//------------------------------//
// 3. How Rarity Met the Scarecrow 
// Story: The Delightful Dragon of Ep 
// by Laichonious the Grey 
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There are times when a pony will be faced with an undeniable truth. Some look forward to those times and others dread them. Rarity was facing one of those moments, and it took the form of a white cat refusing to get into a basket. The truth was, Rarity didn’t take Opal on walks, ever. Mostly because cats don’t walk. Little grey ponies galloped around her boutique, fixing this and that or gathering things that had been flung about during her flight and landing. As Rarity scowled at the cat, contemplating just snatching her up in her magic and stuffing the fickle feline into the basket, she tried to carry on a conversation with Governess Fiddlewick. While in the process of trying to convince Fiddlewick to let some Punchins guide her to the Ruby City—and carry her luggage if possible—Rarity had learned that there was no rhyme or reason to their names. They didn’t even have cutie marks. It was rather disconcerting, therefore, that many of them would pause in whatever they were doing and stare at her flank for minutes on end, absolutely entranced by her emblem.
“So, this symbol,” Fiddlewick said for perhaps the fifth time, once again distracted, “it just, appears at an appointed time? Is that what gives you such great powers?”
Rarity glanced at Fiddlewick, who was staring fixedly at her cutie mark. “No, Fiddlewick, dear,” she sighed. “My cutie mark represents my special talent, it doesn’t give me anything, really, except a sense of who I—AH!” She glared at the little pony.
Fiddlewick had gotten up on her hind legs and was enthusiastically poking at Rarity’s cutie mark with a hoof. She noticed the fashionista’s glare and quickly dropped down to her forehooves, producing a wide smile. “Sorry, I, uh... just wanted to see how permanent it was.”
“It’s a part of me, darling. It’s very permanent,” Rarity said graciously. The glare transferred to Opal, who pointedly ignored it. “Opalescence,” she growled, lady-like of course. “You have until I count three to get in the basket by yourself... before I put you there.”
“These um, cats, did you call them?” Fiddlewick asked.
“One,” Rarity attempted to say dangerously.
“Ah, yes that is what you call them,” Fiddlewick mused.
“Two,” Rarity almost accomplished that dangerous tone she was striving for.
“They seem like not the sort of thing to keep for a pet,” the Governess seemed to be explaining this to Rarity, rather than herself.
“Three.” A burst of blue magic lanced from the seamstress, seizing the white cat in mid air as she tried to escape the wicker-woven fate prescribed by their impending journey.
The cat mrowled and hissed at the vessel she was about to be confined in, but there was nothing she could do against Rarity’s powerful levitation spell.
“You can complain all you want, Opal.” Rarity huffed. “But you had plenty of time to do it yourself.” With only a few more mewlings, and a few more scratches, Opal was successfully contained in the basket. The fashionista sighed and hung the kitty cargo on her specially modified saddle, opposite a small bag filled with needful things. Actual, needful things. The rest of her luggage sat in a corner; all packed up and nowhere to go. She certainly wasn’t going to haul it around, especially now that she was not going to get any help with it. If only it could grow some legs of its own and follow her.
The Punchins were finishing up their self-appointed tasks. She never did ask them to tidy up anything, but they were so happy to do it, she let them. Rarity took one last look at her boutique, wondering if she would ever see it again. It didn’t matter, not as long as she got home. The Carousel Boutique was only a building, and she could build another one, but there was something special about home, something that she knew she wouldn’t be able to replace. With a final, resolute nod, she set off for the front door and briskly exited the boutique, for good.
“Should we... lock it up for you, Miss Rarity?” Fiddlewick asked, trotting alongside her.
“No need,” the unicorn replied curtly, “If there is anything you need from it, anything at all, feel free to help yourselves. I don’t know how well it will hold up after a fall like that, but I’m leaving it to the Punchins. A gift,” she said, smiling at the grey pony with the beryl mane.
