In the Lissome Light
By Frickadilly
Ultimately, Rarity decided, she had no regrets about hosting the New Year's Party.
Festivities were generally left to Pinkie, but last night had proved unequivocally that Rarity was made for the duties of Silvester; for warping the remains of Christmas into some sort of quick freshness in which they could topple off the end of the year.
And she enjoyed it, she reminded herself. She enjoyed anything she was good at. She enjoyed weaving the ragged sprigs of holly, ivy and mistletoe into the hopbine; stripping the fur tree of its decorations, sweeping up the pine needles and adding them to the potpourri. Prizing apart what was left of the Christmas toffees, cannibalizing fridge-hardened feasts and reassembling them on cocktail sticks. Mounting the fondue fountain in the centre of her coffee table amongst her twinkling glasses, and the half a dozen bottles of cherry and juniper wine she'd redeemed from the dust of her cellar (renowned as it was, she was adamant that Pinkie's extravagant cocktail-making be confined to the kitchen).
Her glass conservatory extension had been fitted that summer, and amongst its many advantages was the newfound sanctity of her creations. Hosted predominantly in her studio, her last party had been a drunken blur, cosy but surreal, characterised by mannequins in various half-finished ensembles looming over you and stopping you in your tracks.
The conservatory was refreshing, her wind chimes and spider plants offering scenery that didn't pander to the dregs of Christmas. She had stuck Zecora's incense sticks into the pots beneath them, and the whole place had smelt like a spa in some exotic land and almost made one forget the prospect of two more months of cripplingly cold, festive free winter.
Rarity craned her neck back over her chaise longue so her that her glassy eyes beheld the one mannequin that hadn't been heaved to the back of the studio. It had been a brave act keeping it on show, but the extension had offered it a permanent home, and she hadn't been prepared to evict it. On this particular mannequin was strapped a dilapidated old saddle, at least two sizes too big for it. Staring at that saddle was like staring at all her summers, strung together after being picked and lived. And then she'd feel old, not least because she was indeed a little older than her best friends, with the exception of Fluttershy.
Fluttershy had arrived at the party with Soarin, and although her attendance was as temperate as usual, their newly established relationship was the talk of the town. Rumours surrounding them were already particularly drastic in Cloudsdale, but as far as the Ponyville citizens were concerned, this appearance meant that he was officially courting her. Rarity had immediately apprehended the monumental social significance of this, and was frustrated when Fluttershy had declined her offer to get her dressed up before the party.
"Oh, no thanks. I'm stopping by at Soarin's before heading to yours."
She smiled sweetly as Rarity scoffed. "But darling, that route is completely out of your way! Have him come here at seven; I'd imagine we'll have you looking smashing by then. It's down to him that half of Ponyville will be there with all eyes on you. I insist you accept my help!'
And then Fluttershy had blushed, tipped her head and flitted her eyes up in a way that momentarily disclosed something fundamentally mature in the sentimental Pegasus.
"I'm going home with him tonight after the party and I need to drop off a few things beforehand. Silly really, you'd think I'd have enough of my stuff round there by now!"
Rarity was stunned. She hadn't thought for a second that Fluttershy was actually sleeping with him. At which point she had to remind herself that it was no longer the age of Princess Platinum; Rarity's upbringing had been somewhat traditional, but it was commonly accepted that many ponies would pursue romantic relationships for years before considering marriage.
She is a Pegasus after all.
She blinked, chastising herself for the thought. Shocking. She had never known herself to be such a racist pig. And she wasn't, she maintained stiffly.
But Rarity found herself staring at the elegant skeletal framework of those wings, and as if it had always been obvious, she could hardly think of her friend as anything else.
"Besides," Fluttershy added, "It's your party Rarity. Hearsay aside, you should be the star, and I would never wish to outshine you. See you tonight." She trotted off.
It had been around Eight when Fluttershy's beaming face had graced the stipple of party guests, shortly followed by the strong masked muzzle of her boyfriend. Next to him, the pale lemon pony seemed very small, and Rarity was faintly reminded of their collective femininity; colourful as she and her friends were in personality and prospects, this they shared in common. Seeing Fluttershy, small and exact, in the company of a prize stallion, suggested a certain poverty in that. Rarity nodded to the new guests sweetly from the other side of the room, and swiftly jumped back into her eloquent small-talk with Daisy and Bonbon.
But Fluttershy was her best friend, and the nature of parties saw their company collide more than once over the course of the night, until sufficient alcohol ensured that Rarity once again felt content around the Pegasus, who was just too sweet and understanding to vilify on account of her personal life.
Still, Rarity found her drunken self inquiring a little too excessively about matters with Soarin, and had to restrain herself from asking the more explicit questions that came to mind - have you had sex round yours? Can your pets hear you at it upstairs? What's Angel's position on the whole thing? She even contemplated having a little word in Rainbow Dash's ear, knowing that she, when drunk, was easily obnoxious enough to ask. At this point Rarity found herself once again, if less efficiently, condemning her own spitefulness. That would be positively Machiavellian of me, she thought. At least I know what that means. Roughly. Fluttershy wouldn't know at all. Twilight would. But then, Twilight couldn't pull Billy Jack...Jack Billy...Jack. And he pulls everyone.
