The Anatomy of Aesthetics

by AltruistArtist

Fig. 4. — The Joints (of a Flock)

For the past five years as a couturier, Flaire tended to the periphery of other ponies’ existences. She had cultivated a beautiful absence of presence, a polite, white-faced observer who hovered past customers on her fitting pedestal as they adorned themselves with silks and sequins, transforming into the center of attention.

Now, Flaire was getting approached on the street.

“Excuse me, are you Flaire d’Mare?”

“Flaire d’Mare! I saw a Wonderbolt go into your boutique the other day!”

“You’re the owner of Beware the FLAIR, right? Are you designing something for General Flash?”

She was never stopped this way for questions about her noble patronage. It was gauche to hail one's tailor on the street, and amongst Canterlot, nobles made up more than half the populace. For them to visit an independent couturier was unremarkable. For the Wonderbolts, however…

In the city, Flaire began to wear her veiling derby hat with prim regularity, lest she be prompted for a surprise interview at the grocer's fruit stand.

As a filly, the streets of San Palomino were once her personal runway. Clarity would cheer as Flaire trotted down the sidewalk in ostentatious frills only a child could adore. Color once draped her like a second skin. And her neighbors never ran out of remarks for the foal who trailed taffeta behind her as though she bore a pair of gossamer wings.

Flaire’s cutie mark appeared when she was a mere eight years old. The memory was sharp and clean like the needle she lifted in her magic that day. Tongue poking out from the corner of her lip. Knotting the cobalt-colored thread. She completes the final stitch on the sleek blue and gold flight suit Clarity inspired through her drawing — and her flank begins to shine. A flashing bright light.

Mom’s hoof comes down over Clarity’s eyes.

“Oh my, so early to have gotten your mark, dear,” Mom frets. Clarity squirms in her grasp, hooves scudding on the carpet. She pulls free, and Flaire thinks she’s reaching to try on her new outfit. But her pale pink wings wrap Flaire in a hug.

“Of course she got it early,” Clarity says in that adoring, sleepy way of hers.

“Flaire is good at everything.”

—

We don’t want to deviate too far from tradition. Ponies want to see something familiar!

So read the note General Flash sent in response to Flaire’s first round of design concepts. At her desk, hoof to her temple, she had lost track of how deep into her pack of Marelbroros she was. It was dark outside, the Mare in the Moon peering in through her ajar window.

Eyes watering from the smoke and the hot exhaustion of her candle, Flaire’s magic rustled through her sketches. Rendered with the sharpness of anatomical models, outlines of mare and stallion silhouettes flicked by under her vision, each clad in a variation of the same base design. Aerodynamic full body flight suits to insulate against the drop in temperature in the stratosphere. Goggles to shield the eyes from wind debris. They were sleeker, more streamlined — protective. They met the regulations sent by the previous manufacturer without fault.

“I don't understand.”

Flaire laid out her sketches on her coffee table the next afternoon, General Flash sitting opposite her, studying her work with furrowed brows. This was the second time the tenth leader of the Wonderbolts had opened her boutique doors, crossed her white tile floor, and ascended the stairs to her living room. Flaire put out her cigarette and opened the windows before he arrived. She even misted the throw pillows with lavender.

General Flash was staid in his manner as he lifted his head, upright on her couch with hind hooves on the floor, forehooves neatly placed on his haunches. He was dressed in his outmoded jacket and cap, still bereft of the trousers. Flaire realized she had never seen him naked.

“They’re very different,” Flash said. He cleared his throat. “I mean no offense, Miss d’Mare. But, in truth, I was expecting minor changes. New materials and the like. Not…” He lifted a sketch, eyes narrowing. “Are these meant to conceal our faces?”

His broad hoof touched the edge of the pencil-lined stallion’s jaw. The head was filled in with a fine scrape of blue colored pencil, capturing the idea of a hood and goggles to conceal the face of the aviator who wore it.

Flaire nodded, heart hammering a beat too fast. “For maximum protection of your eyes, your face — all your vital sensory organs.” She gestured to another image of the same design, this one fitted for a mare. “The mask also suggests anonymity. It asks you to envision yourself in this suit. That you, too, could be a Wonderbolt. As you say—” Flaire forced a smile and pantomimed a welcoming gesture, performed with a hoof rather than a wing— “Will you fly with us?”

