Rarity crashes into her dam with a shrill cry, sending the two of them stumbling backward and smashing into the long table. The cheesecake flips up, landing square on Cookie Crumbles and leaving her face and mane coated with gooey silver frosting, while the punch bowl stains her pink coat a bright teal. Rarity isn’t spared, bits and pieces of the cheesy stadium sticking to her once-pristine white coat like miniature suns in the sky.

Gasping and sparing only a moment to clear the worst from her eyes, Cookie Crumbles pushes back with a deep roar.

Rarity is surprised by her dam’s strength, but maybe she shouldn’t have been; after all, her dam is far, far more accustomed to ponies much larger than her charging, pushing, and just generally being a lot more physically aggressive. But she can’t spare that idea any thought, forced to backpedal until the two of them ram into the large window overlooking the field.

Much to her shock the window swings open. The two tumble down the short drop onto the bleachers, each hard step adding another painful jolt and wince, the roaring crowd drowning out their furious shouts and barbed insults. Twenty painful bumps later and they roll onto the field, the second play of the game already well underway. Oh, what a sight they must have been, Cookie Crumbles decked out in Detrot Silverado silver while Rarity sports Canterlot Miner white and orange (though it really should be gold), brawling like two overeager mascots. The players certainly find them quite the distraction, as a number of them stop to watch. Amidst the confusion her sire leaps forward to intercept an otherwise perfect pass, if only the receiver had thought to catch it, though the referees blow their shrill whistles to stop the play dead. Cookie Crumbles growls as she finally forces Rarity to the ground, her satisfied grin remaining even as two security ponies tackle her away. Rarity isn’t spared, a massive Storm Guard clad in the cutest of uniforms rudely shoving her facedown and twisting her forelegs to her sides before carting her off the field as easily as if she was a doll.

Wait, this is ridiculous. Her sire plays wide receiver, not cornerback!

Rarity finds herself back in the Princess Box, a split second away from charging, the pink glow around Cadance’s horn fading as she innocuously whistles.

“As for you?” she finds herself repeating to her dam, still shouting, adrenaline coursing through her. “Doug has been the perfect stallion, even if he has his faults! And you wouldn’t even give him a chance!”

“And if I did,” Cookie Crumbles snarls back, “what then? Would everypony else have suddenly accepted him? Would he have been able to give you strong, healthy foals just because I liked him?”

“Well, no,” Rarity concedes, if reluctantly. She quickly builds back her head of steam. “They would have turned out how they turned out. But what would have changed is how those around them saw him. All ponies want and need is somepony to follow, and look at the example you set!”

Cookie Crumbles scoffs. “And you knew this after how many days of knowing him?”

“Do you think Sweetie Belle is weak?” Rarity demands, ignoring her dam. “Is she suffering? Does she have no future because of her sire?” Her hoof sweeps across, ending up pointing at her filly. “Do you think she is better off without you in her life?”

“Err,” Cookie Crumbles stalls, glancing at the anxious young mare standing next to them. A wan smile crosses Sweetie Belle’s muzzle. “Well, no. Of course not. But you can’t judge an action purely based on the outcome,” she claims, reluctant yet firm. “You have to look at what else might have happened. If he was abusive, or greedy, or a carnivore. Did you know hamsters sometimes kill and eat their young?”

“Now who’s judging without thinking? How did you know it wouldn’t turn out well?” Rarity asks, quickly growing exasperated and not even wanting to acknowledge that last question with a response. “Because of how other creatures have acted? Well, news flash for you: Doug isn’t a dragon, or a griffon, or a manticore!”

“But we’re back to square one,” Cookie Crumbles argues. “How did you know it would turn out well? And if neither of us knew, then you acted foalishly and recklessly by herding up with him instead of going with somepony tried and true, or at the very least waiting for Applejack to test the waters!”

Rarity closes her eyes as she sucks in a deep breath. This is going nowhere. They’re just rehashing the arguments they had before. Obviously her dam has her notions and reasons for her actions, and is unwilling for hindsight to change how she viewed the situation at the time. Maybe if she had argued all those years ago then she could have gotten a different outcome, but it’s too late to change anything then.

