Color Matching

by gloamish

Rating: teen
Tags: Main 6, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Slice of Life
Length: 5031

Ponyville's premier polycule bicker about the colors of their coats.

On the upper floor of Carousel Boutique, Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Friendship, Sleepovers, and Having Hot Marefriends, presides over her court. But intrigue sneaks into the sleepy setting when Rarity's palette book brings up new questions like "how many words are there for the color blue?"

Rated T for Rainbow calling Twilight a pit sniffer and also general implications of pony boinking.

Published 2023-07-08 22:10:00 UTC
Last updated 2023-07-08 22:10:00 UTC

shades

It started when Rarity asked Fluttershy if she could paint the pegasus' nails. Fluttershy accepted, of course, as she would any request from her marefriend, but the dusted pink and shy smile on her snout was enough for Rarity to know indulgence from acquiescence. Twilight Sparkle smugly observed her vassal's adherence to the iron laws of the sleepover from the comfort of her castle - a pillowfort near the center of the room, protected on all sides by pillow walls two ranks deep, fortified by the aura of coziness dripping from the alicorn within.

Applejack lay on her side atop Carousel Boutique's four-poster bed, unbothered by Twilight's tapping of its natural resources and the barren (but for the fitted sheet, Rarity was a civilized mare, after all) mattress left in its wake. She was snout-deep in the latest issue of Cosmare, nosing through the astrology section, one of the few gaps in her no-nonsense policy that her five marefriends had teased out of her over the last year. Pinkie Pie trotted up the stairs with a grin, followed by Rainbow Dash balancing a tray of sweets on her wings (an act she always detested as a waste of Equestria's two most talented appendages, except in the face of Pinky's puppy dog eyes.)

"Just a moment, Fluttershy," Rarity said, turning her attention to one of her shelves, "I need to get my swatches."

"Why?" Fluttershy responded, and the impish edge in her tone drew Rarity's lips into a smile. She knew this game.

"Because, darling, I want your hooves to be perfect, and so I need my swatches to match them."

"Why?" It was a foal's game, but Fluttershy had all the confidence of one, so everyone delighted in the idea when Rainbow floated it a few months ago.

"Because a rainbow is not, despite popular belief, a simple contrast of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet," Rarity continued, finally seeing her quarry on a high shelf and reaching with her magic.

"Why?" With simple questions and silly answers, the shy pegasus could navigate past her will to think herself and her curiosity as a burden. The game was a set of training wheels, and Rarity was all to happy to push her love along. Especially when it gave her a chance to speak at length of one of her passions.

"Because it's composed of so much more!" She unfurled the spiral of color swatches held in her magic to demonstrate. "Salmon, saffron, sunglow, sage, sapphire, cerulean, sangria! Crimson, coral, champagne, kelp, cornflower, cobalt..." She paused, searching, "... Orchid?"

Twilight made an incorrect buzzer noise with her mouth.

"Irregardless!" Rarity pushed on, allowing herself a smirk as Twilight hissed and reared back. "We must endeavor to find a perfect match."

"Why?" Fluttershy giggled as Rarity levitated the book of swatches along her sensitive side, comparing it to her coat.

"Because, you are a perfect pony. And I don't dare to sully you with any less than you deserve." She hummed and flipped a few pages.

"... Why?" Fluttershy managed to squeak out, wiggling with delight.

"Because I am a mare as loving as she is fashionable: debilitatingly. Hold still, dear." A few more flicked-through pages. "Cream, no... Mellow, fitting personally but not visually... Chartreuse? Goodness no... Ah!" Rarity exclaimed with pleasure as she tapped a swatch with her hoof. "Primrose! Your coat is a lovely primrose shade, without a doubt."

"... That's such a pretty name..." Fluttershy sighed happily. Then, she let out a quiet 'eep!' as she realized she'd lost their game.

"What a shame! You could've learned so much about follicles, dear, if only your curiosity kept up," Rarity said with a smirk. Internally, she couldn't help but be disappointed — on the rare occasion Fluttershy fought her to a standstill, dismembering her responses 'til they were but a 'just because', Rarity would generously reward herse- her marefriend. By leaping upon her and blowing raspberries into the soft fluff of her tummy until joyful tears tinged her eyes. Alas! The night was young, and she had her sacred sleepover duties to uphold.

