Rarity was almost certain the marefia wouldn’t burn her house down. But not completely certain.

The shades were drawn and pinned shut, except for the one window facing the road which she would periodically peak through. She had convinced herself she was spending more time working on putting a freshly-bedazzled collar onto a gem-studded tux than looking at the window from her work bench. It was just a nice view--that was all. It gave off a nice light. It put her in a working mood.

And she was supposed to hang a big banner advertising the sale outside! How could she do that if the marefia was waiting for her outside? She had access to neither long poles nor other ponies to do it for her. She even tried consciously procrastinating, but that only yielded a good record being magically lowered onto the gramophone in the corner of the room at the wrong time.

“In a sentimental mood,” she hummed. “I’m within a world so heavenly...”

She was right, in a way. This was a sort of heaven. She could have picked a work song--Work Song, perhaps, or Sixteen Tons. Something to get her angsty and broody and jumpy. Something to get her in the mood to hurt herself running her hooves through her sewing machine or stabbing herself with pins (though to her dismay she bloodied her hooves getting all those curtains shut, so that suffering was pretty much pointless). But for the life of her she couldn’t stop the record from floating from the bottom of the pile, upsetting the two dozen or so records she kept beside her alphabetical catalogue for spontaneous occasions like this. Sometimes it was nice to be the pony everypony wanted you to be. Emotional. Royal. Purple? Blue. Ella Fitzmareald. A true artist. Ugly as a sack of potatoes with legs--but then again, Rarity was no Ella Fitzmareald.

She trailed off. The marefia wasn’t waiting outside with marelotov cocktails. Noir didn’t do that kind of thing--not anymore. Not to ponies like Rarity. Other ponies got whacked and shivved and shanked and faded and erased and taken care of and--killed, but Rarity was not one of them. Worry would turn her hair grey. What was the use? She was alone now. The house was empty. Sweetie Belle was with her parents. The town outside was asleep. It was--what, six thirty? Six forty? Nopony was awake to touch her. Firebombs could eat fabric but not ideas, so long as they didn’t kill the pony thinking them.

She looked out the window again.

The marefia wasn’t outside. Nopony was outside. It was six thirty in the morning. They were all inside in various states of sleep, some snoring and some sighing, some drinking up dreams and others slurping coffee from hot mugs.

She looked around. The place empty, its occupants were in various states of unsleep. Where was her tea? She put down her fabric and trotted into the kitchen. Her mug was right where she left it. A little trickle of liquid had slid down the side and left a trail behind it. The urgency of half an hour ago--where was it now? The fabric had needed to be sewn as if it would soon become her last tether to the world. The window needed monitoring--who knew? The marefia might be out there with firebombs.

Now what? The rush was gone. The fabric ceased to be anything but fabric, the window anything but a window. Art? A vision of the future? It seemed impossible to assign any real meaning to her toils when she was away from them. Fabric. Waiting. What awful things to spend a life on. There could be so much more in the real. Her abstract art, her dresses, her gems--what were they compared to space rockets and microscopes? Did the world need more artists? Did they need artists at all? Ponykind would go on without art. Not so for science. What was the consequence of Rarity’s kind vanishing? She didn’t know.

Art perpetuated itself. Books inspire books and paintings inspire paintings and music inspires music and dresses inspire dresses and she hadn’t looked out the window in a bit. Selfish, maybe. But she was glad. Art seemed very much a tenant of what ponykind was: a small and weird being floating on a rock whose days were controlled by gods who happened to look just like them. More than mere resemblance, though--she could see her face reflected in her gems!

She found little bits and pieces of herself in her art. Did that make her selfish or a narcissist? She longed to find something in her dressmaking but didn’t quite know what she was looking for. Something like gratification, only more permanent. There wasn’t a word in Equine for that feeling of longing for something but not knowing what you were longing for. A few other languages, Griffon and Minotaur and maybe Seapony, but not Equine. She had to come up with a long string of complicated words to properly express her thoughts, and by the time she was through her audience would have been bored away. She pitied the writers, really. Dresses were flashy and bold. She could glue diamonds to them! Books were flat and lifeless. They lasted longer than a dress, but their entropy was enormous. Dresses burned for a little while. She knew the point at which book paper burned--451 degrees fahrenheit. She had to burn a few during the winters of the war years. She wasn’t proud of it, but it was better than torching her dresses. They would have flared up like mad and then burned up in an instant.

She picked up the tea cup and slurped. Nopony was around. They wouldn’t hear the noise.

She smiled a little. Still warm. What did she want? A warm cup of tea. And there it was.

The heat moved through the mug into her hooves. She liked holding her mugs with her hooves. It wasn’t as effective or proper as holding it with magic--but again, nopony else could really see her here. It was pleasant, but it wasn’t enough. Truth be told, she didn’t really care all that much about her body. It was a thing to be stuffed into dresses and fill out the curves.

She wanted more! It’s just that she didn’t know what she wanted more of. Rationalization couldn’t stop it. Warm tea couldn’t stop it. Dressmaking couldn’t stop it. She was an eternally hungry mare with a picky appetite.

She hadn’t checked the window in some time. She took the tea with her, suspended in magic, and let it trail behind her. Just in case the marefia was out there--which they weren’t--she would have to look proper.

The street was empty. Everypony was asleep. She should be asleep. All she had to do was put up the banner advertising her sale. She could finish her tea while she worked and then go back to sleep.