"Ahem." Fluttershy ventured coyly, having at this point sidestepped many a dubious question. "I like the saddle on the mannequin over there. I've seen it a couple of times before but never thought to ask about it. Did you make it? I like it."
Rarity couldn't decide if Fluttershy was stupid for considering she hadn't made something on one of her mannequins, or stupid for considering she had made something so plain and ugly. Paradoxes aside, she was suddenly immensely grateful to talk about the crudely formed saddle she'd accommodated since her early adolescence alongside creations that were arguably genius. When the numerous other guests had asked about it, she'd told them that it was a rustic ornament to combat the extravagance of her own creations. After all, I wouldn't want anyone to think that this night was a fashion campaign. And then everyone had praised her graciousness and artistic tact. But when Fluttershy asked, and stared at her with her perfectly innocent, perfectly jaded face, Rarity was ready to warp it with the truth.
"WELL Darling, that is a story." Her horn glowed as she beckoned her glass of cherry wine and led the dregs to her gullet. The glass wobbled as she set it down on the table with a dangerous jolt. "You see when I was younger, I had this boyfriend. He was older than me, but my talents were such that I merited attention beyond that of the toe-rags our age." She was well aware that Soarin was one of these so called toe-rags.
"We were together for seven months. I had an increasingly busy schedule with my blossoming success, but I would often come to meet him after my local fashion shows..." Her voice faltered, signifying a moment where drunken frivolity slipped into a chasm of the ever-running, ever-pretty past, and Rarity was swept up by it. "There was this one day...I remember it was sunset, and the orchards all looked different because I was younger and I didn't know them so well. I'd just finished a breakthrough show at the high school. Their praises were singing in my eyes, so I felt like I was punting downstream instead of running uphill. Or flying, if flying were as effortless as some of you Pegasi make it look." Rarity took a breath.
"Anyway, he was there, at the top of that hill as usual, finishing off his chores. Even at that distance he was...inimitable. His long shadow swept over me every so often as he went this way and that. Its chill reminded me of his size up close, and made me think of the starry night that would follow, and hope that it would look like my diamond dresses. That might have been the inspiration for them. Anyway, he finished his various errands and wandered up to me. He greeted me with my name. Rarity, from the back of his throat. The only way he knew how to say it. He asked if I wanted to go in the barn, like usual. I said I'd rather see his house, and he said that his grandma was still saying no girls. I tried to convince him that it was worth the risk...but then he gave me that curious thousand-mile look of his, as though he were staring directly at the sun, and told me I was pretty. Real pretty. I laughed. I said, 'so have you only just noticed?'. I don't think he quite understood I was teasing. At one point he asked if I'd ever touched a girl like a boy. I said no, but he seemed to think this plausible because I was always 'dressin em up'. A friend of his had suggested that." Rarity sighed a little. "As if he didn't know me better.
"Anyway, we went into the barn and kissed, because that's all we did, and I asked if he was coming to my End of Season show the following week. He said 'I don't know where it is.' I laughed and told him he was useless, and that I would of course provide him with directions. So he could come. I said, 'then you'll come.' And he said 'I got nothing to wear.' And of course I laughed and told him that only the models were dressing up. I looked where he was looking, out into the night, to the dirty old straw beneath us, to my very own flank, then back outside again. I mean to say, I figured he probably felt terribly inadequate in the face of my success and the comparative...refinement of my regular company. But if he made the effort then that didn't matter at all.
"I thought all these things, in the barn there, with him, and the dark outside and the strange noises between the trees. My eyes had rested on his saddle for some reason; Celestia knows my head was somewhere else entirely. I grabbed his saddle, just on some violent generous impulse I think, and said 'oh let me take that old thing for you, it's so tatty and falling apart, I'll work my magic on it, you'll see! You can pick it up any time next week!' He gave me a look, but I didn't really see it, because I was already trotting off into the night, staring at the sky to distract myself from the danger of the orchards in the dark, and thinking about all the things I'd change about the saddle..."
Her voice trailed away when she suddenly remembered that her story went nowhere. She caught sight of Fluttershy looking at her with faint concern, before the Pegasus brightly obliged her. "Oh look, Lyra's going to play!"
Soarin sauntered over. "Great party Rarity. Now, would a certain Madame honour me with a dance?" Fluttershy dipped her head, semi-embarrassed, and they withdrew. From what little Rarity had associated with the uncouth Wonderbolt, she'd never thought she would hear him say anything like that. But of course, Rarity knew that if he could make the shyest pony in all Equestria dance with him in front everyone, then it only made sense that she brought out the best in him.
The mannequins were arranged in two outward-inclining lines at the back of the studio, and Lyra occupied the space where the two lines met. The area in front of her served as a stage for Fluttershy and Soarin, who advanced towards it and stood opposite each other. Lyra had started playing Cosmia, and Fluttershy nestled her muzzle into the crook of Soarin's neck. Leaning on one another, the couple began to circle an imaginary axis between them.
