"But why?" Rarity hated to sound whiny, but, well, she had to admit that the tone often worked to get her what she wanted when nothing else would.
In this case, though, the pony in the Mare-Do-Well suit reached out and stroked a front hoof along Rarity's neck, everything about the gentle touch exactly what Rarity really wanted. Her heart rate soared, her breath speeding up, the nearby muscles clenching and loosening as pure pleasure sparked through her. "My reply," that thrillingly husky murmur whispered, "is another question, I fear." The masked face moved closer, and it took all Rarity's strength not to whimper with delight. "Do I ask too much and give too little?"
"You're perfect," Rarity got out through clenched teeth, Mare-Do-Well's three other hooves now caressing her in various places to stoke her like a bonfire, play her like a cello, and nurture her like a sapling tree, her mind whirling, scrambling, grabbing at cliché after cliché in an effort to wrap itself around the oceans of joy that flooded her from this mysterious pony's simple touch.
Mare-Do-Well's chuckle was a caress all on its own. "You're perfect, Rarity, the eternal dream of my heart."
Which was all it took: Rarity abandoned all attempts at control, crying out when her body spasmed with ecstasy and slammed her horn into the pillows carefully positioned as cushions between her and the headboard.
"That's my steady girl." The words rippled through the wave after wave after wave that crashed through her, creamier and more gloriously overwhelming than anything any lover had ever brought to her before. "Don't ask to see me in the light," Mare-Do-Well said then as usual, though Rarity—again, as usual—only remembered it afterwards, lying alone in languorous exhaustion among her blankets, tangled with the moonlight from her window, "and I'll be everything you want me to be, everything we both want me to be."
Most of her brain, completely relaxed and satisfied, drifted toward sleep. But not all of her brain, of course. No, never all of her brain...
Waking refreshed the next morning, she basked in the afterglow of last night's memories for several long, luscious moments before rolling out of bed, showering, brushing, combing, trimming, and taking her fabulous self downstairs for breakfast.
Only then did the metaphorical seed between her teeth start poking her gums, the oatmeal going sour against her tongue. Since the night three weeks ago when she'd first seen that slouch-brimmed silhouette against her window shade and heard that throaty voice expressing heartfelt desire and devotion in the most perfect poetry, she'd been feeling more and more torn. Their time together was exquisite beyond words, yes, but when they weren't together, the questions bubbled relentlessly inside her.
Who was doing this? Mare? Stallion? A friend? An acquaintance? A complete stranger who somehow understood Rarity right down to her once-again-metaphorical core, even to the point of fulfilling the desires she'd rarely so much as hinted at to another living being?
Because, yes, she had to admit that she liked this very, very much. The mystery, the romance, the honeyed words and warm hooves: it was all a fantasy, nothing she'd ever thought she could truly experience. But now that it was happening?
She wanted more, wanted to know who her lover was, wanted to return at least a fraction of the pleasure she was receiving. Generosity was her nature, after all. How in the wide, wide world of Equestria could she live with herself if she continued partaking of these marvels without giving anything back?
It all meant, she admitted again but this time with a sigh, that she needed to find out who her Mare-Do-Well was. Even if it did in fact end up ruining everything...
Sometimes, she hated certain parts of her brain.
Washing the breakfast things, then, she started thinking. The pony inside the suit was of almost startlingly average size and build, her trained eye told her: a bit on the large size if a mare, a bit on the small side if a stallion.
Of course, she also had to admit that, surrounded by darkness and excitement, she wasn't exactly at her most observant whenever her paramour was visiting. So the physical details, as wonderful as those physical details were, only eliminated individuals at the furthest extremes. Her target couldn't be Big Mac, for instance, nor could it be, say, Apple Bloom, however ridiculous both those suppositions might be. She needed to be as clear-headed and methodical as Shadow Spade in approaching this situation and thread a very narrow needle's eye if she wished to keep it all from unraveling entirely.
Pleased with the appropriateness of that metaphor, she made her way out to the front of the shop, sent a quick flick from her horn to unlock the door and flip the Closed sign to Open, and settled in at her sewing machine. She had a great deal of fiddly work on her schedule today, so she levitated her glasses into place and let her mind wander over the Mare-Do-Well problem while her hooves, teeth, and magic almost automatically tackled the thread and cloth before her.
A changeling was, of course, the obvious answer, what with love—or at least lust—being so wonderfully involved in the proceedings. But it just didn't make sense. Why the secrecy, for instance? Multiple changeling families had moved to Ponyville since their reformation, starting shops and sending their children to school. Some had even begun romantic relationships with ponies in town, and yet, not a one of them seemed to feel the need to wear a cape and creep about in the night.
No, without further evidence, she couldn't see her Mare-Do-Well being a changeling. These days, they were all about openness, after all...
In a similar way, her first impulse was to remove her five closest and dearest friends from her list of suspects. None of them had ever shown the slightest inclination toward a romantic interest in her, and they'd certainly had ample opportunity in the years since that fateful Summer Sun Celebration had brought them all into each other's lives.
Still, she didn't feel in all honesty that she could simply cross them off. They really were the ponies who knew her best, the ponies to whom she'd imparted her deepest fantasies when they'd all gathered for slumber parties, affairs that became somewhat more alcohol-laden and confessional as time went on. No, it simply wasn't possible for this Mare-Do-Well to be a stranger, not the way that those cloth-covered hooves, snout, and lips knew exactly where to go and what to do.
Rarity shivered pleasantly at the thought, the memories of the past nearly two-dozen nights wanting to carry her away. But she pushed them back. She had a mystery to solve, and her fellow former Elements of Harmony needed the most thorough examinations.
Twilight, for instance. Yes, she was now living in Canterlot Tower and ruling as princess over Equestria—and didn't that often stir the embers of Rarity's royalty fetish in the most interesting ways! But her magic could undoubtedly carry her from Canterlot to Ponyville without much difficulty, and Rarity's imagination could easily conjure a scenario wherein Her Highness felt herself drawn away from the pressing duties of running the world by the sheer magnetism of Rarity's breathtaking beauty and scintillating—
"Yo, Rares!" An all-too-familiar scratchy voice burst into her ears, and it was only by the utmost skill and finesse that Rarity didn't spatter the pieces of her current project across the entirety of her workbench. The process, however, involved altogether too much flailing for her tastes, and once she'd managed to grab everything in her magic and set it carefully down, she turned narrowed eyes and pursed lips toward Rainbow Dash, grinning vapidly from where she hovered just off to Rarity's left.
"Dag nabbit, Dash!" another all-too-familiar voice called from behind Rainbow, but at least Applejack, standing in the Boutique's doorway, had the decency to be frowning. "It ain't funny, sneaking up on a pony when she's that deep in her business!"
"Gotta disagree," Rainbow more drawled than said, the grin somehow oozing out to encompass her whole body.
Rarity swirled her hornglow over a dozen pins stuck into the tomato-shaped cushion beside her and raised them into the air around her head, all of them pointing at Rainbow. "Shall we see if putting these somewhere deep might prove equally amusing?" she asked, trying for a threatening purr and happy when she managed it.
Rainbow's grin vanished as if it had never existed, her wings freezing for an instant. They started up again before she could fall more than a hoof's width, though, but Rarity was glad to see that the grin didn't make a reappearance. "Hey, now, Rarity." Rainbow's swallow was so loud, Rarity was sure she could hear it. "Let's not do anything I'm gonna regret."
Applejack's braying laugh wasn't quite as bad as Rainbow's grin had been, but it was a near thing. "Could be, RD," Applejack said, stepping all the way inside and crossing the room, "you'll someday listen when your ol' pal AJ tells you you're having a bad idea." She slipped between Rainbow and the floating pins, an action that made Rarity blink, and actually pushed Rainbow, still hovering, back a few taillengths. "Now, how 'bout you put them pointy things away, Rares, and just stab RD with that sharp tongue and wit of yours?"
Lightning flashed metaphorically through Rarity's head. That Rainbow could possibly be Rarity's Mare-Do-Well was laughable in the extreme, of course, but Applejack? She'd had always been more intelligent than she liked to let on, had always been decent and thoughtful when she wasn't being stubborn and obtuse.
But the little maneuver she'd just undertaken, trying to remove Rainbow from harm's way while simultaneously trying to cajole Rarity into a better temper, that said things to Rarity. It said that Applejack was seeking to protect Rainbow rather than allowing her to suffer the literal stings of Rarity's righteous wrath. And placing herself between Rainbow and those stings? If Rarity were to guess, she would wager that Applejack's affections leaned more in Rainbow's direction than any other.
