What Was, What Is, and What Will Be

My mother said once that it was good that the walls between Right and Wrong were so tall and impenetrable, lest we be tempted to cross the divide. Mankind was not made to discern the difference on his own, she would continue, not quite wagging her finger in my face. No arcane art can tell us, and we cannot expect the gods to do it for us. We rely on that wall to make the choice impossible.

I’ve thought it over these many long years, Twilight. I’ve rendered it almost tangible through my obsession, turned it over in my mind again and again. I’ve looked for the flaws in the crystalline structure of that memory on many long, hopeless nights.

If I understand anything in this life, then I understand this: that appearances are what separate us from the desperate and the atavistic. Keeping ourselves in the stream of continuity, I mean. Propriety. I am a product of my own imagining, but I am also a product of years and years of rigid and life-giving adherence to prescribed rhythms of being.

Coming back home has been difficult. Not because I’m unhappy to see the old sights and meet the old friends, mind you. Pinkie has matured a lot the last few years, but lost none of her charm. Rainbow Dash and Applejack are getting along in life famously, and Fluttershy finally went to school and set up her clinic in a more official manner. They were all happy to see me. Everybody I recognized (and many I did not!) were happy to see me. None of this was difficult.

The difficulty is in the air. It’s a serpent coiling in my chest, shifting uneasily as if the beating of my heart had disturbed its sleep.

When I see you, sitting on the porch of Applejack and Rainbow’s house the snake squeezes around my lungs for a moment. There you are, shifting an errant strand of hair behind your ear, nursing an amber bottle sweating in the summer evening swelter, a smile on your face. There you are. I swallow and feel unmoored. But weakness is never more than a moment. The gulf I imagine beyond the wall my mother imagined can only entice for a moment before it scares me back into the steady flow of reality.

Your eyes light up when you rise and wave. I wave back, walking as fast as these Canterlonian shoes will allow in the somewhat uneven walk up to the porch. Rainbow, sitting beside you, stays seated. But her smile is no less wide and she lays flat back as you stand full of un-released energy while Rainbow fishes about for the cooler behind her. She holds onto another beer while you and I embrace before the stairs.

Lavender, of course it is, what would you pick besides that? I love it. Lavender has a deep, almost intoxicating quality to it. I allow myself another crack in the wall to breathe deeply. The difficulty, the snake, its all gone for a moment. When we separate we are both smiling, you and I, and my heart could burst. Rainbow calls to me and gladly take a drink and the bottle opener she provides with a flourish.

“Really, Dash? A Thunderbolts official?”

“Got one when I was in the reserve program,” she answers with a laugh.

I hand it back and take another look at you, Twilight. You look… vibrant. You look like a painting restored lovingly in the cloistered studio of a master. The evening sun in your eyes reflects like twin pyres. I cannot bear to see them, to wonder at their fire and want to burn in them, and so I do what I must. I pull away and ask the customary questions.

How are you holding up? Have you seen everyone in town yet? How is teaching at the Academy? How are your days and ways and the time you spend awake and dreaming, how does the sun greet you in the morning and how does the moon shelter you in the darkness of night? And of course the questions I cannot ask, are you happy now? Are you glad he’s gone? What are you doing now, with yourself, and do you talk to anyone anymore? Are you lonely? Do you think about the loss? Do you care at all? Do you think of me when you feel it, or when you do not feel it?

Applejack comes outside as you and I make ourselves comfortable and Rainbow stands and stretches. They share a kiss. I catch myself staring, not in judgment, but with a complicated mixture of emotion. I’m happy for them, I think, as I look to the side and see the burning sun slowly departing beyond the towering trees.

But even there I see you, in my peripheral vision. Smiling, hands by your sides. They call to me, they ask to be touched and held. But there isn’t enough space to hold them, in the second of averted eyes. We’re so close. We always are.

Applejack asks her wife about something and I don’t hear it, as I’m too busy listening to you mention some mutual friend of ours you saw last week. I could not care less who it was, I care mostly about the way you tell the story like a shepherd guiding sheep from one point to another. You laugh and its nothing like the tinkling of bells or music, its just honest and even a little silly sounding, and that’s why I’ve always liked it. Every time you laugh at some joke or chuckle at some secret thing I’ve pointed out in a crowded room, I wonder briefly if we are really dancing the dance I think we are—are you dancing? Do you know you’re dancing?

“I’m sorry, you asked me about the Academy, didn’t you?” you say to me. I grin. You love talking about this.