"My, you are a work of art, aren't you?" Rarity hummed with delight, holding another swatch to Fluttershy's mane. "Here's the color I thought to match primrose, right atop you. A lovely azalea, of which I happen to have in supply. Often creation is simply the act of drawing out what is already beautiful about the world, don't you agree?"

Fluttershy nodded, her blush a similar shade.

"Then let us create!" Rarity threw the book into the air with a manic flourish, letting it join the general mess on the floor. She nudged Fluttershy toward a plush sitting cushion, then trotted off, disappearing into her bathroom.

Fluttershy settled into the cushion, sighing contentedly as it accepted her weight with enthusiasm. "Having fun?" came Twilight's voice.

She turned her head back toward the ensconced mare, allowing her (azalea) mane to curtain half her face. "Oh my! Have I been granted an audience with the Princess of Sleepovers?" she asked, unable to stop a giggle from bubbling out.

"You have," Twilight responded, raising her snout haughtily. "She is of great enough wisdom to seek counsel with her court, and has this to ask:" she met her eyes, sincerity glimmering behind the little joke, "is there anything I can do to improve your night, Fluttershy?"

"No," she responded with that feeling of unshakeable confidence that, the past few months, was beginning to show its face. "It's perfect."

Twilight smiled in response, holding her gaze, enjoying the rare indulgence of holding the attention of those summer-bright pools of blue. "Perfect."

"I have a problem, actually," Rainbow Dash spoke up, showering cupcake crumbs in an imitation of the rains she was contracted to bring down on Ponyville now and again. "O Princess of Pillow Hogging."

"What is it, O Knight of Hot Air?" Twilight responded, making Fluttershy giggle into her hoof. She was at least ninety-five percent sure that her marefriend knew the pet name for the insult it was, and only flexed her wings and kissed them in response to rebuff it, not thinking it a compliment just because it contained the word 'hot'. Five percent was nowhere near slim, though. She'd been kept up in bed plenty of nights by chances fifty times as narrow.

"I invoke the romantic doctrine of jealousy!" Rainbow exclaimed, unaffected by Twilight's personal musings.

Twilight raised an eyebrow. "You... want your hooves painted?" she asked, looking back.

"Wh- no!" responded the butch mechanism herself, fluffing up her wings. "I want... mmghrmghg," she trailed off into an eloquent mumble.

"Oh! Of course Rainbow, why didn't you say so!" Twilight smiled. "I'd be happy to give you mmghrmghg." She stretched, rising from her entrenchment. "I didn't know you'd been studying Ancient Minosh, Rainbow!" An evil mischief glinted in her eyes as she stalked towards the pegasus.

"Uh, wait, wait wait," Rainbow backed away, feathers bristling. "I don't want mgmghrgm, I'll enunciate, I swear! Just don't do whatever it is you're about to do!"

"Oh, Rainbow, how could I deny an honest request from one with such passion for the linguistic arts? C'mere." Twilight advanced further, licking her lips until Dash was literally backed into a corner, her wings folded tight over her eyes, leaving only her snout exposed. She took advantage. "Mmmmmwah!" She said, audibly, as she pressed her lips against her marefriend's, then ducked back in for a proper kiss, melting the tension away.

"You... You jerk!" Rainbow blustered, as if any word would quiet the blush on her cheeks or erase the five seconds it had taken her to recover from wooziness. "Mmrmghrmg isn't even a word, is it?"

"Dash, Ancient Minos isn't even a language."

"What! To think, such a studious and honorable pony, student to Celestia herself, would outright lie to me, a poor, impressionable filly!"

"Oh! Well, you should've just asked, Rainbow!" Twilight cooed, fluttering her eyelashes. "The development of Minotaur language is fascinating, actually! Due to their complex pheromones, Minotaurs didn't actually have a vocal corpus beyond a hundred words until sometime in the last two thousand years, despite their clear intelligence and engineering prowess. In fact, pheromones are still a vital part of their communication today, making transcriptio—"

She was cut off by a wing in her face, which Rainbow Dash kept there until her favorite egghead stopped her muffled infodumping. "Alright, alright already! Jeez, I didn't know you wanted to sniff Iron Will's pits so badly! Listen, just because you're so eager, I'll tell you what I was trying to say before you interrupted."

