Purely Fantastical

by AFanaticRabbit

Rating: teen
Tags: Twilight Sparkle, Slice of Life, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Romance, Rarity
Length: 1226

One lazy night, not unlike many others, Rarity reads and comes to a stark realisation

One lazy night, not unlike many others, Rarity reads and comes to a stark realisation.

An entry into the Quills and Sofas L Contest 2023.

Rated T for alcohol and very veiled suggestive references.

Cover art by Lionylioness, and can be found here.

If you want, you can commission me for a story! See here for details.

Published 2023-06-23 14:30:00 UTC
Last updated 2023-06-23 14:30:00 UTC

Wine by Candlelight

Rarity oh so enjoyed sitting back and reading at the end of the day, enjoying herself a glass of deep, red wine. She lit candles and lounged by the window to her room.

Before Twilight came along, Rarity was on her own, trying to purchase books. The local library was inconsistently open, depending on when the Mayor would open it. She was responsible for it without an official librarian, leaving Rarity to check second-hoof stores and trade with others. That definitely lent something to her rather… eclectic tastes.

But now, with Twilight literally living there, Rarity had far more choices, allowing her to refine what she wanted to read to something specific. Fantasy, romance, cerebral horror; it wasn’t all for her, but she enjoyed finding what she could lose herself in, like feeling out the right design for a commission.

It turned out she really liked political fantasy thrillers, set in alternate versions of Equestria, following the tales of nobles and ministers, mayors and all their staff, and the heroes between them all. There was a little of everything in there for her, between the mystery, intrigue, glamour, and plenty of sappy, lost love and drama.

Applejack liked reading historical adventure stories and had plenty she lent to Apple Bloom and now to Sweetie Bell. Fluttershy’s romance collection erred on the sordid and inappropriate, but Celestia blessed her. She earnestly shared her love of them with Rarity, and Rarity held that dear. Rainbow Dash didn’t read, and Rarity was convinced the same was true of Pinkie.

But Twilight? She enjoyed those same novels and many more besides. Her most recent loan was set in another world, filled with ponies that were similar, yet different enough that it was fascinating to explore their ways of life, their unique problems. Following magical princesses and headstrong commoners.

It was delightfully romantic, in the classical sense, the admiration and desire to go out and face the world and fall in love with it. To fight those that stand against her, like the hero of the novel before her. She’d just reached a passage in which she was defending some commonfolk from her evil guardian, who had taken the kingdom by force, revealing there and then that she had survived.

Rarity sipped her drink, shutting her eyes. She could imagine herself in that position, an enchanted rapier in her magical grip and a mare or two huddling behind her.

Stories like this weren’t always the most progressive. Equestria was always very matriarchal, but it still had, even a millennia later, a particular flavour of misogyny that survived amongst the peerage and well-to-do. It wasn’t anything that genuinely hindered a pony, but it came through in art and discussions, and of course, literature too.

She couldn’t help but place herself in the hero’s stead, bringing the balance of the sexes more over to her side.

It also meant whenever the hero-turned-heroine became the focus of affections thrown upon her by those she saved, Rarity couldn’t help but blush. What would be something to roll her eyes over became something… she desired. Not in the lurid way some authors wrote into their works, like the one in Rarity’s hooves, but again in that romantic, sweet way, thinking it sweet, a fairy tale.

Rarity coughed when the mares that clung to her back legs in her imagination started to look a little too much like somepony she knew.

Opening the pages once again, Rarity returned to the world the author intended, not the one her thoughts wandered to.

Discussing these novels with Twilight was always a pleasure. The mare’s discussions were deep, insightful, and while it would be perfect if they were born wholesale from her own instincts, Rarity knew it was years of reading, of literary analysis from having her snout in the novels for about as long as the two of them had been alive.

It turned out Twilight did much the same as Rarity. She swapped out how she imagined characters and tweaked what she believed their thought processes were their involvements were.

She’d also confided in Rarity that she rather enjoyed the idea of her being the exiled princess, falling in love with the mare of her dreams.

That was the first time Rarity had met somepony else who wasn’t much into stallions. It was so casual, spoken aloud rather than in hushed tones as Rarity had expected. Twilight was confident and proud of her attraction, believing it, on whole, to be natural, something she should embrace and enjoy.

That wasn’t to say it was otherwise not okay. Rarity thanked Twilight for sharing, commenting on the—pardon the pun—rarity of it. Most ponies in the small town simply didn’t care much for the thought, believing instead that ponies should be fruitful.

Later in the story, in many of those stories, the ‘heroine’ would need to prove her worth to her followers, to her companions. Each one would require a different task, a different quest, to win their trust and loyalty, their spears and spells, but there was always the one whose goal was to win their heart. Sometimes it wasn’t compelling, some sweet words that, admittedly, might make Rarity swoon. Yet they truly should not be enough to convince a mare that the comparative stranger that entered her life not days before fell in love with her to devote herself to them for the rest of her natural life.

It was the ones that showed their devotions in small ways, with little help and long conversations. Baring their vulnerabilities and trusting their would-be-lovers as much as they hope to be trusted.

Those, especially over long, overly long stories that felt like lifetimes, were the ones Rarity adored the most. Never on their own, for sure, but part of a much, much larger narrative.

It always became the focus for her. What hurried her to the next chapter was to discover how the princess, in her magical splendour, could truthfully earn her love, the mind and soul of the farmer, the beggar, and the seamstress.

Rarity had moved onto a scene with the reforged hero and her companion, held in an awkward embrace forced upon them by contrived circumstances. That time it was a trip and a stumble, but on other days it might be a crowded street, or a shared bed, or nursing wounds.

And Rarity choked when she realised she was imagining her not as the princess, not as the hero, but the one to be saved, to be earned.

She swallowed and shut the book, lifting the wine glass to her lips. The streets were dark, few of the lamps lit, and many of the homes dark in the faint, crescent moonlight. She knew where to look, though. The tree was cut up and through the roofs, a natural tower in a forest of thatch and slate. There, Rarity spotted a single light, a faint yellow circle near the top of the branches, fortunately, unobscured by the leaves. There, Rarity made out the silhouette of a body, its head unbowed. There, she imagined it looking back at her into the arched window of her bedroom.

Rarity decided then she should write the next page of her story and let the heroine know she’d completed a most essential quest.

Author's Note

Happy Pride! :heart: