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Figure 1: CB Radio3,860 words
Figure 2: Clipper3,796 words
Figure 3: Light Bulb3,631 words
Figure 4: Video Game System3,334 words
Figure 5: Speakers1,551 words
Figure 6: Camera2,213 words
Figure 7: Slide Projector3,141 words
Figure 8: Portable Radio5,165 words
Figure 9: Headphones6,125 words
Figure A: Video Cassette Recorder6,168 words
Figure 10: Air Cushion Restraint System4,357 words
Figure 11: Turntable11,019 words
Afterward, Credits & Acknowledgements11,937 words

Figure 9: Headphones

Figure 9: Headphones

Officer Harry Gloomfeld was awoken from a troubled sleep by an insistent pounding upon the door of his downtown Passaic apartment. With several indistinct mumbles, he put on a robe and slippers (and his holster) and opened the door. His sleepy eyes went wide with recognition at what he saw.

The woman on the other side was tall and slender, her figure obscured by a tan trench coat, and her face above her ruby-red lips hidden behind a pair of oversized sunglasses as well as the brim of a large gray floppy hat; the platinum-blond shoulder-length hair that could be seen was almost certainly a wig. The moment the door was opened, she used two rolled-up newspapers, one held in each hand, to shove her way into the apartment—the one in her right hand, the North Jersey Herald-News, was barely thicker than her thumb, while the other was almost too big around to grasp with one hand. “Remember me?” she asked, her scowl instantly transformed into false perkiness. It was clear that she was deliberately speaking with a lower than accustomed pitch in her voice.

“Sparks Nightly?!”

“Close enough,” she said with a smile. “I haven’t heard a thing since I sent you those pony registration records back in January. Soooo, how’s the investigation?”

“Not well,” Gloomfeld said carefully, trying in vain to hide from her behind the apartment’s door. He had long since learned to watch his words around this woman, as her ability to draw correct conclusions from miniscule amounts of data was frankly terrifying.

“So what’s the hold-up?” Sparks asked eagerly. “Are you missing evidence, or do you need to put some more pressure on that English guy?”

“No, it’s not like that,” Gloomfeld replied as he adjusted the alignment of his robe. “They’re...they’re not up to anything.”

The woman waved the Herald-News in a vague manner next to her head. “You’re speaking a foreign language to me, Harry. Are they Corraglios or not? That’s the only question that matters, right?”

“Well...” Gloomfeld tried to answer, but Sparks was having none of it.

“That’s the only question that matters, Harry. The one with the right answer, the answer that will get you transferred to the Big Apricot like you always dreamed. The one that will get me my big story, the one that will finally break me out of writing those awful fashion and advice columns under stupid aliases, the story that will finally launch my dream career of being an investigative journalist for the greatest newspaper on the face of the earth!” She punctuated the end of her last sentence by lightly tapping Gloomfeld’s chest with the enormous newspaper in her left hand.

“Yeah, but they’re not up to anything anymore—they’re nothing but a wholesome family circus,” the police officer finally said. “I’ve dropped the case.”

“You’ve dropped the case,” the woman said in disbelief. Then she swatted him upside the head with “the greatest newspaper on the face of the earth”. “You dropped the case?!”

The man staggered a bit before regaining his feet. “Yes, that’s what I said. There is no story here.”

Sparks took a few steps back in shock, putting her back outside the man’s door. “They...they paid you off, didn’t they!” she accused. “That’s why I had to come here after you weren’t at the station. You bungled taking a Mob bribe, and now you’re suspended!”

“I’m not suspended!” Gloomfeld replied, deliberately side-stepping the whole issue of bribery. “Things got a little intense, and now I’m on a paid vacation. You can verify that with anybody at the station. If I had taken a bribe, there’s no way I should have gotten away with just a vacation.” Those words were the absolute truth—Gloomfield still had no idea why he hadn’t been fired for his act of blatant stupidity, and he refused to believe Gruekin’s story of mind control. He knew what he did, even if the reasons why didn’t seem to make much sense anymore.

The woman thought carefully about what he said, the movements of her head tracking everywhere his guilty eyes darted. “Well in that case,” she said slowly, “you won’t mind if I make a little visit of my own to the Pagliacci Brothers Family Circus, yes?”

