To embellish the world

by TwiwnB

The beautiful mare seeking beauty

Rarity came into her house, forgot to shut the door, threw the picture into a corner and directly went to the nearest mirror she could find. She looked at herself, afraid of what was going to appear, but there she was, as magnificent as usual. Her mane was perfectly brushed and the hairs were flowing following the exact patterns she wanted while shining in their superb bright color. Her eyes were seductive and burning with an internal fire, circled only by the most precise and most well applied make-up. No trace of any wrinkle, no trace of any fat whatsoever. She was fit, she was young, she was still beautiful.

“He was only pranking me. It was all a bad joke.” She told herself out loud.

Still, she was afraid. Was she only beautiful in her own eyes? Was she blind to her own decline? She needed somepony else as a mirror, as, at that moment, she couldn’t trust just herself.

She went back to the hall of her house, saw the painting in a corner and said:

“What does he know anyway!?”

Then she rushed outside, directly to Twilight’s castle.

“Do I look fat to you?” she asked.

The guard at the entrance tried to understand what was going on, if one of the elements of harmony was hitting on him and how he should react.

“No, of course not.” He replied awkwardly. “Do you want to enter?”

Rarity ignored him. He might have been lying. Stallions tended to lie a lot about how mares look. Like Nimble Brush who had been smiling to her all along. She needed a true friend to tell her the truth about how she looked.

“Rarity?” Twilight asked. “What is going on?”

“Oh, it’s nothing really.” Rarity replied. “I was just wondering if you might be as kind to me as to tell me if I’m looking older than usual.”

It took Twilight about ten seconds to simply process the question. And still it wasn’t making sense.

“Well…” she tried to reply in a logical way, “You do are older than yesterday, as anypony is with time passing, so I guess you must look older than usual depending on the definition. Why?”

Rarity gasped, all her fears taking over with what she was considering as a confirmation. She jumped on Twilight, grasped her and asked with the most dramatic tone:

“Do I look fat Twilight? Please tell me! Do I look fat?”

The thought of calling the guards passed through Twilight’s mind. But only for a moment. Understanding that the problem was more emotional than rational, she changed her mindset, understood her previous mistake, and replied:

“Of course not.”

That was a new mistake that she immediately recognized. Mixing a negation with a positive reinforcement. Emotional talk was hard.

“Rarity, you are fit, very fit. Heck, you’re as fit as I am.” Twilight finally said.

“As you are?” Rarity replied with way much more fright than was politely possible.

“Don’t push it.” Twilight said, not in the mood to let herself be criticized. “Are you going to explain now?”

Rarity would have liked to explain, but then again, she had no idea what was really going on. Could she really say that she was on the point of crying because of a painting? Was it really making any sense? Would Twilight understand her turmoil?
She realized that she couldn’t get the truth from Twilight. She was her friend, so of course she would lie to her if she thought it would make her feel okay. She needed an unbiased opinion. Somepony who couldn’t lie at all.

“I can’t explain, I’ve got to go!” Rarity suddenly told Twilight, knowing what she had to do now. “Thanks for everything. Thanks for not wanting to hurt my feelings.”

And she left a very confused Twilight to rush to Sweet Apple Acres, and to Applejack.

“Look Rarity…” began the farm pony. “I’ve got quite a lot of work today, so it would make things a lot easier if you would tell me what is going on.”

“I just want you to tell me if I look like a hideous monster!” almost complained the white unicorn, as it seemed like a reasonable very easy question.

“It depends on what you call a monster…” Applejack replied. “You sure have a way to make things look complicated.”

“So I do look like a monster?” gasped Rarity, certain to have the confirmation to her fears.

Applejack sighed.

“You are no monster Rarity.” She told her. “I don’t know a lot of things about beauty and stuff, I mean, beauty is just beauty and a pony can look beautiful in the eye of somepony and not in the eye of another one. It’s one of the reasons why you shouldn’t care too much about it.”

The two big puppy eyes of Rarity were begging for more than such a semi answer. Applejack sighed again and added:

“For all I can tell, you do are beautiful sugarcube.”

Rarity burst out of joy. This had to be true if Applejack was saying it.

“So I don’t have any wrinkles?” she asked.

“No you don’t.” Applejack replied.

“And I’m not fat?” she asked again.

“No you don’t.”

“No grey hairs in my mane?”

“No.”

“Any wart I should be concerned about?”

“No, no, no and no!” Exploded Applejack. “How many times do I have to tell you? I might not be an expert, but you are beautiful and that’s final. Now please stop pestering me with that.”

It struck Rarity like a boulder would have. Applejack was no expert on beauty. Not that Applejack was ugly in any way, but Rarity would have certainly liked, and had already tried several times, to improve certain aspects, like the care of the mane, the clothes, the use of make-up, the poses, the smile, the looks, the care of the fur, and getting rid of all the dirt and working traces as well as using some more sophisticated perfume. Basically making some huge changes.
Applejack was probably saying the truth, but her truth, with her non expert eyes. This wasn’t sufficient for Rarity.

What if there were defaults Applejack was overlooking? What if she wasn’t able to see the wrinkles, and the fat, and the grey hairs?
This was driving her crazy. She forgot to thank Applejack and ran back to her home to mourn.

By chance, she had her emergency stack of ice-cream. It didn’t matter if it were to make her fatter, as she was probably fat already. And old. And ugly… She had wanted to get rid of the painting, but had ended contemplating it while eating. She still couldn’t understand. How had her beauty gone by so fast that she hadn’t been able to see it? She felt like she hadn’t really had the time to enjoy it. Or to share it.

She was beginning to wonder if it was so important for her to be so beautiful all the time after all. Now that she wasn’t anymore, why keep one caring about that? It would make her life so much easier not to care anymore and not to make any effort anymore. The tasteful ice-cream certainly wasn’t contradicting her there.
She had been so used to be beautiful and told she was beautiful for so long that she had ceased to think about what it meant to be ugly. All she remembered about that concept was that it was terrible to be ugly. It was sort of a sin.

She rose from her sofa. She couldn’t be ugly, she had no right to accept such a situation. If a dress was ugly, she could make it beautiful again. If the world was ugly, she could embellish it. It she happened to be ugly, then she would have to work twice as hard to change it.

Then her eyes lay down on the painting. It was the cause, the reason she was ugly. Nopony had said anything before that painting had come to the world. All she would have to do was to destroy it to cut the roots of her problem.
Rarity began to snigger maniacally. Quickly, she lit a fire in the chimney and, as soon as she saw the flames, took the picture into her hooves with the intent to throw it into the fire.

Comments

[cheesinator]

NO NOT THE PAINTING!!!!!!!!!!