Rainbow Dash found the forest of statues unnerving, as much from the uncanny quality of their expressions as the near constant worry that a wrong move would send them crashing down. She’d always found statues like this odd. The normal ones, the big ones you found in squares and what not, the monument sort? Those made sense. It was the ones that had ideas in their heads about being art that felt off. No purpose but to be a kind of awkward mockery of the equine form. She frowned at the nearest one, a pegasus in flight (or was it falling?) with a look of dismay flashing across the perfect marble face.

“He’s a wonderful craftsman, my husband,” said her host with a flat tone. “I admit I was not sure how he would do this without magic, but having seen him at work…”

“He’s good,” Rainbow said.

“Mm. He’s talented. A workgrif of the finest quality, really.”

Rainbow stopped at the falling/flying pegasus and pursed her lips. It bothered her. “What’s this one?”

“Pardon? And do you still like cider, Rainbow?”

“I do. Thanks.”

If you could hear smiles, Rainbow would have sworn she heard one. “Presuming I have any. But you’re lucky, because I do. And I’m afraid I don’t understand the question.”

Rainbow gestured at the pegasus before realizing that her host probably couldn’t see her from the kitchen. “This statue. It’s a pegasus that’s midflight. I thought she was flying at first, but she looks like she’s falling? Or stalling out? Her face is all twisted up. It’s a weird expression.”

She heard the sound of hooves clacking on stone and turned to see Rarity in a beautiful black dress, though it was a different one from the one Rainbow had found her in on the streets of Lake City. She floated a glass bottle over to Rainbow and sipped from a crystal glass of her own, brimming with what Rainbow assumed was wine.

She accepted the cider and took a drink. “Good,” she said, taking a breath. “It’s not Sweet Acres, but it’s good.”

“I would defend the alcoholic offerings of my new home, but I confess I said something similar the first time I tried it.” Rarity had wandered away, and leaned against a column, facing away from Rainbow. “As for the statue, it’s of a pegasus falling. He’s a young Nimbusian soldier slain at Mareathon, in battle with the Griffons.”

She cocked her head to the side. “The mane made me think he… Eh, whatever. Different times, different styles.”

“The warriors of old Nimbusia would wear their hair long and care for it more lovingly than any debuttante,” Rarity explained. The suspended wine glass tilted slightly, one way and then the other. “Before battle, they would groom each other and apply oil and fragrances freely. A strange people, the pegasi of Nimbusia. I wish they were a bit more like you, actually.”

Rainbow tore herself from the statue and took a few steps towards Rarity.

“Still kinda wild that you’re married.”

“Did you think I couldn’t bag a husband?” Rarity asked. Rainbow wasn’t sure how to read that.

“Uh, no, more like… Well, I kind of thought you weren’t interested in them by the time… I mean, I didn’t actually ever ask I just... I guess I’m just dumb and its been a long time,” she finished awkwardly.

But Rarity didn’t seem offended. She laughed and looked over her shoulder, beautiful eyes veiled by her long mane. In the low light of the mansion’s grand hall, they were shadowed stars.

Rainbow was out of her lane. She really had been since she crossed the ocean, almost two months ago. Maybe she had been operating far beyond what she was suited for for even longer than that.

It had seemed simple, hadn’t it? Take a few months of sabbatical, her first real true vacation from the Wonderbolts in years, and then just keep flying east until she hit land. Her information was good and her wings were strong, and that seemed like enough when she set off from Canterlot. It had seemed so simple when she dreamed it all up.

But now she was on another continent, and she’d found Rarity at last, and all of her competence and skill and grit had abandoned her.

“Rainbow,” Rarity said. Rainbow locked eyes with her. “You have not changed a bit, have you? I’m happy to see it.”

“Well, I’ve changed a bit. I’m not as young as I used to be.”

“That is true. But—and I do implore you to take this in the most charitable sense—you are still a fool, and it serves you well.”

Rainbow shifted, her wings half-unfolding. “Uh, thanks?”

“I mean it in a good way.”

Rainbow shrugged and her eyes wandered the grand hall. It was alien and old. It felt like a place where no one, pony or griffin, was meant to live. Or perhaps Rainbow just didn’t like when earthbound buildings were open, like they were trying to mock the sky. Either way, she didn’t like the air. But Rarity was here. She couldn’t help but feel happy about that.

“So… Lake City. Griffonia. It’s a long way from home.”

“It is for you,” Rarity said. She turned fully to Rarity now, still leaning indolently against the column. “But Lake City is my home now and has been for several years. For better or worse, these ponies are become my ponies and these streets my streets. Equestria feels far away. And you felt like someone I had read about, and yet here you are. Like a heroine leaping off a page, here you are. Why?”

“Why?”

“Yes. Do not mistake me, I am genuinely happy to see you. But why? Actually, no. Later. First—let me show you around?”

Rainbow nodded, and trotted behind her.

The grand hall was the empty heart of Rarity’s new estate, which sprawled in half-remembered splendor. It had belonged to a cousin of the Sword-Prince, Blessed Sword himself, and had passed to distant relatives until a long age of decline and being maintained as a storehouse for things too old and useless to care about but too historically significant to throw away without raising a fuss. Her husband, an artist and minor noble by trade, had picked up the place from the state on the cheap by promising a few favors, the nature of which Rarity was vague about.

