She found herself wandering through the settled zone on the following summer night, and then again on the one which came after that. It was costing her hours: time she needed for sleep, recovery from the day's (general lack of) sales, and what was required to turn the Boutique's upper level into a place where a pony could live, as opposed to the location of her nightly retreat. But yet Rarity did it anyway: three nights in a row, and then four.
Part of it, she told herself, was from trying to become familiar with her home again. After all, it wasn't as if she could venture out that much during the day. Her hours were her own: that was the arguable benefit to being truly self-employed -- but at the same time, the Boutique had nopony else working there. Rarity could shut the doors and leave the shop at any time she wished -- which meant the shop would be closed. She was still in the first fortnight after her not-so-grand opening. Even if ponies from the capital largely hadn't belatedly trickled in (and the revised opening of the train line was still some time away), there was a chance for them to do so. A local could find themselves in need of a dress. Somepony could drop by and, while not truly showing any interest in the pieces on display, might simply strike up a conversation. A pony who would talk to her for a time...
On one rainy night, she'd found herself wandering past her former primary school and -- hadn't quite understood how she'd gotten there. She certainly hadn't been intending to approach, not on any conscious level, and just going out when the scheduled weather was so muggy and wet, heavy raindrops were saturating her fur while dense air seemed to collect at the back of her lungs... there were better things to do on a night like that, and yet she'd left the Boutique without even bothering to don rain gear and wandered through the increasingly-soaked town, until she'd found herself at the old schoolhouse. And she didn't know why.
At night, the building was empty: that was true in every season. Ponyville occasionally hosted classes for adults who wished to acquire a new skill, but such generally took place in a large, typically-vacant room in Town Hall, if only to keep full-grown ponies from having to find a way of squeezing themselves behind now-inadequate desks. And during the day... well, if any had failed their courses during the bulk of the year, there would be makeup courses in summer: one last chance to advance with the rest of the class. However, it was hardly a year-to-year event: Rarity could recall only one such instance during her own primary schooling, and it had hosted a single, rather embarrassed student who'd never even glanced in the direction of her once-precious glitter collection again. During most summers, even under Sun, the building would simply, quietly wait for autumn to begin.
They're not in summer school. Not all of them. Maybe one or two moved away, and it's possible that there's one who had a bad year, but everypony else would be on summer break right now.
Some might have traveled. Visiting distant family, or the luckiest might have even found their parents offering a trip to Horaceland. But for everypony in her former class to have left the settled zone's borders... that felt as if it was impossible.
Autumn through spring, she would have understood. Her business was open during school hours, homework hours, play hours. There were other things to do. But in summer...
She'd been open for nearly a fortnight now. Adults had come in. Just adults, but for the apprentice baker and Sweetie's single determined try to reach the stockroom during Rarity's very first day. And she'd made sure her one-sheets went to every home in town. Yes, she'd seen plenty of evidence that not everypony had actually read them, and possibly her first townwide advertisement hadn't been the best time to ask the engraver for an accurate transference of Rarity's elaborate calligraphy. But still -- some of them had to know where she was. And none of them had come by to see her, not after five years...
Rarity stood still in the rain, feeling the water running off the ends of saturated mane and tail strands. After a while, she trotted down to the playground equipment, arranged her body on the old merry-go-round. She'd been thinking of that former joy on the day she'd named her shop, looking at the circumference of the building while trying to pin down just what it was reminding her of -- and then she'd had it. The old ride, only updated into something more grand. A carousel, perhaps: that was the basic idea increased in scale. It had seemed workable, she'd never come up with anything better, and -- then it had been on the one-sheet. Official and likely permanent.
But the thing about a carousel...
When it came to store records, Rarity had a bad habit: she kept them.