These thoughts whisked their way around behind Rarity's eyes in an instant, and in the next, she lowered her pins with a sigh. "I sincerely doubt these little things would have left even the slightest mark upon the outer layer of our Dashie's rough-and-tumble hide. Still, in the interest of continued peace and friendship..." She gave a grin of her own that showed as many teeth as she could manage.
"Yeah," Rainbow said with another swallow. "Thanks, Rares. It's just, I was thinking how we hadn't seen you in a while, and when we looked in and you were all spaced out—"
"What Dashie means," Applejack cut in, "is that we're all just a mite concerned 'bout you maybe working too hard."
"Yeah!" Rainbow said it more forcefully this time, rising in her hover to look out from behind the solid wall of Applejack's flank. "All work and no play, y'know? It's not healthy!"
Opening her mouth to dismiss their nonsense, Rarity stopped, unable to recall when exactly she'd last left the Boutique. She'd been out grocery shopping certainly and had picked up a box of croissants at Sugarcube Corner a few mornings ago.
Hadn't she?
And the more she thought, she more she realized that, in the three weeks since her Mare-Do-Well had begun those scrumptious nightly visits, she'd been getting as much done as quickly as possible during the day in order to retire early and await her lover's arrival. Which had meant working through both lunch and dinner, keeping the pantry barely stocked, not taking her usual strolls through town...
"Rainbow?" She levitated her glasses off her snout and set them firmly upon her workbench. "You're absolutely right."
Her eyes as wide as a buckball bucket, Rainbow stared. "I am?"
Applejack snorted a laugh. "Had to happen sooner or later, I reckon."
Rarity stood. "The law of averages is on her side, certainly."
"Averages?" Rainbow's shocked expression tightened into something more annoyed. "Hey! With me, it'd be the law of awesomenesses!"
"Yes." Rarity tried to look serious, but she could feel the smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. "We shall have to alert Twilight to edit the appropriate textbooks."
"Gotcha." Applejack nodded toward the front door. "After we alert Pinkie to grab us some picnic baskets so we can all head on over to Fluttershy's and have us a get-together."
Doing a little quick-stepping dance, Rarity crooned, "Perfect!"
And it would be, too. After all, how could she expect to solve her Mare-Do-Well mystery without getting out and doing some actual investigating?
During the trip to Sugarcube Corner, with her senses now so attuned to the concept of couples and coupling, Rarity couldn't miss the sidelong glances Applejack continually shot toward Rainbow as well as the flirty little mane tosses and wing brushes Rainbow aimed at Applejack.
The only obvious conclusion—if the two weren't yet sleeping together, they soon would be—reluctantly turned Rarity's attention away from Applejack as a Mare-Do-Well candidate once and for all.
The townsfolk, then? Alas, hailing numerous friends and acquaintances along the way didn't give her any sort of a tingle, nothing that might've made her think in even a preliminary fashion that her Mare-Do-Well was walking about in these various horseshoes.
At the bakery, Pinkie was ebullient as always, leaping over the counter with baskets swinging from mouth, ears, and tail before popping from Applejack to Rainbow to Rarity and balancing said baskets on their backs. But Rarity couldn't see Pinkie maintaining the quiet solidity that Rarity felt every time her Mare-Do-Well moved against her. Yes, Pinkie could possibly possess hidden romantic depths—and didn't Rarity have to clear her mental throat after the idea of Pinkie's hidden depths took her thoughts to places not at all suited for a midday stroll along the streets of Ponyville! But no, Pinkie didn't seem any more likely than Rainbow Dash.
Reaching Fluttershy's cottage, Rarity was surprised to see Discord puttering about the garden with her. Surprise, however, didn't seem a large enough word to express her feelings when she began to notice the touches and smiles that passed between the two. She'd known they were close, of course, but when had it begun blossoming into something deeper?
Perhaps this Mare-Do-Well business had infected her brain too thoroughly. Or, that annoying part of her brain piped up in reply, maybe she'd been blind to the romances going on around her till Mare-Do-Well had opened her eyes.
Whichever it was, she couldn't deny something was ahoof when Discord helped carry the baskets to the back of the house, a snap of his lion claws summoning the perfect red-and-white checkered blanket upon which they could spread their luncheon. He even gave Fluttershy a little peck on the check after everything was set up, saying, "Well, I'll let you girls get on with your mare time...especially now that the guest of honor's arriving." He made a little clicking sound with the corner of his mouth and disappeared just as Twilight flashed unexpectedly into being beside the big oak tree.