It was a nice fantasy. She would have loved to believe it. But the view from the window enveloped all her thoughts. She could stand there for a few minutes and not a single thought would pass through her mind. Like she was dead. Darkness in its aging grey preparing to leave, and the dim figures of houses and a road. This was the time of the day she liked the most. She slept through it most of the time to avoid it, but now she was stuck by the window, staring into the empty street. No marefia. No art. Not even houses or a road. Nothing. Rarity thought nothing. Here she could stare and ponies would think her an artist deep in thought. Thinking about how many yards of fabric to use for her next creation, or how far away somepony would have to be to throw a firebomb through her window. You know--the thoughts of an artist. And not really have to think at all. Just stare and stare and stare--

And then drop her tea and duck as a carriage rolled around the bend.

The mug didn’t shatter, but the tea got all over the floor. It was the marefia! Come to burn her house to the ground! Could you imagine it? Rarity, on fire! Burning alive! Running around and wailing and falling to the floor and catching the carpet on fire. Her jaw went slack as she looked for a place to hide. The whole building was wood and fabric. Powderkegs lined the walls. Shelves of fabric. Her dresses. Burning. Everything burning!

She wouldn’t have to worry about paying down her debt. Dying would square her debt with Noir and nullify her debt from the bank. Or maybe it wouldn’t. Banks were banks--maybe they would transfer the debt to Sweetie Belle, or her parents.

So what was she supposed to do--catch the bomb and throw it back? Rarity didn’t actually serve in the war like Dash had. She stayed behind.She designed posters and stole ration cards from Applejack and the ration department. She appeared on television shows and blew kisses into radio microphones.

She rose to her trembling hooves and chugged what was left of the tea in one burning gulp. A drop rolled down her chin and left a trail. She would not die with the taste of smoke in her mouth.

As the carriage approached, she shut the curtains with her magic and moved to the middle of the room. Beams of light shot through the curtains behind her as the sun broke the horizon. She threw the needle off the record player and listened to the approaching wheels. Slanted sounds filled her head. A jagged image of her father dressed in his army uniform flashed before her eyes. She raised the empty cup above her head.

The carriage got softer and softer as it drove up the road. The crush of wheels abated. A moment passed. The sun rose.

Ever so slowly, Rarity crept to the front window. She gripped the curtain rod with her magic and puffed out a breath. Slanted morning light pooled between fabric and glass. Just for good measure, she grabbed the rest of the curtain rods on the first floor and yanked them open all at the same time.

The window was empty. Morning rushed in the open windows. Her knees trembled and straightened. She spun around. Blue skies. Storefronts. Distant skyscrapers. No mobsters. No fire.

The room spun. Her fur exploded into color as she stumbled beneath a skylight. The warmth beneath her hooves made her feel like she was dancing. She pirouetted and pressed her head against the front window. A long sigh curled from between her lips and fogged up the glass. Bits of makeup left a pale imprint of her forehead as she pulled away.

Through the glass, Rarity saw Ponyville’s skyscrapers in the distance. The sun flared against panes of pastel light, cutting long shadows into the sides of houses. She looked further and saw herself reflected in the glass, light pooling in her wide eyes like oil, the outline of her face slipping further out of focus the closer she got.

Hot bile flooded her throat. The curtains snapped shut with a rush of air.

Rarity’s father, shortly before marching off to die in the war, told her that when a problem raised its pissbeak head, you had to keep your chin up and look it in the eyes.

Once she felt good and empty she let go of her mane, which she had been holding over her head. A series of foul-tasting noises came out of her mouth.

This is where Rarity differed. The ugly yellow of her father’s racist nightmares left her unfazed. She never fired any bullets or chanted the racist slogans they threw up on her war bond posters. All she did was pose for the cameras and the artists and designers did the rest.

She rested both hooves on the porcelain and sighed as long as she could. Once her lungs were empty she flexed her barrel until she coughed. Acid filled her mouth.

She lowered her chin again.

Maybe she had it all wrong. Maybe she gave so much of her stock away because she didn’t want to deal with the money. She bled cash and hoarded gems.

She made the mistake of sniffling. Bitter smells rushed in through her nose. She lowered her chin and puked some more. Water splashed against the side.

It smelled like garbage--or was that just a flashback. A sea of garbage, like the one in the middle of the West Ocean. Imagine it! All that trash. No wonder the fish were dying. The smell must have been unbearable.

Rarity felt a lot like a fish. Drowning in air. The bile and acid still inside her slid down her throat, burning every cell it touched. Pollution. Nonchord tones. Slide down the scale, slippery like bleach, like wet rocks in the thinning atmosphere in pictures in books inside her--

Her. Nonsense. Nonchord tones. Latching onto anything and running with it. Third to first, then make the third the first. Bad notation bad composition bad gem placement bad stitching bad mindset bad art. Her mind was always on something else while she sewed. The market price of imported tuna for Opal or the streak on the front windows or the reminders she put up to jog an extra half mile for missing yesterday’s workout. Where was the line between lack of conviction and lack of a chance? A real artist would take the fire in their belly and belch it like a dragon and shape a dress from it. A real artist would stare into the gems of her dress and see refracted a rainbow of tangents cross stitches weaves and desire. Hot like lust, only not as sexy.

Rarity turned away and hugged the floor. In the clean white tile she recognized her silhouette lying beneath her. The closer to the tile she got, the sharper it became. Warm breaths clung to it, yet it was cool to the touch. She put her forehead down and let it soothe her. Here she was stripped down. Here was nobody, atrophy, the death of an idea. She knew it, she knew it, it was her--but here there was nothing to know.

Soon enough the worry returned, clear as the light through the front window.

She stood up and went to her refrigerator in the kitchen, where she grabbed a six-pack of Sweet Apple Acres apple lager in fancy glass bottles. She paused to watch the insulated door close.

Then, like her father, she marched off towards Noir’s.