She was vague about everything that wasn’t the history of the house, if you could call it that. It was really more of a small palace, with its own walled complex and enough room to house a platoon of guards easily. Not that it did, she added hastily. But it could.

“Ponies seem pretty attached to platoons of armed and uniformed ponies walking the street here,” Rainbow had said quietly.

If Rarity could hear it, she studiously ignored her.

When Rarity had come to Lake City years ago, she explained as she showed off another gallery of art—these bought from others—she had found the city not as welcoming as hoped. The ponies of Lake City and of the Riverlands in general were not like the ones she had known. They were a harder people, a fragmented one, and were used to conflict.

She was an outsider, and as an outsider it was hard to break into business in the city’s cultural scene. And as someone very used to adversity, she was willing to go to great lengths. Her husband was a Griffon, and thus also an outsider in the Riverland’s city-fortress bulwark against the empire of his kind. They were two drifting ships with enough crew for one. It was an easy decision.

Rainbow found herself perturbed by the way Rarity spoke about her marriage. She would bring it up with a casual air, as if her husband was an acquaintance. She noted that he wasn’t present, either. But there wasn’t a nice way to ask if your estranged friend had entered a loveless marriage, was there? It just wasn’t something you could ask politely.

Rarity led her at last to a great door and opened it, revealing a vast garden, and beyond it a hedge maze. Rainbow could see even more statues littering the whole things, and to her admittedly uncultured eye they seemed a bit… haphazard. She had a sudden image of the creatures being frozen in place, expressions unset, eyes not yet focused, midstep into the stony gaze of a cockatrice.

“Nice, isn’t it? Like my own little miniature of the gardens of Canterlot,” Rarity hummed. “A simulacrum, but it is mine.”

“It’s nice. Was there a garden here before?”

“Yes, though in horrible disrepair.”

“A fixer-upper ain’t so bad,” Rainbow said. They stood on a platform above it all, with stairs on either side. She leaned on the railing and gazed down.

“Mm. I’d call it more… I’m not repairing. I do not know how to repair. I am unsure,” Rarity said, softer, “if one can repair. But I have always been detail oriented. It serves my preservation efforts well.”

“What are you preserving?”

Rarity just hummed and sipped her wine.

Rainbow waited for an answer, and then deciding it was probably fruitless, looked back to the gardens.

Rainbow thought to herself that she shouldn’t be surprised at feeling lost. Frequently, she found herself on the other side of an impulsive choice gone shockingly right with no real plan and absolutely no leads. Or leads that she had no idea what to do with.

Rarity had just vanished one day. No one was really sure when--how could they be sure, when no one saw her regularly enough to know if her absence was genuine or not? At some point, Rainbow had come off a long tour and skipped back down into Ponyville to see Fluttershy and the old hangouts, and she was just not there anymore.

Fluttershy hadn’t known either. They only met occasionally nowadays. You know how it goes, she’d added. Friends get distant, and one day you realize you haven’t seen someone in a while, and then you don’t see them, and… And yeah, Rainbow kind of got that, she hadn’t seen Gilda in a long time. But they’d parted ways on different terms.

She’d flown over one day to Canterlot and dropped in on Twilight, which had proved more difficult than she’d remembered. The ease of sending letters had made her forget that Twilight was ruling now, and that she didn’t exactly have the luxury of just suspending court for the day to go flying or whatever. Not that Rainbow had expected her to. But being held up by blankfaced orderlies asking for proof of an appointment and then being asked to leave had been a bit rough. Twilight had sent a runner to find her as soon as she found out, but it still had made the whole visit awkward.

Rainbow felt a soft breeze and watched how it caught on the leaves of the perfectly trimmed trees, like odd little balls of greenery on pikes. Twilight hadn’t known where Rarity went, and the question seemed to confuse her. Why would she know where Rarity was? They hadn’t spoken in years. She just went silent one day, didn’t she? Why would you ask, Twilight had gone on, a bit more heated than probably necessary. Why, do you know where she is? At the time she hadn’t known. Perhaps it was better she never followed up on that conversation with Twilight.

“If it were a bit earlier, I would have invited you out into the gardens for tea,” Rarity said, now too leaning against the railing. But I suppose the sunset is nice as well.”

Rainbow watched the shadows lengthen inch by inch. “It’s pretty alright, yeah.”

“I want to ask you why you’re here. At the same time, I’m not sure I want to hear what would carry you across the ocean to come find me all on your lonesome. I take some solace in the fact that it is probably not war or famine or calamity, as I am no longer an element bearer and thus would not be able to help you.”

“Do we ever stop being that? Element bearers, I mean.”

“I assume so,” Rarity said, waving a hoof. “I no longer bear an element tangibly, for instance, and have not for a very long time. My bonds with the rest of the bearers are, let us be charitable when we describe this, memories. By now I’m sure they’ve revealed some new secrets to Equestria’s favorite thaumaturgical prodigy and work altogether differently.”

“She’s ruling now.”

