Cross Your I's and Dot Your T's
It was a nice spring morning in Equestria. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and all that jazz. As much of a sight as it was to behold, it was a little too early for most ponies to be out and about. The few brave souls who had were treated to a spectacle of the senses. No one could possibly be stressed on such a morning, and yet, Rarity was. The small-town fashionista stood just inside the open door of her boutique, looking left and right down the street suspiciously.
"It's still early morning. I’m sure nopony will see me." Emboldened by this realization, Rarity heroically set out for … her mailbox. One might wonder why Rarity would be so concerned with ponies seeing her going to her mailbox, but reason was quite simple: She was wearing her pajamas.
To most ponies this would not matter much, if at all, but to Rarity it mattered greatly. She had always been indifferent about being seen in changing or in undergarments. As nonsensical is this was, Rarity knew better than anypony that a lady had to maintain her grace. A few silly habits was just part of the job
With the swiftness of wonderbolt, Rarity opened her door and rushed out to her mailbox. She screeched to a halt in front of it, looking up and down the street in a fright. When she saw nopony, she relaxed. Using her front hoof, she opened the front flap of the mailbox. Inside were three or four letters, which she grabbed in a field of magic with practiced precision. Most ponies - even unicorns - would just do this the easy way and grab it in their teeth, but once again, Rarity had standards.
She headed back inside, whistling the melody of 'Love is in Bloom' as she went. It had been a month or so since the wedding, and through all that time she had not been able to get it out of her head. She had heard the song before that a few times, but it's original version was the usual tastelessness one would expect from the music industry these days. The singer wasn't good, and the rhythm section was full of no-names. Typical modern music.
And yet, Twilight's version had been pleasantly good, and Twilight had been complimented on her singing abilities by countless ponies afterwards. She was even offered a record deal from a small record company out of Hoofington, which she politely turned down. Not only that, but she insisted that she wasn't really anything special. Rarity could understand humility, but shying away from a talent like that was something she couldn’t.
Speaking of ponies who could sing well but took it for granted, Sweetie Belle ran down the stairs just as Rarity set down the letters. Their parents being vacation for the second time in the last month, Rarity was stuck watching her sister again. How her parents could afford so many vacations, she had no idea.
"Rarity?"
"Yes, Sweetie?"
"Can I sleepover at Apple Bloom's tonight?"
Rarity raised her eyebrows. "I thought it was a school night." she said.
"You forgot? Tomorrow's Labor Day!"
Skeptically, Rarity glanced over at her calendar. It backed up Sweetie Belle's assertion. "Well, I suppose it is. Alright, you can go. Just promise me you will behave more nicely for Applejack this time."
Sweetie Belle grimaced, remembering the incident with the apple cider on their last sleepover. "I promise."
"Okay then. Where are you going now?"
"Where do you think?"
"The same place you always go, I suppose. Tell Applejack I said hello."
"Okay. Bye!" Sweetie Belle ran out the door with an energy that should not have been possible at seven in the morning. Rarity watched her go, then turned her attention to making breakfast, realizing belatedly that Sweetie Belle had missed hers.
"Oh well, I'll just make her a big lunch," she reasoned. She looked into the pantry, seeing if anything piqued her interest. The brown sugar oatmeal fit the bill, so she heated up some water to boil, leaving the oats and other ingredients out on the counter. As the water heated up, Rarity looked around for something to do. Her eyes fell upon a half finished dress sitting on one of the mannequins, and she began work on it without a second thought. Unlike many, Rarity didn't take Labor Day off.
For the next few minutes she alternated fixing the oatmeal and making the dress without dropping so much as a pin. In the short time it took the water to boil and the oatmeal to cook, she had already finished the dress. It was a mint green number with royal blue trim and a chartreuse sash, a gift for an old friend in Canterlot. Rarity knew that she would love it.
