My body remains and reclines in that position appropriate for a chair. Without it, the burden contained within my chest will drag my lethargic carcass down to the train's mold-stricken floor. Shoulders sagged, mouth half-open, eyes lidded towards the painful sunrise that scorches the gray horizon, I raise my heavy hoof and shut the blinds. In so doing, my elbow topples the handbag from my beside. It falls, disgorging its contents of a diamond heart-shaped perfume bottle, an expensive red lipstick, a diamond necklace, some bits, and an empty case of pills. I have neither the will nor energy to fix the mess on the floor.

"Ponyville!" shouts the conductor as he knocks on the door of my car. "Ma'am, we're here."

I am unable to feel the vibrations under my hooves, but the train has stopped moving for quite some time now. I may be the last passenger that has yet to leave her car, and the conductor may as well have been shouting beyond propriety for minutes, but no incentive, even the arrival to my destination, beckons me to move.

I remain there, in that half-stupor of mental paralysis, dazed and wishing that I was not alive–no, not dead, but rather diminished to that state of unrational nonliving, absolved of the responsibility and necessity of preserving one's life.

The door slides open and in wabbles the conductor. "Ma'am, your ticket says this is your stop," says the young coal-colored colt.

I do not respond.

"Ma'am," he sighs, "do you need help with your baggage?" He must have seen my things scattered on the floor.

I shake my head, but the motion is too imperceptible, so I give voice to it. "N-No..." But that, too, can barely be heard.

I kneel on the floor and pick up every reusable cosmetic with my hooves, cramming the items back into my handbag. It is already too late as I realize that I could have used my magic to do so, sparing me the act of groveling on the floor as a stranger looks down to me, but it is irrelevant by the time I refill my bag: the thought does not bother me in the slightest.

"Do you need help finding a... a hospital, ma'am? Ma'am?" the conductor asks.

I rise from the floor, shoving shoulders with the colt as I make my way out the door and step onto the boarding station.

There is nopony here to greet me, and the train seems impatient for its departure by the horn that blazes as soon as my hooves touch the platform. My vision travels westward, toward the hills where the sun's rays brighten the fields of apples and beckons the rooster to crow. I stare at the farm, for a moment, wondering why I have no inclination to move towards it, albeit knowing that, somewhere there, a mare will welcome me with open hooves.

I head east, to where the tall structure of Carousel Boutique casts its shadow upon me. I fumble with the key to my prison several times before the doors welcome me with its chime; but the door sways withotut the resistance of the lock, sliding open at the first touch of force of the wind that rushes inside to fill the emptiness.

I pause, as soon as light enters the darkness, and surprise, for once, breathes life into me. The room is not as I left it. The drawers are pulled open, fabrics and cloths scatters on the floor, tables and chairs lie upturned, and a dozen plastic mannequins are shoved against the corner of the room.

I enter and close the door behind me. The door creaks and slams, alerting the other pony in my house.

Rainbow Dash dives in from the stairs of my bedroom. Aloft in the air with wings batting furiously, she eyes me with bloodshot pupils, empty of all emotion save for pure, unrestricted anger. In her hooves she holds a case of pills she obtained from my room.

"How long!?" she almost screams. She throws the small canister to my face and it hits me on the cheek. It rolls down my body, spilling the small medical pellets, and lands to my hooves. "I asked you, how long have you been cheating on her!"

"I won't answer you," is my reply.

Rainbow Dash sweeps in the air and a blur of blue occupies my vision. A second later, I am pressed against the wall, Rainbow Dash's hooves snapping closed around my neck. I do not resist.

"What are you going to do, kill me?" I ask with a voice laced with the undertone of indifference, as though Rainbow Dash's actions does not matter, or need not to matter.

"I'm trying hard not to think about it," she says between her gritting teeth.

"Do it, you'd be doing all of us a favor."

"It's a stallion, isn't it? Isn't it!?" Her hooves around my neck tighten shut, and it makes my heart palpitate as the air squeezes in and out of my lungs. "Who is it!?"

"Who was it that told you," I ask, "Pinkie Pie or Fluttershy?"

"This is between you and me!"

"I see. Fluttershy."

Pain pulses in my windpipe. She holds me up, pressing me further against the wall. Her head is cast down, too disgusted to even look at me.

"Why..." she whimpers, whole body shaking,"Why!? Applejack loves you!"

"More than anything."

"She trusts you!"

"She does."

Rainbow Dash pulls me in by the collar of my coat and pushes me hard again, the back of my head hits and bounces against the wall. “Do you think this is a joke?”

“I never thought it was.”

She looks at me, with teary eyes that seem, at that moment, to flash the color of blood. She raises her hoof and strikes my cheek. My head snaps to the side; I lick my lips.

“Tell her!” she shouts.

The swelling pain on my face does little to me. I look back to Rainbow Dash, straight into those two magenta irises, slowly boiling red as her pained visage turns crimson. “No.”

“Tell her the truth, you... you...”

“I, what?” I say, tilting my head, “Bitch? Slut?”

She slaps my cheeks again, harder this time, as though the object of my insult was not myself but, contrary, her. I feel blood trickle down from the corner of my mouth and the taste of rust is on the tip of my tongue

“No,” I say. I turn to her and blink only once. "Applejack may find out... but–this I swear–not from my lips.”

Her hooves shake, but this time with the unease of nervousness, as she holds me further against the wall. “T-Then if you won’t, I... I’ll tell her. That’s right, I’ll tell Applejack that you’re cheating on her!”

But I see it, that which she so struggles to hide. The most easily detectable emotion dominant to all things living, visible in the minute perceptibles of twitching muscles and batting eyelids, like a worm that shakes the rubble from where it is buried: the emotion of fear.

“Go ahead,” I say, in the tone of a challenge.

“Huh?” she asks. She heard me.

“Go ahead and tell Applejack.”

“Are you... willing to risk it?”

I shake my head. “By coming here, by coming to me and addressing me first, you already made a mistake.”

I pry her hooves from my throat and push them away, just enough so that I can speak without the strain against my windpipe.

“No, you won’t tell Applejack, not if it’s slander against me. Not just after reforging your friendship after countless fights because of me. You know she won’t believe you, she’ll do her best not to believe you. She’ll drown herself in rationalizations and in my tears, as I grovel and cry beneath her hooves, before she'll even bother listening to you. And when she does listen, she’ll take my word over yours.

“But no, that’s not what you’re afraid of,” I continue. “What you’re afraid of the most is if, if by some chance, Applejack does believe you. What would happen then? She might break up with me, but I highly doubt it. Because she won't blame me, she'll blame herself for whatever shortcomings she can imagine to conjure. Regardless, she’ll despise you. She will hate you–she won’t say it, but she will–for taking away her unmarred love for me. Applejack, the mare you once loved, will then grow distant from all of us. And I as well. Twilight will discover that she was the only one left in the dark, that her friends were keeping secrets from her. Fluttershy and I will stop having our weekly visits at the spa. And who would appear in Pinkie Pie’s party without the fear and ill at ease of having to see one another? What would happen to our beautiful friendship, the six of us? How many more pet play dates or sleep overs or parties do you think we can withstand before one of us leaps from the stage of facade and screams her brains out?”

The red pupils of Rainbow Dash shrink and turn pale as more tears stream down her face. She lets go of me, as her will fails her limbs, and backs away two or three steps, head shaking and eyes wide in disbelief.

“This isn’t a threat, darling,” I explain. “This is plain causality. Your precious Fluttershy knows this all too well, only that cunt had a little too much optimism.”

“What the hell did you call Fluttershy!” she roars suddenly.

“Optimistic.” I almost laugh, but the humor is unaccomplished. “You see, she somehow believes that, given time, this is an incident all of us can look back to and laugh. But we’re not that naive, are we? We know there’s no recovering from this, it’ll only tear open all the more like that of a diabetic's wound. So I had some other means to make sure she would keep her mouth shut...”

“What did you do to her!?”

“A simple exchange of secrets.” I move towards the darkness and sit on the couch, hooves steepled. “Fluttershy didn’t say what she did to you, did she?”

“W-What...?”

“She raped you, Rainbow Dash,” I say. “She did, she told me all about–”

“You lying bitch!” she screams.

“She did. It was at that time we carried you home back from Cadance’s wedding. I saw it. I looked into the window. You were drunk out of your mind and she took advantage of it, thinking she’d never have another chance with her love. Fluttershy confessed to me afterwards. She felt so... guilty. So I decided to keep her secret, if she’d keep mine.”

“Shut up!”

“Why the hell do you think she’s grown so attached to you recently? That’s how it all started. Now, do you want to know what will happen if Fluttershy finds out that I told you? That you know she raped you?”

“No!”

“She’ll break! She’ll never look at you in the face again, in shame, in self-pity and self-contempt. Every time you try to talk to her she’ll burst into tears and spout countless apologies. She won’t look at you, and when she does it’ll be a reproach and a reminder of that assault on her childhood friend. To be blunt, you and Fluttershy will never be together... Why, I wouldn’t be surprised, if one of these days you’d come to her home to see her dangling from the ceiling or bleeding away in the bathtub. Note or no note, you, and I, will both know why she did it... and who’s to blame.”

Rainbow Dash backs away until she hits the wall, pushed by nothing but my words. She slumps down, and her whole body would have crashed on the floor if not for the lone hoof holding on to the edge of a drawer. She looks down on the floor, muttering something incomprehensible that she alone can hear. She takes several long deep breaths, like a fish out of water. Her whole body starts sweating and her other hoof presses firmly against her temple.

“From the start, I knew I was playing with fire. I am willing to risk everything, Rainbow Dash, our friendship included,” I add. “The question is: are you?”

Rainbow Dash shakes her head.

“Secrets are not those we do not say, but those we do not say out loud.” I move towards the pegasus. "Otherwise, it will be your responsibility. I’ve kept the secret; I’ve done my part. Nopony squeals, nopony gets hurt. Nopony cares what emotion is boiling so long as the cover is on, and that the cover is alright to touch. Don’t you see? It'll be loyal, very much more loyal, to keep your mouth shut."

I stop speaking as soon as I realize that my words do not reach her any longer.

Rainbow Dash and I remain there for quite some time. I wait for her to make a move, or to cry out–whichever comes first. I can see, behind and beneath her shaking pupils, how she tries to find a clink in the chain I hold all of us by the throat; and I can see–when she looks at me and then to her hooves and back–that to kill me is an option she seriously considers. Only, perhaps, she does not have the courage to do it; courage, after all, is all that is needed.

“W-What...” she tries to say, but the rest of her words come out muffled.

“Speak up.”

Rainbow Dash looks up to me, for once, without threat or indignation, only a simple curiosity in her eyes. “W-What do you want... from Applejack?”

Perhaps it is the honesty in Rainbow Dash's question, perhaps it's the monotonic expression in her voice, perhaps it is those quivering eyes, that produces the same result: the question strikes me with a peerless coincision, harsher than her steel hoof against my naked cheek. I am left with a powerless grimace, as that of a criminal before the evidence of her crime. But the evidence is not the question, nor the honesty, but the flash of images that I see only when I do not know I am seeing it: the orange-coated earth pony who smiles an endearing smile, who cradles me in the warmth of an embrace and she who told me, from beyond the thin wall of a door, that she loves me.

What do I want from her? The unwelcome thought pieces itself together in my mind. What do I need her for, if I can have Shining Armor? What is she but a farmer, a peasant, to my prince? He who has bedded me time and time again, who has given me more gifts that she can afford in three lifetimes?

Why do I cling to Applejack so?

Why do I love Applejack so?

Then I feel the slow hot rise of fury building inside me, made hotter by the fact that the fury is unjustified and baseless under any terms. I feel my teeth clench and my hooves press against the ground, my eyes set still on the cyan pegasus as the only outlet for such an emotion.

What do you want from Applejack? The words return.

“Get out of here, Rainbow Dash.” It is the only thing I can say to answer the question. “And don’t I ever catch you uninvited to my house ever again.”

