A Delicate Thing

by Entropic Engine

Rating: everyone
Tags: Starlight Glimmer, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Sad, Drama, Rarity
Length: 4147

Rarity is suffering through an art block.

It's been a month of blank thoughts and no creativity, and Rarity is at her whit's end. She needs to find a solution to her dilemma lest she goes mad.

Starlight may just hold the key.

Published 2023-07-14 01:10:01 UTC
Last updated 2024-10-27 21:21:07 UTC

Muse

Rarity stared down at her workstation. She'd been boring holes into the paper for the last hour, willing something coherent to form before her mind's eye, but just like the last dozen attempts, nothing came. She felt the anger rising, the unbidden rage, and this time, she couldn't hold it back.

The scream ripped out of her so fiercely it left her throat sore. That didn't match the pain of her utter lack of creativity, however. Nor did the slam of her hoof against her work desk. Fabric, pens, paper, and needles went spilling across the floor, sewing machine impacting with a crash. She was pretty sure something in there broke, but she was too infuriated to care.

"Rarity? Are you okay?" Sweetie Belle poked her head through Rarity's workshop doorway, worry painted plain as day across her face. "Heard a crash." She saw the spilled supplies, the toppled machine, and winced.

"Yes, Sweetie. I'm fine. I just... I just tripped," Rarity lied, already feeling foolish for her impromptu bout of destructive rage. Her horn glowed and things floated back into place atop the righted table, though nothing looked correct about their order.

Nothing clicked anymore. Nothing snapped neatly into place, or came together in a single, satisfying design. The disorder on her table felt like it was mimicking the chaos in Rarity's head; disorganized and patternless.

"I'm going out for a while. I need to talk to Twilight." Another lie, but Rarity didn't want to stress her sister with the creative block looming large over her thoughts. The affliction blanketed everything, blackening her mind into a featureless, monochrome space devoid of muse. She didn't want to dump such a severe emotional weight on Sweetie's head.

Twilight answered the door after the first few knocks, a similarly worried look on her face.

"Are you alright? You look... tired."

"No, I'm not alright. Where's Starlight? I need to speak to her. Now." Rarity wasn't in the mood for pleasantries.

Up in Starlight's room, Rarity paced, trying to keep the fear, the fury, the overwhelming anxiety from yanking her stomach into knots.

"It's been a month, Starlight. A whole. Month."

"Are you sure it's not just a bad case of art block? That's pretty common in ponies who rely on their creativity for their income. It's a lot of work."

"No, this is nothing like a block. I've had bouts of creative lows before, but this? This is something entirely different. I've had absolutely no ideas, no eureka moments, no muse since the incident."

Rarity tried to compose herself, but the anger was getting to her.

"I can't... There's just nothing in here anymore, Starlight," she said tapping a hoof against one aching temple, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. "I'm empty, drained. The tanks aren't just dry, they're gone."

"Have you tried... taking a break?"

"All of last week I just laid around the boutique and tried not to think about it, but do you know how hard it is not to think about a dilemma that not only stunts your career, but also completely ruins the one thing you truly enjoy in life? Dressmaking is my passion, Starlight. My. Passion. It's part of who I am, but now, that part's gone. I need you to fix this."

The tears were flowing freely now, dark stains trailing down her cheeks. She'd stopped putting on mascara a few days ago, not feeling the urge to pretty herself up with the creative void swallowing her every thought, but the streaks stood out nonetheless stark upon her face. Rarity turned towards Starlight, a pleading, pathetic look on her normally petite, gorgeous features.

"Please, fix this."

Books sat piled on the desk; spell books, hex tomes, enchantment collections, every sort of magic imaginable. Twilight sat looking through a book about the side effects of mixed spells, the dangers of doing it imprecisely, the ways they could be remedied. Her face was solemn, full of barely restrained fear. She tried to hide her building hopelessness, but Rarity could see it in her eyes.

"We already undid the spell. It's not active anymore. Twilight disbanded it. There shouldn't be any lingering effects." Starlight said, voice timid and equally full of concern.

"Starlight's right," Twilight commented, though she sounded more than a little unsure, much to Rarity's dismay. "I was very thorough when I unwove and cleared the spells. None of the others have come to me complaining of mental blocks, and they all were under the same effects as you. I'm honestly at a loss for words. It's baffling. There should be no lingering effects."