Rarity made an odd face. “Oh, I know. I get news from overseas.”

“It’s kind of wild.”

She snorted in response. “I suppose you could say that. I saw it coming. She had more power than she knew long before it was official. I would know. I saw it up close.”

“I’m not here because of any tragedies,” Rainbow said. “If that helps.”

“Oddly? It does. Though that raises further questions.”

“Uh, yeah. I guess it does.” Rainbow swallowed and her eyes stayed down. It was weird how statues looked more sinister as the sun left, at the same inch by inch rate as the shadows grew. The darkness in their chiseled faces got deeper. The lines that marked out their forms got harder to make out.

“Applejack liked to pride herself on being direct. But she was as subtle as history. You, Rainbow? You are the straightforward one. When all else fails or has fallen off, when it all goes to hell, there you are winging into the fray. Is it a good idea? Not at all. Will it help? Doubtful. But you will be there, doing whatever it is to do in front of you at the given moment. Again, I restate: you are a fool, and I am fond of it.”

“What does that even mean?” Rainbow said, pursing her lips. “Like, are you trying to insult me?”

“Surprisingly, I am not. I know! It’s hard to believe, being that I am known for and wide—on two continents now—for my acerbic tongue. What I admire is the ability to ignore the layers upon layers of regret and recrimination and doubt that I cannot seem to ignore. I admire the kind of single minded impulsiveness that flies over the ocean to come see a pony you’ve not spoken to in, what, how many years? You didn’t come back to Ponyville at all after a point.”

Rainbow shifted. “I came back.”

“But I never saw you,” Rarity finished for her. “There’s the rub. That’s the interesting, and the perplexing part of all of this. And you never visited. You knew where the original boutique was. Did you even know it was the only one left? Could you have? Did we write?”

“We did write. The last letter I got back from you was when you were opening a store in uh… I think it was Whinnypeg. I think?”

“Then a very long time ago. That was before it all went so wrong. And then you just decided to find me on a whim?”

Rainbow shook her head. “I visited again, and I stopped by the Boutique.”

“Did you now? I’m flattered. Of course, you couldn’t find it.”

“I couldn’t. I felt pretty stupid, like I’d forgotten where it was. But when I asked everybody kinda got sad and shrugged. I’d missed it being torn down.”

“I did too,” Rarity murmured. “I skipped town the week before to avoid it.”

“I wanted to invite you to lunch, but then I ended up on my own for lunch with Pinkie joining me from behind the counter, and she filled me in. Or, well, she filled me in in her own special way, which means I don’t know a lot but got very vivid descriptions of a hooffull of highlights,” Rainbow said, looking at last at Rarity and attempting a smile.

Rarity raised her eyebrows and her drink at that. Rainbow Dash decided to take her victories where she could find them, no matter how frail.

“She said she tried to turn it into a party, but the uh, the fireworks were a bit too fiery.”

That did get a chuckle. “That sounds about right. Pinkie Pie. She’s like a portal into childhood.”

“Yeah. She’s kind why I started looking. She said that she knew what I was going to want to do, and gave me a business card. I took it, forgot about it, and then a month later found it again. Private detective. I’m not sure if she had the soul read or…”

“We never did nail down exactly the nature of her seemingly always true portents, yes. My money these days would be on attention to detail.” Rarity shrugged. “So, private eyes? How romantic.”

“How expensive, more like. Real private eyes aren’t always as cool as the ones in books. I mean, a couple were, those guys were kinda awesome. Meet them in a diner, voice low, slide you a dossier across the table, so cool. The rest were just kinda… normal ponies who were a little rude and kinda tired all the time.”

Rarity smiled, genuinely smiled. “Still reading, then. You know, that was a nice little change. You really opened up a lot back then, didn’t you? A true three dimensional mare. I feel like we all did, for awhile, before devolving back to form.”

“I don’t know about that. We branched out when we were young, yeah, but look at both of us. Yeah, I’m still flying and doing stunts, but I also picked up hobbies and stuff. I read still. I got really into obscure Yakyakistani cinema for like, a year. You know they have that? They do. It’s nuts. Absolutely recommend. Or, I don’t know. Fluttershy stopped winging it and went to college. Pinkie Pie like, actually settled down and learned how to be still. I mean, don’t get me started on Twilight—”

“Yes,” Rarity replied curtly, “let us not get started on Twilight.”

She turned, and gestured with a hoof as she descended the stair.

Rainbow followed her now somewhat sour host down into the garden under a setting sun. Some other time, she would have stopped to admire it all—time had given her more of an appreciation for things that weren’t fast, the Wonderbolts made you sick of moving targets—but Rarity didn’t seem to have enjoyment on the mind. Instead she all but marched them through the lush greenery towards the statues.

A small army loomed around the gated entrance to the hedge maze. Something in their flat gazes made Rainbow’s hair stand on in, but she powered on, following Rarity through the archway.

The hedge maze was dense, claustrophobic. Rainbow wanted to take to the skies, but she held off. As much as she wanted to slip these surly bonds and be free of the encroaching hedges it was like Rarity’s gravity kept her pinned to the earth. The sun was leaving even faster now, impossibly. Rarity began to hum.