Twilight rolled her eyes as soon as Dash's wing was lifted away, but waited patiently, knowing she sometimes needed a runup to get on top of something.

"... I want to know what color my coat is," she finally announced.

Twilight's eyes darted down, then up again. She cocked an eyebrow. "It's blue. Did you go colorblind?"

"N- no!" She pointed accusingly at Fluttershy, who cowered generously. "She's not yellow, she's primrose, apparently! I want to know what I am!"

"And azalea." Fluttershy mumbled.

"Well, we'll be here all night if we try to categorize Rainbow Dash's mane." Twilight shrugged. "But y'know what? Yeah! That's a fun idea!"

Just then, Rarity emerged from the bathroom with nailpaint, and was nailed to the ground by three intent gazes. "Er. Apologies for the wait, girls. Did you... all want your nails painted?.."

Twilight giggled and shook her head. "We just wanted to borrow your swatch book, Rarity. Is that alright?"

"Of course, darling!" She smiled in response, levitating it over. "Always happy to help you immerse yourself in a new world of theory!" The aura shifted from blue to purple as Twilight took it from her, then puffed away as Rainbow slapped it to the ground with a wing.

Both mares glared at her with twinned frowns.

"What?? You think I just want to sit in the corner and shuffle through a book like some kind of nerd?"

Applejack looked up from the magazine she was sharing with Pinky, eyebrow raised, then thought better of it and went back to reading.

"It's literally just colors, Rainbow. It's simpler than a picture book."

"This is a sleepover, Twilight! I want controversy! Danger! Don't you have that on your checklist?!"

"Oooh, is our Rainbow looking for gossip?" Rarity batted her eyelashes.

"Not gossip! Combat!"

"A pillow fight?" Fluttershy balked.

Rainbow rubbed her temples with her wings. "I don't care what a book of colors says. I want all of us to agree on the colors of our coats! Fluttershy is primrose, sure, but what about Applejack?"

"I'm orange, sugarcube," the pony in question responded flatly, not looking up.

Rarity pursed her lips as she picked up and stowed her swatches. She tried, she really did. She failed. "Orange? Really?"

Applejack closed the magazine, ignoring Pinkie's protest, and fixed Rarity with a stare. "Really."

"It just feels a little lacking, dear." She paused, then hurried along as Applejack narrowed her eyes. "To describe all that your coat is, I mean! Why, honey, merigold, tangerine even... Just not something so pedestrian."

"It's hair, Rarity. 'Bout as common as it gets."

"Aww c'mon, AJ! You wouldn't use braeburns in an apple pie, would you?" Pinkie whined, shoving her head over the forgotten magazine and gazing up into the other pony's face. She rolled onto her back, hooves pedaling in the air as she let out a low ambient whine.

"Definitely not," Applejack snorted, "but that's just bein' practical. Ain't nothin' practical about knowing the difference between mellow and cream."

"Applejaaaaaaaack," Rarity whined, prompting Twilight to update her mental leaderboard of which pony was best at making the fashionista take that tone. Twilight told herself she'd pull out of second someday, but she really had too much trouble saying no to Rarity.

"Nuh-uh. We are not doing the form vs. function argument again!" Rainbow yelled, waving her hooves in a dismissing gesture. "Applejack, for peat's sake, I saw you blush like a filly when Rarity opened the door with her mane all coiffed up!"

The only reason Twilight didn't leap in to spark the debate anew was because she was on Rainbow's side on this one (shocking, yes,) so she considered this as good as getting the last word in. Rarity, for her part, just huffed, turned her snout up, and trotted back to Fluttershy, all too happy to get to work.

"... I guess tangerine sounds alright," came a mumble. Pinkie's squeak of delight confirmed the source to be Applejack, who had shoved her out of the way and buried her face in the magazine.

