Tea Time of the Soul
~`(\/)’~
“Twilight!” Rarity shouted after her companion. The forest was silent in response. She waited another moment before taking a deep breath to steady her nerves. “Alright, Rarity, calm down. She knows what she’s doing. Right?”
Still, a weird sense of déjà vu pervaded her thoughts. This place was crazy and that felt familiar. She hoped it didn’t mean what she thought it meant. Yet it would explain Twilight’s behavior.
Rarity started as she heard a humming coming from above. She swiveled her head all around looking for the source but it seemed to come from everywhere. Then her eyes caught something. A white tail moving rhythmically in the air. “Opal?”
The cat sat on a tall branch and the humming stopped as she turned her head to face her. It was her. Just what was her cat doing out in these woods. Then again, Opal could not belong to her at all in this world. But the cat still looked at her with a seemingly knowing expression. “Um, hello,” Rarity introduced herself, “Do you… Do you recognize me?”
Opal raised an eyebrow and then stood up to stretch. She gave Rarity one last look and then grinned widely and began to jump from branch to branch. “Wait!” Rarity followed after her. Strangely enough the cat seemed to stop at each branch in order for Rarity to follow. She was leading her somewhere, but where? And why?
Before long she could hear the sound of music in the distance. Opal was headed for that music. Out beyond the trees was a light that steadily grew brighter with the music. Rarity slowed to a halt as she reached the tree line and then looked up at Opal hesitantly. The cat had stopped at the edge of the forest and glanced down at her, regarding her with nod to the light. Rarity rubbed her temples and groaned. “Ugh, I must be out of my mind. Then again, this whole ordeal has been utterly mad.” She took a step into the clearing.
“It’s about to get a whole lot madder,” a voice came from behind her. Rarity spun but the source of the voice and Opal were already gone. When she glanced back at the clearing a small cottage with a giant table in the yard appeared before her. There were plenty of empty seats around it and it was decorated lavishly with teapots of every proportion and variety. At the head of the table she saw the source of the music she’d been hearing. A lone orange pony with a poofy brown mane cheered delightedly as he lifted a tea cup to a strangely animated rubber chicken with bunny ears. The stallion had on a large top hat and suit that seemed much too large for him but his springy mane kept it in place. They didn’t stop singing as Rarity approached.
“Um, excuse me?”
“One more time!” the rubber chicken shouted. They began to go into another song, completely oblivious to her presence.
“Excuse me!” she said a little louder. They still wouldn’t listen. “HEY!!”
The singing stopped as the two finally noticed her. The stallion with the hat frowned. “Young lady! Don’t you know its rude to interrupt an un-birthday song?”
“Very rude, indeed!” the bunny eared chicken repeated. They both humphed and dipped their saucers into their teacups before taking a bite out of the porcelain.
Rarity cringed. “I’m… sorry about that. I just need to… Wait, un-birthday?”
“Why yes,” the stallion replied. “Turns out it’s my friend the Hare’s un-birthday!”
“I thought it was your un-birthday, Hatter?” the chicken replied.
The Hatter scratched his chin with a honey dipper thoughtfully. “Young lady, perhaps it’s your un-birthday too?”
Rarity could feel herself quickly losing control of the situation. “Obviously, the ponies here would be just a wacky as the place,” she muttered. Still, no use in not being polite. She cleared her throat. “I’m dreadfully sorry to interrupt you, kind…. sirs,” she gave a confused glance to the rubber chicken that had now began pouring tea into thin air. Then he picked up a second tea pot and poured out what appeared to be the tea cup around it. “But I really just need directions out of this forest. Oh! And have you seen my friend? She wears all this garish purple and-”
The Hatter’s eyes drooped until his head fell on the table. He let out a snore and the chicken tilted his head to the side and began pouring tea into his ear. The Hatter immediately woke up, but he didn’t seem affected at all. “Young lady!” he proclaimed with a frown. “Don’t you know its rude to prattle on?”
“Yes, rude indeed!” the chicken repeated.
“I’m sorry?” Rarity raised a disbelieving eyebrow.
The Hatter stood from his seat and walked over to her. “One cannot live by questions alone. It does simply terrible things to the digestion.”
“Terrible things!” As if to accentuate this the chicken slathered a biscuit in jam and then made a move to eat it but a tea pot lashed out and gobbled it out of his hand letting out a tiny burp.
The Hatter wrapped a hoof around her shoulder and bid her to sit. “Yes, questions have always made me sleepy.”
“Questions have always given me gas!”
“Questions aren’t food,” Rarity tried to reason as she reluctantly sat down.
