Every Dress in Town

It had been a spontaneous impulse, or so Etoile had thought. She'd forgive her father to some extent, but that extent did not include listening to him about marriage. To show that, she'd had a sudden thought, maybe she should try convincing Cornet that marriage didn't have to be a life goal. Sure, Cornet was a hopeless romantic and daydreamer, and she'd been totally convinced that she loved a guy she'd only spent a couple of minutes with. Etoile still tried. The words and emotions the song brought out were things she never intended to say, but then Cornet's hopelessly dreamy starry eyes were on her, and, well…

Well spontaneous songs from the heart did turn out to be the most memorable.

That did lead to a problem. Etoile knocked on the door to Cornet's house and waited. While some part of her was glad to be out of backwards hick town of Orange Village and in the fashionable modern city of Mothergreen, she had to admit it was nostalgic being back. This little clearing in front of Cornet's house was where they had once played every day; even the weathered old well was the same.

Thinking about it, Etoile could recall being jealous of Cornet living in a beautiful big old house like this. Of course, now Etoile lived in a bigger house, a grander one. And she had plans to make herself rich enough to buy an even better one for herself, more fit for who she was. This house seemed small now, but it was still rather lovely. Maybe something in a similar style?

Cornet answered the door, dressed in her usual country bumpkin style (well… it was rather cute on her). "Ah, hello Etoile," she said with a nice smile. "It's a surprise to see you here. Want to come in?"

"Not today, I'm here to bring you over to Mothergreen," Etoile said, waving her fan off vaguely in that direction. "I could have simply sent a servant over to fetch you, but I felt generous enough to walk all the way over here and all the way back to make certain."

She did have the cutest reactions, even this one of disbelief. "Uh, right, how generous… though I am glad to see you. Why are we going there?"

"Well, it's about the ball," she said, tapping her fan against her chin.

"The ball?" Cornet asked, puzzled.

"Of course, weren't you paying attention?" she chided her. "The winner of the Miss Marl contest this year gets to dance with the prince at the ball being held for his birthday in just a couple of days."

"Oh, right," she said, starting to blush.

Etoile fanned herself. "Technically, you're supposed to wear the dress you wore during the contest for the ball, which means you'd have to don that ridiculous bear suit again."

"Huh?" Her eyes were wide and her blush spread.

Smiling, she patted Cornet's shoulder. "But don't you worry, I've already taken care of that. I convinced some very important people that the costume was all the result of a certain prank by a mysterious joker whose name starts with 'Ku' and ends with 'ruru'."

"Hey!" Kururu flung a paper fan from wherever she was hiding inside.

Cornet caught it before it got Etoile across the face. "Well that is true," she said.

Etoile nodded. "Thus they agreed that you may wear something else, something more appropriate to the occasion."

"Thanks, Etoile, you didn't have to do that but it's wonderful that you did," Cornet said, blissfully innocent.

Oh, what now? It was so tempting to tease her some more… "No, I had to do it," Etoile said, putting on a haughty air. For one thing, she didn't want to have Cornet embarrassed in front of so many people. But it wouldn't do to tell her that. "I would have been perfectly fine with it if you were still obsessive over that dull cookie-cutter of a prince. But since you will be coming to the ball with me, as my partner, we have to make sure you are gorgeous enough to be a proper match to me."

"Oh," Cornet said, although for some reason she smiled.

"Not too gorgeous, since I don't want you outshining me, but to shine in your own adorable fashion at my side," Etoile said, starting to ramble as she tried to explain herself. "I mean, you should be seen as beautiful, but everyone knows that I am the true goddess of beauty in our kingdom, so you just need to be, um, differently beautiful? But not embarrassingly so. Something that matches your stellar voice so that when we declare ourselves apart with another duet, everybody around us just swoons."

Then Cornet laughed. "So you actually don't want me to embarrass myself unless I'm trying to be with someone other than you."

"That's not it!" Etoile said in a huff, trying to cover over her own embarrassed blush. "Anyhow, the point stands that you need a better dress. And since your efforts got that bear costume when I bought up every dress in town before the contest, I figured, why not, my closet is your closet now. We'll just pop on over to my place and pick out the dress you should have had for the contest, one that makes others see just how worthy you are of being another Miss Marl."

"Wow, you really are generous, Etoile," she said, sincerely glad about that.

She wondered briefly if she could be even more attractive if she was more honest like Cornet. "W-well, of course, I said so much, didn't I? So come on, let's not delay! We might already take up all day seeing what would be best."