“Ah...no, not at all!” Gloomfeld said with a smile that only crept up one side of his face. “That circus has nothing to hide! Now can I go back to sleep now?”

“Dream away”, Sparks said as she turned to go. “Just keep your eyes on next Sunday’s paper. If I’m right, there will be a front page exclusive with my real name on it, spilling all the sordid details about this ‘wholesome family circus’.” She looked down at the two newspapers she was still holding. “Oh by the way...catch!”

Gloomfeld quickly stepped out of the way, rather than try the dangerous feat of trying to catch the big-city newspaper. Sure enough, the paper smashed right through a ceramic table lamp located a foot behind him.

The woman had the decency to wince. “I’ll pay you back for that, I promise!”

“You better,” the officer said laconically. “And what happens if I’m right? What will I see in the Sunday paper then?”

The woman rolled her eyes behind her sunglasses. “You’ll have another ‘heart-warming tale’ from ‘Sparks Nightly’, with some cutesy-wootsy title like—”

In Pursuit of Rarity
By Sparks Nightly
This columnist’s pursuit of beauty is a never-ending one. Beauty can be found in a museum or in a trashcan. It can be found in the stories of ordinary New Yorkers, like those I have shared with you over the past few months. It can even be found in...New Jersey.
Shocking, but true. Even more surprisingly, I found this beauty in the environs of a homely little outfit by the name of the Pagliacci Brothers Family Circus. I found it in the form of an unlikely individual who goes by the name of Rarity.
I am no expert on circuses. I cannot tell you which acrobatic tricks are the most death-defying, or which lion-taming stunts are the most difficult to procure from an unwilling feline. I only know that, quite contrary to my expectations, I was entertained by the drama and comedy I was presented with under the big top. And, in this place of all places, I saw beauty. I saw fashion. I saw the birth of an absolutely unique voice. I saw it in the costumes worn by the performers. I saw it in the choice of colors for the tent fabrics—it was not just a tan canvas, but rather a rainbow of color swathes stitched together, no two pieces the same size. And yet every piece seemed to have its place. From my position in the audience, the patch that was behind the high wire artist at the dramatic height of her performance was exactly right to accompany that moment, and the one behind the rather verbose and politically-savvy clown as he gave a rather brilliant teardown of President Carter’s latest missteps was worthy of a Greenwich Village nightclub.
I save the ringmaster for last. Unique to any of the admittedly few circuses I have ever attended, this ringmaster belonged to the fairer sex, although I would surely not consider her one of the more withdrawn members of her gender. Her ensemble was therefore not the stereotypical outfit of a coloring-book ringmaster, ready to be filled in all with black. No, Miss Julia Scarpino’s dress was that of a woman of sophistication, in deep purple with sequins, yet undoubtedly the most commanding such dress I have ever encountered, and with a way of capturing the spotlight that had to be seen to be believed. I’m sorry that the photos accompanying this article can in no way capture the magic inherent in this single outfit alone.
I was here with my niece—I suppose I should make that clear for those wondering what manner of madness would have sent this columnist to North Jersey. Miss Sally was not interested in the performance, or the highly fashionable way with which it was presented. She was there for one reason and one reason alone—to ride upon the unicorn Rarity. Rarity was not actually a unicorn, of course...

“You’re not my mother,” the girl insisted. “And do I have to keep lugging this camera around? It’s heavy!”

“Of course I’m not your mother,” the woman with the blond wig under her red sun hat said with a forced smile. “I’m your Aunt Sparks, remember? And you’ll need the camera if you want the best possible picture of you with your pegasus.” She was wearing a trim pink and white dress that might have come from the 1920’s or 30’s, and she had a habit of twirling the handle of her parasol when she was bored, which was nearly always.

“Unicorn,” the girl insisted.

“Whatever. Just think of what your friends at the orph—” (She caught herself to look around at the curious adults listening in on their conversation.) “Orpheus School for Little Girls would say if you didn’t have proof of your little ride.”

“Alright,” the girl sulked. “So can we go now?”

Sparks pointed ahead of her. “Look, we’re almost up to the ringmaster. Five minutes, and we go straight to the pony ring, alright?”

The girl put on a grumpy expression as she eyed the five people between them and the ringmaster, the leader of which was gushing on about her appreciation of the show in a way that made it clear that this could go on forever.