Twilight's smile flashed just as brightly, parts of Rarity figuratively dancing to see that the princess seemed to have grown yet another half a hoofspan since she'd last seen her, her legs a bit longer, her entire physique svelter and oh, so extremely princessent. "I've got an hour and fifteen minutes," Twilight said, folding those fantasy-inducing limbs to settle at one side of the blanket. "And I don't want to hear anything consequential during that whole time, if it's all the same to you."
Rarity couldn't stop a laugh. "Darling, you've come to exactly the right place!"
That led to sandwiches and lemonade, salads both fruit and vegetable, and finally some incomparable puff pastries. "Crème de-la-licious!" Pinkie announced from her corner of the blanket while somehow simultaneously chomping down her third or fourth cream puff.
With a nod, Rarity did her utmost to remain elegant and stylish in the act of chomping down another herself. Everypony did an excellent job of keeping the conversation just as light and fluffy, too, laughter popping up frequently, and as always, Rarity had a wonderful time. Wonderful but unfortunately inconclusive when it came to the current matter under investigation...
At the hour-and-fourteen minute mark, they all shared their usual group hug before Twilight vanished in a lavender-scented cloud of purple fire. Standing and stretching, Applejack said she'd best get back to the orchard, and Rainbow unsurprisingly said she'd go with her. Discord reappeared, and the tender, heartfelt looks he and Fluttershy exchanged made Rarity insist that she and Pinkie would be fine transporting the empty baskets back to Sugarcube Corner without any further assistance.
Still, with everything she'd observed churning in her head, Rarity wasn't exactly focused on the task of levitating her share of the picnic things. She didn't trip, crossing the bridge back into Ponyville, but her distraction was evidently so obvious, Pinkie asked, "Need any help with that, Rarity?"
"Hmmm?" Blinking from her thoughts—so far, Twilight was really the best possibility to be her Mare-Do-Well, but Rarity couldn't quite imagine her still-geeky friend as having the requisite savoir faire or subtlety to pull off such an imposture; a refreshing directness so defined Twilight that Rarity knew, should Twilight be interested in having a relationship, she would call upon Rarity some evening to quite earnestly and forthrightly express her feelings on the matter—Rarity looked at the baskets she was holding aloft in her hornglow. "Oh, no, thank you, Pinkie. Picnic baskets are a bit bulkier than the items I usually levitate, but—"
"No, silly, not that." Pinkie did a quick dance step, her front hooves tapping a lively rhythm along the street. "It's just that I'm an experienced percussionist, and you seem to be beating pretty hard on whatever conun-drum you're hauling around there." She flashed one of her big smiles.
Wanting to roll her eyes and deny everything, Rarity instead shook her head. "It's nothing, Pinkie, but again, thank you for the offer. I'm just, well, thinking about relationships, I suppose."
"You mean Applejack and Dashie?" A scheming sort of gleam came into Pinkie's eyes. "They're almost there, I think. I mean, you saw how they went off together after the picnic?" She nodded. "Pretty soon, those two'll be moving into Smooch City, you mark my words."
It took some effort for Rarity not to stumble over her own hooves. "You mean...you noticed, too?"
"I'm a party pony." Pinkie waggled her eyebrows. "And it can be a real nice party even when there's just two guests, y'know what I mean?"
At that point, dizzy from everything swirling through her brain, Rarity wasn't exactly thinking. That was the only excuse she could make for allowing herself to ask, "And Fluttershy and Discord?"
Pinkie puffed air through her lips. "They've been living in Smooch City pretty much all year, actually, even though I've gotta admit: I didn't think they'd work out together. They're just so different, y'know?" She puffed out more air, but this time, it was more a sigh than a raspberry. "This last three weeks, though, they've gotten one hundred percent smoochy-woochy, and Auntie Pinkie approves. 'Cause that's what's great about love, right? Opposites attract..."
Rarity refused to tremble. Was Pinkie confessing to being her Mare-Do-Well? She and Rarity could hardly be more opposite, after all; could she truly be the one?
A careful breath allowed her to find what she hoped was the correct balance of jolliness and seriousness. "And you, Pinkie? Have you found your special somepony?"
