“Twilight… darling…”
“Yes, Rarity?”
“Did you ever imagine that you would die like this?”
Twilight frowned deeply, almost spiritually. She looked down at herself – up, would be more appropriate, actually – and watched the technicolor mass of wiggling things squirm and jiggle over her body. The mass was comprised of tens of thousands of individuals, which had gathered together to form a massive superorganism which had affixed itself to the ceiling of the cavern she and Rarity had found themselves trapped within. Their texture was rubbery and sticky, most slightly wet, though a few were grainy and coated in a dusting of finely ground white crystals.
Twilight’s movements were greatly restricted, leaving only her head, neck, and shoulders free. Rarity had been likewise incapacitated when she’d last seen her, but that had been nearly an hour ago. The organism’s incessant wiggling had been slowly turning her body. She lit her horn, trying for the umpteenth time to summon enough magic to free herself, but the magic was being sucked from her body as quickly as she could gather it, driving the organism into a frenzy of wiggling that only subsided when she ceased her attempts to use her power.
She couldn’t even muster enough magic to cast a half-decent illumination spell. The only source of light came from crystals that were embedded in the cavern walls all around them. When they’d first been captured, she and Rarity had panicked and fired magic bolts blindly at their attackers. Luckily they hadn’t hit one another, and their stray bolts of magic had struck the crystals, causing them to glow with magical light. Thankfully, she’d put a little extra oomph into her spells, so the light showed no sign of dying any time soon. At least they’d been able to see what had attacked them, though the sight wasn’t exactly a pleasant one.
With what little leverage she had, Twilight twisted and struggled, flailing as hard as she could in order to turn the several degrees necessary to face her friend.
“Rarity, I’m going to be honest,” Twilight said, panting with the effort it took to maneuver herself into a speaking position, “I really, really try not to think about dying.”
“I think about it all the time,” Rarity said, sighing.
Twilight’s ears pinned back in surprise. “You do?” she asked, worry in her voice.
Rarity nodded, her long, gloriously silky mane dangling below. Her violet tresses undulated with the movement like they had become a part of the organism binding them. “Oh, indeed I do,” she confessed. “Do you really not? Our frequent forays into errantry are so often ever so perilous.”
“I didn’t know you were so worried about… about your safety…” Twilight said, her heart breaking as she suddenly became keenly aware of just how much she asked of her friends on their little ‘adventures’.
“Oh, no-no-no-no-no, darling, Twilight, dear heart, no,” Rarity said, denying it so fiercely that her mane wiggled about madly. “It’s not a matter of worry or fear, it’s more of a…” Her cute little mouth pouted delicately as she considered her words. The soft magical glow of the crystals reflected elegantly off her glittery lip gloss. “...it’s more like fantasizing than worrying.”
Twilight’s ears flickered in confusion. “I’m sorry, what?” Twilight asked, mouth agape. “You fantasize about your own death?”
“Mhmmmm, indubitably,” Rarity said, practically purring. “I don’t think it’s bragging to say that we’re something of a band of heroes – like those knightly sisterhoods of yore. We’ve made enough of a hoofprint in history that I sometimes wonder what our end will be. A noble death is a part of any good legacy, you know.” She sighed. “Imagine it, being found dead on your hooves, steadfast and unyielding. Or nobly walking into a snowstorm so that your comrades can have just a few more days of rations, casually adding over your shoulder ‘I’m going for a walk, I may be some time’.”
“That’s an incredibly morbid thing to fantasize about,” Twilight said, frowning but unable to express the exact ways in which that made her uncomfortable. Rarity wasn’t wrong, per se, but… ew…
“I don’t think it is,” Rarity said with a quietly girlish snicker.
“I guess we’re going to have to agree to disagree on this one,” Twilight muttered.
“It will make a wonderful entry for our Friendship Journal.” Rarity said. She paused, then added with a hearty chuckle,“Haha, well, it would have if we weren’t going to die.”
Twilight threw back her head as far as she could, her mighty groan echoing off the cavern walls. “Ughhhh, Rarity, I’m telling you, we’re not going to die. We’ve been hanging here for seven hours already, our friends are probably already back at base camp and getting ready to come rescue us, and that's if they aren’t already on their way. We’ll be saved in no time.”