It wasn't just sales, although those were written down as they happened: the style, size, any comments the customer might have made. Rarity recorded whether a piece had been donned before being rejected, noted which ones had simply been removed from the racks for closer examination. There was a chart for the number of customers entering and how long each had stayed. A separate pair of tallies tracked two numbers: the ponies who'd promised to come back later, and the fractional figure which indicated those who actually had. The ideas was that it would all help her to pin down interests and trends, put away that which nopony was truly interested in (despite how well she'd made it) while making her first forays into learning the art of selling. Everything provided her with numbers, and the endless quiet of a shop awaiting that next visitor granted her far too much time for obsessively reviewing them.
It had only been about a fortnight, and of course the sensible thing to do was reject the figures from her first day: they only tended to unfairly drag up the average. She could also attempt to forecast seasonal sales trends: there should be a little more traffic around Hearth's Warming because that was true for pretty much every other shop and so she might enjoy it as well. School dances --
I will never attend a school dance.
-- might bring in adolescent mares looking for suitable youth sizes, and Rarity was starting to wonder about the long-term value of offering rentals to those who truly couldn't afford her wares.
Perhaps attempting to project things forward was an act of foolishness on her part. There would be upswings and downsurges, plus it was impossible to tell when something might truly catch: the style which brought her notice, the unexpected visitor who finally Discovered her. But with so little else to do, Rarity had still attempted to send her numbers into the future. And what she'd seen there had made a simple statement: she was likely to survive. There would be slow periods, because there always were. But on the whole, if she saved money from when things were a little busier and used it to cover the emptiness, she might just make every loan payment. She would be able to eat, and having the building (eventually) truly paid for would provide shelter. Perhaps a few bits of profit could potentially be risked on an incredibly minor frivolity now and again.
She would survive. But that was all.
Rarity rested on the old, soaked wood, wondered if any of the ancient stain was rising up to discolor her fur, and yet she did not move. She looked at her former schoolhouse through wet eyes, with her right foreleg hanging off the edge of the circle, and made no attempt to push herself along.
For the thing about a carousel was that the pony riding it could potentially travel for a lifetime, and still find themselves in exactly the same place.
[/hr]
A full two weeks now, and nearly all of the daylight portion of that time was spent in the shop. When could she close? What was a good hour to leave without risk? She needed to buy food, look for more stable sales, spend some time making that lonely upper level somewhat more habitable. Was there a point to trying for night traffic in the summer, even as late as Moon arrived? Stay open and wait for ponies to finish their workshifts? Hold out for their days off? Should she be open when everypony else was closed?
Another day had her outside for a few precious minutes, freshening the flowers outside the shop, and it let her overhear ponies talking. Not about her: the subject was the train. The new deadline seemed to be on schedule, the line would be running in just over a moon. Was it worth trying to advertise in the Canterlot newspapers again? There was only one grand opening, but she could at least remind those arriving on the first cars that she was there. Did she even have the money for a fresh round of promotion? Where could she pull it away from, and how would she compensate if that spending didn't produce sales? What if there was another delay and that expenditure was wasted for a second time, with the promise of a potential third?
She wished for somepony she could talk to about it. For somepony she could speak with about anything. But her mother's only business advice was that it wasn't too late for Rarity to enroll in another school, her father (if present) would remind her that the Boutique had been her choice, she could hardly consult her customers...
There was an organization of tradesponies in town, of course: a gathering of business owners which took place once per moon. It was a place to seek advice -- or rather, it would be once Rarity reached the minimum membership age.
The shop saw some customers, and a few sales. Just enough to think about survival, and not much else.
Rarity found herself looking not just towards the door when it opened, but at every shadow which fell across the windows. It didn't take long to realize she was searching for a particular size of shadow. Something a little smaller than an adult, perhaps moving slightly quicker. And she wouldn't recognize any voice calling out to her, not immediately, because it had been years and everypony's voice had changed: the accent might be hers alone, but puberty would have come for all. But it wouldn't take long to see past the change in body, she would rush out to greet her newest visitor and they would talk, talk about all the things Rarity had missed, she would close the Boutique for that because there was more to survival than mere sales and --
-- it was adults. On the scarce occasions when those shadows turned into ponies, it was always adults.