Fiddlewick stared wide-eyed at Rarity. “Really? I mean... Thank you, Great Rarity, this is a most treasured gift. I’m sure we will find many things that we can use. Our town has fallen into disrepair since the Wicked Witch ensnared us. She barely gave us time to feed ourselves before she would return, craving more attention. We will forever be in your debt, Miss Rarity.”
Something about the way the little pony said that made her pause. Rarity glanced to her side to see Fiddlewick quickly wiping tears from her face. With a smile, the unicorn straightened the hat on the little pony’s head. “Listen, Fiddlewick, darling. There is no debt among friends, it’s what friends are for.” She paused for another moment, to let the governess collect herself. “Though I don’t suppose there is any way to convince you to let me have a guide, is there?” she asked as innocently as she could.
Fiddlewick laughed. “Afraid not, Miss Rarity. Selene of the North made it very clear that we should never venture outside of our lands; it is far too dangerous for us, and we are far too small to make the journey in any reasonable time. I’m sure you want to get to the Ruby City with all haste.”
“Oh, yes. Of course,” Rarity said smoothly. “So, how far is it to the Ruby City?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen it myself. Sometimes we get visitors from there, so it can’t be terribly far. If you don’t mind me saying, Miss Rarity, but with those long legs of yours, why, I’m sure you would get there in no time at all.”
“Thank you... I think.”
She started down the Singing Road with a herd of Punchins following in her wake. They didn’t go far before they arrived at a large paved square, which was actually a circle, with a tall fountain in the center. On the eastern half of the square were little houses that made Rarity smile even if the paint was peeling and the roofs were sagging. The fountain in the center of the square splashed pleasantly into three channels that emptied into a basin divided into three equal parts by sculpted stone dividers with figures of little ponies prancing with various kinds of fruit that Rarity recognized, and several others that she didn’t. Into each channel and basin flowed three different colored liquids, yellow, blue and red. A spiral of  yellow bricks spun outward form the fountain that slowly grew into a wide road out to the west. 
Rarity slowed as she approached the fountain. The brightly colored liquid was sweetly fragrant, causing her mouth to water. She took a deep breath, savoring the sweet scent. “Oh my,” she sighed. “That smells marvelous! What is it?”
“Oh, that’s our punch fountain, it’s what we’re famous for. Ponies from all over the land of Ep love our punch. Businessponies from the Ruby City only come this way to trade us things for big barrels of the stuff. It’s smelling a tad ripe, we haven’t had the time to tend it like we normally do, but you can have a drink if you wish and we’ll send you off with bottles of each.” Fiddlewick smiled proudly at the fountain.
“Ah, so that’s why you are called Punchins,” Rarity exclaimed, lowering her head to the blue basin.
“What? No, no, no, they call us Punchins ‘cause we’re small. Oh, and sometimes we punch things at random... but we’ve gotten better with that. Now it only seems to happen when we get angry.”
Rarity spluttered in the basin.
“Are you alright there, Miss Rarity?”
“M-hm! Ah... y-yes I’m fine. Hmm-mmm. Well, that was refreshing,” she said airily. “If I could have some for the trip that would be wonderful..... What is the matter, Fiddlewick?” She knelt down next to the little governess, who was using her hat to wipe her face.
“Oh, it’s nothing, Miss Rarity.” She sniffed. “You’ve been so kind, and wonderful to us. It just seems such a shame that you have to go. But, we understand, your home is important to you, like our home is to us. I hope you get there safely, Miss Rarity, we all do.” Several of the ponies in the crowd nodded behind Fiddlewick.
“Aww,” Rarity said, scooping the little pony up in a hug. “That is very sweet of all of you. I promise I’ll never forget you and all that you’ve done for me.”