Rainbow Dash picks herself up from the floor. She looks at me, with a gleam of a glare behind the tears of her eyes. She dusts herself for a moment and walks, shambling, past me without saying a word. My eyes do not follow her and, instead, remain on that spot at the corner where she slouched and fell defeated. I hear the lock of my door bolt open, and see the ray of sunlight that cuts through the darkness, as Rainbow Dash steps out into the open.

Before she flies away, Rainbow Dash says something that makes me turn, teeth gnashing and heart stopping, towards her glaring eyes:

"Keep your own secrets," she says with the unease of uncertain resolve.

Then Rainbow Dash flies away.

There is a knock on the door, and my first gesture is to remove the red glasses from my eyes and place it hidden beneath the drawer of my work desk. I run to the nearest mirror on the wall and there I fix my mane and dust off some discoloration from my coat. I run to the door and, sliding out the locks, pry it open with my magic.

As expected, Applejack stands in front of the backdrop of a solitary dusk; some of the orange rays seep into the room. There are a few bags under her eyes and her coat still glistens of sweat after a hard day on the farm. But, most of all, I heave a sigh of relief at the sight of her smiling face that proves her nescience and the emptiness of Rainbow Dash’s threats.

“This is a surprise,” I say. I levitate a fresh cloth from the laundry and help her wipe the perspiration from her coat as she enters. “Was work finished early?”

“Eeyup. Woke up earlier than usual today.” Taking her Stetson off, she grabs me and plants a quick kiss to my lips. “Wanted to get here as soon as possible.”

Under normal circumstances, I would be appalled by the touch of another pony’s work-sweat on me, but the fruity scent of Applejack perspiration is one I have become accustomed to over the course of our months. She kisses me again, deeper this time but gentler. I allow her to indulge on my lips, to caress my flanks as she pulls me closer, to push me against the wall as she bucks the door closed. She breaks the kiss, moving down to nuzzle my neck.

“Applejack,” I whisper to her ear. “You’re... kissing more... intensely than usual.”

“Uh... sorry?” she says, sincerely, and it makes me laugh.

I pull her mouth close to meet mine, harder and deeper than how she pressed our lips together. I sense a peculiar quality in me, here, as our hooves and bodies coil and intertwine, as I feel the warm breath of life enter me: the pleasure is there, as it always has been, only, with it, there stings an aftertaste of a nausea stemming from Applejack ignorance. The ignorance that she has yet to know the truth about me. I do not why I taste it now, on her lips, after Shining Armor–damn me for remembering him!–abandoned me. When I break the kiss, I cannot look her in the eye and I turn away, following with it a simple sentence to hide my guilt.

“Have you had dinner already?” I ask her. “We can eat out if you want.”

“Already ate,” she answers, leaning forward and aiming for my lips. “Though ah don’t mind eatin’ again, mind ya.”

“Oh, Jackie, you have the stomach of a stallion.” I run a hoof along the curves of her hips. “Just don’t gain too much weight, I’d hate to see you lose your figure... Want me to cook something for you?”

“Never mind me none. Ah’ll just be quick since we got another early riser in the farm tomorrow mornin’. So...” She stands a little bit farther, just the enough proper distance for a conversation, with her hoof not letting go of mine. “What is it?”

“What?”

“What are ya gonna tell me?”

“Pardon?”

“Rainbow Dash told me last night that ya got something mighty important to say.”

The name of the pegasus makes me freeze in place–no, not out of fear–but out of the cold precision of intelligent calculation. I clear the painful lump in my throat and try not to bite my lips. My hooves crawl from Applejack’s shoulder and back to my side lest she sense the minute trembling in them.

Surely, you have yet to know?

Not if she can smile like this to me.

“R-Rainbow Dash...” I pull the words from my chest. “She... She talked to you... last night...?”

“Uh... Yeah.”

“W-What... did she say?” I bite my tongue, trying to control my stuttering.

Applejack shrugs. “Nothin’ much. She woke me up, in the middle of the night, flyin’ through the barn’s window. Startled the hay outta me. Ah asked her what was it that couldn’t wait till mornin' and she said somethin’ like ya have a very important thing to say.”

“What did I have to say? About what?” But, of course, I knew.

“She didn’t say. Only that it’s mighty important.”

“Can you please repeat it to me, in verbatim, what she told you.”

"Uhh... Verbatim?"

"Word for word, dearest."

Applejack stares at me for a moment, an eyebrow raised. “Well, I was riled up that night, bein’ woken up and all, so ah can’t repeat it exactly... but, to the best of mah memory she said somethin’ like, 'Go talk to Rarity. It’s real important. It’s about your relationship. She...' then she murmured something so low ah don’t know if she herself heard it. She stopped talkin’ and just looked at me for a long time. And ah mean like a long time, like a minute or two. Just stared at me and ah couldn’t tell whether she was sad or worried about somethin’... maybe both... Creeped me out a little cuz it ain't like her to be doin' that. And then after a while of just starin and not talkin’ she... She just started cryin’ and dashed out of mah window... Poor thing, don’t know what’s gotten into that filly.”

I do not know whether it is fortunate or not that I don't share Applejack's sympathy for our friend. Instead, my mind remains focused on how detrimental my friend is to my relationship. “You... You haven’t seen her since?”

“Ah tried lookin’ for her but couldn’t find her nowhere.”

“I see.”

“So...”

“So what?”

“What was that important thing ya were supposed to tell me?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“But Rainbow Dash said–”

“Rainbow Dash did, not I.” Then, realizing the harshness in my tone, I soften my voice and expression. “Maybe I just forgot about it, dearest. If only Rainbow Dash had been more specific then maybe I can remember.”

“If you forgot 'bout it then ah reckon it ain’t important.”

“Yes, dearest. It isn’t important.”

I remain quiet for some time and expertly wear a worried expression, hoping that I can initiate a conversation that may convince Applejack to, for the time being, stay away from Rainbow Dash's company. But my dearest, who herself is genuinely worried of a certain matter, barely notices my enticement, and I am the one who is forced to inquire of her apparent discontent.

“Is there anything wrong, darling?” I ask.

“Hey, hun." She takes my hoof and leads it to her lips for a gentle buss. “Everythin’ is alright between us, right... Ah mean... we don’t have no problems right... with each other?"

“Of course..." I say, quite baffled. "Why would you ask that?"

“It just felt like... we ain’t spendin’ much time like we used to.” She adds, "Or supposed to."

“What do you mean?" I tilt my head to the side.

“Well..." She runs a hoof down my mane, nestling closer to my cheeks. "You know all’em trips you’ve been takin’ almost every week? Ah dunno... Ah feel like it’s driftin’ us apart. And... ya know that Granny Smith’s birthday is two days from now. She’s turnin' ninety-one.”

“Of course, dear. I haven’t forgotten.”

“And that, she ain’t still on good terms with me... Ah accept that this might be her last birthday considerin' her age, but ah fear to think that Gran and I will spend it like this... avoidin’ eyes and not talkin'."

“Of course,” I say, holding her hooves.

“Rarity, this is serious,” she mutters. “Ah want to patch things up with mah grandma and... this time... ah really, really need ya to be there for her. This is important for me. If Granny Smith sees how wonderful of a mare ah have then ah’m sure...”

Applejack stops. I see the small lowering of her eyelids as she stares at me, as though she sees something in my eyes. Something she had been looking for in a long time, found, and only caused her disappointment. She replaces her hat back on as she shakes her head.

“Ain’t no use for this...” she says suddenly, her tone deep, as she turns around.

“Wait? What happened?” Perplexed, I run to her and grab her hooves. “Dearest, what’s the matter? I haven’t said anything yet, have I? I promise I’ll go.”

“Yeah, heard that before.” She sighs. "It's alright, hun... Ya don't have to make no promises. Ah don't want ya feelin' guilty when ya can't keep'em."

“I said I will!”

“Yeah, ah know what ya said and next thing ah know ya get an invitation from Fancy Pants, Fleur, that Scabbard-fella or some other of yer rich Canterlot friends to some party or somethin’. Then ya’ll wire me in the last minute about cancellin' since yer already on the train.”

“It’s not all parties. They’re commissions, business gatherings and career propositions.”

"And it ain't just the date. The dates ah can ignore on account that ah understand that business comes first. But... the worst part was when Granny Smith got sick and all she wanted was to take a good look at ya before she thought she’d kick the bucket. Ya said you'd go but–"

"I told you I'm sorry!"

"–when ah came to pick ya up all ah found was an apology letter pinned to the door! A letter! Without even the decency of facin' me."

“I couldn't help it, it was an emergency!”

"Some emergency that Canterlot party turned out to be," she scowls. "Which explains why ya came home lookin' like ya had the time of yer life."

“I already apologized countless times!”

“Ya apologized countless times ‘cuz ya stood me up countless times."

The exclamation did not come in Applejack's voice, but in the way she reared back and stomped both hooves on the floor. It is not a threatening gesture, but I back away, one hoof folded against the other, to make her think that, somehow, her anger upsets me more than she hopes to. I regret that it is her love for me that makes it work.

"Look... Consarn it, Rare," she mumbles, calming herself down. "Ah already chose ya over the roof over mah head... Don't make me choose between ya and mah family cuz ah don't wanna lose mah family. We've been together for–what?–seven months now and every day after our first ah feel like yer avoidin’ me...”

"Oh, I see what this is all about!" I shoot back, taking advantage of her suddenly lowered guard. "You're frustrated because I still refuse to let you between my flanks. I told you I'm not yet ready and–"

"How did that get into the conversation?" The authentic shock shows on her face, a shock that stems from the unbelievability of what she is hearing. "That’s not even mah point! And if it was, ah’d go on to say that you’d never be ready until ah have enough bits to buy ya a diamond purse!"

“Of all the–!” I gasp. “Well, maybe if you hadn’t traumatized me with rape, we would’ve...”

The look on Applejack’s face stuns me more than my words stunned her. I take in a deep gasp of air, in panic of what I have said, in hope that I may swallow back the words I spew. But it is too late. Applejack is on the verge of tears, her eyes start as she draws back as though repulsed and insulted, and justly so.

“Oh, Applejack,” I say. “I didn’t mean–”

A knock on the door interrupts my apology. I turn to its direction, perhaps to avoid looking at Applejack's tears, but she does not. The entrance to my boutique opens uninvited, Applejack turns away and faces the wall to hide her face from the unwelcome visitor, to the bright smile of an ignorant lavender unicorn.

“Hey, Rarity... Applejack,” Twilight says as she holds up a letter and looks to me. “Got your mail.”

There is neither response from Applejack nor I. Twilight observes it and finally feels the heavy silence that weighs on the room. She looks to and fro the both of us, trying to discern which mare she can better address.

"Uhn... I'm sorry," the lavender unicorn says. Unable to choose of a proper interlocutor, she hangs a question in the air, hoping that either one of us will pick it up."Did I come at a bad time?"

“N-No, darling,” I am forced to say, taking the white burden from her hooves. “Everything’s fine. Did Miss Hooves put my letters in your mailbox again? At least she didn’t send it to Cloudsdale this time.”

I laugh. Nopony else does. Twilight looks to the pony behind me, who no doubt remains still in her position. “I apologize,” the unicorn says. “I didn’t know I was intruding... I’ll go now."

“I-It’s alright, Twi,” Applejack says from behind me. I cannot even turn to face her. “Ah was just leavin’.”

Trotting out the door, eyes hidden beneath the brim of her hat, she does not even look at me except–perhaps it is my own inclination to believe so–for a small turn of her head to my direction.

“Applejack, I–” I try.

“Ya both have a good evenin’ now,” she interrupts. I do not know if by intention. “G’night, ya’ll.”

Applejack walks through and to the darkness, as Twilight and I watch from the safety of my boutique. We can both feel the familiarity of the scene. For, six months ago, it was the prelude of that pivotal moment when Applejack forced herself on me, when the two us watched as the drunken earth pony trotted away from the carriage. Only then, I remember, that I was the one who chased Applejack in the hopes of comforting her from the injury I myself have inflicted upon her heart. I cannot chase her now. I close the door with my magic, forgetting that Twilight is still with me inside.

“I’m not going to pry the details of your relationship,” Twilight says, “but... shouldn't you go after her?”