But maybe she can change something now.

Rarity looks up, the room back as it was before, the pink glow around Cadance’s horn fading as she innocuously whistles. The door to the Princess Box opens; Twilight Sparkle and Sugar Belle step inside, the alicorn scarfing down a monstrous haydog as she exchanges their foalhood song and dance with Cadance.

“Are you all right?” Cookie Crumbles asks, concern replacing her tense frown.

“I don’t want us to just rehash all the arguments we had before,” Rarity explains, struggling to keep tears from ruining her mascara. “I’m going to do what I should have done a long time ago.”

She trots forward and turns what might have been a charge into a hug, wrapping her forelegs as far as she can around Cookie’s muscled neck.

“I’m sorry.” The words burst out like a flood breaking a dam, one she so carefully maintained all these years. “I know you only wanted to help, that you wanted to make sure I was considering every angle, but I took your words so personally. That this was a decision I was making, like when I started the Boutique, and I couldn’t help but take any criticism of that decision as criticism of me. I wanted… I wanted you to trust my judgment, I wanted your support, not condemnation, and when criticism was all that I felt I got? Add that to the way I would have had to go back on my decision, and I hated you. I wanted you out of my life.”

Rarity squeezes. It hurts to say these things about how she felt and still feels. Yet it feels good to get them off her chest.

To her surprise her dam squeezes back.

“I want,” Rarity continues, pausing to take a deep breath. It’s hard, giving up all the epithets she wants to sling her dam’s way, the heartache and wounded emotions, but it has to be the best way. Right? Otherwise they would just be rolling out on the field. “I want to put this past us. I want to bury the bolt.”

Cookie Crumbles gives her a firm hug, yet Rarity can feel the gears turning, almost hear the thoughts going through her dam’s mind, the ‘why now’ or ‘what is she trying to get from me’ or ‘how can this blow up in my face’.

“I have never thought you were stupid,” she ultimately says.

“Please,” Rarity begs in a soft voice, straining to keep her smile, “don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

Her dam’s pink nose raises just a fraction. “Merely rash.” She sighs. “Such is the fate of the fashionista, I suppose, beholden to predicting the trends and staying ahead of them.” She pushes away, just slightly, to better regard her filly. “I’m sorry, too, for not conveying my admiration of your hard work and dedication. It takes a lot of guts to try something new, and I should have supported your decision after giving my input. After all, it is you who would reap the rewards and suffer the consequences.”

“It is my life,” Rarity says with a smile. Her flank tingles, and she spies a glowing cutie mark out of the corner of her eye. “Though, if you wanted to be a part of it…”

Cookie Crumbles gives a smirking, knowing laugh. “Oh?” She pointedly glances at Rarity’s belly. “For no reason?” She winks, her smile turning genuine. “I would love to. Once your sire retires we can move back to Ponyville. Or earlier, should our grandfilly prove too much of a… handful for that stallion of yours.”

Rarity chuckles. “Oh, his hands will be full, no doubt about that.” She gives her dam another hug as the muffled roar of the stadium intensifies. She’s glad to put this past them, even if she still thinks she was in the right and her dam was being unreasonable, but it’s more important that they reconcile.

Her dam moves off to sample the treat Argent brought, though the pleasant aroma is replaced by a pungent salt-and-grease stench. “Hello, Twilight,” Rarity greets, her mouth watering at the nostalgic smell of stadium fare. Her eyes widen as a second haydog levitates from behind the alicorn’s back, happily accepting even as it will spoil her appetite for the finer food.

“Well done,” Twilight congratulates, eyeing the glowing diamonds.

Rarity smiles, but her attention strays to the other alicorn in the room. Cadance’s focus is on her and not the third down attempt outside, whereas Shining Armor’s eyes are locked as though he might transform the outcome with his attention.

