//------------------------------// // Imperfect Settings // Story: Cut, Color, Carat, Clarity // by Estee //------------------------------// At that point in both the summer and sales day, it wasn't so much waiting for the pony to trot into the recently (and not-so-grandly) opened Carousel Boutique who would change her life as simply waiting for the one who would at least alter the amount of ink which had been used on Rarity's daily tally sheet. And in either case, it was turning into a decidedly long wait. The moons following Rarity's dropping out of school and first failed trade show had been busy ones: applying for the loan which had allowed her to purchase the abandoned beauty shop, converting the building into something more suitable for dresses -- time and labor, especially for that last. And said last wasn't even finished: Rarity had managed to get most of the old equipment out of the building and repaired the spots where it had rested, but there had been so many demands on her time. Painting, harsh negotiations with contractors and materials sellers which allowed her to get the work done in something which fit within her new and rapidly-dwindling budget, plus there was the designing and creation of the pieces which were meant to show off just why the Boutique would succeed -- it all added up. And there had been a deadline. Rarity had decided to open her business on the first scheduled day when the new train line would truly connect Canterlot and Ponyville. She'd anticipated any number of capital residents making the journey just so they could say they'd done so on the first day, and so she would have a freshly-opened high-end business waiting to be Discovered. Put it all together, place extra emphasis (and hours) on the time required to create the dresses because the most important thing was in having something to sell, and she'd wound up still having a few beauty stations in place as the last days had ticked away, attached to the floor by nails, screws, and her need to get the last of the opals properly aligned. She'd been thinking (or rather, panicking) about just putting up a series of decorative screens to block them off, but... She'd advertised: another expense. Not just one-sheets distributed to every home in Ponyville, but formal space purchased within a variety of Canterlot newspapers. All focused on promoting that crucial first day. The formal announcement of her arrival on the fashion scene: something she hadn't been able to manage at her first trade show, the ultimate goal of the Boutique's very existence. She'd sewn and painted, decorated and then, after a few minor attacks of hyperventilation followed her first true survey of the results, redecorated. The upper level had been turned into a living space, which had allowed her to escape her mother's final desperate too-late attempts at control (a dream) just before Rarity had encountered the still-ongoing series of costs (a nightmare) involved in turning that space into something a pony could truly live in. Rarity had worked and spent, sacrificing sleep while desperately doing everything she could to retain some money for the first few moons of loan payments, just in case. She'd filled sketchbooks, covered the newly-assigned workroom floor in fabric scraps and, occasionally, the shredded remnants of sketchbook pages. Over the course of just about three moons, nearly every waking minute of her life had been dedicated to getting ready and, but for the final lingering grooming stations in the Boutique, it could be argued that she'd succeeded. In the purest technical sense alone, the nearly-as-recently-founded Equestrian Rail Commission hadn't been quite as dedicated to their own deadline. Oh, Rarity understood the problem, at least after the screaming had died away for the third time and she'd finally bothered to put a little research in to learn the exact reason behind her fresh loathing. There had been an unexpected delay, created by an equally-unexpected monster. No casualties, and the injured among the railway crew would fully recover. It was nothing which was truly anypony's fault, and she'd understood that after spending a few moments in mentally kicking herself, followed by sending some polite get-well-soon cards to everypony's current beds. But the sections of track which had been torn up, workers in the hospital and no way to readily replace them, not with crews laboring all over the continent... the opening of the line had been postponed. The government could freely change a deadline when such things occurred. Rarity, who'd been advertising her Grand Opening date for moons and had a mere three days left at the time everything happened, could not. And so the Opening had come, with Grand turning out to be rather the wrong word. Not that she'd totally lacked for attendance -- or, for that matter, sales. The rail line's completion schedule had been forcibly changed, but that of the Weather Bureau had not: it had been a fine summer day, exactly as dictated by that section of the bureaucracy -- and so even without the train to provide ready access, a few residents of Canterlot had been curious enough to take the trot as a day trip. They had been joined by a number of the Ponyville residents who'd seen the one-sheet and Rarity had quickly learned that some of them had treated 'seen' as more than sufficient, because by the third time somepony came in to inquire about her prices for grooming services, she'd realized more than a few hadn't bothered to truly read it. It hadn't been what she'd most longed for: no trade magazine reporters had come into the Boutique and Discovered her, nor had any shop owners from the capital arrived to inquire about purchasing her wares for their own establishments. It certainly hadn't