Faithfully Yours

                                                                                                                                                            29th June

Dearest Applejack,

I've no doubt you're wondering why I'm replying so quickly to your last letter; the truth is I simply could think of nothing else to pacify myself after today's events. I hope with all my heart that Flim is treating you tolerably; there isn't a day goes that by when I don't worry.

In response to your letter, yes, I will certainly be attending the Fillydelphia ball, on the condition that you honour our pact. I'm sure I don't have to tell you again that these things are no fun without you, so if you leave me high and dry you will be sorry to incur my wrath. I will tell Jangles that you have been dying to take her up on her offer of playing croquet with her mother, and I will recommend you to Pavlova as the most talented ribbon-cutter this side of Equestria.

Celestia knows it won't be all namedropping and profile-raising. Fillydelphia still has unsegregated nightlife, so provided we line the right pockets, we can treat ourselves to some fine cocktails at the very least. Maybe the venue will have a pool like in Trottingham. It would be nice to swim without Pavlova's informative commentary about Trottingham's ratio of pools to other towns. I almost regret restraining you when you suggested pushing her in.

Oh, I do wish I could afford to travel more, darling. And don't be alarmed, that isn't a hint. I'd sooner saw off my horn than be under an obligation to your husband, and Braeburn's position is precarious enough as it is since the disappearance of Sheriff Silverstar. So I'll simply insist that you come down here as soon as you can.

Oh, but I'm getting swept up with all these pleasurable thoughts. I can already hear you squawking "Get to the bleedin' point girl!" And in all honesty, I am terrified that when I do, you may not wish to visit me again, or have anything to do with me for that matter. It's true that it was the most monstrous feelings that compelled me to write this letter, following the most urgent breakthrough. You see, Pinkie Pie has arrived in Appleloosa.

I was on my way to visit Toffee when I first ran into her. I'd heard Caramel had bought a house of his own a couple of months ago, so I was hoping to cut a deal with her to rent out her downstairs room again. I was barely halfway down the high street when I heard that inimitable voice.

"Rocks here! Get your rocks folks! Topaz, Jade, Quarts, pretty rocks to suit all! Any shape! Any size! They're like candy for your eyes! And that's a guarantee from the Pies! Hehe, that rhymes! We've got a new pitch, Blinkie!"

My heart leapt when I first saw her. She looked so bright and alive in the current of soberly clad appleloosans. She was wearing a red and black saloon dress and a twin carrier full of the rocks she was selling, and I could vaguely see another pony in similar attire further up the street. Pinkie was darting this way and that, trying to snare the interest of the passers-by. Most politely avoided her, but a fair few stopped; she's an admirable salespony after all. Some even gave money without taking a rock.

I ran up to her and burst out, "Pinkie! My goodness!"

She replied promptly, "Oh. Hey Rarity! Wanna buy a rock?"

Maybe it was the serrated shrillness of her voice that just hit too quickly. Or the armoured glint in her eyes. Or the way her brows hovered like they were ready for anything. Her curls were stiff and waxy; her dress was torn and full of holes. I don't know what it was, Applejack, but I suddenly felt like I'd hit a force field, and almost leapt back from the impact. She was facing me square on, so that her twin carrier looked like a pair of rock-filled wooden wings, and the trail of her dress loomed behind like a giant black halo. There was a cut on her mouth, or a smudge of lipstick, I couldn't tell. I remember thinking that her open mouth looked like it could breathe fire. The conversation that ensued was something like the following.

"Pinkie, how are you? What have you been doing? Why did you leave Ponyville?"

"Oh, I went back to my family's farm. Flam's protection stallions were threatening my folks, so we harvested as many rocks as we could and, well, me and my sisters have been on the road ever since."

"Oh my dear, did they buy up your farm?"

"I dunno, my dad was dead against selling, but the threats were getting pretty bad. We can't go back in any case."

"Oh Pinkie, I'm so sorry. Here let me help you with those rocks, you shall come back to mine immediately. You can stay as long as you wish."

"Oh no thanks. We're staying at the local inn."

"Oh but you can stay at ours for nothing! Darling I refuse to let a friend of mine - "

"Don't worry about it Rarity!" She laughed unsettlingly. Then she added,  "Oh, but could you tell Braeburn we'll be up at the patches around five? Oh and also to bring more empty bottles, the new hooch should be ready now. Well, better get back to business! See ya!"

I wondered how long she'd been here, and why she hadn't made contact with me.