With a few more hugs and some glass bottles of their famous punch, Rarity set out on the Yellowbrick road with a smile on her face and a bounce to her step. The Punchins watched her leave from the square, waving and calling well-wishes to her until she was out of sight. The day was pleasant, with a soft, cool breeze blowing over the hills, quite easy to walk in. After a time on the road, she opened the small hatch of the basket to let Opal poke her head out, if she wanted to. A snowy paw groped its way out of the opening to grab the tassel on the door and pull it shut with an angry whomp.
Rarity rolled her eyes. “Suit yourself.”
She followed the Punchins’ simple directions and walked down the Yellowbrick Road. For hours. They made it sound like the Ruby City was just over the next hill. It wasn’t. At the very least, those diamond shoes were comfortable, in a strange way. But after a while, the sun beat down on her back, adding to the weight of Opal and her saddlebags, but mostly Opal. So along she trudged, one uneventful hour passing after another, until most of the day had gone—except for coming across a patch of strange roses. She knew they were roses, but they weren’t red; they were in fact a rather violent shade of blue. Violent, because when she got closer to investigate, they tried to attack her. Fortunately, she had hooves and they had roots. But this time, she happened upon something else that worried her somewhat. She blinked at the fork in the road. The Punchins didn’t say anything about a fork, though, she didn’t think they would know about this. She shook her head at it and continued on her way. “Not a proper way to care for silverware...” she muttered, passing the tarnished implement. A few minutes later, she passed another fork, this one much more tarnished than the last, and wrinkled her forehead at it. 
“What on earth are these forks doing in the road?” she wondered aloud.
She should have been able to put the two forks together, for it was one of the curious things Fiddlewick had mentioned while Rarity was trying to secure a guide. Roadsigns didn’t exist in Ep. Travelers thought they were rather insulting, and truth be told, they were. The signs thought it a great sport to switch themselves now and again, to liven things up a bit, and a few had grown so delinquent that they had begun to taunt passersby. So roadsigns were outlawed, to keep the peace. Rarity could care less for the reasons behind the misdirecting signage because she was now facing a problem; the Yellowbrick Road had forked. 
To the right, the road went off on a winding trail that soon became lost in the depths of a dense and dingy-looking forest. To the left, the road snaked around some hills off to the horizon. Rarity knew which one she would rather take. The path to the left seemed relatively safe, but she had no idea which way actually went to the City. The Punchins failed to mention forks, silver or otherwise. With a huff, the fashionista stomped her hoof.
“Well... now what?”
“That's a good question,” said a soft voice.
“Who said that?” Rarity glanced around the road, ears swiveling on her head like radar dishes. “Hello?”
“I wish I knew the answer. There's a lot I wish I knew. I guess that's just something you have to get used to, when you don't know things,” pondered the voice. 
Rarity whipped her head around, peering at the tall stalks of corn growing in the cleft of the fork in the road. “What do you mean you don’t know things?” she asked, creeping forward.
There was a dry rustle, like a clumsy foal in a hayloft. “I just know there’s a lot that I don’t know,” sighed the voice to her left. “I’ve been here for the longest time, or at least, I think it was a long time.... Is it a long time when the bright circle in the sky goes away two times and comes back three times?”
Rarity froze just before she stepped over a low timber fence. “You mean you’ve been out here for three days?”
“Is that what the bright circle in the sky is called?”
Rarity caught a flicker of pale purple among the green stalks of corn. She cocked her head to the side and started towards the little shock of color. “No, that's called the sun.”
“Sun,” tested the voice, “I like that word.”
Rarity soon came to a little break in the rows of zigzagging corn and stared in confusion. In the center of the little clearing was a pole of roughly hewn wood, driven into the ground. On top of the pole was a pastel purple scarecrow, tied to two pieces of wood. It was apparently a pony, like herself, stuffed with hay that poked out through some of the seams in its purple canvas and burlap skin. Strips of lavender and purple cloth served as the scarecrow's mane and tail. A horn carved from some sort of dark wood protruded from its forehead and it wore a pair of trousers striped in alternating white and purple. The scarecrow stared out over the field with large, purple button eyes sewn to its face with thick black thread.