Sitting down with her warm bowl of oatmeal, she set about her next order of business, and the sole reason for the brevity of her beauty sleep: her mail. She was hoping to find a letter back from a Canterlot store that was interested in selling her brand. Leafing through the letters, she was pleasantly surprised to find what she was looking for.
"They returned that quickly? What a happy surprise," she thought while ripping the letter open with her magic. Sitting down, she levitated the letter in front of her, and eagerly read what it had to say.
Mrs. Rarity,
We are sorry to inform you that we will not be carrying your designs due to a complication in logistical process. The letter you sent us was unintelligible, and despite our best efforts, we were unable to read it. We ask that you not re-submit your application, as another designer has been selected for the open position you specified your desire for.
We are sorry for any inconvenience or loss of time that this might have caused you.
Upper Crust Fine Clothing, Canterlot.
"They couldn't read my hoof-writing?!" Rarity slammed the letter down in a fury, and soon afterward, her head. "How could I be so careless?"
As she wallowed in her great moment of peril - with not a fainting couch in sight - she heard a knock on the door. She picked up her head long enough to address the visitor. "Come in, Spike."
The visitor opened the door and walked in, the familiar but at the moment uncomforting chime of the bells sounding throughout the room.
"How did you know it was me?" Spike asked, Rarity’s guess being correct.
"Spike, this is a shop. You're the only one who knocks." she said blankly.
"Oh yeah, I forgot." he said sheepishly.
Rarity got up out of her chair, turning the letter over as she did so.
"So, what can I help you with?" she asked, standing up, leaving her bowl of oatmeal on the table to cool. It was too hot anyway.
"Actually, you wanted me to help you, remember?"
Rarity thought about it, and recalled that she had asked Spike for some help a few days ago. "Oh sorry dear, it completely slipped my mind." she said primly. "Did Twilight figure out where I can find those large pyrite crystals? I need them for an order next week."
"Yep. She said we can find them a few miles outside Saddle Arabia. I could show you on a map."
"Thank you ever so much for that. Sometimes I don't know what I would've done if you two hadn't moved here."
“Uh huh,” Spike said, his eyes wandering away from her eyes. Rarity noticed this, but didn't say anything. After all, what harm was there in letting him stare? She was looking quite pretty this morning, if she did say so herself.
"Oh dear, that's going to be a long trip. I'm probably going to have to take Twilight's balloon. Do you think she would let me borrow it Spike?"
"Sure," he said as he snapped out of his spell, remembering that he had something he wanted to ask her. "Hey, Rarity?"
"Yes Spike?" she asked, turning back towards him.
"Why were you yelling before I came in? There's nopony here."
"Oh, you heard that?"
"Uh huh."
"It's no big deal really. It's just that I wrote a letter to a high-in clothes retailer in Canterlot and they couldn't read my-
"Couldn't read your what?" Spike asked, puzzled by Rarity’s mid-sentence pause.
"Spike, I just came up with a great idea!"
“Okay … what is it?”
"Well, the reason I was so angry before was because they couldn't read my hoofwriting."
"What of it?" Spike asked, rummaging through a pile of gems in one of Rarity's cupboards. "Do you mind if I have a few of these? I didn't really have breakfast."
Rarity sighed. It seemed that almost everypony skipped breakfast these days. "Sure, but just semi-precious if you don't mind."
Spike shrugged, rummaging around for something that fit the bill. He pulled out a fistfull of amethyst and motioned for Rarity to continue.
"So, my idea is that you could help me!”
"Help you? Help you with what?" he asked, moving on from the purple quartz to some aquamarine.
"My hoofwriting."
Spike had trouble getting his words out through the mouthful of rocks. "Your hoofwriting?"
"Yes, my hoofwriting. You will help me, won't you?" Rarity had no doubt about how he would answer. Spike, like most of the stallions and a good portion of the mares in Ponyville, were always more than willing to help her with such things. She was surprised when the answer wasn’t resoundingly positive.
“How am I supposed to help? I mean, yeah, I write a lot, but I write with my claws. It’s completely different.”