As the reporter waited patiently in line, she let her gaze wander to the crew taking down the various props used in the show. She wondered for a moment why they were all wearing long flowing cloaks that obscured all of their features, until she happened to catch a glimpse of a misshapen face.

“Why hello there, Ma’am,” she heard a voice from behind her back. “And how did you like our little show?”

Sparks whirled around to see the circus’ lone clown crouched down so he could address Sally at eye level.

“It was alright,” the girl mumbled as she played around with the camera in her hands.

“Excuse me...?” Sparks addressed the clown, who stood up to face her.

“Chuckles,” he said with an easy smile.

“Chuckles,” Sparks repeated, and then pointed at the cloaked individuals. “I don’t mean to...well, that is to...I don’t think there is any polite way to say this, so I’ll just say it: are those...freaks?”

Chuckles took the trouble to look over Sparks’ shoulder with an eyebrow raised. “Ah...yup, that they are. Say, don’t I know you? Your face looks awful familiar.”

The woman sighed in a resigned fashion. “I’m a newspaper columnist. Name’s Sparks Nightly.”

Ah, the joys of photostatic reproduction—when you could submit a photo of yourself wearing an obviously fake wig to display at the top of all of your articles, and not one of your readers was able to discern the fakery amid the blur.

“Sparks Nightly!” the clown exclaimed. “I read every one of your articles!”

Sparks took a moment to take in Chuckles’ baggy outfit, which looked better than it had any right to be, considering it was composed entirely of scrap fabric sewn together. “Really?” she asked.

“Really!”

“Huh. So, why are they doing clean-up, and not, you know, in their own tent?”

Chuckles drew himself up to his full height, and addressed the reporter with a look of disappointment, causing Sparks to shrink in on herself a little. “Miss Nightly! We live in a modern world, one where we don’t have to look down on others just because they were born outside the range of what we consider an acceptable appearance. We employ them because frankly they can’t get jobs anywhere else, but that does not mean that we pay them any less than they deserve, and this way they do not spend their lives in a box, being gawked at by paying customers. Instead, they have free time to spend any way they’d like.”

Sparks looked in the direction Chuckles indicated. One of the “freaks” was engaged in an animated conversation with a teenage girl using sign language. The hood of her cloak was folded back, revealing that the hair on her head was in random clumps, and that her eyes didn’t seem to be quite lined up horizontally on her face. Nevertheless, the normal-looking girl was signing to her as if she was any other of her friends her age. Sparks got a little misty-eyed at the sight.

“Sweet, isn’t it?” Chuckles asked, before the tone of his voice turned dark. “Of course, wasn’t it your editor who opined that ‘freaks like that knew where they belonged in my day’? Well, I’ll be seeing you two around.”

Sparks groaned as the momentary good mood drained right out of her.

Beside her, Sally uttered a near-identical groan, because in all this time the line to speak with the ringmaster had not gotten any shorter. Then she looked down at her camera with its flashbulb and got a wicked glint in her eye.

“Picture, picture, picture for the paper!” she sing-songed as she set off the camera’s flash in face after face. In seconds, the pair were the only ones waiting to speak with the ringmaster.

After suppressing a smile of pride, Sparks stepped forward to shake the hand of the momentarily confused ringmaster. “Awfully sorry about little Marcie here,” she said with a disingenuous frown. “But I simply had to tell you how pleased I was with your show.”

“Oh, well this is a group effort,” Miss Scarpino told me when I expressed my admiration of the high style of the show. When I insisted that there must be a single guiding genius to the unified look of the show, she reluctantly confided to me that Rarity was responsible.

“The pony?!”

At that exclamation, Sparks saw the cloaked woman suddenly turn in shock to look at her, before quickly pulling up her hood to conceal her features and slinking off into the relative anonymity of the shadows.

“Well, it’s a little more complicated than that,” Julia Scarpino told Sparks with a mysterious smile. “Why don’t you check out Rarity’s Boutique after 4 p.m., and I’ll send word along that you’d like to speak with her then. You...do wish to speak with her, don’t you?”

“But of course!” Sparks Nightly replied with a gleaming smile.

Behind that smile, however, she had no idea what was about to happen.