“But what if they’re not on their way...?” Rarity asked, hesitation clear in her voice.
Twilight stared at her friend. She knew that tone. That was the same tone that Spike used when he’d been caught eating cookies before bed and didn’t want to admit it.
“Rarity?” she asked, her voice strained with forced calm. “Why would they not be on their way? I told you that I was going to pack my bag and you were supposed to tell the rest of the girls that we were going to go spelunking while they went fishing.”
Rarity turned away with a rather accurate approximation of Fluttershy’s brand of shrinking-violet bashfulness.
“Suppose somepony – and I’m merely posing this as a hypothetical – suppose somepony was trying to pick the perfect lip gloss for spelunking and had the teensiest, itty-bittiest little teeny-weeny bit of a slip of the mind?”
“Rarity… you didn’t.”
There was a moment of telling silence.
“Rarity?”
“I’m sorry!” Rarity shouted. Her words bounced off the walls, ringing in their ears so loudly that it made them both a little dizzy. Even their bindings seemed to quiver in disgruntlement. “And it’s not like you’ve never forgotten anything!”
“I never forget anything!” Twilight shouted back. “That’s why I have checklists for my checklists, so that I don’t forget to bring the checklists that remind me to never forget anything!”
Twilight glared at Rarity, nostrils flaring angrily, her chest heaving beneath her living constraints. Rarity was in tears, her face screwed up in shame and her ears pinned so tightly to the back of her head that Twilight couldn’t even see them.
The wriggling beast holding Twilight became agitated by something – perhaps the volume that they had been shouting at – and she felt herself slowly turning away. She didn’t resist.
She just could not believe that Rarity had done this. This was wholly unlike her. Amongst all her friends, Rarity was the one that most had it together when it came to organization and fastidiousness. She was a famous businessmare and a skilled multi-tasker. How could she have forgotten something this simple?
Twilight took a few deep breaths. Getting mad wouldn’t help. And there was still hope. Her friends were all smart, capable, and dauntless adventurers. The girls would find them eventually. The mountain she and Rarity had gone exploring in hadn't been very far from base camp… although they had gone quite deep into the mountain… and there were quite a few twisty-turny tunnels...
“Twilight?”
Twilight took one last breath, deep and slow, hoping that it wouldn’t show her ire with the forgetful mare next to her.
“Yes, Rarity?”
“Are you mad?”
“I am not mad,” Twilight replied. It actually helped to say it aloud. “We all make mistakes. Getting angry won’t get us out of here. I understand that it was an accident.”
“I love you, Twilight,” Rarity said with surprising timidity.
Twilight struggled and pulled and tugged and wiggled as hard as she could until she was facing Rarity again. “I love you, too, Rarity.”
Rarity smiled at her, and Twilight felt the last of her irritation melt under the bright, relieved grin of her friend.
They hung there, smiling at each other as the things holding them continued to writhe. The numerous tendrils were a sea of vibrant hues twirling and twisting and weaving together, rubbing against their bodies. It was uncomfortably comfortable, but they’d grown accustomed to it over the long hours of confinement.
The silence stretched on long enough to be awkward.
“So…” Twilight began, hoping to fill the cavern with something other than the sound of squishy, wriggling bodies. “Is this how you thought you’d die?”
“Definitely not, no,” Rarity muttered sadly. She flicked her head, sending her mane dancing once more. “Being strangled to death by a colony of living gummy worms was not high on the list of possible deaths I had envisioned for myself.”
Twilight tried to voice her agreement, but her attempt was forestalled by one of the gummy worms descending to smack her in the mouth. She glared at it as it wiggled in her face, rubbing all over her cheeks. She clamped down and bit the thing, tearing a chunk out of it. The worm let out a piercing little squeal and retreated back into the mass of its brethren.
“At least we won’t starve to death,” Twilight said, her cheeks full of gummy worm. The taste of fake cherry and green apple filling her mouth with every chew. “If anything kills us, it’ll be dehydration.”