At night, she trotted. And in time, she also recognized that she was trotting to all the old places. Where she'd played, laughed, tumbled with the others (although never too close to the dirt), and --
-- their homes.
She stood outside those homes, on more than a few nights. Two of them were always dark. It might have been families traveling for the summer, or ponies could have moved away. But others had light, if she was there at the proper hour. She heard fragments of speech, voices which almost seemed familiar, and she would trot towards the door, raise a foreleg to knock --
-- the density of five years, abruptly solidified around her hoof, presented something of a barrier. And in time, she would turn away.
The days passed, as did the nights. Sales, waiting, and silence.
Some days had clouds. Others Sun. All were grey.
[/hr]
It happened at the end of her third week and afterwards, she would curse herself for not having recognized what was (retroactively, with the non-benefit of cold experience) so obviously a setup. But only with the minority of her curses, as there was just so much worth cursing about.
"Excuse me?"
She'd looked up as the door had opened, because she still did that, and the words from the teen pegasus stallion cut off Rarity's own prepared greeting.
It wasn't anypony she recognized, not even after spending an extra moment in trying to see past a fresh acquisition of years. A pleasantly dark red shade to the fur, cream in tail and mane, and a mark which was still making itself fully known in Equestria: a movie camera. Nopony she'd ever met, and a stallion of any age -- well, she'd already learned that was a true scarcity for her shop. "May I help you?" A stallion in a dress shop just about automatically seemed to be a situation which begged for help.
"Well..." A forehoof scraped against her entrance mat: it made him look almost endearingly awkward. "I hope so. But it's not for me. You can't help me. Only you can. I hope. I... hope..."
Buying a dress for somepony else? She wondered if he had the budget. Most of the adolescents in town didn't possess much in the way of money, and it was hard to picture a true situation where this one would be able to afford her work. Still, there was the chance he'd taken the day trot from the capital. "Then how may I assist you?"
Another hoof scrape. "Do you do repairs?"
She blinked.
"There's this dress," the male awkwardly said. "At home. My mom is going to use it tonight. And some friends and I, we've been practicing a scene for -- well, a scene, and some of us have to wear dresses for it. Good ones. My mom has a good dress. But it turned out that it... doesn't fit on my friends like it does on her. Or at all. So -- do you do repairs? Because with all the sewing you have to do in order to make all this, I was sort of hoping that..." One last scrape. "I can pay. But it has to be now."
She looked at him, noted the lack of saddlebags, and asked the question which she was afraid she already had the answer to. "Where is this dress?"
"At my house. I couldn't be seen carrying it, or she would know."
Rarity wondered whether she should be explaining the existence of saddlebags. "I am certain that if you..." How to put this? "...place it within --"
"-- I can't make another trip!" the pegasus declared, starting to breathe faster. "Please! You're new! Anypony else, it would get back to her, and --" His head dipped, and the brown eyes barely managed to look up. "-- please..."
I could use the bits.
Repair services are income. Not my favored source of it, but -- income.
I would have to close the shop. There is nopony who could watch it for me. Nopony to sell on my behalf. The scant income from a repair would not match the profit from a sale. If I miss anything because I leave to help him, then my tallies for the day should be conducted with red ink.
She looked at his face again. The concern. The fear.
"Where do you live?"
All the joints on his wings unfurled, feathers rustling with sudden relief. "Follow me!" He spun, flared those wings --
"-- wait! I need to gather my materials! What is the color of this dress? The nature of the repair? Is this a rip or a patch? Should I bring fabric samples? And I have to lock up!"
[/hr]
It took a surprising amount of time. Not just to gather up her supplies for the emergency (and she vowed to put together a standard kit at the next available opportunity -- which, given the way her days tended to operate, would probably be all of tomorrow). The pegasus almost didn't seem to know where he lived. Visibly shaken, yes, but to be so upset as to keep going down the wrong streets, and of course there were the frequent occurrences when he flew so far ahead that he completely lost her, leaving her standing almost still in vibrating exasperation as she waited for him to realize she was nowhere in range, plus she couldn't get him to speak his address and simply let her navigate her own way. Panic explained much of it, but it was still frustrating -- and as it would soon turn out, panic didn't explain quite enough.