"Yep-a-rooty!" Pinkie's walk took on even more of a bounce than usual. "You remember Cheese Sandwich? He's been coming over to Sugarcube Corner a lot lately to help me pull taffy." She waggled her eyebrows again. "And I'm sure you know that that's the truest sign of love there's ever been."
All her assumptions crumbling inside her, Rarity managed to repeat, "Taffy?"
"You betcha!" A curl of Pinkie's mane popped out, and Rarity saw a notebook wrapped in it. "By my calculations, we've pulled about four furlongs, so another two, and we'll be ready to get married!"
"Does he know?" The words emerged once more without Rarity's conscious approval.
"Oh, yeah." The curl and the notebook both vanished back from where they'd come. "It's more a baker's thing than a party pony thing, but Cheesey's pretty au croissant about that stuff."
The mangled phrase poked through the dust and debris in Rarity's head. "Au courant, you mean?"
Pinkie's teeth flashed in a huge smile. "Don't mind if I do!" A box with a picture of raisins popped from her mane this time, and the tangled strands of pink hair somehow dumped what must've been the entire contents into her mouth. "Currants are nature's candy!" she said, chewing briskly the entire time.
Relief mixed with a twinge of sadness washed through Rarity, pushing out the last bits and pieces of her mind's most recent briar patch: Pinkie was definitely not her Mare-Do-Well. "Well, I shall look forward to helping with the ceremony in any way that I can."
"Thanks, Rares." They rounded the corner into the town square then, Sugarcube Corner just ahead in the late afternoon light, but Pinkie stopped, faced Rarity, and put a hoof gently on her shoulder. "You've gotta do what your heart says, too, y'know," she said, her words soft. "Sometimes, yeah, it doesn't work out. But sometimes it does. And that's great beyond great."
Rarity blinked at the odd sight of Pinkie being absolutely still and serious, but an instant later, Pinkie was leaping away, cartwheeling across the square toward the bakery. "Don't take any wooden cheesecakes!" she shouted. "'Cause those things'll leave your tongue awful splintery!" And with that, she rolled up the stairs, through the door, and was gone.
Back home again, Rarity tried not to think.
It didn't work, of course. Parts of her brain kept spinning back and forth in a vain attempt to reconcile the paradox of her Mare-Do-Well knowing her so completely but probably not being any of her best friends. Pinkie had Cheese, Fluttershy had Discord, Applejack and Rainbow had each other, and Twilight had the entirety of the planet.
And yes, among its various spins, her brain managed to cobble together assorted scenarios to support any one of them being her mysterious lover, but Rarity wasn't convinced in the slightest. Still, she let her mind run wherever it wished as she worked on the projects she'd set aside for that evening, ate supper even though she wasn't hungry, and took her not-feeling-quite-so-fabulous self upstairs to shower, brush, comb, trim, open the window across the room, and settle into bed.
Because her Mare-Do-Well would likely appear as usual outside her window sometime before midnight. And she had no idea what she would do this time: forget the pleasure and pursue the mystery, or forget the mystery and pursue the pleasure?
Neither choice would do, she decided. Neither would do at all.
And yet? She hadn't found a third way when her ears pricked thrillingly at the by-now-familiar shuffle on the roof.
Setting her jaw, she silently told her ears to calm down. But then that unmistakable silhouette drifted over her curtains, that murmur drifting through them: "The streets of Ponyville are always charming, my love, but to see you out along them today? You made them absolutely shine..."
Her breath wanted very much to catch, her heart very much to race; Rarity did her best to contain them both, though that process became a great deal more difficult after that lithe shadow slipped over the sill and partially melded into the darkness on her bedroom wall. "We..." She cleared her throat when the word emerged as more of a squeak than anything else. "We need to talk."
"I am your humble and obedient servant," that husky, dusky voice said from what might've been directly beside her bed, but Rarity didn't dare look for fear of losing her nerve, her body wanting nothing more than to shut her brain off and let those hooves have their sweet and gentle way with her.
But no. "I can't keep taking from you like this," she got out through clenched teeth. "I love everything about our trysts except for that one aspect. I just want...just want to give you some shadow of the pleasure you continue to give me."
The silence of her room got even more silent until a warm little chuckle rolled across her. "Oh, my love, my perfect, my wonderful darling. If only you knew how much pleasure you're giving with every luscious, panting puff of your breath."
