THE EPIC RARITY WRITE OFF

by Write Off

The Bead

The Bead

The package weighed heavy on the front step of the Carousel Boutique. To be sure she hadn't yet picked it up with her neat white clean hooves or waved it about with her magic yet, but its delivery had weighed heavily on her mind.

Upon returning from her errands, Rarity very deftly wafted the package through the front door, holding the burlap sack strong and straight, horn-height, avoiding this easy chair and that double-sofa.

With a delicate twist of a hoof, the sign on the front door flipped from a bold OPEN to an equally assured CLOSED. This was a special day for a special cloth sample. It'd taken some weeks to 'procure' the item, knowing this person and that pony and that dragon from back in her fashion-design days in Canterlot, but the rumors -- oh, the rumors! She felt a little faint now it was finally on her desk, smelling faintly of tobacco (packing material, she supposed.)

Throwing back the slim elastic cord set about the bolt on the side, pulling the cloth out its narrow package, Rarity's breath caught. Words would have failed her. The tiny pin-point sequins shone brilliantly in the bright light of the Boutique in the late afternoon. Not a single one felt 'out of place,' and the gentle variations in blue -- god but did it seem a shimmering night sky, just after sunset.

Rarity twisted her prize this way and that way, hoping to turn it into something … more. It was darling, it was elegant, it was the most exacting pattern-work she'd ever seen (come to think of it, she had no idea how they had so expertly strung three tiny beads per loop, creating a luxurious hoof-feel and impressing 'three dimensions' from all angles.) In all, she had perhaps a quarter-bolt of fabric. As she recalled she had to snipe several well-to-do ladies in Canterlot Society at auction by anonymous proxy, at great cost --

The circulars and rumors had all been true. This was some of the most gorgeous embroidery Rarity had ever seen as a dressmaker, as a lover of fashion, or as an equine being. She could -- and probably would -- stare at it for hours, putting it this way or that, wondering how to magic it into a scarf, into a bobbin-kerchief, into the broadcloth for buttons. The white-and-violet pony sighed contentedly.

… She then remembered a side-off rumor of this "Lady Pearl" creating full dresses. Anyone who could make small work such as this must have grand and wonderful designs, all sitting half-dashed and lying gorgeous about a boutique somewhere. Another fantastically fabulous female designer (who else could be a 'Miss Pearl'?) pining, aching to be discovered, a nascent new rising star o'er Equestrian fashion -- with Rarity to show her the way, the ropes, the bobbins …

Rarity's mind reeled with possibilities.

As her mind raced, so too did her hoof to her purse. More than enough for a ride out of town, by carriage or that new Friendship Express to Appaloosa, certainly, and meals, and another carriage ride at her destination--

What was her destination? Her magic flitted to the simple brown shipping envelope inside the 'simple, indiscreet' package.

MISS SNOWDEN PEARL

SOUTH SLOPE 1

NBPR 1, APPALOOSA ADJUNCT DISTRICT

---

The trip had taken longer than she'd thought. Though Rarity didn't relish the overnight car ride, the simple cucumber-and-cheese sandwiches served on the trolley car, the unexpected tips given to the carriage-boys, or the sudden oppressive heat "out West," at least she could look forward to meeting a new star.

Her sleep had been slight, but it was marbled in the same delicate blue as her swatch. Her bed unfortunately had been as lumpy as her hastily-packed day trip bag.

However, having given her address to the carriage-driver, the seats at least were comfortable. The scenery was beautiful if sparse, rolling red rock under a brilliant blue sky with scrawny green plants gripping at the road side. This little rock-farm here, a spittle of irrigated crops there; the orchards were far, far back in Appaloosa 'proper' as the bellhop had put it. The landscape stretched out for miles and miles, not a single thing breaking her reverie--

"Ah, s'up ahead there, miss," shot back the main driving pony. The drawing horses nodded in agreement, eyes all drawn to a large dingy roadside sign --

Native Buffalo Peoples Reservation One

Under the Authority of Brursar Brownbrush

And the Queendom of Equestria

---

And then suddenly she was there, at "South Slope One," which turned out to be a small cow-path the carriage could barely handle, brown and black broken rocks tumbling the wheels this way and that way, jarring Rarity something fierce. The men had taken a short walk to the nearest watering hole, making small conversation with some of the natives --

The rather … chubbier, hairy, hump-backed natives. With horns.

Rarity coughed out a little dust and made her way to the house 'proper.' Everyone here said 'proper,' including the Buffalo men with their rumbling accents and kind smiles to the strange pale Caballo from "Out East." The house, however, was very little 'proper'; it was somehow carved mud and chipped stone, leaning perilously into a bluff and tented in places with plastic bunting and corrugated steel plates here and there. Electric poles drew Rarity's eye away to a small generator and the pump the main driver was currently drinking from.

"Can I help you?" came an old broken voice.

