With my last, long moan, I slam back down onto the pool of sweat that has accumulated atop the dining table. Applejack's own slick coat crashes over me, where I feel the rise and fall of her breathing heave against my chest. She settles her head beside mine; her panting is short and ragged, as strings of her fibrillose mane sticks to my face. I chew on the golden strand for a moment–a taste I can relate to that of grain and summer wheat–before she looms over me again, taking my chin by the hooves, and lands a deep kiss onto my open mouth, so hard that a line of our shared salivation dribbles from the corner of our locked lips.

When Applejack pulls back, she does so leaving the both of our faces flushed and smiling–panting for breath, but smiling still.

Our hunger satiated, the craving in her eyes eases. She leans forward, again, and concludes the morning's intimacy with a light tap of a kiss to the end of my muzzle. My forelegs coil around her back, pulling her body closer to press against mine, in the event that she might draw away from me before I have the chance to relish more of her warmth. Noticing the ever familiar gesture, she allows herself to stay there just on top of me.

"Dearest," I sigh, running a hoof down her loose mane. "I'm feeling guilty."

"Why's that, hun?" she asks, giving taps of kisses on my neck.

"It’s this lifestyle we have." I roll my eyes and flap a hoof about. "It’s like... we don’t restrain ourselves anymore. I mean, doing it everywhere in the house in the most salacious positions possible... every morning, every afternoon and every night of every day. There’s no sign of self-control anymore... or stopping. We’re like a pair of teenaged lovers who just discovered the pool of the promiscuous and have no further thought than to drain every last drop. We haven’t even had breakfast yet and here… on the table… Without holding back–"

"Ya look so wonderful when yer mane is down like that."

"–or control over ourselves, we're no better than very, very wild animals in constant heat. Why, this kind of debauchery should be– Hmpff!"

Applejack kisses me, I know she does it to shut me up from my rant; it works every time.

"Y'know, hun," she says, chuckling as she pulls her lips back, "just say the word and ah'll stop spoilin’ ya this instant."

"Hmpf!" I pout at her remark to my apparent eroticism. "Don't think I will."

She waits there, for a moment, smiling at me before she smiles and says, "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Say it."

Again, I pout. "...Later."

She laughs aloud and kisses me again, sprinkling "I love ya"s in between chuckles. It is curious as to why we find humor in it, considering the joke is a remark on my apparent insatiability. After she calms down, she slides her body away. The contact of our flaring lower lips tingles when she pulls back, and it elicits a short disappointed moan from me.

"Dearest...?" I groan.

"Sorry, hun," she says, getting on her hooves, "ah'd love to stay longer but ah gotta help Big Mac on the farm and work double time, ah'm late again cuz of ya."

"Can't we... cuddle some more?" I ask, sitting up from the table.

"Ya don't consider that pre-breakfast lovemakin' a cuddle?"

"Well..."

Applejack approaches me and holds my shoulder. "Hey, ah'll be back as soon as work is done." She runs a hoof down my cheeks. "Then ah'll take care of ya again tonight if ya want, ah promise."

"I'm sorry for being so–"

"For ya being so lovely?" she says, shaking her head. "Never apologize for bein' so amazing."

With one more post-lovemaking kiss on the bridge of my nuzzle, Applejack places her hat back on her head and–picking up some of the broken plates on her path–heads towards the door with her tail swinging from side to side. My eyes remain on her to watch her leave until she vanishes around the corner of my dining room. Several hoofsteps later I hear the entrance door open and close, finally making her exist and leaving me in a house that has recently become too big for me alone.

I sigh; I remain on top of the dining table, pulling myself together and savoring the warm tingles the remains of Applejack’s touch. It will be another several hours before Applejack marches back from work and hold me again.

Seriously, where does she find the energy?

After several more minutes, I finally rise from the table and dust off some of the smudge that sticks to my coat. I begin by first finishing my coffee and eggs florentine, before wiping away the bread crumbs and throwing out Applejack’s half-eaten toast. I make short work of the other messes, of the spillage of orange juice on the floor, of the shattered plate and glass, and of the chair that my dearest upturned in her frantic advances. I make a mental note to remind Applejack to restrain her rowdy behavior to our soft, less hazardous, queen-sized bed where we can at least limit the number of broken articles.

So aggressive so early in the morning... I think, levitating the shards of porcelain to the trash bin. Grabbing me from behind while I was making breakfast...

A small mischievous smile makes it way to my lips as my hoof presses on the still-warm, still-wet tabletop.

And then forcing me down here... to do with me as she wished...

Having thoroughly cleansed the dining room, I move to the sink where I rinse and wash the dishes. Then, afterwards, I proceed to sweep the floor and dust the corners of the already sparkling house. The motion of the simple act of cleaning–of wiping the cupboards or any of the aforementioned tasks–instills in me a strange pleasure which I cannot find elsewhere and, surely, my past self would remark upon with the scorn of an evil stepmother. It is startling to feel the sense of pure joy in the work of providing for the house, the kind of joy one expects, but seldom finds, in the art of dancing.

There is an intimate sense of privacy in our home ever since Applejack moved in–I have seldom opened the store these past few months. It is as though we are already a married couple where my dearest is the mare of the house and I am but her simple housewife. Though the place is my property, Applejack’s ownership of me–in delivering myself to her–also makes the boutique her own; that to clean this humble dwelling where we share kisses and eat and sleep in each other’s embrace, is no different than to wash my body for her to touch.

Not an hour has passed since Applejack left for work and I have finished my chores. If we are to have a foal–Oh, dear Celestia, it is too soon to think of this now!– then I cannot imagine how the completion of my household duties would be this easy. As it is, I find myself with nothing to do. I align some tilted photographs of Applejack and I–and Applejack with I–here and there, adjust a few late minutes from the wall clock, and check if the laundry hanging outside has dried already–which it hasn't. Sitting on the couch, I find myself wondering what it is that I used to do on my spare time before waiting for my dearest.

Then, as though to answer my boredom, the doorbell rings. I jump for it, hoping that it is Applejack, back from the farm, to take me here on the living room floor–quite possibly the last remaining place we have yet to make love in this house. But, knowing that such a fantastic scenario is highly improbable, my hoof stops inches away from the knob. I jump back, running to the nearest mirror, to arrange my mane to the appropriate proportions of its curls. It takes several more doorbells before I finish and finally attend to my guest.

"Coming," I sing out.

I pull the door open and, seeing the mare on the other side, resist the urge to slam it close if not for the fact that her magical prowess far surpasses my own.

"Good morning, Rarity," Twilight says. "I was ringing for quite some time, it took you awhile."

"I apologize. I was fixing my mane."

"Oh."

"You're early this time," I say, scowling.

"I was hoping I can catch Applejack as well."

"She's working on the farm."

She sighs. "May I come in?"

"Yes, you may," I answer, though it takes me a moment before I stand aside and grant her entrance to my house.

I close the door behind Twilight Sparkle as she walks in. My hoof presses against my temple, already I can feel this week's headache coming to me.

Her presence has an aspect that is too acquainted for an uninvited guest, and too business-like for friends. She surveys the house, particularly the photos of Applejack and I, hanging on the living room's white walls, and pictures of the six of us–all of which are of Applejack's property–that remains securely hidden in the corners where nopony would notice them. Twilight levitates one of the group photos, the one Pinkie Pie took after our first Winter Wrap-Up, and places it on display on top of the cabinet.

"There," she says, "much better, don't you think?"

"No," I answer. "I was planning to have a picture of our next date placed there. Applejack is going out of her way to take me to Neighagra Falls."

"Let it stay there in the meantime. You don't mind do you?" She moves to the cabinet and inspects the framed photograph. "Do you remember why we were all laughing here? It was my first Winter Wrap-Up in Ponyville and the first time in a long while that it was completed on schedule. Pinkie Pie wanted to take the picture to commemorate, but it was the first time she used your camera so she couldn't handle the flash timer well. When it started the countdown, Pinkie Pie ran to join us, but she slipped and fell face first on one of the last remaining snow. When she looked up she had a... had a... snow mustache. Then she said something that made all of us laugh."

"No..."

"What?"

"No," I repeat. "It wasn't a mustache, it was a beard. And she said something among the lines of, 'I'll dress up as Santa till this beard wears off' then added, when it immediately melted, 'looks like that's it this year for me. Ho, ho, ho.' Then that's when we laughed together in time for the camera to flash on."

Twilight smiles. "So you do remember."

I lead her to the center table in the living room where I pull up a chair for her. "Would you like some coffee, darling?"

"I'm alright, I just had a big breakfast."

Twilight takes her seat, but immediately turns around, towards the doorstep's shoe drawer, and looks at the hanging brown weaved basket that holds all of my mail. She levitates the hamper on to the table and rummages through its contents.

"Those are private," I snap.

"I'm just looking for–here it is..." She fishes out an unopened pink envelope. "Glad to know you got my letter."

She produces the missive's content, an invitation made from yellow art paper with the edges trimmed to a heart-shaped design. Crayon drawings of cribs, diapers and stars circle the text of comics sans in the middle. It reads:

Hello!
You are invited to:

FORMAL VIP INVITATION

PRINCESS CADANCE'S BABY SHOWER

"Pinkie Pie helped me make it," she mutters, "the drawings... The written invitations were also her idea."

"It's lovely, dear." I say, without even closer inspection of the letter, as I take the seat in front of her.

She shuffles on her chair. "So..."

"So?"

"It's the first time I'm hosting a party," she tells me. "Pinkie Pie will be there, she's helping me with the preparations after all. Last week Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy promised they'd come, even with Rainbow’s wing still... like that... and yesterday even Applejack agreed to go."

"So, I am guessing I'm the last link to complete the circle?"

I look at the yellow letter that she placed so firmly on the table, going to such effort that she extends her foreleg just so she can place it within my reach. I do not even look at the thing, much less show any sign of receiving it.

"Rarity," she sighs. "You know, I'm incredibly happy for you and Applejack. I really am, but–"

"Here we go," I mutter under my breath.

"–you need to fix– What did you say!?" It is not a question; it is an opportunity she gives me to change what I just said.

"Tell me, dear." I do not take the chance. "Did you have to write this one down? Or did you only have to practice in front of the mirror?"

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"You started with the story of the photograph as an appeal to my sentiments." I point to the group portrait of her first Winter Wrap-Up. "Then to be followed with that half-practiced, half-memorized speech about all of us being friends and–"

"Well, aren't we?" Twilight almost shouts out. I notice that her hoof refuses to let go of the edge of the table. "Aren't we?"

I do not answer her.

"Alright, half-practiced or not," she says, throwing her hooves up, "I'm really happy that you and Applejack found each other, and that Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy found each other but... not like this! This... this silence! This constant avoidance and evasion! I can’t stand it anymore. It’s like the group is now torn between your two pair of lovers and I don’t want any part of it. I want to be happy for all of you, together."

"I suppose that you have forgotten but Rainbow Dash attacked my lover. I am not about to forgive her for that."

"From what I heard, Applejack struck first."

"Any self-respecting pony, stallion or mare, will take offense if his or her marefriend was called a slut!"

"Rainbow Dash didn't call you a sl– she didn't call you that!"

"She implied it when she claimed I am cheating on Applejack."

I do not notice, amidst the sudden eruption of inappropriate yelling, that Twilight and I are standing on our hind legs and with our hoof clutched on the edge of the table, ready to upturn it to whoever snaps first. I have a feeling that it is me, as I see the solid composition of her form and the trembling in mine. The both of us notices it, and the both of us turns away in shame; that every week of Twilight's visit, with her innocent intention of bringing us friends back together, would always have to start with a thick air of self-righteous superiority from both the of us and end with the silence from the residue of yelling.

Twilight Sparkle slumps down in the chair, rubbing a hoof against her foreleg. I can see, by the way she looks at the blank flat surface of the table, that she wishes she has taken up my offer on the coffee if only for it to serve as a momentary distraction. I sit down, calming myself as well.

"Darling, can I ask you a question?" I ask.

"What is it?"

"I’ve never asked you this before but... what Rainbow Dash said... about me..." I clear my throat. "Do you believe it, that I'm cheating on Applejack with some stallion?"

Twilight is quiet for some time. Then, forming a conclusion, she answers, "Of course not. You love Applejack, don't you?"

"More than life itself." I lean forward and extend a hoof, reaching for Twilight's own. "Thank you for believe in me. It means a lot that you're on our side."

"It's not about taking sides," she says, withdrawing her hoof from me. "It's about friends trusting one another."

"I'm still glad that you trust me more than you trust Rainbow Dash."

She sighs. "So... does that mean you'll join us for Cadance's baby shower?"

I remain quiet, for some time, before stating my answer in time with Twilight's gasp.

"Rarity!"

"I can't." I shake my head. "It is an unfortunate coincidence, a trick of fate even, that the schedule for the baby shower is of the same date as a prior engagement of mine."

"What could be more important than an opportunity to fix our friendship?"