“I did,” I reply. “Are you still teaching conjuration classes?”

“Yup!” You take a long swig from the amber glass bottle. “Celestia’s teeth, remember when we were drinking Blue Ribbon?”

“No,” I say flatly. “I have blocked such distasteful things from my memory forever. For my sanity,” I add, pitching my voice just a step lower in mock dignity to pull another laugh from you.

“Well, I do. Glad we improved in at least some ways. Classes are going fine. I actually had Applejack in for a class the other day. I wanted my students to get a more ‘druid’ flavored perspective on things, and between you and me, I think Fluttershy might have died.”

I snort. “Definitely. Is she still coming tomorrow night?”

You nod. “Yeah, she sends her apologies. But that’s alright. We have time,” you say and I swear to all the gods that you winks, as if we’re sharing some kind of deep confidence in this moment, and I suppose we are, but it still sends me reeling internally.

I sputter something that I pray sounds right, and am saved for a moment by Applejack hearing her name and leaning over to comment.

“It was a pretty fun time. Nice to travel a little, too! I don’t do that much these days,” she says. You look up at her and I lose the next bit because I’m swallowing back a—we have time? What does that mean, which way could you have meant that?—and then Dash is passing on my right and taking a call and the contact shakes me out of the reverie.

Applejack settles on the steps on the other side of you, and that pushes you even closer to me, and our hands touch and I am stuck thinking about it for a few beats.

Every time I say to myself, Rarity, this is ridiculous, you are a grown woman. You aren’t a teenager mooning over a crush! And I suppose that’s not exactly what’s happening here. That would be far less burdensome, wouldn’t it? I wish that it was. I wish you and I were young and overwhelmed by something as tame and endearing as a crush.

We finish the round we’re on, and only then do I notice that Dash is gone. I aim a question about it to Applejack, who gives me an exaggerated wink.

“Oh, Dash? She realized we were out of Wild Pegasus and called her buddy who works at the store on Goldleaf street. She’s so sentimental about things like that. Asked him to stay open for just a few minutes so she could grab some.”

“Aw, that’s kinda adorable,” you say. “Just like the first time we did this.”

“Loyal even to memories, I guess,” Applejack replies, in a strange way. She’s thinking, remembering something. Irrationally I wonder if its me. Or if its you. If “loyal” is an unconscious jab. But no, it can’t be. She doesn’t go in for that sort of thing. Applejack would call me a harlot to my face, and that’s why I like her.

“An admirable trait,” I say, and I mean it.

You turn back to me. “I’m glad you made it, Rarity. I was actually a bit worried you wouldn’t.”

I swallow. The sun is gone. When did it leave?

“I, uh, well. I couldn’t exactly miss a chance to see you all again,” I say.

“Glad to hear it!” Applejack cuts in. Thank the gods for you, Applejack. But just as quickly, I am betrayed. “I was a bit worried ‘bout you too. Dash and I still wanted you to know that we’d be happy to let you come stay in the guest house if you’re wanting some space and time to, you know.”

“I’m fine. The house is mine, after all,” I say. I pointedly do not say this with any heat. No cold. Just matter of factly, because my cold fury is not at my friend, and the idea that some small modicum of it might touch her at all appalls me. I worry.

“I knew you’d say that. You’re a tough one. Always said so,” Applejack replies, and returns to the light of my gratitude.

You’re looking at me as she says it. It’s dark but I can see you looking, I can feel your eyes questing, fumbling at me, then the lights come on and Applejack mumbles something about them being awful bright and with no sheltering dark your gaze pierces right through any conceivable defense and my hand is still on yours and the touch is electric. If I were ignorant of what you were capable of, and of course what it felt and looked like, I would swear you were reading my soul.

“I wouldn’t want to bring the mood down,” I say like an idiot. Something compels me to say it, or maybe I simply want to say it. An obvious invitation to comment, to reassure. When Applejack bullied us all into going fishing with her and Dash before the wedding I thought to myself that it was old hat. Set a bait, reel in a foolish creature. I was and am good at it. People are led around by the appetites, by emotion, and caught off guard they can be caught in anything you please. Maybe that is what I wanted to do. Or maybe I panicked.

“You wouldn’t be,” you say quickly. “I understand if its raw, but we’re your friends, and talking with us is good! It can be really healing. Remember how you girls were there for me?”