"Well, clearly there are, because I can't so much as sketch out a basic gown without feeling like my mind's straining at the seams. It's like my creativity is chained, bound. No, it's more like... When I try to put together a design in my head, there's nothing there to work with. I can't put the pieces together because there are no pieces. It's just a permanently blank slate I'm forced to carry around in my head. It's maddening."

Rarity slumped to the floor, burying her head in her forelegs. The tears came heavier, unbridled, cascading down her cheeks in droves.

"What did you do to me, Starlight? What did you do?" She sobbed, whole body quaking.

Starlight and Twilight exchanged looks, the former looking utterly ravaged by guilt, the latter trying to withhold her own brand of frustration. They were both equally lost for what to say.

"I could... try to cast the spell again, see if maybe it puts things back together. You were still able to draw something back then, at least. That's better than nothing, right?"

Rarity shot her head up, suddenly terrified. "No! No you are not putting that.... that cage back on my mind! For all we know, it could get even worse when you remove it! I still have an ache in the back of my eyes from the first time, and that's the least of my problems!"

Twilight sighed, closing another tome. "As much as I hate to say it, we may need to run a few experiments while you're under Starlight's control to see if there's a way to break through this block, but we won't force you into anything. It's your choice, Rarity. But, frankly, I'm out of ideas. We've tried everything at this point. I can't seem to find a spell that would revive a dead muse."

Rarity's sobbing abruptly heightened. "Don't say it like that!"

"Sorry, sorry. I'm stressed. We're all stressed., but I don't know what to do."

Rarity paused, wiping away a tear.

"Alright. Let's... just do it. I need my creativity back. I. Need. It."

Starlight grimaced, averting her gaze. It was obvious she had her own reservations about unleashing the seemingly problematic spell a second time.

"Are you sure? We don't have to do this," she said, sounding less and less confident with every word.

Rarity sniffled, waving a forlorn hoof. "Just do it, before I get cold hooves."

Starlight's horn glowed, the room went white.

Suddenly, her mind was cleared of initiative. Urges came; to speak, to move, to think, but they were all locked away, put in a queue awaiting some unknown force to approve them for action. That force, however, remained absent. Rarity's eyes dilated.

Starlight cleared her throat, trembling.

"Rarity! Hear my voice and listen!" Starlight's voice boomed, the trigger in Rarity's mind clicking. The queue evaporated.

Everything grew quiet, save for the shimmering of Starlight's horn, but that, too, soon died away as the spell was finished. Rarity sat upright, face blank and mane a mess.

"Rarity? Can you hear me?" Starlight asked, words unsteady.

"Yes, I can hear you, Starlight Glimmer."

Author's Note

After a few years I've finally decided to pick this up. I've cut down the ending and worked it into the second chapter. Yes, there's a second chapter now.

Chains

"Can you draw me a dress?" Starlight levitated a scrap of blank parchment from a nearby notepad, along with a quill and some ink. She set the supplies down in front of Rarity, heart thudding in her chest.

"Yes, I can draw you a dress, Starlight Glimmer." To Starlight's relief, Rarity began to draw. But that relief quickly withered away when the drawing on the page became blatantly familiar. It was a dress Rarity had sketched months ago, a project she'd long since finished. Still, it was something.

When it was done, Rarity hovered the page in her magic, smiling vapidly. "I've finished the drawing."

Starlight gulped, shakily taking the page and floating over another.

"Very good. Now, can you draw a new one? One you've not drawn before? Show us something totally unique."

A very long moment passed, spent in utter silence. The tension was thick as fabric in the air, nearly a physical thing. Starlight wanted desperately to cut it away, to slice it through and be rid of it. It felt like the most tense few moments of her life.

Rarity's quill began to move again. It was like gravity abruptly reasserted itself onto Starlight's world, her mind no longer floating in a void of sheer, incoherent terror.

