Author's Note
You might as well read it as Anthro. Nothing should break.
Easier than it could be
Rarity went for one last look at the flawless room. Having examined the perfect line of ponyquins, the sparkling cleanliness everywhere, she found the order satisfactory. This was not her usual perfection — rather, this was a special perfection, as suited for today’s guest. The little curly-maned monster with her rough friends was sent to school. Friends were strictly advised not to come — all but one. Maybe it was worth going upstairs and checking those special preparations for a special guest. No, she decided. Twice was enough.
“Ding-dong!” the bell rang, in the precisely first second of the appointed time.
Rainbow had become amazingly, frighteningly punctual in recent days.
“I’m coming, I’m coming!” hesitating for half a minute, so as not to let on that she was waiting beside the door, Rarity brought her mane into a light, perfectly calibrated mess.
“Oh, come in, dear!” she called.
Rainbow came in, leaving behind an air of crushed grass and fresh healthy sweat.
Rarity fluttered around, flexible tape weaving against strong muscles. She was not a bird – not like Rainbow – and nonetheless her soul chirped with joy.
Rainbow let herself be measured, no usual “I’m bored” on her face. And, it seemed, she was watching over the unicorn too.
She yearns all the same.
“Now, dear,” Rarity went for an inspired lie, “you’ll have to take off…”
Without saying a word, Rainbow threw off her uniform, left in her fur, a little damp after training. Her pose conveyed, I’m dressed in my coolness. Nopony would say “She’s naked” rather “She’s perfect.”
Rarity made an effort not to gulp. Her voice trembled, “You’re right. Let’s continue.”
Making a few more measurements, she leaned over to measure the circumference of the ribs, felt the heat of the pegasus’s body, heard the rhythm of her heart, and found that steel arms had closed around her, gently but inexorably, and ruby eyes were looking straight into her face.
“Darling, I—”
“You had no need to measure me.”
Rarity’s blush broke through all the whitewash. The heat of her cheeks and heart was soon both snuffed out in a sense and rekindled in another one — kisses of one’s love tend to work like that.
They went to the center of the store. Then upstairs, to the bedroom.
The hot summer night was full of heated smells. On such a night you think only about summer never ending, beauty never fading, friends never leaving.
Looking back at the quietly snoring pegasus, Rarity whispered: “I’m ready to be with you for a thousand years” knowing that she would not hear it.
She did hear.
On the tenth night Rarity said to her, “You’re not Rainbow”.
The pegasus looked back, “Yes. Does that change anything for you?”
Thousands of answers flashed through Rarity’s head, and after a few seconds of shock she chose the shortest one, “N-no.” And added: “Even if you’re Queen Chrysalis, I—”
Another voice, tinted silver, laughed in non-Rainbow’s response, “No, lady Rarity. I am not Rainbow, as well as I am not a changeling either. Come with me”.
With not a second spent for an answer, they collapsed in a non-existent spot and rematerialized in another place — in Rainbow Dash’s house. From the familiar tingling on her skin, Rarity realized she had a spell of invisibility on her. The moon jumped over for a different place in the sky — that was a time shift too.
The door opened, and into the empty room herself came. Another Rarity. Her double.
Behind her Rainbow Dash flew, ready to burst with anger. Rainbow, whom the love of her life has just betrayed.
“Now tell me, you monster, where is the real Rarity! What have you done to her?!”
“She is fine. Although for the last few evenings she was indeed very busy. Because I was dating her” the fake Rarity replied; for the farther side of calmness it came and went back alike to an insult “Under your guise.” And leaning over to the ear of the stunned Rainbow, she whispered “And just so you know, she liked it”.
Turning to the fake Rainbow, Rarity saw instead a cloud of black-starred mist. The same cloud appeared in place of the false Rarity. The clouds converged to the center of the room, turning into a tall dark-blue alicorn — higher than Princess Luna they knew, darker than that Luna too; and not Nightmare Moon.
“Now, my love and my other love, let us decide what we are going to do with you next.”
“The betrayal!” A guard burst into the throne room, gasping for breath, “Save yourself, Princess!”
Celestia raised her eyebrow in a mild surprise. Invasions, magic bursts, antics of elder gods - that was almost Tuesdays for her. The betrayal that guards could not manage was something new. She sighed.
“Call them to the small hall of the palace”. There had been a long overdue renovation there anyway, which was to include carrying walls’ demolition. “Let them state their demands”.
She was not prepared for this though.
Opposite her stood her sister — or Nightmare Moon; or maybe not. Hugging with her left wing a Rainbow Dash stood, wearing a sharp horn and wings of a form slightly different. To her right, Rarity with a pair of alabaster wings.
Celestia’s eye twitched.
"You! You went for a rematch, didn't you? You seduced— the two newly created alicorns blushed— these… these foals, to overcome me together?
It will work, her fiery terror whispered inside of her head.
“I invite you, Our royal sister, to be the first and the most honored of the guests at Our wedding with them both”, this darker Luna announced solemnly, and added, so that only they could hear, “There will be a huge cake.”
The pastel mane of Celestia clearly showed the colors of Daybreaker.
“How dare you! We are the royal family, we can’t just take someone and–”
“You can though.”
A fiery ray passed by Luna, melted a sizable hole in the stone wall. A silver laughter, unhinged a little, echoed through the hall.
“Twilight is like a daughter to me! That’s different!”
“A daughter of a noble family, a disciple of a goddess, a mare capable of maintaining a conversation at your level for more than five minutes… and yet still without a single kiss until her twenty-five? Coincidence? I don’t think so. Do not lie to yourself, sister. Admit it, at least for her sake.”
Celestia faded, her posture showing her age for a moment, “I envy you.”
She tiredly lowered her horn.
“Do as you please, sister.” Then, quieter, “and don’t forget the cake.”
After they left, she gloomily watched the broken utensils burn for a few minutes. She turned her grim gaze to the guards.
“What you heard today must die with you. Do you understand?”
The guards nodded.
“Put out the fire, tell there was an accident in the kitchen. After that, note Twilight Sparkle that I want to– see her.”