“What did you do?” she asks. At the slight cock of Cadance’s head she continues, “Your spell. I saw…”

She’s not sure how to describe the vision, and fortunately Cadance steps in to explain.

“It…” Cadance says, mulling over her words for a moment. “It isn’t quite my doing, as I have no control over what a pony sees. From what I have gathered, it is Harmony giving a pony insight into the consequences of their actions, thus allowing them to reconsider. It is more vivid, certainly, than what one might conceive in their mind’s eye, but any rekindled emotions are just that, re-kindled, not inserted or replaced.”

“Oh.” Rarity giggles as she recounts the two other outcomes, Shining Armor perking up at the first and her dam especially interested in the second, though Cookie Crumbles obviously has to bite her tongue to keep from defending herself.

“At least you weren’t using your horn,” Shining Armor comments, earning a long-suffering roll of the eyes from Cadance. “No, seriously. The officials take any interference, especially magical, extremely seriously.” He points outside, and though they have to strain to see it a tell-tale blue surrounds the horns of the spectating unicorns. “We get some special privileges, being royalty, but it would only take a single incident for us to be subject to the same restriction.”

“Of course,” Rarity says with a grateful look at the haydog suspended in her aura, glad to not have to carry it like an earth pony. “But let us stick to happier topics.” She turns to Sweetie Belle and Sugar Belle, taking a moment to register how her filly is growing up, with a job and responsibilities. Oh, where has the little filly gone who spent afternoons with her sibling, trying everything under the sun in the hopes of gaining a cutie mark? It must be the haydog making her yearn for simpler times. “You mentioned being a cook? Or a baker?”

“I thought we were sticking to happier topics,” Sugar Belle remarks, though there is a playful smirk to her pointed jab. “But, well,” she stalls, her smile slowly fading as she glances at Sweetie Belle, fishing for support, who gives her an encouraging smile. “We haven’t exactly found a good fit.”

“Yes,” Rarity agrees, “the restaurants here do tend to be quite, well, trendy, as in they all follow the same trends. A surefire way to success, if you ask me.”

“That’s not what you do at the Boutique,” Sweetie Belle argues, momentarily taking Rarity aback. Since when did her filly argue with her? “You always whined whenever somepony wanted you to make duplicates.”

“I would not whine,” Rarity claims, though her mind immediately goes to the time Hoity Toity commissioned a dozen copies of the dresses she made for her herdmates, Trixie’s alterations and all. “Okay, maybe I did whine, on rare occasions, but it was completely justified!”

“Uh huh,” Sweetie Belle says, obviously not convinced.

“Yes, well.” Rarity huffs, turning to address Sugar Belle. “If Canterlot is not to your style, have you considered somewhere less conventional?”

“Like Ponyville!” Sweetie Belle pipes up.

A thoughtful expression crosses Sugar Belle’s face. “After seeing firsthoof the hustle and bustle of Canterlot?” She smiles, relieved. “I never thought I’d grow accustomed to the quiet of Our Town.” She looks Rarity in the eyes. “Is Ponyville a quiet place?”

“Err,” Rarity says with a reluctant scratch to the back of her mane. It feels like Twilight’s strained smile is boring into her. “Most?” She does a rough count on her hooves, nodding that most is a true qualifier. “Most days in Ponyville are quiet. Notwithstanding the inevitable Pinkie Pie party, of course.”

“Of course,” Sweetie Belle and Twilight say simultaneously, nodding along and looking quite eager for the pink unicorn to join them in Ponyville.

Sugar Belle matches their fervor. “Then maybe I’ll have to give Ponyville a try. After all, how bad can it be?”

“I’m sure it’ll be-” Twilight gets out before a glob of cheesecake forces its way into her mouth. She rolls her eyes as the glow around Rarity’s horn fades, all of them settling down to watch the game. It looks to be a hoof-biter, the Silverados already putting up six points, though Rarity is confident Mottled Braid will pull off another miracle in the fourth quarter.

Next Chapter: Ch. 178 - The Golden Rule Estimated time remaining: 4 Hours, 3 Minutes