Her voice was beautiful. Rarity herself was still beautiful. Rainbow hadn’t known what to expect, but she had expected that. It had felt like some kind of constant.

“So, how did you private eyes find me?” Rarity asked at last.

“Lots of incredibly boring searching through manifests and ship logs,” Rainbow replied, taking a deep breath. “And finally one of them landing in Aquilea and catching sight of an ad.”

Rarity tsked. “Ah, done in by Aquilea.”

“Once we had your new name it was easy. Sapphire was a nice choice.” She paused, grimacing. “Uh, is a good choice still, I guess.”

“I’m fond of it for my own reasons. And the information was private? No one knows but you and them?”

Rainbow nodded. “Right. Uh, Soarin’ knows vaguely where I’m going, but not exactly. He’s supposed to check in with Equestrian embassy here in town if I don’t get word back in a month.”

Some embassy, she thought with a scowl. It had been a small building tucked away in a part of town mostly given over to industry. Rainbow had grown out of her tribalism, but it did feel a bit insulting.

“A good call. Griffonia is dangerous these days. Tumultuous, even. Even this city stirs. The Guilds are losing their grip, the new middle class is burgeoning. Ponies of every order have started talking about rumors of a new king biding his time.” She turned, as if waiting for Rainbow to catch up. “And of course, the army has a mind of its own. Parts of it.”

“That’s… worrying. Are you safe here?”

Rarity cocked her head to the side, a smile lighting up her face for a brief moment. “Oh, Rainbow, of course I am not. Nothing and no one on this earth is safe. But I am quite prepared.” She cleared her throat. “If the Sword Prince takes his throne, then I shall be a lady waiting my liege. If the fascists win their barracks putsch I shall be a lady of the people, decrying the violence but of course willing to do what must be done for the average citizen. If the Guilds win, I shall be a bit cross, but will continue as I always have. If the Republicans win, then the world shall be turned upside down.” She shrugged. “”I have become a proper Lady, you know. An aristocrat. I am the predator among the flock, but a very specifically genteel sort of predator.”

“Things… things seem a bit nastier out here.”

“Equestria is not all roses, darling. You’ll see that. The world is changing around us, and that change will find my birthplace one day soon. I do wonder where you will end up. But come along.”

They walked on a bit. Out of nowhere, lights placed at every few hooflengths lit with a calming blue light, and Rainbow recoiled.

“Don’t be surprised,” Rarity said, voice almost musical. “It’s an enchantment set to let the fairy lights all wake up together. Pay it no mind. Well, unless you wish. Don’t look too long. Their entrancing.”

They were. Rainbow tried to avoid looking.

“Time is funny. Funny as in odd, distracting, frustrating, liquid, like sand sliding through the cracks. Especially here in the maze. Sure, I suppose you could wait until the lights and tell time from there.”

“Yeah, just a matter of counting.”

“How long will you count, Rainbow Dash? I’ve not made it very far. Who could? Or, really, who would? Maybe you would.”

“I, uh, I guess?”

How long had they been walking? Rainbow wasn’t sure. The sun was more or less gone now, in the maze. What was Rarity up to?

She’d always been dramatic, a bit odd. She’d liked things that seemed pointless or frivolous to Rainbow, but that’d been normal things. Things which seemed like not worth the effort but that you expected somepony to care about. Managing her store and clothes and designing and what not. But this atmosphere was uncomfortable. It felt like something else.

“Why did you come, Rainbow Dash?”

Rainbow coughed, pulled out of reverie. “Because I wanted to know where you were and what happened and, uh, cause we’re friends?” She added at the last moment, feeling a bit tepid about her own answer. Right, Rainbow. Very convincing.

“Are we? We were, yes. I don’t suppose we are enemies. Let us for the sake of argument give you that.” Rarity did not look back at her. She just moved inwards. “You now know where I reside and my current estate. You know some things about me. Are you satisfied?”

“Not exactly. I do know more now, but I also have more questions. Why here? Why did you leave? What happened before you left? My private eyes found your stores had all dried up over a couple of years, but they had reopened under their old managers. Some of them. None of them wanted to talk about the whole thing.”

Rarity snorted. “Good for them. Let the dead bury their own dead. Even that little bitch, Coco. I hope she does well. I also hope she rots in Tartarus. The feelings aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“I asked her about you while visiting town on tour. She, ah, she didn’t like that.”

“As she wouldn’t.”

“What happened?”

“I was a bad omen.” Rarity sniffed. “An albatross about her neck. About many necks. Like a noose, a sword of Damoclops, a omnipresent ruin. They cleaned me out after I’d gone and they are better for it. Remembering me is unpleasant, in the way remembering a particularly unpleasant yet very unfortunate relative is.”

“That’s… not enlightening, I’m gonna be real.”

“It wouldn’t be. I’m not being clear. My stores closed because I had nothing to give them and my name no longer carried any weight. It didn’t all happen at once, but when it was in full swing it felt so. An outfit at a large showing isn’t well received, or is moderately received. A client isn’t entirely satisfied, and decides to go with someone else just once and finds a new favorite. The writer for the exclusive luxury magazine can’t find her inspiration in your newest offering and skiips the article for a month and by the time she writes it the moment has passed, you’ve lost sales, and you’re on the fifteenth page between advertisements for overpriced cigarettes and mediocre import services. The big cracks weren’t like this, of course. They were more personal.”

