow in the middle of her back, then a loosening. Then, nothing. Rarity looked at her with a smile.

Ellie understood. Only she could take things further. The action would be the speech. That yes, this was really going to happen. Yes, she wanted this. Yes, enthusiastically. And not only that, but judging from the hunger in the unicorn’s expectant eyes, that yes, she was going to bottom first.

She wondered briefly which part was weirder. That she was going to bottom first, or that she was about to have sex with a magical talking horse.

Probably the talking horse part. That was way weirder. She should probably be freaking out a lot more about that. A part of her definitely was freaking out a lot about that.

The rest of her was hooking her thumb underneath her bra strap to slide it off her shoulder, taking delight in the approval on the pretty horse face in front of her.

Don’t worry, she told herself.

It's okay.

Just remember.

It’s not bestiality if the ovaries don’t touch.

Author's Note

Mature continuation for those interested:

[Adult story embed hidden]

Otherwise, do continue.

Matin

She awoke, but did not open her eyes, because that would mean waking up. This meant that the first thing she noticed was the sheets. Very soft and smooth and luxurious. Silk? In any case, she felt very held, tucked in underneath them. Certainly, a new experience.

Her first thought was nice hotel, because stranger’s bed was hardly a very common place for her to wake up in. Then again, neither was nice hotel. But stranger’s bed usually meant waking up sprawled atop cotton sheets and sad pillows, feeling a draft coming in through a door that didn’t quite fit right in a house shared between way too many people. Not tucked into silk sheets, head resting on what felt like a cloud.

For a second after that first thought, maybe two, she was back. Waking up from that weird dream where she was in a land of colorful, magical horses who were her friends? What was the deal with that? But no, then she realized it. Her memories did not dissolve away into nothingness like a dream would. They were solid. They held when pressed. An autobiographical record of months of life here. Conversations and experiences and learning. Then there were the names and voices and faces. Well, she had to admit it, the faces would be pretty difficult for her to distinguish if it weren’t for the coat color and manestyle. But the names and voices were people to her. Wait, no, ponies. Wait, people?

Whatever. The point is that they were her friends and acquaintances, and despite their world being so much more innocent, still were fully-rounded and complex individuals that she cared about her relationships with. Hardly the stuff of dreams.

When was the last time she even thought about a human?

She skipped over that thought, as she always did whenever it came up. Sitting with it….

No. Focus on the now, as she always did. The Buddhist in her would be proud. She was a being with no past and no future. No attachments. Open to the world, in a way that she never was back in her old life of work routines and tablet screens. Floating from one experience to the next. That is how she ended up here, wasn’t it? Crossing a line she had been wary of ever since she started noticing how charmed she was by something clever or funny one of these horse ladies said or did, or how, if she closed her eyes, they really did not sound any different from human ladies with pretty voices. Each time, suppressing those feelings and chastising herself for even noticing said things. Crossing a line that she didn’t even think was possible to cross, because for all she knew before last night, sex did not even exist in this magical princess fairy castle world.

But, no. Sex definitely existed here, if those memories of last night were anything to go by. Boy howdy, it did.

She turned to her right, into the slight gravity well that she felt on the mattress surface, and opened her eyes to look at her.

A slight, content smile, so coy. Eyes that were just as pretty closed as open. Two perfect ovals of light-blue bordered boldly at the bottom by an arc of eyeliner and thick, lush lashes, contrasting so beautifully with that bright, white coat and brilliant, purple mane. And that distinctly non-human muzzle, with its curves so soft and elegant. It was difficult to believe that something so pristine had ever been pressed up against something so worldly as Ellie’s own lips, much less against the other things it had been pressed up against last night…

Ellie smiled. Those were good memories. To be filed alongside the drunk makeout session with that queer-famous touring indie musician who was at a friend of a friend’s party in their self-renovated Victorian/anarchist zine library, and the one night with that exotic dancer/chainsaw artist/disowned airport heiress at her rented farmhouse in the sticks.

Only those times, she was so very cognizant that she was in a world where she did not belong. A temporary visitor, to be yanked back down to the mundane at any second once her time was deemed to be up.

Okay, so that wasn’t too different from her situation here. But the difference was that she was in the moment this time. Maybe it was because she was so far removed from her own context and from the task of fitting in this experience into her otherwise very ordinary, boring life. Maybe it was because she was older and wiser now.