"Fleur de Lis's wedding," I answer. "It's been delayed long enough and I'm the maid of honor. I've missed a lot of parties since my being lovers with Applejack, but I do not intend to miss this one. The letter is there, in the basket, so you know I'm not making up some sort of excuse."

Twilight does not reach for the basket; neither does her eyes move to container. Her stare, her glare, instead chooses to lock on my eyes as she gives her ultimatum: "Rarity, what's more important: the six of your best friends or thousands of faces you don’t know or even care about?"

I recline back in the chair, staring back at Twilight’s grimace. There is an atypical averseness in how her forehead scrunches and how the intervals between her blinking eyes shorten. Infinitesimal droplets of sweat form just over the line of her forehead. She knows the question is not as rhetorical as she makes it sound.

I recall that this is the same place where Cadance and I first became friends, in her definition of the word. The bedroom of the alicorn still brims with elegant regality of the luxurious even when hidden beneath the most childlike and childish of decorations. Pink and blue banners flow from one end of the ceiling to the other, the bursts of confetti already litter the tiles, multi colored balloons tie the curtains, and the mini table of the kitchenette is pushed to the center to accommodate the assortment of candies, tarts and cupcakes. The amount of light coming from the bulbs makes it seem it is still high in the afternoon.

"Oh, Applejack," moaned Cadance. She presses a hoof on her cheek, chewing on a baked sweet. "These are amazing!"

"I'd advise you not to have too many, though," I say. “We wouldn't want your baby to develop a sweet tooth as well."

"It's alright, hun," Applejack says, handing my second cupcake. "Ah cut down on the sugar, knowin' Cadance. Ah used concentrated cinnamon instead. So there’s also no need for ya to watch this flank of yers."

Applejack emphasizes her statement with a light tap of her tail against my rump. It makes me glare at her, and Cadance laugh.

"Thank you, Applejack," Cadance says, "this is very thoughtful of you."

The princess finishes her cupcake in two bites and, having wiped the crumbs from her lips with a napkin, she levitates three more from the baker's dozen. The treats floating in front of her, she trots to the other ponies at the end of the room.

"Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy," she calls, "you have got to try this."

Fluttershy's hooves reach out, then draw back, then finally reach out again to take the cupcakes.

Rainbow Dash shrugs, not making an effort to receive the fruits of Applejack's baking. "It's alright," she says, "I'm not hungry."

“Don’t be so modest,” Cadance insists. “I promise it’ll be good.”

Rainbow Dash looks to Fluttershy, as though seeking for further encouragement. Fluttershy, in turn, nods and extends her feathers against her lover’s bandaged wing. The cyan pegasus sighs, takes the cupcake from the princess and takes the bite.

“So?” Cadance asks, watching the pegasus chew.

“It’s... not bad, I guess.”

“Are you kidding?” asks Cadance. “These are great!”

“It’s too fruity for me,” says Rainbow Dash, a little too fast. “I’ve lost the taste for apples for quite some time now.”

At the sound of Rainbow Dash’s comment, I see Applejack’s ears perk up as she places a fresh tray of baked treats on the table. Still wearing that stoic and distant facial expression, her acknowledgment of the cyan pegasus changes her visage no more than if she is to recognize the persistent clattering of an all-too-visible poltergeist.

Fluttershy, by contrast with Applejack, is far too obvious. She glares at her Rainbow Dash and shaking her head in a show of disapproval to her crude statement. Rainbow Dash rolls her eyes and turns away, back towards the bowl of punch that cannot pass judgment.

“Maybe... Maybe...” Cadance says, smiling, “you just need to get used to it again.”

Something else passes through the room, the night’s cold chill in what was not said in Cadance’s words; and, as though by instinct, it makes Applejack and Rainbow Dash look at one another for a brief instant. There is not a hint of threat in the way the two ponies looked into each other’s eyes, only the shared embarrassment that preludes an apology. The glance holds only for a few seconds, and they both turn away again, head down, simultaneously.

It is Cadance's natural sympathy, and not her timidity, that allows her to read the Macbeth-ish atmosphere. She is not ignorant of the fact that a string of tension takes the place of air between the two mares standing at both ends of the room. She is also not blind to the fact that the two parties have yet to even interact since their separate arrival. The bandages that still crusts Rainbow Dash's wing is nothing compared to the dry wounds that bled the pair apart; it does not help either, that it provides Cadance a clue as to what may have caused the injury.

Before further implication passes through the minute gestures of the ponies in the bed chamber, it is Twilight Sparkle, finally coming out of the balcony to announce Pinkie Pie’s late arrival, that wipes away the monotonic silence.

“So according to the checklist,” the lavender unicorn says, eyes scurrying down a scroll, “now’s that part of the party where we’re supposed to shower Cadance and baby our presents.”

If Cadance can still fly, hindered, of course, only by the extra weight of the foal she carries, she would have leapt from her position back to the table in the center of the room. “I am so looking forward to this,” she squeaks out, her hooves rubbing against her cheeks. She does it to try and ease the tension, I believe.

Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy rush to one end of the kitchenette to take their respective gifts. Applejack and I do the same.

“I guess I’ll go first,” says Twilight. Her horn glows, and a flash of purple magic conjures a small pink box sealed with a pink ribbon. “You’ll never guess what I got you.”

As Twilight extends the gift, Cadance reaches for it. “Is it a book about foal parenting?”

Twilight’s hooves stop mid-air, her jaw hanging open.

“Oh, Twily,” Cadance laughs. She neatly opens the gift and produces the exact present she predicted. “I’ve been your foal sitter long enough to know you only ever give books on any occasion.”

The unicorn’s ears droop. “I thought I would be able to surprise you this time.”

“That’ll be incredibly difficult.” Cadance opens the book, smiling as she flips through the pages of pictures of foals. “Though I’m not surprised, it doesn’t mean I appreciate it any less. Thank you very much, Twilight, it was very thoughtful of you.”

The two mares embraced one another as Fluttershy walks up to them, holding her gift against her chest. She extends it with her shaking forelegs and her head bowing, as though she is offering a sacrificial lamb to a bloodthirsty deity.

“Uhm... Y-Your highness, this is from me.”

“Why thank you, Fluttershy,” Cadance says, receiving the present. She notices Fluttershy’s nervousness, and eases it when she bends her knees to match the pegasus’s level. “And please call me Cadance. We’ve known each other long enough.”

Tearing away the blue wrappings, Cadance’s smile widens as she unveils the thick empty photo album.

“I have a feeling,” she says, looking up to the canary pegasus, “that this gift of yours would last for years and years to come.”

Fluttershy is touched by the compliment. Her smile vanishes for a second, however, but comes back when Rainbow Dash hoof wraps around her shoulder.

“That’s Shy for you,” says Rainbow Dash. “Here’s my gift.”

Rainbow Dash takes a small barbell and throws it to Cadance, who catches the object with her magic.

“Oh, another barbell,” laughs Cadance. “I would have never expected that... but I don’t think my foal will be able to...”

“Go on, hold it,” insists Rainbow Dash, and Cadance’s magic guides the exercising instrument to her hooves.

As soon she feels its weight, Cadance laughs, squeaking the dumbbell. “Oh! It’s a squishy toy!”

“Yeah,” Rainbow Dash says, “I had something similar when I was a filly, couldn't take my hooves off it.”

Throughout the conversation of the pegasus and the alicorn, I can see how Applejack's eyes never leave Rainbow Dash, a small humble–perhaps apologetic?–smile creating an upward curve in the corner of her lips. The origin of that smile, I discover as I see the small twitch in my lover’s ear, is the genuine hearty laugh of her best friend.

When Rainbow Dash retires back to her place beside Fluttershy, it is my Applejack who next presents her gift.

“I... uh... don’t know if this here’s appropriate,” Applejack says, holding up a rectangular box. “Ah’ve planned on giving it to ya fer a long time now but...”

Cadance uncovers the box and takes out thin hoofwoven curtains made of white silk and adorned with red abstract stitches of apple simulacra. “Oh Applejack, it’s so... it's simply beautiful.”

“Shucks, princess,” Applejack laughs.

“Thank you.”

“Yer welcome..." She stops for a moment, scratching the back of her head. "Ah actually hesitated givin’ it to ya after ah heard of what happened to yer house. Real sorry about that.”

“Oh, you mean the cabin?” she says, more than asks, ears drooping down. “I heard it was stray cloud from the Everfree Forest that struck a lightning and started the fire.”

“Such a shame. Rarity and me was lookin' forward to havin’ you in Ponyville.”

“I’m having the house rebuilt, a little crisis conscious this time. But you know what they say, lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice.”

“Oh, ah saw that!” Applejack says, nodding furiously. “Did ah ever tell you that mah sister AB is helpin’ with the construction? She’s doin’ a darn good job at it too, even better than our pops did. Ah’d be disappointed if her cutie mark won’t show up once the house’s done.”

They talk, for quite some time, and it surprises me–appalls me, even–when I notice in all of my observations that not once had there been a hint of fakery in the genuine interest Cadance shares in the conversations. Perhaps I have grown too accustomed to the opposite, during my Canterlot parties where a yawn hides beneath a laugh, that I cannot believe anything otherwise. Still, in the middle of her talk with my dearest, her eyes happen to land on mine, and she notices me staring.

Clearing my throat, I approach her. "And this is from me, darling," I say, handing her my own gift-wrapped box.

She receives the item warmly, sliding the blue ribbon out of its knot. One hoof pulls the contents from the container and the other leaps to her lips. It is a white footie pajama and a cap, both of which made of fine hoofstitched silk.

"It's beautiful," she says, holding up the small clothing.

"It could have been better if I knew if it is a colt or filly. I could have overall improved it."

"It's gorgeous as it is."

"Still," says Twilight to Cadance, her eyes on the pajamas, "I think you should've taken the sonography. Pinkie says she's sure it's a colt, but I think it's a filly. Can't speak for the other's though, and the suspense is killing me!"

"We want it to be a surprise," Cadance laughs. "But speaking of our favorite pink party pony, I thought you said she'd be here by now?"

On cue, the sound of trotting hooves and rolling wheels resound from the corridor adjacent to the bedroom. The two large doors swing open and Pinkie Pie enters. Wearing a white toque and white apron, she pushes the dessert cart that serves a large vanilla-flavored cake. The cake, repelling to me, is in the shape of stacked diapers. On the flat surface of the lemon glaze, the following words are written in blue frosting:

“Cake time!” Pinkie Pie shouts to the air.

"Wow!" gasps Cadance. "You made that all by yourself?"

"Uh-huh," Pinkie answers, clapping her hooves together.

The pink pony slices the cake–a diaper on each plate–and gives one to Twilight before she leaves the balcony. Serving more slices of the diaper cake, she gives one slice to Cadance and one for each pegasus.

"Uh... Pinks," says Rainbow Dash, taking an early bite. "Y'know, this cake is awesome and all but... the vanilla is just the frosting outside, right?"

"Right-o!"

"And the inside is... uh... chocolate filling."

"Chocolates don't have feelings, Dashie.” She snorts with laughter. “They'd be sad if they did because I eat them all the time."

Pinkie Pie laughs so loud that Applejack and Fluttershy are also affected with the contagion.

"No," continues Rainbow Dash, "what I'm trying to say is that, y'know, a diaper cake with chocolate filling? Don't you see how wrong that looks?"

"Nopie-Dopey," Pinkie Pie says, taking a massive diaper-slice in one bite. She swallows the whole thing, without even chewing. Then, cutting up two more slices, Pinkie Pie hands two plates to Rainbow Dash. "Pass this around, would you? Thanks."

I do not think it is by chance–rather, by discreet forethought and calculation–that, when Pinkie Pie hands Rainbow Dash the cake, everypony but Applejack and I already have a slice. Forced to comply with a friend’s request and deprived of any other options to whom that request may be fulfilled, Rainbow Dash approaches us, cake in hoof. She hesitates for a moment, as everypony in the room–even, I see, Pinkie Pie from the corner of her eyes–watches and waits in silence. Heaving out a loud sigh, Rainbow Dash extends the platter to Applejack.

“...Here,” she says, turning away.

“...Thanks,” Applejack replies, receiving the offered sweet, turning away also.

Left with one platter on her hooves, Rainbow Dash turns to me. The smile, which had appeared after my lover expressed her gratitude, vanishes the moment the pegasus knew she would have to extend the same beau geste to the mare she slanders. I wait for it, hoping that I will be able to receive the same gesture she gave to Applejack. But Rainbow Dash squints her eyes and leaves the platter of cake over the nearby davenport, waiting there for me to pick it up.

Applejack’s face scowls as she sees the rude indication, a sign she did not expect from her friend immediately after a display of compliance. As Rainbow Dash briskly turns around, my dearest extends a foreleg to grab a hold of the cyan pegasus, no doubt with the apparent reason to make her apologize to me. I block the hoof in time with my own.

“It’s perfectly alright, dearest,” I explain. Rainbow Dash continues walking back to the others, who stand as dumbfounded as my lover, unmindful of us. “Dash knows I’m keeping watch on my weight. I wouldn’t want a slice of cake to sit in my flanks now, would I?”