turned out the way she'd dreamed of. But there had been some ponies at the opening. (Even now, a week into her new career, there were ponies coming in under the impression that they were arriving on her first day, because the dedication to not reading also allowed them to fully avoid the actual date.) A number had simply examined her wares and departed. Some had sniffed, snorted, and made comments meant to be overheard, for Rarity was beginning to truly learn that a creative talent was always at the total lack of mercy of those whose skills centered around a complete lack of taste. But a few had purchased and one, a newly-married minor and rather impressed noble from the capital, had inquired about a commission... She hadn't finished the day with what she'd truly dreamed of. But her loan payment for the moon had been secured. She could purchase a few bolts of cloth to start working on replacement items and had begun the sketches for that advance purchase, which had to be delivered by the start of autumn. Rarity, in spite of everything, had ended her first hours in business under the impression and hope that she was on her way. Most of the hours since then had been spent under the crushing weight of boredom. [/hr] The door opened, and the soft blue of Rarity's field surged in response: the sketchbook was hastily scooted under a nearby swath of fabric (which had been discolored by the grayish light coming through the windows), the quill nearly slammed into the inkwell, and her glasses leapt from her face to take refuge behind the shielding cover of a trade magazine. (She'd only begun wearing glasses within the last two moons. She didn't strictly need them and in fact tended to get headaches after wearing them too long, but the magnification made it easier to check fine detail work. Rarity had yet to find a style she was even remotely happy with.) "Welcome! Welcome to the Carousel --" "-- I'm just looking, Rarity," Mrs. Voyeur casually interrupted, shaking her body slightly to get rid of the moisture in her fur and feathers while still standing on the absorbent mat: the Bureau had given Ponyville the dubious benefit of a summer day in which the air was filled with something just above mist and slightly below drizzle. It generally took about twelve seconds of exposure to begin permeating fur and up to three days before anypony truly felt dry again. "I thought it was about time I came in. Don't you agree?" Rarity just barely managed to repress the sigh. "Yes," she told her former neighbor. "I've been expecting you, actually." Because wherever ponies gathered, Mrs. Voyeur might eventually follow. Standing on the absolute border of the discussion (or, given the benefits of wings, somewhat overhead, behind a cloud, well out of sight), close enough to overhear everything -- followed by retreating to a location where she could find more ponies, because what was the point of acquiring gossip if you didn't repeat it? At the time Rarity had been sent away (rather against her will) to boarding school, Mrs. Voyeur had been serving as the settled zone's central distribution center for tales, pass-along semi-facts, rumors, and gossip of all sorts. And any number of things had changed during the young unicorn's period of forced exile: ponies had moved away, and some new ones had moved in. There had been relationships begun, while older ones had ended. Some businesses had closed, and one of those closings had allowed Rarity's to open. She'd missed all of it and was still desperately scrambling to catch up, trying to find a fresh place within the town's social web. (Her carefully-manufactured accent was working against her: some of the new arrivals felt she was from Too Far Away to trust, and a few of the long-time locals heard the voice and failed to see through the years, beholding the adolescent and failing to recognize the youth they'd once known. However, her profession seemed to be helping.) But some things didn't change. Where ponies gathered, Mrs. Voyeur would be there. Eventually. There were ways in which Rarity could try to tell herself it was a positive sign. The Boutique was now officially something worth gossiping about. "You don't seem to have any customers," Mrs. Voyeur openly noted. "Unless there's somepony in the dressing rooms?" Not that all gossip was positive. "No," Rarity steadily replied, and felt the second repressed sigh join the first in the bottom of her stomach, where the squirming immediately turned into a duet act. "It is somewhat slow at the moment." Knowing, a split-second too late, that 'somewhat slow at the moment' might turn into 'she's teetering on the verge of bankruptcy' before the pegasus elder cleared the second rack. "Well, I'll just be looking around," Mrs. Voyeur said. "Maybe I'll see something interesting." Followed by repeating it to most of the settled zone, with no more than ninety percent of the details lost along the way. "Yes," Rarity said for lack of anything which wouldn't be falsely incriminating. The older mare nodded and began to browse. Rarity went back to her sketching. She'd been learning a lot during her first week in business -- the first normal week (or rather, what she was still desperately hoping wouldn't be completely normal) after her Not So Grand Opening. And one of the first lessons had concerned the passage of time. Namely, that the average duration between one sale and the next was forever, although that was simply the mean of the numbers: you had eternity at the low end and infinity holding up the high. The moons leading up to her opening -- work. Endless work, with just enough time available to her in which to realize there wasn't enough of it. The first day, even with the train postponed, had been active: enough to grant her a