The Hatter shrugged. “My dear, haven’t you ever heard of ‘food for thought’?”
Rarity let out a long sigh and pushed her chair back to leave. “Fine, I see this is getting nowhere. I’m just going to go then.”
“Oh, and where might you be going?” the chicken asked.
Rarity paused half way up and frowned. Where was she going to go? Twilight was still out there somewhere, she could try to find her. But then what? By Twilight’s description of how things unfolded they could very well be the only ones of the group here. Without Pinkie they had no way home. It could take months, years before their found. And who even knew if the others were still alive.
A sudden chill swept through her. She expected Nightmare to speak at a time like this, but nothing. No more voices in her head. That’s right, she thought, regardless of the quality of company, I’m all alone. She sat back in her chair and gave a resigned sigh. Best to just stay in one place until Twilight finds her. She gave a weary smile to her two hosts. “So, what’s an un-birthday again?”
---<^^>---
Mare Do-Well had been chasing that rabbit for what felt like hours. She was getting tired and every trail she laid down in this forest simply seemed to disappear the moment she turned a corner. She trudged along through the impossible forest grumbling to herself, the white rabbit gone completely. “Rasafrasin, stupid rabbit, mumble, mumble,” she murmured to herself.
Just where did it all go wrong? Not just here in Lala Land, but in the beginning. She was smart, she should have seen that it was Twilight behind all this, manipulating Fili-Second. Who else but another Twilight. Despite who she knew her to be, she also knew that Twilight was a self-absorbed knowledge seeker. After all, she was exactly the same way.
So to be stuck here in a place that seems to take the scientific method and throw it out the window is like being dumped in the middle of a desert, she thought. Mare Do-Well closed her eyes as she walked, her mind beginning to wander. “Why did it all turn out like this?”
She felt something brush against her face and she quickly opened her eyes. She was no longer standing in a clear part of the forest. Instead she was in the middle of what appeared to be a forest of tall flowers. There seemed to be every kind, blue, purple, red, yellow and every bud was pointed down at her as if staring.
A survival instinct hit her. These things look as if they’re ready to attack, she thought. Then out of nowhere, a flower’s bud and petals folded into what looked like a mouth. “A weed?” it asked in an accusing tone.
More flowers began to morph as well taking on mouths. “It certainly looks that way!” said a few.
The first flower, a red rose bent down and poked her. “This is a proper garden, we don’t allow weeds here.”
Mare Do-Well rolled her eyes at the absurdity and simply pushed it away. “I’m not a weed.”
“Not a weed?” the rose asked. “Then what are you?”
“A pony.”
“I’ve never heard of that kind of flower,” a blue lilac muttered.
“I’m not a flower!”
“Then you’re a weed!” the rose insisted and poked her again. “A weed that doesn’t belong in our garden!”
She was having about enough of this nonsense. “So everything that’s not actually a flower is a weed, then? Never thought I’d meet racist flowers.”
The rose stood tall and seemed to look down on her with an indignant air. “A weed is something that doesn’t belong.” A sneer crossed its lips and it grew closer to her face. “You stand in our garden pretending to be something you’re not. When you’re really just a nobody.”
Mare Do-Well backed up into a bed of smaller tulips that pushed her away. “She’s not colorful!” they proclaimed.
A daisy plucked at her cape with a leaf. “She doesn’t have the proper amount of petals.”
The rose wrapped it’s stem around her leg and pulled her into the air. “You’re nothing but a pretender.”
Mare Do-Well hung upside down, the blood rushing to her head as she also felt it boil. “I am not a pretender!” She pulled out a sharp shuriken and slashed the rose’s stem. The flower screamed in pain and fell limply to the ground, Mare Do-Well in tow.
“The weed killed the rose!” a daisy shouted hysterically. “She’ll kill us all!”
Mare Do-Well watched as the flowers began to retract their petals and then seem to reverse their growth until they were no more than tiny buds. The lilac was the last to go as it hissed at her like a snake. “Killing flowers, that’s all a weed is good for.” Then she too disappeared in her bud.
Mare Do-Well held herself together as she surveyed the scene. The remains of the rose lay on the ground before her, it’s lifelike characteristics gone. It was just a simple rose once more. She didn’t know why she was so jumpy. It was just a flower. Yet it had a voice. She lifted a trembling hoof and flexed it to stop the shaking. She needed to get out of there. Just don’t think about it. And don’t think about what they said. She was not a weed. She wasn’t.