Applejack leans forward to me, still furious, and whispers, “If ya think ah’m gonna let that mare humiliate ya like that then–”

“It’s alright, dearest,” I assure her, running my hoof on her back. “It’s alright, please. No need to make a scene.”

Applejack looks at me for a moment, and sighs in surrender. “If you say so, hun.”

“Thank you.”

“But if she so much thinks about offendin’ ya again tonight, Celestia help me cuz ah swear ah’ll be on her face and–”

“Just... just please calm down, dearest. This is Cadance’s baby shower after all. Let’s all just please enjoy the par–”

The interruption comes from the only pony in the room who did not see the commotion. Once again, Twilight appears from the balcony, running this time in a hurry towards Cadance.

“He’s here!” Twilight shouts. Then, turning to Cadance, she says, “He’s running so fast. I told him you’re feeling the cramps and–”

“You what!?” Cadance laughs as well.

“Might as well surprise him!” Pinkie Pie follows with her own laughter.

And then, not even a minute later, with the sound of his galloping hooves raising their excitement, he does come in, bursting through the door, welcomed by a yell of “Surprise” uttered by five ponies in unison and by a blast of confetti that Pinkie Pie showers him with.

The immediate stimulus must have been too much, even for one such as he: the greeting of her sister and the other elements of harmony, the way his wife pulls him into her hooves and kisses, and the sight–from his peripherals–of a certain white coated unicorn mare. All of which renders him speechless.

“What’s the matter, honey?” laughs Cadance, kissing his husband. “Have you been so accustomed to the barracks that a baby shower is this shocking to you?”

“Uh... yes... I mean no,” Shining Armor says, shaking his head. “Twily told me that your water just broke and... Anyway, I was just so worried.” Then turning to Twilight, passing by me in his range of vision, he says. “And that’s in very bad taste, by the way. I panicked!”

“It’s alright. It's the only way I can get you to run as fast as you can from the mess hall.”

“And aren't stallions and colts usually not allowed to a mare’s baby shower?”

“I’m the host of this party,” Twilight says. “I can do whatever I want.”

As Shining Armor continues to speak, both Rainbow Dash and Applejack are drawn in by the courtesy to express their commendation to the would-be father. In the room, only two ponies stand in silence: I and the wide-eyed, hoof-trembling Fluttershy.

She stares at me, that pegasus, with her lips slightly open that I can see that tongue hanging in her mouth. She looks at Shining Armor then to me again, my watchful eye never leaving hers.

I approach her and immediately; she retreats to the punch bowl, as though the mechanics of apparently quenching her thirst would render her invisible to me. Standing on her left, where her bangs cover her face, I take a plastic cup from near the bowl and fill it with the pomelo mix.

“Rarity...” she whispers.

“Oh, so you have something to tell me after all,” I say, smiling for the others to see but she cannot. They cannot hear what I am saying, too preoccupied circling around Shining Armor. “Funny, and here I was planning to make sure you how to keep your mouth shut this time.”

“Rarity,” she repeats. “I... I didn’t tell Rainbow Dash... about Shining Armor.”

“I can see that.” I turn, looking at how the cyan pegasus is able to so easily converse with the stallion. “Otherwise she wouldn’t let her guard down around him.”

“No, I meant–”

“Thank you for telling me that,” I say, sipping the juice from my cup. “It’s good to know that you were willing to slander my name but are still courteous enough to protect Shining Armor and Cadance’s reputation... Anyway, enough of this talk. Surely this isn't the time and place in which I would suggest that you once forced yourself onto Rainbow Dash, so neither is this the aspect nor manner in which you would suggest that Shining Armor is cheating on his pregnant wife.”

“You don’t understand. It wasn’t me–”

“Oh, and by the way, darling,” I say, licking the traces of wet punch on my lips. “This drink contains some alcohol in it. Vodka, I’d like to think. If you’d like to rape Rainbow Dash again”–here she gasps, the breath she takes almost pushing her back and down on the floor–“I suggest you make her drink a lot of it. I still haven’t told her of what you did and she still trusts you. As always, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

Fluttershy knows she can no longer hide the gobs of tears that smear her crumpled face, and so no longer bother to hide her eyes. Before she finally breaks out into those foul loud sobs to garner everypony’s sympathy, I beat her to everypony's attention. With a flick of my hoof, I slap away the cup of punch in her hooves. To the carpet the pink liquid goes, splattering all it’s contents in one big wave over the white rug.

“Oh dear!” I say, loud enough for the others to hear. “What happened? You made such a mess of the carpet! ...Oh, don’t worry, darling, I’ll clean it up.”

By the time Shining Armor, Cadance and my friends all join us, I am already cleaning the spilled fruit juice with a cloth I levitate with my magic.

“Oh, Rarity, you don’t have to do that,” says Cadance. “I’ll air it out in the morning.”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Fluttershy is saying. But, to the bewilderment of everypony in the room, everypony else but I, the canary pegasus is apologizing, not to Cadance, but to Rainbow Dash. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” she squeaks, again and again.

Inconsolable and out of breath from countless apologies, Fluttershy bolts to the door.

“Fluttershy, wait!” cries out Rainbow. She groans and winces as, in the process of her pursuit, her wings snap back from the tight shackles of her bandages as she tries to take to the air. She barely manages a few feet from the ground before she collapses. Without even waiting to recover from her fall, Rainbow Dash trots after the pegasus.

“Rarity!” yells Twilight, her heinous eyes spitting at me. “What did you do?”

“I was levitating her punch to her and, suddenly, her wing– Well, you know how... clumsy she is.”

Twilight groans and follows the pegasi out the door.

Applejack turns to me, taking my hoof. “Rare,” she says, “I know we still have that thing with RD and Shy but... ah need to make sure mah friends are okay.”

She waits for my answer, and I let a few more seconds pass, to make my hesitation more apparent, before I do. “Alright, dearest. Make sure our friends are okay,” I say. “B-But please... don’t be too friendly with Rainbow Dash as of yet... I still don’t trust her as much as I used to.”

“Ya don’t have to worry nothin’ bout that,” so saying, Applejack runs off.

A gust entered from the balcony and blew away the most naïve fillies in the room.

With half of the ponies in the room suddenly racing out through the Canterlot night, the four of us are left in the sudden bewildered silence of the predicament.

“Gee,” Pinkie Pie says, standing beside me. I had not noticed that she has been standing there the whole. “What a party pooper,” she laughs. “Speaking of poopers, would you like a slice of diaper cake, Shining Armor?”

Upon hearing her voice, it makes me wonder how is Pinkie Pie able to stay. I am confident to think that she, too, would have found something odd in the way Fluttershy suddenly ran out of the room and would have also followed in pursuit. The fact that she is here suggest she is either duller than what I give her credit for, or...

No, there is no basis for the alternative but for my paranoiac delusions.

I shake my head. I can no longer make sense of the wild card that is Pinkie Pie. Though I have not seen it in the last months, I am unable to rid myself of the replaying scene in the Jellyfish Room: the straight-maned mare wearing the silver mask of comedy. Even the proposition that what I saw is a mirage conjured by my guilt is downright absurd: I have nothing to be guilty about.

It is not my intention to have Fluttershy run off in a burst of foalish tantrum, nor to have Twilight, Rainbow Dash and Applejack to follow her in pursuit. I only meant to remind the bitch that even now she still cannot disclose of my affair without ill consequence to herself. The fact that her dramatic turmoil even occurred is a fortunate circumstance I could not have foreseen or expected.

Left alone with Pinkie Pie, Cadance and Shining Armor, those three exchange a few words, with the pink pony enlightening the couple as to the obscure details of the cause of our circle’s current unease. Again, I do not know if it is by Pinkie Pie’s sheer innocence or trust of me that she chooses to omit the reasons as to why Applejack and Rainbow Dash fought in the first place. It is also commendable that she plays her role splendidly. That is, if she knows she is playing a role in the first place, or her simple mindedness cannot conceive of the implication of what she knows about Shining Armor; to her, we may be nothing more but two ponies who entered a hotel together after a long night of searching for a Hearth’s Warming Gift for Cadance.

As the pink pony rants on, I steal a glance from Shining Armor. Neither Cadance nor Pinkie Pie could have seen it, of course; a single look from the corner of my eyes as I bat my eyelashes. The glance does not serve as a reminder to him that I am here–I knew well enough that he could not have forgotten my presence–but to show him that she who is here is not just Rarity, but Miss Glass Slippers as well.

Knowing that Shining Armor will no doubt follow me now, from the minute ripple of his legs–an imperceptible motion that is invisible to anypony who has not spent as much time as I pressed against those broad muscles–I head onto the balcony outside, levitating a cup of punch beside me. I lean over the railings, overlooking the Canterlot night, and there I wait for him. Sure enough, given several minutes, I hear Shining Armor excuse himself from the company and join me out on the balcony.

There is only a warning of a few hoofsteps before I hear his voice:

“What the hell are you doing here?” It is amazing how he can speak in the volume of a whisper and the tone of shout.

“Good evening to you too, Shining Armor,” I answer, turning to him. “And since we didn’t actually part on the, say, gentlest of terms during our last encounter, may you please be generous enough to at least humor me with the luxury of a polite conversation first.”

He has yet to remove his captain’s armor; looking back now, it would have been indecent to do so in front of so many mares in their pubescent primes. But I myself do not mind seeing the ribbons of moonlight make those hard silver glint and shine; there is a fulfilling quality to it, as the complete effect would have matched his name. I also remember that not even once, during our encounters, had he worn the peytral and flanchard.

“Answer my question,” he says.

“I guess not,” I sigh. “But please keep your voice down. Pinkie Pie and your wife may still be able to hear us.”

“I thought I made it clear that I never wanted to see you again.”

“And when, pray tell, did you actually make it clear?” I say. “You have to forgive me, darling, I am no expert in the hermeneutics of pony kinesics. Was it in the fact that you avoided contacting me for the last six weeks? Or was it that time when we encountered last, when you so mercilessly ravaged the living hell out of me–even after I begged you to stop–that, after which, I had to remain chained on the bed for the next day, enduring every sore muscle in my body? Or was it that time you swore, by your love for me, that you would be there when I wake up from the nightmare in which you left me stranded, only to find you absent the moment I opened my eyes?”

“If it's bits you want–”

My laughter interrupts him. I do not bother to tone down the sound. If either Cadance or Pinkie Pie heard it then let them interpret the laughter any way they wish.

Collecting myself, I answer him, “Please, don’t say that Shining Armor. It makes me feel like we didn’t have anything special.”

“We didn’t.”

“You’re a bad liar, dear,” I sigh. “Maybe even worse than Applejack. I even wonder how you were able keep our affair a secret.”

“I am living a happy life with my wife.”

“I’m sure. As I am with my dearest.”

"What the hell do you want, Rarity?" He grabs my foreleg, yanking me close.

My eyes stray from his, moving down the muscular tone of his chest to his biceps. I tap my hoof over his, easing his hold. Shining Armor complies, letting go. "I want the same thing you want, Shining Armor. I want us to stop."

He snorts, the stallion equivalent of rolling one's eyes. "...You'll have to forgive me if I find that hard to believe."

"It was not necessarily a compliment," I laugh. "But I love the fact that you have no illusions regarding your own… shall we say, allurement."

"I was referring to your lecherousness."

“...I’m sure you’d know that more than anypony else.”

“More than Applejack?”

What is left of the humor that I have hoped, at least, to put us both at ease in this awkward conversation is gone the second he placed Applejack’s name beside his. I turn away from him, leaning against the railings, and again overlook the breathing city of Canterlot, a dim hum rising above the spires. The sharp jagged columns of the horizon erupt from the pavements of silver bricks. From the clear line of the railings, my hoof slithers to his.

“I really want to stop, Shining Armor,” I say, “for Applejack's sake. As I've mentioned, Applejack and I are happy now. We're ready to get settled. Has Cadance already told you that Applejack moved in with me about a month ago?"

He makes a small nod.

"I expected as much," I say, smiling. "It's very troublesome for her, for my dearest Applejack, as she has to wake up half an hour earlier than usual to walk back to Sweet Apple Acres. Which is already very difficult in itself considering how late we sleep at night because of our... well... I don't need to tell you about that."

"Get to the point."

"I want to protect what Applejack and I have now," I say, the smile vanishing from my face. "There's an innocent charm to it, a particular spell from the sweet innocence of just getting away from it all–this! Canterlot and high society–and just live the rest of my days in the countryside. But it is impossible for us, the innocence, not after what we've done. You want to stop our relationship permanently, and I believe you. I want to stop myself. But we both know we both won't be able to."

"You're wrong about one of us," he says. "I plan to protect what I have with Cadance."

"And I don't doubt it." I lean forward over the railings, resting my hooves over the ledge. "But we can only plan so long and protect so much."

"What do you mean?"

"We won't be able to stop, Shining Armor. We can only delay the inevitable. We are drawn together, as I said long ago, not by something like love or lust, but something less innocent: our necessity to punish our guilt by betrayal and our betrayal by guilt. One of these days, we will push ourselves and be pulled by the other, succumbing to the temptation. Maybe not tonight, not tomorrow, not in the next few years but someday... a day when we realize how much we love those we do...”