“Or a rash,” Rarity said with a shudder. “It’s not so bad now since these wigglers are squishy and smooth, but mark my words, even silk can chafe.”
“I wish I could reach our saddlebags,” Twilight said as she squinted at the ground. Their bags had slipped free when the gummy worms had grabbed them earlier and the contents had spilled all over the filthy ground... well, hers had. Rarity was far more skilled in the art of luggage management and so her pack had remained firmly buckled.
“Oh, yes, I could rather go for a bottle of wine,” Rarity said, moaning with longing.
“You brought wine on our spelunk?” Twilight asked in disbelief.
“Indeed, and cheese, and wine, and strawberries, and chocolate, and wine, and wine… and a magnum of champagne.”
Twilight narrowed her eyes in suspicion at Rarity’s bulging saddlebags. “We weren’t going on a picnic.”
Rarity clucked her tongue in disapproval. “One never knows when a picnic might break out, darling. As my dear father always said, ‘Hey hey hey, is that a pic-a-nic basket or are you just happy to see me’?”
“That… what?” Twilight blinked in confusion at the string of seemingly random idiocy spewing from her normally level-headed friend. She turned her squintily appraising gaze towards Rarity. “Rarity, you’re all flush.”
“Glowing with the hue of youthful comely vigor, you precious little purple puddin’ pop, you,” Rarity declared in a suspiciously happy, almost melodious, tone.
“Rarity, don’t get worked up,” Twilight said, “but I think the blood might be pooling in your brain and making you go loopy.”
“Oh, darling, you do go on,” Rarity said, tittering in a disturbingly maidenly fashion. “Me? Loopy? Why I blood am never brain pajamas in the ding-dong-doodle.”
Panic flashed through Twilight as the tiny librarian in her brain went to work, sorting through everything she knew about increased intracranial pressure and the effects on the equine body.
If she didn’t do something then Rarity might develop a blood clot, if she didn’t already have one! A clot might cause her to stroke out! Or maybe the increased pressure might rupture something and cause intracranial bleeding! But Twilight was still fine and she’d been hanging upside down just as long... Maybe it was because she was an alicorn...? What could she do to help Rarity then? They couldn’t escape, or even move enough to sit up to allow the blood to drain out of her head. If Twilight was fine as an alicorn, maybe Rarity would be if she was an alicorn, too? She could make Rarity an alicorn! No, that was stupid… Or was it!? Wait, no… no, yeah, definitely—wait, but what if...!?
The fog of Twilight’s internal panic was blown away by the sound of laughter ringing through the cavern.
“Oh, oh my,” Rarity said, gasping and chortling. “Oh, Twilight, your face! You’re so worried, it’s adorable!”
“Rarity, are you messing with me!?” Twilight demanded, her voice sending the gummy worms into fervent-wiggling mode again. “I thought you were having a stroke!”
Rarity schooled her features, her face setting into a mask of stony concern that was spoiled only by the strangled chuckling that she couldn’t quite get under wraps. The attempt to hold back her laughter only caused her to laugh harder. A hard snort of laughter blasted out of her nostrils like a sneeze.
Angry though she was, Twilight couldn’t help but laugh at how silly Rarity looked, scrunching up her face and trying to scratch at her itchy nose. They laughed for a good long while, barely paying any mind to the gummy worms coiled around their bodies writhing in displeasure at the noise.
When the laughter subsided, they were both red-faced and sweaty, grinning at each other like morons.
“I’m sorry, Twilight,” Rarity said timidly. “I was just trying to make a joke.”
“It’s hardly the time for jokes,” Twilight chastised. “This is serious. I was really scared for a second there.”
“But do you feel better now that you’ve laughed?” Rarity asked with hope in her voice.
Twilight sighed. “Yeah, I guess I do.”
“Then you’re not mad at me?”
Twilight snickered at the way Rarity’s lower lip was trembling. Rarity could play a pony’s emotions like a fiddle, and a vast array of pouts and fluttering eyelashes were her tools to do so. It was fascinating to watch the silly white mare utilize her lexicon of body language all geared towards sympathy and coquettishness.