Flash chuckled. “I see the intent. It’s an inspiring gesture, but, ah…” His eyes swivled upward, outward, searching between her Tiffaneigh lamp and her floral wallpaper for his next words. “How might I put this? We have a certain legacy to uphold, Miss d’Mare. One representing generations of pegasi who’ve worn the Wonderbolts’ dress uniforms for our aerial work.”

Flaire’s lips ghosted with a smile, yet her withers twitched. She cleared her throat. “And in my professional opinion, I believe it would be best to separate those dress uniforms from your performance wear. Save the former for ceremonial appearances, certainly. But in the long term, you all really do need something more sustainable, more safe, for your work in the air.”

“‘A pegasus in the air is never safe, but a pegasus on the ground is never alive,’” General Flash recited. He chuckled. “Sorry, that's an old flock saying. You understand the meaning though, yes?”

Flaire’s ears jerked back. “I do.”

“Then you understand the essential nature of our role.” There was a tight smile on his face — a face that had once beamed with open joy at the wonder he brought. A face Flaire now struggled to look at. “Our caps and jackets have been a tradition of the Wonderbolts’ performances since the time of General Firefly. This is how we honor our history.”

“If history demands that much honor, then the Wonderbolts should all be dressed in Pegasopolian armor.” Flaire's tail tossed against the edge of her chaise, and she asked, “What happened to representing our nation’s progress?”

“It’s a thing best done subtly, Miss d’Mare.”

And though they were the only two in the room, Flash got close to her. He stood, crossed the floor, and his muzzle came down beside her ear. “If I may be frank: abrupt change always signifies that there’s been a problem. We’ve been fortunate that Swift Kick made a full recovery and is enjoying his early retirement. But if we stepped out on the stage with an entirely new appearance to our uniforms, ponies would start asking questions and making assumptions.”

Flaire’s neck stiffened away from him. Her nostrils twitched, her tongue running behind her teeth. Lacking a cigarette, she caught the crisp scent of ozone and bergamot wreathing Flash, a splash of cologne on his clean collar. A stallion who spent so much time miles in the sky still affected himself with fragrance.

“Swift Kick retired?” Flaire asked. “He couldn’t have been older than twenty.”

Flash nodded solemnly. He stepped back, removed his cap and held it to his chest. “It was the best decision. His body healed, but… Well, us pegasi, we can get spooked when something causes us to drop from the sky, spooked in a way that’s near permanent. Many refer to it as fall-shock, and, well, Swift seems to have caught it.”

“Fall-shock…” Flaire breathed, trying on the shape of the term like couture in her size custom-designed for somepony else. She swallowed. “I hope that doesn’t mean he’s doomed to be terrified of flying from here on out. ‘A pegasus on the ground,’ and all.”

Flash’s chin jerked. “A keen observation, Miss d’Mare. Only time can tell us that. But to force him back into service would doom him far more severely than time spent Equus-bound.”

Once again on the subject of Swift’s accident, Flaire prompted, “You’re talking like this is all familiar to you.”

“It is, Miss d’Mare. It simply is.” Flash said this with a plain humility that made Flaire’s gut twist. “And if it seems unfamiliar to you, that’s because we do all we can to keep these things from reaching the press. Imagine, if you will, you were an aviator who suffered a terrible accident. You wouldn’t want your story paraded through the city in front of uncompassionate eyes.”

“No,” Flaire said, not having to imagine much at all, “I wouldn’t.”

Flash nodded. “Then you understand the worth of keeping this story between us.”

Flaire’s lips tugged upward in a congenial smile. Her nerves were buzzing and embrittled. “Of course.”

Flash tapped a hoof to one of the robust gold buttons down the front of his jacket. “I’d like to see something closer to this. Remember: crash tests, regulations, tradition. I know you won’t disappoint.” He smiled, the corners of his eyes creasing.

"I... I won't. I'll do everything within my power and capability to ensure your uniforms are safe and within your vision." Flaire swallowed, a bitter aftertaste of tobacco tinging her throat. "In fact, in the interest of that... I was wondering if I might make a request from you, when the work is done. A favor."

