The Princess

Rarity had waited all her life to be kidnapped. But tonight, all the other ponies of Ponyville writhed in their beds. If the School Master took them, they'd never return. Never lead a full life. Never see their family again. Tonight these ponies dreamt of a red-eyed thief with the body of a beast, come to rip them from their sheets and stifle their screams.

Rarity dreamt of princes instead.

She had arrived at a castle ball thrown in her honor, only to find the hall filled with a hundred suitors and no other mares in sight. Here for the first time were stallions who deserved her, she thought as she walked the line. Mane shiny and thick, muscles taut through shirts, skin smooth and tan, beautiful and attentive like a princes should be. But just as she came to one who seemed better than the rest, with brilliant blue eyes and ghostly white mane, the one who felt like Happily Ever After . . . a hammer broke through the walls of the room and smashed the princes to shards.

Rarity's eyes opened to morning. The hammer was real. The princes were not.

"Father, if I don't sleep nine hours, my eyes look swollen."

"Everypony's prattling on that you're to be taken this year," her father said, nailing a misshapen bar over her bedroom window, now completely obscured by locks, spikes, and screws. "They tell me to shear your mane, muddy up your face, as if I believe in all this fairy-tale hogwash. But no one's getting in here tonight. That's for sure." He pounded a deafening crack as exclamation.

Rarity rubbed her ears and frowned at her once lovely window, now something you'd see in a witch's den. "Locks. Why didn't anyone think of that before?"

"I don't know why they all think it's you," he said, brown mane slicked with sweat. "If it's goodness that School Master fellow wants, he'll take Mrs. Cake's daughter."

Rarity tensed. "Pumpkin Cake?"

"Perfect foal that one is," he said. "Brings her father home-cooked lunches at the mill. Gives the leftovers to the poor hag at town square."

Rarity heard the edge in her father's voice. She had never once cooked a full meal for him, even after her mother died.

Naturally she had a good reason (the oil and smoke would clog her pores) but she knew it was a sore reason. This didn't mean her father had gone hungry. Instead, she offered him her own favorite foods: mashed beets, broccoli stew, boiled asparagus, steamed spinach. He hadn't ballooned into a blimp like Pound's father, precisely because she hadn't brought him home-cooked lamb fricassees and cheese soufflés at the mill. As for the poor hag in the town square, that old crone, despite claiming hunger day after day, was fat. And if Pumpkin Cake had anything to do with it, then she wasn't good at all, but the worst kind of evil.

Rarity smiled back at her father. "Like you said, it's all hogwash." She swept out of bed and slammed the bathroom door. She studied her face in the mirror. The rude awakening had taken its toll. Her waist-long mane, the color of spun moderate indigo, didn't have its usual sheen. Her Moderate azure eyes looked faded, her luscious white lips a touch a dry. Even the glow of her creamy white coat had dulled. But still a princess, she thought. Her father couldn't see she was special, but her mother had. "You are too beautiful for this world, Rarity," she said with her last breaths. Her mother had gone somewhere better and now so would she.

Tonight she would be taken into the woods. Tonight she would begin a new life. Tonight she would live out her fairy tale.

And now she needed to look the part.

To begin, she rubbed fish eggs into her coat, which smelled of dirty hooves but warded off spots. Then she massaged in pumpkin puree, rinsed with goat's milk, and soaked her face in a mask of melon and turtle egg yolk. As she waited for the mask to dry, Rarity flipped through a storybook and sipped on her cucumber juice to keep her coat dewy soft. She skipped to her favorite part of the story, where the wicked hag is rolled down a hill in a nail-spiked barrel, until all that remains is her bracelet, Rarity felt her thoughts drift off to cucumbers. Suppose there were no cucumbers in the woods? Suppose other princesses had depleted the supply? No cucumbers! She'd shrivel, she'd wither, she'd-

Dried melon flakes fell on the page. She turned to the mirror and saw her brow creased in worry. First ruined sleep and now wrinkles. At the rate she'd be a hag by afternoon. She relaxed her face and banished thoughts of vegetables.

As for the rest of Rarity's beauty routine, it could fill a dozen storybooks (suffice it to say it included goose feathers, pickled potatoes, and cream of cashews). Two hours of rigorous grooming later, she stepped from the house in a breezy purple dress, sparking glass slippers, and mane in an impeccable curl. She had one last day before the School Master's arrival and planned to use each and every minute to remind him why she, and not Pound Cake or Pumpkin Cake or Fleur De Lis or any other any impostor, should be kidnapped.

(Rarity might be out of character, don't know?)