"You're a lovely shade of tangerine, Applejack," Rarity hummed. She almost managing to keep the gloating edge out of her voice.

"Oooh, I wanna try!" Pinkie shouted, rolling around. She squinted in concentration. "Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm cotton candy!!"

Everypony paused, looking at Applejack, then back. Each took a moment to wonder if they'd ever seen orange cotton candy. Near-simultaneously, they all realized Pinkie had moved the weight of their little game onto her own withers.

"Pinkie, I don't believe cotton candy is a color. It's certainly not a shade in any color space I know," Rarity said, trying to gently drag the mare back to reality — or to acquaint her with it for the first time, perhaps over tea.

Pinkie, as always, dexterously squirmed away from her rhetorical clutches with an ironclad argument. "Sure it is! Oh but, for clarity, I mean pink cotton candy! Not blue." She nodded, clearly reassured she'd steered everyone away from what could be a precipitous misunderstanding.

"Isn't cotton candy white, anyway? It's just sugar, after all. The actual color is just dye," Twilight reasoned, shifting on her legs tucked beneath her. "Pink and blue cotton candy are the same."

Pinkie Pie gasped as if mortally wounded, a deflating sound that everyone patiently waited through for a good ten seconds. With all eyes on her, she flung her accusation across the room like a javelin: "You think all cotton candy tastes the same?!"

"Uh... No. I know it tastes the same. It's just colored differently."

"No! One tastes blue, and the other tastes pink!! They couldn't be more different!"

"She has a point, Twilight," Applejack nodded, ever the eager moderator.

"She doesn't???"

"I think I of all ponies would know!" Pinkie said, hefting all the might of her resume (two years working part-time as a live-in babysitter and baker at a kindly couple's eatery.) "Visuals are a vital part of the ambience of a meal!"

"Ambiance, darling," Rarity supplied, inspecting her work as she switched to Fluttershy's other forehoof.

"That too!"

Twilight Sparkle's nostrils flared. "Cotton candy is not a meal."

"What about frosting?" Rainbow interjected, clearly seeing the path Twilight was pulling this conversation down.

"Oooh!"

"Also not a color," Twilight said, entirely to herself, already giving up on the battle. Or, at least, stowing it in the back drawer of her mind with all the others, to be triumphantly revealed when they least suspected it, her argument perfectly formulated, shattering their paltry defenses—

While she daydreamed about routing her marefriends' mental walls and burning their keeps, Rainbow Dash had floated over to the snacks and scooped up a tiny bit of pink frosting from one of Pinkie's cupcakes. Pinkie scowled at her, no doubt upset at the defiling of her contribution, then went cross-eyed as Rainbow smeared it on her snout.

Everypony gathered around, inspecting. "I'll be. I can barely even see it," Applejack murmured.

"That is certainly a palette match," Rarity agreed. "However, frosting is-"

"Ee!" Pinkie squeaked, bouncing onto her hooves. "I can't believe I'm cupcake colored!!!"

Finished with Fluttershy's hooves, Rarity rolled her eyes with a fond smile and meandered over to Twilight's pillow fortress. She wiggled under the south wall and slid up alongside, her defeat graceful and silken next to the clammy-sheets-loss her partner was trying to kick off with a twitching hindleg.

"Okay, okay, everypony shut up," Rainbow said, clearly proud of her victory. She strutted to the middle of the room, then posed, her coat glimmering in the low light, so clearly horizon-colored Celestia herself might worry of a chip in the sky above some far-off mountain where she'd stolen her color from. "My turn."

"Blue," came the unanimous reply, an unimpressed "It's blue," from Applejack closing out the chorus.

"What?!" Rainbow yelled.

"Isn't this what you wanted, darling?" Twilight mocked with a smug grin. "We've all agreed, after all."

"It's not! And I haven't agreed!"

"What did you have in mind, then?"

"Something cool, like cobalt! Or cerulean!"

Applejack tilted her head. "Light blue, maybe?"

Pinkie Pie nodded gravely.

"Oh for- what happened to precision?!" Rainbow Dash sagged back into her beanbag and huffed.

"You're looking more like foal blue right now," Twilight said, a wave of giggles following her ribbing.