With my eyes closed, I fix my mane in front of the mirror before answering Twilight’s question. I heave out a sigh.

“Whatever are you talking about, dear?” I turn to the lavender unicorn with a beaming smile that hurts my cheeks. “There’s no reason for me to chase Applejack.”

I do not care if Twilight believes the smile, only that she choose to accept it at face value in her refusal to deny what she knows to be a complete and utter lie.

“Now let’s see what came in,” I say, levitating a letter opener from my drawer. I pry through the thin paper and, from it, I unveil two silver tickets. Each states the following:

ADMIT ONE
VIP invitation:
Basket Case’s 1ST MASQUERADE PARTY
Canterlot, Grand Oceanarium, 2B

At the back of the ticket, a date shows that the party will be held two days from now.

“Are you taking Applejack with you?” Twilight asks, looming over my shoulder.

I look at the pair of tickets in my hoof. The paper seems too heavy all of a sudden. I remember Applejack’s words, of how she chose the farm over me. And yet, here I am, struggling to choose between her and another mundane and formulaic gathering. A party that, even if Shining Armor comes, no doubt Mr. Scabbard will be absent from.

I shake my head, crumpling those two tickets, before throwing them down the trash.

“I won’t be going,” I tell the dumbstruck Twilight. “Granny Smith’s birthday is in two days. I cannot possibly miss it. Not for my dearest.”

It is painfully difficult to smile, even if the conversation itself is most appealing to my taste. Still, I hold the curve of my chin upwards and try to enjoy myself at a party I already think to be irksome. Taking out another cigarette, the young stallion beside me, who just introduced himself and whose name is already lost to my memory, casts a quick flame spell to ignite the tip of the tobacco roll in my hooves.

“Thank you,” I say to the stallion, slightly pulling down my domino mask to bat my eyelashes to him. I smoke a quick puff before turning back to my conversant speaker. “You were saying?”

“Like I said,” says another stallion, wearing a traditional eastern dragon mask, “if the rumors are true that Cadance is... shall we say, adulterous... then this constitutes grounds for Shining Armor to file a divorce. And, in so doing, the entire estate would be split in half.”

“Interesting,” I say. “It’s very... democratic for Princess Celestia to make sure that princesses are not above the law... But, hypothetically speaking, supposing that it was Shining Armor who is charged of adultery and it was Cadance who filed the divorce, would the estate be intact or would it still be split down the middle?”

“Well, since Cadance is the original holder of all that property, and not his husband, and since it was his husband who was the offender, then the estate would remain intact. Shining Armor would not get a bit out of it, and he’ll most likely be stripped of his title as a prince consort and captain of the Royal Guards... Why are we discussing this again?”

“Well now,” I laugh. “I simply find it curious. Nothing more. Such information is invaluable to mares of my position.”

“In what position, Miss Rarity?” asks Jet Set who is listening, desperately trying to be noticed.

I answer: “The position of being vulnerable, darling. Mares such as you and I, whose hearts are as brittle as glass and as absorbent as cotton, have a weakness for the first stallion who shows us the first and briefest sign of kindness.”

I laugh, and so does my company.

The Grand Oceanarium of Canterlot is an inverted fishbowl the size of an average ballroom. The wall and the floor that seals out the water is of transparent glass, thick enough to withstand the pressure yet so thin and clear that it gives adequate visibility to the aquatic life outside, where hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of fish of all colors, shapes and sizes swim and spin around the sphere and amidst the deep blue. A strange place, and time of year, to hold a masquerade party, really. But, then again, Basket Case’s aesthetic taste has always been questionable. And so, in appeasement to those ponies she holds in contempt for expressing their disagreement–I among these ponies who evinced dislike in the realm of fashion–this gathering is quite a smart social move for her to show her tolerance of opinion. And no Canterlot pony, at least not those who count, would be caught dead without having attended a party where so much financial account has been invested, her father’s financial account to be exact.

“Caviar truffles, ma’am?” A passing waiter bows to me, holding up the tray of hors d'oeuvre.

“Don’t mind if I do,” I say, thanking the waiter as I levitate my glass of Fino Sherry Manzanilla to my red wet lips.

It is hard to observe the party when I compose its great majority and whereas the others are simply they who fight and scramble on top one another for my attention. Those few who know they may not get the chance to even receive my passing glance, settle their eyes to the fishes outside and their ears to the cello of the gray earth pony mare on the stage.

However, to the sensitive ears of decorum, a loud, almost mocking, gay laugh erupts louder from the middle of the dance floor. Those whose eyes can afford to stray from me moves to the object of that laughter. It is a loud, familiar and twinkling laugh, one I can enjoy hearing anyplace else but among the company of my peers.

“Didn’t you come here with that... earth pony?” asks Basket Case, pointing to the center of the ballroom with a tilt of her head. She already knows the answer to the obvious but she insists with the hopes that it will somewhat humiliate my position. I do not notice that it is she who is beneath that Masque of Red Death.

“Why, yes I did," I answer.

“Very ill-mannered for a friend of yours.”

“She is from Ponyville,” I answer. “And no, we’re not friends... I barely know her, really. She’s just another... You know... Element of Harmony... Laughter.”

“She certainly lives up to it.”

Pinkie Pie is in the utmost center of the ballroom, holding and dragging in her hooves a poor young stallion in an unorchestrated and improvised dance of tango. The pink earth pony wears the dress I gave her for the occasion: a ruched charmeuse gown with feathered skirt. If not for the interchanging red and gold color of the fabric, the ebony plumes that sways with her every movement, and the smooth ceramic mask of comedy that serves as her visage, one can easily mistake the whole ensemble for a wedding dress.

“Are you really associated with...those kind of ponies,” Basket Case adds.

“By decree of my being an Element of Harmony from the High Princess herself?” My stare remain transfixed on the boisterous source of the room’s laughter. “Yes.”

“Might I suggest, from one mare to another,” she continues, in a voice louder than necessary for me to hear, “that you disassociate yourself from such company when in public. I’d hate to see that others might think you’re friends with somepony of that... discipline. It’ll be detrimental to your position.”

“Well,” I clear my throat. “In that case, the burden of responsibility is not upon me but those others, as you’ve called them, who makes the assumption that there is some plausible way I can be friends with–”

I stop, seeing Pinkie Pie from the end of the ballroom. The mask with the permanent smile turns to me, as though the omniscience of her Pinkie Sense whispered the knowledge of my looking at her. “Hey-a, Rarity!” she shouts for all to hear, waving and hopping to my direction.

“Excuse me, darlings,” I say to my crowd, pulling myself from them with the hopes that I can bring to a private conversation whatever it is Pinkie Pie wishes to say. Several times now, her own misbehavior in high society is already enough to smear my repute, protected so far by my denial of our friendship to others. But it is her candid unpredictability that I fear may jeopardize my position the most; it only takes one mention of my affair with Shining Armor–and of my relationship with Applejack–that will cause my ruin.

I meet Pinkie Pie somewhere in the middle of our point of departure, still within the eyes of the onlookers but, thankfully, beyond their ears. Before I can say a word, the pink pony jumps in the air and grabs me in a tight embrace. Not once, before my affair with Shining Armor was temporarily discontinued, have I worried of Pinkie Pie’s behavior in the parties I invited her in; I let her gorge on food, take the dance floor or obliviously reject the invitation of Canterlot stallions who take a liking–or cathartic pity–to her personality.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, Rarity!” Pinkie Pie says, pressing our cheeks together. “Thank you for inviting me! I’ve never been to a masquerade party before.”

The shortness of breath, as her hooves lovingly coil around me, I can tolerate; but, it is when I see the hidden chuckle of those socialites that my tolerance turn to panic. With more force than necessary, I shove Pinkie Pie away from me. The gesture throws her off balance–it does not make her tumble, however–and only leaves her dumbfounded at the sudden infliction of force.

“Rarity?” Pinkie Pie mutters. Behind the mocking smile of her mask, I cannot tell if she is on the verge of tears or erupting in anger.

“I’m sorry, darling,” I respond. “It’s just that...”

I do not finish. I do not find it necessary to even make up an excuse or justify myself. So long as I said the word ‘sorry’, it should do enough for her. I dust off whatever particulates she might have smeared on my black evening top and fix the creases on my skirt.

“Pinkie, dear,” I say, holding on to her hoof and leading her to a more private location. “May I have a word with you?”

“Sure-y, Rarity-ie!” she shouts, hopping all the while. Apparently, the instant of being pushed is all but remembered.

I lead her to the Jellyfish Room adjacent to the Grand Oceanarium. It is a room so dark one cannot measure its dimensions. The floor, the walls, and the ceiling seem to continue to an endless expanse of black. Of course, the illusion is made possible by architectural design and lighting, or lack of it, to mimic the effect of being submerged within the oceanic depths. The sole source of illumination, apart from the trail of a broken line which leads to the exit, are several giant fluorescent tanks randomly scattered all over, each filled with several jellyfishes that glow the water in them to a light pink.

"Ooh," Pinkie Pie moans, observing the aquatic creatures inside the nearest tank. “Oh, Rarity, look! Jellyfisheses! Do you really think they’re fishes made up of jelly? Or are they jelly that’s made up fishes? They don’t even look like fishes. They look like octopuses. That’s what should we call them: jelloctopus! ...But then they’d be made up of Jell-O, which is like jelly only it’s a dessert... ”

I approach the pink mare. She presses the pale-faced mask against the glass. It makes me wonder whether she can see behind those small slits for her eyes.

“Pinkie Pie, dear,” I say. “Do you know why I brought you here?”

“Nopey dopey...” she laughs. “Do you think jellyfisheses taste better with peanut butter?”

“I brought you here to talk to you,” I tell her, “in private.”

“Oh, what do you want to talk about?” Pinkie jumps from one tank to another, the translucent tentacled sea creatures in them frisking about. “I really wish there are peanutfisheses.”

“Do you remember how many parties I have already invited you to?” I say, following her.

“Including that dinner party with very, very rich stallions? Hmm...” she places her hoof beneath her chin as she seriously ponders. Then, as though struck by revelation, she hops in place, saying, “I know! I know!”

“How many?”

“Nine!”

“Correct.” I actually do not know or care enough to count. “Now, do you still remember why I invite you to my parties?”

“Because we’re best friends.”

“Of course, darling. Now... Do you remember why we’re best friends?”

“Is it because you want me to keep that secret that I saw you and Shining Armor going to a hotel together in Manehattan?”

This time my smile vanishes. As much as I knew that the conversation would lead to this, the fact that she said it so straightforward and so high-toned reminds me of the knowledge that I know, even if she does not, that she holds me under her power.

“Yes... Pinkie Pie...” I mutter. “That reason.”

“So what’d you want to talk to me about? I’m sure you didn't bring me here to see if I spilled the beans... or if I still have them with me to spill in the first place.”

I am stunned, for a moment, to hear her use the expression she was once unable to conceive of. Nevertheless, I go on to my point.

“Pinkie Pie...” I say, clearing my throat. “You know that I’m famous in Canterlot, very famous.”

“Are you,” she says in a tone and voice unnatural to what I know of her. It is not a question.

“Yes. I am... But the ponies here... in Canterlot... They don’t know that free-spirited nature of enjoyment and they can’t even comprehend the concept of fun. And, more often than not, they misunderstand you, and”–I continue to speak, studying her, looking for any hint of emotion in her still body. But it is futile, she does not move, not even in her breathing, and that damnable impertinent smile of her mask renders her visage invisible to me. I do not know if she is listening, and understands, or if I am wasting my breath as the thoughts of jellyfishes cloud her sense of perception–“I do not want them thinking ill of you. So, if I may ask, if you wish to continue to attend the same parties I am in, to please remain more... settled in one place and quiet.”

"Am I embarrassing you that much?”

“No!” My cry is immediate and involuntary, begging to be believed. “Goodness, no. I’d never sell out my friends for...”

“Who said anything about selling out friends?”

“I mean...”

“It was that mare with the red mask, wasn’t it?” she says, with the indifference of a shrug. “Have you been friends long before us? Longer than we've been? I didn’t see her face, or don’t remember seeing her face–or know if she has a face to begin with.”