Raising her head, Rarity tried to find the figure in the dark, tried to meet the blank blue cloth that covered those eyes, tried to understand what her Mare-Do-Well meant. "But—"
"Shhh..." At least two hooves stroked over her, their pressure and texture just exactly right to strum her nervous system like an eager guitar and get her humming like a well-oiled sewing machine. "Pleasing you is the most pleasant occupation imaginable, so unless you'd like me to stop..."
The hooves pulled away all at once, and Rarity couldn't even try to stop herself from whimpering. "I just— There's not— I want...want...want..." She had no idea at that point what she wanted except— "Don't stop," she finished, squeezing her eyes closed.
Silken smooth and velvet soft, the hooves and the whisper returned to touch her:
"Expand, my heart, and overflow
To fill the darkness, stoke desire,
Embrace a brilliance none can know,
And soothe my soul before her fire..."
Gasping, Rarity abandoned all pretense of resisting and gave herself over to sheer enjoyment for a timeless amount of time. At last, though, spread like melted butter over her sheets, every single bit of her completely sated, she heard the distinctive shuffle of a cape against her bedroom carpet. "I beg you, my dearest, not to fret," Mare-Do-Well murmured, that rasp alone enough to send Rarity swooning. "You give so much and in ways that I cannot explain. All I ask is that you don't seek to see me in the light, and we'll all continue getting exactly what we want..."
What Rarity wanted at that moment was to object, to call her lover back and try to work out their differences in a way that would benefit them both, but she was already falling asleep, deliciously worn out from the evening's activities.
The good feelings floated in her dreams, big, beautiful butterflies that both warmed and cooled her, a calmness that let her drift awake, as always perfectly refreshed and tingling with an eagerness for the next night's meeting.
Except...what had Mare-Do-Well meant by "we'll all continue getting exactly what we want"?
Making her bed and conducting her morning ablutions, she pondered. Could this truly be a representative of a hidden pod of changelings, draining her of her love and then distributing it to the others?
She didn't feel drained, however. On the contrary, she almost thought that each visit was leaving her more exhilarated than the one before. Some sort of reverse changeling perhaps, filling her with love energy for some unknown reason?
With a shake of her head, she dried her mane, styled it, and went downstairs to breakfast. She was grasping at straws, scrambling for ridiculous answers because—
Because the answer that was bubbling up from the depths of her brain was entirely and utterly repugnant in every possible way. It couldn't be right, had to be anything other than that! But...
Not letting herself think, she spun in the hallway and galloped to the front door. A wrench of magic opened it, and she charged across the market square, through the streets of town, across the bridge, and screeched to a halt on Fluttershy's front stoop. Her hoof didn't want to rise, didn't want to knock, didn't want to jeopardize more than just her gorgeous evenings. But she forced it, tapped on the door, stood waiting and twitching and hoping maybe nocreature would be home.
A click and a clatter from the other side, though, and the door pulled open to reveal Fluttershy blinking out at her. "Rarity? Ummm, good morning, of course, but...did I forget a spa date or something?"
Rarity forced a smile. "Not at all, darling. I was wondering, however, if Discord might be about. I wasn't sure how else to get in touch with him."
"Ummm," Fluttershy said again, her ears folding to almost vanish into her mane. "He, umm, I mean, yes, he...he's here..." She stepped back, a wing shaking to pull the door further open. "Won't you come in?"
Stepping across the threshold, she pleaded with that foul and unreasonable part of her brain not to do this. She could still invent some excuse for her early morning call, could still stop before she destroyed—
But Discord was reclining in the empty air on the other side of Fluttershy's table, a teacup in the talons of his eagle claw, his red-and-yellow eyes wide. The sudden, sour-milk scent in the air spoke volumes, and that unfortunate part of Rarity's brain would brook no other response except outrage.
"Well?" she said, glaring at him. "Will you tell her? Or shall I? Because I refuse to be a party to any sort of deceit practiced upon my dearest friend in the entire world."
"Ummm," Discord said, and it was such an atypical thing for the big blowhard to say that Rarity became even more convinced that she was right.
So she took another step forward. "How could you?" she more rumbled than said.
"Ummm," Fluttershy muttered behind her. "He didn't. Not alone, I mean..."
Ice shooting through the heat of her righteous indignation, Rarity swayed where she stood, turned, and didn't even try to stop her jaw from gaping open as she looked at Fluttershy rubbing one front hoof against her other front leg. "It...it's been both of us," she said, her gaze fixed on the floorboards.