“Okay, I get losing some of your… I don’t know, your popularity? But what was big enough to just send you into hiding?”

“I was not hiding, Rainbow Dash. I never hid. I was always available, always present. I just no longer was worth remembering. It is natural. Do you think that your friends will always be your friends? Will all those you care about be around in ten years? Will half of them? If they are, will you still care about half of them? Most ponies can’t say that confidently. They aren’t built for it. Creatures like us, darling, we aren’t made for eternity or for long distance running.”

“I mean we are—”

You’re a fool, that doesn’t mean that you’re dense. You know what I mean. I don’t mean actual running. My friends dropped me easily and quietly and without much effort or sense of loss, and then I have a few unpleasant conversations with Twilight, perhaps, or Fluttershy. Twilight doesn’t like an opinion I have, and contends with me with irritation, and her court takes note. Fluttershy and I get into a spat while on a spa date, and the twins notice. I don’t come to Sugarcube Corner for a month, because I’m putting all of my money into the Boutiques, and Pinkie notices. And again and again, and then one day you find out, Twilight isn’t actually a friend anymore. You only talk when you’re in town, and she never seems excited to see you. She sees you because you wandered in. Fluttershy and you still take tea, but she always seems a bit sleepy. Is it the school work, or a lack of interest? Do you bore her? Do you tire her?” She rounded and pointed a hoof at Rainbow. “Does she find you a bit lacking? It would be reasonable. You are a diminished mare. You’ve lost one of your boutiques already, crumbled under the weight of an ill-considered loan and a company worth that has dwindled as the fashions changed and your creativity waned. Your subordinates find you frustrating. You feel like it rains every day. Applejack doesn’t wave to you when she’s making deliveries in town, and could it be she just didn’t see you? Who can say? Asking seems impossible, so you don’t. In a word, your connections are all fleeting. In a few more, you are the weakest linked, the one who sloughs off with time, the one you can let drift back into the waves as you swim forward through time. ”

“It isn’t a one way street, Rarity,” Rainbow Dash cut in, a bit emboldened. “You can’t just wait for people to come to you all the time. You can’t be passive. I don’t know what to call it. The social? The communal? I don’t know, someone else would know, the Thing, whatever, you can’t just be passive in it. Your life is an active thing happening all around you.”

Rainbow gestured around them. “These lights don’t just light up on their own. You made them light up at this time every night, right? You made that decision. You had agency. That’s what Twilight used to call it. I know you don’t like her, you have beef, just let me finish. You have that agency to act and to push back at the world. You have to pursue others to be pursued. You have to be a part of it all or it will never come to you. People will stop talking to you if you never talk first. We can’t live with hollow dolls when we’re all craving other ponies to know.”

“And you think I didn’t try that?” Rarity asked, stamping her hoof.

“It sure sounds like you didn’t.” Rainbow mimicked the motion. “You were so dependant on ponies to come to you. Didn’t you try to go to them? Or to others? Did you not try to, I don’t know, talk to anybody else?”

“Those other ponies weren’t the ones I had suffered alongside, were they? How do I trust someone who didn’t?”

“I…”

“Oh, but it continues, Rainbow Dash. You, the most distant of us all, but I’ll spare you that bit, you know it all, and I think maybe you were the most innocent. You did come back after all, when you could. You did choose to keep talking. You did write me letters. You wrote us all letters. But you were the only one that seemed to think, by then, that friendship lasted and that ponies were made to be more than dayflies.”

“What are you talking about? You can be friends for more than a short time, Rarity. That’s ridiculous.” Rainbow shook her head, backing up. “I… I don’t know about the rest. I don’t know why they seemed distant. Fluttershy seemed so sad when I asked her about you.”

“The sadness, I remind you, of the aunt who was so horrid, yet so cursed by fortune. My fall ruined many, and they hated me, and they were not wrong to do so. The royal aegis had left me as Twilight let herself be angry with me where prying ears and eyes could record the fact. Do you think they let me live long in their presence after that? No. That was how it all ended. I had sought some solace with Twilight. In the end she was all I had left. Our warmth had faded. Of course it had, and it was my fault, I’m sure. I know it was. She tried and tried but I was a miserable pony to be around and it drained her. I know it. Did you know, we were lovers once? Did you have any idea?”

Rainbow took a moment. She blinked.

“Excuse me?”

“Yes! We were! I know, it is impossible! Such a busy mare and me, such a failing one! The year before my great fall was the happiest of my life! I was so stupid, and so naive. I thought that love would buoy me, that it would inspire me. It mostly left me feeling wistful, and then it comforted for only the first six months. And then it was like an addiction. Not even in Aquilea, before I’d weaned myself off of sleep medication, not even there did I have such an addiction as I had to Twilight Sparkle.”

“What happened? Like, between you two? Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“It’s a fair question. You know to ask! You, the Fool, like the Tarot, cuts to the heart of the matter.”