“She’s the host of this party.” I scowl. “Why do you say things like that?”

“Do you like her,” she says, again, without the question mark in her tone.

“She once supported me, financially. And I am very grateful that–”

“Are you friends? Or friends of friends? Or friends of friends of friends?”

“She’s influential.”

“What do you think of her?”

I look around where I stand, hoping that nopony else is within earshot. The thick darkness makes the motion useless. “There’s a name for mares like her,” I say. “But it’s not relevant to this discussion... nor the vulgarity of the term is appropriate in the drawing room.”

Pinkie Pie sighs beneath the mask. What makes me to turn to her, in a sudden unfathomable panic, is the curious quality of that release of breath. It is as though she heaved her soul out from her mouth, leaving only an empty automaton of a carcass. And when I see, through the ebbing pink glow of the water tank, how her bubbly mane faded and died, deflating to a long sharp fall over her shoulder, I know I am looking at an entirely different mare.

“P-Pinkie... Pie?” I still managed to say.

She turns to me. I cannot see her face beneath the smiling mask.

“It is both ironic and redundant,” she says, the voice deep and hollow, with a somber tone akin to a eulogist, “this masquerade ball.”

“W-What?”

"Ironic, that is the literary quality of metaphysically undercutting an element of an existent with its direct, yet most adverse, incongruity." She moves around the tank, one hoof outstretch and tracing an invisible line against the glass. “Here we are, the faceless, wearing masks upon masks upon masks playing charades and hide-and-seek and musical beds. Tell me, Miss Rarity, supposing that, with a knife, you peel away the mask, and another mask, and another mask, and yet another mask, of any your friends here in Canterlot, what do you get? A face? Really? Now what's behind that? Peel that away and you are left with the skull. Now bash it open or break it to pieces and here–ah, here–what do you get, what do you see, inside of what that sturdy bone protects? Tell me, Miss Rarity, would it make much difference to you if we slosh all that skin, and muscle, and bone, and marrow, and–in its place–we put one full and faceless mannequin, as equally brainless, mindless, opinionless as any one of your retinue? Dress it up, from muzzle to tail and from mane to hooves, with the most expensive embroideries and jewelries brought from the nearest store that rejects a customer whose purse is cheaper than its contents. Would you still suck up to it? Appeal to its favor?"

I cannot follow Pinkie Pie's train of thought, nor could I even hear anything outside the deep monotonic voice. I question whether she still is Pinkie Pie but my mind cannot fathom an alternative. Who else can be behind that mask of comedy, a solid and unflinching visage with a permanent smile?

"You can only wear one mask at a time," she continues. "So don't make the mistake of interchanging one for the other. And make sure you remain distant from everypony lest they tear that mask off you and expose your real face to the world."

I stand still, but not as still as she. Pinkie Pie stands straight and unmoving, in a sudden stillness as though her whole being petrifies. Even her long sharp mane refuses to be carried by the same little breeze that shivers my spine. I do not what compels me to do so–perhaps it is because my eyes are unable to convince my mind–that, throat dry and wide-eyed, my hoof inches closer to the mocking mask of comedy worn by the unknown pink pony before me.

And, as I tear that mask away from that unmoving body, a blast of confetti hits me in the face.

"Ooh! Ooh! Heya, Rarity!" Pinkie Pie snorts and laughs as a shower of multi-hued streamers rain down on me. "So... what do you think?"

I cannot answer, nor do I understand the question. My mouth babbles in shock, not knowing what just happened.

"I said that if a peanutfish and a butterfish would have a baby, it'll be a peanutbutter fish," she says, jumping excitedly as though the thought itself is a cause of celebration. "And if the peanutbutterfish and the jellyfish get a baby it'll be a peanutbutterandjellyfish!"

My hoof touches the cold and solid floor. I am reminded that I am still in the plane of concrete existence and not thrown into some surreal dimension manifested by the trompe-l'oeil; where that which I have seen rages in conflict against what I see: Pinkie Pie stands there, hopping in place, as I know and knew her, the jubilant and harmless party-loving pony she is. She stops hopping for a moment and looks at me with one raised eyebrow. She extends her hoof and I reach for it, hesitatingly so, as she helps me to my feet.

“Are you okay, Rarity?” she asks. “You look like you’ve seen cheesefish! Where can I see it?”

“P-Pinkie,” I say, composing myself. “The.. I mean... Were you just...”

“Yes?” she asks, leaning forward and batting eyelashes.

“N-Nothing...” I cannot continue. There are no words to complete the sentence.

Were you just not Pinkie Pie? is a question too redisory that I cannot bring myself to say it.

“Let’s go back to the party!” Pinkie Pie screams, pressing her smiling visage against the glass tank. “I wanna dance!”

Surely, it is impossible. There is no other Pinkie Pie.

My memory traces back to that seemingly irrelevant event months ago when, having been discovered by that pink pony, I saw, for a fraction of a second, that same straight-maned creature wearing Pinkie Pie’s skin.

Is it a phantasm? An illusion?

Watching the Element of Laughter laugh as she exits the Jellyfish Room, I am left alone within the darkness, conceiving, and even considering, what I know to be absurdity.

Am I projecting my... guilt... onto Pinkie Pie?

I shake my head, shaking away the preposterousness. Standing amidst the emptiness, head throbbing and, somehow, a droplet of a tear in my eyes, I trot back to the exit to rejoin the party.

On my way, I stumble. Just below my hoof is a small piece of artifact that makes me coil away. Thalia’s smile is made real in silver ceramic, beaming and mocking in its permanence. I levitate the article to me with my magic as I ponder why, of all possible aesthetic and literary design, Pinkie Pie chose the face of comedy.

I look up from the artifact to see the pink earth pony standing in the distance, her head turned to me, smiling; and it seems, at that moment, that she still masquerades the mask I now hold in my hooves.

It is hard to sleep on the train. It is not because of the occasional bump that rock my seat, nor is it the ear-wracking screech of the engine, it is not, even, what's left of the painful sun rays that stab through the slits of the window blinds and into my eyelids; it is the peaceful sleeping of the pink pony in front of me.

Pinkie Pie is sprawling on the sofa of our private Pullman car. She snores, loudly, with her maw open, as she spins and turns on the spot for a more comfortable position. She mutters something incomprehensible, something about ice cream, and she rolls again on her magazine, her right hindleg dangling at the edge of the seat.

Forelegs folded against my chest where I hold on to my bag, my eyes do not leave her sleeping figure. Even though the other Pinkie Pie has not shown herself since the party, I no longer know if I can trust this seemingly innocent pony that, on occasion, knows more than she shows. Moistening my crusted lips, I reach for the pink pony–out of the necessity to prove the reliability of my senses–extending my hoof to touch her face and see, by some absurd hypothesis, if her face can fall off.

Then, in a sudden abrupt movement, Pinkie Pie shoots up, wide awake, standing on the couch. She stares blankly to whatever is infront of her and then, without warning, she clutches her chest and coils on the floor. Pinkie Pie starts screaming.

"P-Pinkie!" My earlier concern for her is flung aside at the sight of a pony tortured by an invisible physical pain. "Pinkie, what's wrong? Pinkie!"

Holding back her scream, she says: “I... I’m twitching... my heart... hurts...”

“What is it?” I move towards her. “What’s happening?”

Though I am among the skeptics to Pinkie Pie’s unusual ability, despite the statistical generality by which it is accurate, it is the sight of an agonized pony that forces me onto my knees andher into my hooves.

“I’m alright... It’s...” She pushes my hoof away. “It’s gonna happen... in Sweet Apple Acres... Applejack... We won’t make it.”

I look out the window, and the vast apple farm is laid across before me. There is no pony there in sight, except for a few pegasi pushing the dark clouds above towards an accumulation of miasma. A little farther, I see the train tracks circling the prairie of Ponyville to the train station at the end of town, dragging us farther from the supposed setting of Pinkie Pie’s impending premonition.

I jump back to my chair, grab my luggage and purse with my magic, and bolt to the end of the car to where the emergency break hangs on the ceiling. I pull on the line, and the loud screeching of metal against metal can be heard throughout. I feel the floor shake beneath my hooves as the train comes to a full halt.

Not wishing to delay myself, I follow Pinkie Pie who, sharing my intention, jumps outside the window. Racing towards the barn house, the first droplets of rain descend from the darkening sky. As we run, Pinkie Pie is once again felled to the ground where she clutches her chest.

“It’s happening…” she says, “We’re too late.”

I leave the pink pony writhing on the dirt as I run to the small speck of orange in the far distance. But there is another color beside that glint of sienna, a color that makes me stop momentarily, in fear, before trotting as fast as I can, from that same emotion that made me stop. The color is cyan.

Cyan and orange collide together, and I can hear the loud thud of their impact. As I near, whole body shaking, my suspicion is made true.

Applejack and Rainbow Dash stand in front of one another, their hooves wobbling and marks of black bruises litter the vibrant colors of their coat where sweat, blood and rainwater mix to an undefinable smudge. At a distance behind Rainbow Dash, a teary-eyed canary pegasus is on her knees, sobbing and begging the two ponies to a halt.

“Dearest!” I cry out, in time for lightning to cut through the clouds and for thunder to render us deaf.

Applejack charges Rainbow Dash and topples her to the dirt. But speed is to the pegasus’s advantage and, as she is thrown down, she drives her knee against Applejack’s stomach as they both hit the ground. Applejack’s face contorts before she crunches to her belly. Still on top of her opponent, the earth’s pony facial contortion turns to a grimace as she lunges and bites Rainbow Dash’s shoulder. Rainbow Dash screams. The pegasus uses her hoof and punches Applejack side, trying to shake her off. But the earth pony's weight and sheer fortitude makes it impossible. Her screams getting louder, Rainbow Dash’s right hoof crawls along the ground until she grabs hold of a black rock and smashes it twice against Applejack’s temple. The earth pony tumbles and rolls away from her opponent, writhing in pain as a viscous red liquid intermingles with the brown mud where she lies.

Another thunderclap erupts from the sky as Rainbow Dash glides, with one battered wing, over Applejack. She takes the earth pony by the collar of her coat and lands several punches on her muzzle.

“Stop it!” Fluttershy and I scream at the same time, but, again, the crack of thunder and howling rainstorms drown our words.

Rainbow Dash yells something to Applejack, something I cannot hear. The earth pony responds: she grabs Rainbow Dash by her nape and bashes her forehead against the pegasus’s nose bridge. Rainbow Dash steps back, twice or thrice, both her forelegs on her muzzle, shouting profanities in pain. Applejack takes advantage of the sudden pause. She stands, walks to the pegasus, and lashes out against the cyan belly.

Applejack falls forward, face first to the mud, collapsing.

Rainbow Dash is sent to her knees, one hoof on her muzzle and another on her stomach. She scrunches down and vomits blood.

We cannot stand the barbarity any longer. We run to our love ones; I to Applejack, and Fluttershy to Rainbow Dash.

I kneel to my dearest and I take her in my hooves. Her eye, her left eye that is not painfully shut closed by a bruise, grows wide as she finally notices my being here. She twists her body, withstanding every ache of every movement, just so she can wrap her hooves around my neck and plant a kiss on my cheek.

“Ah… Ah l-love ya, hun…” my dearest struggles to say.

“Don’t speak…” I tell her, “We’ll get you to a hospital.”

From the other end from where we sit, the muffled and half-choked pleading cries of Rainbow Dash thunders amidst a gust of wind. “S-She’s cheating on you!”

“You... shut yer f-fuckin'... mouth!” Applejack screams back, almost immediately.

Those two uttered sentences alone summarizes the entire cause of their conflict. Rainbow Dash paid justice to her warning.

“She’s…! She’s been sleeping with… with a stallion!” Rainbow Dash continues, coughing out more blood. “That... bitch h-has been lying… to you... the whole time.”

“Shut up!” Applejack screams. She picks up a bloody rock and throws it to Rainbow Dash. The rock falls several meters short of its target.

Rainbow Dash gnarls at me, teeth gritting, face crunching and eyes biting and shaking. “Tell her! ...Tell AJ the truth!”