In a corner, in a low cloud of acrid smoke, was an old crone of a buffalo, huddled over a bowl and staring at Rarity with the most ineffable expression.

"I'm looking for someone," piped Rarity, "I'm-"

"You're someone from out east looking for someone, mmm," hemmed the bent woman in low flat slow tones. Her bones seemed to prod through a shabby hoary carpet of skin, a simple sweat band drooping over one eye. "Have some water."

"I drank quite a bit before leaving town," Rarity offered, eyes darting around for a ladle nonetheless. It was so warm, and that woman wasn't exactly being gracious, her hooves darting round and about something. Must be some nervous tic of dementia, the poor dear.

"Mmm, well, who's this 'someone'?" A dry cackle rose a bit at the last word; she must have heard the way Rarity narrowly avoided 'some pony.' It wasn't polite, but neither was making light of being polite or correct in … tense racial circumstances.

"Snowden Pearl," Rarity bit. Nothing wrong in being forthcoming.

The figure began to keen and convulse, a low keening sound rumbling deep in her throat. Rarity stood stock still, not sure what to do -- the smoke from her short-barrel pipe seemed to waft and weave, making her look so terribly hellish and confusing in the borrowed light from the flagstones out back, a real horror in a small way -- until it rose to laughter as her bowl tumbled over.

"Ah, oh god, I swear," barked the old woman, hoof scraping at her little baubles, getting them back in the thick wooden bowl, "You people just can't damn well pronounce Buffalo, can you?"

"You're- Miss Pearl?"

Rarity was now acutely aware she was reeling on her hooves.

"Mmmm," nodded the old woman with a gleam in her cloudy green eyes, "And you have … clean hooves," she motioned with her chipped brown-black hooves through the soft earth, pulling back a hoof full of brilliant red squarish beads, pinprick-small.

“I came to look at some of your dresses,” Rarity offered quietly, reaching instinctively for her purse, “I mean, that’s to say you have the most luxurious fabrics, they catch quite a sum at Canterlot-”

“The scraps I give away get sold, the rest I really just do to kill time,” Snowden rumbled, pulling deep from a pipe. Her hooves had resumed to their invisible minutions on a slight strand. A low mutter, "After all, time's killing me."

Rarity gasped, "But all the articles on this newfound artist, they say you're up and coming--"

"They're being kind," a rasp, "I'm eighty. I won't be ninety, there's nothing 'new' about me and I'm not going anywhere," a pause, a snort, "nothing worse than being a goddamn 'found' artist."

The snowy-white pony with purple tresses looked about the room. An old stove on a far corner, a few 'primitive piece' furniture items, a deeply worn rug -- they could have been home to any part of the last century. There wasn't much new or hip or posh about this woman. She'd stood the test of time her sagging-bones look and her loving-grandmother hornpipe tobacco in this place for 20 years, maybe more, wittling away at her beautiful fabrics -- "to kill time."

"You make the most wonderful art," chimed Rarity. It came out a little thin.

No response but a shrug. It sounded loud in the silence of the settlement.

"I came from Ponyville to see what dresses you'd have made," Rarity admitted, making special notice of the ground at her hooves.

"Mmm," came noncommittal around that stem of a pipe.

The clock on the mantlepiece clicked slowly. Dead stony silence would be so much more comforting than the rustle of the beats, the ticking of the clock, the little rheumy noises Snowden made as she sucked at her terrible tobacco and bullied her lungs to work properly.

Rarity made her apologies to the driver, tucked back in her little carriage, and sped away from the old woman and her old hut and back to the new bright clean Apaloosan train station. She'd take a luxurious ride back with simple watercress-and-cheese sandwiches. A smaller carriage would drive her back down to her little boutique. As always she'd weave her own easy-breezy magic and stud her clients with her own horn-picked gems … And she'd love every clean smooth moment of it. She'd love going through all the steps and preparation and presentation and marketing and sales; the adulation of the crowds, the eventual rise to stardom she'd had dreamt of with Sparkle Shores' endorsement or Photo Finish's media machine. She'd be giddy and joyous at all her hard work coming to bear, to be represented, to be … recognized.

And yet … all the 'art' she'd seen, of all the fabrics she'd darn and mend and transmute, nothing was quite as well-crafted as that horrible old woman's Sunday-knitting project. She'd fallen in love with that fabric, just as she'd fallen in love with making her own art.

But they weren't the same, not at all. It wasn't glorious high fashion fabric, it was … It was killing time. Killing away time in a rough cold hot terrible desert world in a little hovel. It wasn’t high brow art, it was a way of surviving as a thinking thing.

In the present, the here and now, Rarity rolled down the window and lolled out her head, blue yes turned to the brilliant desert sky. She could feel the sand starting to fleck into her well-oiled hair, but it just didn't matter. Lolling out her suddenly very heavy head out the window, focusing her eyes half-lidded at the sparse clouds up above, it felt right.

Just killing time.