Water were her limbs, fire was her hair,
See the moonlight caught her eye,
And she rose through the air.
Having built up a little momentum, they took flight, forgetting Rarity's house entirely as they wove in and out of each other on effortless glides and twirls. The vague indications of ceiling were lost in the haze of darkness that seemed to flake around them like black petals. They never took their eyes off one another.
Well if you see true light, then this is my prayer...
...Will you call me when you get there?
Rarity shortly became bored of looking at both of them, and found herself staring at her mannequins behind, made visible as petering peach phantoms amongst the string of Christmas lights haphazardly twisted between them. Her tea light lanterns had been brought in from the conservatory and distributed on the floor, and Rarity wondered if the littered shards of light were how the stars looked to Pegasi when they flew high enough and were this much in love. And then she thought about how the cheer of her crowd that summer's day had rendered him so obviously not there, at which point she had decided that the next time she would see him would be when he stopped by to collect his saddle.
And yet upon mounting that great alien thing in her house, and feeling like it was his very skin she'd ripped off his back and stolen, for all he'd cared to give it to her, she dared not sew up a single hole of its tough, sun-jaded surface, paralysed by the notion of vulnerability that came with piercing it and heaving together the slack, leering lips of inadequacy with the innumerable tug of a thread. The faceless white mannequin had stared at her through the shrieking silence, and she felt like it was her very passion screaming as it burned in an inferno of plush self-preservation. At a loss of what to do, she'd shoved the thing into a corner; when he came to collect it she could tell him she fell behind - it was no priority of hers, after all.
Can you hear me, will you listen?
Don't come near me, don't go missin'.
And in the lissome light of evenin',
Help me cosmia, i'm grievin'.
In her drunken daze she teetered back to the present party, and vaguely registered the background mannequins on which her eyes had been dully resting. They didn't stare upwards at the glamorous couple like every one of her guests, but straight ahead like her...at her. It was this dark, alternative audience that drooled with her endless giving, forever fully subject to her torrent of talent and beauty, and forever staring at her with absolute indifference. And with equal stoicism, she found herself staring back for once, as she thought of her faintly hopeful walk in the orchards a month after her End of Season show, the sweaty bare back of her boyfriend needling through the gently blowing trees that had made her pain deft and feathery as she stood there, not needing to look past them to know that he was making love to Miss Woodland Stone, having never come back for his saddle.
The closing notes of the song saw her memory fray and end, and she remembered nothing of what happened after, if anything happened other than the death of another year, until the guests began to trickle out into the night, sending her various flocks of thanks that went right over her head. Applejack hollered from behind her and she turned, finding the farm pony standing at the back of the conservatory.
"Hey Rarity! Don't tell me this here saddle's Big Mac's! Sure you've had this old thing for years haven't ya?"
"Indeed it is, Applejack." Billyjack 'Big' Macintosh had not attended the party. "Did he get the invitation I sent him do you know?"
"Oh yeah, but 'course he'd rather go up to Appleloosa and get pickled with Braeburn. Y'ask me that's the best place for him."
Rarity bent her head to nod, but didn't manage to lift it up again.
At least not until this morning, when the residual phantoms of the night were withdrawing, and the clutter appeared to set. Rarity propelled herself over and faced it. The clock said Seven Thirty, and a thin skin of light had spread over the saddle from a break in the undrawn curtains. Rarity's stomach complained, and her entire wretched being seemed to hang on the ache in her head, as she approached the coffee table and half-heartedly fed herself some left-over crackers and caviar, the latter of which was in ample supply, because no pony really liked to eat fish eggs. On that note, she remembered the smoked artichoke in the fridge, and knew that she ought to eat it before it went bad. She'd just have it with the crackers, she thought, but the crackers were stale, and torpid as she felt, she was forced to admit this wasn't adequate. So with a sigh, she wandered to the kitchen, toasted some bread and mixed herself a White Russian.
No sooner had she put the kettle on when the doorbell chimed, much to her confusion because the post didn't come on New Year's day and anyone in Ponyville who wasn't hideously hung over would have only got up to work. She supposed then, that it was either a special visitor or some special post. However, as she entered the boutique and her front door came into view, the letterbox flapped and a slip of card fell to the floor, and by the time she had opened the door, whoever had called had gone.
She sat in the garden that dewy, sunny morning, having dried the bistro table with a swift spell and summoned a cushion. She breakfasted on chilled toast with artichoke, cream cheese and a dash of lime juice squeezed from the ragged mulch of Pinkie's cocktail leftovers, sipping her White Russian and Black coffee with sombre alternation. She knew that her hangover would be all but gone by ten, by which point she would be showered and blow-dried, and by eleven her house would be spotless. Then she could start on Fluttershy's wedding dress. It would be a late spring-time wedding, pre-planned but confirmed last night, no doubt after she had gone home with him.
So until the call of duty summoned her from the remains of her breakfast, Rarity was left with a few hours to watch the milky light of dawn smear itself shallow chasing Sweet Apple Acres into its timeless horizon, and contemplate how once again her crushed life unfurled like a paper lily, and wonder if the best things she would ever have would be what she would give herself.