"You're just putting words in front of blue!!"

"Whiny blue."

"Bratty blue."

"S- silly blue." Fluttershy attempted.

"You all hate me," Rainbow pouted, sinking deeper into her seat.

"Oh my dear, we're only teasing. Clearly you're..." Rarity cleared her throat. "A piercing blue, like the air from my lungs that you steal..."

Rainbow's ears twitched, pleased by a moment at somepony taking this seriously, until what Rarity was saying, or reciting rather, registered. Color drained from her face as her pupils shrunk to pinpricks.

Twilight, horribly, picked up where the other left off in a singsong voice: "And I wish only to paint your cheeks with the evening blush they deserve, and set like the sun down your sky to-"

"Stoppppp! You're violating a sacred pact! We agreed to never speak of it again!" Rainbow squealed as she stormed the castle. Twilight popped a shield spell, repelling her advance.

"As I recall, you ignored us for five whole days, then crawled back like nothing happened! We never agreed to anything." The flowery zine they'd found on the floor of the combination CMC clubhouse and Rainbow Dash fanclub a moon ago had been memorized front to back by nearly all of them, and they made a game of sneaking passages from it into conversation with its subject to see if she'd notice.

"And I'll do it again, too!" she threatened, using her wings to blow a gust of air through Twilight's permeable shield, ruffling Rarity's mane and drawing a shriek from the mare.

"Twiiiiiliiiight! What use is a shield that can't even stop a little wind?"

"It's great for breathing," Twilight deadpanned, remembering the fillyhood lesson with her brother that ended with her nearly passing out in front of the Princess. "You know what'll make you feel better?" She let the shield pop, instead directing her magic toward a brush.

"A bow-tied braid from my beloved?" Rarity fluttered her eyelashes.

"Some flattery." Twilight smirked, causing the eyelash-fluttering to increase to the point she wondered whether Rarity really needed magic butterfly wings to fly. "But I'll braid your mane, too."

"Well, if it's my turn, I'm all too ready for your opinions! Naturally, being the expert here, I already know my true shade." Rarity posed like she was the subject of a life drawing session. Rainbow Dash huffed and crawled, defeated, back to her beanbag.

Twilight had to sit up to get a proper view of her brushwork with Rarity's new position, and in doing so she caught Fluttershy, who she fixed with a disapproving glance as the pegasus reached up to the swatch book like it was an answer key in a multiple choice test. She flushed and returned all four hooves to the carpet.

"Hmmm..." Applejack tapped a hoof against her chin as she searched for a fancy-sounding word for white. "... Eggshell?"

Rarity gasped in mock offense. Wait, no, that was real offense, Twilight realized. "Eggshell?! I am a mare, not Fancypants' newly remodeled kitchen!"

The country mare at least had the manners to blush as she realized where she'd pulled the word from. Her gaze slid to the side, avoiding Rarity's glare, then her eyes narrowed as she noticed something. "I wouldn't, Dash."

Rainbow Dash looked up from the table, a scoop of marshmallow frosting already in hoof. She licked it off, the picture of innocence. Unfortunately, she'd already drawn one pony's ire, and said pony launched herself off the bed, crashing Rainbow to the ground in a swirl of frosting, frosting, and blue. Pinkie pinned her to the ground, newly nudened cupcake held in an upraised hoof and eye twitching apoplectically.

The pegasus opened her mouth to say something smarmy and Pinkie took the opportunity, cramming the disrobed confection in. "Eat! The! Cupcake!!!" she screeched, using her other hoof to clamp Rainbow's mouth shut and force chewing.

"Oh dear..." Fluttershy mumbled as the blue pony choked on the floor. Rather than stepping in and risk losing a leg, she looked up at Rarity, who looked almost as miffed at the violence in her bedroom as she was at the lack of flattery in her bedroom. She extended an olive branch of civility. "I think your coat is... or might be... a lovely alabaster, Rarity."

The mare perked up at that. "Alabaster! What a wonderful thought, Fluttershy! So regal, so stately..."

In the background, Rainbow coughed and pounded her barrel as Pinkie's assault waned, scattering more crumbs on the floor. Once she was able to speak again, she grinned. "Great cupcakes, Pinkie."