“Hello? Anypony here?” she asked of the field.
“I'm here,” answered the soft voice.
“Where?” she asked, turning around.
“Up here.”
Rarity jerked back. The scarecrow waved at her. “H-how.... What.... Huh?”
The scarecrow shrugged. “I don’t know either.”
“B-but, you’re talking!”
“I’m sorry. Should I stop?”
“No, that’s fine, I guess, but... scarecrows usually don’t talk, at least where I come from,” explained the white unicorn, going back to the edge of the field to look at the scarecrow’s face.
The canvas visage shifted into a semblance of surprise. “What is a... scarecrow?”
“Well, that’s what you are. You look like a pony out here in the field to scare off crows, to keep them from the corn.”
The scarecrow’s face scrunched up in confusion. “Pony? Field? Crows? Corn?”
Rarity blinked at her. Then blinked at her own thoughts. Why did she assume the scarecrow was a mare? She looked over the scarecrow again. There was something familiar about the stuffed pony. The way her mane was shaped, the way she looked at everything with open curiosity, the shy but direct way she spoke, even her soft voice tickled at the back of her mind, like she should be able to recognize it. It felt important that she should remember, but she couldn’t. Rarity shook her head. “I’m a pony, darling. This,” she gestured to the stalks around them, “is a field. The plants growing in it are called corn.”
“Ooohhh...” the scarecrow said, gazing around the clearing, “Do all of these things have a name? Like, the other bright circle that comes when the, sun, goes away, does that have a name?”
“Well, of course everything—”
“Everything...” whispered the scarecrow.
Rarity raised an eyebrow but continued. “Everything has a name. The other bright circle is called the moon, and when it comes out, that’s called night, and when the sun is out that is called day.” The fashionista considered the purple prop. “You really don’t know all of these things?”
“I guess not,” replied the scarecrow, “I never thought there was so much. I didn’t start to notice things until I saw the sun and the night and the moon and the sun three times. But before I was here, I saw them in another place. A place with... ponies, ones that were smaller than you are.”
“The Punchins?”
“I don’t know. Are those the small ones?”
“Yes those are the Punchins.”
“Oh. There was another pony, bigger than the others. What was she?”
Rarity thought for a moment. “Was she tall with a long blue mane?”
“What’s blue?”
“Ugh...” Rarity held a hoof up to her face. “Blue is a color, darling. The sky is a color of blue.”
“There’s more than just one blue?”
“Yes, but this other pony you saw, was she tall and blue?”
The scarecrow raised her head and studied the sky for a moment. “No, she was not that blue. Was she another blue?” she asked, turning an inquisitive face to Rarity.
The seamstress opened her mouth to reply and suddenly found that she had no way to describe the color pink. “Well, if there was another pony, like me, and she wasn’t blue then she was the Wicked Witch of the East.”
“Humm,” thought the scarecrow. “I don't know what a lot of those words are, but I think you're right. The smaller ponies said something about me, like you did, that I was random, or the other not blue one was random for taking me there. So when the not blue pony left, the little ponies—Punchins?—they took me here and put me on this stick and this is where I've been ever since.”
“Well,” said Rarity, “I suppose that is a pretty random thing, to animate a scarecrow. Would you like to get down from there? It looks awfully uncomfortable.”
“I think I would like to come down.” 
Rarity summoned her magic and lifted the scarecrow off of the stick a little too forcefully. She had prepared to levitate a full-grown mare, not a mare stuffed with hay. The scarecrow shot up into the sky before Rarity dampened her telekinesis. Gently, she lowered the airborne scarecrow to the ground.
“Sorry, dear, I tried to lift you as if you were heavier than you are,” she said with an apologetic smile. She looked the Scarecrow over, to make sure she hadn’t hurt her.
“That’s okay.” The scarecrow smiled.