“I remember,” I reply by rote, locked into my own manipulation. “And I suppose I can’t complain too much. I hadn’t expected it, really. I certainly didn’t expect…” I cough. “Well. It’s finalized, now. I’m not quite on the market again, obviously, we can’t be so quick as that! And I’m not exactly of the age to re-debut in the circles of society again.”

“Sounds terrible,” Applejack opines, and pulls the cooler that Rainbow Dash had been tending closer. “The re-debuting again, I mean. Sounded like too much fuss the first time! Though I remember you liked the parties!”

“You know me, dear, I am always up for a soiree,” I say.

“Well, a change of pace could do you some good,” you say. Your voice is so gentle sometimes, do you know that?

“Oh, I know.” I am tempted to match your tone, but the Wall demands I play things off. I can’t cross. I have a role to play, and I must appear even-tempered. “That’s why I’m here, after all! Leaving the city behind for friends and a change of pace. Hard to feel down when I have you all here. And besides,” I say, and my heart skips a beat as my mind reaches forward into possibilities I had not thought about until just this very moment, “Rainbow Dash will be back with that Wild Pegasus soon.”

I am not a lush. I know that it has from time to time been something of a joke in our circle to imagine me as being in love with any fine bottle that comes across my path, but I drink far less than people assume. Some of this is for decorum’s sake—it can be acceptable to drink a bit too heavily in the rarefied society I’ve kept since leaving home, but a disgrace to be visibly intoxicated. I am worse at hiding my own drunkenness than I would like! Some of it is simply a preference. But if I am being honest, and I try to be honest with myself if with no one else, I am afraid of what I will do and say in such a state, and secretly thrilled by that fear. Vulnerability is not merely another state of being to me, it is an obsession. It is the northern star of the sensations I cannot afford but crave with ravenous desire.

So if I lick my lips, taste my own lipstick, and then embarrassedly cough and turn my head, then it is reasonable and not a massive lack of self control.

We laugh this off, and the conversation drifts. You ask me if I still remember the little trick you helped me with years ago, when I was feeling insecure about my own command of magic. It had been a lie, though I wonder if you know that. I wanted to spend time with you. Of course I remember, and I show you, holding forth my hand and calling up the glittering stars again, dancing like Planetars in my palm. Your obvious delight is like honey on my tongue. I show off, forming the little lights into shapes.

“I’m glad you remember. You know, I think that was what got me thinking harder about teaching,” you say.

I do not grimace. Best not to let you ever guess my true intentions in those halcyon days. “Really? I guess I assumed you’d always wished to teach, Twilight. You were so consumed with your research into, well, everything.”

“Most things. Research into the arcane and teaching it are quite different. But I understand how you could think that.” You chuckle and lay back. I steal glances down at you, and I know somehow that you know that I am.

Applejack stands and stretches. “You know, I’m glad I didn’t have to go through all that,” she says and leans against the railing, her strong arms folded and her face out towards the now dark shadows of the orchards. “Druids and wizards not workin’ the same was pretty lucky for me.”

“You would have done your best,” I say. “And I have no doubt you would have done well, ‘twere they more similar.”

“Ha! Try, yes, but ain’t sure I would have done that well.”

“No, I’m with Rarity on this one,” you say lazily and shoot me a smile as you reach out and touch my hand again. I can tell you’re feeling a slight buzz, but nothing more. We’ve reached a new rhythm, then.

That’s how it always is, isn’t it? That is how our dance works, vacillating between boldness and subtlety. Gods, its maddening that I can’t just ask you if your dance and the one in my head are even the same! Which steps are your cleverness and which are… whatever else! The skull is a prison for the mind.

Rainbow returns not long after to find you and I laying on her porch, you pointing up at stars and I wishing I could keep my eyes on you. Applejack whistles at her in a way I can only describe as uncouth and Rainbow Dash makes an obscene gesture and they both laugh, and as you pick yourself up halfway to say hello, I join you. Honestly, I’ll never understand how those two work.

Dash holds her stupid bottle of whiskey with triumph befitting a champion. “Got it! Hon, you grab a couple of shot glasses, and if you’re slow I’m just gonna start passin’ it around.”

“Hell, you might as well,” Applejack says and they share a laugh.

Shots. They’re more of a passtime of Rainbow Dash’s then mine, though you confessed University had been interesting time for you, so perhaps they’re more your speed as well.

Not that I’m going to say no. You always make sure to find me and clink our glasses. It’s a bit silly, but it’s also earnest, and I can’t help but indulge you every time. In truth I’d indulge you in almost anything, at least alone.