And, frankly, she knew what Rarity was doing, but having that knowledge didn’t make her immune to the effects. Even she had to admit that Rarity was adorable when she wanted to be.
“I’m not mad,” Twilight said after a few moments of mugging, playing at first like she wasn’t going to forgive the other mare.
Rarity’s smile lit up the cavern like the sun. “Love you, Twilight!”
“Yes, yes, I love you, too, Rarity,” Twilight said, chuckling.
They lapsed back into silence. The gummy worms, no longer stimulated by magic or sound, grew still. Only the occasional twitch or wriggle was any indication that they were alive.
Twilight, never one to lie still, began to once more tug and pull against her constraints. Most of the visible worms were long and thick, almost as wide around as a stallion’s leg, but there were also some smaller worms in there. It was the smaller worms that were the biggest problem. It was like being wrapped up in stretchy pasta, or being a krill trapped in an enormous whale’s baleen.
If only she could use magic…
The silence was broken once more by the sound of delicate grunts and respectfully whispered swearing. Twilight looked back to find that Rarity and she had been turned away from one another again, and Rarity was now in the process of trying to maneuver herself back around. Twilight did her part and struggled to turn as well, the stretchy worms tugging and releasing and recapturing her every step of the way.
“Twilight…” Rarity began, her voice soft, almost frightened. “I don’t want to die like this…”
“We’re not going to die here, Rarity,” Twilight said, hoping the words sounded more convincing to Rarity than they sounded to her. She was trying to keep a stiff upper lip, but she had to admit, this was quite a pickle they were in.
“But suppose we do,” Rarity insisted. “What then?”
“Do you mean what will happen to us after?”
Rarity nodded meekly.
Twilight hummed thoughtfully and send her tiny brain-librarian to the shelves to pull all the theology books she had. There weren’t many, but there were enough to provide some form of spiritual counsel to an ailing soul.
“Well that’s one of the big mysteries of life, isn’t it?” Twilight said as she closed her eyes and immersed herself in academic thinking. “Pony scholars and philosophers have been wrestling with the mysteries of the hereafter for as long as we’ve been cognizant of our own mortality. Sadly, it’s not something that can be scientifically studied, on account of there being no way to collect data without dying. There have been some attempts to study the subject, mind you, and anecdotal evidence suggests some sort of bright white light that appears overhead, leading some to believe in a place that the ancient thinkers called ‘Pony Heaven’, but I don’t know about that. There’s also science to suggest that any sort of light leading into the sky is just the brain shutting down, causing all senses to experience hallucinations and the like as your synapses fire off for the last time… I guess the real answer is that I just don’t know... But hey, at least we’ll go together. One last big adventure with one of my best friends.”
Twilight opened her eyes to find Rarity staring at her with a blank, unreadable expression.
“I meant physically, not spiritually,” Rarity said.
Twilight blinked, heat filling her face as she flushed from something other than blood rushing to her head. “Oh…”
“I was just wondering if these worms were going to digest us or something,” Rarity clarified. “And really, darling, I do know what heaven is. Don’t you remember before you were a princess, when you ran the library and I came by and checked out the entire ‘Heaven Can’t Wait’ series?”
“Isn’t that the erotic novel series where the angel with the thick mustache ‘romances’ lonely single mares and bored housewives alike?” Twilight asked.
Rarity nodded. “Indeed. And can I just say? Considering we’re hanging upside down, if I see a light shining above me and beckoning me forth, I’m going to try to float the other way.” She pursed her lips and blew a dismissive raspberry. “Some stupid light isn’t going to trick me into Pony Hell. If eternal damnation is to be my punishment it shall be for my disastrous Summer ‘07 line, not because I flew towards a bright light like a stupid moth.”
Twilight just rolled her eyes.
“Well… I guess the answer to that is also ‘I don’t know’,” Twilight said, shrugging minutely.
“I hope we get digested,” Rarity said in a huff. “I don’t want my corpse to be found in such a compromising position. I don’t want word of this ignominy getting out.” Rarity’s face slackened into a dull, almost mindless expression, giving her the mien of someone truly vapid. “Did you hear how Rarity died’?” She wiggled, tweaking the gormless look on her face ever so slightly as she changed the pitch in her voice. “‘Oh, yes! She ignorantly wandered into the setting of a filthy comic book and got tentacle-diddled until she died’!”