taste of success and the bitterness of what might have been. But since then... There were only so many times one could adjust the display. Clean the shop. Going up the ramp to continue the work on what still wasn't quite a comfortable residence was impossible: there was a chance of missing somepony walking in. She could sketch and sew, of course, and it turned out that in the right (or wrong) pony eyes, that was offensive: if she was not fully ready to serve them at the moment they trotted inside, their eyes would roll, their ears would twitch, and bits would remain within saddlebags. Of course, for those same ponies, if she then politely offered to help them, she was putting undue pressure upon them and they would certainly never spend at a place which refused to leave them alone... (A certain number of contradictions seemed to be extant in selling. Rarity had begun the slow process of resolving them through deciding that a surprisingly large number of ponies were stupid.) She worked when she could, as ideas came to her. There were still sales here and there: not many, but enough to give her hope -- although she was beginning to wonder if that was truly a gift worth accepting. But for the most part, she waited. Not necessarily for the pony who would change her life, or even her tally sheet, but just for a pony. Anypony at all. Mrs. Voyeur qualified as an 'anypony,' which made Rarity realize she should have been considerably more specific. "You've left a few grooming stations up," the pegasus observed, and Rarity listened to the subtle sound of internal notes being taken. "Couldn't quite finish in time?" Yes. Rarity weighed her words carefully before replying, trying to figure out which ones would suffer the least amount of distortion. "Actually, a surprising number of ponies seem to think this is still a beauty shop," she tried. "I've had more than a few ask me to style their manes. So I've decided to study that. After all, I am selling a few hats here and there, plus not all of my dresses are intended to cover the tail. Styling a pony's coiffure into something which would best suit their purchase would only help them." Not that she intended to become a professional and she still wanted to get rid of the grooming stations eventually just in the name of having a pure shop -- but as long as ponies were wandering in under the impression that the previous owners had just taken a year-long vacation before opening with some mostly-ignored new stock, she might as well try to get a few bits out of it. "It can be rather difficult," Mrs. Voyeur nodded with what felt like a mostly false sympathy. "Getting the entire herd to realize the charge direction has changed, especially when the new leader is -- less than ideal. And aren't you still a little young for this?" This is not the time to grind my teeth. "I am doing this at my current age," Rarity steadily replied, "and therefore this is the age at which I should be doing it. The only completely unnatural act is the one which cannot be performed." "I heard you dropped out of school," the pegasus mostly ignored her. Rarity didn't answer that one. It seemed just about everypony knew that by now. Her mother's voice, especially when boosted by the heat of argument, tended to carry a rather long way. "Well," Mrs. Voyeur continued, "everypony makes mistakes..." And back to pretending towards browsing, an act which the lone member of the local audience was no longer willing to believe. More sketching. Rarity watched Mrs. Voyeur from the corner of her right eye as the older mare repeatedly demonstrated the art of putting things back in exactly the wrong place, because it simply wouldn't do for the pegasus to sneak up on her and spot the image which was lovingly being created, no matter how much fine detail work Rarity had managed to get in on the noose. The door opened. Rarity's field covered the sketchbook again -- and that was all there was just barely time for. Time passed slowly in the opened Boutique: an early lesson. A fact which instantly, loudly shattered. "HI!" The new arrival abruptly shook herself to get rid of the mist's moisture, turning the pink body into something of a blur. That state then maintained. "I'm really really sorry I couldn't get in here earlier!" the blur apologized as it sped towards the first rack. "I mean, I've been meaning to, because if I came in too late, I'd look like a meanie! Is that too much mean in one sentence? I can't tell. Anyway, HI! I saw your one-sheet, and of course I saw the building at night or early in the morning, but I couldn't come in because I had school, and then I had work, and then I had summer and there's just so much to do! Like when you opened, because I was working. And most of this week, because I had parties and play and just about everything else. But since you weren't new or anything, there wasn't much of a hurry, and even if I didn't know your name, it's because I'm still meeting everypony and I could meet you when I came in, and you could meet me!" The full speech had come across from a series of at least twelve different locations within the shop. Rarity was fairly sure one of them had been almost directly behind her. She'd felt a little movement of breeze along her fur as something had glanced past her to get a look at the sketched-out noose on that briefly-uncovered page, immediately followed by what had felt, even completely unseen, like a quick smile before the presence had briefly relocated itself to the dressing rooms, then found that boring and checked out the magazines in the waiting area. Most of those had then ridden the wind from the next shift and wound up on the floor. Rarity felt her ears beginning to descend towards her skull, pressed down by the rushing weight of