Flash nodded. “For all your efforts, Miss d'Mare, you'll be handsomely rewarded in return. You have my word on that.”

Flaire swallowed that promise like a spoonful of analgesic syrup.

—

“He seriously didn’t like these? Lady, they’re so cool.”

Fairy Flight was rifling through Flaire’s sketches while her sewing machine purred along under the bidding of her magic.

“It’s all right.” Flaire’s hooves kneaded the material under the stomping presser foot, intent in her focus. “I got carried away by sentiment. The design matters less than the fidelity of its fabric.”

Fairy clicked her tongue and whistled. “But, these lightning bolt patterns on the sides, around the legs…” There was the watery turn of a page. Fairy laughed. “You’ve sure got me sold on lightning bolts beating out polka dots for the title of ‘Best Shape for Clothes.’”

Across the past weeks, Fairy Flight had been spending lackadaisical stretches of time at Beware the FLAIR. She appeared without letter or preamble at Flaire’s door, sometimes holding a pair of dripping snow-cones between her feathers, one of them meant as a sticky offering to Flaire herself.

Flaire never closed the door to her, even during business hours. Fairy was energetic and distractible, but under her rascally manner, she had a delicacy about her. She entertained fillies who entered the boutique with their mothers, telling them stories about her work in the Wonderbolts, a conspiratorial wing held to her snout like they were the lucky recipient of some wonderful secret. If Flaire needed something, Fairy helped to fetch it. She moved about the room like a dusky pink cloud, stirring up a sugar-scented wind from the downdraft of her wings, an air that caressed Flaire’s face and soothed her nerves.

“Pegasi aren’t meant to be alone,” Mom would say. “Because, we’re a flock. We look out for one another.” She wraps Clarity and Flaire in her wings, even though her white-furred, unicorn daughter looks so much like the stallion who packed his suitcase, donned his trilby, and started walking away from their home so long ago.

Mom hadn’t hugged her like that since she was nine years old.

The sewing machine snapped off. Flaire levitated the basic mockup of a sharp ‘Bolts dress jacket. Her magic yanked the sleeves, assessing their tensile strength.

“Ready to test it?” Flaire asked.

Fairy replied with a vigorous nod, her gelled mane wobbling. “Future-Admiral Fairy Flight, at your service.” She saluted, her wing bending into a charming curve.

—

They met out on the rolling Canterlot hills beyond the city square stage. The fuzzy green slopes slicked with golden light each morning with the rising dawn. Every Summer Sun Celebration, they became incandescent. It was difficult to believe the sky had been dreary and overcast not a month ago. No matter how many storms Equestria weathered, the sun rose anyway.

Fairy glided above, cobbling together the sparse clouds into a single cumulonimbus, dense and gray. Below, Flaire set down a ponnequin held in her magic, the featureless white equine dressed in her mockup jacket. She scrubbed it down with a fiber cloth, shoring up a static charge. Then, she ran, her bare coat prickling as though she had been the one scoured with friction.

From a safe distance behind a line of shrubs, Flaire grit her teeth and yelled, “Now!”

Fairy’s hind hooves came down hard on the cloud. It expelled the quick snap of a bolt. An ugly rattling crack.

One… Two… Three…

Flaire’s heart was pounding, her hooves shielding her eyes.

“Woohoo! Look at that!” Fairy’s whooping voice carried across the field. “Not a mark on it!”

A cold gust of wind swept Flaire’s mane as Fairy swooped overhead, bringing the scent of ozone. She alighted in front of her –“Oof!”– and came down hard, her fetlocks bending as they touched the grass. “Lady, it worked! Uh — you okay?”

Flaire’s chest was heaving, her legs clenched tight and trembling. Woefully unclothed, nothing obscured the pin of her ears or the tuck of her tail. “I’m fine!” she snapped, an unintended heat roughing her voice.

Fairy flinched, showing a rictus grin. “If you say so!” She gestured to the ponnequin, small in the distance. “Did you hear me? It worked! I don’t know what kind of magic you applied to that thing, but I’d sure say it’s shock resistant. Shock impossible.”