Rarity blinked. She hadn’t thought about it that way. “Well, I’m sure you can still find some way to help, can’t you?
This was a true dilemma for Spike. If he refused to help Rarity, he knew for certain she would think less of him. On the other hand, he had no idea how to help her.
"Uh … sure, I'll help." he said dumbly.
Rarity squealed, running over to Spike and trapping him in a tight embrace. "Oh thank you ever so much!" she said before releasing the baby dragon.
Not that he wanted to be released. When she pulled away, Rarity just stood there as if waiting for Spike to do something. It took Spike a few seconds to realize that Rarity was waiting for him to start.
"Okay … well … how should we start … um,”
“Spike, you do know how to help me, don’t you?”
Spike looked into Rarity’s eyes. There was fear there. She was counting on him, he had to do this. He strained his head, and in the end, inspiration came.
"Oh, I've got it! Do you have a copy of that letter you sent?" he asked, knowing that Rarity usually kept very good business records.
"Yes, I did write a copy. Why?"
"Can I see it? I want to see what I'm working with exactly." Spike made sure to make his comment sound as professional as he could, trying to hide the fact that he was merely stalling.
"Do you promise not to read it?" Rarity asked, still a little embarrassed about the rejection. “I mean, just look at how the writing looks, not at what the whole letter says.”
"I promise." Spike said reassuringly.
Trusting her friend’s honesty, Rarity fetched the letter from a filing cabinet in the far corner of her workroom. She lifted the letter from the cabinet and into the empty claws of her guest. Spike gave the text a quick look-over, then set it down on the nearby table.
"I can read it, but then again, I'm used to reading Twilight's writing after she's stayed up two days in a row working on research projects. I can see why the people you sent it to had trouble." Spike paused, trying to find some bit of critique that would be helpful to Rarity.
"Your letters are a little too small, and half of the time you can't really tell which are which. There’s not enough space between the words, so sometimes it looks like a couple of words are just one big word. All in all, it’s just messy."
"Oh," said Rarity, feeling slightly dejected.
Spike quickly came to her side. "Hey, nothing to worry about. Having bad hoofwriting is no big deal, a lot of ponies do."
"I know, but I still find it a little disconcerting, if you know what I mean."
"Dis-con-what?" asked Spike, fumbling over the foreign vocabulary.
"Disconcerting. I think it means the same thing as embarrassed, but I'm not that sure. You could ask Sweetie Belle, that's where I got it from."
"Yeah, but she’s kind of a know it all … no offense," Spike said, quickly trying to cover his tracks.
“None taken. It’s quite true, and the worst part is that she had perfect hoofwriting, and she does it in her mouth of all places. I don’t understand."
“Yeah, it’s crazy, isn’t it?” Spike now saw a truth that Rarity seemed to be denying, one that she probably wouldn’t like. Hopefully, Spike wouldn’t have to point it out.
“Now maybe it would help if I saw how you write." he said, gesturing over to the table. "Do you have any spare paper lying around?"
"Allow me," she said, levitating a stack over to the table as she sat down.
"We don't need this much, but that's okay I guess." he said, taking a seat across the table from Rarity. "Well, go ahead."
"Sure," said Rarity, moving a piece of paper from the stack in front of her. She sat there for a while, not really doing anything. "What do I write?"
"Whatever you want. Poetry, a sentence, song lyrics, anything you want."
"Okay, I'll give it a go," she said. The first thing that had jumped out at her was song lyrics, so she wrote down the first that came into her head.
Spike looked over at her paper when she was done. He grinned at the familiar lyrics. "Can't get it out of your head either?"
"No, I can't. She is quite a talent, isn't she?"
"Yeah, she's really good, but she's doesn’t seem to care all that much. I mean, whenever we start talking about music, she goes on into these boring tangents about the mathematical properties of rhythms and harmony and stuff like that."
"That does sound like Twilight," Rarity commented.
The meaning of the writing aside, Spike looked over the writing itself. Somehow, it was worse than the original letter. He would have to try something else. But how to put it gently?