I didn't accompany my husband to the patches the first evening, or even the second. On the third, after attempting to work for a few hours, I decided I had to join them. The patches - the old fruit and vegetable patches that are clustered on the edge of the town, that is - have been dead for months, but there were still many gardening ponies sifting through the brown plant life, looking for any that might have made it. I cringed at the thought of those precious spoils on our patch being wasted on moonshine - more so when I noted that the still set up on the outskirts, along with the kegs of that potent drink and a number of my wine bottles (refilled), were presently being ignored. Pinkie and Braeburn were running through the sea of dead foliage under the sun, giggling inanely and talking all manner of nonsense. It seemed that they had finished for the day, having no doubt sampled their product amply upon doing so.

Blinkie Pie, a plain, pallid young thing I regret to say, was over by my scarecrow (the one I told you about a few letters ago, that I fashioned for everypony last Fall from one of my mannequins and excess fabric). She was staring at it intensely, perhaps wondering if it was worth their switching clothes. Oh I don't mean to be disrespectful to Pinkie's family, given how tough things are at the moment, but Applejack, Pinkie and her sisters are not the first to have passed through our town. Many come with various products, displaced gypsies and farm fillies, dressed much the same and selling whatever they can.

And then I saw her Applejack - Octavia. I knew there was a third sister I'd yet to run into, and I guess the rumours in Ponyville were true. No wonder she hadn't been available to play at my wedding. I hadn't seen her approach; I was staring at my husband. Pinkie had stolen his trademark waistcoat, and he was galloping this way and that in a playful attempt to get it back, sweat gleaming through his bare golden back hair. And then all of a sudden Octavia was before me, staring at me square on, all kohl and fishnets and broken, stormy grey gown. Octavia has always been a notable beauty, but there and then it was extreme, obscene, stunning to the point of sickness on account of all it meant now, and I wished with all my might that she would stop staring at me but she wouldn't let up, until she said in her elegant voice, utterly devoid of shame,

"Are you looking for someone?"

I couldn't take her merciless eyes; my own mortification. I tore my own eyes away from her and ran back up the high street.

Pinkie won't come to our house on my invitation, but on Braeburn's she will come round the back to use our well and root for truffles, while my husband sits on the back porch, whittling away idly as he watches her. Today, when he went inside for lemonade (his first non-alcoholic beverage all week, I suspect) I approached her. She was at the well, clad in a new outfit that was already lined with dirt, while her old one, and those of her sisters, hung around the stone edge.

I spoke without any idea of how my voice would come out.

"Pinkie, are you sleeping with my husband?"

She took a small breath, before responding curtly, "Nope."

I swallowed, and then I asked, "Are you going to?"

And then she turned back to me with that horrific brightness.

"Oh Rarity, you're my friend, but you gotta know I'd do anything to help my family!"

Applejack, I know how I should have felt. She's destitute, she's lost everything, she has no idea if her parents are lying dead in a ditch full of bullets. And I know what they say about Braeburn and the garden farmers; for lord's sake, even as early Fluttershy's wedding his flirting was provoking comments from perfect strangers, and Celestia knows I got what I paid for when I ignored such warning signs and went and married him anyway.

But Applejack, I couldn't feel for her. In the face of the humiliation I saw on the horizon - the humiliation of losing my husband to somepony so piteously wretched - all I could do was hate her. I stood there paralysed on the porch, listening to Braeburn pour the tumbler while, having turned her back on me, she proceeded to heave up our bucket from the depths of our well, full of our water. And all I wanted to do was to scream at her; everything that the workers say, everything that gets coughed behind napkins by Equestria's finest at every elegant function we have ever attended and ever might. And in my mind's eye, I saw myself laying hooves on her.

Fucking Earth Pony Whore! Get off my property!  How dare you take my water to clean your whore clothes! How dare live off my money and harvest my truffles! How dare you use my fruit to make your disgusting farm drink! And how dare you even think of laying hooves on my husband! How dare you, when you know what I am?

Applejack, I felt like I'd been poisoned.

But darling, I beg you, do not abandon this letter in light of what I have imparted. I do not tell you these things to upset you, but to put myself through the uncompromising mesh that is your relentless integrity. If you never wish to speak to me again on account on my having these thoughts I understand. But I am living on the hope that you will forgive me, because it's all that I have right now.

I've never been too proud to admit the truth, and the truth is that I'm afraid. I know that Pinkie's situation is purely circumstantial, but then, isn't it such that we have become so close? What would I have become if I had married well? What would you have become if you had not? This is a unique and precarious middle ground on which you and I have been washed up together. I don't know how long it will last.