“I certainly don’t think that’ll be the story that gets around,” Twilight said, giggling softly at the show despite her personal objection to the implication of sexual misconduct. Grabby though they might be, these evil gummies were hardly diddling them.
“It’s all well and good for you,” Rarity declared, wiggling about and tossing her mane to-and-fro. “You’re a princess. I’m sure your diddling will be covered up by the state-run news agencies. Some of us aren’t quite so sheltered from scandal by our station.”
Twilight’s ears flattened in disbelief. “I can’t believe you’d accuse me of using my position in such a way!”
“I’d never!” Rarity vehemently denied. “I’m saying this would all be done posthumously. You’d have no control over it. As I was saying earlier, legacy is very important, and I’m certain that someone as long-lived as Princess Celestia understands that. She certainly wouldn’t want an Equestrian princess’ unseemly death to taint the dignity of the crown.”
“Oh… I guess that’s not wrong.” Twilight frowned.
“Then you’re not mad?” Rarity asked.
“Well… like you said, you weren’t really implying that I’d do that, so I guess there’s not really anything to be mad about.”
“I love you, Twilight.”
Twilight sighed, feeling very tired of dangling high above a cave floor wrapped up in sugary gummy beasts that seemed to have no intention other than to simply hold them and eat their magic.
“I love you, too, Rarity.”
At least she wasn’t alone.
They lapsed back into silence, a sense of calm coming over the room as they resigned themselves to simply continue hanging. As there wasn’t much else to do, Twilight found her eyelids growing heavy, sleep coming for her with slow, weighty steps. A nap would be good. Maybe when she woke up this would be over...
...or maybe she wouldn’t wake up. That would be another way for this whole ridiculous situation to end.
“Twilight.”
Twilight opened her eyes. She was still facing Rarity, but she seemed further away. Maybe they were moving apart, like flotsam adrift upon a wiggly sea.
“Yeah, Rarity?”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Twilight muttered groggily, slowly drifting back to sleep.
“No!” Rarity let out frustrated squealy groaning grunt that snapped Twilight wide awake. It was a sound Twilight had heard before, usually when her friend was having trouble with some stitchline that refused to be straight, or two swatches of color that refused to be avant garde, or something. It was a sound that was impossible to replicate without magic or machinery and it was entirely ‘Rarity’. “No, you’re not listening. I’ve been trying to… I’ve been saying it since we got here, darn you, but you just keep saying it back like you’re saying it to your sister.”
“I don’t understand…” Twilight furrowed her brow mightily. “You are like a sister to me.”
“Don’t say it like that!” Rarity thrashed against her bindings, squeaking and grunting and groaning like a weightlifting mouse. “Even if that’s what’s in your heart, don’t say it out loud!”
Twilight blinked owlishly, dumbstruck at Rarity’s protestations.
“Wha?” she asked, smartly.
“I didn’t just forget to tell the others where we were going!” Rarity snapped. “Do you really think I’m that airheaded!? I intentionally didn’t say a word because I knew at least one of the others would want to come along!”
Rarity’s lower lip trembled, but not in the way Twilight was used to seeing. There was no feigned vulnerability, no crocodile tears, just… just fear?
“You wanted to be alone with me?” Twilight asked.
“Why do you think I packed wine and cheese and strawberries?”
“And chocolate,” Twilight added, mortified that she’d been so indifferent to Rarity’s advances.
“I wanted to tell you today,” Rarity confessed. “And then the gummy worms thing… I didn’t want something this stupid to stop me, though, so I plucked up the courage and said it anyway… but then you just said it back, like ‘whoopity-doo, who cares’?”
The gummy worms were tugging, presumably riled up by Rarity’s bit of shouting. Twilight could feel herself being pulled further away. She struggled for all she was worth, trying to stay close to Rarity.
“I never meant to be dismissive,” Twilight said. “I just thought you were saying you loved me the way… the way that I love all my friends.”