Shining Armor shakes his head. “No, you don’t understand, Rarity. This stops now. There won’t be another instance of temptation anymore, no more risk of getting back together. I’ve removed it all.”

“Your denial is expected.”

“And so is your pose at omniscience,” he says. He grabs me by my shoulder and forces me to face him. “Never again, you hear me? If I can’t make that clear enough then I’m sorry. But nothing in this world or thereafter is going to make me sleep with you, or any other mare for that matter, and risk hurting the best thing that ever happened to me. And I hope you do too, for Applejack’s sake if not for yourself.”

I feel my magical grip on the cup tighten. “Don’t you dare uphold that self-righteousness after everything that you’ve done.”

“I’m upholding it, for what I’m doing for Cadance and I.” He lets go of me. “Rarity... we’re not strong enough to do the right thing. We’re not strong enough to expose the truth, but at least we’re strong enough to commit on no longer doing what we know to be wrong. I hope you understand.”

“No, I don’t,” I say, my voice rising. “This isn’t something you can brush under the rug. This isn’t something you can... you can decide on your own! You can’t just give me a false sense of... of hope and then take it away!”

“Hope?” he asks, genuinely baffled. “Hope for what?”

That... you’d choose me over Cadance.

As though reading my mind, he asks, with contempt in each breath, “If I take you, right now, would you be willing to leave Applejack for me?”

The question does not shock me as much as my answer. I know what my immediate response would have been, it came to me, instantaneously, as soon as he asked the question. But what I say, instead of the answer, is its emotional equivalent: “...you abominable bastard.”

“You see, Rarity,” he says, “none of this should have happened.”

I am unable to control myself any longer; I grab the floating cup with my hoof; I throw the contents to his face.

Shining Armor is unmoved, not even with the dignity of a shock as the cold liquid flows from his unrelenting visage. He takes a handkerchief from his breast pocket and proceeds to wipe his face clean.

“Don’t you ever say that,” I hiss between my teeth. “Say that you feel guilty, say that you feel ashamed, say that it is wrong but don’t you ever say that the best days of my life should have never happened.”

My prince stares at me, with the same eyes he had when he confessed that, of all things, it is pity that made him endure me on his bed. Pity–and mercy–as would one give to a wounded serpent, with all the care one can give without the blessing of either love or affection.

He turns away. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.

Without saying another word, I whip my dress to the air and proceed to return to the bedchamber.

I turn back, only once, to look at him. He leans over the balcony, with one hoof pressed against his forehead. He stands there, my prince, glinting with the moonlight between the grand city of Canterlot beneath and the starry heavens above.

I fumble with the key in my hoof. It is needless, of course, maybe even stupid. There are only two keys on the chain, one of which is for my suite and the other is for the suite's bathroom.

“Are ya alright, hun?” Applejack says. “You’ve been out of it for quite some time now.”

“I am fine, dearest. I just have... a lot on my mind.”

“Like what?”

"It's just... uh... it’s incredibly generous for Princess Celestia to give each one of us a private suite."

"Yeah..." Applejack sighs. "Mine's thataway, in the next wing of the castle."

I lean my head against her shoulders. "It's such a shame that you won't even get to see it."

I wrap my hooves around her neck. Applejack takes the key from me and opens the door to my suite, eager to get inside. "This is the same room, isn't it?" she asks. "The room when we first..."

"Yes," I answer. "Yes, it is."

Although each suite is exactly alike, it is the air in the room, once the two of us are together in it, that engulfs us the sense of familiarity. How many months has it been–almost a year now–since we have last entered these four walls? I have in my mind some vague semblance of this room which I expect reality to throw and toss about from my memory as soon as the two images coincide–nothing much, but a few rendition in coloring, positions, or shapes of furniture here and there–that I am startled to find that no such distortion occurred in my mental image. For better or for worse, the room is exactly as I remembered; making the memory of my first night here with Applejack replay in my mind more so with vivid clarity: I remember crying on this floor, her picking me up and placing on those same purple-sheets, where then I forced myself on her after I have brought her guard down with a reminder of her attempted rape, and even after my disgraceful attempt to humiliate her as an act of vengeance, she is able to give her feelings for me tenderly and lovingly.

"Ah'm not sure if ah'm comfortable with this," she confesses, no doubt seeing the same mirages that I do. "Don't get me wrong, though. Ah wouldn't trade anythin' to change what happened, it was our first after all and it's the night I got you. But... You know... it wasn't exactly the best night of our lives."

"All the more reason to make up for it." I turn my back to Applejack, heading towards the bed and wiggling my tail. "Can you please help me out of this dress."

She stands behind me, wrapping her hooves around my hips and planting kisses along my neck.

"Oh, dearest," I moan. "Can you please wait until I take a nice bath first? Cadance's baby shower took a toll on me and I'm not as fresh as I'd want to be."

"You're wonderful as ya are now," she says, nibbling on my ear. "And ah can't wait."

"Don't be in such a rush," I laugh, “we have all night.”

Applejack's hooves and teeth work their way in trying to unbuttoning the dress's backside. But as I feel the brush of her touch against the line of my back–sending a tingle all over me–the warm breath of her sigh blasts my neck the same second her body stops all movement.

"Anything wrong?" I ask. I crane my neck to look at her.

"Rare," she sighs again. "Ah can't get through this without telling ya... If ah slept with ya first then told ya later, ah'd feel like cheatin' the truth out of ya."

With how Applejack evades my eyes, I knew that, for her, what she wishes to say is of the utmost importance. Without saying a word, I sit on the edge of the bed and tap the empty place beside me. She complies, sitting as she takes my hoof and kisses my elbows and shoulder.

Taking a deep breath, she speaks, "Ah spoke to RD after Shy calmed down.”

"...Oh." I can only say. I run my hoof against the sheets, smoothening the crumple.

"She was still kinda confused when Fluttershy freaked out and she kinda needed a friend." Applejack stops for a moment and she clears her throat. "Twilight was comfortin' Shy so ah had RD covered. We made up and talked for a long time about some things. That's the reason we kinda took a while gettin' back to the party earlier."

"Y-You talked... to Rainbow Dash." I shuffle back and turn to Applejack. "About what?"

"Nothin' important. About Fluttershy and her, mostly. Then ah apologized for what ah did about her wing and she apologized for hurtin' mah eye–"

"Wait," I interrupt. "I have to ask, who apologized first?"

"What does it matter? We both said we're sorry for what happened."

"It does matter."

"Ah did," she answers. "Ah can't pretend how ah'm all healed up from our fight while she has one more month waitin' before that cast on her wing comes off."

"Did she... apologize for what she said about me?"

"We avoided talkin' bout it,” Applejack admits. “We'll discuss it one of these days."

"Discuss!?" I gasp. "Discuss what? She accused me of cheating on you."

"Ah don't believe that, ya know. Ah'm sure she made it up to hurt you and me, and ah know that soon enough she'll confess it." Then Applejack turns away, her hoof pressing against my knees. "But... that ain't what's eatin' me."

I look at her, and watch the way her whole body trembles and how she fights to open her eyes. I shudder to imagine what can make my dearest struggle to face me.

"I..." she clears her throat, her lips quivering. "Ah kissed Rainbow Dash."

"You what!?"

"Ah'm sorry, Rarity!" she jumps, kneeling below me. "Ah swear to Celestia ah meant nothin' romantic by it. It was just a friendly kiss on the forehead–just on the forehead–while she was leanin' on me. S-She looked really upset, and she was cryin’ her eyes out and ah just had to show that we're friends again and– hun, where're ya goin'?"

I am already on my feet, facing the vanity mirror and my back turned to her. "How dare you..." I mutter under my breath.

She quickly gets up and runs to me, reaching for my hoof. "Hun, ah'm sorry–"

"Don't touch me!" I shriek, before she can.

Her hoof immediately retracts. "Ah'm sorry," she pleads again. "Ah swear ah don't mean nothin' by that kiss."

I believe her, of course. Nothing in Applejack’s nature can even suggest the possibility of betrayal. Therefore, it is not the kiss that bothers me–which anypony can assure that, despite Rainbow Dash’s feelings, is nothing more than a friendly gesture–but the thought that Applejack, being friends with Rainbow Dash, risks knowing about me and Shining Armor. Though it is only Fluttershy who knows of my paramour, it is only a matter of time before she confides with her lover.

Rainbow Dash and Applejack... Their friendship is something I cannot allow...

"I've been faithful to you, haven't I?" I turn to her, my eyes squeezing out tears from my sockets. "I haven't so much as lusted after another. And yet you...! You! And Rainbow Dash of all ponies! She who accused me of betrayal!"

The full impact of the realization struck Applejack right in the face.

"Rarity," she pleads, "lemme hold ya? Lemme talk to ya... Ah'll hold ya now."

Her hoof traces along my quivering shoulders. Slowly, cautiously, she takes me in her embrace; I let her. Then once I am secure in her hold, her forelegs tighten to prevent me if I am to escape.

"Ah'm sorry...” she whispers, her muzzle brushing against my neck. “Ah swear ah didn't think ya'd be hurt that much. Ah'd take that kiss back if ah could... but RD is mah best friend."

"I'm sorry for being so... jealous." I hold her hoof. "Just the thought that you're kissing another...” Then, clearing my throat, I moan out in my most pained voice possible: “Please... please... stop seeing Rainbow.”

“What?” Her surprise does come from my words, but the fact that she knows I mean them.

“Please stop seeing Rainbow Dash,” I croak out. “I... I don’t trust her. She lied to you, to take me away and separate us.”

“Rare, she’s mah best friend.”

As I try to pry myself from her embrace, her forelegs only tighten. She knows, that if I am to look at her in the eye, my ultimatum will be absolute and questionable. Nevertheless, I still give it to her: “Y-You have to choose... between Rainbow Dash and I.”

“Hun...” she mutters. “Don’t ya do this. This is unfair to me.”

“I don’t want to do this either. But you leave me with no choice... I’m sure that even if she’s with Fluttershy now, Rainbow Dash still has some feelings for you. And... I don’t want to live the rest of my days thinking that... one of these days you’ll leave me for her.”

“That ain’t gonna happen!”

“I know! But I also don’t want to think of it happening. So please... if you really love me... forget about Rainbow Dash.”

“Hun,” she is pleading now, “Ah can’t just throw away a friend like that.”

“Then I guess... I guess you’ll have to throw me away–”

“What!? No!” The cry is sudden. Her hold on me tightens further that it is now hurting my ribs. “Ah don’t want to throw ya away! Ah love ya... S-So okay... okay... tell ya what... I... Ah’d stop seeing Rainbow Dash for now, but that ain’t gonna mean we’re not gonna be friends no more. It won’t happen again, ah promise. Ah’d stop bein’ with’er until she confesses herself, how about that? Just... please don’t leave me. Ah won’t be able to take it. ”

“Alright, dearest,” I tell her. I feel her body easing. “I’m perfectly fine with that... Until she confesses that she’s lying... And about that thing about leaving you... it’d hurt me too... more than you will.”

“Ah doubt that.”

At this point, I no longer care if it means that Rainbow Dash and Applejack will never be friends again. If they are going to be, it will mean that Rainbow Dash would have deny her accusation of me. In the end, my dearest has unknowingly given me a win-win situation.

And now, to remove any doubts from my lover’s mind and assure her that she chose that right mare...

I laugh softly, just to show her that my anger is gone. “I was planning to get angry at you for an hour, but your accent gets me every time.”

“Uhh... sorry?” she laughs as well. “Ah thought ah killed the mood.”

“It’s alright dearest.” I press my hooves against her chest and nuzzle close to her. “It was my fault for bursting in jealousy. I don’t like getting mad at you.”

Applejack takes my hoof from her chest; she yanks it, so that my body is pulled to hers. Her foreleg wraps around my neck and she drags my head to meet her lips. It is a hard kiss–still angry perhaps, or desperate?–apparent in the way she refuses to let me go until we are both out of breath.

“Applejack...” I mutter, as soon as our lips are parted. “If you still want we can...”

“Do ya want to?” she says. The blush in her cheeks, as well as the very small and very crooked crease in them, betrays the hesitation found in her eyes.

“If you’re fine with it then I’m more than willing.”

She nods. She takes my shoulders. She gently leads me to bed.

Applejack looms over me, pushing down further with her eyes and hooves, as my own are folded against my chest. For as many times and as long as we have been making love, it is embarrassing that I still maintain a form of timidity during the most intimate of moments. She takes great pleasure in uncovering me from the protective world of my hesitation; I always see it in her smirk and in her attempt to elicit the first moan from me. That I will not give in to her so easily is one of the most entertaining sports in our bed. She unfolds my hooves and pins me against the sheets. Her lips move forward, trailing from my cheeks downwards. I feel the gentle nips of her teeth against my neck. Her bites are softer than before, perhaps because of the recent fight that still gives her a cause for caution.