Rarity walked backwards as often as forwards now, her voice carrying in the now truly gruesome maze. The whole thing felt ghoulish. It felt like a confession. But Rainbow kept going. She had come so far.

“Yeah. I need to know, I think,” she said. “I’ve taken months off of the Bolts for the first time in… ever. I spent hundreds and even a few thousand bits on investigators and expenses and travel. I flew most of the way here unaided, resting at waystations in Haukland. I’ve asked too many times and gotten nothing.”

“I think the last moment we could be called lovers, I was furious. I was frustrated. I wanted… I don’t know what I wanted. A magazine had absolutely trashed the latest line from the Canterlot boutique. I knew it would mean a hit to our sales right at the start of the busiest season. I ranted and ranted. She sipped tea. She didn’t look at me.”

“And?”

“And, her voice so very cold and irritable, asked me if I wanted her to do something about it. She was being sarcastic. I think she was. I don’t really know. No, obviously I did not want her to have the writer chained or any such nonsense. But I stopped and I stared at her, and she at me, and between us the mostly untouched tea we had been served an hour before. She’d invited me this time, you know. But I knew it was over. We did not see eye to eye. There was no eye to see. There was nothing to see with that sight we didn’t have. I was a crawler, a whiner, a schemer and she was a quiet and calculating tyrant, a forgotten and lonely scholar in a locked tower, and there was no possible ground to share. We had pushed each other into these pathetic roles. Did she think that I had loved her as a ruse to wield her like a club? If she thought that I could hardly blame her. Perhaps I sounded that way, bitter and resentful of her. Was my companionship just a reminder of the loneliness of being admired? Her companionship surely was like a thorn in my heart, painful but stemming its bloody flow.”

“And somebody heard that happen.”

“Oh, several. A few maids, the guard at the end of the hall, the enchanted bugs that even Twilight Sparkle, the Paragon of all things Magic, cannot fully erase from her palace. My reputation had soured on the vine before I reached home. A few weeks later the ponies who had seen in me a fellow Lady on hard times, but still worthy of some shabby respect, found me a detestable worm. The Canterlot boutique made not a single sale after that month, and I shut it down rather than waste my time, and my staff hated me, and they are right to if they still do.”

“You seem awfully invested in everyone’s hate,” Rainbow commented, following Rarity around a corner.

She found her quarry and host ahead of her in a open area. Perhaps it was the center. She had no way of knowing, but a fountain flowed here and the lights danced enticingly about. Statues again at four corners, but she could ignore those. Awful things. She would hate statues after this, she decided. No statues for a month. Celestia, but they just stared at you, and they never talked, and it was stupid to be angry about that but she was.

“I am invested because I am hopeful. To be reviled is a nice alternative to the more likely truth of being forgotten and happily so,” Rarity spat. She grimaced. Her tone softened. “Wouldn’t you rather someone felt anything at all about you, even something horrid, if they at least remembered your name and what you looked like? If you had no friend or lover left behind?”

“You have at least one friend,” Rainbow said. “And surely you have more here.”

“I have a husband,” she said stiffly, “of convenience and of alliance. You noticed his absence, of course, I know you did. I could feel it in you, like an uncomfortable crawling in your feathers. He is currently out there on the town, procuring.”

“Which means?”

Rarity sighed. “It means, darling, that he by now is on his first whorehouse of the night. He likes to start on Canal street with the mares first, and by moonrise proper he will be stumbling over to visit the young griffon lads and stallions on Yearling Street, and I suspect he shall be home ‘round three. We are friendly when we see each other, which is whenever he has recovered from his carousing and his politicking, and when I have rested from mine. So we see each other rarely. I have allies, and enemies, and a chambermaid to bicker with, and loyal ponies who take coin and do not ask questions. And that is it.”

“That’s… Rarity, and you want to stay here? That’s awful.”

“It is power. It is life. It is unassailable.”

“I thought you said no one was really safe,” Rainbow challenged, her eyes flickering from dancing light to dancing light.

“Bah. You know what I mean. As far as a thing can be without vulnerability, so I am.”

Rainbow circled the fountain, and Rarity countered. It was hard not to feel… a bit frightened. Not frightened, that was too extreme—was it? Yes, she decided finally, it was—nervous, perhaps. Anxious. Like she was sitting on a landmine.

“Why didn’t you ask us for help?”

“The answer to that was in the story. Keep up, dear.”

“I… okay, point. And you didn’t know I cared, I guess.”

“I suspected you might.”

“Did you not want me to?”

“I am undecided. You are alien to me now, Rainbow Dash. You are a reminder of Rarity, and I have not been Rarity since… a long time ago. You know, I worked the houses of Canal Street once. It’s how I met Redfeather for the second time, when I proposed this arrangement with my hoof in a threatening, yet interesting position. He knew my art, he’d seen it already, he knew my cunning, he’d felt it, and he knew my ruthlessness. It was easy. But you aren’t from any of that. You remind me of Rarity.”

“You’re Rarity.”

“I was Rarity, yes, at some point, and I stopped being that pony, and that pony died.”