& & &

Seeing that it was only a little after 2 p.m., the young reporter allowed the girl in her charge to drag her without resistance down the midway to another tent, this one much smaller than the big top. To one side she saw a second, smaller line leading to a carousel of eight riding ponies. None of them, Sparks noted, had horns upon their heads. A five-minute ride on the carousel cost $5. Five minutes with Rarity in the tent cost $35. And yet here was a line of children and parents willing to pay that seven-time premium.

As they waited, Sparks picked up on a pattern with each pair of child and parent to be admitted to the tent. The girl would emit a high-pitched scream upon seeing the miraculous little horse in person, as if Rarity was some kind of rock god instead of tamed livestock. The screaming would last through most of the allocated five minutes. And then the girl would finally calm down enough to get one certainly botched photo with the animal before being unceremoniously ejected from the back end of the tent. And despite the clear warning example from the couple to enter before them, the next pair of child and parent would then enter and repeat the process.

The pattern broke when Rarity suddenly emerged from the tent. Her appearance was heralded by a gaggle of gasps from the little girls standing in line, followed by a discordant chorus of “Mommy, Mommy!” as the girls sought to get their parents’ attention. And with few exceptions, the parents waiting in the line before Rarity’s tent were in fact female. In fact, it gradually dawned on Sparks Nightly that several of the adults were at least as excited to be seeing a “unicorn” as their gullible daughters.

The first thing that struck Sparks’ eye regarding the little white pony was that she must have been trained to an exceptional degree, and even beyond that must be exceptionally bright for her species. Her purple-dyed tail and mane was only half grown out, yet it had been given what must have been several hundred dollars’ worth of beauty care—the tail was shaped into a semi-circular curve, while the mane hung over her left eye in a way very reminiscent of Veronica Lake. She also walked like the blonde bombshell might have in her heyday, her steps light and delicate. She moved to accentuate her curves, and always managed to just be out of reach of the more grabby children in line. Her head was held high as she gazed serenely into the eyes of all who craned and contorted themselves to see, and she could almost be said to be smiling—except of course that ponies couldn’t smile. Upon reaching the end of the line, she turned to prance around the carousel, causing the riders to happily cry out her name. Then she returned to the tent, and after a minute of settling down, everything was back to normal.

“She’s...she’s engaging in expectations management,” Sparks slowly realized out loud. “Keeping the crowd from going nuts waiting out here, as well as throwing a bone out to the ones stuck with the rest of the ponies.” A second observation occurred to her, one that made her just a little uneasy: the pony had looked humans in the eye, humans that weren’t her master. Based on her experience with cats, that meant that Rarity considered herself the equal of any human she encountered.

The girl interrupted her thoughts by tugging on the hem of her dress. “Yes, Frieda?” she asked, looking down.

“We’re next, but you have to hold the line for me,” the girl replied.

“How did you manage that?” Sparks asked. She was quite sure that there were at least three girls, one boy, and three mothers ahead of them.

“I found out they all go to the same school together, and convinced them to save their money by all going for the same five minutes. Plus I agreed to go in and take extra pictures to mail to them, for a quarter a shot. That’s alright, right? Plus I get to see Rarity and get all calmed down so I don’t waste my five minutes when it’s my turn.”

Sparks smiled once more in admiration. “You’d make a good reporter, kid.” She reached in her bag and handed over a couple of film packs. “Although next time you should probably remember to include the price of shipping in the deal. Oh, and here,” she added, tearing off a sheet of paper from her notebook and handing over her pen. “To get their mailing addresses.”

“Right, thanks. I forgot all about that.” And with that, the line moved forward so that only Sparks was outside the tent.

A few minutes later, and I was able to witness Rarity the pony in action. She was a charming animal, the perfect huggable pet for all little girls (and boys) who dreamed of living in a fantasy world of brave knights, daring princesses, and wish-fulfilling unicorns. Some children were happy to just be with the pony and the well-painted but nevertheless plywood-backed sets for the five minutes they paid for, while others took advantage of the well-stocked wardrobe to engage in photography sessions, sessions that I was surprised to learn were free with the price paid to see her. All in all, I considered it to be the best use of $35 that I ever spent, if only to see the blissful look of joy upon the face of my dear Violet.
As I’m sure you will agree, Rarity is very photogenic.
But in the end, the pony Rarity was just what she presented herself as: a fantasy. The horn on her head, I was informed, under an oath not to tell any of the children present, was just a fancy flashlight, originally needed to treat a medical condition, but then modified to its present use of delighting the public.
And so of course Rarity the Pony was not the fashion designer for the Pagliaci Brothers Circus. This “rarity” was not unique. I needed to find the other Rarity.