I find her gentleness, however, more awkward than arousing and, hence, less excitable. Again, I believe it to be caused by the still-lingering tension of our argument.

Feeling guilty, and with a desire to avoid a bad experience in bed, I know I have to initiate the sign that she needs not hold herself back from me. Hooking my hind legs around her hips and shifting our weight, I reverse our position. Climbing on top of her, I pin her by her shoulders down the bed.

“Oof!” she groans. Then, looking at me with a raised eyebrow and an uneasy smile, she says, “You...uh... want to be on top this time? That’s a first.”

I sit on her stomach and clip out the pins from my hair so that my mane is let loose down my shoulders, a style she has a particularity for. Applejack smiles at the sight. She raises her foreleg to my face and gently runs her hooves down my smooth satiny encolure.

My own hooves fondle her chest, her neck, and her shoulders, reacquainting myself with the already familiar texture of her form. There is a peculiarity in Applejack’s body, a distinctiveness that is almost alarming, present in the firmness of her muscles and the sturdy scoops of flesh on her flank; there is irony in that such a solidity of corporeal body must protect in itself something so valuable and so fragile. It is quite different, I realize, to Shining Armor’s own form, which is stout in its respect, yet is in its own right delicate and translucent in its vulnerable openness. I only realize the difference in them now as I search for a part of my prince in my lover; knowing that both are two distinct worlds, I found none. Whereas Applejack is made of bedrock and mountains, Shining Armor is of adamant and ice.

He has always been colder, harder... and more brittle.

I lean forward and initiate the kiss, one I have not given to her before but one I have planted many times to Shining Armor. My tongue dives past the threshold of her warm lips, exploring, with utmost vigor, the insides of her incredibly moist mouth. I hook one foreleg around her nape to pull her close, deepening the wet osculation. I feel tongue there, with mine, just lying flat so my own can twist and thrust unhindered.

With my other forelimb, I grab on to Applejack’s hat so that I can use it to pull her even closer to me; but it produces in her a reaction which I do not expected. In panic, while our mouth still meshed in a sloppy kiss, she muffles, trying to say something, as she extends a hoof to hold me back.

“Wait... w-wait...” she says, catching her breath. Though the light rosiness that lightens the color of her face is still there, Applejack suspends the blush to take her hat off–with both hooves, one on the side of the brim and other under the crown–and place it on top the bedside drawer.

The strange gesture captures my attention for a moment, until Applejack pulls me down against her body and returns us to that kiss which, for that matter, she has only become more enthusiastic to participate in.

At last, after a few minute, we pull back again, robbed of our breaths by one another. I remember when Shining Armor first kissed me as roughly so, when he came unto me in the very same room.

“Yer kissing very... uhh... passionately?” she says, laughing.

You will never kiss me like that, Applejack. One who is rough-hewn towards nature, you are much too gentle, much too loving, to your mare... Unlike Shining Armor...

Between my legs, a wetness already accumulates on Applejack’s belly. She can feel it, or smell it, as the moisture is hard to miss. I spin in place, turning my back to her and face the lower portion of her body. Brushing a strand of my mane behind my ear, I lay flat forward and impress my lips against her slick opening. Applejack moans as I continue to kiss and fondle her quivering crevice.

Soon enough, I feel her forelegs cup my tailbone and pull my rump closer to her face. Then I feel the light tap of her tongue stroking against the line of my sex, moving upwards and downwards, slowly, in that mild motion familiar to her tenderness. It makes me gasp, in turn, right into her slit, before I return the favor of that oral caress.

Shining Armor and I have done this too, I remember. It was that time when we enjoyed experimenting with each other’s body during our stay in the Chevaux-de-Frise Hotel.

I try to match her, returning the mastery of her exuberance. When she strikes her tongue inside, sending in me the vibe of my inner circuits, I do the same in hers. When she runs her lips up the lines of my folds, I follow the same motion in the same delicate affection. When her teeth carefully, oh so carefully, nibbles on my small protruding bud, it takes all my focus to ensure that she is returned of the same favor.

I do not realize when or how, but I find ourselves already lying on our sides. And so when Applejack shifts our weight, we roll together, still interlocked, on the bed, dragging the sheets with us, until I find myself now beneath her and she on top. My forelimbs circle around her flank and pull her closer as I continue to lap at the sweet succulent fluids that so conveniently drips into my mouth. Applejack buries her muzzle between my legs, as her own kisses grow more and more intense. When I feel the shudder in her spine, I feel it in my own as well.

“Rarity...” she groans, “I’m...”

“M-Me too...”

We moan, soundlessly, eyes screw shut and hooves trembling, having carried each other up that plateau of bliss. Captive in each other’s embrace, we continue suckling on each other’s love and wanton. It manifests, bursting in the warmth that both flows and drains to and from our enclosed lips. In this moment, there is nothing else but the circulation of our lust: mine into hers and hers into mine, an eternal cycle infinitum. The union destroys our individuality; there is no more Applejack and there is no more Rarity, there is only she and I, both but not either.

Applejack’s body slumps down to mine as she collapses from her ascent. I, too, am left flat on the bed in the aftermath of having been completely enfeebled. Lying there, feeling Applejack’s heaving chest against my stomach, only now when I have retired from the momentous effort that drained me, do I become aware of my senses, the strongest of which is the precious tangy taste of apples in my tongue.

This taste... I lick my lips, is not Shining Armor’s...

Applejack shuffles atop me and her orange silhouette takes the place of the ceiling that occupies my vision. The band on her mane must have slipped away, allowing the golden threads to spread down, sheltering my face. More than anything else, her femininity shines by the moonlight. She kisses me, in assurance that it is not yet over. We taste ourselves, in that brief kiss.

Gently running a hoof against my cheek and chest, Applejack lays me on my side where she raises one of my hind legs. She runs her kisses there, on my fetlock, moving down to my thighs to carry my attention there and not shock me when, positioning herself, she presses her sex onto mine.

“Ahh!” I gasp, feeling the buss of our lower lips.

I feel the tingle of sensitivity against sensitivity, of prickle against prickle, of the kissing swirls of our lower lips. Applejack pushes herself closer, bucking her hips up in a sudden jerk. It is as though our bodies snap perfectly into place as she does so.

She starts to move; her hips begin to gyrate in a circular motion. It is a slow and careful process, as how a forger would stir liquid metal to control its fire lest burned with a sudden heat. Applejack is careful, and endearingly so, that the sudden stimulation of a strength she exerts–a strength that I have tasted, time and time again, in bed and anytime I am within her reach–may prove too much for me.

Yet, for all her care, why does it feel so lacking where her love for me should fill all?

Heat gathered and lust reawakened, Applejack moves harder. Back and forth goes my dearest, thrusting and bucking her hips. The sparks of fire ignite where she mashes our folds. I see her, looming over me, with her eyes shut in rapture as she rocks us both.

But for all my passionate love for her, and all her violent love me, I cannot help but feel that something is missing, something that should be there inside me. Something like...

Like cock...

I gasp, her mound desperately shoving down mine.

Like Shining Armor’s hard cock rutting my cunt senseless. Yes, the missing piece, my prince’s large throbbing dick molding my inner walls in the shape of his rod. I cannot forget it, the delicious teeth-gnashing pain each time he slams the tip into my cervix; even the sound of it, a loud inner thud, is so loud that I can hear it amidst the squelch and echo in the back of my head.

“Yes!” I moan, “Harder!”

And he will, without restraint, pound me mercilessly as I scream at the top of my voice. He will fuck me so hard that he, too, will be in pain; but pain is not his reason to stop, not when it hurts me a lot more than it hurts him. Yes, he will continue, even after he turns my fuck-hole swollen, bruised and bleeding.

“R-Rarity! I’m almost...!” I hear Shining Armor scream, in the voice of somepony else.

And when Shining Armor cums–oh fuck, the cum! and how I miss it!–it will always leave me in an intoxicated spasm at the sensation of being filled and being completed. I will feel it thick and viscous, swirling in the cup of my marehood and overflowing, squeezing out of me.

I feel somepony slipping out of my body and crashing on top of me, showering me with kisses.

And what of afterwards? Shining Armor will take me again if he wishes, in any way he wants. Perhaps he will make good use of my throat–a fondness he has developed for in our last few nights–or shove my tail away to try and make me scream when he stretches the tight vulnerable hole of my vulgarity.

I feel myself again, when Applejack rolls to my side, behind me, and hooks her hooves around my ribs to pull me into a loving embrace. She pulls me, in that same instant, out of the thin veil of fantasy where my mind had been. And I do not realize it, not until I feel Applejack nuzzling the back of my neck and whispering, so sweetly, to my ear, “Ah love ya, Rarity... Yer wonderful.”

And there I find myself, with Applejack and without Shining Armor, in the bedchamber of my suite where they both have first bedded me.

...Why did it have to end, when it need not be? Why did he abandon me, his princess?

I lay there, wide-eyed, unable to comprehend both the shame and guilt of what I have done: as Applejack struggles to make sweet love to me, how sacrilegious it is that I fantasize of my prince. I take my lover’s hooves around me and wrap them tightly around me chest to assure her–and myself–that not once have I regretted her in my bed. I can only thank my own good fortune that my dearest is unable to see my face right now, for I know that streaked upon it is the remorse for my crime.

She will not understand it, of course. And both her innocence and benevolence would render her unable to imagine that I daydream of Shining Armor in her place. She will only, at worst, believe that the cause of my distress is the dissatisfaction due to our fight and whatnot.

It is dawn now, and I observe the sun rising. The firsts of its rays begin to stretch past the horizon and climb each horizontal step of the window screen.

“Dearest,” I mutter.

“Hmm?” I feel her moan behind me.

“Did you... enjoy it?

She shuffles up, her head leaning on her right hoof as her left runs along the line of my shoulders. “Yeah... Much.” She leans her head forward and kisses my cheek. “Why? Ya didn’t?”

“I did,” I answer almost immediately. “It’s just that... I think we can do a lot better next time... I mean, not that I’m saying you’re bad... It’s me.”

She makes an uneasy smile. “You... uh... wanna go again? Ah can do that if ya want.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I mean... Yes, I want to. But not now... As soon as... Maybe tomorrow night, but... not now. Anytime but now.”

The smile in Applejack’s face dissipates, and is replaced by a steady facial arrangement of one who is struggling not to frown. “Ah said ah’m sorry about Rainbow Dash.”

“No!” I sit up, and grab on to her. I already forgot about the filly. “It’s not that, trust me. It’s something else.”

I do not know why but Applejack’s second suspicion makes her turn her eyes away from me and to her Stetson on the bedside drawer.

I suddenly remember that seemingly irrelevant detail, moments ago. There had been times when, in the heat of the moment, Applejack’s hat will accidentally be tossed from her head and only afterwards will she pick it up. The careful and cautious way she took the trouble to take her hat off a while ago makes me curious about that article.

My horn glows and I levitate the hat from its placement.

“W-Wait! Rarity!” In a surge of panic, Applejack raises her hoof and touches my horn, instantaneously cancelling my magic.

The hat drops to the floor and, from it, something else. The small sparkling object rolls just below my side of the bed and, not until I raise it to the sunlight with my hoof, do I realize that is a ring.

“...Consarn it,” Applejack mutters.

I stare at it, for a long time. It is a silver ring with a small deep-yellow gem gleaming on top. Imbedded on the circlet are the following words: Till Death Do Us Part.

I look at the ring, then to Applejack, then to the ring again.

“Gimme that,” Applejack says, snatching the ring from me.

It takes a certain level of vanity to conclude the first and initial assumption that comes to my mind. Nevertheless, my amour propre and my mind cannot process any other alternative. I do not blame myself much. I know that mares of my age would only want and dare imagine the same romanticized notion.

“Applejack...” I mutter. “Were you going to...”

“A-A-Ah ain’t goin’ to propose!” she recites. Her face scrunches as she bites her lip, her eyes turning away from me.

“You... you aren’t?”

“Ah mean, I am... ah mean, not yet... ah mean... Darn it!” She plants both hooves on her eyes and shakes her head.

“You... you were planning?” I struggle to say. It takes me a moment to realize that I am as nervous as her, and it is only the shock that prevents me from losing it completely.

“Not today, ah mean... It’s uh... uh...” Before she can finish, she flings the sheets aside and prepares to jump off the bed in an attempt to escape.

“W-Wait, dearest,” I grab on to her, before she can leave the bed. “Please calm down, I want to hear this.”

Applejack stays in place. She could not have jumped with how I cling on to her or, if she could, it would mean I will be slammed down onto the floor, a risk I know she will never take. I grab on to her, for a full minute, until her breathing relaxes. And even after, I refuse to let go. I press my face against her broad back, so that our faces will not instill each other the unneeded nervousness that is already there by the sheer topic of our conversation.

It seems absurd now, that having been together for almost a year and making love every single night in the past few months, that the very idea of marriage strikes us as incredible. Incredible, but not unfathomable.

“Are... are you calm now?” I ask, clearing my throat.

Applejack nods, and answers. “Yeah...”