“And yet you’re here, saying that.”

Rarity grimaced. “And yet I am here saying it, yes. Obviously something of Rarity remains, I’m not blind. I was delighted to see you. My happiness was open and honest and incredibly stupid. I let my guard down. I did not question what it would say of me to any watching when I embraced you on the street. I did not wonder how I might use this chance meeting, or what it might mean. Until I stood with you on the dais I did not even think of how I might turn even this to my advantage, and when I think of it now it feels dirty. It is so hard for me to feel as if anything is beneath me, now, Rainbow. So I am a bit distressed.”

“You’ve gotten used to living this way. I get it. I do! But you don’t have to just give into it. You can still be someone like the Rarity you want to be. Do you want to be the way you are?”

“Want is an odd word.”

“It’s a simple one,” Rainbow said, stomping her hoof. “Very simple and very clear and you should answer my question.”

“Of course I don’t,” Rarity said, or snarled, whichever. Whichever. “Obviously. Be reasonable, Rainbow Dash, between the sex work and the failing and the exile, do you think I have much room in me left for choice? I did not want to make anymore choices like that, and now I don’t. Now I run my own establishment on Canal, and the girls there are paid better than I ever was. The commoners hail me in the streets and my designs are bought all through the riverlands. I do not have to wait for Twilight Sparkle to save me, and I do not need the niceties of tea at the town spa, and I do not need the sycophancy of little traitors like Coco.”

“And you don’t need any warmth? Or friends?”

“I haven’t in some time!”

“You did,” Rainbow replied. “Didn’t you? If you are starving, do you suddenly not need food?”

“That’s not the sa—”

“Isn’t it?”

“And this is just a temptation, same as many before,” Rarity said, her voice shrill. She shrank back, and took a few deep breaths. “A temptation, and nothing more. Another chance for Rarity of Ponyville to prove her worth, by rejecting it out of hand.”

“What does that mean?”

“I could have turned aside. There were seamstress jobs in Lake City, but there were also room in the fashion houses, and I obviously did not fall for the temptation of easy money and easy food. Failed, of course, everything does fall apart in the end, but such is life. It’s how it goes. The sex work was a way to make the ends meet while I rented gallery space. I could have made enough to live rather well mending and tailoring, but that is a life for worms. A stupid and dull existence. And this is a temptation to, what, dream? Think too long about how much I’ve forgone and how stupidly impossible it would be to crawl back into the graces of ponies who do not remember me?”

“Or maybe connect to some here. Just… any one. For once. For the first time in a long time.”

“To whom? The peasants? My husband?”

“There’s no one at all?”

Rarity sighed. “I couldn’t think of any.”

Rainbow stopped dead in her tracks.

“You mean… you sound serious, like. Not shrugging me off here. No one?”

“Not a soul.”

Rainbow reeled. She wasn’t naive, despite Rarity’s assertions. She wasn’t blind. She knew that the world was harder around the edges than she’d imagined growing up. If just common sense hadn’t kicked in, her years with the Wonderbolts would have provided a splendid education on the matter.

You meet all kinds of ponies on the frontiers, and you learn that not everyone has the luxury of company. But the way Rarity talked wasn’t about a lack but something else, something more categorical.

“Surely you’re not serious. You can’t know for sure that you could not find some sort of warmth or connection from another living soul in a city this big,” Rainbow pressed.

“I am an aristocrat in a city that absolutely writhes with political tension, in a time marked by the fear that any moment now the Emperor out west is going to die and the whole continent is going to hell, and I am known to be cold and polite.”

Rainbow had seen both of those qualities. “I’m still not sure I’m sold on the wisdom of staying in a city you absolutely know is going to blow up.”

“Where would I go? To Equestria, and a name I don’t want? Oh, it’ll have troubles soon enough. To the Crystal Empire, where I’d start over in a system still marred by the byzantine bureaucracy dear Cadance has failed to curb? Would I skip over to Aquilea? I hear the revolutionaries are meeting again.”

“I…”

“But that isn’t the point, is it?” Rarity asked. “You’re not asking about the political situation. You’re asking about the social. And I can assure you that my situation isn’t going to change.” She smiled, and it was not a happy smile. “And there’s nothing you or I can do about it, my dear Rainbow. It’s best to let it go. Let me show you the city, have a nice day or two of rest as a guest, and then fly on home. If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll even write. Wouldn’t that be lovely, writing!”

“It would, yeah,” Rainbow said. She swallowed.

“Two, maybe three days, in foreign climes. It’ll be a nice sabbatical. I’m sure that the Wonderbolts—”

Through the whole conversation, Rainbow had rallied and then sunk again. Now, she found herself sitting back in a feeling she could only describe as despair. “They may not take me back,” she said. Her voice quivered. “I… I’m sorry. Nevermind.”

Rarity paused. Rainbow tried to steady her breath, and oddly enough, was thankful for the otherwise awkward silence. She just needed a moment to recover. Rarity wouldn’t ask her about it.

“What do you mean?”

Rainbow groaned. “It’s not important.”

“Now I am sure that you’re lying. What is it?”