The conversation around us turns towards events in town. You and I’ve come back for the harvest festival, allegedly, tho I think we both came back more for each other and our old friends. Though, I have to admit as I finish off the first round that you may in fact be genuinely interested in it all in a sort of anthropological way.

“Weren’t you taking notes at some point on the towns traditions?” I ask you. The pleasant warmth in my cheeks is so nice. “Whatever happened to that?”

I hold up the little shotglass and then shake my head. “No, this is barbarous. Twilight, dear, we must raid our dear hosts abode for something to put this in.”

“Oh, the notes are still around. I’m still considering it,” you say and help me to my feet. We make our excuses and head inside.

I feel instantly different when the door closes behind us. A deep breath fails to steady me. My heart thunders like artillery in my throat. Why? Why the hell? But I know why.

You slide past me and walk ahead. “Applejack mentioned something about—“

Honestly, I only catch that much before I’m focused on the fact that we are finally briefly alone. I say something hopefully coherent about wanting a proper glass with some ice, and top it off with some half-considered joke about it being a more civilized option. In the kitchen you go searching and I lean against the counter, steadying myself.

“I’m really glad,” I blurt out.

“I know. You seem tense,” Twilight says. “I’m glad I can help. I’m here for you.” As if I didn’t know that. As if you weren’t always with me. I watch you gather two glasses and ice, unsure of what I even want to say.

“It feels… like breathing. I mean,” I begin but stop. You offer me a glass and of course, of course, you clink them together as soon as I take mine. Rolling my eyes, I continue. “Not that I was stifled or anything. Perhaps it’s akin to the feeling of relief one gets from canceling plans.”

“That’s a feeling I know well,” you say. “You’re handling this all really well. Better than I did, honestly.”

“Yours was a bit more distressing, dear. Mine was a farce.”

Still. Not a great track record for our group. Half of the marriages dissolved. My mother would be appalled. She probably was appalled regardless. I hadn’t talked to her since informing her of my new status as a free woman. She’d not been thrilled.

“I wouldn’t say that, well, okay, I’m sorry but he is a bit of an ass.”

“Delusional,” I correct with a growl. “Honestly. You know, he was convinced he was right to the point of paying for a cleric to come to my home and cast enough spells to fry me, and even then I swear the man isn’t convinced. As if I would sleep with any of his disgusting circle.”

They were repulsive, my former husbands friends. Truth be told, he was not that much better than his associates. What good qualities he had he had because of me, and we both knew it. I molded him, poured time and effort into him. His suits, tailored by my own hands. His connections, forged by and through me. He was a worm, and I made him a man to know!

I would have spit, but not even alcohol could make me do something that uncouth. “What a bastard. I’m glad to be on my own.”

You nod, and with a sad smile you reach out and clutch my hand. “Freedom can be wonderful, Rarity. Really, truly feeling free. It’s… dizzying, at first.”

“Dizzying?” I ask. I pointedly do not look down at our hands. I pointedly do not wish that your warm hand was touching my cheek. I do not think about anything but what you’re saying. That, and hurriedly taking a sip of whiskey, only to remember that none has yet been poured.

“Yes.. The, heh, the dizzying heights of freedom,” you intone, as if reciting something. Knowing you, you probably are. “I know people are telling you you have time, that you’re still young and can bounce back, and I don’t want to be one more person throwing true but platitudinous statements at you. Our circumstances are different, also. I know that.”

I let out a sigh. “A bit, yes.” I watch you close the cabinets with a cup of your own, and retrieve some ice for us both. “I figured you liked shots,” I say, hoping to pull you in another direction, a somewhat safer direction.

“I like what you like,” you say. “I figured I’d join you.”

“Right,” I say, helplessly and hopelessly. When did you learn to learn to outmaneuver me so deftly? When you take my hand and lead me back towards our friends, I am still off-balance, and I begin to suspect I may not recover in time. But I am less afraid than I am excited. Instead of the snake in my chest there is a warm, burning feeling. It’s a kind of good anxiety. A hungry, ravenous kind of anxiety, the kind before you turn the page of a riveting story or the kind before you open some sort of hidden diary that you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are not allowed to see.

As we return, listening to our own steps on the old creaking wood of Applejack’s family home, I can’t help but think of how we used to be—specifically when we were much younger, having a very different kind of harvest festival-tide experience.