Taking a few deep breaths, I begin to speak: “That ring... Dearest, were you going to... propose to me.”

She turns to me. She will not answer such a question without looking. Her eyes close for a second and she breaths out, for the both of us. Gently holding me away, she answers: “Yes, hun. Ah’m gonna propose to ya.”

At hearing those words, my hooves jump to my lips to withhold my gasp.

“But not yet,” she continues, head shaking. “Not now, not tonight. Not after making great passionate love to ya. Cuz ah don’t want ya answerin’ with ya all fuzzy and getting’ all emotional. When ah pop the question, ah want ya–all of ya–to be there and not caught off guard in the spur of the moment. Ah want to know that yer sure ya want to spend yer whole life with me, and ah want the timin’ to be perfect... Ah don’t know when, but it ain’t now.”

“But...” I manage to say. “That ring? You’ve had it with you all this time.”

“Oh, this little thing?” She smiles, sheepishly. “Mom gave it to me before she passed away. She got it from Granny Smith, who got it from her mom, who got it from her mom before that. Ah brought it here to Canterlot to... uh... to sell it.”

“Sell it!?”

“Yeah,” she says, her eye not leaving the small jewelry in her hoof. “It’s just plain silver, and the gem on top is a fossil of a resin called amber. It ain’t no Celestia's crown but it’s got some value in the market so ah’ll get good bits for it. Then topped with mah savings from the farm, ah’ll be able to buy ya one heck of a purdy diamond ring that’ll make yer Canterlot friends jealous.”

“Applejack!” I almost scream. “You don’t have to do that! It’s a family heirloom. You–”

“Hush, now. No need talkin’ to me bout it. Ah made up mah mind long ago: only the best for mah mare.” She raises a hoof and caresses my cheeks. “And that best for ya will come very soon when a carriage will pick ya up from Carousel Boutique and take ya somewhere to a fancy private dinner with me. We’ll have the best meal of our lives and the best darn musician playin’ yer favorite music. Then when the moon is at its highest, ah’ll go down on one knee and open up a small box and there ya’ll see the biggest, most expensive diamond ring ya’ve ever laid yer eyes on. And then–then!–that’ll be the time ya can answer when ah ask fer yer hoof in marriage.”

My hooves are still pressed against my lips to still my gasp. If I were to lower my hooves down then I do not think I will be able to stop myself from screaming in glee. Looking at Applejack’s face, I can see the planned scenario play out in her eyes.

Clearing my throat, I try to say something. But every time I open my mouth the words are lost to me. I raise my hoof, suggesting that it is my turn to speak on the matter, to which Applejack waits patiently with that confident smile on her face. And I know that only honesty is the proper response to a smile, and tribute, of that kind.

“Dearest,” I say, somewhat coughing in my attempt to withhold a scream of delight. “If you were to... spoil me by unveiling so much of your secret and perfect night then I’ll have no choice but to spoil you myself by saying that... when I see you see there, kneeling before me, my answer will, undoubtedly, be Y–”

Applejack jumps forward and silences me with a kiss. Of all the kisses tonight, this one feels different: anew, awake and alive, as though carrying in it the taste of the dawn and the new day it carries. When Applejack pulls back from the kiss, she leaves me still yearning for another, my eyes still closed.

“Shh...” she says, holding her own hoof up against my puckered lips. “Don’t tell me, not yet.”

I open my eyes, slowly. “You know my answer, Applejack. More than I do.”

There is an eerie silence as I take my seat on the opposite end from where the hostess sits, even after she says her welcome:

"So glad you could make it. I was afraid you wouldn't come."

"You were always so cordial in your hospitality," I laugh. "I sure do hope you don't mind my coming here uninvited. I was here in Canterlot since last night, as you may not know, and I heard you were having a unicorn-only dinner party. I was hardly going to pass up the chance."

Basket Case answers only in that impish smile for which she is known for. I do not know why she, or her guests, might hint that this barging in of mine is presumptuous. Why, she ought to be honored that I have finally graced her mansion with my presence after those literally hundreds of invitations I ignored.

The waiters surrounding our table tend to us, each one placing a tray of truffles and goat cheese on our plate. A second group of waiters follows the first, placing a wine glass and a newly opened bottle of zinfandel for each and every one of us.

Basket Case continues to speak, in a tone of a preach, to an audience who long wish they have never joined the choir. Under the circumstances of any other sane dinner party, the guests would converse among themselves. But it is the host herself, speaking to everypony in the table as though we are a single pony, with names of Jet Set, Pearl Necklace and the occasional Ms. Rarity popping here and there to shackle our attention, who makes it impossible.

"...which makes such tastes in fashion passé," she says. "Wouldn't you agree Mrs. Ruby Rose?"

Ruby Rose nods eagerly, hoping Basket Case would accept the approval and that the unwanted attention will find a new victim.

It is difficult not to listen to Basket Case's speech, especially when only the sound of her voice, mixed with a few yawns from the others, is what fills the room. A year ago, I would have punched her face for saying the things she does–about beauty being too commonplace–but now I find myself more tolerant to such a difference of opinion, if that half-intelligent slandering of hers counts as an opinion.

I swirl the fluid red in my glass, carefully so that the liquid does not slosh in and against itself.

I wonder why the red wine reminds of my prince, of how he could have dejected me so unceremoniously night after night, encounter after encounter. I never received a farewell kiss from him, something I had imagined, at the very least, if we were ever to part permanently.

Will I ever taste him again, my Shining Armor?

I lift the glass to my lips and drink in the sweet inspiration. The taste, if anything, is of the color of red, and it makes me run my tongue within to spread the nectar in my mouth.

But isn't this what I truly wanted? To part with Shining Armor? So I can be with my beloved dearest?

Again, I lift the drink to my lips. But once the liquid reaches my tongue, I draw the glass away. For it is as though mud has replaced the wine, and the assault on my taste buds tempts me to vomit the contents.

I put the glass down, wondering what sort of insanity have I succumb to that even my perception is perverted. Casting my head down, it is only by my elbow over the table and hooves pressed on my face that I am still able to hold the position of sitting upright.

I sigh, in a deliberate expression of my boredom, running an eye up and down her. It comes as a surprise, a true surprise, to notice that Basket Case, who has recently become one of the more famous mares during my absence, has no feature worth remembering. I have seen her face before, on one of the countless lackeys that followed me so long ago. Her mane is arranged in such a way that she either follows the trend or the trend follows her. Her eyes, nose and mouth are so preposterously and frighteningly normal that one cannot distinguish it from anypony else’s; no, rather, it cannot be remembered through its sui generis. It is as if one is draw upon the average face of the sum total of every sophisticated mare in Canterlot high society, it is Basket’s Case that would be both the denominator and the result.

“...Miss Rarity?” she says suddenly.

My name slips into my mind at the end of the stitched sentences spouting from Basket Case’s mouth.

I look up to see everypony’s eyes on me. “Yes?” I ask forcing a smile.

“I was asking your opinion regarding the subject,” Basket Case continues.

I levitate a nearby napkin, pressing it against my moist lips. “I apologize, darling. The wine strained my attention. What was it you were talking about?”

I expected, to see, from the corner of my eyes, a few giggles and snickers from my undercutting Basket Case’s current position. It is usually the kind of humiliation these mares enjoy seeing. That is why it surprises me to find not one smile among their faces and, instead, scrunched foreheads and haughty raised snouts that nopony would have dared to flaunt on me.

Basket Case clears her throat. “Well, before you embarrass yourself with such absentmindedness, let me summarize that for the last fifteen minutes I have been talking about the superiority of unicorn's fashion sense compared to that of the earth pony.”

“Earth pony?”

An eyebrow of hers is raised. “Earth pony, I’m sure you’ve at least heard of the term there in your Ponyville schools–assuming, of course, your school wasn’t free.”

Before I can wonder as to what impertinence this bitch just suggested, I hear a few giggles from the sides of the tables. Giggles that vanish as soon as I turn to find out from whose source it comes from.

She continues, once the last of the snickers has died away. “You know, such as Photo Finish, Sapphire Shores and that stallion, Honky Tonky I believe his name is.”

“Hoity Toity.”

“Yes, that one,” she says, drinking from her cup. “I remember that he used to be your sponsor? He used to be famous a year ago. He’d be lucky if he has my window drapes to decorate now.”

Again, she summons laughter from all sides of the table but from me. No matter how tempting it is, no matter how close I am to smashing the wine glass against her muzzle, I resist the urge and settle myself with swirling the red fluid.

“So?” she asks.

“So what?”

“The subject matter? About earth ponies ...or should I repeat it again for the second time once more?”

I look around the table, searching for help. But all their eyes are elsewhere. Jet Set is eyeing her untouched plate, Mrs. Pearl Chops is speaking to the waiter, Pep Talk is going out of her way to cover her face with her hoof.

Not one of them does not know that I am affiliated with the Earth ponies that Basket Case has so slandered and that any defamation I may utter will no doubt reach my contractors and potentially ruin any future commission I may have from them. But to oppose Basket Case in her own home, who for some reason now holds the esteem of all ponies in the table, would guarantee a social black mark on my name.

“Well,” I clear my throat. “You know Earth ponies, they’re still in the process of evolving.”

The impish smile that returns to Basket Case’s face, a smile too big for her lips, indicates that she has won this trade of social approval. The others, too, share her grin—a silent laughter targeted at me that only the facade of table manners prevents from unveiling completely. I am amazed to think as to what sort of power struggle happened here during my absence that has suddenly removed me of my influence.

But Basket Case’s next words do not let me amaze for long.

“Speaking of evolving,” she says, “you must be wondering as to where Ms. Fleur currently is?”

“I believe she’s on her honeymoon–Celestia knows where–as her wedding was yesterday.”

“Oh, I’m glad you remember,” she laughs. “That saves me the absolute trouble of asking whether you have forgotten or not.”

“Well, why would you ask such a thing?”

“It was my–I mean, our–first reason to believe as to why the maid of honor would be absent from such a grand occasion.” She tosses her hooves up and a small spill of wine drops on the white tablecloth. “I mean, surely, it is not your intention to have delayed Fleur’s wedding for hours, aggravating her guests, only to turn out that you have no intention of joining the ceremony in the first place... Many of her guests left waiting for you, even after how Fleur boasted of how you were the maid of honor to the wedding... But I'm sure you probably have a good reason for your–ehem–abandonment."

"Excuse me?"

"My apologies. I meant to say absence."

"Well, yes,” I take a pause with the wine. “There is a good reason. A friend of mine is sick and I had to rush her to the emergency room."

"It must have been quite an emergency," she chuckles, "that you are now calm enough to be able to join us for tonight."

"It was a false alarm, a minor cardiac arrest."

"I am glad to hear that... for your friend."

"Is there any reason as to why you would interrogate me as you do now?"

"Again, my apologies," she says. "Consider it a hostess's curiosity to an uninvited–pardon–unexpected guest. Having not attended Fleur yesterday and, yet, having your presence here today would surely arouse some rumors I know we both would rather keep in clean taste. Why, not twenty hours have passed, and already there is gossip of you."

"What kind of gossip?" I remember that I believe once, in my youth, that ‘all publicity is good publicity.’ But, having entered high society, I realized that the phrase cannot be farther from the truth.

"Nothing but scandal and slander, Miss Rarity” she says, with a smile and a tone of a challenge, “I'm sure you've no reason to hear it."

"I'd like to hear it very much, before clarifying them."

"Well"–Basket Case smiles her biggest smile. Nopony in the room can deny that she is enjoying it–"There was this rumor that the reason you haven't been in Canterlot for these last months was because you've settled in Ponyville with your lover. And she's the reason as to why you couldn't attend Fleur wedding yesterday. Then there's that other rumor that yesterday, instead of the wedding, you were with that princess whatsername and her baby shower."

I have to laugh, and laugh fast and aloud, to undercut the seriousness the ponies in the table attribute to the actuality of the rumors. "Oh, dear, pardon me," I say, taking a few more moments to hold back my laughter. "I thought I've heard of everything, but really! Rumors beyond believability circulate in the higher circles of Canterlot? I must have given too much credit to anyone who began, and believe, such a thing!"

The look of half-open mouths and wide-eyed look in their eyes–specifically that of Basket Case–almost makes me laugh for real.

"S-So..." Basket Case sputters, "I... I mean we... take it that such rumors are baseless?"

"Of course, darling. Everypony knows that I have only ever been available as a prize to the bachelors of Canterlot willing to test their mettle in a contest of chivalry. And though no such gentlepony has yet to win my heart, I still have enough years left in me to buy the luxury of patience and being picky."

"B-But... what of Miss Jacqueline?" asks Chatterbox "We've heard that..."

"Heard from Cadance, I presume?"

"Well... yes–"

"That explains it. She, Cadance, has always been after my social ruin for any reason I wouldn't care to imagine. I am trying to cut ties with her–and yes, I did receive an invitation to her... baby shower... But she insists so much on my presence so that I may introduce you to her. But no, before you ask, I did not attend the party. As I've said, there's a dear friend of mine, another Element of Harmony, who had a slight cardiac arrest and whom I had to see in the hospital. As for Miss Jacqueline, she is just... a friend of mine. Yes, a dear friend of mine. We... have no relationship whatsoever."