“I know you didn’t mean any harm, darling.” A sad smile playing across her lips. “You’ve a good heart, better than the big wide world will ever know. You can be a bit self-absorbed, but… I think we have a bit of that in common and I love that about you.”
“I don’t really know what to say to that…”
Rarity’s smile flickered, threatening to die, but she managed to keep it up long enough to say, “You don’t have to say anything, Twilight, dearest. It’s just my selfishness, wanting to say this before I die. I don’t want you to say anything that isn’t in your heart, so if there’s nothing but friendship in it for me… well…” She let out a small laugh, diluted and feeble. “Better not to say anything, then, if you please.”
This was all very sudden. Part of Twilight was looking back and asking how she could have missed all the little signs that Rarity was interested in her, while the other half was asking how she could have possibly caught them. Rarity was a flirt, that’s just how it was. Rarity used flirting the way Twilight used math – as a tool to interact with and understand the world around her.
Rarity flirted with the milkmare. She flirted with Spike. She flirted with the mayor, with her customers, with her friends, strangers, jammed sewing machines.
Twilight had once walked in on her friend flirting with herself in the mirror and doing it well. She’d been practically ready to elope with herself.
How was one to know when such a flirt was legitimately interested in them? Especially a relative social neophyte like one Twilight Sparkle.
Twilight had to admit that maybe she was… flattered? Maybe even a little interested. She’d never really considered any of her friends as potential romances, but if any of them was a half decent fit for her it’d be Rarity. Rarity who enjoyed being indoors, who was ambitious, who enjoyed immersing herself in work for hours on end, and whose stockpile of fancy shampoos was so enormous that she never smelled the same on two consecutive days.
Yeah… yeah Twilight could see it. She could see how she and Rarity could work. It might take a little explaining to their friends, but it could be good. Spike might be a problem, but the little guy had matured a lot over the past couple of years. He’d probably be disappointed, but she knew he’d definitely want them both to be happy. Besides, she could always make it up to him next Hearth’s Warming.
“Rarity?”
Rarity had drifted away in the short amount of time that Twilight had taken to chew on Rarity’s confession. She turned her head to blink quizzically at Twilight. Tears and something that might have been the tiniest bit of hope glimmered in the corner of her eyes.
“To borrow a phrase from Rainbow Dash, this adventure has kind of sucked.” Twilight cleared her throat. “I think I might need a vacation after all this. Do you want to maybe… come spend a weekend with me in Manehattan? We could catch a play or something. Maybe go for a carriage ride in Central Park?”
Rarity stared, seemingly dumbstruck by the question. “Are you… asking… are you asking me out, Twilight?”
Twilight laughed nervously, suddenly immensely self-conscious. “I guess I am.” Rarity continued to stare and Twilight’s ability to hold a straight face crumbled with every second the other girl looked at her. She laughed again, awkwardly. “Ehehehe, I uh, I guess even if you say yes it’s just academic, huh? It’s too bad we’re going to die here. Guess we won’t make curtain call for that play!”
Twilight flinched. She was notoriously bad at jokes, despite her hours of research into the craft, but even she could that that one had fallen flat.
“No,” Rarity said, her eyes narrowing and her voice dropping dangerously low.
Twilight blinked. “Oh, you… you don’t want to go out?”
“I do!” Rarity declared with nostrils flaring. “I was saying no to your suggestion that we’re going to die here!” Rarity began flailing, flopping around like a fish dangling from its tail. “I’m going to get us out of this nightmare of a candy cavern!”
“Rarity, stop getting worked up!” Twilight shouted. “Your heart rate is going to go up and it’s just going to make the blood pool in your brain faster!”
“I’m not going to die a virgin!” Rarity declared, thrashing even harder. She reached up and took one of the gummy worms in her teeth and pulled, biting a huge chunk out of it. She chewed as the worm squealed, shivered, and fell to the ground. “I refuse to die knowing that the last thing to touch my poodle was some damned colorful gummy tentacle!”