Flaire collected herself. She had been smoking less with Fairy around and a maddening, chronic jitter electrified her nerves. Coughing, she ran her hoof through the grass. “That's because it’s made from a blend of cotton and elastane, rendered with an anti-shock spell for good measure. Both fabrics are comfortable to wear, soft on the primaires, and averse to generating static buildup.”

She rocked back on her haunches, and indulged, briefly. “It's a blend I crafted myself through a bit of tedious textile spellwork of my own design. Something I adapted from my studies in medicinal magic. There are few unicorn doctors who have mastered the art of regrowing tissue at a cellular level. I certainly was never one of them, but I studied their theorems. As it seems, their work is transferable to the practice of knitting the cells of cotton fibers through synthetic weave.”

Flaire cleared her throat, her eyes dropping. “Fabric has its own anatomy, but many don’t recognize that. It recalls everything done to it; it’s not unlike flesh in that way. The cotton knew it belonged to something alive, once. And it longs to close, much like a wound wants to knit back together. When you add magic, you’re merely helping along a process that was already there. Completing a circle, half-drawn.” She snorted. "I've seen other tailors attempt to cast magical enhancements on already-complete garments. It doesn't take the same way. The magic must be incorporated thread by thread. It has to truly be a part of the clothing."

Fairy was awestruck, mouth agape, primaries quivering. “Sweet work, lady!” She bobbed in place, rocking her joints. “That’s a shame about never learning cell regrowth for ponies. Otherwise, I might have asked you to fix up my lousy fetlocks.”

Flaire frowned. She crouched low in the grass, examining Fairy’s foreleg. “When you landed, I saw that they hyperextended.”

Fairy grinned, dimple rising. “I told you my stretchiness messes with my landings sometimes. Just came down a little too fast ‘cause I was excited.”

Flaire squinted, attempting to parse through those dusty rose-colored hairs to the joint bundled beneath. “Even if the tissue itself isn’t something I can coax, I may be able to make something for you.” She nibbled her hoofnail in thought. “Perhaps… a splint of some sort.”

Fairy was giddy. “Lady, if you could do something like that, I’d be on cloud nine!”

Flaire sat up, blowing a lock of mane from her snout. “I’ll do what I can. Though, whatever I create will have to come once these uniforms are finished.” The ponnequin hovered on its stand in the distance, a white-faced observer in its unscorched jacket.

“Well, you’ve nailed the fabric! I feel safer already just having seen it in action.” The tips of Fairy’s wings were fluttering, a sheen of mischief in her eye. “This calls for congratulations, pegasus-style!”

And then she did something outrageous. Her wings spread wide, she scooped her hooves around Flaire’s barrel, and she jetted skyward. The white flail of Flaire’s hooves swept below her vision, the ground sucking away, the shrubs like pin pricks over the wide, wide expanse of green.

“You— You— You!” Each exclamation was whisked away on the rapid pulses of Flaire’s affrighted heart in her throat.

“You’ve earned a celebratory flight!” Fairy declared, her belly jerking against Flaire’s back with her laughter. “A well-deserved honor for my squadron-mate and her fancy magic and her clever mind!”

The rushing wind smeared moisture from Flaire’s eyes. She blinked, her hooves clutching up toward her body, stomach reeling, her frightened animal nerves propelling cortisol through her blood. But the fast jump of terror was soon to abate.

Canterlot dropped away. The field, the stage. All those worldly haunts made insignificant in the sky.

Flaire could see the horizon.

The memory was limitless, like the dark expanse of atmosphere over the edge of Equus. Clarity’s little forehooves hug under Flaire’s barrel, her wings fluttering, straining, grunting. Trying to lift her. Grass stains sweeping Flaire’s dragging belly. Both of them giggling.

“One day I’ll be big enough to carry you!” Clarity laughs.

—

The ground was no longer familiar. Laying on her back in the field, Flaire stared at the sky. Blithe and blue, a place that should never be able to hurt you.

Beside her, Fairy was weaving clover blossoms into a chain. Tugging the snapped-off stems into knots with the nimble work of her hooves and teeth, the air smelled verdant.