Three pairs of eyes look at me at once. Among those teary orbs of pain and anguish, I avoid the ones that shine a bright green below me. “I… I have no idea what you’re talking about!” I cry out.

Applejack holds on to my shoulder. Fluttershy turns away from me. Rainbow Dash's eyes shoot open as she gasps in a full open expression of unbelievability; and, a second later, the scrunched face of a murderer possesses her visage.

Rainbow Dash pushes Fluttershy aside and lunges in our direction. Her eyes are set. She tears me away from Applejack with a thrust of her body as she pounces on me. In a second, I find myself on the muddy dirt, with nothing but the avenging face of Rainbow Dash to see in front of the backdrop of a black raining heaven. She forces me down by the throat.

“Tell her!” she screams, and I feel the reverberation of her yell in the trembling in her body.

I writhe beneath her, forelegs aimlessly and frantically thrashing about in an attempt to push her off. The air is locked out of my lungs as my whole body squirms. Blood pumps my face to a manic reddening. My mouth hangs open, desperately trying to cry out "Stop! Stop!"; but I cannot, with the voice she traps in my windpipe.

“Tell her!” she screams again.

Droplets of rain hit my face, blurring my vision. I force my magic, but my horn merely blinks on and off as the life is choked out of me. My limbs and heartbeat begin to falter. My sight darkens as my eyelids eclipse the world of what I am seeing.

Trapped within the dimness, my ears still twitch, picking up the sound of somepony screaming at the sound of a loud snap. The heavy weight on my chest is lifted and thrown from me, and I feel myself once again distinct from the darkness of the unconscious.

All I know is, that when I next open my eyes, all I see is Applejack's face hovering in place where Rainbow Dash was once in my vision; and the hooves that forced me on the mud is now replaced by the ones that lifts me from the earth to the comfort, and safety, of an embrace.

Sitting up, coughing out the blast of air that my desperation to breathe had forced into my lungs, I look to my love. A fresh wound cuts just above her right brow, where the blood that flows from it conceals her eye. But she herself does not notice the injury. I follow the trail of her vision to the other end where Rainbow Dash lay on her face, panting in pain, down the rain and tear-soaked dirt.

Hooves shaking, the cyan pony picks itself up from the ground, much of her color marred by the mud. She coughs, several times, before looking at Applejack and I.

“S-She’s... cheating on you...” cries Rainbow Dash, her shaking hoof outstretched towards us. “Trust me, AJ.”

Hearing those words, I clutch tightly onto Applejack’s shoulder as I press my face deeper against her chest.

“Ah... ah know what this is all about, RD,” I hear my dearest say. “Y-You’d... think ya’d win me by slanderin’ mah mare like this? Well, fuck you! Ah didn’t love ya before... and ah’m sure as hell... ah ain’t g-gonna love ya now! Not now, not ever! Ya hear me!?”

“AJ,” Rainbow Dash whimpers, “this isn’t... about us... I’m telling you... R-Rarity, s-she–”

“G-Get outta here, Rainbow,” says Applejack. She says it in the tone of a whimper, but in a volume heard by all amidst cries of the sky. “Ah don’t wanna see ya ever again...”

My head still pressed against Applejack’s face, I turn my head to meet Rainbow Dash’s empty stare. We hold each other’s glance for a moment and, even against the darkness of a stormy dusk, the distance of our bodies, the tears running down her cheeks, I can see the disbelief, and regret, in the imperceivable shaking of her dilated pupils.

Still holding her glance, invisible to Applejack and Fluttershy, I mouth the words–without anger, without contempt–she knew I will not let her part without:

I told you so...

Rainbow Dash rears back, head shaking back and forth, looking to and fro my mare and I. She stands. She turns around. Batting her only working wing, she dashes to the curtain of the darkness beyond.

Alone with what she might think to be her enemy, a sobbing Fluttershy follows the marred spectral of color into the gray weeping sky.

Big Macintosh and I sit in the center table of Carousel Boutique. It has already been an hour since we got Applejack into bed, and neither of us has spoken to each other since. Silence is our conversation, the tick tock of the wall clock fills the spaces in between. The coffee that is meant to shake away the cold from the rain remains untouched. It is cold now, as is the air in the room.

Big Macintosh raises a hoof to his muzzle and coughs. The silence grows heavier around us.

“T-Thank you,” I say, just to rid ourselves of the muteness, “for helping me carry Applejack here.”

“She’s only stayin’ here until mah sis is well enough to stand on her own,” he answers. “After that, ah’ll be carryin’ her out.”

“I-I understand...”

He breathes deeply, the steady heaving of his chest visible. “No, ah don' think ya do," he says, shaking his head. "Do ya know why ah insisted not to let her stay in Sweet Apple Acres, even after ya barged through the door of mah house?

I look away from him, and shake my head.

“Take a guess,” he says.

“Is it because... Applejack would prefer to stay here with me.”

Big Macintosh shakes his head in disgust. “Yer insufferable,” he sighs out. “It’s cuz ah ain’t want granny to see her like this. Even if those two’ve been bickerin’ for months now because of ya, they still love each like a granddaughter and grandmother would. Mere sight of Applejack like this will break Granny Smith’s heart... and for a mare of that age, broken things don’t get fix no more.”

“About Granny Smith, does she still–”

“Ya didn’t go to Granny Smith’s birthday yesterday,” he interrupts.

“I’m sorry, I was–”

“Don’t explain,” he interrupts again. “Ah don’t wanna hear it... D’ya know how much effort mah sis put into it? D’ya know that she swore on our parent’s grave that you’d be there for her... D’ya know that when ya didn’t show up she fought tooth and nail against Granny Smith for the both of ya? Ah guess you didn’t.”

The weight of Big Macintosh's words weigh on my back, sagging my shoulders. I cannot look at him, or at anything. My eyes remain stagnant at the edge of the table, shaking my head as my only response to answer his rhetorical questioning. I can see her, my dearest Applejack, pulled from my imagination and projected into the dark closure of my eyelids: she stands in her doorway, looking at the setting sun, pacing back and forth as she had just told her grandmother that she is in a relationship with the greatest mare in of all of Equestria. What could she have thought, finding me absent by her side? What could she have said, have begged, to her grandmother to grant us a blessing? What words did Applejack say when she fought for me?

My thoughts are silenced once the stillness of the room is broken by the sound of a creaking door. Immediately, I stand and run up to the second floor, if just so I can exclude myself from Big Macintosh's judging glare.

“Will she be okay? Is she alright? Can she still see through her right eye?” My barrage of questions strikes Nurse Redheart before she can even close the door to my room.

The white-coated nurse does not answer as of yet. “Let’s talk downstairs,” she says. “I don’t like repeating the same thing twice.”

Without waiting for my reply, Nurse Redheart climbs down the stairs and I follow her to where Big Macintosh waits. He lifts his head as soon as he hears the nurse and I, and straightens his back to take a position more appropriate for a stallion of his stature.

The three of us sit in the center table. I place my hooves on the furniture's edge, to hide my shaking. Big Macintosh rests his hooves against his side, but I can see the small worriment by how he presses against the floor. It is only the pair of hooves of the white nurse that have enough equanimity–or is it impertinence?–to reach for one of the several coffee cups laid out on the table and drink from it.

“She’ll be fine,” she says, as soon as she replaces the cup on its plate. “There is no permanent damage, and the injuries are nothing that a little earth pony regeneration can’t heal.”

“Thank goodness,” I sigh in relief. And I can also see how the broad chest of Big Macintosh eases.

“The contusions are temporary, it’ll take about four days for them to vanish,” she continues. She adds two more spoonfuls of caffeine to her cup. “She’ll have a hard time seeing from her right eye for two weeks. I managed to stop all the bleeding, but she lost so much blood that she won’t wake up till tomorrow night, approximately. However, there’s a deep bruise on her chest and I suspect it to be a fractured rib but I can’t be a hundred-percent certain as of yet. I recommend you bring her to the hospital for an x-ray as soon as next week.”

“Is... is there anything I can do, to help the process?”

“Plenty of bedrest,” she answers. She stands up, takes out a pen and a notepad from her brown windbreaker hanging from the coathanger, returns to her seat and starts to scribble something. “I know how Miss Applejack’s stubbornness will make it difficult, but I leave it to you as to how you’ll accomplish that.”

She rips a piece of paper from her notepad and places it atop the center table, leaving it to us as to who will take it.

“And that’s the prescription," she says, reaching for her coffee. "The medicine is already in her room. Make sure you stick with the schedule to avoid unnecessary deviation.”

Finishing her coffee, Nurse Redheart stands up again, and slings her windbreaker around her shoulders before buttoning it closed around her chest.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have another patient to tend to.”

“Thank you,” I tell her.

She trots to the exit and opens the door to where the storm still rages. She looks at it for a moment before deciding to hide her nurse cap beneath her windbreaker.

“One more thing,” she says, turning back. “She winces every time I touch her manubrium,”–she points to the flesh between her collarbones–“if she’s staying here, make sure she digests nothing but liquids and soft foods. Otherwise, it’ll hurt her. She won’t say it, but it will. I’ll be back everyday for the next two weeks for a check up.”

Big Macintosh rises as well. "Ah guess ah'd better go," he says, more to Nurse Redheart than to me. "Ah got some explainin' to do to my grandma as to why she won't be seein' her granddaughter for a while."

I escort the red stallion to the door. "Big Mac," I say, "I'm sorry about what happened..."

"Ah know," he replies, standing side by side the nurse as the two exit. He turns back only once. "Ah'm sorry too."

The door closes as the the two earth ponies make their exit. I stand there for quite some time, just by the door, feeling that I have no right to open it.

I move to the center table and return the used cups to the kitchen to join the dishwash. I toss the cups into the sink, pour some stale dishwashing liquid on a pool of water, and begin to scrub each greasy brown stain from the porcelain. All the while I have no control over my actions. Rather, it is as though there is somepony else in my body to repeat the motions; it is the movement of an automaton or utter zombiefication: motion without reason or cause.

I continue to scrub, scrubbing that sponge against a persistent blotch, the force and violence of my scraping increasing with each hard scratch of the sponge against ceramic–as though the the stain is not just to be removed, but be killed and murdered as an enemy.

My hoof slips and the small cup scatters into a hundred pieces as it crashes on the floor. The impact and the tinkle of porcelain resounds throughout the kitchen, and it seems to echo louder than the thunder outside. The instant shared a moment in me, a reflection, that I refuse to identify; for the sight and sound of those broken shells seem to match the hollow remains in my chest.

It’s... my fault...

I fall to my knees, my hooves still over the sink, as tears breach through my eyes and flow down my cheeks. I gasp, bite my lip, and struggle not to scream out my cries for forgiveness. I pick up the shattered pieces one by one.

It is that time of night when the darkness of the sky has swallowed all constellations, making it impossible to discern the hour. Awakened by the small rustle of the pony in front of me, I open my eyes to the sight of Applejack just barely opening hers. She lies across my bed, bandages wrapped around her torso and shoulder. Her right eye is hidden by a medical patch.

“W-Where... am I...” she groans, struggling to sit up.

I lean over from my chair beside her bed and place a hoof on her chest, urging her to remain down. “It’s alright, dearest... You’re in my room. You’re alright...”

“R-Rarity...” she says. I can feel the tension in her body loosening. “Y-You there, hun? Ah can’t see nothin'.”

“It’s alright.” I rub a hoof against her mane. “It’s just darker than usual tonight... and your eye is a little... hurt. Nurse Redheart said it will be okay.”

She raises a hoof, searching for me, and I hold it on my chest to assure her that I am here. I lean forward and kiss her lips, hoping the gesture does not hurt her in more ways than one.

“H-Hun, where’s.... where’s R-Rainbow... D-Dash,” she asks. “She alright? Ah... Ah didn’t hurt her too much, did ah?”

At the sound of the name of that treacherous pegasus, I find myself wishing for the opposite of what I say: “She’s fine.”

“That’s... that’s... mighty... good to hear... Ah thought–” Applejack is interrupted by a grunt and wince from pain. Her hoof snaps to the side of her chest.