Mare Do-Well started out slowly leaving the garden until she began to run. She didn’t even know why she was running, but something inside her told her to. Her mind was a mess. So many thoughts and memories swirling around, it was hard to keep track of what she was running from. The act of herbicide just now? The names they called her? Maybe even the names she called herself? She didn’t want to think about it. Not yet. So she ran.
After a few minutes of running she heard a sound. She began to follow and saw that it was coming from a lighted up clearing of the forest. With a crouch she approached stealthily, trying to keep to the shadows as she came to the tree line. She was dumbfounded by what she saw.
Rarity sat at a long table with plenty of extra chairs and two other figures at the head. One wore a large hat and the other was some kind of rubber chicken with bunny ears? But what amazed her more than that was the fact that Rarity was laughing. She hadn’t seen a smile as genuine as that on the mare’s face. Just what was going on?
“And so, Pinkie Pie copied herself too many times and we had a veritable swarm of them all over the town!” Rarity laughed.
The Hatter laughed heartily and poured himself more tea. “It’s always good to keep an extra pair of hooves around!” He grabbed a teacup with his right hoof and began to pour some with his left while a third limb protruded from his coat and dropped in some honey. “But I must say this Pinkamena sounds most delightful!”
Rarity smiled broadly. “Oh, she would love you, Mr. Hatter! You seem to have very similar interests. Why, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Pinkie throwing a party like this. Though I think I’d keep the concepts of un-birthdays away from her. Faust knows she already has enough excuses.”
“Rarity?” Mare Do-Well stepped from her cover and the unicorn turned to see her.
“Twilight!” she shouted happily and ran over to embrace her. “Oh, I knew if I just stayed put you’d find me.”
Mare Do-Well frowned at the tea party and its hosts. “Yeah, I guess. So, what’s going on here?”
“We’re having an un-birthday party, my dear!” the rubber chicken hare proclaimed. Great, another inanimate object that can talk, she thought.
Rarity’s face brightened and she smiled deviously. “You know, fellows? It’s my friend here’s un-birthday as well.”
Mare Do-Well frowned. “What’s an-”
“It is?” they both shouted. “Well…” They began to sing a nonsense song that Rarity seemed to enjoy. Mare Do-Well simply looked between the smiling faces and the colorful decorations. It all seemed so fake to her. This wasn’t the way reality was supposed to be. All this nonchalance and carefree attitude.
But Rarity was smiling. She was happy. Mare Do-Well felt herself smile a little at the mare’s newfound freedom. Maybe, if she just indulged in this frivolity a little. For Rarity’s sake.
They finished their song and the Hatter pointed her to a seat. “Come! You must sit and have some tea!”
Rarity leaned in close to whisper to her. “I know we need to find a way back, have you found anything? We can leave if you want.”
Mare Do-Well looked at her and shook her head. “No, I’ve got nothing. If you want, we can stay here just a little longer. Maybe even get some information out of these guys.”
Rarity smirked. “That’s going to be a little bit hard, trust me.”
They sat down and began to drink and talk with the two fools. Mare Do-Well had to admit, she was having fun.
~`(\/)’~
Rarity honestly couldn’t remember the last time she’d had so much fun. Every now and then a stray thought of her sister or the mess she left her friends with back in her own world would surface but something about this place and the ponies made it go away. Something made her want to get lost in the craziness of it all.
Even Mare Do-Well seemed to be getting into the spirit. Beneath that mask she could almost see the smile she’d grown to love on her friend. She finished the tea in front of her and set it down elegantly like a lady. This tea party may be strange but she still knew how to act prim and proper.
“More tea?” the chicken hare asked.
Rarity nodded obligingly. “Thank you.” The chicken poured her some from a new pot.
Mare Do-Well barely touched her tea, only having sipped it once and she made sure not to show how she did it with that mask on. Instead she seemed placated by the smell and the odd things their hosts would say. “Why would you think that mustard is a mineral?”
The Hatter harrumphed. “Well, have you ever seen a mustard plant?”
Mare Do-Well gave an aggravated shrug. “Not personally, but it’s obviously a seed!”
“Mineral!” “Seed!” “Mineral!” “Seed!”
Rarity chuckled to herself as the two bickered. She took a sip of her tea and winced at the bitterness. She reached for the tray of sugar and dumped some in, then searched for a spoon or stirrer to mix it. “Pardon, but do you have a stirring spoon somewhere?”
The Hatter stopped his argument and the chicken Hare looked at her. “You mean you don’t have you’re playing card?” the Hatter asked, pulling out a small decorated card with a two of hearts. The chicken hare did the same and they dunked them in and began to stir their tea. “Spoons are improper, so says the Queen.”