Discord broke the frozen silence. "Oh, come, come, now!" He snapped his lion claws, and Rarity found herself at the table with several scones and a steaming cup of tea in front of her. "I can hardly believe that I'm the one saying it, but let's not fly to pieces and drown in the bitter cream of recriminations."
Looking up, Rarity saw that Fluttershy was now slumped across the table, her mane like a pink veil covering her face, while Discord was seated off to her right. "Please, Fluttershy," he was saying, "if we can all talk about this together, it'll be fine. You saw how Rarity marched in here to defend your honor; she'd never abandon you!" His peculiar eyes darted over to Rarity. "Would you?" he asked, and Rarity had never even imagined that she would hear such an imploring tone in that usually sardonic voice.
"Of course not!" she said automatically, but her brain was nearly vibrating in her skull as it shuffled all her conclusions around with the evidence she'd seen yesterday and still came up with absolutely nothing. "But darling, darling, darling!" The word had never seemed more inappropriate, but she had to force herself to stop saying it. "What in the bright blue name of Equestria is going on here? You and Discord...both? You've together been my Mare-Do-Well?"
The barest nod of that head. "We've been getting closer, he and I," she said so softly, Rarity had to hold her breath to hear her. "And we started talking about...our fantasies..."
A slurping sound brought Discord slithering up beside Fluttershy, his lion paw resting over her withers, her whole body moving to cuddle against his side. "I've never had any fantasies," he said, shrugging with the arm that wasn't holding her. "Until a certain mare of our mutual acquaintance told me 'no' and spun my entire universe so marvelously over sideways, I simply summoned whatever I wanted. But my dear little Flutsy, she had dreamed up several somewhat elaborate scenarios." A tiny smile tugged his snout, and he glanced at Rarity again. "All of them involving you."
"Don't, please." The words came ragged from behind Fluttershy's mane. "She'll hate me, hate me, hate me..."
"Never!" Rarity almost leaped over to press herself against Fluttershy's other side, but she couldn't imagine that the resulting sensory overload would help in the slightest. Instead, she leaned across the table so she could speak softly and still be sure Fluttershy would hear her. "You dreamed of making my fantasy come true, wanted to give me the romance and mystery I've told you about so often during our spa dates."
For a horrible, awful moment, that icy silence filled the room again. But then Fluttershy nodded ever so slowly and ever so shallowly. "But I couldn't," she whispered. "Discord even...even popped up a Mare-Do-Well suit so I could be in disguise, but I...I would've died if I'd tried to touch you the way you talk about being touched. And if anypony but me ever touched me...down there? My brain would shoot right up through the top of my skull, my hide would burst into flame, and my hooves would—"
"Darling, please!" Rarity cried it at the exact same moment as Discord, and while he pulled her even closer to himself, Rarity abandoned all rationality and scrambled through the tea things, slid along the tablecloth, and tumbled down to likewise embrace Fluttershy. "It's all right!" Rarity went on. "It's all right! It's all honestly all right!"
Fluttershy had begun hyperventilating, her body wracked and shaking between Rarity's forelimbs, but as Rarity continued murmuring, "It's all right," Fluttershy slowly subsided till all Rarity heard with the slight whistle of her breath.
By then, Rarity's brain had stopped spinning and flailing as well. "Then," she said, keeping everything light and gentle, "you and Discord...combined somehow to create a Mare-Do-Well for me?"
A tiny hitched jagged through Fluttershy's breathing, but everything smoothed out again almost immediately. "Not exactly," she muttered.
She didn't go on, though, and Rarity glanced up from her to Discord, his head resting atop Fluttershy's. The movement brought his face a great deal closer to Rarity's than she could ever recall seeing him before but at least the scent wafting from him now was more sour cream than sour milk—decidedly less unpleasant than previously, at any rate. The slight darkness of his cheeks made Rarity blink, however. Was he blushing?
"You see," he said quietly, his eyes flicking around under those bushy brows so that they never held her gaze for more than a second or two at a time, "our Flutsy wanted so much to touch you and be touched herself, but, well, you heard all that about skulls exploding and whatnot. So it was...it was I inside the suit doing the actual touching."
"I see," Rarity said into the silence that followed. Unsure what propriety called for under these circumstances, she more blurted than said, "Well, you were very good at it."
His possible blush deepened. "Thank you. I have to say, I quite enjoyed it myself."