Do you remember, Twilight, two summers before you received that junior fellowship with the academy? It was the year with the haunted house, and we all laughed at it. But we all went in, did we not, and we played at being afraid. Perhaps I would have noticed our friends being so close then, seen them coming even farther off than I did, but my eyes were only for you that night. In the darkness, with everyone looking everywhere except for you and I, we held hands and reveled in the secret communion.

And near the end, when one of those silly scares truly spooked us—remember that, it was one of the young men from town, I’ve quite forgotten which one—jumping at us from the shadows, and we ran, and we all stopped in the next room and caught our breath and we looked at each other and we laughed and laughed, and your cheeks were flushed and something about it made me feel feral and I forgot all decorum and laughed as hard as you did. I hope you remember the way we kept close after that, hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, and our faces were so close and I felt every single muscle in me strain to avoid kissing you. I knew you felt the same. I saw it in your flushed face in the passing shafts of light.

We are at the door now, and my hand is still tightly grasped in yours and there is a slight moment of panic as you reopen the door and pull me into the well-lit porch where our friends will see, and then I don’t care. And then I care again, far more than I should, far more than is rational. Was this already a loss of my practiced control? Why did I care? What was wrong with this? The moment where our hands parted, where we took a step away at just the last possible moment leaving the haunted house years and years ago, where we could not bear to look in each others eyes, where we transmuted a spark of worry and avoidance into some kind of game post-hoc, a shared fun secret and not a moment of honesty—all that, in the same moment as we push through the door and there I am, in the light with you, hand in hand.

You grab the Wild Pegasus from a smirking Rainbow and pour us both new glasses, getting in your little clink with delight, and in the process you entwine our arms for a blessed moment and I decide, what the hell, why not? This is normal. We drink at the same time and Applejack claps.

“Enthusiastic, Twi!”

“Hey, it’s been a long semester,” you say and throw me a wink.

We settle back on the steps, and I settle my heart. It feels more safe, yet also strangely less… exciting, to be here in the light, and not back in the darkened house, alone with you.

We’ve been finding ways to have little pockets of time together for years. Moments salvaged from busy days with friends, a quiet moment on the road, tea here or there, small letters left for each other in mailboxes and on reading desks.

I’d never done it with anyone before then, and I have not done it since. My husband I drank together, we talked, we schemed. But we never truly conspired the way you and I did, Twilight.

But you’ve been the one doing all the conspiring. I feel as if I should be contributing. I have been knocked off-kilter by life, but am not so disoriented that I cannot give as much as I take!

A few sips in, I lean on your shoulder. With a calculated yet genuine murmur more catlike than human, I cuddle close. “It’s been so long since I could just drink with friends,” I say to you, pitching my voice just a half-step higher.

And, because miracles are real, you reciprocate and put an arm around me. “Same!” you say, voice a bit louder than before. And for a heartstopping moment I’m convinced you’re about to kiss me or pull me into the crook of your neck or something, but you don’t, not yet. Maddening. Absolutely maddening. I manage another sip.

I think I once thought of what I do now as “taking liberties” before I thought better of it with age. No, I am merely enjoying the aesthetic experience of tasting the impossible. It is natural, normal, and fleeting to enjoy the warmth of your body and the sound of your voice so close to my ear. To feign weariness to enjoy laying on your shoulder, to play up my very real and growing intoxication to allow myself a smooth slide into daring innuendo. I admit, some of my crass speech at my former husband’s expense was a bit beyond the pale, but in all honesty I cannot be asked to care all that much, and neither you nor our friends made me.

But the night drags on and on, and soon I know that my acting is no longer an act. My mind is blurred and fogged. The conversation wanders from topic to topic, and when I can no longer keep up, I realize that the hour is very late.

Applejack suddenly stands and stretches, letting out a loud yawn. “Alright. I gotta be up at a reasonable hour in the mornin’. You staying up, Dash?”

She shakes her head, and then looks at me. “You two staying the night? I made sure the guest bed upstairs was ready, but one of you is going to have to take the couch.”

“You mean I bothered you into it,” Applejack says and kisses her cheek. “I suggest rock-paper-scissors, girls. But the couch ain’t so bad. I fall asleep on it mid-chapter some these days.”

And with that, they head inside, and Twilight and I are alone again under the stars.

As soon as the door closes, you hum and say softly, “Well, I suppose its only fair that you take the bed. You’ve had a long way to come.”

I shake my head. “As much as it pains me, dear, I couldn’t bear the idea of you exiled to some couch, no matter how much Applejack or her wife say that it is comfortable.”