Twilight could only watch as Rarity went absolute mad, biting and chewing and swallowing huge chunks of gummy worm. The dainty unicorn mare fought like a savage beast as she tore the gummies to pieces, sending bits of sugar-flesh raining onto the cavern floor. The fur around her mouth was sticky with saliva and gummy-juice, and tears streaked her face as she fought through the urge to pucker when she bit into the sour gummies with their flakey sour-sugar crystal coating.
“I’m coming for you, Twilight!” Rarity screamed through a mouthful of gummy, her color-stained cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk with the stuff. “I’m coming and I’m going to lick all the gummy juice off your sexy little body!”
“Rarity, stop struggling!” Twilight repeated, though she knew her friend was beyond reaching. “You’re going to give yourself a stroke, or like… vomit or something!”
“I won’t vomit! I am a warrior of love with a stomach of iron and a heart of steel and teeth of whatever is the opposite of gummy… which is probably teeth!”
Twilight could only watch as the struggle wore on. A minute. Five. Ten. Rarity was like a machine, but even machines had their limits. Her valiant struggle ceased almost as explosively as it had begun. A rather greenish complexion had been slowly coming over Rarity, cutting through the fierce crimson blush of blood rushing to hear head. All at once her body went slack, swinging amidst the sea of colors. No matter how hard she struggled, no matter how much she ate, new gummy worms would move in to take hold of her. It was a battle of attrition without nutrition, and the deluge of empty calories and sugar had finally stopped up the mighty engine of Rarity’s rebellion.
“Ooooooh dear…” Rarity moaned. Even from a distance and over the sound of flopping gummy bodies, Twilight could hear Rarity’s stomach burbling like a pot of overheated stew. “Ooooh no… No I think… I’ve…” A mighty belch issued from her elegant mouth. Rarity snapped her mouth shut, swallowing back what was almost assuredly a torrent of gummy vomit. “I ate too many gummy worms…”
“Just throw up!” Twilight shouted. “You’ll feel better if you throw up!”
“Never!” Rarity belched again, moaning in pain. “It’ll get in my mane! If I am truly to die then I will have an open-casket funeral!”
“You can have an open-casket funeral even if you throw up!”
“With sticky vomit in my hair!?”
Twilight sputtered in disbelief. “The mortician will wash your mane, I promise!”
“Ponyville’s mortician!?” Rarity began thrashing again. “That loudmouthed rumor-mongering snob!? I’d rather die than let Shallow Graves see me in such a state!”
“Rarity, listen to how crazy you’re sounding!”
“We’re being molested to death by magic-eating gummy worms deep in the recesses of a mountain, how are you not crazy!?”
Rarity was gone. Her senses had definitely taken leave of her and she was now completely beyond reason.
Twilight looked around for something, anything, that might have slipped her notice that could be of help, but of course there was nothing. No gaps in their gummy bindings, no way to use magic, no loose stones, no candy predators she could lure to their aid.
Seeing the hopelessness of their predicament, Twilight did the only sensible thing.
“I’m coming for you, Rarity!” she shouted as she raised her head and bit into the gummy worms holding her. “I’ll save you!”
“Twilight, no,” Rarity managed to say between pained moans. “That’s stupid! It didn’t work!”
“I’m not letting you suffer alone!” Twilight said in as heroic a voice as she could manage with a mouth full of gummy worms. She was already feeling kind of sick. She didn’t really like gummy worms first place, but that wasn’t about to stop her. This was an act of passion. “If we’re going to vomit ourselves to death we’re going to do it together!”
“Twilight, I love you!”
“I love you, too, Rarity!”
“I love you both!”
Twilight stiffened. She looked down to see four familiar faces staring up at her. Pinkie Pie was rearing up, a huge smile on her face as she waved at them. “I loooove youuuuuuu~!” she repeated at the top of her lungs.
“Well this is a hay of a thing to walk in on,” Applejack said as she surveyed the utterly surreal scene above.
Twilight swallowed down the gummy worms in her mouth so quickly she almost choked. “H-how’d you guys find us?” she asked, coughing and spluttering to dislodge the gummy bits that had wormed their way into her sinuses.