The scratches of the quill's tip against the rough parchment were like the songs of morning birds upon the dawn of a new day, a joyous sound that brought a broad, genuinely relieved smile to Starlight's face. She watched and waited as Rarity continued to silently, robotically draw. Lines and shapes came together, forming a gown that Starlight had, thankfully, not yet seen from Rarity. Given that they'd only known each other for the last few years, however, it was possible that it was an older design plumbed from the attics of Rarity's mind. That worry was counteracted, however, by the fact that the spell, as thorough and potent as it was, was nigh impossible to strain against. This little tidbit of information made Starlight both proud and a little dismayed, a mixture of her prior self showing through, standing right beside the new, more empathetic Starlight. She mentally shook herself. This wasn't the best time for self-reflection.

More important than the strength of her spell was the smile steadily stretching across Rarity's placid face. Even through the mental manipulation her glee was showing through, that almost dead, vacant upward curve of her lips ascending into something lively, whole, pure. Rarity still looked like a zombie from the nose up, but that smile was nothing short of happiness made manifest.

It was the best thing Starlight had ever seen.

Twilight was smiling too, tears rolling down her cheeks in much the same way Rarity's had moments ago. They were all, Starlight abruptly realized, crying. She lifted a hoof to her eyes, gently wiping the joyous tears away while the sound of Rarity's sketching went on. Starlight was in no rush to break the silence nor halt Rarity's progress.

"I've drawn something totally unique, Starlight Glimmer."

It was, indeed, unique. More so than that, though, it was beautiful, wholly new, and, Starlight noticed with a start, somewhat dark in tone.

Chains. The dress, tight and gothic, was clad in squeezing, constricting chains.

"That's very good Rarity," Starlight replied, her earlier elation stunted slightly by concern. "What was your inspiration?"

"You, Starlight Glimmer."

The words hit like an icy hammer to the heart. Starlight felt herself go pale, her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth as all moisture evacuated the space behind her lips.

"That's... wonderful," Starlight nervously said, glancing at Twilight. She, too, looked worried.

"It's still progress," Twilight said, smiling sheepishly. "More than we had before."

Starlight pondered the unusual dress. The symbolism was obvious, blatantly so, not nearly as subtle or nuanced as Rarity's previous work, at least the creations Starlight was familiar with. But it was, indeed, progress, and it wasn't like frustration and anger weren't valid emotions to pull from. Maybe Rarity just needed to work through the no doubt crippling fury she felt while being unable to put anything together.

Those chains looked so tight, though. The sketched pony's body looked like it could barely walk if its etched legs had the ability to do so. Certainly that was the intended effect. If Rarity's description of the void within her mind was anything to go by, this was an apt physical representation.

Starlight decided it probably wasn't as big a deal as she was making it out to be.

"Starlight?" Twilight's voice abruptly cut through Starlight's internal discussion with herself. She realized she'd been staring at Rarity's new dress design for nearly a minute straight. Maybe longer. It was hard to tell with how high her emotions were at that moment.

"Sorry, I was just lost in thought. I think this is a good sign. It means her muse isn't gone. Her talent's there, just... restricted." Starlight looked up at the hypnotized face staring back at her, that genuine smile still plastered upon Rarity's lips.

"Okay, I guess it's time to see if your creativity sticks around after the spell. Are you ready, Rarity?"

"Yes, Starlight Glimmer, I am ready."

Starlight looked to Twilight, nodding slowly.

"Alright, I'll start work on undoing the spell," Twilight announced, her horn sparkling with the beginnings of raw magic. "It'll be easier this time around, I think. I've already got all the counterspells gathered and I still remember the process. She's going to have another doozy of a headache, though. We should probably prepare some cold water."

"And her shades," Starlight added.

"Those, too," Twilight agreed.

Rarity didn't say anything, though her wide, dilated eyes remained fixated on her own drawing, staring at it like she was cast adrift amidst a raging sea and that little piece of sketch-filled paper was her only lifeline.

Author's Note

I have no idea where I want to take this. Okay, that's not entirely true; I have several paths I could take this, but I'm not sure which one I wanna follow. Any thoughts? What do you guys think of the new ending?

Boiling

Rarity returned to herself in a flash. She instantly felt sick.

"I'm sorry," she croaked, taking the water offered to her by Twilight in her magic. The cold glass and the equally cold water felt like bliss upon her lips. Her head throbbed from temple to temple, a raging, slamming train wreck behind her eyes. It took her a few moments of shakily sipping and keeping her eyes shut before she could work up the courage to meet Starlight's eyes.