“Only two choices,” you remind me. I take a sip to avoid answering. I try not to think of saying the obvious thing, the thing I very much want to say. Maybe you pick up on that. You mirror me, at any rate, and then you continue. “It’s too bad we’re so far from town.”

I nod. It is a bit of a walk. “We don’t have to decide right away,” I say, and then a bit breathlessly add, “We could just.. Stay up a bit longer.” When you cock your head at me, I swear that my face betrays the coiling feeling in my stomach. “I just want to be—to talk, you know, be in a friend’s presence for awhile. A friendly presence.” That isn’t losing its mind that I no longer am attached and locked into the fate of unbreakable marriage, my mind adds bitterly.

I expect a playful response, some push and pull as we try and talk ourselves into spending just a bit more time doing what we both know we want to do, but you just smile at me and say, “I’d like that a lot.”

We stand and head back inside. Rainbow’s footsteps creak above us and the pillow and folded blanket on the bed that I missed before now stare teasingly at me. We set them aside and lounge on either side of the couch, nursing what is left of the night’s whiskey. Or rather, I do. You were never quite as slow at this as I was, but your tolerance is higher.

“I know its a bit… gauche of me, Twilight,” I say languidly, letting myself simply splay across the couch in this odd moment. “But I rather wish the dissolution of my own relationship had been more like your own.”

You raise your eyebrows. “Oh?”

“Yes. Something liberatory and scandalous—in all the best ways, obviously. It was so messy, but that wasn’t the galling part. It was just so pathetic. Paranoid fool. Convinced that I was with someone else, complaining that I was sneaking off whenever I could. Honestly. I wish I had! I so wish I had.”

“Just for the drama?” you ask and tilt your glass slightly towards me.

“Could you even imagine it? It would have been delicious, truly, the web of intrigue I would have spun.”

“Spider Rarity, capturing them all,” you say, and lower your voice. Did you mean it to sound so…. Breathy? Or is that just the echo of my own lurid interest? “I could see you enjoying that, even if the targets of your schemes weren’t themselves very interesting. Unless they would be, I don’t know.”

“Hardly. I assure you, there is nothing so dull as a man who thinks he is quite important and that others should remember it. But such dullards are easy prey.” I blink and then look away, feeling suddenly as if I’ve said something wrong. “Not that I would know. You know me, Twilight. Bluster. I couldn’t do such things even if I tried.”

You just hum at me. “I think you have the ambition.”

“Yes, yes, but I’m simply not as coldblooded and ruthless a mistress of plots as I would like some to believe. Oh Twilight… I’m not much changed in all these years. I rather thought I would have changed more! Grown.”

“You have,” you say quickly.

“Grown complacent, perhaps,” I grumble.

You scoot closer and put a comforting hand on my leg for just a moment and I feel like I’m going to die right there, overwhelmed.

“Rarity,” you say, and the worry on your face melts through self-pity. I cough.

“I’m fine, I’m fine. I promise. Just a moment of doubt,” I say hurriedly.

“Maybe its good to stay the same in some areas,” you say, and then set your glass down on the coffee table. I do the same. You look into my eyes and I look into yours.

Deep breaths, Rarity. I know that look. You know I know that look, you simply must know. Its such an inviting look. It says, I’m right here. You could come closer. You could lay your head in this lap, on this shoulder, on this chest, under this chin. You could have this for a moment and retain your spotlessness. You could make a thousand excuses to keep the wall from falling brick by brick on your head.

I make every excuse. I’m tired, I’m sleepy, I’ve had a bit to drink, but I am not tired or sleepy and I am not drunk. I shove it all aside and swallow the fear and the exquisite excitement of something dangerous and slide over and you grin like a much younger you and my head is in your lap so fast I hardly remember it happening.

You play with my hair, and I don’t even for a second think to worry over my coiffure. It matter less than nothing compared to the ecstasy of being so close without restriction, in an activity that is normal but just not normal enough, right on the edge of what I could justify if I had to. Your fingers trace lines through my hair, curling it around your finger and then releasing.

It is indescribable. I feel exposed more surely than if I had been naked, though with a little internal start I find that no, I am decidedly not more exposed, I could imagine being more exposed. But I am, at least for now, just slightly vulnerable. Placed in harm’s way.

I say nothing. You say nothing. You touch my cheek, first “accidentally” and then quite obviously on purpose.