Maybe it was because the other party was literally a magical, talking horse.

Said magical, talking horse woke up, with hardly a yawn or an adjustment. She simply woke, opening those big, beautiful eyelids to reveal a sparkling pair of blue irises underneath, forming a warm, intimate smile.

“Mor-ning!” Rarity sang, with a bright energy that seemed impossible to Ellie for a thirtysomething before coffee in the morning. (Wait, how old was Rarity?) “How did you sleep, darling?”

“Oh, uh…” Ellie croaked, distinctly unable to match said energy, though she hoped her irrepressible grin would communicate the same thing. “I slept great! Your sheets are so comfortable, and amazing!” Just like you, Ellie stopped herself from saying, mindful of not overselling it. “How did you sleep?” Darling, Ellie also stopped herself from mirroring.

“I slept fabulously, of course!” Rarity flipped her mane with a hoof and smiled, fluttering her eyelashes. She continued without letting the moment linger awkwardly. “Particularly since you had no disagreements to sleeping with a properly made bed.”

“Oh, of course!” Ellie blinked, realizing what she meant. “I mean, it’s not what I’m used to, but that’s because I’m too lazy to tuck those things in properly and keep them tucked. But it was cozy. I appreciated it.“

Rarity’s smile widened at that, and from the look in her eyes Ellie could sense that there was more to the story here than just her appreciating a made bed.

A few moments passed in silence as Ellie realized that she knew what she wanted to do, but not what to do. It was always an odd liminal space, that first morning after. That’s what the scripts were for. Cliched lines about cooking eggs. (Did ponies even eat eggs?) Gooey lines about being cute or adorable. Trying to gauge the right level of engagement to be at, to not make the other too uncomfortable. Calculating, because she didn’t know how to do anything else. Because she always believed her first instinct was wrong.

Rarity seemed to have no such beliefs as she moved over underneath the sheets to wrap her foreleg around Ellie’s neck and kiss her warmly. Ellie moved into the kiss, hooking underneath Rarity’s foreleg to place her forearm on her withers. They held each other close, lightly making out for a minute before Rarity turned around and backed herself up, pressing her flowing mane into an impromptu blanket between Ellie’s body and hers. Ellie settled into being the big spoon, which was fitting as she was the bigger one, and held her cheek against the mane at the back of Rarity’s head.

There was no script. There was no calculation. Just Rarity doing what she wanted to do in the moment. Ellie could appreciate that. Maybe that is how these little ponies did things.

But did they? She knew from her readings that the ponies’ storybook romances looked oddly similar to the storybook romances of Ellie’s world. That they had dates and their version of Valentine's Day and engagements and weddings. But sex was never really mentioned. Certainly nothing like Tinder. So what did all this mean?

Was this the worst possible time to talk about this, with Rarity's body nestled so comfortably against hers? Or was it the best? To figure things out before they went any further than, well, they already had? Surely, the earlier she knew what was going on, the better, right?

"So…" Ellie began, possibly the worst way to do so. "I realized that since this stuff all seems to be unspoken of here, I really have no idea what something like last night means."

"Means?" Rarity puzzled. She turned her head so that one eye was able to look into Ellie's.

"Yeah! You know!" Ellie laughed nervously. "I mean, it must mean something, considering how you knew to build up to it with all that flirting. You sensed my hesitation and helped me overcome that, too, so it must be a status change that is meaningful here. A social threshold to be crossed. Oof." Ellie winced. "Sorry. I'm talking like that again."

Rarity blinked in confusion before her eye brightened in realization. "Oh, you mean our lovemaking!"

Ellie's eyes widened at that. That was a very strong word to use out of the gate, at least for her.

"Yeah, that!" Ellie tried to hide her trepidation. "The thing we did. What does that, uh, make us?"

"Oh, it makes us lovers, of course!" Rarity pish-poshed, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. But then she softened. "Ah. I do apologize. You felt so familiar in ways that I never quite thought how things might be different for you, coming from a world with only one species. You would not take certain commonalities for granted."