“We were fishing and we found some weird gummy fish monsters in the river,” Rainbow Dash explained as she kicked the mangled scraps of ruined gummy littering the cavern floor. “We followed the river to find out what was up with that and it led into a cave, which led into the mountain. We got kinda lost, but then...”
“We heard screaming,” Fluttershy added. Unlike Rainbow, she gingerly tip-hoofed her way around the sticky bits of slain gummy worms. “Your voices carry very far in this cave.”
“We saw a gummy bear!” Pinkie declared excitedly. “His name was Haribo and he called us neighbor!”
“He did not,” Applejack said, stamping her hoof as she glared at their bubbly pink friend.
“He did so!” Pinkie argued back. “You just don’t speak candy.”
Applejack scoffed, adjusting her hat in clear annoyance. “You don’t speak candy either!”
“You believe that Fluttershy speaks animal but I can’t speak candy? Well I can, so deal with it!”
Rarity let out a piercing squeal. “Will you cotton-brained ninnies just get us down!?”
“Don’t have to be rude about it,” Rainbow Dash said as she flapped her wings and began flying up to them.
“No, don’t come up here!” Twilight warned. “The worms are alive and they eat magic. You’ll get caught, too.”
Rainbow’s wings snapped closed. “Thanks for the warning,” she said, a light blush tinting her cheeks.
“Reckon I could probably lasso ya down if’n I go back to camp for my rope,” AJ suggested. “Problem with that is only your heads are sticking out there. I’d have to catch you by the neck and considering how stuck you two are I’d likely pop your heads clean off.”
“That or strangle us to death,” Twilight said in a deadpan.
Applejack shrugged. “That’s the limit of my expertise then. Fluttershy?”
Fluttershy, the wildlife expert among them, plopped down and narrowed her eyes in appraisal at the worms. She hummed, stroking her chin in thought as every set of eyes watched her. After a long period of thought, she put up her hooves and shrugged. “Nope, I have no idea. These aren’t really animals. They’re candy.”
All eyes turned to Pinkie Pie.
“Oh, so noooooow you need my candy expertise,” Pinkie said, practically gloating as she shot a sideways glance at Applejack.
“Just get us down before I throw up on all of you!” Rarity shrieked.
“Fine fine fine,” Pinkie said with a wave of her hooves. “I’ve got just the tool for this.” She reached up into her mane, her hooves sinking far deeper into the body of curls than should have been physically possible. Pinkie made a pleased little squeak and pulled the ‘tool’ from her mane.
“You brought your pet alligator on our mission?” Fluttershy asked.
“Never know when you might need a guard dog,” Pinkie said.
Applejack frowned. “How’s this critter going to help?”
“Oh, AJ,” Pinkie said, clucking her tongue in clear condescension, “why do you think I named him Gummy?”
Applejack raised an eyebrow all the way to the brim of her hat. “‘Cuz he ain’t got no teeth?”
“That and his gummy candy addiction.”
Pinkie reared up and tossed the little gator like a hoofball, sending him into the air with a perfect spiral. The little reptile disappeared into the wriggling mass, vanishing between the interweaving sea of colorful sugar beasts.
And then the carnage began.
Ten minutes later Twilight found herself on her hooves, her horn glowing as she helped Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash guide Rarity to the ground. As soon as Twilight’s newly-minted suitor’s hooves hit solid earth, Rarity shoved their two pegasus friends to the ground and ran off further into the cavern. Rarity’s beautiful voice filled the air with the sound of retching and most unladylike cursing. It was nasty, but to Twilight, it was gorgeous. Rarity’s furious vomit noises were the sounds of freedom and new beginnings, like the singing of hungover birds.
That was her girl now.
“What the hay happened before we got here?” Rainbow asked.
Twilight ignored the question, choosing instead to trot over to the bulging saddlebags Rarity had dropped. She undid the straps and nosed around inside, sending bottle after bottle of wine, of varying vintages, spilling out. She lifted one – the biggest one – with her magic and yanked the cork out with her teeth.
“I’ll tell you about it when she gets back,” Twilight said.
With that said, Twilight sat down, put the bottle to her lips, and chugged the whole damn thing right there.
* * *