"You don't have anything to be sorry about," Starlight replied, hovering Rarity's fashionable shades over, and, once Rarity gave a curt nod, let them gently float into place onto her muzzle.

"No, I do. That design was born of stress and fury, of frustration. It was raw negative emotion given form, and it was hideous."

"I think it's kind of... cool? In a sort of dark and gloomy way, I guess?" Starlight said, rubbing the back of her head with a hoof. "Sure, I get that it was an expression of your anger with me, but it's not like I wasn't the cause of that anger. Better you get your frustrations out through artistic expression than by, say, smashing my head against a table corner." Starlight tried on a smile, but Rarity didn't return it. It was hard to smile when it felt like you were having your skull renovated from the inside by a jackhammer.

"Regardless," Rarity replied after another sip of her blessed water. "You didn't deserve my unfiltered thoughts. They were uncharitable and cruel, no matter how... right it felt to bring them into existence. It was still unkind."

"But, you drew something new. Your muse isn't gone. It's a step in the right direction." Twilight commented, her horn's light fading away as she put away the last of the spell books. "We're on our way to fixing this."

Rarity sat in silence for a while, alternating between looking at the sketch she'd drawn under Starlight's concoction of a spell and the mare who helped bring it to life. Slowly, she brought a blank piece of paper and a quill up, her azure aura the only sound in the room.

It remained the only sound for a painfully long moment.

"It's still not there," Rarity sighed, letting the stationary drop with a quiet clatter. "I'm still broken."

The guilt was as bold upon Starlight's face as the icy water upon Rarity's lips.

"I'm sorry," Starlight said, her eyes downcast. "But maybe we should give it a bit? You're not exactly in the best shape to be concentrating." Starlight made a vague gesture to Rarity's head with a hoof. "You know, with the headache?"

"This isn't a headache, it's..." Rarity began, looking like she wanted to elaborate but simply couldn't, like the words to emphasize her point were sticks buried to the hilt in the thickest mud imaginable. She groaned, rubbing a hoof over a particularly foul spot of pounding near her horn. "It's awful, whatever it is. In any case, I've been able to work through headaches before. Migranes, even. No, it's still that blank slate. A void."

Starlight and Twilight frowned at each other as Rarity sat in silence once more, the room growing more tense with every passing heartbeat.

"I'd say I've got to go home, but there's nothing there for me right now. Nothing I can't do here. Sweetie Belle's fine on her own, mostly, and I can't stand being around my workspace while I can't, you know, work." Rarity growled, more so at the situation than at Starlight, though Starlight still flinched back. That made Rarity feel better, and the fact that it made her feel better subsequently made her feel guilty. Spite wasn't usually in her emotional repertoire.

"You're welcome to stay here, if you'd like. Goodness knows I've got way too many guestrooms and not nearly enough guests to fill them," Twilight replied. Rarity could tell she was trying to be jovial, but it didn't lighten her mood any.

"I'm going to have to go under that spell again, aren't I?" It was more a statement than a question, her shaded eyes staring bleary, bloodshot daggers at Starlight.

"... If we want to figure this out? Probably," Starlight gently answered, shuffling a bit in place.

"Grand," Rarity stated, that one single word as flat and heavy as a slab of granite. "This is going to ruin me," she added after a few moments of stiff quiet.

The tears were gone by this point, replaced with deadpan misery. Rarity was all at once resigned to her fate, and no amount of mental arguing with herself seemed to pull her out from beneath that resignation. It was difficult to hype oneself up when what felt like the core part of your mind was simply gone, or at least under a lock to which the key was inaccessible to you.

"Should we... get lunch?" Starlight offered, hitting Rarity with a forced smile that made her want to smash the other unicorn's head into a table corner.

"Why not," Rarity said with a heaving exhalation, her glasses sliding down her snout as her head dipped. She absentmindedly readjusted them with a hoof. "It’s not like if my sister messes up anything in my shop I'll be in any rush to fix it. I might not even notice she's changed anything. Nothing feels 'right' anymore."

Starlight winced again. Rarity's lip curled up ever so slightly.