"Right??" Pinkie responded, immediately waving the white flag and snuggling against Rainbow's barrel. She reciprocated, wrapping her in feathers.

Rarity lifted a hoof to her chin. "Perhaps slightly too stately? Stuffy, even?!" She whipped her head around to Twilight, who clicked her tongue as her magic nearly slipped loose from the strands she was forming of Rarity's mane. "Princess, sending of the sun, last bulwark against the night, height of the evening! Am I... fuddy-duddy?!"

Twilight rolled her eyes. "No, Rarity." She was bright and clear and refreshing as a mountain stream, but hearing that would surely make her mane harder to braid. "You dance on the cutting edge of fashion and society both," she settled.

"I do, don't I?" her marefriend responded. "Alabaster is certainly becoming, but perhaps too formal..."

"Well, you're certainly not virgin white," Twilight snickered in too low a voice for anypony else to hear. Regardless, nopony looked surprised when Rarity jumped over the castle wall and bucked it to pieces, burying Twilight in the rubble with only a paltry 'noooooo'. Rarity huffed and shook her mane out, not caring whether the ensuing silence of her lavender love was contrition, acting, or suffocation. Everypony had delighted in bookish Twilight Sparkle finally growing a teasing streak a few moons after they all fell over each other, but it was quickly becoming a threat.

She stalked over to Fluttershy, coming to rest next to her. "If one of you doesn't come up with a proper suggestion, I swear on Celestia's feathers, I'll kick all of you out!" She paused, glancing over. "Except Fluttershy."

The exception hoofed at the carpet. "I think eggshell is a lovely color..."

"Oh it is, darling! For a wall! And at any party worth being at, who is always the furthest thing from a wall? The center of the room and its attention?" Rarity asked, rhetorically. "Moi, of course! Surely a coat as white as untrodden snow should inspire songs, not such droning doldrums as I've been presented with!"

"Isn't it more of a light gray?" Rainbow asked, quirking an eyebrow at Applejack.

"It's at least a dark white," she responded, deftly rolling to the side as Rarity slung a hairbrush (last artifact of Castle Twilight, valued at sixty thousand bits) her way.

"That tears it!" Rarity cried, retrieving a tub of vanilla oat swirl from the emergency ice cream stash next to her bed. "You are all horrible, horrible mares, and the only reason I've survived you is my endless well of self-confidence!" She shoved a spoonful into her mouth, mumbling around the cold treat: "Except Fluttershy. Fluttershy is without flaw."

"If I could haul Her Mareship out of Her Well for a tick..." Applejack said, unaffected by her marefriend's tantrum. "What color are you so sure your coat is? Makes it a mite difficult to suggest things when the answer's already picked out."

"Aww, Rarity just needs a widdy bit of reassurance sometimes, don't you Rare?" said Pinkie, muffled by the fluff on Rainbow Dash's stomach.

Gulping down her third scoop, Rarity hiccupped. "Porcelain! It's so clear I can only guess you all failed out of cruelty, not cluelessness! Why, even my cutie mark is the blue shade of underglaze!"

"Of course. How could I not see it," Applejack said, tone and expression flat as pancakes.

"And you're just as fragile," Rainbow Dash snorted, then yelped as Pinkie Pie bit her.

Her assailant came up for air and met Rarity's eyes, her own glimmering with genuinity. "That makes total sense, Schmarity! It's like you in every way! Refined! Delicate!" She grinned. "And I swear whipped cream tastes better off it!"

Rarity flushed, caught in a pincer attack between praise and teasing. "Yes, well. Thank you, dear." And just like that, the stormclouds lifted, their subject brought to sucking her spoon more for comfort than consolation. She trotted to the castle ruins and plopped down on them, drawing a muffled 'oof' from within.

"Haunted ruins!" She gasped. "If only Twilight were here, she'd love the chance to experiment on a ghost. Alas!"

"If Twilight were here..." Pinkie wondered, "what color would you say her coat was?"

"Lotta purples in nature. Plum, lavender, lilac..." Applejack listed, resistance finally worn down enough to participate in their game.