& & &

It took another trek across the circus grounds to finally reach Rarity’s Boutique.

Instead of a plain canvas circus tent, this Rarity lived in a one-room dollhouse (canvas) castle, scaled up to adult human size. Doors and windows were painted on the walls, and furniture was comically oversized and made extra-durable for the bounce-testing of the little ones. And just like a dollhouse, the entire front facade, made of cloth, rolled back to expose the innards to the outside world. On a warm spring day like today, that was alright. I wondered what they did on rainy days.

The shop was manned by the teenage girl Sparks had seen earlier speaking with the cloaked woman. She had short fine blonde hair that stood up from her head like thistledown, and her skin was nearly the color of buttermilk. She was wearing a plain wheat-colored sundress, a pair of amber-tinted sunglasses, and a pair of over-ear headphones, and she was nodding her head lightly to the beats she was hearing from the boombox stereo whose handle she clutched with one hand. The one feature of her that most strongly drew the eye were the silver rope chain bracelets that wound around her forearms. As she moved about her job of cataloguing inventory, the bracelets slid around her skin. The chains looked long and loose enough that they should have slid entirely off of the young woman’s arms, but somehow they seemed to stick to her like they were made of iron and she was magnetized. Except that that explanation wouldn’t explain the sliding.

Sparks walked over to be in the girl’s line of sight and tapped lightly on the top of a counter. When the girl turned off the boombox, Sparks told her that she was there to see Rarity at 4. “You’re not Rarity by any chance, are you?” she added.

The girl blushed and shook her head. She then pointed at a clock on the wall, showing that there were still fifteen minutes until the designated meeting time.

Sparks nodded and then joined her “niece” in looking at the clothing available for sale.

The finer clothes were displayed in the shaded corners of the little house, the only illumination provided by sunlight caught and refracted through mobiles of colored glass—perhaps they were even jewels, although if that were the case, each one appeared to have been cut specifically for acting as chandeliers in that particular spot, because each dress, suit and ensemble was lit to perfection.
The primary purpose of the shop was to replicate the fantasy costumes from the pony’s photo session. A wide variety of costumes were available, in various sizes. I was intrigued to discover that multiple price points were available for purchase, and yet even the cheapest sets, made from pieces of painted vinyl assembled with hot glue, nevertheless showed a definite care for detail that was sure to leave every customer satisfied.

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance I can talk you into buying me any of this stuff,” the girl said in a low tone, running a hand idly along the frilly collar of an elaborate Italian Renaissance dress, complete with gold brocade and (presumably imitation) ermine ruffs. The dress stood out from its neighbors in being completely over the top in ostentatiousness. If all the other dresses for little girls were rewards for being good little daughters, this one was there as a self-inflicted punishment, a way to tell the world that you’re a spoiled brat who deserves everything bad that happens to you.

In addition, Sparks recognized the girl’s choice to be an close reproduction of the wedding dress of Catherine de’ Medici, one of the most influential and copied pieces of clothing ever worn. Sparks remembered Catherine for three acts that resonated through the ages: First, her difficult youth before being suddenly elevated to Queen of France was the basis of the fairy tale of Cinderella (complete with the “Catherine de’ Medici” dress). Second, after that fairy tale marriage she grew into the bitter old woman who orchestrated the St. Bartholomew Day’s Massacre. And third, she invented the very first pair of high heel shoes to go with that wedding dress, so she wouldn’t feel so bad about being a short Italian girl surrounded by the king’s tall French mistresses. This third fact may in fact help to explain the second one.

“You know what, Lucy?” asked Sparks with a wicked grin. “I’m going to let Rarity pick out the perfect dress for you when she arrives—it will be great for my story, and I’ll even foot the bill on the off chance that my paper doesn’t. And if she thinks that dress is the right one for you, then that’s clearly the dress you deserve.”

The girl looked carefully at the dress she had been touching, and then slowly backed away.

Before I knew it, it was finally time to speak with the mysterious crafter of all of this beauty...the other Rarity.