"There's another thing I noticed. Did you just write using magic?"
"Yes. Why?"
"That's most likely the problem," he said, fetching a new piece of paper off of the top of the pile.
"But I don't understand. I see Twilight do it all the time."
"Yes, but that's Twilight. She has very good control over her magic. Writing using a spell is not something everypony can do. I'm pretty sure Twilight also explained that to me at one point. It was something about precise control of the levitation spell and that stuff." He pushed the paper over to Rarity, locking eyes with her.
"You should try to write with your mouth. That's how most ponies do it."
"You want me to put that disgusting thing in my mouth?" she said, gesturing to the quill.
"That's why the Earth Ponies invented pencils. I'm sure you have one lying around here somewhere," he said, getting up out of his chair.
"Yes I do, but that's not the point."
"What is then?" said Spike, who had found a pencil in the first drawer he opened.
"Well it's just that … well … I have no idea where that thing's been.”
Spike sighed, something he felt like he did a lot these days. "Look, there are two ways for you to get better at this. Either months of intensive magical training or just picking it up in your mouth. What's it going to be?"
Rarity glared at Spike, making him falter. For a moment, he'd forgotten who he was talking to and how he was talking to them. In his eagerness to help Rarity, he’d forgotten to be kind.
As much as it seemed that way, Rarity wasn't glaring at Spike because the comment was rude. She was glaring at him because what he'd said was the undeniable truth, and she didn't really want to admit that. Grudgingly, she picked up the utensil with her magic, and after a pause, put the end in her mouth.
"Good job!" said Spike enthusiastically. "Now try writing something again!"
"Fhn," Rarity mumbled. At first, it was awkward to write it that fashion, and it looked even worse than before. The mouth didn’t offer much more control than her magic did, and having her head that close to the paper made it harder to see. Stubbornly, she kept at it, and before long, her letters began to have more definition. They were larger, more distinct, and neater.
More time passed with more repetitions, and at long last, Rarity put down the implement. She stared down at the last sentence she’d written. It looked more like her younger sister’s writing than her own. She dropped the pencil from her mouth and stood up, letting out a contented sigh.
"Finally, I won't have to deal with them not being able to read it anymore!"
"Wait, you mean this has happened to you before?" asked Spike.
"Well, yes, at least a dozen of times. But now it looks amazing!"
Spike leaned over to check Rarity's paper, and he had to agree with Rarity. "It does look really nice. It's a lot more fitting for you, I think."
"Yes it is, isn't it. And I have you to thank for it!" Quickly, Rarity leaned in and gave Spike a kiss, then started prancing around Carousel Boutique like she had just won the lottery.
At least, it was a minor event for Rarity. For Spike, this was understandably major. As you would guess, he had an intense reaction to getting kissed. For Rarity had not kissed him on the cheek, nor the forehead, but on the lips. It had been a quick one, but that second or two was probably the single greatest thing that had ever happened to Spike in his short life.
Spike was convinced that Rarity had either done it by accident or just got caught up in the heat of the moment, but it didn't really matter to him. He'd gotten kissed by Rarity. A real kiss, lip to lip. But Spike would not be able to enjoy it for too long, for he fainted only a few seconds after the whole thing went down.
It took Rarity another few minutes of romping around in the boutique to get all the energy out of her system. When she finally finished, she looked back to where Spike was lying on the ground, intent on thanking him again. What she saw was Spike lying unconscious on the floor.
"Oh my, did I really do that?" she asked herself. Giggling, she looked down at the baby dragon, who even in his temporary unconsciousness was smiling. Rarity had no clue what to do with him at this point. But then again, was there really any need to do anything?
"After all," she reasoned, "he'll wake up in a few minutes." Still embarrassed slightly, Rarity went over to her now-cold bowl of oatmeal, which she'd neglected to eat. Using her magic, she lifted the bowl into the sink to clean.
"Oh well, who needs breakfast anyway?"