“Dearest, please don’t talk,” I hold her down on the bed, caressing the shoulder that pains her. It is all I can do. “You need more sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”

I pull the blanket over her body, making sure the cold does not bother her in the slightest. Applejack touches my hoof as the cloth reaches to cover her neck.

“C-Can you do me a favor... hun?” Applejack says.

“Anything dearest.”

“Ah know... that this is yer room and all but...” Applejack looks away from me. “Can y-ya... give me some time alone for a minute... Ah... Ah need... to think of some things.”

I stop for a moment, and lean to the side hoping I can see her eyes, hoping I can find out why her voice trembles as she says those words.

Does she blame me for what happened to her?

"Of course, dearest," I tell her. "Whatever you wish."

I rise from my seat and walk out. As I open the door, the gentle light from the hall ebbs through the room, drawing a line of illumination between me and her. I look back, for a moment. I expect, as much as I wish, for Applejack to tell me to stay. She does not even turn her head to see me leave. I slowly close the door on my way out as her eyelids descend down her eye.

Three potatoes pulled from an old brown sack join the radish and leek stalk on the counter. The gruffy brown stallion takes all the vegetables and puts them in a white plastic bag in the same motion as his other hoof slides the waiting bits to the pocket of his apron. He hands me the plastic and I levitate it into the saddle bag hanging on my side.

“Have a good day, Miss Rarity,” he says.

I turn away and survey the small marketplace and its line of stalls for whatever else I can hope to buy for Applejack. Among the competing stands that showcase their motley articles of merchandise and feedstuff, Carrot Top's fresh harvest for the day–which I have read to produce miraculous regenerative effects on earth ponies–takes a liking for my attention. I would have no doubt brought three or four of the vegetables if not for the inconvenience that, standing in line of the booth, is a certain canary pegasus.

And, as though sensing my looking at her, Fluttershy turns around and her stare lands on mine.

She is expressionless, wearing a face without the cringe of fear or gasp of astonishment. We hold our glare to one another, from the distance, and I feel a silent rebellion in the way she challenges my eyes in her refusal to back down. She cannot, of course, have forgotten of my position over her.

However, it is I who first turn away, having noticed an ignorant Carrot Top wave to my direction. “Oh, Miss Rarity!” the earth pony calls out.

I sigh and trot to the ponies despite all inclination; the discourtesy of simply turning around and walking away would be too obvious.

“Good morning, Carrot Top,” I respond to her, then, turning to Fluttershy, I add, “...Fluttershy.”

“...Rarity,” she replies, her voice sullen.

Carrot Top’s own hurried motion of rummaging through the drawers of her stall renders her both blind and deaf to the tension between the two mares in front of her. “I have something for you,” she says, just before she looks up.

Stretching her hoof, she hands me a white envelope.

“Derpy was supposed to give it to you yesterday,” the earth pony says, “but she kinda left it in the house among other letters. I’m trying help her out.”

“Thank you,” I say.

The envelope is light on my hoof, the rough thick texture of which, as well as the embroidered borders of golden and pink curls, indicate some form of Canterlot origin. A faint fragrance perfume of what seems to be Hydrangea extract emanates from the piece. The red wax sealing the letter is embedded with a symbol of a crystallized heart. Turning the paper around, my suspicion is made real as the name of the sender is written in a neat and cursive script.

Fluttershy, too, can no doubt see the name written on the envelope.

Again, I lock eyes with the pegasus and, again, she refuses to cast her eyes down. We hold each other’s stare for a moment, a moment long enough for Carrot Top to cast her own eyes to and fro either of us, with no words being said.

“S-So... Miss Rarity,” Carrot Top finally says, unable to tolerate the heavy silence any longer, “would you like to buy something?”

“Three carrots, please,” I say, smiling at her. “I hear it somehow increases the regenerative effects on injured earth ponies.”

“It’s unfortunate that pegasi aren’t that lucky,” Fluttershy murmurs.

Carrot Top plucks three of the vegetables from her stash, securing them inside a sturdy white plastic. I levitate some bits to the countertop at the same time I levitate the merchandise to my saddle.

“Come again,” Carrot Top says. I do not know whom she says it to: I, who buys her product, or Fluttershy, whom the earth pony eyes as the pegasus leaves.

Following Fluttershy away from the stall and taking the privacy of our conversation to a nearby bench in the marketplace, we sit there, overlooking the ponies yonder move from one stall to the other. Even from where we are, and where those ponies stand or trot, we can hear their laughter in our silence.

I levitate the letter in my hoof into the saddlebag, Fluttershy’s eyes follow the white paper.

“Aren’t you going to open it?” she asks.

“Perhaps later,” I answer.

I wait for her to say anything more; she does not. She waits for me to speak and, only after the intolerable silence and my impatience, I address her first.

“So...” I clear my throat. “I heard Rainbow Dash is staying at your place instead of the hospital, as Applejack is with me.”

She nods.

“Why?” The word hangs in the air, so I change my question. “How is she?”

“She’s... she’s fine...” she says, her eyelids fluttering and unable to look at me.

“It’s that bad, huh?”

“It’s... her wing. She...” Fluttershy clears her throat. “There’s a dislocation... in the socket... S-She can’t move her left wing... Nurse Redheart said it’ll take at least one month before we can remove the splinter and then we... we have to put in the cast... and that'll take... longer.”

The silence remains, amplified by the bustle of the ponies in the plaza.

“Why did you have to tell Rainbow Dash about Shining Armor and I?”

I cannot see what face Fluttershy makes, but I can imagine it by the high-pitched cry she utters by reflex. “W-What!? B-B-But I... I didn’t–”

I feel my hooves press against my thighs as the words seeth from between my clenched teeth. “If you two had only kept your fucking mouths shut. If neither of you snitches...”

“B-But...”

“You see now, you self-righteous bitch!?” I shoot my eyes at her, I feel my face scrunching. “Nopony was supposed to get hurt.”

“But... B-But...” What are supposed to be words come out as mumbling nothings, muffled by a mare being choked by her own tears. A pale-faced Fluttershy sits beside me, her lips moving without sound as crystalline liquid flows from her eyes.

I do not bother to hear what excuses she may conjure. I stand up and trot back to Carousel Boutique where my injured lover is waiting to be nursed.

It is early morning when I come back in. I knock before entering the door to my own room, carrying with my magic a metal tray.

"Good morning, Applejack," I say, trying to make my voice as loud and cheerful as possible in hopes that it will scare away the residue of the eerie silence from the night before.

Applejack sits on the bed, her back resting on the headboard. It is amazing how fast she can recover in a matter of two days. The bruises on her coat are still there, but it has been reduced from a smudge of black and blue to a graying pigment of sienna. But I know that the most painful injury she bears is yet to even ease, the symptom of which is her refusal to speak.

"I... I made you some carrot soup." I move to her, pulling the mahogany chair beside the bed as I levitate the tray on her lap. "It has tomatoes and celery... with some cabbage stock and a hint of beer for taste. I hope you like it."

Applejack just nods.

I pull the chair closer as I sit, so that it seems that I am on the bed beside her. Using my magic, I stir the soup with the spoon. The hot fragrant steam rises into the air, carrying with it the strong aroma of the vegetables, to mix with the young daylight.

"Nurse Redheart says that I should give you soups and porridges for now," I say. "She said that otherwise it'll hurt your throat."

Applejack nods again.

Instead of using my magic, I hold the spoon in my hooves. I scoop up some of the yellow-red delicacy, give it a few blows, and hold it up to her. "Now eat up. I promise it'll be good."

Applejack turns her head away.

My jaw drops as I am left, still hanging, with my hoof raised with a spoon of refuse. The thought that Applejack rejects my attention is inconceivable, for even in our fights, that had grown more and more frequent, not even once had she turned away from me. It is always dearest Applejack that charges head first into any flood, landslide and quarrel.

My hoof goes down. The spoon drops to the bowl.

"I... I forgot I left the kettle on," I laugh. "I'm sure you can feed yourself."

I stand and trot, almost running, to the door. I try my hardest not to turn around and give away my distress, but I am unable to resist. Pulling the door open, I look over my shoulder. Applejack still does not look at me.

"Call me if you need anything, dearest," I say, "...please."

Having paced back and forth across the living room, it is relieving to hear the sound of a closing door followed by the hoofstomps of Nurse Redheart climbing down the stairs. I Immediately run to the white nurse. Before I can say anything, she raises a hoof that silences me.

"She's fine. Her recovery is impressive and she might be able to walk in two or three days."

"B-But... That doesn't make sense. Why won't she talk?"

Nurse Redheart shrugs and replies, in a tone of a professional stating a fact, without malice or ridicule or insult, "She doesn't want to."

“W-Why...?” I ask, hoping for an answer from anypony, or anything, in the room.

“Miss Rarity, I’m a physician not a psychiatrist,” Nurse Redheart sighs. “But if this continues, I heavily suggest that you transfer her immediately to Ponyville General. This isn’t the kind of environment I’d recommend.”

“What kind of environment?”

Nurse Redheart trots past me as she plucks away her brown windbreaker from the coat rack. She flings the jacket over her shoulders and buttons it up to her neck. “The kind that she doesn’t want to be in.”

It is night again, the hour in which time freezes in place and darkness reigns supreme. As I open the door, Applejack is sitting there on the bed.

“Applejack?” I call to the room.

She does not respond. It is as though she does not hear me beyond the twitching of her ear.

I open the door further, and the light from the hallway lacerates the darkness of the room, illuminating half of my lover’s face. I step in into the darkness, every hoofstep I make is inaudible.

I crawl onto Applejack’s bed and, without waiting for her permission, I wrap my hooves around her. She does not respond.

“Applejack...” I plea in a whisper, “Please... talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

It is a slow motion, at first. Applejack takes both my hooves and gently holds and pushes me away from her. Applejack looks away.

“R-Rare... Ah’ve been thinkin’.”

“What of, dearest?”

“Hun, ah want to start by sayin’ ah love you,” she says. There is no romantic indication in her face, rather, it is a cold seriousness that I feel in her voice. “Ah love ya more than anythin’.”

“I know, dearest. I love you too,” I say, trying to match her expression. She is unfazed.

“And ya know that... Rainbow Dash is mah friend, right? Mah best friend.”

My whole body freezes; It does not merely stop, I feel the coldness wash all over me: on the trailing sweat that suddenly trickles from my forehead, on the dryness of my throat, and in the stillness of my heart. I know, as soon as I hear the name of that damn pegasus, what troubles my love’s mind.

“Ah... ah couldn’t imagine it... her lyin’ to me like that...” Applejack says, and, for the first time, she turns to me, but it is now I who turns away. “Even if it’s... like ah said... she’s tryin’ for mah attention... ah couldn’t believe she’d say somethin' like that... After what she and me have been through... There’s just no way. And ah think that... that ah pushed mah best friend without even... hearin’ her out... ah got so mad at her and... ah don’t know anymore... Rare.”

My head feels so heavy that it is a struggle to face her. And, as I see her eyes, it is even more difficult to hold her glance. Applejack, dear and powerful Applejack who never shows weakness, makes no effort to hide the tears streaming down her cheeks.

“R-Rarity,” she whimpers, “ah gotta know... It's eatin' me alive not knowin'. Ah want ya to tell me the truth... Do you... Do you have somepony... other than me–”

“Applejack, I–”

“W-Wait a minute... Wait... lemme finish,” she interrupts, grabbing my shoulders. “Rarity... Ah want ya to know that ya mean the world to me. And that... if ya tell me that ya do have... somepony... I... Ah think ah’ll... ah’ll get angry and... and ah’ll get hurt... and ah’d probably cry mahself for days like the mare ah am... But ah’ll take it... Because ah’ll love ya still, like how ah always loved ya... But ah won’t ever, ever, for the life of me, abandon ya to anypony else... Ah’ll fight for the both of us... So that ah’ll keep ya beside me because ah’m too selfish and possessive to share the best thing ah have to anypony else... Ah’ll show ya that ah’m the right one, y’all see... Ah’m the one ya really love... Ah’ll do mah best... Ah just don’t... want ya lyin’ to me, Rarity... Ah want to know the truth... The truth, Rare... just that and nothin' less... Just like how true it is everytime we say ‘ah love ya’ to each other... So please... Rarity... just... just please... tell me... Ah swear on mah life that ah’d never stop lovin’ ya...”