I am good. I’m so good. I’ve spent so long being as good as I can be, fitting so neatly into the prescribed avenues life was—is—will go, should go. Every principle and step along the way, I followed, in utter conventionality. Every excess and eccentricity was paid for with conventional success or lip service to the values of family and fortune. None of it has ever for even a moment made me feel like this. Of course it never could. I cannot explain it, either because I actually cannot or because I cannot afford to. Maybe it is just the forbidden aspect. The desire that cannot be fulfilled, being with you, in some way that I struggle to articulate or even to imagine.

Everything about you is so soft, Twilight. I feel like some sort of campaigner long from home sinking into a too-soft bed and being lost in it. Surely you must see this… this shamelessness and somehow pity me. I don’t even think I would mind that, to be a creature, to be pitied, if it were you doing the pitying.

“This is nice,” you say quietly. “You know, every time we meet up, I think you’ll look different, but you never do, not quite. For a moment, I think you do, but then no, there you are. Same old Rarity. Same new Rarity.” Your hand stops, hovering, pausing, and I wish it would not. I wish you would touch my lips with your thumb delicately, I hate myself for thinking it but I wish you would part my lips just slightly, to show you could. God, why do I feel this way? How does this happen?

“It is nice,” I manage. “It really is.”

“You’ve been brave all night,” you say. Your hand, your blessed hand, finally moves. It rests on my forehead for a moment, and then you pull it away. “But its just us. You can be honest.”

I sigh. “I am. I… I’m…” A deep breath. Another deep breath. “I don’t know what I am. I don’t know what to say. Am I sorry? I can’t say I am. Do I feel guilty? Perhaps a little. I could have… I don’t know, avoided all the mess. Somehow. Am I sad? I don’t think I am? I can’t tell what it is I feel. But I don’t care that he’s gone. About the part where he specifically is gone,” I add. You continue running your fingers through my hair and shatters my thoughts again. With truly, and I do mean truly Twilight—with absolutely herculean effort I regain my momentum. “I’m sad that my life’s comfortable certainties are gone. I didn’t like the certainties, but I am not happy they are gone.”

“Because they were safe. You understood them.”

“Yes,” I say. “Because I understood them and because finally, for the first time, people weren’t hemming me in on all sides, expecting and waiting and pushing. They left me alone. I had gotten over the finish line, they could afford to just let me breathe. So they thought,” I add and grimace.

You’re silent at this. I can see the wheels turning behind those beautiful eyes, Twilight.

I don’t blame you. You understand what I mean. We may have come from different “stock” in the estimation of power but very dead old patriarchs, but old ways die hard, and so do old expectations. Tradition and the continuity of the family are everything, more important than ambition or freedom. My parents had spent so long preparing me for settling down and having braces of children running around in every direction, and the best I could manage to pull the rudder of their vision was a married life in high society surrounded by money and the monied. That had taken years of pressure, to boot.

It wasn’t as if the idea of… pursuing other kinds of relationships were somehow inherently… it wasn’t as if they found such things distasteful in of themselves. The Thing Itself was not the problem, Twilight, you know that. It was the disconnect. We didn’t do that sort of thing, we didn’t go in for that kind of unconventional lifestyle. “Lifestyle” was and is a very pernicious word, I both commend and condemn whoever came up with that specific little trick.

We talked about it. Of course we did, when did we ever not talk about everything? Oh Rarity, don’t lie. Not here, not in your own mind. But we had talked about it. Your house is old and storied, if not particularly influential or rich, and there was the weight of centuries on your shoulders.

I don’t see it on you. You seem so unburdened.

“It’s scary to rewrite anything. If it’s scary to do with a paper, it can only be infinitely harder to do with your life. It can… it can be wonderful. I promise.”

The way you say that pierces the ecstatic peace.

“You… you’ve ah, you’ve dated since, haven’t you?” I say, or more honestly, croak like some sort of dying thing in your warm soft lap.

There it is. Rarity, you idiot. You absolutely idiotic, impulsive fool. Why would you bring this up. Why. When she withdraws to the safety of distance it is going to be agony. It’s too soon, you just started having this… whatever this safe but thrilling moment is.

You just nod. “I have. A few dates, a repeat. All women,” you add, as if that isn’t the moon, Luna forgive me this blasphemy, plucked out of the sky and falling quickly right on top of me.

“You… I… I, ah.” You look so concerned. Why do you look so godsdamned concerned! I have to stop it, “How has it been?”

“Freeing. I had a lot of long talks with my mom and dad. I had some nice dates. It’s been a good year and a half, Rares. I’ve been taking it slow. I would say it’s… like, I want to say it takes getting used to, and that’s sort of true, but it’s also not. It feels good and right.”