"All day?" Cornet asked. "How big is your closet?"

"Very," Etoile said.

Etoile did not have a walk-in closet. She had a warehouse closest with its own walk-in side closets sorted by shoes, purses, and other accessories. Even her fan collection had its own dedicated space. "Th-this is bigger than your bedroom!" Cornet said in surprise.

"It's like a fashionista's heaven in here!" Kururu said, going over to look at some purple dresses.

"Isn't it?" Etoile said, smiling and happy to be here. Or, maybe happy in having her here? "My parents let me do whatever I liked in this part of the house, so I kept expanding this closet until I finally got something befitting my wardrobe. I could spend days in here putting together new outfits."

"Or months," Cornet said. "But Etoile, you always wear the same pink dresses. I never see you in any of the rest of these colors, as many as you have."

She huffed and put her hands on her hips. "They are not the same dresses! See?" She patted the transparent overdress that went over the main pink dress. "I have the lotus-inspired set today, pleated to look like that elegant flower. The bottom hem is a comfortably off the ground enough that I don't have to worry about getting dirt from roads around Orange Village on it, and it shows off these super cute ribbon boots that are also good for travel while looking spectacular. All the other ones are over here," she gestured to the left, where pink dresses of all kinds spread from the door (on the right side of the room) and around the corner to where the mirrored dressing room was.

"But they're all pink in similar styles, so most of them look the same," Cornet said.

Kururu flew back over. "Yeah, to the casual eye, you look super lazy with copies of the one same outfit, even down to the fan."

"It's not the same to a fashionista," Etoile said, although she seemed to be trying to keep her pride. "It's just, even with all the options I picked up, even with all the very elegant and glamorous styles I've tried, only a very few styles actually accentuate my beauty to its maximum potential. And, well, pink is just my perfect color! I am a classic princess beauty of long blond hair, blue eyes, and flawless skin; pink is absolutely the best color for me."

"I guess it would be weird to see you in any other color," Cornet said. "But it does seem lazy, so maybe switch up styles more often? It'd make you stand out more on special occasions like the contest or ball if you wear your perfect style then, and do others on normal occasions."

"Maybe," she said, then turned to her fully. "But the point of today is to draw out your ultimate style so we are two glamorous stars who outshine even the prince at the ball."

"That seems kind of rude on his birthday," she said.

"Oh, but let's do it, let's!" Kururu said in excitement. "You are Miss Marl now! He'll be happy enough to get to see two beauties there, but then he can't have either of you! Isn't that just delicious?"

"Absolutely!" Etoile said, in high spirits again. "Let's make you fashionable, Cornet!"

While Etoile was certain of her own best color, she seemed indecisive of what Cornet's best color would be. Maybe a deep emerald green, or a bright perky orange? Or this brown one because sometimes simple was best, oh no, that was far too plain. Or the blue, or the red, but definitely not the pink, no; they didn't want to go in looking like twins. Sometimes it felt like Cornet had barely come out of the dressing room that Etoile decided the dress wasn't as great as it seemed.

And of course it all broke out into song at some point. It was a horribly sloppy song that needed a lot of work before Cornet felt comfortable sharing it with anyone else. With Kururu and Etoile helping and the flurry of fashion trying to be made, it was tremendously fun. Cornet remembered singing with Etoile being this fun until the past few years when her pride got enormously inflated. As she saw that her best friend and now sweetheart was still under that ego somewhere, it was like returning to the past.

Etoile was certainly having fun, laughing after the song was over. "This had to be done, but I didn't expect it to be so fun! It's almost better than when I got to clear all the racks and own them all."

Maybe if she got to see this as more fun than spending money selfishly, she'd be on her way to being a better person? "Yeah, it is great! Maybe you should take over the dress shop and help other girls find their perfect dresses. You are the top fashionista around here."

"Hmm, do you think that would really work?" she asked, looking thoughtful. "I do have all these dresses that are barely worn, if worn at all. And if they would actually pay me for critiquing their styles and getting them into much better shape," she cackled in a worrying fashion. "Oh Cornet, that's brilliant! Then I could unload most of these dresses and accessories, making a tidy little profit off them."

"Well you can't be too harsh with them when you're trying to make them look and feel beautiful," Cornet said. "I can take it because I'm tough and I know you have good intentions behind it all, but other girls could be deeply hurt if you're so blunt."

Etoile tapped her fan against her chin. "Hmm, I guess. Business does take a certain balance between flattery and honesty, I've seen that. Perhaps you can deal with keeping them cheered up and I can handle the critiques. We can deal with that later, though, we still haven't found a good dress for you."