Leaning back in my chair, I show them my smirk with each syllable that I hiss out. But, as I mention the denial of my Applejack, I am unable to hold the smirk for long, hiding it behind another sip of the wine glass. The fallout, however, is extraordinary. Most of the ponies now stare at Basket Case whose jaw is drawn towards the table. After a moment, she looks at her company at the table who, undoubtedly, expect a rebuttal from her. Having none, she does the unthinkable:

"My apologies," she says, "for being so straightforward in my approach."

At that gesture, I knew, even if she did not, that I have once again won the esteem of everypony in the room. If we were in my own home, I could have pressured her apology further with some humiliating remark about her rudeness. But, considering it is beneath her roof that we currently stay, I am compelled, by courtesy, to accept her apology outright and grant her a retreat without losing face.

"No worries, darling. Such straightforwardness is appreciated if we are to rid ourselves from harmful gossip."

"Thank you," she says. Then she makes a gesture into the air that makes the line of waiters and butlers to rush into the kitchen. Then, turning to me, she continues: "About what you said, regarding your availability, I cannot help but think of my nephew, Bronze Buckle, whom I'm sure you'd love to meet."

The waiters return, carrying in their trays a small plate of soufflé on each. I receive one warmly, quickly taking a spoonful of the sweet treat, before answering Basket Case, "A bachelor of fine quality and nephew to one of Canterlot's most popular hostess? But of course I would want to meet him."

"You're truly very generous, Miss Rarity," she says, taking a bite from her own dessert. "I look forward to–"

The two doors of the dining room burst open, cutting off whatever Basket Case has to say, and a certain pink earth pony dashes in with a multitude of house servants scrambling after her, pressing her leave. But as soon Pinkie Pie–whom I have already recognized more to the bouncing of her body than of the color of her coat–opens her mouth to call to my name, the house servants are forced to consider her as an eventual guest to the party and back away.

"Hey Rarity!" the party pony says. The sophistication of the dress she is wearing–a green gown I made especially for her–does not even compensate for the way she presents herself.

"Pinkie Pie," I say. Startled of this sudden and unannounced entry, I am already on my feet. "You’re not supposed to be here."

"Well," she tilts her head, "remember how you said you'll invite me to all your parties? I think you forgot to invite me to this– Ooh! Is that a cupcake?"

"That's a soufflé," somepony answers.

Pinkie Pie jumps on the table–on the table!–and sits there in front of Ms. Ruby Rye. "You gonna eat that?" Pinkie Pie asks the dumbfounded matron, pointing to her dessert.

"Uhh... No," says the elderly mare, standing from her chair and moving away. "Help yourself."

No sooner does Ms. Ruby Rye give permission that Pinkie Pie swallows the dessert whole, cup and all. "Yummy," she says.

Basket Case, whose expression of shock is now replaced with indignation, stares at Pinkie Pie as if she is about to call the Royal Guard to arms. She raises a hoof instead and a waiter approaches beside her. She whispers something and the waiter returns to the kitchen.

Before further humiliation can be dealt upon my repute, I extend my hoof and beckon Pinkie Pie down. "Get down from there, Pinkie Pie."

Pinkie Pie somersaults from the table and onto the chair where I originally sat. “Thanks for inviting me, Rarity."

"I didn't invite you." ...you little shit.

"You didn't?" Pinkie Pie asks, stroking her chin. "But I thought you said I'm invited to all your parties."

There is no indication, from Pinkie Pie's cheery tone, of a threat or compulsion. "Well, not every party, darling... There are exceptions, such as this one. Which is a unicorn-only party."

"Ohh..." Pinkie Pie's ears droop down. “Okay... I thought that... when you said every party I thought you meant every party.”

“I apologize, dear.”

“Oh, it’s alright,” she says, her ears popping up again. She turns to Basket Case and bows her head. “Sorry for barging in.”

“That’s perfectly alright, little filly,” says the hostess, desperately trying to be tolerant.

“That soufflé, by the way, was super!” Pinkie Pie says, hopping in place. “Do you mind if I ask the chef for the recipe on my way out? I’d like to make some for Rarity and Applejack’s engagement party.”

All eyes on the room, which had been expertly avoiding Pinkie Pie’s embarrassing antics, suddenly turn with unison of a “What?” And among those who voice the exclamation, Basket is the loudest.

“Oh, Rarity hasn’t told you?” Pinkie Pie says, tilting her head. “Well, I guess I get to! It’s a surprise, Applejack told me that even before she was going to officially ‘pop the question’–like balloons–Rarity already said a huge ‘yes.’”

“Applejack?” Basket Case inquires, standing up now. “You mean, Jacqueline. The Manehattanite earth pony and Element of Honesty?”

“Pinkie,” I say, “Maybe you should–”

Pinkie Pie does not hear me, excitedly answering the question. “Applejack is from Ponyville, silly. But Rarity calls her Jacqueline in Canterlot for some reason.”

“That Jacqueline is from Ponyville!?” somepony says to another. “And her name is Applejack?”

Another pony whispers aloud, “She must be a family member of those apple farmers!”

I grab Pinkie Pie by her shoulders and proceed to shove her out. My voice is already rising. “Run along now, Pinkie Pie, the adults are talking–”

“Please,” snickers Basket Case, and there I see the impish smile returning to her crooked face, “join us. I’m sure we can make an exception. Would you want some more of the dessert.”

“Would I?” Pinkie Pie exclaims, mouth watering.

The hoof that I am holding vanishes from my grasp. It is instantaneous; there is no transition of her slipping from my grip. It is as though the pink pony had just turned to air. When I look back, Pinkie Pie already sits in my chair as a waiter lays out several sweets before her.

“So, Miss Pinkie Pie,” chuckles Basket Case, “Rarity is going to get married after all... and she never told us.”

“Rarity likes surprises!” answered the pink little bitch.

“I’m sure she does.” The whole table laughs from Basket Case’s remark. “But when did this union first come about?”

“Oh, that!” Pinkie Pie says, swallowing several of the desserts in one bite. “Applejack and Rarity has been dating together for almost a year now! But Applejack said–”

“Pinkie Pie, I wouldn’t have anymore of this–” I try, but her voice outreaches my own. I no longer know if she chose to ignore me, or is merely unable to hear my words.

“–that she proposed last night.”

“Last night?” Basket Case gasps, in laughter, knowing what is to come next. "Miss Rarity was with Applejack last night!?"

“Yuppers! Last night, just after we went home from Cadance’s baby shower–”

“Enough!” I scream aloud. “That’s just about enough with you!”

The room shakes with stomp of hooves slamming against the floor. Amidst the sound of laughter her element has produced from the ponies in the room, I grab the bewildered Pinkie Pie and yank her from my seat.

"Ow," she groans, as the force I impose upon her sends her knee-first into the floor, scraping her legs as I drag her out.

"We're leaving!" I say. "Now!"

With my magic, I pull Pinkie Pie by her collar and sleeves and drag her, hauling her, out the door.

"W-Wait, Rarity," she says, "my soufflé!"

"Shut up!"

As I open the door, I hear Basket Case's apology coming down from her laughter. "Oh, I am so sorry, Ms. Rarity," she says to me. "As a sign of my apology, I invite your friends to join us in another party. They truly are... more entertaining than you give them credit for. And please bring Jacque– Applejack along. I’m sure we would all love to see your future husband."

I feel my whole body stop and tremble in place, as I turn to face them, those vile wretches of high society. The cackling that erupts from their maws seep and send the shiver to my back. I know the nature of that laughter. It is not the kind of joyous discovery of the serendipitous, that which honors and discovers the great, but the kind of snickering guffaw that debases which it knows to be great and cannot equal. And no form of such a laughter exist so authentically than when it is actualized in the public fall and humiliation of the high and mighty.

I see it, inside their mouths, crumbling like the morsels between their teeth, what stature I have left in Canterlot. From the tongues in them they will whisper of me, the once grand and respected, of how I am reduced to loving a mere earth mare when once I could have had a prince. They will, without the decency or respect of sublimity, point and laugh at me as the object of the sick joke in their parties and luncheons. And if I were to speak, then all will flee to avoid bearing the shame of being my interlocutor. And those who do will do only to amuse me, to humor me, to use me as the object of charity for their attention.

I find myself standing in the rain, imprisoned within the boundaries of the Canterlot royal castle and in the heart of the city. I do not know when or how I got here, or how long have I remained in place, soaked beneath the waters of the sky. Pinkie Pie, her hoof still within my death grip, is twisted behind me. Her mane, drenched in the rain, is a twisted product of curls. Her eyes, I realize, are in tears, and, when I see the bruise from where I hold, I realize that I am the cause.

Regardless, innocence or no innocence, justified or not, she becomes the victim of my wrath.

"Do you have any idea of what you've done!?" I roar at the top of my voice. "Do you have any idea what this will do to me!?"

"I'm so sorry–"

My hooves jump forward, shoving her down the gray pavement. "Do you know what I had to do to get to where I am!?"

I swoop down, before her, once again gripping her hoof. If I had the strength I will have no doubt ripped her forelegs off their sockets.

"Ow," she groans, trying to take my hoof away.

"You planned it didn't you!?" I scream at her.

"Rarity, you're hurting me."

"C'mon, you retarded little bitch!" I claw my hoof into her cheek. "Take that damn mask off! Show me your true self! I wanna see it!"

"R-Rarity?" she groans, as I press her face against the cold, uncaring sidewalk. "It hurts... I-I don't like this game."

Pinkie Pie sobs. Even from the darkness of the night, her tears are visibly distinct from the rainfall. I recognize those tears; it is one shed only by foals who are ignorant to such things as guilt, shame and regret, yet are all too familiar to the pain borne of physical injury.

I let her go and stand to her side. She immediately retracts her limbs from me–I can see a small purple bruise on one of them–before shielding herself back. She does not even look at me, only at her hooves where the pain I inflict must still linger and hurt.

“Pinkie...” I stretch a limb, reaching for her.

In panic, the pink pony recoils farther, as though I hold a knife in the hoof I offer. Wiping the wetness from her eyes, scampering on the pavement, she sprints away into the safety of the distance between us.

I choke on my words as I manage to withhold myself from crying out my friend’s name. But I realize–in brief unwanted flashes of Basket Case’s sneer–that after what she has done to me, I should once and for all disassociate myself from her lest my position in high society be anymore ruined than it already is, or will be.

I stand, desolate, in the dreary mists of Canterlot sidewalks, where no lamppost leads me a path and no moon shines upon me. The city lights have gone now, except for a few dim lanterns behind the fog that serves as a gloss semblance of stars in a crestfallen downpour.

Is this how I fall from the land of the high and mighty? My pride tattered to pieces in how I was so disgraced by the laughter that still rings in my ears? That will no doubt continue to echo in ballrooms and parties for days and weeks and months to come.

I look up, to the black sky. There is nothing there, not even the clouds from which the rain spills. Yet it is from that void where the droplets come to tip and tap onto my face.

If I am crying, I do not have the power to know it.

Have I really no place among the grandiose, the sophisticated, the rich and the elite? I ask, hooves outstretched, to the silent city that was once mine.

There is not a sound from the darkness.

Do I lack the beauty, the grace, the majesty?

A gust of wind howls from above.

Robbed of a castle and amended with a farm, has my dreams ultimately proven unattainable beyond my sleep? Pulled from the heights of the great and the unique, and thrown to the lowly level of the commonplace, the simple and the plain, has fate torn my wings and tied my hooves to the muck? Rebuked by a prince and pledge to by an earth mare, has destiny closed the doors of my life? Am I now to spend the rest of my days in–

“No!” I cry out, a shrill wail that cuts through the air. “No! No! No!”

No... I haven’t lost yet...

A violent shudder quakes my body, an internal tremor that emanates from the cold–but, no, it neither comes from the rainwater nor from the night’s chilling breeze; it is a coldness that can only arise from the lingering nullity of what was once there and now stolen from me.

I can still win, I think as I chew on my hoof, I still have a chance to take Shining Armor... I still have a chance to take it all back.

It’s only because of Cadance...

I taste blood on my tongue and still I do not realize how tightly my teeth clench on my foreleg.

Yes... Cadance...

...If she knew the truth about Shining Armor and I, then...

I walk, forward, to wherever it is I am facing, through the mist and through the blanket of the night. I walk and walk some more, aimlessly, mindlessly, past the mountains of bricks and trees of steel and cement.

...then...

I walk, with nothing but my thought to accompany me, creeping into the darkness where the light will no longer shine.

The air inside the castle is damp, I can taste the salty moisture by sticking my tongue out to the air. The sky continues to melt, down to Canterlot, in driblets of heavenly tears that weep for me. The drape of the black mass of clouds curtains what light still manages to penetrate the afternoon fog, giving birth to a premature night.