There were several reasons to wish for that address, and the most dominant manifested when they reached his home -- or rather, the place where Rarity could stand beneath the cloud which floated quite some distance overhead. The pegasus then wasted time in inquiring whether she could cast the cloudwalking spell, or self-levitate, or anything which meant he didn't have to bring the dress out and risk having somepony see it. She'd used several minutes in trying to explain that no, every unicorn in the world couldn't cast a spell just because that working would be rather convenient at the moment, in between her increasingly desperate attempts to explain the mere concept of 'saddlebags'. But eventually, she'd gotten him to at least recognize the idea of 'sack' because somehow, 'saddlebags' seemed to be too feminizing for a stallion who might have recently been wearing a dress, and the garment came out, hidden within burlap. He'd then insisted that they get out of sight before attempting the repair, just in case his mother returned, she'd agreed to that, he'd taken a ridiculous amount of time to find a location he was happy with, the sack had finally been opened, and it had taken Rarity nearly twenty seconds before she could visually distinguish the burlap from its contents.
By the time the sack finally opened, she'd formed several opinions of the fear-filled male, and quickly wound up adding several more. Some of the fresh ones equally applied to his mother, and every last one of them wished to know just what that family's standards were when it came to a 'good dress'. The garment was, in fact, in need of some repair. Also reworking. And, if you truly wished to skip over the labor which would need to go into any pointless attempts at triage upon a patient who had been dead on arrival, what it really needed was a rather sudden and fully comprehensive fire, but the pegasus had offered payment and Rarity, whose need to criticize was currently at war with her need for income and suffering heavy losses along the line, had gritted her teeth and gotten to work. She'd managed the first repair, and correcting that had allowed her to see where the second was required. Fixing that distortion led her to find an error, the pull on the weak fabric created by fixing the error exacerbated an extant flaw, and that had meant redoing the entire hem line...
By the time she reached the end, Sun had been lowered. Moon was raised. Rarity had used most of her supplies, along with every last tenth-bit of her patience. The garment had been repaired, and 'repaired' was all the pegasus had allowed her to do, because of course his mother would spot any attempts to render the thing into an actual dress. (He'd made her take her first two tries apart and spotted the third before it could truly find a stitchhold.) And with all the labor complete...
She looked at the saliva-dampened coins which he'd just placed on the ground.
"Ten bits," she softly observed.
"I said I'd pay."
"Ten bits," she too-calmly repeated. "For all that. For all the material. The labor. The time away from my shop. Ten. Bits."
"It's... what I have," he eventually risked. "You never said..."
She hadn't. Her own fault, that, seeing his panic and wanting to help. "Ten bits, then." Her field scooped up the minimal weight, deposited them in much emptier saddlebags.
"So," he awkwardly tried, "if it ever happens again -- because, you know, we're not done with the scene yet --"
"-- it will not be ten bits."
He thought about that.
"Discount for repeat business?"
Rarity briefly entertained a fantasy, one in which her field strength was considerably higher than her actual rating, enough to lift the pegasus, turn him over, and shake the male until more bits fell out. But she didn't have the raw power required for such manipulation of mass, plus the adolescent still wasn't wearing saddlebags. Instead, she simply turned and slowly trotted away.
So now there were four things to do tomorrow. The construction of a comprehensive emergency traveling repair kit, setting a fee structure, creating a very visible policy concerning payments being made in advance, and the complete disposal of any plans she might have entertained for providing costumes to Ponyville's amateur filmmakers -- actually, that made it five things: she would need to form at least one such plan before disposing of it.
How many sales had she missed? Likely none. So in her dreams, it wouldn't become more than a hundred or so.