Rainbow turned. She ruffled her feathers. “It’s fine. Aren’t we going to get eaten alive by mosquitoes out here?”

“Enchantments,” Rarity said quickly by way of explanation. “I’m sorry, I believe I misheard you.”

Rainbow grit her teeth.

“They may not take me back. It’s not a big deal.”

Rarity came around the side of the fountain.

“Explain, then, if it isn’t a big deal.”

“When I put in my time, they asked why, and nobody liked my answer,” Rainbow said. “I got the approval. I did. But then Twilight got wind of it cause apparently she’d asked them to look after me after we talked or whatever. So I lost my approval. So I told… Okay, so I left Soarin’ a note and a cake I got from Pinkie and I went AWOL.”

“You abandoned your post.”

Her voice was so flat. Rainbow felt a little bit of angry heat flair in her belly.

“I took my vacation because I came here to find you, and I did, and that’s what happened and that’s all that happened.”

Rarity’s face was so… strange. Her tone was so strange.

“They’ll likely have already filed for you to be removed in absentia.”

Rainbow swallowed. “Maybe.”

“What does Equestria do for desertion again?”

“I’m not a deserter,” Rainbow insisted, practically grinding her teeth. “I am not a damned deserter, I didn’t desert anything, I flew all the way here looking for you, and I found you, and that’s it. I don’t care.”

Rarity blinked.

“Oh. Oh my god.”

She swayed, as if caught in a sudden gust. Rainbow thought to move forward and steady her, but the mare was too fast, righting herself and shaking her head.

“It’s not a big deal.”

“If you say that again,” Rarity warned, “then I will close your mouth with magic and it will stay that way for an hour. It is a very big deal. You may have thrown away the Wonderbolts on a whim to see me? I said you were a fool and I meant it amiably but now I’m horrified. You idiot! You absolute idiot!”

“Someone had to!” Rainbow yelled. All the frustration welled up. It burst. “Someone had to come looking! Twilight didn’t wanna look and Fluttershy thought you didn’t wanna be found and nobody wanted to look, so I did! And I left Soarin’ a note and I found you and it’s fine okay? It’s fine. Just let it be fine. I’ll stay in your mansion and go home! It’s fine! I found out everything fucking sucks, all the mysteries are revealed, hurray.”

Rarity shook her head. “Please, no, I can’t… You can’t derail your entire life because you wanted to know where I was. That’s preposterous. It’s asinine. It’s absolutely abhorrent, and I refuse to have it on my conscience.”

“It’s not on yours, it’s on mine.”

Rarity growled. “Oh, it’s on both of ours. Rainbow Dash, you are my friend, and I refuse to let you throw your life away on a wasted husk like me. You are staying here, I’m finding you a job as an attache for the city guard, and I am writing Twilight and I am going to squeeze her wings into knots until she gives me her holy word that you’ll be reinstated at your previous rank, or so help me, I’ll coup the guilds myself!” By the end, she was all but yelling. “I know how Twilight works! I remember what makes her squirm with frustration! I will make her life hell and she will read every letter because that’s the way she is.”

Rainbow blinked.

“You… we’re still friends?”

Rarity laughed a bit deliriously.

“Rainbow, you walked off base from the Wonderbolts just to come see what I was up to. I don’t think I have a choice in the matter.” She laid a hoof on Rainbow’s shoulder. “I… I don’t know about the rest. I have no idea. I've ranted and argued and decried but now I am just dumbfounded. I have no idea what to do with you, or with this. I should just throw you out! I should send you packing! But I cannot. I should be furious that someone even unintentionally has put me in their debt, and I am a bit angry, but its so ludicrous. Rainbow, I am incredibly angry right now, but I am also overwhelmed. The girls have dinner ready, or will in a moment. We’re going to eat dinner. Alright?”

“I, uh, alright?”

“We’re going to do that, and then we are going to get incredibly drunk. I have a cellar full of cider. No arguments. We are going to get incredibly drunk.” Rarity took a deep breath. “And in the morning, when I am done having the worst of my hangover, I am dragging you to the guardhouse and I am finding you an attache position for the next month, and then I am coming home and I am writing letters until my horn falls off. And then maybe we’ll talk.”

“Thanks?” Rainbow shook her head. “I can just go home. It’ll work itself out, probably.”

“You know it won’t.”

“I… yeah,” she said, deflating. “I know. I’ve known the whole time. I thought about it a lot waiting to get across the border into the Riverlands. Told myself it would all be worth it when I got here.”

Rarity laughed. “Well, maybe it will be. Who knows.”

“We still need to talk more.”

“And we will. We will. I… I don’t think I’m wrong. But Rainbow, the madness of what you’ve told me is enough to shake my faith in just about everything. I’ll let you convince me again. You’ll have a whole month or more to argue with me. Will that satisfy you?”

Rainbow sighed. Rarity held out a hoof to her.

Rainbow took it. “Yeah. I think it will. Friends?” she added, almost nervously.

Rarity paused.

“I suppose we are,” she admitted, and they couldn’t help smile in the lantern light, and Rainbow thanked whatever gods ponies had forgotten that she’d see no more statues that night, if she could help it, with her own eyes or in Rarity’s face.