“Now,” the fashionista said, aiming her critical eyes at everything about the strange scarecrow. “I don’t suppose there is anything we can do about those striped pants.”
The stuffed pony shook her head. “I’m pretty sure they are a part of me.”
“Oh well,” Rarity sighed. “It doesn’t matter, I like you just the way you are. Except your name. I can’t just call you Scarecrow.”
“Why not?”
“Because, darling, that’s what you are,” Rarity replied.
“But,” said the scarecrow, furrowing her already knit brow, “why can’t you just call me a scarecrow?”
“Well, yes,” the white unicorn confessed, “But I don’t want to just call you what you are. It seems... I don’t know, unfriendly, I suppose.”
The scarecrow was silent for a moment, regarding Rarity with her large, purple button eyes. A complicated expression folded onto her canvas features. “I’m... your friend?” she asked.
“Of course, darling.”
The scarecrow looked down at the ground and shuffled her hooves. “I’ve never had a friend before.”
Rarity’s breath caught in her throat at the scarecrow’s admission. It sounded like something she had heard before. Something near and dear to her heart. She stared past the stuffed pony at the horizon, trying desperately to hold on to that thought, to recall what was so familiar.
“Uh, Miss?”
Rarity blinked, her eyes focusing on the scarecrow again. “I... I’m sorry, darling, what did you say?” From the concern evident on the burlap face of her strangely familiar new friend, she had scared the poor thing. The lady unicorn assumed a pleasant and unconcerned smile, donning it as easily as she would a gown and forced her shoulders to relax.
The scarecrows eyes shifted slightly in a way that made Rarity think of it as a blink. “I was just asking,” the straw pony said timidly, “What does a friend... do? What makes me your friend? And, does that make you my friend too?”
The simple questions hit the white unicorn like a lightning bolt dragging an avalanche behind it. She considered the scarecrow’s question for a long time. The scarecrow didn’t seem to mind. She sat down across from Rarity, canvas face towards her, patiently waiting for an answer.
Rarity cleared her throat. Smiled at the scarecrow, and cleared it again. “Well a friend...” she attempted to define friendship in her own mind, but her thoughts moved like icebergs, refusing to give her anything deeper. “A friend... is... somepony who, I suppose, is willing to, well, under any circumstance... to, um... to be with you... no matter what. Does that help?”
The scarecrow nodded enthusiastically. Paused. Frowned, then shook her head slowly.
The fashionista let out a soft sigh. “Look,” she sat down next to the scarecrow, for once not even thinking about the dirt on the ground. Well okay, maybe the thought skittered over the surface, but she sat down anyway. “Friendship is a lot of things. It means different things to different ponies. But most of all, I think friends help each other. They want to be there for each other, no matter what happens. A true friend loves you for who you are... and they will make you better for it. I consider you my friend... because I want to help you,” she gave a little laugh, brushing at something on her nose to hide wiping away a small tear. “I would hope I’m your friend because I helped you in some way.”
The sun-bleached and worn fabric of the scarecrow’s face scrunched up once again. She looked at the road as if considering the two paths, her button eyes shifting side to side. After a time, she turned to Rarity. “Well, don’t worry, Rarity,” she said with a smile, “I’ll be your friend, and you can be my friend. I want to help you too... and I think I can start doing that right now.” She gestured with a straw-filled limb down the right side of the branch in the road. The side that suffered from an unfortunate case of arboreal overgrowth. “I think I remember ponies walking down that side of the road. Hardly anypony has gone the other way, so I guess that means the city is over this way. Right?”
Rarity giggled. “Why yes, that seems right. See? You’re smarter than you think. Hmm...” She put a hoof up to her chin.
“What’s the matter?” the scarecrow asked, tilting her head to the side.
“I think I know what I’m going to call you. How would you like Smartypants?”
The scarecrow smiled again, her patched ears perking up. “I like the sound of that.”