My eyes shut painfully closed, stinging in the darkness, as the coldness of my body overwhelms me. I shudder, a trembling I wish my dear Applejack could not see or feel in her embrace. It takes me several seconds to answer her, several seconds in which the truth wrestles with the lie. The equilibrium in which reality and fantasy are placed, shaken as thoughts of my position in Canterlot–repulsive that I think of it now–and my relationship with Shining Armor is pitted against the safety of Applejack’s innocence.

What of Shining Armor and me now? The stallion who abandoned me?

Against dearest Applejack, who never will?

I open my eyes again, and pucker my lips. As I was to confess, a thought, a single thought, tips the scale:

Cadance...

“Applejack,” I hear myself say, “I’ve... never had anypony else but you.”

The lips on Applejack’s visage slowly curve upwards as new and fresh tears stream down her eyes. The tears, this time, are different than the ones she shed seconds before.

“Dear Celestia, ah knew it!” she says, her hooves wrapping around me in a tight and powerful embrace. “Ah knew it! Ah knew ya’d never... Ah love ya, Rarity! Ah swear ah’ll never think of anything like that again."

Cradled in Applejack’s warmth, the coldness vanishes.

Within the privacy of the confines of my own thoughts, amidst the hollow darkness, there I pray, I beg, to an almighty force that the words that escaped my lips would be the last lie–for the rest of my life–I will have to state to the Element of Honesty. I know, as well, that the prayer will not be answered.

It is night still when I walk into my room where Applejack rests. I trot towards her, coming from the cold shower, my hooves soundless. She turns to me and there is no smile on her face, only an austere quality of adherence. As I climb onto our bed, brushing a mane behind my ear, Applejack takes my hooves and pulls me to her.

She raises a hoof to caress my cheeks, and my face melts under the tenderness of her touch. She leads me closer, so close that I felt the warmth of her breath brush against my lips, until my mouth meets hers. The familiar taste of apples returns to me once more, a taste I had long missed and sought for, a distinct sweetness that can only come from her buss.

"Rarity," she whispers.

"A-Applejack," I respond in the kiss.

She holds me back, by my shoulders, to break the kiss just so we can breathe and see the furious blush in each other's face. My horn glows and I turn off the lights in the hallway, and all the other lights in my house, shrouding us in the privacy of darkness apart from the small illumination of the moonlight misting around us, beckoned into the room by every swift wave of the curtain.

I do not know if it is the magic of my delusion or the majesty of Princess Luna, the pale beam of stardust that pierces through the window glows her orange coat to a bluish hue. She sparkles a little, dearest Applejack, as the twinkles of the night reflect upon the smooth arrangement of her coat.

I, too, must have been transformed by the night in her eyes.

Beheld beneath those emerald eyes, I wrap my hooves around me in a sudden realization of my own nakedness; as though, for once, the sharpness of her stare pierces through my coat and skin, seeing straight through to my vulnerable and fragile spirit. I feel myself filling all of her vision, in her longing stare that takes in the form of the alabaster unicorn in her embrace. Applejack’s hooves gently explore the figure of my body, as how a sculptor would relish the touch of her statue. She trails the edge of her hooves against the curves of my hips, the polished line of my shoulders, the softness of my belly, the heaving in my chest that resounds a painful rhythmic beat. I close my eyes, letting her examine every minute detail of everything that is me. I want her to be sure that I am here; that I am no illusion, that here, in her hooves, is her Rarity, her mare.

Applejack breaths between her lips, in the same instant as her hooves take hold of my shoulders. She leads me down the soft cushions, placing my head gently on the pillow. She pins both my hooves against the sheets and leans forward, her muzzle inches from mine. Whereas I expected a kiss, her face instead nuzzles my ear as she whispers to me:

“Ya sure yer ready for this?”

I throw my head back against the pillow and finally say the words the both of us are aching, begging, to hear: “Yes, dearest,” I whisper back, “I’m ready for you.”

Her lips brush against my cheek as it reaches for mine. I respond, this time, to the invitation, pulling her close as she does to me. The kiss is altogether different from the one that preceded it, identifying the primal nature of our hunger for one another; it feels wet, real, physical, and the light tap of Applejack’s tongue inside my mouth sparks the first current to my nerves.

My eyes still closed, it is my other senses that devour Applejack. I can hear the sound of her frantic and impatient breathing as she kisses me, accompanied by the small enticing moan that escapes the confines of her repression. Her scent tickles my nostrils, that of spring water from her perspiration and of the fruity musk of her yearning exhalation. As my own hooves trace across her dorsum, fondling down the line of her spine, pulling her weight onto me, I feel the texture of her coat graze against mine.

I open my eyes as she pulls back, leaving me panting for breath and mouth half-open in demand for more. I try to say something, but it is as though she has drained every word from me in that kiss.

Applejack sits me up and turns me around, so that my back is resting against her chest as her hooves wraps around me. I face the blank wall of my room as Applejack’s words trickle into my ear.

"Rare...” she whispers to me, her voice alone sends a peculiar vibration running throughout my nerves. “Tell me if ah’m gettin’ too rough. Tell me... if ya want me to stop.”

I nod, but I know it is irrelevant. There is no force in the world that will make me ask my dearest to stop what she does to me.

My assurance is all she needed.

She starts, giving small nips and bites to the back of my neck as her right hoof caresses my stomach and dips in between my legs. My reaction is immediate: my hoof leaps over hers, both to encourage and stop the stimulation that makes me jump. My body jerks back, shuffling closer to Applejack’s torso. Her hoof proceeds to press further and harder against my lower sensitivity. The tinge of her first touch on my sex strikes shivers to my limbs; my hindlegs snap shut around her, dragging in the purple sheets beneath us. The tension does not let go. Applejack moves her hoof, running the pressure up and around the line of my delicate opening. My body coils to its center. I can already feel myself sweating profusely. The rubbing of Applejack’s hoof against my slit only hastens, and already I can feel the moisture collect from my crevice onto the bed.

Then, as though a nerve has been plucked from the back of my mind, my whole body convulses in a sudden awakening, shocked with an electric current, to a state unreached and untouched before. The knowledge that it is my Applejack, my dearest Applejack, the mare who loves me the most, who unlocks the secrets and sacred pleasure of my body, raises me to a new and unknown level of ecstatic invigoration. My heart palpitates. My breathing is precarious. My body burns so hot it feels as though I am aflame from within. I push myself as hard as I can against Applejack’s body, forcing as much contact of her to me.

The welling in my loin begins, a familiar sensation in which the energy reserved for my limbs is drained to the inner core of my womb. It pools in the depths of my abdomen, boiled by the heat of our love making.

I writhe on the bed, clasping on the sheets, as I try to tear myself away from the loving pressure of Applejack's hooves and, at the same time, to impose herself on me all the more. My dearest does not disappoint, she does not let go of me even as I squirm in her hooves. She grabs me tight from behind, fighting to control her hold as she churns and evokes the heat between my legs.

A small line of spittle crawls down from the corner of my lips. I try to moan her name between my clenched teeth but I am unable, reaching the first plateau of my ascent.

I scream in rapture, in release, soiling Applejack's hoof with my waters. I twitch, grabbing onto Applejack and nuzzling her neck, as I collapse onto her chest, panting for breath.

Still cradled in her hold, I crane my neck and kiss her, in thanks and in plea; she responds in the way her tongue coils around mine. I have never myself felt closer to her than I do now, with our bodies entwined together, sweat and heat intermingling, in the unyieldng lock of her embrace.

She holds me down on the bed, for a moment, so that I can catch my breath. I shield my forelegs around my eyes; even the full moon shining out the window seems too bright for me now.

I feel Applejack's insatiable kisses on me, pressing against my most vulnerable parts: I feel her lips on my cheeks, I feel it on my lips, my neck–twice, my collarbone, my chest, gliding down to my stomach, lower to my navel and lower still. Her lips stay there, on my loin, on the small soft space between my belly button and my sex, before she rears back and plants her kisses on my hindlimb. I feel the cold dampness of her salivation as her kisses press against my calves, running down my inner thigh.

I do not know if it is out of fear–or guilt–that my legs close in again, hiding the door of my femininity from her invading eyes. My resistance proves little against Applejack as she parts my legs with her hooves in a powerful, yet gentle, push. I can feel the weight of her stare against my dripping flower.

She stares at me, for a long time, with a humble smile on her face, before she looks up and says, "Yer beautiful..."

Her compliment alone renews the heat of my body and I almost climax again after just having heard the courtesy of her praise. It makes me smile.

Her muzzle inches closer, I can feel her breath first and foremost, and the first touch of her to my marehood is of her tongue. I can feel it, through the wracking sensitivity of wetness against wetness, trailing up a line that sends currents to my sex. The contact livens the fibers and wirings within the root of my inner flesh, as though each nerve sparks to life at the command of my dearest's lips. It makes my whole body jolt , and I suddenly sit up and hold a hoof against Applejack's head, ready to either push her away or pull her close. I collapse again on the bed in my inability to remain firm and composed with her inside me.

Withdrawing a few inches, I feel her breath again trickle across the slick opening of my folds. The sudden retraction releases the succulent liquids enclosed between the two moist lips and I feel it, the collection of her slaver and my own dew, slither down my inner thighs. But the pause is only a momentary relief, serving only to amplify that which comes next.

Applejack dives in again, her lips closing, wrapping, nibbling at the protruding bud at the tip of my blossom. Groaning and gasping, my jaw hangs open. I want to scream–tell her to stop, to not stop–but the nerve wracking strain in every fiber of my muscles renders me mute. I thrash about, one hoof over my lips, the other clutching the blanket. Applejack's forelegs circle my hips and thighs, wrestling me down and holding me in place.

Her lips turn to fondle and lap at my lower petals and her tongue buries deep within the depression in search for the sweet aphrodisiacal nectar of my concupiscence that spills from the cup from which it is contained. Again and again, heat and moisture condense inside me with each flick of my dearest to my most inner sanctum. Then I feel something I have never felt before–not even with him–as Applejack's kisses grow more and more furious; pleasure overflows from every pore of my skin–only it is not pleasure, for pleasure is the gross and fleshly–in a moment of exaltation. With each motion of her tongue, my heart trembles with all the blood in my veins–from my chest to the tip of my hooves–and pushes out my soul, only to have it slam back within my body after the repercussions. Both heart and spirit, working to the rhythm of Applejack's command, seem to pump and fill the core of my womb with all the emotion a mare lives in a lifetime.

Applejack's hastens, and so does my heartbeat. I writhe, under her mercy, and start to palpitate. I lose control of whatever else that remains of me: the eyes that refuse to shut closed, the precarious heaving, the hoof that pulls her closer to me. Even my breathing, lost to me, I cannot control. My whole frame curves upwards, my hips raised to the air. I hold my breath, with the ascending, spasming, tortured reification of surrender to the one whom I love the most in this world–

I cry out her name, as I reach my apex: "Applejack!"

The release outpours from my body, an arc of clear nectar streaming from my marehood. It exits, in time for Applejack to pull back, a white, almost sparkling, liquid ejection. For seconds that lasts for minutes and hours and forever, everything that is me–everything that I am: my love for Applejack, my desire for Shining Armor–quakes in the percussive echo of a loud and desperate spiritual wail.

I collapse, slamming, down on the bed, thrown to eternity and back. The tips of my hooves tremble, and my chest heaves out breaths of life.

I lay there–awake, unawake, breathing, not breathing–eyes wide open, staring blindly at the ceiling. I am muttering something, I do not know what, something about Applejack and something about love.

"W-Woah!" Applejack says. "Rarity, you just... Ah didn't know ya could–"

Applejack's voice comes to an abrupt halt, stopping with the paralysis of shock. I know, even without looking at her–for I cover my face with my forelegs–that she looks to me.

"Hun..." she says, as I feel her move to me. "Are ya cryin'?"