Between them, Fluttershy began to shake. Rarity opened her mouth to restart her it's all right litany, but stopped when she heard giggles. "Oh, you two!" Fluttershy's head rose, her mane parting to show her smiling. "You're both absolutely adorable, did you know that?"
Rarity cocked her head as if considering the notion. "I've had my suspicions that I might be."
"Hmmm..." Discord was stroking his beard with his eagle talons, but since he seemed to have both arms still around Fluttershy, Rarity could only guess that he'd summoned a third arm just for the occasion. "I've had a number of words associated with me over the years, but 'adorable' has never been one of them."
The fresh spate of giggles tickled Rarity, but Fluttershy speaking tickled her even more. "Discord was in the suit," she said, "but he set up some sort of magical connection between us. So while you two were at the Boutique touching each other in your bed, Rarity, and I was here in my bed touching myself, everything that Discord saw and heard and felt, I saw and heard and felt it, too. And when I had suggestions, I could just say them here, and he'd hear them and do them." She sighed. "It was wonderful..."
That got a few premonitory shivers prickling up Rarity's neck. "It is wonderful, surely you mean, darling," she said, and seldom had she meant that term of address as literally as she did at this moment. As gently as she could, she touched a kiss to the nearest of Fluttershy's ears. "For nothing that's happened here today, I would say, should stop us from continuing an activity that we all find so enjoyable."
Another silent moment crackled into place, Rarity suddenly afraid that she'd misjudged the entire situation. But then Fluttershy slid her head around to look up at her with those big, beautiful eyes. "You...you wouldn't mind?" she asked.
Wanting to bark a laugh but knowing such an action would shatter the mood like a frozen balloon, Rarity instead cocked her head in her most artfully coquettish manner. "Well, you two have gone through a great deal of effort on my behalf, and to say that I've appreciated those efforts would be to use the wrong word entirely."
She slowly moved her gaze from Fluttershy's to Discord's and back again as she spoke, keeping her one forelimb around Fluttershy's withers while she reached out the other hoof to touch Discord's eagle claw. "You reinvigorated me in a way that I didn't even know I needed and brought a spark into my life that I hadn't understood I was lacking. So yes, if it wouldn't be too much to ask, could we please explore this little trio we've become and see where it takes us?"
With as lascivious a smile as she could manage, she batted her eyelashes. "For instance, I'm thinking perhaps two beds in each bedroom. For I find myself extremely curious as to what delicious little noises and aromas you might give off, Fluttershy, when you're touching yourself and enraptured within the throes of passion."
"Eeep!" both Fluttershy and Discord said, but neither of them pulled away or vanished. Nor, Rarity was glad to see, did anycreature's skull go whooshing out the top of his or her head, something that she felt could only be a positive sign.
"So!" she said briskly, a number of interesting ideas already stitching themselves together in her brain. "For now, we can keep on as we have been if that would make you more comfortable." She lowered her voice to prolong the intimacy of the moment. "I find that, after touching and manipulating cloth all day, I quite enjoy the sensation of being touched and manipulated by cloth-covered hooves." A breath-catching shiver trickled through her at the memories. "Exquisite..."
"Ummm..." Fluttershy shifted ever so slightly. "I think...I'd like very much being in the same room while everything...was happening."
Discord's chuckle reached Rarity partially through the air and partially through the surface of Fluttershy's skin. "Our little thrill seeker," he muttered. "So," he went on with a bit more volume, "when I arrive at the Boutique this evening, I shall enter as usual by the bedroom window, but once I've arrived, I'll transport our Flutsy and her bed to join us."
"Ummm..." Fluttershy was shifting more than slightly all of a sudden. "I mean, unless you have anything you need to do, Rarity, I...I'd really, really, really like to see what...what this would be like." Rarity could feel her trembling, too, and the delightful aroma of an excited mare drifted up to fill the air. "Upstairs? Right now? If...if that'd be okay?"
Rarity glanced from Fluttershy's hopeful and fervid expression to meet Discord's gaze. That third arm reappeared, snapped its lion claws, and Mare-Do-Well was looking back at her. "Ladies?" that unmistakable husky murmur asked. "Shall we?"
Fluttershy was nodding, her mane rubbing soft and warm against Rarity's chest. Rarity nodded as well, and as Discord's magic swept over her, she bid a fond farewell to the past world dissolving around her and set her eager gaze forward for her first glimpse of the new one into which she was now entering.