The shopkeeper ushered her pair of customers out of the building, then rolled the facade back into place to “close” the shop. Then she left to fetch Rarity.

Curiously, she never removed her oversize headphones the entire time, despite the fact that they were no longer attached to anything.

Next door to Rarity’s Boutique, Sparks discovered another canvas building, this one an electronics repair shop. From within could be heard what sounded like a live performance by Stevie Wonder, but in fact must have been an incredibly good sound system:

When you believe in things that you don’t understand,
Then you suffer.
Superstition ain’t the way.

Standing outside the open tent flap of this structure was Chuckles the Clown. He was wearing a baggy parody of a business suit...and still had his face paint on. His arms were crossed and his eyes had a faraway look, but he had a satisfied smile on his painted lips.

“Good afternoon, Mr. ... um, Chuckles,” the young woman said by way of greeting.

“Good afternoon, Miss Nightly,” Chuckles said evenly, his eyes never moving from their target.

“I don’t suppose there’s anything you can tell me about this Rarity before I meet her. Being her neighbor and all.”

“Miss Rarity,” said Chuckles. “She pretends not to care about titles or compliments, but she does like being called ‘Miss’. Of course, that depends on which Miss Rarity you’re about to meet.” With these words, his smile turned into a disapproving frown.

Sparks Nightly turned slightly to look in the direction in which Chuckles the Clown had been gazing for the past minute. It turned out to be the top of the circus big top tent, where a woman in a cloak was crouched down. As Sparks watched, she climbed a rope tent attached to the sloped roof in order to reach a trapeze bar that had been secured to the central pole of the tent. There, she sat herself down and arranged some equipment she had been carrying around her neck, extending a long antenna before producing a pair of binoculars. Sparks looked away just in time to prevent being caught in the view of those binoculars.

Sparks couldn’t be certain, but she had a strong suspicion that this was the same cloaked woman from earlier.

“Chuckles, did you wish to see me?” came a voice from an entirely different direction.

Sparks craned her neck around, to two figures on the other side of the businessman/clown. One was the shop girl from earlier.

And the other was Rarity the Pony, who was standing very still, her large blue eyes fixed to Sparks’ in a shocked expression.

Chuckles finally wrested his eyes away from the woman sitting atop the tent to face the reporter and the silent girl beside her. “If you could give us a few minutes?” he asked them quietly. “She’s not very enthusiastic about the press, so we told her she was going to meet me instead of you. I’m sure I can convince her to give you a few minutes of her time.”

“Um...alright,” Sparks said after a few silent seconds, before grabbing the girl’s hand and trying to walk away.

The girl, however, refused to move.

“Come on, ...?” Sparks urged, embarrassed to realize that she had forgotten her name.

“Peppermint Patty,” the girl said, deadpan, and then started walking.

“No, I’m pretty sure that isn’t it,” said Sparks.

From a spot next to the entrance to Rarity’s Boutique, Sparks witnessed a hushed but quite animated argument between the clown and...what appeared to be the pony.

At first, I thought I was being tricked, for the Rarity I was introduced to then was the pony I had already met. That I was being asked to believe in the existence of talking magical unicorns, in this day and age.

“She told me she wasn’t Rarity,” Sparks muttered to herself, trying to figure this out. And in fact the teenager standing next to the pony hadn’t opened her mouth once during the entire conversation. As the pony made what was surely a trained gesture of putting a hoof to her forehead in mock-exasperation, the cape she was wearing slipped to one side, revealing the existence of a speaker strapped to her back. And then Chuckles reached down and extended the collapsed antenna that was attached to that speaker.

& & &

“Oh no, I couldn’t wear anything like that!” Sparks’ “niece” exclaimed a few minutes later, as the store clerk held up the dress that Rarity’s voice had picked out for her. “I mean, what would my friends think? They’re not into any of the girly stuff.”

“Unlike you,” the voice over the speaker said with an audible knowing grin. “Well, what about a cape then? I think this shade of orange would look fantastic on you, and I think your friends would agree.”

The group was by this time out of sight of the woman atop the neighboring tent. Of course, it certainly helped that Chuckles was walking beside them, narrating their current location as they went.

At this location was a structure shaped like the spines of an umbrella, from which hung a large variety of capes, in both child and adult sizes, brightly colored on both front and back. Sparks found herself strangely attracted to a bright red adult-sized example.