Flaire began to laugh, flush and restless. “Why do you keep hanging around with me?”

Fairy glanced over her shoulder. A broken grass blade was pressed to her cheek. “I dunno.” She gave an exaggerated shrug, flashing a comical frown. Turning away, she grinned, twisting another knot with her hooves. “Can’t be because you’re cool, or something. Or that I admire you.”

“Pfaugh!” Flaire spat. “Now you’re joking.”

“Pretty often,” Fairy recited, tying her final knot, “but, I’m dead serious, lady. Is it massively corny to say I’d want to be like you when I grow up? Even though I’m already grown up?”

Flaire scarcely imagined there was enough of her left to grow up into.

Fairy reached across the small gap between them and set her chain of clover blossoms over Flaire’s horn like a coronet. “A fairy crown for you, lady!” she announced.

The round edge of a buttery cloverleaf hung in Flaire’s vision as she stared at the mare opposite her.

“Why?”

“‘Cause they're fun to make! And you earned it.”

“No, I mean…” Flaire shook her head. “Why would you want to be like me?”

Fairy smiled. Her cheek was propped up by her hoof, effortless and casual beyond belief.

“‘Cause you help ponies,” she said, like it was the easiest thing in the world.

—

Those words were a distant haunt in Flaire's ears as she sat at her vanity mirror that evening, wiping greasy gray crescents of mascara from her lashes. She stared into the reflection of her stormy pink-gold hazel eyes, an intense shade that always made her appear fresh from weeping.

The small mahogany chest was open beside her, revealing its inner colors. The crown of clover blossoms sat atop the yellowed sheets of paper within.

“It’s to protect her, Mommy. If she falls,” Flaire would say to her mother’s protests. Mom is tugging the sleeve of Clarity’s flight suit, undressing her. Clarity is blinking rapidly, her blue eyes glossy. Mom’s hoof flies up. “Flaire. It’s a costume! It won’t do anything but encourage her to fly. Do you want to put your sister in danger?”

“She won’t be! Because I can put a magic spell on her flight suit. And that will protect her no matter what!”

Staring down at her hopeful, pleading, unicorn daughter, Mom almost cries. “This isn’t the sort of thing magic can help.”

Flaire reached to the lid with a shaky hoof and brought it closed. Sealing it off from the light.

She opened her history book to the image of General Firefly, set down a fresh sheet of paper, and brandished her pencil.

Flaire tried again. For that was all she could do.

Comments

[-Brutus]

I'm stating to slowly question of what happened to Clarity. I await more upcoming chapters with baited breath.

[AltruistArtist]

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Thank you all! I'm glad you've been enjoying it so far. ♡

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The concept is indeed turned on its head in this opening scene — well noticed! The way you've described the trick for measuring the distance of a thunderstorm is correct, but Flaire has internalized a backwards version as a compulsory response that operates on her mind's own distressed internal logic. There is a bit of intentional ambiguity in those passages and more on this subject will appear in the coming chapters.

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I also appreciate the setup between Flaire and General Flash, which is straight out of the golden age of Hollywood.

You've given me such a glowing compliment with this, thank you so much! I really appreciate your keen analysis of the tone, too.

As an additional note, while Flaire may as well be an OC with what little we know of her in the show and supplemental material, she is actually a canon character! She, along with General Flash and Fairy Flight, are named in episode 21 of Season 4, "Testing, Testing 1,2,3." All three of them are as far into background character territory as you can get, and I was inspired to give her and these other notable figures of Wonderbolts history a bit of attention, as I don't believe I've ever seen anyone attempt to flesh them out.

[PaintedPony]

I love how you give insights to your characters. You're doing very good at fleshing them out. In a way you remind me of Admiral Biscuit in your ability to do so. My guess on what's going on with Clarity. Clarity was Flaire's sib and something happened with lightening that either killed or disabled her so she couldn't fly again... Flaire wanted to become a doctor to help her, but couldn't take cutting up cadavers. Clarity eventually died of a broken heart because she couldn't fly again. Perhaps Fairy is Clarity reincarnated.
Just what I'm getting out of it. No matter if I'm right or wrong, I'm really enjoying this story.