Climbing up the stairs, I find myself alone within the desert of marble tiles, red carpets and silk mantles. But notwithstanding the desolation of a tower that once bustled with a dozen maids and house servants and guards and princesses and princes, the silence is not omnipresent. My hoofsteps are lost amidst the splatter of every raindrop tapping against the granite walls and glass windows as they race in their descent towards this jagged earth. I feel pity for them, the raindrops, for being so infinitesimal and powerless compared to those who tread these great halls.

The red carpet beneath my hooves finally ends several more meters before the object of my destination. I have always felt it, in the back and forth come and go, from the room yonder and the hallway from where I stand, that this stepping out of the red carpet is the anteroom to the chamber ahead.

Not moving from where I stand, I look up, to a lone chandelier balancing just before the entryway. It is a chandelier of considerable size, gilded and embellished with diamonds. It swings, suspended by a light filigree chain, in the air, like the body of hanged pharaoh. I have passed this chandelier a thousand times, yet I have not truly seen it until now in all the rapture of its glory. It is as though the sun outside that is drenched in the rain has hidden itself here, manifesting itself in that chandelier to lighten me with hope for all that is éclat and splendid; It explains to me, whispering into my ear, as to why this sun had shone so dimly upon before. It had hung here this entire time, in this hallway, before the vestibule to Cadance’s room.

Waiting for me.

I hesitate for the last time. I pry my eyes away from the sun and take a step out the red carpet. I raise my hoof and knock on the door.

The knob creaks and the door swings open. Cadance appears from between the slit and gasps, seeing me on the other side. “Oh, Rarity!” she ejaculates, taking me into an embrace. “We were so worried about you.”

“May I come in?” are the words I utter. The tone, however, says: I will come in.

“Of course! Go right ahead.” She leads me by the hoof and leads me inside her bed chamber. She eyes me, from my mane to my hooves, before rushing to the bathroom to grab me a fresh clean towel.

She holds it in the air with her spell until I take the magical grip and proceed to wipe myself clean of the rainwater that soaks my coat. Afterwards, I fling the towel onto her bed.

“You didn’t come back after Basket Case’s party,” she says. “We all thought that something bad happened to you. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I answer.

“Please don’t scare us like that.” She rushes to her kitchenette and begins to boil water in a white kettle. “Applejack panicked and went out of her way to look for you all over Canterlot when you didn’t show up last night.”

She steps out of her kitchenette and looks out of the window, through the balcony, to the drenched city.

“She’s probably still out there,” she sighs, “worried sick.”

“She does that… Applejack, I mean… panicking so easily, as though I’m still a little filly who can’t take care of herself.”

“You should’ve told her, at least, that you’d stay the night elsewhere and be late. Where did you stay last night, anyway?”

“Where is everypony?” I ask, ignoring her. “Why are you alone here?

“Well, I gave the castle servants the day off last night,” she answers. “Most of them still haven’t come back because of the rain. The few who came back, well... I sent them out to look for you.” Stopping for a moment, she adds, smiling: “Shining Armor is in the barracks, training the new recruits.”

Cadance moves to her davenport at the corner of the room. She produces a piece of paper from the drawer, and begins to levitate a quill.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Writing a letter to Twi and the others, telling them you’re safe.”

“Do it later,” I say. “I need to speak to you.”

The raised quill remains suspended in the air as Cadance hears my demand. It stays there a second too long; a small glob of ink spills and blots the parched paper. Cadance puts down the writing implement and turns to me. “Is it important?”

I nod. I stand, and take my usual place at the table. The kettle starts to screech from the searing pain it has suffered over the fire and Cadance rushes to empty its contents into a pair of small cups. The steam wafting into the air carries in them the scent of coffee in one and tea in the other.

“Drink this first,” Cadance says, handing me the cup of hot coffee. “It will help you shake away the rain.”

I look down the porcelain, seeing my own reflection staring back at me in the fluid mud. I hold on to the cup, relishing the heat that steals the cold from me.

“Did you just walk all the way here from–Where were you again?”

I do not answer. My eyes remain transfixed on the drink.

“Rarity, did something happen between you and Applejack?” she asks. It is the first conclusion she can think of. “Did you two have a fight? You can tell me anything, we’re best friends. I’ll be there for you and I will do anything I can to fix whatever it is that–”

I raise my hoof to silence her. She waits for me to speak. But when I utter not a word, she is once again forced to inquire.

“What is it?” she pleads. “Did I say anything wrong?”

When she knows that I will answer none of her questions, she settles herself in the ensuing silence. Perhaps it is because she knows that I am the one who initiated the conversation on my own terms, initiated by my coming here, with neither her foreknowledge nor invitation. It is the first, since our year-long friendship, that I am the one to prompt our usual meeting.

The weight of the silence, we both know, only increases the tension and magnitude of what is that I am about to say; and from the premonition that such a silence, where a pin drop alone would echo in the whole castle, is made necessary, I see, in her dry lips and heaving chest, that Cadance knows that she does not want to hear what I am about to say, but needs to.

I lift the coffee to my lips and take the first sip. The warmth slides down my throat.

“Cadance,” I say, looking her in the eye. “I’m having an affair with your husband.”

Cadance puts down her cup. She places both her hooves on her lap. She looks down on the table, avoiding my eyes. She says only one thing: “…I know.”

The shock, the numbing, unfathomable paralysis of a shock I have so wished, planned and desired to instill upon her, to break her, to shatter her, to hurt her, instead whirls around and strikes me mute in those two words alone.

I lose my grip, the coffee I hold spills on the table. The brown liquid crawls and spreads throughout the white surface, showing the muddied reflection of a wide-eyed unicorn.

I look up, slowly, cautiously, to Cadance, who looks to me with a sad sympathetic smile that is all but hateful. A single tear escapes from the corner of her right eye. She wipes it away, with a flick of her hoof against her cheek.

“N-No, Shining Armor didn’t tell me,” she mutters, answering the unstated question. “I... I found out myself. It.... it was the perfume.”

Perfume?

“The one I gave you,” she struggles to say, “on my wedding day. My... grandmother made it for me and... and... there are only four bottles of it in the world. Two are still unpacked... One is in my drawer and... the last is... with you. A-And... I haven’t opened my perfume since my wedding.”

A diamond heart-shaped bottle...

“S-Sometimes...” she continues, “sometimes... when he gets home late... after... going away for some time... I always catch the smell... on his coat... especially on nights when he’s most exhausted and... sad....”

Unable to look at me, Cadance turns away. She levitates a napkin with her magic and begins to wipe her eyes that slowly turn red as it endures and withstands the pressure of the tears that threaten to flood out.

“I... I don’t blame you, Rarity,” she says. “Neither do I blame Shining Armor. You are my best friend a-and... and he’s my husband. I-If there’s anypony that's at fault... I think it’s me. If... I am unable to make Shining Armor happy then... that’s my shortcoming. If I have driven him to the bed of another mare then it means that I’m not... good enough for him. This is all my fault... I’m a such a failure as his wife. I... I even failed as your best friend when I didn’t put a stop to this sooner... when I first found out. Because... I was scared of losing you both.”

Cadance takes the napkin down from eyes and I see her face again. She is in pain by the smile she forces upon her tear-soaked face.

“B-But when you stopped seeing him... two months ago... and he came back to me, I was so happy. I finally had my husband all to myself again... and he was so happy too... like... like it was the early years in our lives when the two of us first saw each other and fell in love. And then I thought that if... if we can just let the entire affair be a secret and never speak of it then... there wouldn’t be a fissure in our friendship. But now that you’ve... that you’ve confronted me about this then...”–Cadance sits properly, taking a deep breath, straightening her posture upright onto the chair–“...then I would ask you to please stop sleeping with my husband.”

Leaning towards the table, she extends her hoof once again to grab onto mine.

“I-I don’t want you to have an affair with Shining Armor,” she concludes. “But... I don’t want us to stop being the best of friends. I want to say that... for this whole mess... I... I am so sorry.”

Slowly, excruciatingly, I retract my hoof from the gentleness and warmth of her hold. She is shocked, by the gesture, but not as shocked as I when I realize that neither her words nor action contains a hint of fakery. That her forgiveness, her understanding, the burden of shouldering the blame, the friendship she still extends, is as honest as it is sincere.

Cadance, she whose husband I had tempted to my bed, she whose friendship I have betrayed, she who still reaches out the hoof of friendship, has not once, or ever, borne ill hatred upon me. In spite her knowing, all this time, of my disloyalty.

It returns to me, in amplified waves of sudden realization: the still warm coffee she had served me and I have spilled on the table, the blanket she draped over my shoulder to shield me from the rain and I have thrown on the bed, the roof of the castle she provides to protect me from the rain and I wish to covet.

Cadance, the beautiful and benevolent princess of fairytales and children’s stories, the mare whom Shining Armor loves most in this world. The mare whom my own prince believes to represent all that is good and holy in the spirit of all of us, has not once betrayed her very nature. She, who is loved and adhered by all, is despised only by one.

Then I feel it, inside me, the white hot burning fires of rage and cinder that boils and spears my unmoving body. Somewhere in the darkness of my mind, behind my eyes, I see, and remember, a torrent of innumerable images flooding from the depths of my repressed memories from the last days, weeks and months that have passed. I am seeing Shining Armor and Cadance’s grand wedding, and how happy they were, how the world revolved around their happiness, and how I stood there, in the sidelines, holding on to the bouquet. I am seeing them, as newlyweds, beam every time their lips touch in gentle caress, and how I sat, tea in hoof, voiceless and panged with jealousy. I remember seeing the anger in Shining Armor’s eyes, the same anger I feel now when I seduced him. I am seeing the shudder of his spine and the imperceptible tear in the corner of his eyes when chivalry lay devastated against temptation. I am seeing the same chivalry reborn when, two nights ago, the brimming confidence gleaming in Shining Armor’s eyes as he severs what ties that binds us so to return to his most beloved.

I am seeing, right now, before me, Shining Armor’s goddess. If she is to be is the complete reification of the good that he adheres to, then what am I? I, who sits opposite to Cadance.

What am I? What have I always been to Shining Armor?

The answer, I knew, is the reason why he will always love Cadance, and never me.

“...Goddamn you...” I mutter beneath my breath, my hooves clenching against the furniture’s edge.

“R-R-Rarity!?”

“Goddamn you!” I scream out, upturning the table to her face. The violence and hate and anger can no longer be contained within stagnant stillness. “Who the hell do you think you are!? What gives you the right that you can shame me like this!?”

“What?” she draws back, slumping down her chair. “B-but I never... I-I don’t–”

“You, who have everything that I ever wanted, how dare you just let it all go!” Like a broken dam, the torrent of my soul outpours from me and drowns the air in the room. “Your castle, your title, you prestige, your own goddamn husband! How can you treat it so selflessly!? How dare you throw everything back to my face! While I climb out from the muck from where I came just to reach the dream where you are placed simply by the birthright of your horn and wings and crown! You don’t deserve any of it! Goddamn you!”–my hoof snaps, slashing across her right cheek–“Goddamn you!”–another, against her face–“Goddamn you! Goddamn you! Goddamn you!”–again and again, I feel her soft muzzle against the sharp edge of my hoof.

Then, taking her by the collar of her coat, I scream unto her:

“I want it! I want everything you have! I deserve to be called a princess! I don’t deserve that bouquet cast into the sidelines. I deserve a castle, I deserve a prince! I deserve Shining Armor! I don’t deserve that apple farm in Ponyville! I don’t deserve Applejack!”

My own words make me gasp a muffled scream and fall back, letting go of Cadance. I shake my head, trying to deny what I told her and what I told myself.

Mouth hanging open, I re-utter the true meaning of that statement: “I mean... I... I don’t deserve... Applejack...”

Looking down beneath my feet, Cadance is crumpled on the floor, between the tossed furniture and broken cups. A foreleg tries to shield the tears in her eyes and, the other, strokes her swelling cheeks. “Y-You...” she manages to say, barely above a whisper. “You can be happy together.... Applejack loves you.”

When she looks up, I see how the tears have spread to sting the red injury of her face. A speck of blood dribbles down the corner of her lips.

Clenching my teeth, I storm out her bedroom, shoving open the two grand doors with my magic.

“Rarity!” she cries out. “Wait, please! Let’s talk.”

I hear her scramble to her feet and run towards me. I stop and turn, glaring at her. And, for the first time, I see fear in her eyes.

There is no more emotion left. The wild raging fires of hate has burned down to the roots everything that is within me, and, for itself, has ultimately died out in a last puff of smoke. Only the shivering cold of emptiness remains, for I am now nothing more but skin, held together by the physical necessity of being stitched together. I do not even feel the blood course in my veins, nor do I hear the sound of my heart beating against my chest–but that, I knew, has died long ago.

“Rarity!” she cries out again. “We can still work this out. Please...”

I do not wish to hear her any longer. My horn glows and so does the thin chain above us.

“Cadance...” I hiss. “...I should’ve told you this before...”

The chain above snaps–

“...but...”

–and the chandelier crashes–

“...I’ve always hated you.”

–on top of the still-pregnant Cadance.