It was a quiet restaurant. Low light, gentle but not boring music. Bitalian. Rarity liked Bitalian. It was a guilty pleasure. She felt every calorie pass through her lips and straight onto her flank, but at that moment she didn't care. The weighty, cheesy pasta was heaven in her belly after the day she'd had. It almost made the sledgehammer pummeling the back of her eyes manageable. The dinner rolls were good, too. Thick, buttery, just the right amount of garlic.

They all ate in relative silence, the only sound being the scraping of their forks and the combined shimmer of their magic. The wine Rarity picked was grandiose in price and she'd instantly chided herself after ordering it, but she'd had a horrid day - month, really - and so she felt like she deserved a treat. She had the money, too. That thought made her cringe. How much longer would the money last if she couldn't craft new designs? Sure, she could resell old ones, have Fluttershy sew them, but eventually they'd fade out of fashion, out of relevancy. On top of all that, though, she hated the idea of doing the same thing over and over again. It wasn't creatively fulfilling. All at once the rage and sorrow came flooding back.

"Rarity?" Twilight's voice cut through the dreadful cascade of negative thoughts tumbling through Rarity's head. She blinked behind her shades and realized she'd been carving a spot into her plate with her fork for the last few minutes. She forced her magic to relax, letting the fork clack, lifeless, into the plate.

"I'm fine," Rarity replied, trying her best to not let the two words turn into a snarl. She brought a napkin to her lips and dabbed away a bit of cheesy sauce, leaving her muzzle spotless once more. Really, though, the motion had been a way for her to hide the grinding of her teeth while she fought back the mean thoughts swirling through the miasma of pain that was her skull. "I think I'm full."

Her plate still had more than half a portion left. The wine, however, went down in a few unladylike gulps. It was satisfying to simply cut loose and drain the glass. Plus, there was no sense in wasting good, expensive wine.

She decided to go back home afterward. She didn't want to see Starlight's face, no matter how much genuine and deliciously satisfying guilt was smeared upon it.

Rarity slammed the door to the fridge closed with a furious huff. She heard things rattle and shake, but nothing fell, which was good because she was in no mood to clean up a mess. Especially not one she'd made as a result of foolish, unnecessary lack of control. She'd finish the pasta later. Maybe. She didn't know. She didn't care. Sweetie Belle could have it if she didn't. Again, she didn't care.

She found it hard to care about anything in that moment.

Upstairs she went, feeling like a stranger in her own home, feeling like an imposter. This was Rarity's home, the unicorn who'd built herself up from nothing. Rarity made dresses, beautiful, beautiful dresses. Who was she now if she wasn't Rarity? An Element of Harmony? Sure, saving the world was great, objectively, but being a heroine wasn't her passion. It wasn't her drive.

Not-quite-Rarity walked without purpose into her room. She spent a very long time in her bathroom; letting the near boiling hot water of the bath soak to her very soul. She sank in until only her head was above the surface, and even then she wanted to go further. sink beneath the steamy surface and sit there until all-consuming darkness overtook her. Dramatic? Sure, but in that moment, with the nigh scolding water turning the skin beneath her coat pink, she didn't care. That became the theme of the evening; not caring. It was, Rarity realized, somewhat liberating to not care.

She tried not to think, not to let the twisting, jagged glass shards of stress in her guts rip her apart. She tried to blank out her mind.

All she could think about was how good it'd feel to see Starlight suffer.

It felt good in the way she'd imagine cutting oneself with a knife would; hot, feverish, and wild. It'd hurt, but that was, Rarity thought, part of the appeal.

Something struck her then. In her mind. A vision. An idea.

She felt her heartbeat begin to ramp up, a tightening, fluttering feeling snaking through her guts. She shakily, nervously, ignited her horn and levitated a small book she kept on the back of the toilet over and the tiny pen that sat nestled within came out with a hush. It was her restroom ideas book; what she used when there wasn't anything else to do while taking care of things. Her mind, not too long ago, never shut off even when biology demanded she step away.

She flipped to a blank page and put pen to paper.

Author's Note

I'm flying by the seat of my pony pants here. I'm as much in the dark about where this story might go as you guys are. I'm just letting it all out piece by piece, seeing where things fit.