words. For the other occupant's part, Mrs. Voyeur had taken off, and the backblast of that takeoff had done cruel things to the contents of a rack. It was now completely disorganized, with the overlapping contents appearing to have simply occurred of their own accord, in something perilously close to a totally random state. On the bright side, however, it now matched the local theme. "So it's nice to be here!" the blur gushed as it pronked -- pronked? -- towards Rarity's central sewing station, where her device was now starting to bounce from the vibrations of the repeated jolts against the floor. "Wow, it's pretty in here! The paint, I mean. And the dresses! The decorations are kind of nice. Not enough streamers, though. And I mean -- there it is again! -- there aren't any streamers. Somepony should do something about that, especially for a new shop! From a not-new pony. A pretty shop! And that pony is --" All movement abruptly stopped. This seemed to include blinking. They were staring at each other. Rarity did a little more with the time. The now-motionless arrival was an earth pony adolescent mare, somewhat younger than Rarity. Pink, yes, the only detail Rarity had truly been able to make out while everything had been happening: a rather bright, happy hue which still only went with a few other shades and would take a lot of work to get into something a little more subdued. The body was still in the process of filling out into its adult build, and that potential result was partially shrouded by a touch of extra weight. Both mane and tail (also pink) were heavily, wildly curled: twin masses which were something close to untameable, and Rarity instinctively knew it had nothing to do with the humidity outside. The blue eyes were a lighter shade than Rarity's own, and the earth pony's features were pleasant, even cute -- and then moved beyond that state. She was no great beauty, but had something which might have been better than the mere perfection of snout and ears. Her appearance did not speak of the barrier which so often existed between the ideal and those around them. It was the open appeal of total approachability. Anypony could come up to her without being stopped by the wall created by the aloof, and find her waiting to speak with them. Rather quickly. And the mark was -- balloons? Rarity, with no sign of talent visible before her, tried to interpret it. Aeronautics? It might be possible. For an earth pony, the new arrival certainly seemed to spend an impressive amount of time above the ground. "You're not new," the earth pony said. "I'd know if you were new in town. I would." A quick nod at that, as if reassuring herself. "But you are new. And not new. I don't know everypony's names, just the ones I've heard, and I would remember if I'd ever seen you. But you're new, and not new. How is that possible?" Still staring. She seemed to be fairly good at it. "Not new," Rarity tried, "in town." It was mostly buying time. Repeating some of the younger pony's words would have to give her a few seconds for finding her own. "Yeah!" Curls bounced as the nodding drastically accelerated. "I'd know!" "I recently moved back to Ponyville," Rarity carefully attempted. "I had been away at boarding --" "You don't sound like you're from Ponyville!" the earth pony enthused, with Rarity completely aware that the particular descriptive term shouldn't have been on that bit of speech and had somehow wound up there anyway. "At all!" Rarity made a careful, sincere, and completely desperate attempt to dredge up one of her standard responses for that. "Um..." "But that's why I didn't know you'd come in!" the earth pony gushed. "Because you're not new! Even though you are. Which means --" and the bright features abruptly collapsed into worry "-- oh, no, the shop's been under construction for moons, I didn't know about you for moons because I've been so busy with everypony else, I've completely neglected --" with an instant transition to sorrow "-- I'm sorry! I really am! I should have said something way before this! And somepony should have totally done something just because you're home again after being away for so long! Because home is important, once you know you have one. But --" and surging to brightness again "-- I'll fix it! I'm going to go work on that right now! So I'll see you when it's ready!" The pink body blurred, raced for the door -- -- stopped halfway through the opening. The door rebounded into the wood on the other side, came back, and was stopped by a pink forehoof. The young mare stared at Rarity again. "What's your name?" "Rarity," managed the slightly older unicorn, and not by much. "I'll remember!" -- and gone. Time resumed its normal flow, which suddenly felt like the only normal thing left, especially after Rarity looked up to make sure Mrs. Voyeur had survived the onslaught and found something partially blocking the view. "...what," Rarity asked the world, not particularly expecting an answer, "was that?" The older mare slowly worked her way past the intermittent new barrier, touched down, sighed. "That," Mrs. Voyeur said, "was Pinkie." "Ah." The pegasus nodded. "And what," Rarity dazedly forced herself to continue, "is a 'Pinkie'?" The town's foremost gossip slowly smiled. "You really don't know?" Rarity just barely managed the smallest shake of her head, which allowed her to truly feel the recently-inflicted damage done to her own manestyle. "Well," the elder pegasus settled in, arranging her body into the position of a pony who was prepared to talk for quite some time while providing absolutely no guarantee for the accuracy of anything she said, "that's a story..." And Rarity listened as best she could, with her ears trying to focus while her eyes stared up at the streamers.