"Well, much as I detest the mare, her coat is as alluring as amethyst," said Rarity, readjusting to try to find some comfort on the lumpy pile of pillows.

Her quest was foiled as the spirit within grew restless and surfaced with a gasp, scattering the soft rubble everywhere. An escalation of pillow brinkmareship into outright pillow war was narrowly avoided by about two centimeters as one of the cotton projectiles whizzed past Pinkie, whose vested interest in pillow profiteering had not gone unnoticed. The revived mare spoke up. "I like just 'purple' actually."

Rarity sneered, an honest look of disgust, then schooled her expression into something more suitable. "Sweetheart, Princess. You're the subject of poetry now." Her eyes took on that hazy glimmer she had when she stepped into what she thought should be somepony's fantasy like it was a pair of boots. "You can't really expect your little ponies to work with that!"

Twilight tapped a hoof to her chin, ignoring the royalty bait in favor of the challenge. "Throuple?"

"... That's a slant rhyme and you know it, Sparkle."

"Well maybe I don't want to read the work of a poet so bound by form!"

"Nurple's not a slanty rhyme!"

"Perfect rhyme, Pinkie. Not a word, however."

"Burpgull," Rainbow said, not knowing that the researcher who named the bird with such a distinct call was, in fact, deeply in love with a stallion whose coat was a similar shade to Twilight's, and had wholly contrived the name to pen one of the most unflattering poems ever written by an ornithologist.

Twilight grimaced and wondered if Rarity had a point. "That's an ʌl, Rainbow. Purple ends with an əl."

"What?"

"A schwa. As in sofa."

"Pretty sure sofas are stuffed with feathers, not shwas."

Twilight considered that perhaps there was, in fact, a use for a shield through which air could not pass.

"Well, I think you should go with violet. Very rhymable. With your own name, even!" Rarity huffed.

Twilight lifted an eyebrow. "So slant rhymes are fair game now, miss formalism?"

"When tasteful. Anything is, even denim on denim."

"So you've been reading mushy poetry about our Princesses, huh?" Applejack smirked.

"Oh, yes." Fluttershy nodded, though the question was not addressed to her. "I have a lovely collection of amorous offerings to Luna. Rarity borrowed it."

Rainbow snorted. "I know she's a patron of the arts or whatever, but there's no way Celestia's okay with ponies writing flowery verses about her flank."

"I bet she doesn't know what 'shade' her coat is," Applejack said, making exaggerated air quotes with her hooves. "She's a practical girl, beneath all that fanciness the court wants out of her."

"Ivory." Everyone looked at Twilight. She looked down, suddenly finding the remaining pillows fascinating. "It's uh, ivory... 14-0214. That's the color most painters use to depict her, and the one the royal fashion advisor color matches against."

Rarity gasped. "Ivory? Ivory?! Twilight, where was ivory when you were all dragging my coat through the mud? Ivory???"

"The Princess is a warm white, Rarity... Your coat is a cooler temperature..." Fluttershy explained, soothingly running a hoof down her flank.

"Oh you have not seen just how cold I can be, Fluttershy!" she hissed, bumping her hoof away with a huff. Fluttershy only giggled at her drama.

Twilight rolled her eyes and pushed her snout against Rarity's mane, nuzzling into it. "I think porcelain is perfect for you." She sidled against Rarity, nuzzling all the way until she reached her cutie mark, which she gave a little kiss. She punctuated the motion with a flick of her tail against her marefriend's snout.

Rarity huffed her petty huff of defeat and leaned into Twilight.

Twilight's mental quill skipped a few boxes and came to rest over one of her newer items, one which didn't have a place in fillyhood sleepovers. "Y'know, we've barely scratched the surface... Want to see what new colors we can mix with our little palette?"

Rarity flushed, then grinned. With a flick of the lightswitch, the room was lit only by glowing violet and the porcelain moon as Twilight reassembled the bed, eager to make a mess of it all over again.

Author's Note

watched mlp for the first time this year and feeling so normal about these horses. wanted to write some lighthearted character stuff to shake the rust off before i chase my heart's true desire, Bottomless Angst Pits