“Why are they so short?” she asked the pony beside her. “And this scalloped design on the bottom...”

“It’s for catching the wind, my dear. We are about a decade past the last time that anybody considered a dress cape useful. Those long weighted capes are meant to accessorize standing still, with their dull exterior sides contrasted with striking interiors exposed with every slightest move. These capes, on the other...um, hand, are designed for motion, for people on the go! You see, I dream of the day when the dreary streets of your cities will be accented by the bright colors of my capes—it would go a long way towards making them look like the...some of the places I used to know, places I’m not sure if I’ll ever go back to. And...”—the pony actually started producing tears at this point, so well was she trained to respond to the tone of her mistress’ voice—“...if it turns out I can’t ever return there, at least I can make this place a little bit brighter, a little bit more hopeful, a little bit more...home.”

Chuckles kneeled down and produced a flower-patterned handkerchief out of his wrist to wipe away the pony’s tears.

“It makes me feel like I can fly!” exclaimed the girl with the pink cape tied around her neck, as she ran out of the shop.

“I’ll take it,” Sparks said with a bittersweet smile, gently rubbing the fabric of the red cape between her fingers. “This one too. I could use a little more flying in my life.”

The shop clerk rang up the purchases without a word, then repeated her procedure of closing up the shop.

“Thank you very much for your time, Rarity,” Sparks said as she walked into the late afternoon sunlight. Her eyes were not on the pony, but on the grinning woman sitting atop the big top.

The pony bumped her lightly, forcing her to shift her attention. “Think nothing of it,” the voice from the speaker said. “Are you sure you don’t want a longer interview? I had no idea that you big city reporters could be so accommodating! I’m not sure if I have anything else to say, but I do think that was rather short—don’t you?”

“Don’t worry about a thing,” the disguised reporter replied. “I’m pretty sure I know exactly how I’ll end this story.”

& & &

At first, I thought I was being tricked, for the Rarity I was introduced to then was the pony I had already met. That I was being asked to believe in the existence of talking magical unicorns, in this day and age.
But the truth was much more mundane, if a little heartbreaking. For you see, Rarity the Pony wore a speaker and an antenna, and somewhere nearby a woman with a microphone and another antenna was using that setup to talk to the first person she had met in months capable of fully understanding what she was doing in this easily missed North Jersey circus. The Other Rarity was a woman dedicated, even obsessed, with the idea of making everyone she met look as beautiful on the outside as she could see they were on the inside. But the one person her wonderful gift could never make presentable, the one person who would never be presentable to the world at large, was the human Rarity herself. So she hid behind a pony. Some, seeing the act without guessing the reason, would call her a gimmick in desperate search for celebrity. I instead proudly proclaim her to be the greatest undiscovered fashionista of the era, and I invite anyone who wishes to catch a glimpse of what beauty truly is to take a ride down the 95 to North Jersey, to track down the current whereabouts of the Pagliacci Brothers Family Circus, now on tour throughout the cultural wilds of northern New Jersey.

“Wow,” William Martin exclaimed a week later upon reaching the end of Sparks Nightly’s latest fashion article. “How did you manage to pull that off? Officer Gloomfeld only gave you a couple hours’ notice!”

“It wasn’t too hard,” Chuckles said as he reclaimed his copy of the newspaper. “I had a full collection of City sections, as the back pages are just packed with little articles I use to build all my conspiracy theories. Well...that I used to use. So I was able to get a good read on this ‘Sparks Nightly’ character from that, enough to figure out that like me, she had a profoundly suspicious mind, and would never buy the idea that Rarity could actually talk in a million years. After that, I just asked myself what would be necessary to trick me into believing what I wanted her to believe, and went with that. It wouldn’t have worked if Livinia wasn’t such a good actress.”

“I notice you didn’t have any problem lying to her.”

“I did not lie to her. Read that article again. I never once said that Livinia was supplying Rarity’s voice. I just presented her with an option that was more believable than the truth. And Rarity insisted on acting like herself after I let her in my plan—she could have played dumb, you know.”

William sighed as he turned to leave. “So in other words,” he said over his shoulder, “you made her famous by proving that Discord was absolutely right about us. This world may well have been as magical as Equestria once, but we humans killed the wonder by refusing to believe in it.”

Chuckles chose to say nothing in reply.

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