Yes. Of course. There was an entire cultural context that she was unfamiliar with here, but it was worse than that. There would be things that Rarity would assume she already knew because they were so basic to her, and maybe even worse than that. That even the questions Ellie could ask, if she really wanted to know the shape of that cultural context in all its detail, could offend her.

No. Back to the basics. What was important was the core of the expectation.

"I mean, I just want to make sure. We're not, uh, courting to be married right now, or anything like that?"

Rarity's eyes widened in horror as she frowned. She took a moment before she responded.

"Darling. I do not want to insult you by excluding such a thing out-right, but it is uncomfortable to think of such things after knowing each other for less than a moon, and well, you see, well—"

Ellie interrupted. "Let me take a guess! Lifetime commitments are only made when both parties know reasonably enough about each other, themselves, and their futures for it to make sense to do. They are not made because they are expected due to or being implied by anything outside of themselves."

"Oh, splendid!" Rarity sounded relieved. "So our species do see things the same way!"

"Yeah, let's go with that!" Ellie smoothed over. She was relieved, too. One end of the expectation scale eliminated, and by far the most difficult one. But she couldn’t just leave it at that.

"And, uh, I was just curious. I mean, it's totally cool if not, of course, but would you, uh, want to do all this again sometime?"

Ellie cringed at the memory of those artificially chipper and positive, friend-vetted and lab-crafted after-the-morning-after texts that were left on read. Of the left-on-reads that she had done. But most cringily, of the lesson she had learned early on in her terrible dating career to definitely not ask this question during the actual morning after unless the answer was clearly yes, in which case the question did not need to be asked, and if so, definitely not in that terrible hedging way she just did.

"Darling!" Rarity huffed, and Ellie cringed again. "I am not a Diamond Dog! I—" Rarity stopped herself, and Ellie could sense a whiff of insultedness about her. "I really should not even have to say this, but after everything we shared last night it should be abundantly clear that we like each other. And I do not know how your species does things, but when I like somecreature, I do hope to see them more than once."

"Oh, good!" Ellie agreed, relieved that the question itself did not seem to have ruined things. "I was never really one for one-night stands."

Rarity blinked in confusion again. "Night… stands? Darling, what could furniture possibly have to do with this conversation?"

Ellie laughed at that. Of course. "Never mind! Just a human thing, apparently." Unless it was a word boundary issue again, of course. But that hardly mattered.

The laugh seemed to have broken the tension, and Ellie could see Rarity smile a bit and crucially relax. It seemed as if their expectations for each other were, at the very least, somewhere on the same page.

Ellie, at last, listened to the part of herself that wanted things, and reached over to begin stroking Rarity's muzzle and cheeks. Rarity closed her eyes and leaned into it in response. Ellie kept stroking, enjoying the feel of Rarity's face on her fingers. She let this go on for a bit before asking her next question.

"So, are we 'dating', then?"

"'Dating', 'in a relationship', 'lovers'…" Rarity opened her eyes back up as she considered. "My, we do have a lot of synonyms for this, don't we?"

"It's an important thing! It makes sense." Ellie shrugged. She mused for a few seconds. "And we'll be like this until when, exactly?"

"Well, relationships usually end when one or both parties decide it is time." Rarity was again using that tone of voice she used when explaining the most obvious thing in the world. Which, to be fair, she was. Then she smiled wickedly, speaking in the same tone. "Or, you know. When one of them dies."

"Yeah!" Ellie chuckled. "Or one of them gets sucked back to the world that they originally came from, leaving this one behind forever as if it were just a dream."

"That one might be a smidge too specific to you, darling!" Rarity sang and laughed prettily. Her laughs were all pretty, weren't they? Rarity gave Ellie one last warm smile before she closed her eyes and turned her head back away, snuggling herself into her embrace. Ellie held her tighter, sinking her face this time into the back of her head, knowing that the conversation would be over for a while.

It felt really nice, being in the moment. It felt really nice, too, having moments in the future to look forward to.

She smiled as she pressed her body against that of the unicorn cuddled up against it, imagining in her head all of the things she was looking forward to in all their wonderful detail. Things she would never have imagined would be things she looked forward to even, well to be honest, yesterday morning. How quickly things change. For the better.

But then a thought came to her. A fly in the ointment. A horrifying realization of the implications. Oh no.

This didn't mean that she was a furry, did it?