I hope you'll forgive me for burdening  you with these sentiments, darling. And please, don't allow them to spoil your experience of the derby next week. For all my jealousy, I will be contenting my troubled heart with thoughts of the fun you'll be having at such an exclusive event. Please give my love to Rainbow and Soarin if you get a chance to talk to them amidst the hype.

All my love

Rarity

PS. What you said to me last time you were here, about the Appleloosans. You were right.

--

Braeburn finished the letter and looked up to meet the eyes of his wife.

"Well?" She snapped. "Aren't you going to say anything? Or was the violation of my privacy not even worth that?"

Braeburn croaked stiffly, "What did you mean at the beginning, 'bout Flim not treating AJ right?"

Rarity let out a small embittered laugh.

"Is he hurtin' her?!" The stallion barked.

Rarity looked to the floor. She decided to spare her husband the obligation to confront his boss, and Applejack the potential danger. "No. He just doesn't leave her as much money for clothes as he should. You know how passionate I am about that."

Braeburn snorted. "Yeah."

After a moment of silence, Rarity lost her patience. "Aren't you going to answer to anything else that's in it?"

"I don't see why." Braeburn said faintly, anger brewing under his words. "You seem to have me all figured out, and all the rest of my kind on that note."

Rarity took a sharp breath, thrown off-guard by his boldness. "Oh, I assure you, I haven't figured anything out," she said vehemently. "Least of all the kind of stallion I've married."

"Ya married a country stallion, Rarity," Braeburn drawled bitterly, marching to the other side of the room and turning his back on her.  "Just a plain old country stallion with a plain old country life."

"And Celestia knows I could have had better!" The unicorn burst out.

Braeburn turned, growling. "And don't ya just love remindin' me of that when you're whinin' about dirt and bugs and how much ya miss Ponyville and yet here ya still are! Sittin' pretty in your froufrou dresses and livin' off my farm!"

"You wouldn't even have the farm if Flim's wife wasn't your cousin and your own wife a unicorn!"

Braeburn's mouth snapped shut. His gaze went through her as he stood there, stone-faced. Then he said curtly, "I'm going out."

He walked swiftly to the kitchen cupboard, fished out two bottles of hooch, and headed to the front door. Rarity followed hastily.

"Why?" She spluttered at a higher volume, now that they were out in the street, and Braeburn was doing his best to lose her. "Where could you possibly have to go? The farm has no use for you anymore, and you've all the alcohol you need at home, courtesy of your latest catch."

The Appleloosan citizens turned to stare at them as they both made further progress down the street; Braeburn had nearly reached the saloon.

Amidst her anger, Rarity's discretion had died. With her feelings unleashed and the consequences muted, she hollered shamelessly, "Or perhaps she's not desperate enough for you? Perhaps you need a prostitute with even greater misfortune. Is that what you're going out for?"

And then she stopped dead in her tracks, staring at the ponies that occupied the front of the saloon, whom her husband had now approached. There was Octavia, looking much the same as she had at the patches, were it not for the deeper shade of unfathomability that became her face as she glanced at Rarity. She was simultaneously garnishing and supporting a perfect wretch of a stallion swathed in a ragged cloak; his head and eyes were crudely bandaged and encrusted with dried blood. Rarity gasped, recognising the badly bent badge that was tucked about his collar.

"Sheriff Silverstar?"

Octavia pulled back his bandages a fraction around his eyes, allowing them to pierce Rarity with a chilling resonance. The former sheriff gave a low growl. "What would you know about misfortune?"

"Forget it Silver." Braeburn murmured , handing him a bottle of hooch. "She's just like the rest of em."

"Like what?" Rarity snarled at her husband's back, her heart throbbing. "Tell me what I am!"

She panted hotly, swamped by the stares and titters of the simply dressed Earth ponies that inhabited this town - that were this town - while she stood trembling furiously in a quintessentially fabulous gown of last season's collection, which she couldn't have made them wear if she had dropped the price to nothing. Chantilly was whispering. Toffee was laughing. A long standing truth was grinning at her, having got a foot in the door. They all hated her.

With all her fury and desolation, she threw the line at her husband, reaching for him with all she had left.

"SAY IT!"

Braeburn lowered his hooch, eventually turning to face her. The line was there, but the noble sneer that became him told her plainly he wouldn't bite, before he tiredly uttered, "A bitch."