“It… that does sound nice.”

“Nothing serious,” you add. “Not yet. Maybe someday.”

My mouth feels dry. “Someday,” I echo. “Maybe someday.”

You stroke my cheek. “Thinking about it?”

“About you and—oh no you mean, doing that. Dating. Like that, I mean, myself and—“ I cough. “No, just… thinking in general.”

You chuckle as if this is funny and it absolutely is not funny. “You’d do marvelously in the local dating scene, you know. I…” There’s a split moment’s hesitation. “I don’t know if you swing the other way, but if you do…”

I feel myself short of breath. You wouldn’t. Would you? No. Would you?

“...Do you have any idea what some of these girls would do for the pinnacle of high femme?”

Glad I’m not mid-drink, I sputter. “Twilight!”

“I’m serious! You’re a—“ you’re laughing at me, Twilight, I swear before the stars themselves—“a rarity.”

I groan and swat at you, only for you to catch my hand and deftly redirect the momentum. Your fingers around my wrist are strong, but not tight. I’m reminded of a coiled spring, of the way a cat settles in before jumping. I rather like it, though I don’t have time to consider why.

“Seriously,” you say after a smug smile and another damnable wink. “We’ve… ahem. I mean. We haven’t really talked about it directly. You’ve hinted you might, maybe, if I’m not misunderstanding you. Which I could be. I don’t think I am, but I could be.”

“I… it hasn’t exactly been an option,” I say. “I mean. You know, spoken for.” Wonderful deflection, top form, no notes.

“Right. But like, in a general sense,” you say, and gently let my hand down. You don’t let my wrist go, you guide it. You simply have to be doing this on purpose.

“I have considered it. I mean. That’s fairly normal, so I’m told. I’ve thought about it.” A lot. Constantly. Specifically, even.

You nod. “You could try. You could at least consider it. Maybe… it could be time to try something new, even if only for a while.”

You’re so earnest. You can just say impossible things. You could just ignore the immovable wall, you say, as if you possessed some perfect knowledge beyond the ken of mortal man.

“I wouldn’t even know where to start courting a lady,” I say, looking away from you. “I know thirty isn’t that old, Twilight, but it’s also not like I’m starting fresh, either, you have to have some sort of runway into such a thing, surely.”

“Not really. You could start by asking someone if they want to have coffee somewhere nice.”

“You’re impossible, Twilight Sparkle.”

“I’m very reasonable, is what I am.” You yawn, and I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment. “Did we ever decide who had the bed?”

I shake my head, forgetting it is currently in your lap for a moment. “No. I was going to offer to take the couch, but I feel like you’ll say no.”

“You’d be right.” A pause. “Weren’t you staying at the old boutique?”

“Yes,” I say, and then I also pause.

In the back of my mind, I had been working this problem. Some ruthless part of me had been working every angle, figuring some way in which I might convince you to share that bed with me. Or the couch, honestly if I was throwing out decorum I could throw out comfort if it meant an extra few inches of proximity. But I could be sent off to my own bed. Maybe that was… no, the idea of whatever lurid and overbearing desire I have in me, in this house, under a friends roof? I’d never survive the mortification.

First, a bit of sadness but relief. I’ll simply head home. But then something else. My heartbeat in my throat again reminds me that you could come with me. We’d be so, so very alone. I could extend my time near you, lengthen the time I could gaze in your eyes and sneak very sincerely accidental touches.

“The guest bed is a bit small,” I say, as absolutely casually as I can. You raise your eyebrows. I feel exposed again. “I wouldn’t mind sleeping under my own roof.”

“Walking on your own would be a bit much,” you say slowly. “I could go with you.”

“And I have a lot of room. We just… leave a message on the kitchen counter and walk back into town. Maybe have a nightcap in my kitchen, or coffee, or something.”

You nod so seriously! And then you grin and I shiver a little, there’s something strange in your eye. “See? Not so hard,” you say, and I look on with confusion and then feel my face grow hot. “Sit up,” you say, and I swear I snap to attention. You let a hand fall down my back, or maybe it’s an accident, and rise and I follow you like a lovesick dog, and I feel so embarrassed and I have no idea why. You find the little whiteboard on the fridge and write a note and then take my hand. Our fingers intertwine and you pull me to you and then with you, towards the door and the night.

“Wouldn’t want you to get lost, it would be a shame,” you say quietly, as we leave the porch behind us.