And, just like that, I come to the realization as to why I cover my eyes. I feel Applejack's hoof over my own and she pries my forelegs to reveal my tear-soaked face to her. I look away, shutting my eyes, and wipe the endless streaming lamentation from my cheeks.

"Y-Yer cryin!" she almost screams. She immediately slides next to me in the bed, taking me in her embrace. "Ah'm sorry, hun. Dear Celestia knows ah’m sorry. Did ah do somethin' wrong? It was too rough, wasn't it? Too rough?"

I shake my head.

"Was it because ya... you just... It's alright, hun. Ain't nothing to be embarrassed about. Not many mares can–"

I shake my head again.

She is silent for a while. Then, "Goshdarn it, this is all mah fault," she says. "Ah should've known better that ya weren't completely ready for this yet and ah took advantage of–"

"N-No... It's not that." I stop her, before guilt would cloud her judgement.

"What is it then?" She cradles me in her hooves. "It didn't feel good?"

"No! ...no." I wipe the tears from my eyes and force a smile for her. "It's great, dearest. It's the most amazing thing I've ever... felt. Even better than"–Shining Armor–"the ones before."

"Then why are ya cryin'?"

I shut my eyes and press my face against her chest. "I... don't know... I... I feel so... happy."

But it is not tears of joy that I shed on Applejack's chest, the emotion is not enough to bring me to tears. Rather, it is tears stemming from that pure bliss and happiness, of the guilt of having to feel and receive it from Applejack's love.

"It's awright, hun... Hush now." She rubs my head. "Ah know how ya feel. Ah feel so happy too, now that we're here... And ah feel like cryin'."

“I’m... I’m sorry. You still haven’t–”

“Don’t worry bout me none,” she says, smiling. “Only thing that matters is that yer happy and that we’re here.”

Her words make me cry all the more. "A-Applejack...I love you... I love you so much... P-Please... A-A-Applejack... I love you."

"I know, hun–”

“No, you don’t.” I pull away, gently. I see the horrified look in Applejack’s face, and the tear-drenched mare reflected in her eyes. “I love you... You don’t know how much. I... I want you to know that... that you’re the only reason I’m breathing right now, that I still choose to walk on this world is because you are in it. You’re the only one I want, I realize that now. You and you alone. In telling you this, I’m opening myself up to be hurt by you, because now you’re the only one who can ever hurt me. And here I am begging!–begging without recompense–begging for the charity of your love for me, a love that I cannot live up to.”

“No!” she yells. She grabs me; she holds tight against her chest. “Don’t ya say nothing like that! Ah forbid ya from sayin' somethin' like that ever again, you hearin’ me!? I forbid it! You deserve and earn every bit of mah whole feelin’ for ya. Don’t ya dare tell me yer not worth it, cuz you, Rarity, are the most wonderful mare that ever lived! And ah swear–dear Celestia, ah swear!–on every goddarn sacred and holy testament of everything that ah believe in, that ah will never–ya hear me, never!–ever leave you.”

“Oh, dearest!” I cry out, sobbing on her chest.

“Ah’ll always be by yer side, hun,” she whispers to me. I feel a droplet of her tear fall on me. “Lovin’ ya and nothin' less."

“I-I promise I’ll make things right, dearest,” I mutter, calming down. “I’ll do my best... It’ll be just the two of us. Nopony else will get in our way... It’ll be just the two of us...”

Perhaps I did not wake up, in fear that if I do then I will find her gone from my bed–as with my prince. I remain here, on my bed, still cradled in the embrace of she whom I have given myself to.

It is still night, the same ethereal night of our first. I watch the gentle sleeping face of my love beside me. She is smiling, no doubt, and it makes me flip through the blank pages of my memory as to where and when was the last time I have seen a pony smile in their sleep. I raise a hoof, caressing her soft cheeks and smooth mane. She mumbles something incomprehensible as her right hoof rises up and holds onto mine.

I lean forward, kiss her lips and toss the blanket as I climb out of bed.

I march down through my living room, snatching the opened letter from above a drawer and the black hoodie, as I make my way out of the house. I close and lock the door with my magic, as silent as my hoofsteps.

The darkest hour is just before the dawn; an hour when both the moon and stars sleep behind the darkness and the sun has yet to rise. Pacing myself through the night, not even the heavenly bodies can bear witness to me or that which I am about to commit. I head north east, just above Sweet Apple Acres and beyond the elementary school, to a small remote hilltop where an empty cabin stands unwary.

It is a relatively small and humble log cabin, the kind one sees in a thousand juxtaposed watercolor paintings. Complete with the thin rippling river on the left and the swaying summer trees on the right. The maple paint is still fresh on the roof, as with the glossy white finish on the walls. The trail of sands and slabs of rock that cuts from the main road, through the freshly trimmed grass, leads to the house’s heart-shaped door mat that says ‘Welcome.’

Applejack would love to have a house like this...

Perhaps someday the two of us will...

I shake my head. I cannot think of it now, not when my horn glows as I prepare to cast the spell:

It starts with a small spark–strong enough to light the end of a cigarette–that ignites the fire, slowly engulfing the lines and corners of the wooden construct. The trail of red crawls on the roof, on the windows, on that welcome mat, until all is swallowed in the conflagration. The towering inferno rages in a sudden combustion as the cabin crashes on top and on itself. The pristine white color is robbed of its purity, reduced to ash and coal black behind the flickering curtain of flame. The wooden beams and foundation crack, breaking into splinters and tinder, as it extends out the blaze like a burnt foreleg reaching for help.

It surprises me, when I fail to shudder, as the moment casts upon me a peculiar delusion: that the sound of the crackle and pop of blisters and the whistling of the fire appears, at the moment, as the sound of the house’s long cry of torment.

The wind fans the flames, and the flames seem to dance in celebration of its hearty meal. I let my spell go, satisfied that what’s left of the fire is sufficient to consume what cinders remain.

Before I cover my tracks and return to the bedside of my beloved, I stop on my feet, recalling the weight of an additional sensation on my chest. I unsheathe the letter–that which initiates my purpose here–from the pocket of my hood. I re-read its contents one last time:

Dearest Rarity,

I hope you don’t mind my writing to you :) I just can’t wait for our next meeting before I tell you the good news: you were right all along! It really just was my maternal anxiety getting worked up over nothing. This week had been the best week of my marriage so far! Shining Armor told me that he’s finished with whatever secret mission he’s been doing all over Equestria and that he promised he’d spend more time with me. And he did!

Last week we went out to go swimming, the day after that we went out on a yacht. Yesterday we went to go see the opera. It was boring as I expected but Shining Armor had his hooves all over me the whole time! Then tomorrow he’s taking me to a fancy restaurant...

I really wish I can share all this in person.

I guess I might be able to in no time. Twilight sent me a letter saying that my house cabin there in Ponyville is already finished and Shining and I can move in anytime next week. I’m so looking forward to it that my baggage is already packed.

Anyway, I got to go, I can see the post office from here (I’m in a carrai carriage, Shining Armor is sleeping beside me. We went to see a movie!) Hope to see you soon!!! :)

Your best friend,

Cadance.

PS. There’s an unopened bottle of Burgundy Pinot noir (sur lie of course), waiting for you when I get there.

My horn glows and the piece of paper is enveloped with the same magical aura. The white moth aimlessly flaps its wings, diving towards the crisp fire.

“Good morning, dearest!” I say, as I enter my room. “I brought you some bre– Applejack, I told you to stop doing that!”

My orange coated love stands from her prone and lowered position. “Mornin’, hun!” she says, smiling as bright as the morning.

The sun that sprays from the window glistens the fresh sweat she has already worked up. I pout and levitate a folded towel from the cabinet to her. She takes the cloth warmly as she drapes it over her shoulder.

“Seriously, Nurse Redheart warned me against this,” I sit on the edge of the bed where Applejack sits beside me. “It only takes one accident–just one!–before you hurt yourself again.”

“It’s mighty fine,” she laughs. “Ya don’t expect me to lay in bed all day, do ya? A few push ups never hurt nopony.”

“It might hurt you,” I levitate the tray of food onto my lap. “You’re putting too much strain on your shoulders... Now eat up before the food gets cold.”

“What are we havin’?”

“Oh, don’t mind me. I already ate,” I answer. “And these are potatoes mashed in milk with pickle relish and celery. This here’s the tomato soup where I also mixed in your medicine since I know how stubborn you are about it, but I added a spoonful too many of the seasoning to hide the taste. Now... That one’s sour crop with chopped carrots and–”

Applejack is not listening. As I talk, pointing my hoof over each delicacy on the plate, my dearest nuzzles my neck and kisses the small soft spot behind my ear for what she really wants to taste. She wraps her hoof around my hips and pulls me in closer.

“Jacqueline...” I moan, but then hold it back before I succumb to temptation in her still injured state.

“Aren’t ya gonna feed me?” she asks, pulling back.

“What?”

“Feed me?”

“You’re a grown mare," I pout, "you can do it yourself.”

“Can’t.” She flexes a hoof. “Can’t strain these muscles now, can I?”

“That’s not what you say every night,” I mutter. She laughs in response.

I glare at her, at the playful smile on her face, but only for a moment, as her smile is reflected on me. I chuckle for a second, to her own bewilderment. Without saying a word, I use my hoof and scoop up some of the mashed potatoes and hold it up to her.

“Say, ‘ahh,’” I say and, realizing the absurdity of the position, it makes Applejack blush as bright as her favorite fruit.

Her eyes not letting go of mine, her lips open just slightly apart as she leans forward and takes in the food in her mouth. I slowly slide out the spoon from between her closed lips and watch the motions of her chewing and the gulp in her throat as she swallows.

“Ahh... ya know, Rare,” she says, rubbing the back of her head and with her face lighted by a flame from within, “ah guess ah can... feed myself.”

A sly grin makes its way to my face. “Nonsense. Can’t have those muscles straining now, can we?”

I raise another spoonful for her and, after a little hesitation, she leans forward and takes it into her mouth.

“There we go...” I laugh.

“Yer enjoyin’ this aren’t ya?” she says, the food still in her mouth.

I let the spoon down on the plate where, for a moment, I play with the food and let it grab my attention. “Dearest,” I say.

“Yes, hun?”

“Y-Y’know that you’ve been here for... two weeks now.”

“Two weeks, three days, and”–she glances at the wallclock–“eight hours.”

“Yes, well...” I clear my throat. “And your... recovery is going great. Better than Nurse Redheart anticipated. You’ll be able to work back on the farm by Monday.”

“Yeah, so...?”

“So, I’m saying,” My stare remains fixed on my spoon, playing with the food in the plate, my hooves rubbing together, “with all that’s happened... with you and Granny Smith... and that you two are not exactly on the best of terms... and that part where you and Big Mac and... With you living in the barn and... Right now, while we're here... And considering we've been together for eight months now...”

“Spit it out, Rare," snaps Applejack.

I turn to her, and blurt out what I wish to say in response to her provocation: “W-Would you like to move in with me?"

Applejack stares at me, wide eyed and mouth hanging open.

“I-I’m sorry,” I yelp in panic. “It was too sudden, right? Sorry, it’s a big decision and I assumed–”

Applejack silences me with her lips, her body arching forward as her hoof pulls me even closer; our chests touch. I remain pliant and immobile, unable to take my hooves away from the tray on my lap.

As my dearest pulls back, breaking the kiss, she answers:

“Ah’ll have Big Mac move mah things here first thing tomorrow.”

I squeal aloud, my voice cracking, like an excited filly as I jump and throw my embrace around Applejack’s torso. My dearest laughs.

“H-Hey, careful," she laughs. "Don’t wanna spill our breakfast now.”

The morning passes slow and fast for us. So fast, that there is nothing but an empty tray on my lap after the first five minutes. So slow that, in the high and early morning, as the wind rustles the curtain of my room, beckoning in the glow of sunlight, as our legs dangle from the edge of the bed, as I hold up the spoon of a warm breakfast to her, as her crystalline green eyes shine and glint, it is Applejack’s smile, and the beating of my heart, that all I can see, and feel.