“So says the Queen!” the chicken Hare repeated.
Mare Do-Well frowned at this. “The Queen?” Rarity frowned as well but more due to the fact that she didn’t have a card on her. Mare Do-Well leaned forward on the table to ask the Hatter more. “Just who is this Queen?”
Rarity turned to her and saw poking out from beneath her cape was a small card like shape. She smiled and reached for it. “Oh my, you really are prepared for anything aren’t you?”
Mare Do-Well spun in surprise as Rarity reached under her cape and touched the card. “No!”
Suddenly the world around her was gone. The landscape and the ponies around her vanished from sight and she stood petrified in a deep darkness. Above were what looked like storm clouds, a miasma of churning dark energies that shot blue lightning sporatically. And in the clouds, a face. A sinister familiar face. Her eyes widened in horror as the face of Nightmare Moon saw her and snarled, though no sound seemed to exist in this realm. The mass of darkness roared silently and shot out at her. Rarity lifted a hoof to protect herself and felt something push her down. When she opened her eyes once more she was back at the tea party. She was trembling all over and Mare Do-Well pinned her down, a worried look on her face. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Rarity’s mouth trembled and then curled into a grimace. She spotted the card on the ground, patterns and symbols painted across it and a horrible presence emanating from within. She glared up at Mare Do-Well. “She’s still alive!?”
Mare Do-Well turned her head to the side guiltily. Rarity pushed her off and stomped a few hooves away, her back to the mare. The terror of that monster had removed any calming effects her surroundings had. “Why?” she asked. “Why is she still alive?!”
Mare Do-Well rubbed the bridge of her nose and frowned. “Nightmare Moon is one of the most dangerous entities I’ve ever come across. Can you imagine what would happen if she got out? Applejack didn’t have time to explain all the details of the talisman to me. If I destroyed it she could get free.”
Rarity reeled on her, her anger welling up into a boil. “Then you should have just left it there!”
Mare Do-Well’s expression hardened and she stood a little taller. “And risk that entire world? They’ve already been through enough. Can you imagine what would have happened if they had a monster like that return?”
Rarity dug her hooves into the ground, seething inside. She knew she was right, but she was still incredibly angry. She should have told her. She deserved to know. “Why did you keep this a secret?”
Mare Do-Well’s confidence faltered. “I…” Rarity took a step closer to her and the mare flinched back. “I didn’t want to worry you, alright?”
Rarity’s eyes widened. She pointed at the talisman on the floor. “That is my burden!” she shouted. “Do you have any idea the pain it put me through? The suffering it made me inflict?” Tears began to run down her face. “I should be the one decide what happens to it, not you!”
Mare Do-Well held up her hooves trying to calm her down. “Rarity, I understand your frustration but you’re too close to this. Think about the repercussions.”
Rarity didn’t listen as she reached for the talisman. But Mare Do-Well was quicker. She snatched it up before Rarity could even touch it. The two stood off for a moment, both eyes boring into each other. Rarity’s full of anger and resentment and Mare Do-Well’s a mask.
Finally, Rarity turned her head away and wiped up some of her tears. “You know, Twilight? For a pony so smart, you can be incredibly thick headed.” With that, she spun around and raced off into the forest.
“Rarity!” Mare Do-Well shouted and raced after her.
The Hatter and the chicken hare simply watched in befuddled amusement as the two argued and ran back into the forest. The Hatter turning to the Hare. “Do you think we should have told them their heading toward the castle?”
The rubber chicken waved a dismissive wing. “I’m quite sure they know what they’re doing.”
Rarity ran as fast as she could. All she wanted right now was to get away from that cursed talisman and Mare Do-Well. That sight. Just seeing that horrible thing again made her want to just keep running forever.
She slowed down to look behind her. It seemed she had lost her pursuer. Not surprising considering the odd forest. Rarity then slowed to a halt and lowered her head. Anger gave way to painful memories. Enslaving all her friends. Hurting them. Applejack’s crazed expression of determination. And Fluttershy. Her Fluttershy, dead at her hooves. Tears began to flow again and she yelled as she pounded at a tree. Why? Why did it all have to be like this?
The snap of a twig from behind made her stop and she turned around. Five ponies in soldier’s uniforms pointed spears at her. Each one had a different set of hearts adorning the side of their white armor. A sudden sobering feeling fell over her and Rarity held back her tears. The tree she had been punching splintered behind her and toppled over with a crash, a rain of leaves falling to the ground.
She glanced back at the soldiers and chuckled nervously. “Um, that wasn’t yours, was it?”