Rarity sighed, and slowly trotted home under Moon. Any urge to wander the settled zone seemed to have been satisfied for the evening: she'd certainly seen more of Ponyville than anypony would have reasonably expected just from going out to the pegasus' home. She would just go back to her understocked kitchen, find something she could try to prepare without destroying it, and then settle into her blanket nest.
Going home. That was the proper term for what she was doing, and so it only felt as if she was being forcibly returned to her cell.
This is what I wanted.
No. It was an aspect of what she'd wanted. A first hoofstep in creating her own road, after other paths had been closed. It just didn't seem to be a road which was going anywhere -- except, perhaps, moving in an eternal circle.
It's only been three weeks. Things will get better.
Would they?
It wasn't prison. But it wasn't home yet either. It was just a too-big empty space where she slept, above a shop where just enough ponies were buying to allow the chance of survival and no friends ever came to visit. Nopony even seemed to remember that she'd ever been a friend at all, and when she tried to knock...
How good a friend could I have been if nopony comes to me?
Eventually, she got back to the center of town, crossed the train tracks which wouldn't have anything running down them for some time, started to make her way towards the Boutique.
How can I call myself a friend when I'm afraid to approach anypony after so long away?
There was a surprising amount of shadow up ahead, even for a night under what was just about a new Moon. A glance up found unscheduled cloud cover blocking most of what illumination should have existed. Well, the town's weather coordinator had been approaching the age of retirement when Rarity had been forced to leave Ponyville, and was probably now well past the point where he should have landed with his last shred of dignity intact and kicked the job over to a younger pony. But she knew him, or at least what her mother had once said: he would probably keep a mouth grip locked until the complaints mounted into the sky and the Bureau was effectively forced to ground him. That could be a long process. Years.
Eat. Rest. Do it all again tomorrow.
And tomorrow.
And tomorrow.
She should have acquired a pet. Just so there would be something she could come back to.
Yes, far too many shadows around the Boutique, more than there ever should have been. And somewhere within them, the sound of --
-- whispering? Giggles?
Rarity stopped moving. Her horn lit, corona igniting, surging in preparation for her best weak effort at self-defense --
"SURPRISE!
She recoiled from the group shout, which gave somepony in the shadows time to switch the devices over, turning the projection of darkness into pools of light --
-- and there were ponies.
There were dozens of ponies. All ages, including some youths: those younger than she, those somewhat older, and -- she knew that face, didn't she? It had been so long since she'd seen those features and the years had changed much, but that face, and -- adults there, former neighbors, and she was certain some of the vaguely familiar ones operated the shops around her own.
She saw several carefully-arranged tables. Some benches, also brought in for the occasion. One refreshment area featuring a communal drinking trough. A gramophone. And a slightly chubby pink adolescent, rapidly pronking towards her.
"HI!" Pinkie beamed. "We were starting to wonder if you were even coming back tonight! I should have had somepony escort you in -- well, actually, I sort of did, only you didn't know about it because I didn't tell him to let you know, especially since it would have ruined the surprise. But I also didn't tell him to fly ahead to us every so often, just to let us know how close you were getting. So that part is totally my fault." She looked up. "Sorry, Vaude! My fault! The actor doesn't take the blame for the script!"
"It's okay!" the red pegasus called down from somewhere behind the mobile cloud with the spyhole in the center. "I still sold the part!"
"...what?" Rarity finally managed. "...what is --"
"-- it's your welcome home party!" Pinkie smiled. "Because you should have had one, after being away for so long. And somepony totally should have hosted one for you, which turned out to be me. So --" a little more slowly, and much more softly "-- that's also sort of my fault, your not having had one for so many moons. Because I didn't know you were new, even without being new, because I guess when you're away for so long, everything starts being new again. And new can be scary. I know." Back to normal volume. "So welcome home, Rarity! Welcome home! And let's party!"
She allowed herself to be led forward, for there was nowhere else to go and the familiar was in front of her.
Somepony wound up the gramophone. Pinkie took charge of the refreshment table. That old and new face smiled, and its owner began to trot towards Rarity.
The party began. And for a little while, things were better, almost right up until the moment it all went wrong.