Feeling like she should bring up something important to her, Cornet said, "There's been some nice ones, but I think you're too attached to the outfit needing to be a single color. You always bring out things like a green dress, green shoes, and green necklace, maybe with some gold accents. But I like colorful things that are more than one hue."

"But single colors are so striking," Etoile said. "Using multiple colors ends up looking so busy, or childish, or, or really like a country bumpkin."

"I am something of a country bumpkin, if what you always say is true," she said, pointing out her own colorful clothes hung on a chair near the door.

She got embarrassed at that, hiding her face with her fan. "Well, I admit that you are very cute with your country styles. It's just, I'm a true city girl even if I was born in the country, so I wanted to keep away from anything country. I keep most of the country styles over in back when I end up picking them up too. It's just, I'm not sure any of it would be appropriate to a castle ball."

There was a good chance that she hadn't looked through them since buying them. "Let's take a look, then."

Over in back, Cornet was happy to find styles that she was more used to. There were gingham dresses, cute cowgirl style dresses, lace-trimmed dresses that were like what women around her village used for their best clothes, and more styles that did seem a little out of place for Mothergreen. But they were cute, more comfortable looking than others she'd tried, and most important, colorful. Most of them appealed to her far more than the rest of Etoile's wardrobe.

Including one that was whole range of oranges, yellows, and reds, all arranged in thin vertical stripes and edged in white lace. "The shawl that was with it is more like a grandmother's style," Cornet said. "But if I replace it with a big waist ribbon, and ribbons in my hair, that'll work, right?"

"Um, that is really bright and perky, like you are," Etoile said, looking her over closely. "I've never worn that one because it doesn't suit me. But it does suit you wonderfully, like a gorgeous country flower… oh yes, let's ditch the shawl and go with ribbons. I should have some good ones to match that."

And Etoile did make good on her word, letting Cornet take a few of the other dresses to try wearing around instead.

"So, what happened after that… well, it's clear, isn't it? We were the stars of the ball, no question about it. The prince came off like a generically decorated cookie prince; handsome but nothing as divine as my sweet Cornet. When the two of us sang together of finding happiness with each other, the prince was super gracious and said he'd accept that. But you could just tell he was seething with jealousy underneath the surface that us two goddesses of beauty were out of his reach. Anyone would be, right?

"Oh, but there was the awful disruption from that horrendous old maid Marjoly. She declared Prince Ferdinand to be so handsome that he had to be hers. But, she messed up her spell and turned him into one of those short cat-people. White fur, and still dressed in his generic princely get-up."

"It was pretty cute."

"Well yes, but not as cute as you. Marjoly freaked and said that she didn't want some furry, which did tick off the prince and get him to attack her. Oh, but the weird cat-loving girl Myao absolutely adored Ferdinand like that. Marjoly said that she was going to declare war on Marl Kingdom, for her own dumb mistake! Myao ditched her right away, as she should have all along, and declared she'd follow the new cat prince everywhere."

"And Ferdinand asked us to accompany him and Myao on a journey to defeat Marjoly and save the kingdom, since he'd seen how well we both fought in the Leadership part of the Miss Marl contest."

"Right, he knew there was no way that he was going to stop that old hag on his own, so he asked the best ladies around to accompany him. And Myao, she won't let us forget her."

"She and Ferdinand did get together over our journey together, and they're very happy with each other. They're an adorable couple."

"If you can call that adorable. I call it trying too hard. So here we are now, heroines of the kingdom and new owners of the most fantastic fashion boutique in the world. We're here to help everyone find their ideal styles; I'm the expect and hard critic, and she's the encouraging softie to make everything balanced and fun."

"It is fun, even if I often have to step in when she starts going overboard and the customer seems like she'll burst out in tears."

"Not everyone can take the truth like you can, sweetheart. Oh yeah, and we couldn't figure out how to undo that enchantment until Ferdinand decided he didn't want to go back to being human. Now we're ruled over by a cat-person king and a crazy cat lady sorceress queen."

"There are so many cats around Mothergreen now."

"But hey, at least you can't call Ferdinand a generic cookie anymore! That's a definite improvement for everyone. But if you want more of that story, you're gonna have to pay for it."

"Etoile!"

"Aw come on, Cornet, our free time is valuable and they should feel honored we told them as much as we did."

"It's not something that needs to be charged for."

"But it is a really good story. Now, are you here for the story, or are you interested in unleashing your true inner beauty to the outside world?"